Although we think that John McCain may still be in the midst of some sort of convention bump, so far there has been no real letting up of his improved performance in state-level polling:
Ignore, for a moment, the series of Internet-based polls that John Zogby released today. What else do we see?
We see John McCain continue to consolidate his advantage in red states like Utah and South Dakota.
We see Nevada polling pretty close to the national averages, as it has all year. Right now, our model forecasts a 2.2-point victory for John McCain in Nevada, versus a 2.4-point victory nationwide. Just as was the case when Barack Obama was leading in the national polls, the key metric for determining resource allocation is not a state's standing in the absolute sense, but where it stands relative to the national numbers. Nevada remains an important state because it's polling so close to the national averages. Conversely, something like Wisconsin, though certainly winnable for John McCain, is polling about 7 points better for the Democrats than their national estimate, which means that it is unlikely to be a decisive state. New Jersey is also a good example. We see some evidence that it has tightened (Marist has him 7 points ahead among registered voters -- the version we will use until the first debate -- but just 3 points ahead among likely voters). But it is still polling at a considerable enough distance from Obama's national averages that it is unlikely to serve as any sort of tipping point.
We do see a couple of polls showing Obama's numbers holding up reasonably well in the Pacific Northwest, though the Elway poll in Washington is a bit weird. They split their sample into two, using different phrasings for each group; half the sample was asked a question that included the names of the VP candidates (e.g. "Barack Obama and Joe Biden") and half got the top of the ticket only. Obama led by 9 points with the veeps included and 6 points without. Each of these are perfectly valid ways to ask the horse race question, so we simply average the two numbers and combine the samples.
...As for the Zogby Interactive polls, I tend to prefer to let them speak for themselves. Obama ahead in North Carolina but 6-7 points down in Virginia? I don't find that especially credible. Anyway, they're in our model, but given a very low weight.
I've also made one methodological fix. Alaska, because of the selection of Sarah Palin, was having some weird effects on our various sorts of regression analysis that we use throughout our model. Alaska has a lot of young voters, for instance, and so when the model sees that McCain has picked up 20 points or so in Alaska, it says "Gee Whiz! Obama must be tanking among young voters!". So in other states with a lot of young voters, like Colorado, Obama was getting harmed by this, whereas the opposite might have been true in a state without many young voters like Florida. But really this pattern had nothing to do with young voters, and everything to do with the fact that Alaska is Sarah Palin's home base; it hadn't manifested itself in other states with substantial youth populations. To correct for this, I have simply pulled Alaska (and Delaware) from the sample whenever we're calculating a regression, which produces what I find to be somewhat more intuitive-looking results.
One of the truisms of political reporting is that it is exceptionally results-oriented. When a campaign wins, essentially every aspect of that campaign is deemed to be praiseworthy, and when a campaign loses, almost every aspect of the campaign is deemed to be a failure.
Think how much different the conventional wisdom would be if Al Gore had won 300 more votes in Florida. Bush's strategy of rallying to the evangelical base would have been considered a failure, as would the Rovian politics of personal destruction. But instead, because of what was essentially a mathematical coin-flip -- the vote count was so close in Florida that nobody really knows who won -- these things are considered to be standard operating practice in any competent campaign.
In the absence of actual results, what opinion-makers look toward instead is polls. And presently, with John McCain holding a 1-2 point lead in most national polls, essentially every aspect of Barack Obama's campaign has come under intense scrutiny, whereas Steve Schmidt is regarded as some kind of savant. This is even worse than being results-oriented, because we don't yet know the ultimate effect of the choices the McCain campaign has made on November's results. Certain of their choices, such as their intensely negative campaign against Barack Obama and perhaps even their selection of Sarah Palin, may be short-term winners but long-term losers.
Conversely, the Obama campaign's focus on the ground game has come under criticism in some circles, even though almost by definition most of its effects will not be known until after the election. Suppose that, because of their ground efforts, the Obama campaign is 5 percent more efficient at turning out its vote than the McCain campaign on Election Day in the 22 states or so where it has concentrated its efforts. The implications of this would be absolutely enormous -- a net of 2-3 points in each and every swing state -- but we know zip, zilch, nada at this stage about their ultimate effect.
Besides all that, there is nothing particularly impressive about the Republican bounce. It has followed almost exactly the pattern that we predicted ahead of time when two typical convention bounces are taken and laid on top of one another:
...that is, first a sharp tick upward in Obama's numbers, peaking at about a 6-point bounce, and then an even sharper downtick, bringing McCain about 2 points ahead of where the numbers stood in the pre-convention period. The final phase has yet to occur, but was predicted to consist of gradual lessening of the net GOP bounce over a period of a couple of weeks, as the day-to-day banalities of the campaign tend to displace the emotional high of the convention from voters' memory banks.
This is not to suggest that the Obama campaign is sitting on some sort of latent electoral magic bullet. If there are still 2-3 points worth of "bounce" in the McCain numbers, that would suggest once things return to equilibrium, Obama will be 1-2 points ahead rather than McCain being up by the same margin -- better results for him, certainly, but hardly a commanding advantage.
The better question from my vantage point is why Obama's lead dwindled from a peak of 5-6 points in June to 0-2 points in the week or two immediately prior to the conventions. Even if McCain's convention bounce is entirely "real", he would still have gained more ground in the polls between June and the conventions than he did during the convention period itself.
I think the Obama campaign's messaging, with an exception here and there, has actually been fairly sharp of late. In contrast, I think they wasted a lot of time over the summer on things ranging from Obama having to play defense after he flip-flopped on FISA, to the European leg of his foreign trip, to the unnecessarily drawn out and ultimately anticlimactic VP rollout process. But since Obama had maintained a lead in the polls throughout that period, those things did not receive nearly so much scrutiny as Obama is getting now.
Later today, Sarah Palin is visiting Carson City, Nevada’s capital. Carson is roughly 30 miles south of Reno, and Minden is another 15 minutes south of Carson, in Douglas County. Douglas County is one of the traditionally reddest counties in Nevada, a place where registered Republicans outnumber registered Dems by roughly 2-1. It’s an area where many retirees migrate (especially from Orange County, CA), given its proximity to Tahoe.
If you want to talk about Republican domination, try this. Not since 1946 has a Democrat been elected to a county office here. George Bush beat John Kerry countywide 15,192 to 8,275, and Kerry lost statewide by 21,500 votes (Bush and Kerry together got approximately 815,000 votes statewide). Another way to put it is that about a third of Bush's 2004 victory margin came from an area contributing less than 3% of the statewide vote. You can see why reducing that margin by even a thousand votes would be a worthwhile investment in Nevada's ground game. Already, local radio has several times played an effective "Vote for Change" ad which features mostly younger people vouching for why they registered to "vote for change" (health care, the war, higher wages, etc.) followed by an Obama-ending voiceover that no matter why you're voting, it's important to register and vote. That's the Obama focus here right now - targeted voter registration.
The northern NV Democratic grassroots effort, in part inspired by an apparently highly effective Dean/DNC 50-state staffer based in Reno, has begun to stir the local Democrats into action. They've been trained how to use the VAN (Voter Activation Network) which is how voter files are maintained and improved. The Republicans have an office, but so does Barack Obama (about a block south of a brand new Starbucks!). There is real competition for votes for the first time in Douglas County.
A reminder about Nevada voter registration. The deadline to mail in a voter registration form is October 4, but you may take it to your county registrar in person by October 14 and still register. Early voting starts October 18. (Obama's website says October 25 is the Nevada deadline; unfortunately that's wrong. UPDATE - They've changed it this afternoon.) Your local Obama offices and McCain offices know the true deadlines and can help you register to vote.
If you live in Douglas County, here are your early voting options and locations.
This is just a brief update, there's more to come from Northern Nevada, specifically the Sarah Palin rally and some information about Reno/Washoe County. And a little teaser, we're going to have a feature starting in a couple days in this series that we hope you'll really like. I'll post this for a little while in the series, but to contact me on the road: pocket99s at gmail.
This afternoon our Road to 270 series continues with the North Star State, Minnesota.
ONCE A DEMOCRATIC GIVEN, Minnesota has tightened up in recent cycles. It’s no longer the same state Mondale won in 1984 against Reagan, his home-state popularity notwithstanding. That said, it’s still an uphill fight for Republicans to take the state, exurban growth aside. John Kerry held off George Bush by 3.5%, and Bush is deeply unpopular in the state. Republicans clearly see the Upper Midwest as the first place to break out of the tight blue-red map of the last few cycles. The St. Paul convention was the equivalent of Democrats planting a flag in Colorado and the Mountain West to expand their base reach. This year, a highly competitive top-tier Senate race is on tap in the land of 10,000 lakes. Norm Coleman remains a moderate favorite to hang on against comedian-turned-political aspirant Al Franken. In that race, if Franken wins, a lot of credit will go to Obama-generated enthusiasm that drummed up high voter turnout. Considering that Minnesota consistently ranks proudly at the top of the highest voting rate states (almost 77% in 2004!), it’s unclear whether there is room to grow that would provide Franken the coattails he’ll likely need.
Key Demographics
Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apparent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.
What McCain Has Going For Him
If anything, McCain has the tightening trend in recent cycles going for him as well as a convention that saw the Republican base jolted in the arm by the Palin pick. Looking through our demographic chart, there’s nothing particularly striking about Minnesota aside from voter turnout – it’s within ten spots of the middle in nearly every comparative ranking. The few areas where Minnesota lands on one end or the other tend to favor Obama.
If there is any hidden factor in Minnesota this year, one undercurrent I sensed from attending the St. Paul convention was a potential backlash against the protesters. While many felt outraged about the very heavy-handed police crackdown, the reality is that I talked to a number of local folks, including older Democrats and undecideds, who were angry about the costs to the state incurred by the protests and police effort. It’s all about relatability. The image of a few folks smashing windows and wearing costumes designed to provoke and/or speak out added a few lines of cultural division. That's not to say the protesters shouldn't have protested, just reporting a not-all-that controversial result: dramatic protest provokes strong reactions. This is also not to say that protest backlash equals a McCain victory in Minnesota. But if McCain were to win, I’d venture you’d hear a lot of this type of analysis in the post-mortem.
What Obama Has Going For Him
Minnesota’s high education rates favor the Democratic candidate, as does the relatively high liberal score on the Likert scale (which is just over 50%). There are more DFLers (Dems) than Republicans, and Obama’s fundraising indicates an enthusiasm gap. Minnesota ranks just inside the top third on our Starbucks:Walmart scale, and is relatively high in per capita income, a factor that doesn’t track significantly more clearly with one party or another.
Obama has paid attention to Minnesota, both running up a large Super Tuesday victory here in the caucuses and delivering his nomination-clinching speech on June 3d in St. Paul. The other big thing Obama has going for him is that it’s low on the Tipping Point scale, meaning that the McCain camp surely has better and more efficient pickoff targets over the 2004 map (e.g., Michigan, New Hampshire). That means Obama isn’t likely to need to mount any tough defense, even if some polls show a close single-digit race as opposed to the double-digit polling we’ve often seen this cycle out of the state.
What To Watch For
Minnesota will likely be a single-digit race at the presidential level when all is said and done, but pay close attention to the Coleman-Franken race. Not only is it a brutal fight already, with each candidate wounded by tough criticism and a torrent of attack ads from each side on the air, but also note that if Franken cannot pull off a victory then Democrats have very little chance of getting to the magical, filibuster-proof 60 seats they hope for.
There’s also a tough fight in MN-01, with freshman Democratic Congressman Tim Walz having pulled off one of the bigger upsets in the 2006 wave year. The biggest House tossup is in Minnesota’s 3d district, where Republican Jim Ramstad is retiring. This is the wealthiest of Minnesota’s House districts in the Hennepin County suburbs of Minneapolis, with Ramstad staffer Erik Paulsen (R) in a “no clear favorite” dogfight with 30-year old Iraq War veteran Ashwin Madia (DFL). Since both Walz' district and Ramstad's former district are very narrow +1 R on the Partisan Voter Index scale, the presidential coattails and ground organizing will certainly come into play in these races.
Apologies to our readers from the University of Cincinnati. Apparently, it is abbreviated simply UC, not U. of C. as I had asserted before; apparently only my alma matter is pretentious enough to do that.
Then again, it may just be a regional thing, like those soda/pop/coke conversation you had at your first week at college. The University of Michigan is almost always "U. of M." -- never "MU" and rarely "UM". Likewise with the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota. Of course, Indiana is "IU" and Wisconsin is "UW", so what do I know.
Another fairly strong polling day for John McCain:
The University of Cincinnati's highly-ratedOhio Poll has John McCain leading by 4 points in the Buckeye State. There are no particular demographic quirks in these results; Barack Obama is simply a little behind where he needs to be across the board. The U. of C. (no, not the real U. of C.) had surveyed Ohio once before in February, at that point showing Obama with a 1-point lead, but that was a poll of registered rather than likely voters so the results are not directly comparable.
Rasmussen, meanwhile, shows John McCain closing to within 2 points in Washington, a state in which Obama has generally held large, safe-looking leads. This seems to confirm SurveyUSA's finding from earlier in the week, which showed Obama's lead diminishing to 4 points. The Pac Northwest has a decently-sized evangelical population that may be taking well to Sarah Palin. Still, our model can't imagine Obama losing Washington except in a catastrophic landslide. Oregon, on the other hand, might merit watching. (Edit: Although it looks like there's an Oregon poll out that shows Obama up by 7; it came in too late for our early deadline today).
North Carolina's results have been all over the board, but a new Research 2000 survey for Daily Kos would tend to confirm the pessimistic assessment of Obama's position offered up by SurveyUSA, showing Obama down by 17 points. Whether or McCain's lead in North Carolina is in the double digits or the single digits, it is pretty far removed from being a tipping point state.
Finally, in Missouri, Rasmussen has McCain ahead by 5. This is actually not a terrible result for Obama, as Rasmussen's August poll of Missouri had shown him down 7. Although Obama is clearly losing Missouri, it has moved closer to his national averages as those numbers have regressed, and so retains some currency as a potential swing state.
“It was drizzling and mysterious at the beginning of our journey. I could see that it was all going to be one big saga of the mist. ‘Whooee!’ yelled Dean. ‘Here we go!’ And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; he was back in his element, everybody could see that. We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move. And we moved!”
– Jack Kerouac, “On the Road”
Five Thirty Eight is headed for the open road. We may have built a reputation for the numbers, but don’t be fooled: there is poetry in our souls. We are in the middle of an epic election, and for the final eight weeks we’ll be bringing you not only an intense daily polling menu, but also the story of the battleground states’ ground game. You deserve that – you love this country just as much as we do, so consider it the least we could offer. At the end of this important day of remembrance, in the starry-dark Reno bare-mountain night, we’re officially posting notice of our series to come.
The story of the organizer and volunteer effort is one that needs to be told. It was much underreported in 2004 just how potently the Bush ground campaign organized. Say what you want about his governance – and we all have – but his competitive fire was lit for the election race. Republicans turned their voters out. Who’s got more heart this time? Missouri boys say: Show-Me.
This year, all available evidence suggests the Obama campaign is doing something unprecedented with its organizing efforts. Is it this: 29’2.5”?
Is it Mexico City, 1968? The story seems to be hiding in plain sight. The effort is more reported than the Bush 2004 effort, but it is still underreported. More significantly, it is under-contextualized. Pollsters have to guess about turnout, and often they revert to more conservative estimates because their past modeling of likely voters suggests that’s correct. Besides, if ground games are equally effective, they should cancel each other out. There's an understandable bias against believing something and modeling it until it is proven. It's why big enthusiasm and GOTV can make up ground against a fully accurate poll of voter preference.
Just what is organizing? How does it work? What are the nuts and bolts? And why is it something a site primarily (but not exclusively) known for its polling analysis would want to cover as closely as possible?
And is the McCain campaign being given short shrift? Is it being taken too lightly? And what kind of galvanizing effect did the Palin addition offer the Republican base? This is not a one-sided story.
And it all deserves to be told in real time. We're tempted to do a photo series of the floors of organizers’ rooms, but we think organizer moms and dads would freak out. There ain’t no lipstick on that pig, we can assure you (and once had our own crazy-stupid organizer floor mess).
Here is the tentative list of battleground areas we’re attempting to cover, in approximate order and subject to change: Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska’s 2d, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. We’d love to get to ‘em all but, baby, we’re just a man.
And like the Temptations, we ain’t too proud to beg. Organizers, volunteers, candidate supporters along the way with their hospitality, absolutely (and bipartisan), but especially information. We want your stories, your inside scoops, and frankly, we want you to teach us what’s going on in your area on the ground. How is the national campaign interacting with the local grassroots groups? How are the downballot candidates coordinating with the presidential race effort? What’s different about this year than past years? And nineteen other questions not listed here. Tell us, o ye hockey moms: pocket99s at gmail dot com.
Here’s a note to the staff organizers we’ll meet along the way, for both sides. What you do is epic. This is not something people get into for money. The hours are absurd. The health toll is often obscene. The number of demands coming at you from all directions is often overwhelming. And we are not out there to get you folks in trouble. Talking to the press at the field level is verboten, for message control. We know. We respect. There is a built-in limit to what can be reported, a lot of it will come from savvy and observant volunteers. Paid field staff cannot even comment on blogs, which is one great secret as to why the general public hears so little about organizing. Yet it is the foundation of our democracy – people sacrificing themselves for something they believe in, something for America, this country that we love. Even when we don’t share your political views, we respect your direct action.
Finally, an appeal to all Americans, regardless of voting age or partisan bent: do something tangible. It is now or never. Fifty-four days. Do something that will make the face you see in the mirror on November 5 proud. Push yourself. Suck it up. Work for it. Make a sacrifice you would not otherwise make. Leave the confusion and nonsense behind and perform your one and only noble function of the time – move.
And now… to the road!
We are back in our element. Everybody could see that.
An avalanche of polling today, but a consistent theme emerges: And what is that theme? Well, it's that the popular vote and the Electoral College are significantly diverging. Although the Republicans seem to be polling stronger than they were in the pre-convention period almost everywhere, the differences are much larger in traditionally red states, particularly in the South and the rural West (Colorado and Nevada, by the way, are not rural states). Basically, I think the Republicans are getting the evangelical vote, and a significant fraction of the Perot vote.
Unfortunately, these are not particularly useful votes for them to have in terms of the electoral math. Here is a comparison of our projected margins of victory on August 26th -- the Tuesday of the Democratic convention, before polling had any chance to take Michelle Obama's opening night speech into effect -- with our projections today in a select group of states that have been polled since the RNC ended.
McCain's gain in our popular vote projection has been 2.1 points. Note, however, that his gains have been less than that in essentially all of the most important swing states, including Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Only Virginia is on the other side of the line, and then only barely so.
As a result of all this, the Electoral College remains too close to call, even though McCain has a 1-2 point advantage in the popular vote. Obama now has an 8.4 percent chance of winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, which is far and away the highest that this number has been all year. And that number may get larger rather than smaller, once polling filters in from other red states like Texas, Nebraska and South Carolina. Palin may have been a brilliant VP selection -- I think even Palinophobes like me have to concede that right now McCain's looking pretty savvy -- but some of that sheen is taken off by her somewhat lackluster effect on the Electoral College.
Two new national trackers are launching today: Insider Advantage, and Research 2000 (via Daily Kos). They'll join Hotline, which just launched last week, and our old friends Gallup and Rasmussen.
At least eight pollsters look as though they'll be churning out multiple state polls a week: Rasmussen, CNN/Time, PPP, SurveyUSA, Strategic Vision, InsiderAdvantage, Research 2000, and Quinnipiac.
Mason-Dixon is a little hard to predict, but usually does a lot of late-cycle polling and will probably be joining that list. Likewise with ARG. John Zogby's polls are often maligned here, but his non-Internet polls aren't bad, so I hope we'll see some of those. Suffolk seems to want to broaden their horizons a bit. Gallup usually does some state-level polling late in the cycle. And then there are a whole number of state and regional pollsters.
Add it all up, and it looks like we're going to be averaging something like 10-20 state polls and 6-7 national polls per weekday. In the last couple weeks of the election, we'll also likely see some daily tracking polls at the state level, which could up the former number significantly.
As they say, you can't tell the polls apart without a program, so stay tuned right here.
Although Michigan -- my home state -- is one place where Barack Obama's numbers have so far held up relatively well in the post-convention environment, it is also one with numerous potholes that he must navigate, as I outline in this new piece at the New Republic:
But Barack Obama has had trouble getting traction in the Wolverine State. Although nearly all polling since the Democrats resolved the state's messy delegate situation in June has had him ahead, it has often been by uncomfortably small margins--just one point, for instance, in a Public Policy Polling survey released on Monday. For most of the election cycle, Michigan has polled no more than 1-3 points ahead of Obama's national poll standing, placing it well within the range of a potential Republican takeover.
All of this comes in spite of a seemingly favorable environment for the Democrats. Michigan, its fortunes still tied to the struggling domestic auto industry, has the nation's highest unemployment rate at 8.5 percent. Its population is 14 percent African-American, among the highest figures outside of the South. And it has two huge university towns in East Lansing and Ann Arbor, potential ground zeroes for youth voter enthusiasm. Why, then, have Obama's numbers been sluggish in Michigan?
Here's one reason; you'll have to click on over to TNR for the others:
Race. Lastly, stemming back to the Detroit Riots of 1967, which triggered massive white flight into the city's wealthy suburbs (Detroit, at 82 percent African-American, remains the country's blackest major city), Michigan is not devoid of racial politics. Just one African American, former Secretary of State Richard H. Austin, has ever held statewide office in Michigan. And the area around Howell in Livingston County is a former Ku Klux Klan hotbed. The racial tensions aren't as overt as they once were, but nevertheless, the de facto segregation between Detroit and the suburbs creates little interaction between the state's black and white communities, and the combination of Kilpatrick and the difficult economic situation may evoke some latent prejudice.
28. Regardless of how you might vote, which presidential ticket do you think will bring the right change to Washington?
Dem Ticket Rep Ticket Total 46 39 Democrats 84 5 Republicans 7 82 Independents 36 38
It's the number at the bottom that ought to be a concern. Obama presently has no edge on "change" among independents. In fact, the Republicans lead in that category by two points.
You think that's because of John McCain? You think that McCain would be polling evenly among independents on "needed change" if he had selected Mitt Romney as his running mate? No, it's because of Sarah Palin.
But here's the tricky thing: it's not directly because of Palin. In this survey, when questions were asked about Palin herself, she performed well, but not all that well. As might be expected, she leads Joe Biden on the have-a-beer-with attributes and trails him on the ready-on-day-one attributes. Overall, Palin scores at a +9 among independents when they were asked whether they were more or less likely to support the Republican ticket because of her presence. That isn't a bad number, but Joe Biden, at a +7, is right there with her.
But Palin is McCain's warrant for his claim to be a change agent. She is his lipstick.
Of course, the Democrats ought not make it personal against Sarah Palin. That will fail.
(And no, "lipstick on a pig" is not a personal assault on Palin. In fact, the Republican reaction was so overwrought today that it probably enables the Democrats to use this line however they see fit. More on this in a moment).
The Democrats, however, do have a couple of things working in their favor. Firstly, voters do not know very much about Sarah Palin apart from the personal stuff. In a Pew survey released today, 69 percent of voters said they'd heard a lot about Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter. By comparison, just 35 percent said they'd heard a lot about her record as a reformer, and just 30 percent said they'd heard a lot about troopergate (fully 28 percent said they'd heard nothing about troopergate at all). So there is ground to be made up here.
And fortunately for Democrats, the ground is fertile. It is fertile because the Republicans significantly overplayed their hand on earmarks. Palin was before the bridge to nowhere before she was against it. John McCain was against $3 million to study bear DNA in Montana -- but how does he feel about $3.2 million to study the DNA of harbor seals in Alaska? It was in Alaska's earmark request (last row of the second page). Or the mere fact that Alaska is the nation's runaway leader in earmark requests, as Josh Marshall so aptly caricatures:
Earmark reform is Palin's warrant for being a change agent. Palin is McCain's warrant for being a change agent. "Right change" is the argument that McCain has staked his election upon. You win this argument, you probably win the election. It's not that complicated.
Of course, there is the argument from conventional wisdom that a presidential candidate should not be attacking a vice presidential candidate, as Karl Rove espouses today:
Of all the advantages Gov. Sarah Palin has brought to the GOP ticket, the most important may be that she has gotten into Barack Obama's head. How else to explain Sen. Obama's decision to go one-on-one against "Sarah Barracuda," captain of the Wasilla High state basketball champs?
It's a matchup he'll lose. If Mr. Obama wants to win, he needs to remember he's running against John McCain for president, not Mrs. Palin for vice president.
Michael Dukakis spent the last months of the 1988 campaign calling his opponent's running mate, Dan Quayle, a risky choice and even ran a TV ad blasting Mr. Quayle. The Bush/Quayle ticket carried 40 states.
Adlai Stevenson spent the fall of 1952 bashing Dwight Eisenhower's running mate, Richard Nixon, calling him "the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, and then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation." The Republican ticket carried 39 of 48 states.
Rove draws an analogy to Michael Dukakis attacking Dan Quayle. But Dan Quayle, from the moment he was selected as George H.W. Bush's running mate, was a liability for Bush. Dukakis was wasting his time attacking Quayle because he had already won the argument -- but it wasn't a winning argument.
On the other hand, Palin may be a winning argument for McCain. Rove ought to know this, because he knows all about attacking an opponent's strength. But as the Pew numbers reveal, the argument is very much unsettled. It should not even be a particularly difficult argument for the Democrats to win, but they need to make sure that 90 percent of the voters know about harbor seal DNA by the time that Election Day hits.
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Indeed, not only was Barack Obama's "lipstick" comment today not something he should need to apologize for -- it is precisely the right metaphor for the campaign. If the Republicans get their way, and "right change" versus "wrong change" becomes the prevailing narrative of the campaign, it will be Obama's best argument, and maybe his only one. I had a friend who suggested to me today that rather than cut and run from the metaphor (which Obama, wisely, has not done), Obama go full boar -- er, full bore -- and build an advertising campaign around it:
Just thought I'd share an idea circulating among my circle of friends. The Obama campaign should cut an ad featuring a real pig wearing real lipstick. A funny ad ---- when I was a kid liberals actually had senses of humor and weren't afraid to provoke; it'd be nice to see that back in the playbook.
In this hypothetical ad, the pig roots around in its sty, wearing lipstick and a pink bow. The soundtrack just consists of pig sounds ---- grunts, hooves in slop, &c. After a few seconds, the words "John McCain's agenda --- more of the same." Those words fade out, followed by (one at a time, in sequence): "Unfair tax policy." "Foreign policy failures." "War on the middle class." "Irresponsible energy policy." "Corporate welfare." etc etc etc.
Two-thousand and seven was the year of the pig in the Chinese calendar; maybe it can be 2008 here in the States.
Lots of interesting polling data today, but the headline is that our model has now pretty much fully caught up with John McCain's bounce -- attributing him with about a 1 point lead in the national popular vote. As a result, it also now regards him as the slight favorite to win the Electoral College. As I've disclaimed before, however, we are still in the immediate aftermath of the convention period, and as such all polls need to be treated cautiously. The next movement in the polls is still more likely to be toward Obama than toward McCain.
The two results that jump out to me are New Mexico and West Virginia. New Mexico polling has been all over the board all year, but Rasmussen -- which had generally had pretty good numbers for Obama in the state -- now shows a 2-point advantage for John McCain. Obama led by just 5 points among Hispanic voters in this poll; he'll likely need to win that group by at least 10 to have a better-than-even chance of taking the state.
New Mexico is also a symbolically important state because losing it would break Obama's firewall -- his seeming path-of-least-resistance to 270 electoral votes consisting of the Kerry states plus Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado. For the time being, however, in consideration of other polling in the state as well as its demographics, our model still regards Obama as the favorite in New Mexico, although it also presently regards John McCain as a slight favorite in Colorado.
On the other side of the coin is West Virginia, where a Mark Blankenship Enterprises poll shows John McCain ahead by just 5 points, with a high number of undecideds. This poll has a small sample size and I don't know much about the firm, although it's apparently been polling WVA for quite a while. Those caveats aside, however, if West Virginia is truly polling at just 5 points in the midst of McCain's convention bounce, it becomes a pretty interesting state. Remember, there are a lot of Democrats in West Virginia, and a particularly large number of Clinton Democrats, a group which may be coming home to Obama even amidst his difficulties. And there are not a lot of evangelicals; West Virginia is fairly culturally conservative, but it is not Southern ethnographically. There are scattered reports that Obama has devoted more resources to West Virginia; it remains a long-shot for him, but his staff would surely be doing more good there than somewhere like Alaska.
CNN has a series of polling out in Michigan, New Hampshire, Missouri and Virginia. Obama leads in the two Kerry states -- Michigan and New Hampshire -- while trailing in the Bush states, Missouri and Virginia. I don't find any of these numbers terribly surprising. While McCain's numbers have surged among independents, and New Hampshire has the highest percentage of independents in the country, independents are less homogeneous than either Democrats or Republicans, and the sort of high-info, libertarianish variety that is common to New Hampshire probably won't take well to Sarah Palin. Also, note that I use the version of these polls with the third-party candidates included; most outlets will report the other version.
Public Policy Polling shows a 4-point lead for John McCain in North Carolina, quite a contrast to SurveyUSA's 20. It appears that PPP weighted by party ID, whereas SurveyUSA did not, which accounts for most of the difference. Yesterday, I was pretty dismissive of North Carolina as a tipping point state for Barack Obama -- and even after seeing the PPP poll, I still am. It is not that the state is completely out of reach for Obama, but that it's difficult to conjure up any realistic scenario in which it's the state to put him over the top to 270 electoral votes.
Strategic Vision has Obama just 2 points ahead in Pennsylvania. This looks like bad news for Obama, but Strategic Vision has a Republican lean, and has had some particularly weird polling out in Pennsylvania all year, which has ranged from McCain +10 to Obama +9. At this point, Pennsylvania is still not quite a top-tier swing state, though if Quinnipiac comes out with the same numbers, the model right be ready to change its mind.
Lastly, North Dakota has probably followed Montana off Obama's board. This looks like it's basically going to be a seven-state election: Ohio and Michigan; Virgina and Florida; Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. Throw New Hampshire and Pennsylvania in there if you want to be conservative, and perhaps Indiana and West Virginia if you want to be aggressive. But Sarah Palin quickly partisanized the electorate, and gave us a considerably less fun map.
Oh yeah -- and Sarah Palin has given John McCain one heck of a VP bounce in Alaska. For purposes of calculating the trendline curve, I'm treating the pre-Palin and post-Palin Alaska polls as discontinuous series, since it's not quite fair to ding Obama with a 30-point hit. We'll do the same with Delaware polls, if anyone decides to survey that state again.
A MediaCurves focus group of 312 women shows that, while John McCain's 'lipstick' ad did somewhat increase perceptions that Barack Obama has a gender bias, it has not moved very many votes and rates as a below-average ad overall.
Before viewing the commercial, the focus group leaned 43/42 for McCain, versus 45/42 afterward. The changes are not statistically significant given the roughly 6 percent margin of error in the sample (data).
(And, yes, I'm buying time here until the polling update. My laptop broke -- anyone got a Best Buy gift card? -- and it's going to take a bit of time to update the version of the model I have on my backup computer).
EDIT: As one of the commentors notes, perhaps this will move votes if Obama commits another 'gaffe' of a similar variety. I think that's probably true.
Also, note that this study was of women only. We don't know how men reacted.
This afternoon our Road to 270 series continues with the Natural State, Arkansas.
HOME OF WAL-MART, Arkansas ranks predictably lowest on our vaunted Starbucks:Walmart ratio. This state likes its schmoozy, charismatic governors from Hope, having elected and re-elected both Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee for over 22 of the last 30 years. It likes its politics socially conservative (Democrat Mark Pryor, running unopposed for his first Senate defense, is a creationist) but economically populist (see: Huckabee). In terms of the presidential race, this is not a state where Barack Obama was competitive in the primary against Hillary Clinton, and also looks like an easy win for John McCain in the fall. Key Demographics
Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apparent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.
What McCain Has Going For Him
The highest percentage of white evangelicals in the country is the biggest reason McCain will win this state. One of the most conservative states on the Likert index, Arkansas also has the 3d-worst education rates. High gun ownership, high “American” ancestry reporting, 5th-fewest same-sex household rate are all sociological factors weighing in the Republican’s favor. This is another state where McCain outraises Obama, though it’s not because his fundraising is anything special (8th-lowest per capita), it’s because Obama’s is dead last.
McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin will play extremely well with the evangelical base here. Already, there is indication that McCain’s biggest convention bounce is in the South, in large part due to Palin’s selection. McCain also benefits from a relatively male and relatively older voting population.
What Obama Has Going For Him
Barack Obama hasn’t been to Arkansas since 2006, and it’s unlikely he’ll be there before November 4. There are a relatively high percentage of black voters as well as under-30 voters. In theory, Obama should be able to be competitive in Arkansas, as Democrats outnumber Republicans by a significant margin, both Senators are Democrats, the governor is now a Democrat and three out of four House members are Democrats. Moreover, the state’s Democrats have very little else to do with so many races unopposed. But the state’s distaste for Obama personally is reflected in his fundraising numbers. Obama is to Democrats in Arkansas and West Virginia what Hillary Clinton is to Democrats in the Mountain West.
What To Watch For
The biggest thing to watch for is the role Arkansas plays in the post-election analysis. If Obama loses, Hillary Clinton supporters will point to Arkansas as Example #1 of six electoral votes that, they claim, would have swung the other way had she been the nominee. This argument would gain credibility if both (1) Obama fails to win any of the Mountain West states like Nevada and Colorado and Montana - states Clinton would have not even bothered to compete in; and (2) the overall defeat is a narrow one. It's easy to forget that Hillary Clinton was minimally targeted once it was clear in mid-February Obama would be the nominee, and indeed even today the McCain campaign is reduced to avoiding both Hillary Clinton (for voter-wooing purposes) and Teddy Kennedy (for illness/backlash purposes) as puppet arguments to vote against Obama. (Instead the bogeyman is Patrick Leahy? He was in Dark Knight! Is Dick "Go F%^* Yourself" Cheney behind that one?)
As for what to watch before the elections, not much. It wouldn't be a big surprise to see Arkansas - for lack of almost any competitive races anywhere on the ballot - have the lowest voting turnout on the mainland, if not in all 50 states.
My first reaction upon hearing Barack Obama's "lipstick on a pig" remark was that it was deliberate. Not a deliberate attempt to smear Sarah Palin per se, but a deliberate attempt to provoke exactly the sort of fanatical reaction that they have gotten from the Republicans. The McCain campaign has spent a week campaigning on big themes and big personalities, and gotten a fair amount of mileage out of it. This takes everyone back down a notch, back down to the tedium and banality of partisan politics. It would be wishful thinking to call it a momentum-changer, but it may by default be a momentum-stopper. The convention/Palinmania phase of the news cycle -- a phase the Republicans clearly thought they were winning -- is now over.
This is not to call this some sort of brilliant strategy; I have no idea how any of this is going to play out. But it may, in conjunction with the Obama campaign's pushback on the Bridge To Nowhere, be part of a developing Obama counter-narrative. That narrative might go something like this; imagine these words in Obama's voice:
My opponent's chief strategest just said, "this campaign isn't about the issues." Well, I've got news for you, America. The Republican Party is desperate. They are going to do anything to try and hold onto their power, because they know the damage they've done to our country, and they don't know how to fix it. They know that people are out of work, and they don't know how to help them. They know that people are dying because they don't have health insurance, and they don't know to save them. They know that families are struggling to put food on the table, and they know don't know how to provide for them.
So they're going to try and distract you, America, because that's the only thing they know how to do. They're going to try and scare you. They're going to try and tell you stories, instead of offering solutions. And yes, folks -- these are the same people that have been lying to you for the last eight years -- and they're going to lie to you again.
Okay, so I'm not Jon Favreau. But I think something along these lines would be toward the more effective end of Obama's potential post-convention messaging. And the "distractions, not solutions" meme is something Obama is going to have to trot out anyway once the 527's (including very probably the reincarnation of Jeremiah Wright) really begin to hit.
Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling has an interesting insight from one of their firm's recent North Carolina polls:
One red flag for Barack Obama's prospects in North Carolina that came out of our poll this week was that only 69% of self identified Democrats in the state are committed to supporting him this fall. [...]
A lot of the Democrats not for Obama are also not for Kay Hagan. Elizabeth Dole has a 41-37 lead among them. But they are for Walter Dalton, Roy Cooper, Janet Cowell, Beth Wood, Elaine Marshall, and other Democrats. Just more evidence that this is the persistent problem of folks who identify as Democrats overall casting their ballot one way for who they send to Raleigh and another way for why they send to Washington.
So, among North Carolinian Democrats not supporting Barack Obama, more than 60 percent of them were also not supporting Kay Hagan, the Democratic candidate for governor the Senate. And lest you say: "not only are they racist -- they're sexist too!", that doesn't really work here, since Hagan's opponent is Elizabeth Dole.
There isn't much doubt that Barack Obama is losing some votes because of his race (although he may be gaining some as well). My guess is that a great number of you have encountered friends or relatives, or friends and relatives of friends and relatives, who won't vote for Obama because he is black.
But there may not be very many of them -- and they may not have voted for Barack Obama even if he were white. If you back out the math from PPP's poll, about 4-5 percent of the sample are Democrats who don't support Barack Obama but do support Kay Hagan. I would suggest that this is far closer to the cap on the number of votes that Obama may be losing because of his race than the 15 percent figure sometimes tossed around by other sources.
1. Polls that show changes in party ID composition are not "cooked", "rigged", or "biased". Changes in party ID composition may occur for a variety of reasons, including random chance, response bias, temporary changes in party affiliation, and longer-term changes in party affiliation. It is possible that, if the partisan ID composition of a poll shifts rapidly from week to week (more so than is likely from random chance alone, and more so than is precipitated from external events), this may be an indictment of a pollster's methodology -- that the pollster is having difficulty getting a good, random sample. But the notion that credible pollsters like Gallup or SurveyUSA are deliberately rigging their samples is patently ridiculous. Polling is a very competitive industry, with relatively low barriers to entry; they would go out of business in a hurry if they did this.
2. The decision a pollster faces is whether or not to weight its sample by party ID. In fact, the whole point is that pollsters like Gallup and SurveyUSA do not weight their samples by party ID -- they just tally the results, and let the chips fall where they may. So in some sense accusing them of "cooking" their samples has it backward; what you're really arguing is that they should weight their samples, presumably in a way that is more favorable to your preferred candidate.
However, there is no one right answer as to whether to weight by party ID is the superior choice. A couple of pollsters, notably Rasmussen, do weight their samples by party ID. These pollsters tend to get more stable results from week to week. However, more stable does not necessarily mean more accurate over the long run, as these pollsters may miss real changes in party ID that occur over time.
Rasmussen, which targets its party ID figures based on a rolling, three-month sample of interviews with thousands and thousands of voters, has what I consider to be a eminently reasonable approach. Even so, the true party ID composition of the electorate is difficult and perhaps impossible to ascertain. You can take a survey of party ID, but it is still a survey, and therefore itself may be subject to issues like poor methodology and response bias.
There might be some promise in targeting party ID figures based on actual changes in voter registration -- although many states have open (non-partisan) voter registration, and some of those that do require registration by party do not report these figures. Some state-level pollsters seem to flirt with this approach, although I do not believe that any of the more prolific, national pollsters do.
3. Changes in party affiliation are tied up in the notion of the "convention bounce". Successful party conventions usually produce some shift in the self-reported partisan composition of surveys taken in the days and weeks that follow them. This may be a form of response bias, if voters of a particular partisan persuasion are fired up by their convention and more likely to take a pollster's phone call. (It may particularly be a form of response bias if the poll is taken during the convention itself, as voters of a particular party may be more likely to be at home watching their party's convention, and therefore more available to take a phone call).
However, remember what the conventions are. They are the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention -- not the McCain National Convention and the Obama National Convention. They are big advertisements for the parties themselves. And so, it is not unlikely that, if voters respond favorably to a convention, they will respond favorably both to the candidate and to the candidate's party.
In other words, while some of these polls may have implausibly high numbers of self-reported Republicans in their samples, this is more a symptom of the convention bounce rather than a separate and distinct phenomenon. Moreover, conventions sometimes do trigger longer-term shifts in party identification. In 2004, for instance, the Republican convention appeared to cause a semi-permanent shift in party ID toward the Republicans, amounting to a couple of points. As I also argued recently, it is also plausible that unenthusiastic Republicans or Republican-leaning independents (which I call "shy Tories") were being undersampled prior to the Republican convention, until the convention renewed their enthusiasm.
The fact that the Bush administration is in its last days, that much of the dissatisfaction with the Republican Party had to do with George W. Bush, and that this is an election featuring two non-incumbents, is a salient factor here. It may be that, rather than trying to tie John McCain to George W. Bush, the Democrats should be making more of an effort to indict the Republican Party as a whole, of which John McCain is indisputably a member.
4. Responsible pollsters should always disclose the partisan ID composition of their samples, and should notate in their press releases when material shifts occur. Regardless of the above, there is little doubt that the partisan ID composition of a poll is an extremely important element in the proper interpretation of a poll. Pollsters should always report the partisan ID composition of their sample, and should qualify in their write-ups when substantial changes in party ID have occurred since their last survey.
Yesterday, we saw a lot of places where the McCain bounce wasn't; today we see some places where it is:
The theme here is simply traditionally red states coming home to John McCain in a big way, likely cordoning off certain corners of the electoral map to Barack Obama. A 20-point lead in North Carolina? Wow -- that's a big, shiny number. And it's probably an outlier to a certain extent, considering that Obama's numbers didn't appear to have suffered very much in neighboring Virginia. But even if it is a big outlier -- say Obama is really down 10 points rather than 20 -- and even if it's owing in part to the convention bounce -- say Obama rebounds to 5 points behind -- is there any way in hell that it's going to be a tipping point state? I think the answer to that is pretty obvious. The only reason for Obama to be maintaining a field operation in North Carolina is to help Kay Hagan.
Montana, on the other hand, I don't think is worth completely giving up upon. Obama still retains (barely) a net favorable rating in the state, and the Rasmussen poll did not include Ron Paul, who will be on the ballot. Still, Montana has gone from something like Plan D to Plan Q.
I don't know what the post-convention numbers will like in Indiana and Missouri, but I don't expect they'll be good for Obama. North Dakota, which is a little different demographically and more moderate culturally, is perhaps more likely to remain within striking distance.
Outside of those shock polls in North Carolina and Montana, things are kind of a wash. The pair of Strategic Vision polls in Wisconsin and Michigan, Obama ought to be feeling all right about, as Strategic Vision has a fairly notable Republican lean (Obama was ahead by 5 in Strategic Vision's most recent survey of Wisconsin; this is the first time they've polled Michigan). It appears that there's been some movement toward McCain in New Jersey, but FDU switched from a registered voter model to a likely voter one, rendering trendline comparisons dodgy; in any event, the Democrats have bigger problems to worry about.
Lastly, there's a PPP poll out in Florida that does not show the race tightening, as Rasmussen and Mason-Dixon did; instead, McCain has moved from a 3 to a 5-point lead. I continue to think that, as some of the red states come off the map, Florida is a state where Obama should be moving resources in.
Our trendline, although confused by some of the weird polling out today, has now almost caught up to the national averages and shows the popular vote dead-even. Obama, however, retains a lead in the electoral college projection, as the Kerry + NM + IA + CO combination remains intact, however tenuously. Obama would not be favored in any of Ohio, Virginia and Florida if an election were held there today, but they remain perfectly viable alternatives if and when he gets some arm's-length distance from McCain's bounce.
Note: the charts and graphs will be updated momentarily.
This afternoon our Road to 270 series continues with the Yellowhammer State, Alabama.
STAUNCHLY SOCIALLY CONSERVATIVE, Alabama is another easy state to analyze on the road to 270. This is another southern state that used to be heavily Democratic, until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Alabama handed him a 69-point loss to Barry Goldwater that fall. In 1968, Alabama voted for home-state segregationist Governor George Wallace by 47 points. Except for the 13-point win it gave neighboring Southern governor Jimmy Carter in 1976, Alabama has been as reliably red as it gets at the presidential level since the sixties. At the state level, however, both chambers of Alabama’s legislature are Democratic, while virtually all of the statewide executive offices are Republican. None of the major state executive races are up this year, so we’ll be revisiting the state in our 2010 previews.
Key Demographics
Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apparent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.
What McCain Has Going For Him
Alabama is one of the few states where fundraising per capita is better for McCain than Obama – that should tell much of the story. It’s our 6th-most conservative state on the Likert index and went for Bush by over 25 points in 2004. Nearly half the registered voters here report to exit pollsters they’re Republicans, despite Alabama not recording party affiliation.
Comparatively, Alabama is a high “American” ancestry state, a high gun ownership state, mostly rural, not very gay, not very Starbuckian. Religious factors that favor McCain are the high white evangelical population now thrilled with McCain’s running mate (3d most white evangelicals), and a the 3d-lowest Catholic percentage. Both sociologically and religiously, Alabama is an exact reversal of yesterday's Massachusetts. While McCain was always going to win Alabama, the Palin religious conservative factor is extremely helpful in a state that went for Mike Huckabee during the primaries, enough to possibly affect downballot races that might have otherwise been tempered in evangelical turnout.
What Obama Has Going For Him
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The best thing Obama has going for him in Alabama is that it’s not worth 270 electoral votes – Alabama’s nine electoral votes are a virtual lock for McCain. Alabama is a culturally conservative state, and High African-American turnout in Alabama will help Obama, but only as far as the margin of defeat goes. Very high turnout in Montgomery, however, could affect a House race there (see below). Obama’s best ally is Rep. Artur Davis, the House member in AL-07 who might have his eye on the Governor’s mansion when that race begins in 2010. The very low fundraising total for Obama (only 17 cents per capita) betrays his weakness here.
What To Watch For
The presidential race isn’t dramatic here, nor is the Jeff Sessions – Vivian Figures Senate race, a safe race for the incumbent Sessions. As with Wyoming, the only real potential action is in the House, where Democratic Montgomery mayor Bobby Bright faces Republican State Representative Jay Love for an open (Republican) seat in AL-02. Also, longtime Blue Dog Democrat Bud Cramer is retiring in AL-05 (top of the state), and Democrat Parker Griffith is the polling favorite to hold the seat blue against erstwhile Cramer-challenger Wayne Parker. We also recommend to watch for the annual War-Eagle v. Roll-Tide, Auburn-Alabama game.
On September 5, the ballot-qualified Constitution Party of Montana submitted its presidential elector candidates to the Secretary of State. The party informed the Secretary of State that its electors are pledged to Ron Paul for president and Michael Peroutka for vice-president. Ron Paul was aware that the party planned to do this, and has said that as long as he can remain passive and silent about the development, and as long as he need not sign any declaration of candidacy, that he does not object.
Could Paul be a difference-maker? He's actually pretty popular up there. Paul was responsible for raising 8.4 percent of the funds raised by all Presidential candidates in Montana. By that metric, Montana is his third-best state after Alaska and North Dakota.
Highest Ron Paul Fundraising Share, as Percentage of All Presidential Candidate Funds Raised
Alaska 12.2% North Dakota 8.8% Montana 8.4% Idaho 7.3% New Hampshire 6.5% Wyoming 6.4% Iowa 6.3% Nevada 5.3% Kansas 5.1% Hawaii 5.0%
Paul also got about 22 percent of the Republican vote in the largely meaningless Republican primary in June, and finished ahead of McCain (but behind Mitt Romney) in the somewhat meaningful Republican caucus in February.
I do think he'll steal a few votes from McCain -- particularly given the selection of Sarah Palin, who may not play all that well with libertarianish Republicans. But he'll likely also take some votes from Obama, especially among under-30 voters, as well as from other third-party candidates. And having attended a Ron Paul event in Chicago last summer (don't ask -- we don't get many presidential candidates around these parts), I also get the sense that he turns out certain folks who just wouldn't bother voting period if it weren't for Ron Paul.
My guess? He gets 5-6 percent of the vote, taking 2-3 percent from McCain, 1-2 percent from Obama, and 2-3 percent from other/nobody.
The ABC News finding that Sarah Palin dramatically upped John McCain's support among white women is one I'm not entirely convinced by, mostly because other polling by the same agency shows Sarah Palin performing worse among women than she does among men. One needs to remember that the margins of error are much higher for subsamples of the data than for the poll as a whole. That's why I generally don't spend a lot of time focusing on the demographics in individual polls. If a poll is breaking out six or eight different demographic groups, and the margins of error on these subsamples are 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 points, then odds are that something is going to be out of alignment merely due to chance alone.
With that said, there is a subheadline in the ABC poll that I find both more interesting and more believable. Sarah Palin polls very well among women with children -- specifically white women with children, who give her an 80 percent favorability rating. In fact, it appears to me that Palin's high favorability ratings among women are entirely owing to her popularity among women with children. Roughly one-third of registered female voters should have children at home, which means that among white women without children, her favorability rating is around 60 percent -- still pretty decent, but barely different from the 58 percent she received in the poll overall.
So -- one is led to ask -- which state has the most moms? The table below ranks the 50 states, based on 2000 census data, by the percentage of residents aged 18 and up who are women with their own children living in the same household (WWC). States that are presently in the top 15 in our tipping point rankings are highlighted in a maternal purple.
This distribution is mostly a function of age: states with young populations like Utah and Texas rank toward the top, and states with older populations (meaning more women are post-menopausal), like Hawaii and Florida, rank toward the bottom. In general, the top of the list consists of red states; whether motherhood begets conservatism or conservatism begets motherhood, we will leave as an exercise for the reader (my guess is the former). Among the battleground states, 11 of 15 rank below average.
But now let's look at an arguably more relevant metric, which is the percentage of white women with children at home (WWWC):
Here, the swing states are distributed a bit more evenly, in part because the swing states tend to be somewhat whiter than the country as a whole. I don't quite buy that Palin is going to help in New Hampshire, which is the fourth most pro-choice state in the country, but some of these other states are worth watching. Conversely, there isn't much of the Palin target demographic in states like Florida and Nevada.
After a brief convention hiatus, our Road to 270 series continues with the Bay State, Massachusetts.
HIGHLY EDUCATED AND LIBERAL, Massachusetts is easily one of the top-five most reliably Democratic states. Once again, there’ll be no drama here, not even in John Kerry’s Senate re-election bid. As you can see from our demographic chart below, there’s not much of a race projected here, with nearly every variable that favors Obama in the top 10-25% of states, and every variable expected to favor the Republican in the bottom 10-25%. Our Starbucks-to-Walmart ratio puts Massachusetts just outside the top ten states, but that’s deceptive because Dunkin Donuts is the dominant coffee behemoth and Starbucks are scarcer. Don’t kid yourself, these liberals drink their liberal coffee with the kind of liberal brio that must’ve led Mitt Romney to snap and use “liberal” as a pejorative in his Wednesday night St. Paul speech the way some stumbling speakers use “uh.” Below the liberal chart we'll have some brief-but-liberal analysis of this straightforward and liberal state.
Key Demographics
Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apparent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.
What McCain Has Going For Him
The fact that Massachusetts doesn’t have 270 electoral votes is a big plus for McCain. It’s only 12. The fact that Obama’s not from Massachusetts (as were Kerry and Dukakis) means Republicans aren’t bashing the state as hard as they sometimes do (“Taxachusetts,” “Massachusetts liberal,” etc.). McCain is well-liked in neighboring New Hampshire, and the Boston Globe endorsed him during the Republican primary. And the state’s voters did decide to elect Mitt Romney twice. McCain is also the type of Republican who – in his 2000 incarnation – might have played well here. In 2000, he might have even lost by single digits to Al Gore. Unfortunately, the Palin pick is too socially conservative for this state and McCain is no longer that 2000 guy. In an alternate universe where McCain were to make a play for Massachusetts, he might try and tie Obama to his friend, Governor Deval Patrick, as someone who speaks well but doesn't deliver - Patrick's unfavorability rating is high.
What Obama Has Going For Him
Home of Obama’s Harvard Law pedigree, pretty much every demographic breakdown strongly favors the Democratic candidate. It’s the most liberal state on the Likert scale. It’s the most educated state. Sociologically, it’s highly urban, has few military veterans but the second-most same-sex households per capita and ranks 48 of 50 on the gun ownership scale. In religious categories, it’s the 2d-most Catholic state but 49th-most white evangelical state. Demographically it’s got the 3d-highest female voting percentage, and has a huge Democratic-to-Republican disparity, with Republicans reporting at the 2d lowest rate. Obama fundraising per capita is through the roof, at over $2 per citizen. The 2004 Massachusetts bashing and home-state edge led to Kerry's biggest win. It might not be Obama's biggest margin in 2008 - he did not carry the primary here despite the backing of both Democratic Senatorial deans - but to suggest this means Obama will struggle to win the state would be analytic malpractice.
What To Watch For
With Tom Brady done for the year, will the Patriots fall apart, or can Matt Cassel step in and do the job? Can the Celtics repeat? What about the Red Sox? Oh… Obama vs. McCain. Let’s not let ourselves be fooled. Probably the best thing to watch in Massachusetts this presidential year is the Boston Globe’s coverage of the New Hampshire race.
White Sox did get rained out tonight, so I've been able to update the charts and graphs on the site. A couple of notes:
1. This includes all polls described in the below thread, as well as the new Washington poll from SurveyUSA (Obama +4, was +7), as well as the ABC and CBS national polls that came out this afternoon.
2. I've also tweaked the trendline curve to make it ever so slightly more sensitive during the convention period (defined as the 21 days commencing from the start of the DNC), but it doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference.
3. From that Washington Post poll: there was a 20-point swing toward John McCain among white women. Is this interesting and relevant? It might be interesting, but I don't know that it's terrifically relevant, at least as far as the electoral math goes. If McCain gained 20 points among white women in a poll where he gained 5 points among registered voters overall, that means McCain made hardly any gains with other groups (e.g. men, and nonwhite women) -- in fact, he would have had to backtrack slightly with these groups to get the math to work out right. The gender gap is not very interesting to study from the standpoint of the electoral map, since sex ratios are nearly identical in each state (the West is slightly more male, but we're talking about something that might have an impact at the tenth-of-a-point level). If the white/nonwhite gap has increased, on the other hand, that could potentially be interesting. One thing I'd like to get a sense of is how Sarah Palin plays among Hispanics.
4. Our model does not yet have enough data to conclude that Florida and Ohio have flipped positions in terms of their relative favorability to Barack Obama, although my hunch is that things may be headed that way. But here's something interesting about Florida. In the pre-convention period, we had concluded that there were 243 electoral votes that were essentially fairly safe for Barack Obama in a close election. Those are the Kerry states, minus Michigan and New Hampshire, but plus Iowa and New Mexico. A total of 243 electoral votes leaves him 27 shy of the 270 he needs to win a majority. How many electoral votes is Florida worth? 27. The potential utility of Florida for Obama is that he could afford to lose Ohio and Michigan (as well as Colorado, New Hampshire, Nevada, Virgina etc.) and still have a winning map by bringing home his "safe" states. Of course, some states that appeared to be safe before, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, may no longer be in the post-convention environment.
Rasmussen has just released polling from five key swing states. When coupled with PPP's new poll of Michigan and SurveyUSA's new release from Virginia, we see a race that is relatively unchanged from the pre-convention period, but with incremental trends in different states that might portend changes in electoral strategy:
State/Pollster WAS NOW SWING OH Rasmussen McCain +5 McCain +7 McCain +2 MI PPP Obama +3 Obama +1 McCain +2 PA Rasmussen Obama +3 Obama +2 McCain +1 VA Rasmussen McCain +1 McCain +2 McCain +1 VA SurveyUSA McCain +1 McCain +2 McCain +1 FL Rasmussen McCain +2 TIE Obama +2 CO Rasmussen McCain +1 Obama +3 Obama +4 ==================================================== AVERAGE McCain +0.6 McCain +0.7 McCain +0.1
A few thoughts, and caveats:
The best news for McCain at a micro level is that he appears as though he might have gained just a tiny bit of ground in the Midwestern Rust Belt states, something which may also have been reflected in the new ABC/WaPo national poll, which showed him performing well in the Midwest. I still think that Pennsylvania isn't going to close quite enough for him to qualify as a top-tier swing state, especially as there are a lot of Clinton voters out there who should be returning to the Obama ticket. But Ohio now looks like it probably isn't Obama's path of least resistance to 270 electoral votes, and I'd expect Michigan to continue to be very competitive.
The best micro-level news for Obama is in Florida, where there are a couple of favorable dynamics in play:
(i) the Joe Biden selection probably went over well there; (ii) the consolidation of the Clinton vote is also valuable in Florida, and (iii) something is likely to be lost in translation between Sarah Palin and swing groups like Jewish voters and Cubans; moreover, Floridians tend to be fairly socially liberal but more conservative on fiscal and foreign policy, not necessarily the best match for Palin's politics.
We need more evidence to confirm this, but at this point, it feels to me like Florida is a better target for Obama than Ohio.
It also looks to me like the Palin selection may have increased the income/economic gap. That is probably good news for McCain in Ohio and good news for Obama in states like Colorado. It theoretically might also be good news for Obama in Virginia, but I think his gains there might be offset by McCain consolidating evangelicals.
At a macro level, these numbers seem like basically good news for Obama, since the overall numbers in swing states haven't moved much at all - just shifted around some from region to region. McCain is polling about 3 points better right now than he was at the pre-convention equilibrium. It's possible that those 3 points are manifesting themselves mostly in states that were already very red. Maybe Obama will lose Idaho and Nebraska and Alabama by 30 points rather than 20, but that doesn't help McCain very much electorally (an exception might be in a state like Indiana).
In other words, I suspect that the probability of Obama winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote probably increased as a result of the post-convention dynamics. If you literally just looked at the polling out today, McCain would win the popular vote by 2-3 points, but Obama would probably be at least even money in the electoral college, by just barely holding onto Michigan and Pennsylvania and then either winning the Colorado/Iowa/New Mexico parlay, or perhaps Florida.
Note: These polls won't officially be reflected in our model until tomorrow, unless the White Sox game gets rained out.
Obviously with a headline like that, you're probably expecting me to go all counterintuitive on you, and to some extent you'd be right.
Going into the conventions, the race was trending to Barack Obama by roughly 1 point. At the height of his convention bounce early last week, Obama had moved into a 5-6 point lead, indicating a convention bounce of 4-5 points. Now, over the past weekend, the polling appears to have transitioned into a 2-3 point McCain lead, indicating movement of 7-8 points.
But the question is where are we measuring the McCain bounce from. If you measure it from the peak of the Obama bounce, then indeed McCain has swung the polls more. If, on the other hand, you're measuring it from the pre-convention baseline, McCain's bounce is arguably slightly less -- especially since Obama's bounce was probably blunted to some extent by the Sarah Palin selection.
This is all academic, I suppose, but the point is that while the Republicans had a reasonably successful convention, the Democrats did too. Once the dust settles, I think you're going to see some movement of evangelical voters further into the McCain category, and some movement of Clinton Democrats into the Obama category. I think we can say this because even polls conducted during the peak of Obama's bounce had McCain gaining ground among evangelicals, and even polls conducted this past weekend had Obama gaining ground among Clinton Dems. Where other groups of voters will settle, however, remains to be seen.
Polling, especially during the convention period, is often described as a "roller coaster", but I think the metaphor is a little bit more powerful than that. You can ride a particular coaster a dozen times, visualize the ride, and tell yourself that you aren't going to be scared when you go down the first big hill. But inevitably, if you have genetics like mine, you'll be still be screaming once you've actually strapped yourself in and are riding the damned thing. There are certain things that are so experientially intense that it's probably impossible to fully prepare yourself for them -- you can know exactly what's coming, and it doesn't matter.
At this very moment, John McCain has a lead of something like 2, maybe 3 points in the national polls. If I had asked you, before the convention period began, what you expected the national tracking numbers to look like on the weekend immediately following the Republican convention, my hunch is that the average guess would have been right around a Republican +2 lead -- exactly where the polls are now.
Is it possible that the race has entered some sort of new steady state? Yes, of course -- such things happened following the Republican Convention in 1988 and the Democratic Convention in 1992, for instance. But history tells us that far more often, convention bounces recede. And even if this one doesn't, the absolute worst case for Barack Obama is that he'll be within striking distance given one good debate performance, and will probably also have a slightly stronger hand to play in the electoral college than in the national popular vote.
McCain's bounce is probably now fully manifested. I think he might pick up one more point or so in the Gallup tracker tomorrow, as I show slightly stronger results for him on Sunday (+5.0) and Saturday (+7.2) than I do on Friday (+2.7). But I don't know that he's going to get much more than that without further, intervening events.
Public Policy Polling also has a survey out in Michigan, which shows Obama with a 1-point, 47-46 lead. Those are better numbers for McCain than other PPP polls of the Wolverine State -- he had trailed by 3 in July -- but actually ought to be a somewhat heartening result for Democrats, since it means that Michigan is polling about 3 or 4 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. I will have more thoughts today or tomorrow about the way that individual states might be affected by the convention period.
Finally, as I've urged throughout the convention period, take the various charts and graphs on this website with a grain of salt for the time being. It usually takes something like 5-7 days, depending on the volume of polling, for our tracking curve to catch up to the new numbers. If McCain holds onto these numbers through the end of the work week, he should be leading in the national popular vote estimate (though I'm less certain about the electoral college). Then again, maybe the bounce will recede quickly, in which case the tracker will seem prescient.
