Amid Epidemic of Challenges, Coleman Appears to Expand Lead

According to the latest counts provided by the Star Tribune and the Minnesota Secretary of State, Republican Norm Coleman appears to have expanded his narrow lead over Al Franken on Day 4 of the recount process. The Star Tribune now puts Coleman's lead at 180 votes, and the Secretary of State, 167 votes. (The Star Tribune's tally appears to be inclusive of all of the Secretary of State figures and is probably the more authoritative estimate). Coleman's lead had been 215 votes before the recount process began, but had become as small as 115-120 votes at other stages of the recount process.

It is unclear, however, whether the running counts provided by the Star Tribune and Secretary of State are any longer providing useful information. This is because the percentage of challenged ballots has now reached epidemic levels. Among the relatively small number of ballots added today to the Secretary of State's nightly estimate, the Coleman campaign challenged 14.2 ballots for every 10,000 cast, and the Franken campaign 12.2 for every 10,000 cast. This rate of challenges was almost twice that observed in Friday's counting, and 4-5 times as much as in the first two days of ballot counting on Wednesday and Thursday.



With the rate of challenges running this high, it may be impossible to glean whether either side is in fact making progress in the recount.

Suppose that there is some relatively large number of cases in Hennepin County (which Franken won by 100,000 votes on Election Day) in which ballots regarded by the optical scanners as undervotes in fact show some indication of voter intent for Franken. However, these ballots run along a spectrum from those where the ballot is completed almost perfectly, to those where there is only the faintest indication of voter intent. If the Coleman campaign is challenging virtually every instance in which an election judge rules that there was in fact voter intent for Franken, and the Franken campaign simultaneously is challenging virtually every instance in which the judge rules that there was not clear enough evidence of voter intent, then both sides will rack up high numbers of challenges. All of these ballots, for the time being, are being reported as non-votes. When the canvassing board evaluates them in December, however, only Franken can gain ground, as they will either be ruled to be legitimate votes cast for Franken, or will continue to be regarded as non-votes.

The reason I bring this up is because almost all of Franken's advantage on Election Day came from three large counties -- Hennepin (Minneapolis), Ramsey (St. Paul) and Saint Louis (Duluth). In two of these three counties, however -- Hennepin and Saint Louis -- Coleman rather than Franken has thus far gained ground in the recount, by 30 and 22 votes respectively. In Ramsey County, on the other hand, Franken has gained a net of 35 votes -- but the rate of challenges has been much lower in Ramsey County because of a gentleman's agreement in force between the two sides to avoid frivolous challenges.

What I am suggesting, in other words, is that Ramsey County, with its lower rate of challenges, may represent the more natural state of affairs, and that Franken is in fact likely to gain quite a bit of ground in Hennepin and Saint Louis counties once challenges in those jurisdictions are resolved. Remember, either Coleman or Franken may wind up challenging potential Franken undervotes, depending on the initial ruling of the local elections judge. Likewise, either Franken or Coleman may wind up challenging potential Coleman undervotes.

Of course, there may be other areas in which Coleman is likely to gain ground. Franken issued 51 challenges to Coleman's 7 in Meeker County, for instance, a relatively small county won by Coleman on Election Day, and 26 challenges to Coleman's 11 in Mille Lacs County, which also went for Coleman. Almost certianly, a large percentage of Franken's challenges in these counties are frivolous.

Minnesota's recount, generally speaking, has gone smoothly, and is a model for how other states should adjudicate their recount process. I believe, however, that Minnesota has made a significant mistake by reporting all challenged ballots as being non-votes until the canvassing board has a chance to rule on them. This creates a strong incentive to issue frivolous challenges, one which both campaigns have apparently wised up to. A better way to report the results would be to list the ruling of the local elections official as the default; this would provide for a more honest indication of those cases where the canvassing board in fact determines to overrule the judgment of the local official. Alternatively or additionally, the state could disincentive frivolous challenges by providing photocopies of all challenges online, making them subjects of potential ridicule.

Until such time as the the state changes its reporting process, or the incidence of challenges drops to a healthier level (such as was observed on Wednesday and Thursday), the running counts reported by the Star Tribune and the Secretary of State should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

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The Ghosts of 1993

What high-profile policy change has the support of 75 percent of the American public, and could be implemented by changing a very few simple statutes at essentially no cost to the American taxpayer?

That would be a repeal of Public Law 103-160, the 1993 measure more commonly known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", which prohibits openly gay persons from serving in the United States military.

Public sentiment on DADT has shifted dramatically since 1993. A May, 1993 poll by ABC News and the Washington Post showed that 44 percent Americans favored allowing homosexuals (their wording) who have publicly disclosed their orientation to serve in the military, as compared with 55 percent opposed. An identical poll taken in July, however, shows 75 percent in favor versus just 22 percent opposed. Other recent polling shows similar results; in May 2007, CNN showed 79 percent of Americas in favor of allowing for openly gay troops to serve to 18 percent opposed, and in March 2007, Newsweek had 63 percent in favor and 28 percent opposed.

What has changed? Well, certainly, America has become more liberal on a variety of issues related to same-sex-attracted individuals. But also our country is now at war, and military recruitment has become more of a problem. Not coincidentally, the number of dismissals under DADT has decreased significantly since 2002 as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ramped up. (It's not OK to be gay -- the army seems to be saying -- unless we actually need you.)

If this were any other issue, it would be the sort of slam-dunk stocking stuffer that a new administration would be looking to implement quickly to bolster its favorability ratings. But of course, DADT is laden with historical significance, precisely because of the way that the Clinton administration mishandled the issue in 1993 and expended a lot of its political capital in the process. A Washington Times report -- as yet unconfirmed by other sources -- suggests that Barack Obama is likely to delay action on the issue until perhaps 2010.

Does Obama have legitimate reason to proceed cautiously? It is hard to know. On the one hand, even if those who still oppose gay servicemembers are in a small minority, sometimes the minority is much more vocal than the majority. Going after a DADT repeal would surely pique the interest of the Radio Republicans; they'd attempt to portray Obama both as a liberal boogieman and as a political naïf for making the exact same mistakes that the Clinton administration did.

On the other hand, perhaps this is the sort of fight that Obama should be inviting -- for target-practice if for nothing else. Obama should be fully ready to deploy the patriotism card, e.g. that our best and bravest troops should be allowed the honor of serving our country, and the commonsense card, e.g. that when our forces are stretched thin, we can't be dismissing them for something as frivolous as their sexual orientation.

This is also precisely the sort of issue on which the Radio Republicans are liable to overplay their hand, missing the fact that Americans are capable of finer points of distinction than "Gay People Bad!", and that there is a sizable swing vote that is ready to see gays and lesbians serve in the army, even if they aren't ready to see them get married or adopt babies. Let the Radio Republicans wallow in their own insignificance.

Put differently, if Obama can't get a DADT repeal passed, then good luck with something like universal health insurance, which though also supported by solid majorities of the public, is not at 75 percent support, and will be met with much, much more vigorous resistance from lobbying groups.

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Coleman's Lead Down to 120 as Challenges Skyrocket

According to figures compiled by the Star Tribune, Norm Coleman now holds a lead of 120 votes over Al Franken. Coleman's lead before the recount began had been 215 votes.

A majority of the state's ballots -- some 64 percent -- have now been re-counted. The counties re-counted to date have been slightly redder than the state as a whole, favoring Coleman by an aggregate of about 1.6 points in the initial count. The difference has diminished, however, as more re-counted ballots roll in from Franken-friendly areas like Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, the number of ballot challenges -- cases in which one or both candidates appeal an initial ruling my local elections judges -- has increased significantly. Among ballots added to the Secretary of State's totals since last evening, the Franken campaign has challenged 7.5 out of every 10,000 ballots, and the Coleman campaign 7.2 out of every 10,000. These figures are more than double the number of challenges on the first two days of the recount process.

On balance, Franken's pace has slowed somewhat, while his rate of challenges has begun to match or slightly exceed that of the Coleman campaign. As such, Coleman should probably regarded as the slight favorite to retain his seat.

However, the uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding challenged ballots is very large, and tends to swamp everything else in the system. The fraction of challenged ballots can vary radically from county to county. We do not know whether one or another campaign is systematically making more frivolous challenges. In addition, we do not know what fraction of the challenges concern ballots that were initially ruled as legal (which the campaigns are now hoping to have discarded), versus ballots that initially were deemed to be overvotes or undervotes (which the campaigns are hoping to have counted). The first type of challenge will result in a temporary deduction to the opposing candidate's total until the challenge is resolved, whereas the second type will have no immediate impact on the state's reported totals.

Earlier today, the Franken campaign told the Huffington Post that it was within 100 votes based on a different standard of accounting for unresolved challenges. We have also heard, anecdotally, that Franken's ballot judges have tended to be more experienced and better trained than Coleman's ballot judges, perhaps suggesting that they will win a higher share of their challenges.

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Ballot Challenges On Rise in Minnesota

On the first day of Minnesota's recount process, the Coleman campaign challenged roughly 2.3 ballots for every 10,000 cast, and the Franken campaign challenged 2.5, for a total of 4.8 challenges per 10,000 ballots according to figures compiled by Minnesota Secretary of State.

Yesterday, the second day of the process, that challenge rate rose to 3.1 per 10,000 ballots for Coleman, and 3.4 per 10,000 ballots for Franken, for a challenge rate of 6.5 ballots per 10,000.

And now, on day three, according to the Star Tribune, "a rash of challenges has marked today's recount action in Ramsey County [St. Paul and outskirts], with observers from both campaigns questioning voters' intent far more widely than they did the first two days."

It is hard to know whether this phenomenon is statewide or occurring in Ramsay County only, which had had an usually low rate of challenges over the first two days of ballot counting. Nevertheless, given that there are very few disincentives to challenge ballots, it is not surprising that something of an arm's-race has occurred as both sides learn from one another's behavior.

EDIT: The Uptake has video of 10 ballots identified by Franken that were challenged by the Coleman campaign simply because voter voted both for John McCain and Al Franken! Uh, in case you were wondering, the campaigns are no longer leaving any stone unturned.

The disincentive to challenge ballots is precisely this sort of thing -- challenges that look so ridiculous that they'll weaken your ability to take the moral highground. If the Coleman campaign is on the ball, they'll be ready to show similar frivolities from the Franken campaign as well. The Uptake also reports that the Secretary of State is also taking under advisement a proposal to make all challenged ballots available for public viewing on a website.

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The Final Words (For Now) on Zieglergate

Mine...

The only reason that Mr. Ziegler's original survey got stupid answers from Obama's supporters is because he asked stupid questions.

And Carl Bialik's at the Wall Street Journal....

...actually I'm not going to pull a quote from Carl's piece because you should read the whole thing, as it represents by far the fairest and most comprehensive summary of the issue to date.

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Friday eCommerce Interlude

I generally try not to go too far off-topic, but ... well, it's Friday, and I figured this might be of interest to you.

Below I have listed a series of prominent, politically-oriented websites, and compared them on their ability to retain traffic in the post-election environment. The way that I have calculated this is to take the 1-week average daily reach number from Alexa.com (representing post-election traffic) and divided it into the 3-month average daily reach number for the same site (representing -- principally -- pre-election traffic from the convention period onward, the juicy part of the four-year election cycle). For instance, Slate.com has reached 598 out of every 1 million global internet users on an average day in the past week, as compared with 892 on an average day over the past three months, for a retention percentage of 67 percent.

TheAtlantic.com         125%
DrudgeReport.com        124%
HuffingtonPost.com      109%
NYTimes.com             97%
WashingtonPost.com      82%
FOXNews.com             78%
TalkingPointsMemo.com   71%
DailyKos.com            68%
Slate.com               67%
RedState.com            66%
NationalReview.com      63%
FiveThirtyEight.com     59%
Politico.com            55%
Pollster.com            37%
BarackObama.com         37%
Electoral-Vote.com      30%
RealClearPolitics.com   25%
RasmussenReports.com    15%
Gallup.com              12%
JohnMcCain.com          9%

Any number of caveats apply -- including that Alexa.com estimates are usually pretty blunt insturments(although they're a little bit better for relatively large sites like these). But you see the sites running along something of a spectrum from campaign-specific to general political (and sometimes cultural) interest.

Our retention percentage is 59 percent, which I'm actually very, very pleased with. Thank you for visiting us during the run-up to the election and thank you for continuing to visit us now. I haven't done one of those "what's next for FiveThirtyEight" posts yet, but I will do so soon; rest assured that we are in this for the long haul.

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Coleman Leads Franken By 136 Votes After Thursday Count

Perhaps Al Franken's campaign is listening to Nate, never a bad move. Franken has now challenged more ballots than Norm Coleman, 414 to 409.

Coleman's lead over Franken is now 136 votes after two days and 46% of the ballots recounted. 30% of votes have been recounted in heavily Democratic Ramsey County, 36% in Democratic St. Louis County, and 42% in Democratic Hennepin County.

Six relatively small counties are set to begin counting tomorrow. More are set to begin counting next week, and the challenge adjudication phase of the process can begin as early as December 6, but likely Monday December 8.

Dakota County, which went for Coleman decisively, has produced a net gain of 32 for Franken. Coleman has lost 40 votes to Franken's 8, so perhaps this is where Franken challenges have stepped up.

Without seeing all the challenged ballots, it's unclear where the challenge phase will take us, or what the final tally of challenges will be. Obviously there is an important perception problem in terms of who has the lead after the recount.

Per the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, both camps seem pleased with the state of the recount, which should indicate just how little certainty either side has about the ultimate outcome. We'll update tomorrow.

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Minnesota: Is Franken Being Too Nice?

According to the latest statistics compiled by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Norm Coleman's campaign has thus far challenged 240 ballots in Minnesota's recount process, whereas the Franken campaign has challenged 172 ballots, a 68-ballot gap. If the rate of challenges holds steady as the rest of the state's ballots are re-counted, that would mean the Coleman campaign would send about 1,050 ballots to the state's canvassing board as compared with roughly 750 from Franken.

'Challenged' ballots can fall into a number of different categories. One common category is when a vote that had previously been determined to be legal is disputed by one of the campaigns. In such cases, the vote is deducted from the opposing candidate's total. All challenged ballots will then be reviewed by the state's five-person canvassing board in December.

Minnesota Public Radio has examples of many challenged ballots. As you can see, the reason for the challenges run the gamut from the obvious to the frivolous. In some cases, ballots may also be challenged by both campaigns.

Local news accounts contain numerous examples of precinct-level elections officials attempting to dismiss frivolous challenges before they are forwarded to the canvassing board, although it is less than clear what legal standing they have to do so. In practice, the prevailing standard seems to be 'Minnesota nice', with most disputes being resolved amicably and by consensus.

Nevertheless, given the ever-increasing gap in the number of challenges, one wonders whether the Coleman campaign has instructed its precinct-level representatives to challenge ballots aggressively, even if such challenges are almost certain to be rejected by the canvassing board. Their incentive to do so might be as follows: whichever candidate leads at the end of the first phase of the recount process -- before the canvassing board reviews any challenged ballots -- will be able to claim some sort of moral highground. By being able to deduct ballots from their opponent's total essentially at will, the campaigns increase the likelihood that they will in fact lead at the end of the first-phase count with each additional ballot that they challenge.

The incentives may be particularly powerful for the Coleman campaign, because Minnesota has a Democratic Secretary of State (although the five-person canvassing board he appointed appears to be divided roughly evenly across the political spectrum). If Coleman leads at the end of both the initial count (as he did) and the first phase of the recount process, but falls behind Franken after the canvassing board completes his review of the challenged ballots, he will probably attempt to complain later that Democratically-appointed canvassing board had "overturned the will of the people". This might give him greater leverage to demand a second recount or even a re-vote in the event that he falls behind. It might also plausibly affect the mindset of the canvassing board when reviewing the challenged ballots.

To make clear, this behavior is perfectly above-board and 100 percent within Coleman's rights. It is also 100 percent smart. But the Franken campaign should make sure it understands the incentives here, and perhaps do away with some of that Minnesota nice.

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Did Talk Radio Kill Conservatism?

Nate Silver [NS]: Do you stand by all the statements in the survey as being unambiguously true?

John Ziegler [JZ]: I stand one hundred percent by the notion that there is absolutely zero ambiguity as to what the right answer is to any of the questions.

And then a bit later...

JZ: [Laughs]. In your world, the question that I would ask you is what question [in the survey] is there any ambiguity as to what the answer is?

NS: Well, that Obama 'launched his career' at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground --

JZ: That happens to be one of the questions that Obama supporters did the best on! They did better on that question than on any other Obama-related answers! And here you’re telling me that it’s not true?

NS: What do you mean by "launched his career"?

JZ: The first campaign as told by the person whose position he took in the State Senate, as told by her admission, his first campaign event was in the home of Bill Ayers and his wife. [Laughs] Unless you live in the Obama kool-aid world! That is astonishing to me that you would not accept that! And by the way, when you're given four responses to that question, what else was the response going to be? Sarah Palin?

Emphasis mine.

This might be the key passage of my interview with John Ziegler on Tuesday, for it is, in a nutshell, why conservatives don't win elections anymore. It is not that conservatism generally permits less nuance than liberalism (in terms of political messaging, that is probably one of conservatism's strengths). Rather, the key lies in the second passage that I highlighted. There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion.

John Ziegler is a shining example of such a conservative. During my interview with him, Ziegler made absolutely no effort to persuade me about the veracity of any of his viewpoints. He simply asserted them -- and then became frustrated, paranoid, or vulgar when I rebutted them.

I didn't quite get how someone like Ziegler, who is usually fairly poised, who solicited me to interview him, who has years of experience in the media, could so completely lose his cool. This was until last night, when I read David Foster Wallace's profile of him, conducted in 2005 when Ziegler was hosting a fairly successful talk radio program in Los Angeles.

To understand Ziegler, you have to understand that he's a radio guy. And you have to understand that radio is a very strange medium. As Wallace writes:

Hosting talk radio is an exotic, high-pressure gig that not many people are fit for, and being truly good at it requires skills so specialized that many of them don't have names.

To appreciate these skills and some of the difficulties involved, you might wish to do an experiment. Try sitting alone in a room with a clock, turning on a tape recorder, and starting to speak into it. Speak about anything you want—with the proviso that your topic, and your opinions on it, must be of interest to some group of strangers who you imagine will be listening to the tape. Naturally, in order to be even minimally interesting, your remarks should be intelligible and their reasoning sequential—a listener will have to be able to follow the logic of what you're saying—which means that you will have to know enough about your topic to organize your statements in a coherent way. (But you cannot do much of this organizing beforehand; it has to occur at the same time you're speaking.) Plus, ideally, what you're saying should be not just comprehensible and interesting but compelling, stimulating, which means that your remarks have to provoke and sustain some kind of emotional reaction in the listeners, which in turn will require you to construct some kind of identifiable persona for yourself—your comments will need to strike the listener as coming from an actual human being, someone with a real personality and real feelings about whatever it is you're discussing. And it gets even trickier: You're trying to communicate in real time with someone you cannot see or hear responses from; and though you're communicating in speech, your remarks cannot have any of the fragmentary, repetitive, garbled qualities of real interhuman speech, or speech's ticcy unconscious "umm"s or "you know"s, or false starts or stutters or long pauses while you try to think of how to phrase what you want to say next. You're also, of course, denied the physical inflections that are so much a part of spoken English—the facial expressions, changes in posture, and symphony of little gestures that accompany and buttress real talking. Everything unspoken about you, your topic, and how you feel about it has to be conveyed through pitch, volume, tone, and pacing. The pacing is especially important: it can't be too slow, since that's low-energy and dull, but it can't be too rushed or it will sound like babbling.

Not to reduce Wallace's fine prose to a catch phrase, but the distinguishing feature of radio is that it exists in a sort of perpetual amnesiac state. In a book, you can go back and read the previous page; on the internet, you can press the 'back' button on the browser. In radio, there is no rewind: everything exists in that moment and that moment only. This is, theoretically, a problem with teleivsion too, but in teleivison you at least have context clues -- graphics and what not, and what falls under the heading of "non-verbal communication". In radio you do not. Just a sine wave in the ether.

Moreover, almost uniquely to radio, most of the audience is not even paying attention to you, because most people listen to radio when they're in the process of doing something else. (If they weren't doing something else, they'd be watching TV). They are driving, mowing the lawn, washing the dishes -- and you have to work really hard to sustain their attention. Hence what Wallace refers to as the importance of "stimulating" the listener, an art that Ziegler has mastered. Invariably, the times when Ziegler became really, really angry with me during the interview was when I was not permitting him to be stimulating, but instead asking him specific, banal questions that required specific, banal answers. Those questions would have made for terrible radio! And Ziegler had no idea how to answer them.

Stimulation, however, is somewhat the opposite of persuasion. You're not going to persuade someone of something when you're (literally, in Ziegler's case) yelling in their ear.

The McCain campaign was all about stimulation. The Britney Spears ads weren't persuasive, but they sure were stimulating! "Drill, baby, drill" wasn't persuasive, but it sure was stimulating! Sarah Palin wasn't persuasive, but she sure was (literally, in Rich Lowry's case) stimulating! By the way, let's look at another little passage from Lowry's paragraph on Palin:

A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat.

I'll bet you that TV executive began his career in radio. Television too has to be stimulating (although perhaps not quite so immediately, since the television viewer is usually giving you a larger proportion of his mindshare). But it can stimulate you in a variety of different ways -- through visual cues as well as verbal ones.

FOX News is unusual television, really, in that almost all the stimulation is verbal, and almost all of it occurs at the same staccato pacing as radio. You could take tonight's broadcast of Hannity & Colmes or the Factor and put it directly on radio and you'd lose almost nothing (not coincidentally, Hannity and O'Reilly also have highly-rated radio programs). That wouldn't really work for Countdown, which has higher production values, and where the pacing is more irregular. It certainly wouldn't work for the Situation Room -- or moving in a different direction, the Daily Show.

Conservatives listen to significantly more talk radio than other market segments; 28 percent of conservative Republicans listen to talk radio regularly, as opposed to 17 percent of the public as a whole. (Unsurprisingly, conservative hosts also dominate the the Arbitron ratings). It may have gone to their heads a little bit; they may have forgotten about radio's idiosyncrasies as a means of communication. The failures of the Bush administration have woken the country up; conservatives now need to find a way to communicate with people who are actually paying attention.

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Napolitano Reportedly Picked for Homeland Security, Casting Doubt on Potential Senate Run

CNN is reporting that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is likely to be named Barack Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, potentially becoming the first woman to head the six-year-old cabinet department. The report has not yet been confirmed by other sources. Politico is now confirming CNN's report.

Napolitano, popular among her constituents as well as with the netroots, was to be term-limited in 2010, but was reportedly considering a run for Arizona's Class 3 senate seat, currently occupied by John McCain. At least one poll had shown Napolitano ahead of McCain in a trial-heat matchup, although McCain remains fairly popular in Arizona and had led Napolitano in other polling of the state.

A promotion to Homeland Security would not inherently dash Napolitano's prospects of running for the Senate. Florida's Mel Martinez, George W. Bush's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, stepped down from his position in 2003 to run for Florida's open senate seat, and last year, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns did the same to run for Nebraska's; both Republicans won. Martinez and Johanns, however, had served in their positions for the better part of three years, whereas Napolitano would presumably have to vacate her position by early 2010 to run a competitive race against McCain. Martinez and Johanns, moreover, were running for open seats that they were favored to pick up, whereas Napolitano would have to run against one of the icons of the Senate, albeit one who recently suffered a notable electoral defeat.

If Napolitano does not run, it is not clear who the Democratic nominee might be. Democrats will control 5 of 8 chairs in Arizona's delegation in the 111th Congress, although some of those Democrats are likely to be too green, too liberal, or too vulnerable in their own seats to have a plausible chance at statewide office. The notable exception is AZ-8's Gabrielle Giffords, who has proven to be a good fundraiser and a savvy politician, winning her only two elections by double-digits in an R+1 district. Giffords, however, could also choose to run for governor, as she is talented enough that she may harbor longer-term ambitions for national office.

There is also a chance -- maybe even a fairly good chance -- that John McCain chooses not to run, although my gut-level read of the situation is that McCain would not want to end his career on a losing streak and therefore becomes less likely to retire if he does not have to worry about Napolitano. AZ-6's Jeff Flake is considered the favorite to run for the position if McCain retires; he has a strong brand and would be a formidable opponent. If a Flake v Giffords grudge match ever materializes, it should be a fun one to watch.

Democrats will also lose the governorship if Napolitano accepts a cabinet position. Arizona is one of four states without a lieutenant governor's position, so the honors would go to Jan Brewer, the Republican Secretary of State.

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[UPDATED] On First Day of Recount, Franken Gains Net of 43 Votes on Coleman

UPDATED, 9:15 PM Central

According to data just released by the Minnesota Secretary of State, Al Franken has gained a net of 43 votes on the first day of that state's recount process. Norm Coleman had a lead of 215 voters over Franken in Minnesota's certified, pre-recount tally; that margin is now 172 votes.

Minnesota reports that it has thus far re-counted 15.49 percent of its ballots. If the first day's results are indicative of the pace that the candidates will maintain throughout the recount process, Franken would gain a net of 278 votes over Coleman, giving him a narrow victory. For any number of reasons, however, the results reported thus far may not be indicative of future trends.

Although Franken gained ground relative to Coleman, in actuality both candidates have fewer votes than they began the day with. This is because of the "challenge" process in which representatives of either candidate may challenge any ballot for any reason, which will subsequently be reviewed one at a time by Minnesota's canvassing board in December. Challenges can occur to ballots that had previously been deemed to be legal, in which case those votes will be deducted from the opponent's total. Coleman has thus far challenged 115 ballots and Franken 106. However, based on local reports, many or perhaps most of the challenges are frivolous, and are unlikely to be upheld upon review. Thus, the candidate who has challenged fewer ballots probably stands to gain ground once such challenges are adjudicated.

Of Franken's net 43-vote gain, a net of 27 of those votes came from just two towns in Saint Louis County, Ely and Eveleth. These Northern villages, characteristically highly Democratic, use an older type of vote scanning technology called the Optech IIIP Eagle which is less reliable and requires use of an alternate ballot design. The Star Tribune reports, however, that about half the Saint Louis County precincts with the Eagle machines have already had their votes re-counted. Thus, it would be dangerous to extrapolate results from these precincts (and therefore to some extent Franken's overall gain today) to the county or statewide levels.

On the other hand, the precincts that were re-counted today were slightly redder than average, having favored Coleman by an aggregate of 3.3 points during the initial count. No votes have yet been re-counted in Minneapolis (out of more than 200,000 cast), although about 43,000 have been recounted in St. Paul (out of around 140,000 cast on Election Day). Another city which has not yet reported any results is Duluth, traditionally a Democratic stronghold.

The Star Tribune reports slightly different results, with Franken having gained a net of 41 votes rather than 43, 18 percent of ballots re-counted rather than 15.5, and higher numbers of challenged ballots for both candidates.

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[UPDATED] In Minnesota Recount, Both Candidates are Losers Thus Far

And I mean literally.

The Minnesota recount has started, with the results being updated in semi-real time on the Star Tribune's webpage. Thus far, with about 5 percent of the ballots recounted, Coleman has lost 55 votes and Franken has lost 61.

The reason the vote totals are going down when you might intuitively expect them to go up is that either candidate has a right to challenge any ballot for any reason, even if it had been counted as legal originally. When a vote is challenged, it is deducted from the opposing candidate's total. These challenged votes will go before the state canvassing board in December and be debated (and debated and debated) one by one (by one by one). Thus far, Coleman has issued 79 challenges and Franken 61, a rate that puts us on pace for about 2,800 challenges statewide.

It is difficult to say how many votes so far have actually been recharacterized so far as opposed to (or in addition to) those that have been challenged, because the Star-Tribune's website only provides the net totals in each locality, but no detail about how we got there. Nor do we have any information yet on ballots gained or lost by third-party candidates. Keep an eye on the Minnesota Secretary of State's Webpage, which will have an update at 8 PM Central tonight and should hopefully provide for a more thorough accounting. I would be very reluctant to come to much of any conclusion about the recount until we have that additional layer of detail.

EDITED AND REVISED, 6:10 PM Central.

UPDATE #2 (6:15 PM) The totals listed on the Star Tribune's website do not yet reflect a net gain of 28 votes for Franken in portions of St. Louis County (Duluth), a Democratic stronghold that uses older, more error-prone scanning machines.

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Dear Democrats: If You Must Blame, Blame Obama

I haven't commented extensively on L'Affire Lieberman, in part because I personally feel somewhat agnostic about it and in part because I think the writing has been on the wall for some time that Democrats would decide to keep him in their caucus and let him retain his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee.

One thing's for certain, though: when a vote that looked as though it was going to be fairly close originally instead passed the caucus 42-13, something happened to whip that result into shape, and that something was Barack Obama. True the caucus might have voted to retain Lieberman on its own -- or it might not have. But Obama's signal last week to extend Lieberman a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card was the immediate cause of that decision. Conversely, Obama could probably have engineered the opposite result if he'd wanted. (Nor is this to dispute the characterization of the Senate Democrats -- and particularly the Majority Leader -- as being somewhat weak-willed, but the practical implication of that is very different when you have a Democrat rather than a Republican in the White House.)

In our interview with him yesterday, Howard Dean dropped some very strong hints about what Obama is up to. We should expect him to be as methodical and meticulous about spending his political capital as he was about spending his advertising dollars and his ground game resources during the campaign. One can debate whether the Democratic caucus was more likely to achieve certain progressive policy outcomes with or without Lieberman in its ranks, but to Obama's mind, kicking him out would have been a giving both the Washington press corps and the Republicans a sort of shiny red apple, creating a huge distraction and requiring a significant expenditure of political capital.

So how you feel about Lieberman should ultimately hinge on how you feel about Obama, and how you feel about Obama should ultimately hinge on your opinion about whether he is liable to put that political capital to good use. If you believe Dean's implication that Obama is going to use that political capital to pass both significant climate change reform and significant health care reform within the first two years of his presidency, you probably ought to give him the benefit of the doubt. If, on the other hand, you see Obama as someone more concerned with the accumulation of power toward ambiguous, uncertain, or incorrect ends, this is liable to be the first of a long line of displeasing decisions, and you had better get used to pushing back against the White House.

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An Interview with John Ziegler on the Zogby "Push Poll"

I had the chance this afternoon to speak with John Ziegler, a documentary filmmaker and former radio talk show host who built the website HowObamaGotElected.com and is promoting a forthcoming documentary of the same name.

Ziegler was responsible for commissioning a Zogby International survey of Barack Obama supporters, which took the form of a multiple choice political knowledge test, stating a "fact" to the respondent and asking them which of the four major candidates (Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin) the statement applied to. Because I believe that many of the statements on the survey are questionable or false but are misleadingly presented as factual to the respondent, I characterized the survey as a "push poll" in an article posted early this morning.

Ziegler had contacted me by e-mail, asking if I'd like to interview him; the interview itself was conducted by telephone. Ziegler asked, among other conditions, that I post a full transcript of the interview, which I have. The transcript below is intended to be representative as possible from my shorthand transcript, with the exception of two or three rapid-fire ad-hominem exchanges being edited out. The transcript, however, is not safe for work.

Nate Silver [NS]: Were only Obama supporters interviewed for the [Zogby] survey, or was everyone interviewed?
John Ziegler [JZ]: The reason why I interviewed Obama supporters only is because I’m doing a documentary on the media coverage of the campaign and how the media coverage of the campaign impacted what Obama supporters knew or thought they knew about the campaign. I had planned from day one because I knew that no one would take seriously any random sampling of interviewees that I was going to commission a scientific poll of these questions. I also knew that it would be a lot cheaper for me to do a nationwide survey of Obama voters than the nation as a whole because basically I’d only have to do half the number of people to get a representative sample. When I went on FOX last night, I made a deal that if anyone on the left -- you're more than willing to take me up on this -- wants to ask the exact same deal of the McCain supporters and you get examples that are equal to or worse than the Obama supporters, then I’ll pay for your expense. The point here was not to show that Obama supporters were idiots -- there are plenty of idiots on both sides of the aisle -- but what information they got from the media that they were able to consume.

NS: Do you stand by all the statements in the survey as being unambiguously true?
JZ: I stand one hundred percent by the notion that there is absolutely zero ambiguity as to what the right answer is to any of the questions. With the one exception of the Palin-Russia-Alaska question which we asked the way we did for a very specific purpose which was to try and gauge the Tina Fey Effect which I think we did in a very effective manner which was what was actually said by Tina Fey, everyone attributed to Sarah Plain. But for purposes of scoring Obama supporters’ answers we counted Palin as a correct response.

NS: What was the right answer to that [Palin] question?
JZ: The technically accurate question [sic] is that none of the four people said that, but we counted it as correct if they said Sarah Palin.

NS: Why would you commission a survey question with no correct response?
JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.

NS: Were the interviews conducted by telephone or online?
JZ: How can you ask a question like that and pretend that you have any clue what you're writing about! That's unbelievable that someone could write what you did! That is unbelievable that you wouldn't know that it's a telephone or an online poll and that you went on my summaries of the questions before the questions were even released!

NS: We’ve heard reports from our readers that very similar questions had been asked in an online format. There was no online component at all?
JZ: That is correct, which you would have known if you had looked at the information. Before you called this a push poll -- you don't seem to know the definition of a push poll. How do you have this website?

NS: Is the complete interview available anywhere -- complete results for the interview?
JZ: Yeah if you had done your research it is all online, every question, all the cross-tabs. Man, you're never going to post this [transcript], are you?

NS: Were the respondents informed of the 'correct' response during the telephone interviews?
JZ: No.

NS: Did Zogby have a chance to preview the questions before agreeing to accept your business?
JZ: John Zogby himself or the company?

NS: Either/Or.
JZ: I am quite certain that if I asked a question they deemed inappropriate they would have not allowed the question to be asked.

NS: What questions were removed from the survey?
JZ: We didn't remove any, we edited some.

NS: What questions were edited?
JZ: Nothing was substantially edited but there was some wording on some that we went over with them. For instance, I think I had inadvertently said “See Russia from my home” instead of “See Russia from my house”. There was a distinction about Obama talking about energy prices versus electricity prices so we corrected that. That’s all that I can recollect.

NS: What did Zogby charge you -- what did you pay for this survey?
JZ: I'm not going to tell you that, I'm not a fucking idiot.

NS: Did he charge you at his usual rates or did he ask you for extra?
JZ: You'll have to ask them. I'm not going to respond how much money I paid for this. It was substantial but I’m not going to say anything more than that.

NS: In the Youtube video, how were the Obama supporters identified for the Youtube video?
JZ: I had nothing to do with it. I had a person who was working with me who happens to be a black female since you seem to think I’m a racist who was the one that chose all of the respondents based on conversations we’d had prior, people who were well-spoken, thought they were informed, willing to come on camera and [who] voted for Barack Obama.

NS: What was the location of the polling place where the interviews were conducted?
JZ: They were both in Los Angeles.

NS: Okay, that's what I kind of guessed. How many Obama supporters did you speak with in total?
JZ: All twelve we spoke with are in the video.

NS: Was there any significance to the fact that in the YouTube video, seven of the twelve Obama supporters were black?
JZ: [Laughs]. The reason why we had more black supporters – that might surprise some of the people that we spoke to -- if we go by your apparent ability to determine race -- the first location happened to be in a black section of town and we were able to get our interviews faster there because of they way that was set up, because of the logistics. We had a second location but it got dark and we didn't have any lights. So, that's it, it was no grand racial conspiracy.

NS: How did you represent yourself to John Zogby?
JZ: As private company, Death-of-Free-Speech-dot-inc which is the name of a book that I wrote.

NS: Did Zogby give you sign-off on the press release that he released on his website?
JZ: I'm not sure what you mean by sign-off. The press release I had input into, yes.

NS: Did you have financing for the project or was it paid for out of pocket?
JZ: It is not self-financed.

NS: Who paid for it?
JZ: You think I'm going to tell you that? When you've already shown yourself to be the enemy?

NS: Was it paid for by the RNC?
JZ: [Laughs]. In your world, the question that I would ask you is what question [in the survey] is there any ambiguity as to what the answer is?

NS: Well, that Obama 'launched his career' at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground --
JZ: That happens to be one of the questions that Obama supporters did the best on! They did better on that question than on any other Obama-related answers! And here you’re telling me that it’s not true?

NS: What do you mean by "launched his career"?
JZ: The first campaign as told by the person whose position he took in the State Senate, as told by her admission, his first campaign event was in the home of Bill Ayers and his wife. [Laughs] Unless you live in the Obama kool-aid world! That is astonishing to me that you would not accept that! And by the way, when you're given four responses to that question, what else was the response going to be? Sarah Palin?

NS: Well, her husband was a member of a secessionist party.
JZ: You are such a hack! That's a very good analogy.

NS: Do you think that certain types of voters are less well informed?
JZ: I think anyone that looks rationally at these poll results would have to conclude that Obama voters are incredibly poorly informed about major issues that occurred during the campaign -- my guess is because McCain voters got their information from different types of media than Obama voters did.

NS: What types of media would you consider credible?
JZ: I think you need a variety of sources, but I do not accept the notion that if it's not in the New York Times it's not true and if it is in the New York Times it is. Just because Sean Hannity says something doesn't mean it’s not true.

NS: What is Barack Obama’s religion?
JZ: You'll have to ask him. But I do know that he never claimed to be a Christian until he met Reverend Wright. And I do believe -- and I’ve never held this against him -- that it would have been highly unlikely for him not to have been registered as a Muslim as a child in Indonsesia but who cares. He did change his website based on that reality –- he was far more ambiguous about that issue on Fight The Smears. I’m an agnostic so I couldn't care less what his religion is. I just care that he lied about it.

NS: When do you think Obama was a Muslim?
JZ: I think he was likely -- registered as a Muslim between the ages of 6 and 10 while he was going to school in Indonesia. It would have been highly unusual for him not to be.

NS: But would you personally consider Obama a Muslim?
JZ: No, because he was a child. We're talking about two totally different things. There's what religion you're born into and there's what religion you become because of your own decisions

NS: Would you consider Obama a Christian?
JZ: You'd have to ask him. There was never any evidence that he was a Christian until he decided to join the church of a racist hate-monger for political purposes.

NS: Would you not believe Barack Obama if he told you he was a Christian?
JZ: Does he believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God who died and was raised from the dead later?

NS: Do you think he’s a believer in Jesus Christ?
JZ: I have no way of knowing that. I don't think there's any evidence that he is, either.

NS: Do you have doubts about Barack Obama's birth certificate?
JZ: I couldn’t care less about that. I accept he was born in Hawaii.

NS: Would you consider yourself well-informed
JZ: I’d consider myself extremely well-informed.

NS: Who are the two senators from South Dakota
JZ: Thune and, uh, Johnson.

NS: Very good. South Carolina?
JZ: Go fuck yourself. I'm done with this interview if you're going to ask me stupid questions like that. Obviously I know who Lindsay Graham is.

NS: Well, since you’re running a website calling people misinformed, I’d like to see if -- there are certain things you’ve said that I would consider misinformed.
JZ: Misinformed? You're a piece of work! You are never going to have the guts to post a representative transcript on your website! I thought you actually ran a legitimate website!

NS: Thank you, have a good day.
JZ: Go fuck yourself.

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Begich Will Be Alaska's First U.S. Senate Democrat Since Gravel

Democrat Mark Begich will win the Alaska Senate race.

With 14,626 counted of the roughly 24,000 ballots left to count today, Begich's lead over Republican Ted Stevens is now, 2,374. The remaining results are expected to arrive later this afternoon. Stevens would have to win by a margin of over 25% of the outstanding ballots to tie Begich.

That would require something of a Gravelanche.

[UPDATE]: 8,212 more ballots in, that should be it except a few straggling votes. Begich by 3,724. Recount would cost $15,000.

Currently, Begich leads by 0.77%, which is outside the free 0.5% recount zone. The recount fee is a paltry $15,000, not a sum Stevens has ever had trouble acquiring via one means or another. Given his likely expulsion by either the Republican caucus or the U.S. Senate as a whole (though we are in "reconciliation" mode, so who knows?), it seems unlikely anyone besides Stevens himself would have the desire to pursue such action. Still, the Anchorage Daily News calls such a recount "likely."

Congratulations, Senator Begich.

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Dean Defends Lieberman Decision, Speaks of "Mandate for Reconciliation"

In a brief but candid and wide-ranging telephone interview with a selection of bloggers and new media journalists, former Vermont Governor and DNC Chairman Howard Dean spoke frequently on themes of reconciliation and pragmatism, defended his party's decision to keep Joe Lieberman within its caucus, and said that the 50-state strategy will continue -- at least in spirit.

Much of the interview focused on Lieberman, as Dean received a tough and thorough line of questioning from Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake and John Aravosis of AmericaBLOG. "The truth is, Barack Obama got a mandate to bring the country together and to stop the politics of anger," Dean said, leaving little doubt that Obama's signal that Lieberman should keep his Homeland Security chairmanship had been instrumental to the party's decision today to give the Connecticut senator a pass.

Dean suggested that the decision should be political rather than personal, indicating that while "certainly [he] had anger" over Lieberman's actions during the presidential campaign, there was little space for what he regarded as a punitive action. When pressed by Hamsher about Lieberman's qualifications to chair the Homeland Security Committee, Dean said that he hadn't examined Lieberman's credentials in detail: "I was too busy trying to figure out how to win the election. [But] I certainly hope they did look at his record."

Dean also spoke of the decision in generational terms.

"If you get a mandate for reconciliation ... is your first act going to be to kick him [Lieberman] to the curb?", Dean said. "If you're in my generation you say, 'yeah, damn right we should'".

But, Dean claimed, the younger generation's tone and strategies are different. "The younger generation's message is, let's put aside something that we can't agree on and do something about the things that we can agree on." At the same time, Dean acknowledged that he expected dissension, particularly within the netroots -- "I'm sure the sentiment online is one of outrage".

Dean repeatedly mentioned two particular issues that he expected Obama to focus on: national health care and alternative energy. When I asked Dean what Obama's time horizon might be on these issues, he responded "[Obama]'s going to have to make changes sooner rather than later," suggesting that these things would be priorities within the first two years of Obama's administration. "I don't see the economic disasters of the past few weeks as a reason not to do it."

Dean gave less attention to a prospective pullout of troops from Iraq, implying that a pullout was inevitable but that a debate over time horizons was not a good use of Obama's political capital.

Dean also responded to questions about Democratic tactics, particularly with respect to the "50-state strategy" that he engineered. "The 50-state strategy is really an empowerment philosophy more than anything else. You can't empower people in Utah or in Texas if you don't show up there. Whatever I'm going to do next is based on empowerment and the 50-state strategy is an empowerment strategy." Dean suggested that states such as Georgia and Texas might be attractive targets for Democrats at the presidential level in 2012.

At the same time, Dean said, governance in a majority requires a different timbre than party-building.

"We just turned the page on a generation of politics." Dean said. "Barack Obama is the president who will bring in hundreds and hundreds of young people into politics and keep them there. Now has to govern. One of the fun parts of my campaign is that we could throw a little bomb from time to time but you can't do that when you're governing. The hard part now -- is -- we won. Now it's a different skill set and it's going to require some restraint and some thoughtfulness".

I also asked Dean his opinion on Rod Blagojevich's decision to appoint a replacement for Barack Obama in Illinois. "I'd always rather pick someone who can win re-election," he said.

Dean also gave Al Franken better than 50-50 odds of prevailing in Minnesota's recount, and said that Democrats "already have" a recount strategy in place. "In 2006, we supported Democratic Secretaries of State. I'm not so worried about the recount because I think it will be run by a qualified, competent person who will put democracy ahead of their party."

Dean was less forthcoming about his own future, repeatedly stressing that he had no plans and wasn't certain about what he was going to do next.

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Zogby Engages in Apparent Push Polling for Right-Wing Website

UPDATE: For additional context about the survey and an exclusive interview with John Ziegler, please see here.

The conservative website HowObamaGotElected.com reports that it has commissioned Zogby International to conduct a poll of 512 Barack Obama voters as part of what can best be described as a viral marketing effort to discredit the intelligence of Obama supporters.

The website, created by former radio talk show host John Ziegler to promote a forthcoming documentary, features a YouTube clip of interviews with 12 Obama voters who "were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience". The clip portrays the Obama supporters as giving "incorrect" answers to political questions such as "which candidate said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket". Of the 12 Obama supporters interviewed for the clip, 7 (58%) are black; nationwide, about 23% of Obama supporters were black according to the national exit poll.

In connection with the YouTube clip, Ziegler describes that he "also commissioned a Zogby telephone poll which asked the very same questions (as well as a few others) with similarly amazing results." Partial results of the survey from among 512 Obama voters are reported on the website. It is not clear if voters for non-Obama candidates were screened out by the survey, or Ziegler has chosen not to report their results.

Most of the questions on the survey take the form of a multiple choice political knowledge test, stating a "fact" to the respondent and asking them which of the four major candidates (Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin) the statement applies to. Questions include the following:

"Which of the four [candidates] said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket?"

"Which of the four [candidates] started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground?"

"Which of the four [candidates] quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism?"

"Which of the four [candidates] won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot?"

As should be obvious, the veracity of several of these claims is -- at best -- debatable, yet they are apparently represented as factual to the respondent. It is not clear whether the respondent is informed of the "correct" response after having had the question posed to him.

Not all of the items in the poll are intended to apply to Obama or Biden. Several apply to Sarah Palin, although the items about Palin, while probably unflattering ("which of the four [candidates] has a pregnant teenage daughter?") are nevertheless apparently true. The exception is a "twist" question about Palin in which the respondent is asked "which candidate said that they can see Russia from their house?". Ziegler claims in the video that none of the four answers is correct because the statement was made by Tina Fay rather than Sarah Palin. (In her interview with Charlie Gibson, Palin said that "you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska", not that she can see Russia from her house.)

To my mind, this survey meets the definition of a "push poll", which the Random House Dictionary defines as "a seemingly unbiased telephone survey that is actually conducted by supporters of a particular candidate and disseminates negative information about an opponent." That (i) several of the items on the survey contain information which, in addition to being negative, is arguably also untrue; (ii) Ziegler brags that the survey includes a trick question to which no correct answer can be provided, and that (iii) apparently only Obama voters were targeted by the survey (although this is not 100 percent clear), also inform my opinion that the survey can fairly be described as a "push poll".

In an item on his personal website dated today, 11/18, Ziegler claims that Zogby will officially release the results of the survey tomorrow. Ziegler also appeared on Fox's Hannity & Colmes news program yesterday (11/17) to promote his documentary, on which clips from the YouTube video were shown.

Why Zogby International has decided to accept this client and conduct a survey in this fashion is not clear. I would hope, however, that any and all clients that need legitimate polling work conducted would take their business elsewhere. These clients include C-SPAN and Reuters, two organizations with longstanding and well-deserved reputations for accuracy and neutrality; contact information for C-SPAN and Reuters can be found at their respective webpages.

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Penultimate Alaska Update; Uncalled Congressional Races

With roughly 24,000 ballots left to be counted tomorrow, the Alaska Senate race is near its official conclusion. No update today, and Democrat Mark Begich's lead over incumbent Ted Stevens remains at 1,022.

Quinnipiac assistant director Peter A. Brown, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says that "Unlce Ted" is "less than even money." Now that's charity. (In other news, the 2-8 St. Louis Rams are "less than even money" to win the NFC West this year.) Brown's piece is more about Sarah Palin preferring Stevens to win so that she could launch a 2012 presidential bid from his seat after he is expelled from the Senate.

Though many Democrats fervently pray for Palin to remain on the national stage as the de facto brand leader of the Republican Party, not allowing Republicans to turn the page, she will not likely get the chance to replace Stevens. Perhaps if and when Representative Don Young's Justice Department investigation moves into an indictment phase, Palin would have an opening for the House.

In California's 4th House district, Republican Tom McClintock leads Democrat Charlie Brown by 622 votes with roughly 25,000 absentee and provisional ballots left to be counted. Both men are attending freshman House member orientation.

In Ohio's 15th House district, another extremely close open seat race, a federal judge today listened to arguments about the counting of provisional ballots, and will rule on the counting of approximately 1,000 ballots by Thursday 5pm Eastern. With thousands of ballots left to count, Republican Steve Stivers leads Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy by 149 votes.

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For Obama, Will Familiarity Erode Contempt?

I've been playing around with the same exit poll data that Pollster.com's Charles Franklin has been looking at, on the percentage of the white vote received in different states by John Kerry and Barack Obama, respectively. Franklin has identified a correlation between the percentage of voters in a given state who are black and the share of the white vote that Obama received: essentially, the blacker the state was, the fewer whites voted for Obama. This correlation existed for John Kerry too, although it's a bit stronger for Obama:



My focus is on the South in particular, because it's not clear if there are especially meaningful patterns in this data outside of that region; Obama had no trouble winning over white voters in relatively black non-southern states like Michigan, New York, or Maryland. There are fifteen states that I define as Southern. Obama drew a larger percentage of the white vote than John Kerry in five of them, a smaller share (sometimes substantially smaller) in four of them, and got exactly the same percentage in the other six.

The driving factor in determining how Obama performed vis-à-vis John Kerry, however, appears as though it might not be race, but rather how much Obama camaigned in a given state. According to the New York Times candidate tracker, Obama campaigned extensively -- by which I mean, he actually went out and spent a lot of time on the ground -- in 6 of the 15 Southern states. These include Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and Missouri (where Obama campaigned extensively in the general election cycle), as well as South Carolina and Texas (where Obama campaigned extensively in the primaries). The other nine Southern states, Obama did not have more than a couple of apperances in, and several he did not visit at all.

In the states where Obama campaigned extensively, he drew, on average, 3.3 percent more of the white vote than John Kerry did. In the states where he did not campaign significantly, on the other hand, his percentage of the white vote dropped by an average of 3.3 percent. The differences are highly statistically significant.



Now, the difficulty here is that we don't know which way to draw the causal arrow. Did Obama campaign more in states like North Carolina because he knew that white voters would be more receptive to him there -- or, were white voters more receptive to Obama because he campaigned more in North Carolina?

I think the most telling example might be South Carolina, which Obama did not campaign in because of any particular demographic strengths, but merely because it happened to enjoy an early position on the primary calendar. In that state, Obama did 4 points better than John Kerry among white voters, even though he didn't really visit the state after January. (Interestingly, it did not seem to matter whether Obama visited a state during the primary cycle or the general election; merely spending time on the ground there was what counted.)

The question, really, is to what extent Barack Obama's underperformance among certain types of white voters was a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're not asking for somebody's vote, you're usually not going to get it. This may be particularly true if you're a black person and the voter is a rural Southern white person.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that the voter is hellbent against you. I tend to think that racism runs along a spectrum. Many, or perhaps even most white voters are a little bit racist, but for relatively few is race a complete deal-breaker. Many of them will vote for you if you're actively soliciting their votes, and they've had time to grow comfortable with you. If Obama had been targeting Georgia's or West Virgina's electoral votes as actively as he sought Florida's or North Carolina's, might he have won them? I don't know, but I think he'd have had a fighting chance.

There are some analogies here to homophobia, in that people become much more tolerant of gay people once a friend, workmate or family member has come out to them. The idea that you can say, Greg is gay, but guess what -- I know Greg, and he's a pretty good dude is very powerful. Prejudice is global, but tolerance is local.

This also has some interesting implications for 2012, in that by virtue of having become President, Obama will have spent four years in the living room of every American. That doesn't mean that Obama is going to win, say, Alabama. But it might mean that if he has a successful presidency, he can become -- well -- everybody's imaginary hip black friend, at least up to a point. I hope I'm not being too optimistic by suggesting that our country will be a bit less racist four years from now than it is today. If so, then states like Georgia and West Virginia should be given careful attention once Obama begins to plot out his 2012 strategy.

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Why The Networks Haven't Called Missouri

From turnout guru Michael McDonald, who is in a position to know:

As someone who works in the quarantine room on election night at Edison Media Research, I can tell you that we will not make a call if a race has the potential to be in a recount situation. In a close race, we review the recount procedures and consider what we believe to be the outstanding absentee and provisional ballots before we are willing to make a call. It is not the job of the media to prejudge the election process when there is a possibility for recount procedures to take place. Think: Florida 2000.

If the Obama campaign makes a formal statement that they concede Missouri, then I would expect the media would call the election outcome. My guess is that they will wait until the results are certified to make a decision if they will request a recount. As we have seen in Minnesota, there can be human errors lurking in the results reported to date.

The big picture: the Obama campaign has every right to a recount if they want one, and the networks aren't presuming to make that judgment for them. There is also a small but tangible chance of a material human error in the vote tabulation.

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A Few Notes on the Media

Let me try and tie a couple of things together here.

1. It has been widely claimed that 32 absentee ballots from Minnesota were left in the trunk of a Hennepin County election official's car before being "discovered" some days later. However, as Media Matters and other new media organizations have reported, the authenticity of the claim is -- at best -- debatable, and may have originated from one of Norm Coleman's lawyers. (As you can see for yourself, I share in the blame on this one).

2. I spent a good amount of my Saturday watching the Frontline special on Lee Atwater, which -- while painting a very humanizing portrait of the "Boogie Man" -- left little doubt about how credulous the mainstream media can be in the face claims made by a skilled (but manifestly deceitful) operative like Mr. Atwater.

3. The New York Times reports that CBS executives were attempting to placate Republican critics with their investigation into Dan Rather's reporting of the Killian documents, which alleged that George W. Bush received preferential treatment while in the Air National Guard. (The Killian documents were rapidly and -- to my mind -- somewhat convincingly challenged by conservative blogs.)

It is, from my vantage point, utterly hypocritical that CBS apparently encouraged Dan Rather to resign his anchorship after the Killian report, when the broadcasting of such claims speaks to far more widespread dysfunction within that news organization. (Nor is it any accident that, when Mr. Rather left CBS, a cavalcade of talented personnel -- ranging from acclaimed producers to cameramen -- left along with him.) That CBS officials may have succumbed to Republican pressure is completely unsurprising; unsurprising that Republicans applied such pressure (Democrats would have done the same), but equally unsurprising that such a mainstream media institution lacked the backbone to admit to an honest mistake and own up to it.

CBS's underlying problem -- and the commonality between the three items that I described above -- is the arbitrary and largely ineffectual nature of the fact-checking process employed by the mainstream media. I have written for perhaps a dozen major publications over the span of my career, and the one with the most thorough fact-checking process is by some margin Sports Illustrated. Although this is an indication of the respect with which SI accords its brand, it does not speak so well of the mainstream political media that you are more likely to see an unverified claim repeated on the evening news than you are to see in the pages of your favorite sports periodical.

One of the questions triggered by the Frontline program is what would have happened if Atwater were still alive today; might he have had more success in undermining Barack Obama than Steve Schmidt apparently did? My answer is very probably not, because the blogosphere serves as the fact-checkers that the mainstream media is too negligent to employ. On the contrary, I think that Mr. Atwater would have been smart enough to realize that he'd be eaten alive by Daily Kos and Media Matters and Keith Olbermann, and would be thoroughly enjoying himself in retirement playing in a blues band in South Carolina somewhere.

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What's Holding Up Missouri?

It's now almost two weeks after Election Day, and so far only one of the six principal decision desks (NBC's) has called Missouri for John McCain. I'm not quite sure why the others have been so slow to follow. The situation for several days has been as follows:

Unofficial results in Missouri show McCain winning by about 4,900 votes. There are about 6,300 provisional ballots statewide that county officials are still reviewing. Counties must send final results to the state by Nov. 18.

So, yes, there are believed to be more provisional ballots outstanding than the margin between John McCain and Barack Obama. Obama could do quite well among these provisional ballots ... provisional ballots almost always tend to favor Democrats, and a large fraction of Missouri's provisionals are reportedly in St. Louis, Obama's strongest part of the state.

Even if Obama were to win 80 percent of the provisionals, however -- which seems exceptionally optimistic -- he still would net only 3,780 votes, leaving him about 1,000 shy of McCain. Moreover, some provisional ballots are in fact illegitimate, cast by voters who are not properly registered, etc. The rules of thumb I have seen are that somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of provisional ballots usually hold up upon review. A more realistic scenario then is that two-thirds of the provisionals are counted and two-thirds of those go to Obama, in which case Obama would net about 1,400 votes, not nearly enough to close his gap with McCain.

In other words, in order for Obama to win Missouri, he'll need some source of votes apart from the provisional ballots. Mistakes are sometimes made in the vote-counting process, and Missouri doesn't finalize its count until Tuesday, so this is always possible. There's just no reason to think it's especially likely ... maybe John McCain is a 99% favorite to win Missouri but not a 99.9% favorite, and the networks usually want more like 99.9% certainty before they call a state.

Now, Obama does have the right to request a recount in Missouri, provided that the margin is less than 1 point, which it obviously will be. But Claire McCaskill has said that he sees no point in doing so, and besides that, a margin of a few thousand votes is exponentially more difficult to make up in a recount (i.e. it's nearly impossible) than a margin of a few hundred votes, like we have in Minnesota.

Missouri may be having trouble coping with the fact that it's no longer the king of bellwether states, but in all likelihood it's just going to have to deal with ceding its title to Ohio or whatever.

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