Nate summarized our discussion about the Republicans and the Latino vote by pointing out which states the Republicans need to win to be competitive in the electoral college. I'd just like to go one step further and say that most of the story is the national swing. If the Republicans can get a 4% national swing, that will probably do it for them. (McCain got 46% of the vote, so adding 4% would bring the Republicans to 50/50.) The electoral math matters a little bit as, for example, we've discussed regarding the Latino vote in Florida. But, pretty much, what you need is that national swing. It's not really that much different in practice from trying to win the national popular vote. Our calculations from previous elections showed that if either party won 51% of the popular vote, they'd have about a 90% chance of winning the electoral college. (This calculation is based on research that I published a few years ago with Jonathan Katz and Gary King.) Granted, the vote might be close, and if it's a 50.5%-49.5% margin, the electoral math will matter. And, during the campaign, the parties have to decide where to spend their resources. But overall I think the state-by-state electoral college counting is a bit of a distraction.
P.S. I added a couple of clarifications above to address some of the commenters who were questioning our numbers.
P.P.S. This post is not tautological. The context is that people discuss electoral strategies, which states the Republicans need to target, etc. What I'm saying is, sure, targeting key states is important during the campaign. But that's all minor compared to the larger goal of national popularity. For the Republicans (or, for that matter, the Democrats) to improve their chances for 2012 and 2016, right now they have to be thinking about what will swing voters at the national level. There's not a lot of evidence that you can easily push buttons and swing particular voting blocs or states.
I could imagine a world in which candidates could win elections by targeting particular states. That's just not the world we live in. We live in a world of approximate uniform swing. Recall these graphs:
The swing from 2004 to 2008:
The swing from 1980 to 1984:
The swing from 1952 to 1956:
Not exactly a random scatterplot but, again, more variation than we saw from 2004 to 2008. Actually, the variation from 1952 to 1956 and from 1980 to 1984 is more comparable to the variation in two recent elections, say from 2000 to 2008:
So, the data say that swings are more national than they used to be.
5.29.2009
How the Republicans Can Win It All Back
@ 1:20 PM
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> But overall I think the state-by-state electoral college counting is a bit of a distraction.
Aren't you on the wrong website then? :)
Aye, what I'd like to see is a breakdown of the general electorate, what elements of it could be pulled from one party to the other, and how these strategies might negatively effect other elements... and what would be a good trade off as far as a general strategy is concerned.
The anti-immigration pro-NAFTA strategy was a nice exercise I suppose, but it seems wholly unrealistic given the layout of the national parties.
I think we've been mostly focusing on electoral map math because the last couple of elections (not counting 2008) were close enough that the math mattered. It's not that common that it's this close, however... Maybe with 2008 we've seen a return to more normal elections?
What will trump any and all other considerations regarding the future of the GOP is that their base is shrinking rapidly because the heart of the party is shuffling off to its reward.
The great masses that came in fromthe wilderness when Ronald Reagan came on the political scene are now dying like flies. Remember that this resurgence happened thirty years ago. The Republican Party has shrunk down to a core of very old, very white men, and any miniscule recruiting they manage to pull off amongst minorities (or any other group) will be more than offset by the numbers they lose to plain old age.
This doesn't mean that the Democrats should just sit back and watch the GOP fade away. They will have to be in there every second, like cavemen on a dying mastodon, harrying, poking and enraging the best until it finally is dead.
Well obviously - which is why the whole "gringo strategy" was inane. Giving up on Florida (which was relatively close) to try to win Minnesota and Pennsylvania (which Obama won by huge margins)... right...
@Andrew: I think what you say is true, as far as it goes. But what factors are likely to determine the national swing (net % GOP in 2012 vs. 2008)?
Roughly speaking, I think the discussion on Nate's last thread focused on four factors:
(a) Macropolitical factors (economic performance [unemployment, inflation, etc.]); Presidential (incumbent) popularity.
(b) Policy/programmatic factors (i.e., "issues" and "policies" -- including possible distractors) -- more broadly, what do the competing candidates offer programmatically in health care, education, immigration, etc., etc.
(c) Candidate characteristics
(d) Demographic change, including (1) cohort replacement as the relatively more conservative and pro-GOP older generation is replaced by the relatively more liveral and pro-Dem younger generation, and (2) differential population growth, in particular the expanding fraction of Latino and other minority ethnic groups in the total voting age population.
So, while it's fine to talk about the national swing -- and thereby not to focus so much on state-by-state strategy, though certainly the campaigns will be doing this -- the national swing is likely to be a product of several factors whose potential effects need to be examined.
Ben,
My main read of the "Gringo Strategy" posts was that it was meant to demonstrate what a desperate idea it was (at least in the medium-to-long run).
The thing is: the Republican base keeps aiming for this strategy. In the last cycle, Bush and McCain tried to push a somewhat moderate immigration reform bill, and the base revolted. Granted, the hispanic community is about more than the immigration issue, but the Republican base's fierce anti-immigrant stance gives the Democrats a huge advantage. The Republican leadership used to know this (back when there was a Republican leadership), but the Party as a whole can't seem to find a way to move on.
One of the main questions of the moment is whether the rudderless Republican party will be able to respond to the Sotomayor nomination in a way that doesn't alienate the hispanic community and commit them to a de facto "Gringo Strategy."
Don't give them any ideas. I like their current strategy. Alienate anyone who doesn't like Rush Limbaugh. I think they are onto something there. I think they need to double down on the Rush strategy.
Andrew,
Please, please have your writing edited before posting it. "Dress for success" applies to words, too.
Give us some insight on how they can or will turn 21% party affiliation into 51%+ results. The whole world wonders....
If a national swing, by itself, were all that was needed, Democrats could potentially open up a huge popular vote advantage by pouring significant resources into get-out-the-vote campaigns in New York and California. They don't bother to do that, because they can win those states without a large commitment of resources, so they focus on states they need to win where popular votes are harder to come by.
@Daniel - That misses the point of what a national swing implies - an across-the-board shift toward one party or another as a result of large factors that affect the whole country, whether it's a recession or a failed war or something else.
@John - His comments are intelligent and comprehensible. Until you start paying for the content, you should stop either reading or whining.
Not to be an ass, but who is Andrew Gelman? What does this column have to do with anything? Just about everyone that comes on this site knows math and stats pretty well. Reading this was a waste of my time. Of course, the GOP needs to move the popular vote needle about 4% to win the Presidential election. What does that have to do with anything? The real question is how can they go about doing it? Will they have a decent cnadidate in 2012? What will Obama's administration accomplish or not over the next 3 or so years, etc.? I don't have any idea why Nate and company posted this column by this Andrew guy. Any of us could have writeen a similar article in about 5 minutes. What have you told us that you don't know? Please tell me this website will continue to be the go to place for politics and not drag itself down with useless writings such as this.
Reposting this because it is relivent this time:
Barack Obama 53%, Newt Gingrich 36%
Barack Obama 52%, Mike Huckabee 39%
Barack Obama 56%, Sarah Palin 37%
Barack Obama 53%, Mitt Romney 35%
"...most of the story is the national swing. If the Republicans can get a 4% national swing, that will probably do it for them. The electoral math matters a little bit as, for example, we've discussed regarding the Latino vote in Florida."
The Republicans who seem to be leading the party (from the rear?) these days are, thusly, shooting themselves in the foot AGAIN, aren't they, by trashing Pres. Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor?
Adrianna Huffington once referred to the reason certain people flock to the Republican philosophy is that they are "reactors", not "thinkers".
They have a perhaps overdeveloped (for humans) limbic brain -- sometimes called the "reptile brain", very instinctual (fear, flight -- while people who "think" and research and seek out reasons and facts use the part of their brain that is logical.
Can someone inform me, have Nate and his buddies gone on hiatus or something? I used to come to this site a whole lot because Nate and his team were the only folks I could find out there that knew more than I did about what was going on and could explain it to where I'd be better informed. If he hired some less knowledgable folks to start writing on this website, then I'll know what to expect going forward. Though, I'll be disappointed. Someone please inform me. I'm really confused. I feel like 538.com was a Masters in Statistics and Political Science from Harvard and now might be dilluted to Political Science 101 and a small town's Community College. Please do better going forward Nate and team. Ya'll are capable of being awesome and the goto site. Don't let us down. This column I'm responding about from Andrew Gelman is bunk. It's not that he's wrong or uninformed or a bad writer or anything. It's just that what he wrote took no great insight or investigation or smarts to write. It doesn't help any of us understand anything any better, as opposed to the endless columns you and your buddies had been writing for years.
A few points.
Incumbency is worth 2-5% just from name recognition and familiarity (I'm estimating this from Senate and Governor campaigns). In a two person race beating an incumbent POTUS is hard. Clinton needed Perot, Reagan did it (over 50% in a 3 way), Carter beat Ford but Ford was "appointed" not elected, so history isn't kind to challengers. A 4% swing is hard.
Plus Latinos will edge up 1-2% of the National Vote by 2012 (10-11% of the electorate), Asians up 0.75% (Whites down about 2%) making this 4% swing harder.
The problem with creating a Latino backlash, is a brown swing matters most in the purple states. A safe NV, CO, and NM means freeing up dollars and resources for a newly purple AZ (-7% home state McCain advantage + increase in Latino vote by 10% = 50:50 tie)
As I said in another post, the anti-Nafta nominee is like the hypothetical Black GOP nominee. On paper a Republican who can get 20-25% of the black vote is unbeatable. But their is no such nominee. Powell and Rice are both pro-choice (Powell is pro-Affirmative Action) the current more conservative GOP will not nominate such a person. Name a anti-trade GOP front runner. Mitt? LOL now that would really take a flip flop. Huckabee maybe, but he has ties to WalMart that would make this a hard sell. Palin could because she has so much white space on her resume, but she has a major FL problem (FL started to move to Obama at the height of her post convention boomlet FL Latinos and Jews seem to HATE her). Sanford and Jindal are on record as strong free trade guys.
This (anti-Nafta) would make fundraising for such a GOP nominee VERY hard, where would they dial for dollars? Also Dems in Congress would place 11,000 anti-free trade bills on the floor. Congressional Republicans would have either vote for them or repudiate their nominee.
Yes a 4% could happen, but it's harder, then it sounds.
An obvious point, but also one that's not really worthy of a full post on 538.
Again: put the "Gringo strategy" aside and we are still left with a situation where CO, NV, and NM are looking like Democratic holds for at least the next election or two. Republicans then need to take back IA, VA, FL, and OH to retake the WH in 2012. (NC and IN were so close we can assume they'll tip back over if there is much national movement towards Republicans). FL and OH are in my opinion trending favorably for Republicans.
The question then becomes how you get back IA and VA. IA alone was responsible for the fact that Republicans would have had to win the popular vote by about 2 points to win the EC in 2008. It is a very difficult nut to crack, particularly given the full year of campaigning Obama put in there and its proximity to IL.
Put an upper midwesterner somewhere on the 2012 ticket and focus a lot of money on the VA governor's race, where iirc the Republican is running ahead in early matchups. Those would be good starts.
Reposting this because it is relivent this time:
Barack Obama 53%, Newt Gingrich 36%
Barack Obama 52%, Mike Huckabee 39%
Barack Obama 56%, Sarah Palin 37%
Barack Obama 53%, Mitt Romney 35%
This shows how far the GOP has to go. Certainly Gingrich, Huckabee, and Palin have a 0% chance of beating Obama in 2012. Romney would have a sliver of a chance if Obama's next couple of years damage his popularity, especially if the economy doesn't turn around at all, and Romney can win over the social values piece of the party. More likely scenario is there's someone we're not talking about that gives the party a voice in response to a failing Presidency. That's unlikely, maybe 10% chance, but that's as good as the GOP can hope for for 2012 to beat Obama. The bigger question is have we seen a tidal shift, similar to Roosevelt in 1933 and Reagan in 1980, where one party is absolutely dominant for more than a generation? From 1933-1968, the only Republican President was Eisenhower, a centrist. From 1980-2008, only Dem PResident was Clinton, a Centrist. My guess is we've entered a generation of Democratic dominance. Now that would change our world for the foreseeable future.
@Eric, despite your wish, you are being an ass. Andrew has been posting here for months. He's a professor of political science and statistics at Columbia University and author of "Red State, Blue State."
Nate was on vacation for a week or so, and has been back for the past week and posting his usual inventive stuff. He invited some additional contributors to post here during his absence, and some will continue to post. You don't have to read anything here that you don't like, and if you don't find enough that you like you don't have to come here at all. The site is free and so are you.
1992, 1996, 2000, and 2008 the Democrats won the popular vote. (1992, when Perot dropped out in between, the majority of his support went to Clinton)
2004 was motivated by fear that a Kerry victory could harm the war on terror. That strategy of fear didn't work anymore in 2008.
Of course the Republicans could win elections again if they moved to the left. But that's exactly what they won't do, so they will continue to lose.
John M.,
Re: "Again: put the "Gringo strategy" aside and we are still left with a situation where CO, NV, and NM are looking like Democratic holds for at least the next election or two. Republicans then need to take back IA, VA, FL, and OH to retake the WH in 2012. (NC and IN were so close we can assume they'll tip back over if there is much national movement towards Republicans). FL and OH are in my opinion trending favorably for Republicans."
The electoral college math will change with the 2010 census. That math will help the GOP. They're unlikely to need all of the states you listed. Obama will have to lose a lot of popularity to lose all of those states though. I don't see both Iowa and Virginia moving to the GOP without a titanic shift in Obama's popularity and some great undiscovered candidate from the GOP. I'd put those odds at 10-1.
A 4% swing sounds like something that oughta be pretty simple, except when u realize that with a voting population of about 120 million, you're trying to persuade nearly 5 million people who voted Democratic in 2008 to vote republican......with this crowd of idiots currently at the mic on their side, good luck with that one!!!
I think Andrew point is valid. How can the GOP win just hanging onto a base only narrative. I think the GOP need to begin to moderate their social positions, so that the economic and philosophical messages, which though I tend to disagree with, I can see appeal for others in. By selling yourself as anti gay marriage and anti abortion you close your message off to many who could be conservative but in the end don't get why those issues matter. I think the Democrats have begun to succeed by accepting that decent people can enjoy guns or may be uncomfortable at the thought of abortion.
We have to remember Obama is similar to Reagan as an incumbent going forward. Unless something unforeseen happens, he will continue to be looked at as the one with the answers by more than half of the electorate. This makes him unbeatable in most purple states in my opinion. Not to mention, the GOP is void of any real talent to oppose him, unless perhaps they enlist Michael Bloomberg.
...You're right Juris. I'm being an ass. Just disappointed upon coming back to read something uninsightful, when I had learned something from almost everything I had read previously. 100s of posts, over a couple years. Sorry though, I should refrain from whining and throwing people under the bus on a great free site.
They can't win it back countenancing voices like these.
MORANS abound
++++
if you want to twitter & become the Newt Gingrich of the pollsters, so be it.
But PLEASE get rid of your twitter fead on your page, it hangs up your whole site from loading.
@ Eric
Based on a very recent post of Nate's (yesterday?) the most recent best estimate from a neutral source is that the Republicans will gain 5 EV's in the 2008 McCain states, moving from 171 to 176 EV.
That is the difference between getting to 271 votes with IA/VA/etc and getting to 276 votes with the same. Lose IA and you're still under 270. Perhaps if Obama 2008 states they flip gain additional EV, then they won't need IA (and I don't have the time to read the detailed report as I'm at work right now.)
If that is the case, then the biggest problem state becomes VA. And a sharp focus on getting the Republican elected governor becomes a concrete, near-term action item for both the base and the party.
To be sure, a sufficient national swing trumps state-by-state calculation.
But any national swing will require GOP inroads into demographic groups that currently are very blue, especially the Millenial Generation and Hispanics. Or with "Operation Gringo" a bigger swing among non-Hispanics to offset the growing number of Hispanics...
Considering that the Millenial Generation happens to be the most progressive age cohort in the United States, it's really hard to see how the GOP might offset a continued weak position among Hispanics by wooing them.
Besides, I doubt that an anti-NAFTA and anti-immigration agenda is effective in gaining the youth vote. Such an agenda arguably has the most pull among middle-aged people, I should say.
As a non-American, I'd say the GOP is really in a bind. America is becoming more diverse and more progressive (as for instance the "lower taxes" GOP mantra and social conservatism becoming less effective a vote-getter suggests).
Unless the GOP becomes more moderate and modern - think European Christian-Democracy! - I have a hard time seeing them making a lasting comeback. Given the very right-wing nature of the GOP base, I just don't see em allowing a future leader to take the party in that direction.
My guess therefore is that the GOP will be supplanted in the coming decades by a moderate centre-right alternative. Think Schwarzenegger-Bloomberg-Powell types forming a new party.
Of course, rabid right-wingism isn't going away quietly. I dare say about a third of the US electorate loves and identifies with the FoxNews-Palin-Gingrich-Cheney culture. A big minority, but one which cannot win nationally.
It has made the GOP a pretty monolithic ideological bloc, whereas the Dems are a coalition of moderates and progressives.
The moderates right now are perfectly at home in the Democratic party (and many self-identified moderates are progressives/liberals who just don't like the maligned term "liberal").
So really, where can the GOP get that national swing from? I just don't see em making that great inroads among Hispanics, the young and moderates.
It doesn't help them that any who might really appeal to those groups will seek to rise in the Democratic party than try their hand in the pretty toxic GOP.
I think that further lessens the chances of the GOP miraculously producing their own "Barack Obama" or "David Cameron" (the Blair-like leader of the British Conservatives).
So not only does the GOP have ideology/agenda and demographic problems, but it's compounded by a lack of a new attractive generation of political leaders. Given that, about the only hope they have is for the Dems to fail - which of course makes em appear yet nastier given the obstructionist tactics they employ to that end.
It's the GOP death spiral.
I don't believe in the inevitable political cycle ensuring a GOP comeback. I think there's a very good chance they will be going downhill for decades and be supplanted by another party.
A 4% swing is not enough. Based on the table in [Operation Gringo, Cont'd.
by Nate Silver @ 9:03 AM] a 9% swing (all the way to Colorado) is requred based on the distribution of voter sentiment from election 2008.
There have been four “wrong winner” elections out of the nation’s 56 presidential elections. This is a failure rate of 1 in 14 (7%).
Half of American presidential elections are landslides (i.e., greater than 10% margin). Any system will produce the correct winner in a landslide. Thus, among the non-landslide elections, the failure rate is actually 1 in 7.
We are currently in an era of non-landslide presidential elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008). We should therefore not be surprised to already have had one “wrong winner” election in this recent string of close elections.
Moreover, a shift of a handful of votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in five of the last 12 presidential elections (and, of course, did elect the second-place candidate in 2000). In 1976, for example, Jimmy Carter led Gerald Ford by 1,682,970 votes nationwide; however, a shift of 3,687 votes in Hawaii and 5,559 votes in Ohio would have elected Ford. In 2004, President George W. Bush was ahead by about 3,500,000 popular votes nationwide on election night; however, the outcome of the election remained in doubt until Wednesday morning because it was not clear which candidate was going to win Ohio’s 20 electoral votes. In the end, Bush received 118,785 more popular votes than Kerry in Ohio, thus winning all of the state’s 20 electoral votes and ensuring his reelection. However, if 59,393 voters in Ohio had switched in 2004, Kerry would have ended up with 272 electoral votes (two more than the 270 required to be elected to the Presidency). This would have nullified Bush’s lead of 3,500,000 popular votes nationwide.
Given the current political environment (with consecutive non-landslide elections since 1988), the prediction of “the coming debacle in the Electoral College” made by the 1992 book Wrong Winner should be taken seriously.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.
The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes--that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The Constitution gives every state the power to allocate its electoral votes for president, as well as to change state law on how those votes are awarded.
The bill is currently endorsed by 1,777 state legislators — 829 sponsors (in 48 states) and an additional 948 legislators who have cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. This national result is similar to recent polls in closely divided battleground states: Colorado-- 68%, Iowa --75%, Michigan-- 73%, Missouri-- 70%, New Hampshire-- 69%, Nevada-- 72%, New Mexico-- 76%, North Carolina-- 74%, Ohio-- 70%, Pennsylvania -- 78%, Virginia -- 74%, and Wisconsin -- 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Delaware --75%, Maine -- 71%, Nebraska -- 74%, New Hampshire --69%, Nevada -- 72%, New Mexico -- 76%, Rhode Island -- 74%, and Vermont -- 75%; in Southern and border states: Arkansas --80%, Kentucky -- 80%, Mississippi --77%, Missouri -- 70%, North Carolina -- 74%, and Virginia -- 74%; and in other states polled: California -- 70%, Connecticut -- 73% , Massachusetts -- 73%, New York -- 79%, and Washington -- 77%.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 28 state legislative chambers, in small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oregon, and both houses in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington. These five states possess 61 electoral votes -- 23% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect. It could be enacted by sufficient states so that it is in effect in time for the 2012 presidential elections.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
@John M the GOP has another issue. Yes in a rightward swing you could see NC and Indiana swing back to the GOP (although I wonder if IN is the GOP's WV on paper they shouldn't win it but do). But Obama lost MO by 9,000 votes, much like NH and IA loving their "first" voter status MO likes there "always vote with the winner status". Expect a BIG push from Obama's team there. Is incumbency worth 10,000 votes in MO? Chuck Todd (In "How Obama Won") has MO as the only state with Bush under 37% that Obama lost, because it was the only under 37% state he "lost" the "ready to be commander in chief" vote (48% Negative, 46% Yes), remember 9,000 votes. MO could swing to more easily Obama then IN could swing red, as I said above AZ will be a big push also. So just winning IA and VA isn't an option. Expect Obama action in MT also.
I think Ohio is MUCH more favorable (for the GOP) than FL. The Latino population is changing (more democratic Puerto Ricans and Domicans, and younger "post" Castro Cuban), the peaking of "Reagan era" retires, etc. Don't let Florida gerrymandering fool you, it's still purple not trending GOP. Ohio I'm always unsure of.
Now this being 538 what I would like see is Nate dust off his state by state formulas from 2008. Update The MidWest and SouthWest with expect 2012 EV (and demographics) and run some numbers. Say a 3-4% shift in white men (going nativist populist conservative) v. a brown backlash Obama to 75% Hispanic.
I think it's worth keeping in mind that no matter what else happens, how well Obama's policies are perceived to be working will be the most important 2012 factor.
Just to put the case for the electoral college. It does force candidates to campaign in a range of states. It does force candidates to appeal not just to a very narrow base but to a range of voters.
And you could make a case that in each of the wrong winner elections a statistical tie meant that either candidate winning was fair enough. And just imagine Florida 2000 playing out over the whole nation.
The major shortcoming of the current system of electing the President is that presidential candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of closely divided "battleground" states. 98% of the 2008 campaign events involving a presidential or vice-presidential candidate occurred in just 15 closely divided "battleground" states. Over half (57%) of the events were in just four states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia). Similarly, 98% of ad spending took place in these 15 "battleground" states. Similarly, in 2004, candidates concentrated over two-thirds of their money and campaign visits in five states and over 99% of their money in 16 states.
Two-thirds of the states and people have been merely spectators to the presidential elections. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the voter concerns in states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. The reason for this is the winner-take-all rule enacted by 48 states, under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state.
The state-by-state winner-take-all system is not a firewall, but instead causes unnecessary fires.
Under the current system, there are 51 separate vote pools in every presidential election. Thus, our nation's 56 presidential elections have really been 2,135 separate elections. This is the reason why there have been five seriously disputed counts in the nation's 55 presidential elections. The 51 separate pools regularly create artificial crises in elections in which the vote is not at all close on a nationwide basis, but close in particular states.
A recount is not an unimaginable horror or logistical impossibility. A recount is a recognized contingency that is occasionally required (about once in 332 elections). All states routinely make arrangements for a recount in advance of every election. The personnel and resources necessary to conduct a recount are indigenous to each state. A state's ability to conduct a recount inside its own borders is unrelated to whether or not a recount may be occurring in another state.
If anyone is genuinely concerned about the possibility of recounts, then a single national pool of votes is the way to drastically reduce the likelihood of recounts and eliminate the artificial crises produced by the current system.
The U.S. Constitution, existing federal statutes, and independent state statutes guarantee "finality" in presidential elections long before the inauguration day in January. These constitutional provisions, statutes, and precedents apply equally to a presidential election conducted under the National Popular Vote legislation and an election conducted under the current system.
The U.S. Constitution (Article II, section 1, clause 4) provides:
"The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States."[Spelling as per original]
The common nationwide date for meeting of the Electoral College has been set by federal law as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.
Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote approach, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" prior to the common nationwide date for the meeting of the Electoral College. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the states are expected to make their "final determination" six days before the Electoral College meets (the so-called "safe harbor" date established by section 5 of title 3 of the United States Code).
In addition, in almost all states, state statutes already impose independent (typically earlier) deadlines for finalizing the count for the presidential election. The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled that state election officials and the state judiciary must conduct counts and recounts in presidential elections within the confines of existing state election laws.
It may be argued that the schedule established by the U.S. Constitution may sometimes rush the count (and possibly even create injustice). However, there can be no argument that this schedule exists in the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, and state statutes; that this schedule guarantees "finality" prior to the meeting of the Electoral College in mid-December. This existing constitutional schedule would govern the National Popular Vote compact in exactly the same way that it governs elections under the current system.
Markymark: I agree with all your points. On the last one, I wouldn't favor a national popular vote criterion until and unless we really straightened out our balloting and ballot counting apparatus and procedures.
What if a very close nationwide vote triggered recounts in every precinct in the country? Just think of Florida 2000 or Minnesota Senate 2008 as examples of lawyering gone awry -- basically because we just do a bad job of managing our voting in this country.
We could learn a lot from another large country: Brazil. They manage to get all the votes counted within hours of closing the polls and everyone accepts the outcome. They have a federal system, just a we do.
T J Hairball…
You wrote: “I think it's worth keeping in mind that no matter what else happens, how well Obama's policies are perceived to be working will be the most important 2012 factor.”
True, but the incumbency factor can actually trump the performance factor. In 1936, FDR’s successes with reversing the Depression were suffering serious setbacks, yet he won that year’s election handily. Voters across the country went for FDR even though they personally had not benefited from his policies, but they had a sense that he was doing something, and that he was on the right track.
Obama could benefit from the same perception, even if the economy is still struggling. The contrast between George Bush as a crony-capitalism, deer-in-the-headlights president and Obama as a hands-on, try-anything president will still resonate four and even eight years down the road.
upyrom: Overheard in a fractious ashram...
@Dopper
Sure there are additional states like MO and MT (and AZ!) that Obama can push. I'm assuming a swing of several points or else the GOP loses anyway. If you get that swing of several point MO and MT probably stay red. You make some good points about MO, however I don't think it will be enough to push past OH and FL in the direction of going blue, certainly not by 2012. My family is from there and there is a strong and increasing evangelical influence not to mention persistent racism in a small but discouraging segment of rural downscale white voters. MO moved towards Obama by about 7 points while the nation as a whole moved by about 10.
Until I see how 2010 goes I still think Florida is trending red (not in Nate's "Operation Gringo" scenario, but rather in the real world.) The growth in evangelicals in the state has been explosive and it went from tied in 2000 to a Bush margin of 5 points in 2004. Yes, it was bluer in 2008 than 2004 but just like MO, it swung 7 points to Obama when the national popular vote swung 10 points relative to 2004.
If only elections were math, then Nate Silver would be president! Two points to make regarding these two leaps into the hypothetical (which I enjoyed by the way): 1. Americans are loathe to change horses in the middle (see W. Bush) unless someone comes along with better ideas and more charisma (like Clinton) or the other guy is doing so poorly that people can't wait for change (like Carter or even Ford). 2. Saying something is possible is far from saying it is actually feasible. To adopt a 'gringo strategy' would be a step back to Rovian tactics and if they didn't pay off could have huge consequences for the GOP. A last hurrah perhaps.
So while 4% doesn't sound like too much and you can crunch numbers to make anything look possible, the basic assumption that Obama will only do as well as he did in 2008 seems somewhat misplaced. It seems that many presidents did better the second time around than the first; the country is familiar with them, comfort level is high. Isn't there some factor to add into your formulas in order to account for this eventuality? Assuming Obama can continue to do a competent job and that his approval ratings remain above say 55%, would not this alone spell certain defeat for the GOPers? I do not know all the history here, but it seems W.'s approval ratings were not all that high leading into '04 and he won easily. And he was a complete idiot!
Of course, anything can happen, but it seems more than a bit unfair to assume that Obama will only do just as well as he did in 2008. If nothing else, race will prove to be less a factor the second time around which can only help him.
@Charles
I have said it every time since I got on the Obama wagon back in 2006: the GOP has grown brittle from their time in power and is going to spend at least 8-12 years in the wilderness after the 2008 elections much as the Tories did.
I don't see any reason why they must be replaced by a new party rather than reformulating along current Tory lines. That might include re-emphasizing pragmatism and realism in foreign affairs, making a commitment to stop global warming in a more economically efficient manner than cap-and-trade, and turning away from a one-note, incessant mantra of tax cuts toward a rigorous assessment of the efficiency of current government programs. I would also love it if one party had the guts to honestly tell the American people the truth about the looming entitlement crisis. But perhaps that's too much to ask.
In the more short run, Republicans can use the Sotomayor appointment, and the issue raised by Ricci, to suggest a reformulation of affirmative action along the lines of helping people from lower-income backgrounds rather than people of a certain race. To the extent that minorities remain disproportionately poor, they remain disproportionately aided. There's no reason my black friend who grew up in Chevy Chase, MD should get more help than my white friend who group up as the son of a couple supermarket cashiers in a rustbelt town. No reason someone who grew up in a comfortable upper middle-class background should get help because I'm actually 1/4 Cherokee (and no, I've never used it to my advantage.)
That sort of Republican party is one I would very much give consideration to voting for, and one I hope to see in the future. In the short run, even their "respectable" voices like Krauthammer and Noonan are playing fast and loose with the truth to score points on the Sotomayor appointment. I'll continue being a reliable Dem vote while I wait for the Republican party to grow up again.
This Andrew dude and Nate Silver have been pretending that Sotomayor is Latina, and not a WOMAN.
How much could this hateful rhetoric against Sotomayor alienete? WOMEN? Not just Latino women, but also independent and black women.
What about black people? Do Nate and Andrew think that black people are not sympathetic to the nominee that the black President nominated? Are they not sympathetic to the judge who sided with many blacks in the New Haven firefighter case?
Sotomayor is a woman, too.
I'm pretty hopeful at the moment that the electoral math will be an afterthought in 2012. If things go well Obama should win 55%+ in 2012 and it won't be close.
The comments on this site are a constant barrage of spin on behalf of the left, all designed to further the myth that the US will become the first Western country in modern history without a serious conservative party. Idiotic.
Three questions to drive home the point: can Obama be reelected if unemployment is at 9% in 2012? can Obama be reelected if inflation is at 7-10% Can Obama be reelected if the debt and deficits require a national sales tax? Answer: no, no, and no. The odds on any one of those things being true are lowish, but the odds of one of the three being true are considerably better. That doesn't even touch the possibility of a major terrorist strike. Remember, Bush Snr. looked utterly invulnerable at one point.
Events. Drone on about demographics all you want. If politics were really like statistics, we wouldn't need elections. The trends won't save the left. The left has to govern successfully.
Juris, I think that in a sense a move away from the electoral college would perhaps allow a more national approach to voting systems but given that it would be a company like diebold in charge I am not so sure that's a good thing. I do agree that voting firstly needs to be more standardized but also simpler. One of the problems the US has is it's politicized bureaucracy. One thing that would be needed to make the system really work is people running the election who were unquestionably neutral.
If the Republicans lose the Hispanic vote overwhelmingly, it means they have to do even better among non-minorities. It seems unlikely that an isolationist, anti-immigration platform would make whites more likely to vote Republican, considering that platform isn't particularly popular outside of states with large Hispanic populations. I don't see that platform helping them all that much in the rust belt.
I gotta say, I do not like the new people Nate has on his site. No offense, but I'm tired of articles like this, that are short, virtually fact-free, and just plain wrong (a 4-point swing towards the GOP would have made 2008 a 51%-49% victory for Obama. Smaller, but still a victory).
Please, Nate, stop hiring new people to post this stuff, 538 was best with just you and Sean.
/rant
@John
I think there's a fundamental difference in the party structure of the British Conservatives and the US Republicans. The Tories' MPs (and some other delegates nowadays?) elect the party chairman whereas the presidential candidate of the GOP (i.e. the de facto party chairman) is elected by the party's supporters.
Since a party establishment thinks more strategically, it is more willing to moderate than a party's supporters. And in the case of the GOP, its base is rapidly becoming rabidly right-wing. There are not enough counterveiling forces given the party structure.
That's why a full comeback as a European party can expect after 8-16 years in the political wilderness may not be in the GOP's future.
>>> That might include re-emphasizing pragmatism and realism in foreign affairs, making a commitment to stop global warming in a more economically efficient manner than cap-and-trade, and turning away from a one-note, incessant mantra of tax cuts toward a rigorous assessment of the efficiency of current government programs.
Aye. To get back out of the political wilderness a party basically has to accept a fair chunk of the agenda of the previously victorious party. Just look at history of the two major 20th century paradigm shifts in US politics:
The GOP only regained the White House in 1952 by fielding a moderate, who accepted the New Deal paradigm.
The Democrats regained the White House in 1992 after fielding a "New Democrat" who embraced much of Reaganomics.
I believe a similar paradigm shift occurred in 2006-08. And, unlike you, I very much doubt the GOP will be able to successfully adapt and become to Obama what Clinton was to Reagan.
> In the short run, even their "respectable" voices like Krauthammer and Noonan are playing fast and loose with the truth to score points on the Sotomayor appointment. I'll continue being a reliable Dem vote while I wait for the Republican party to grow up again.
That's another problem. The party's intelligentsia has also jumped off the deep end and are little more than partisan hacks. People like Christopher Buckly and Andrew Sullivan once were Republicans. They no longer have innovative and intellectually-honest thinkers. Instead, they have clowns who parrot the same ole talking-points and are intellectually disingenuous.
They've lost the professional and writing classes and embraced Know-Nothingism. Once you go there, it's exceedingly difficult to recover, I think.
@Jeff since I engage in "left wing spin" please explain how California went from being Reagan land to a true Blue state without using any changes in demographic information. Then explain how Bush won Ohio in 2004 with a truly bad economy without using an social policy factors?
I used to believe that people voted mostly on economics. Most people vote their values and identity. First the GOP got blue collars whites to change their voting patterns (so called "voting against their own interest") with God, Guns, and Gay. The GOP is now the mostly the party of working class whites. Then the Democrats figured out how to return the favor with upper income whites with Pro-Choice, Environmentalism, and Diversity. Remember college education and professional carers now make a person more likely to be a democrat. Look at how Obama did with people earning upper middle class income, a liberal democrat won them! He even won income groups who knew he would raise taxes on (>$200,000 yr!)
1) Unemployment won't likely be 9% in 2012, no matter how much the right screams against liberal policies. There is too much stimulus in the USA and China for the world to stay in recession, which is what is needed to keep unemployment at 9% for another 3.5 years.
2) Inflation at 7% is very unlikely. There is too much excess manufacturing capacity in the Pearl River Delta, Rhine/Ruhr Valley, MidWest for inflation in goods. Too much spare capacity in India, NY, and London in Services. It will take more then 3.5 years to soak it up (inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods nothing else)
3) A national sales tax are you kidding? No Democrat will EVER vote or sign that. You would see income, capital gains, and legalized internet gambling before that. That is so politically unrealistic you are showing you inability to offer analysis and project what you hope for not what the data and history suggest.
@John M: You are correct. One of the smartest move the GOP could do to start to win over more Latinos and Blacks is to champion class based affirmative action. They already have a better ability to drive initiative then the left. If they actually were for something rather then seeming to oppose a program geared towards the poor an minorities it would work wonders. They just don't have a Jack Kemp policy center. Vouchers aren't enough. Many blacks who support vouvhers also think its also about splitting the left (Blacks v. unions) and are very suspicious of anything that reeks of divide and conquer politics. But a social affirmative action policy would be seen as a genuine concern for the poor. Remember Bush just showing concern and respect for minorities sprung him from Texas to the White House.
People there is NO CHANCE of the GOP going away get real! Democrats over the last 70 years have a great capacity to win congressional blow out (they have had some truly awesome majorities 70 Senators, 140 house seats)), the GOP over the last 60 has had a greater capacity to win Presidential blow outs (Ike twice, Nixon, Reagan twice). So when the parties win on the other's turf (GOP runs congress, Democrats win the White House) each sides panics. The two parties are very ingrained in America neither is going anywhere.
Eventually a group of GOP governors much like in the 1990's will develop new solution and approaches, and regenerate the party. The GOP being more authoritarian won't get much help from congress, they need executive leadership from governors who tend to be more pragmatic and less ideological. They will be back.
> The comments on this site are a constant barrage of spin on behalf of the left, all designed to further the myth that the US will become the first Western country in modern history without a serious conservative party. Idiotic.
Hm. I would argue that Germany lacks a "serious conservative party". I support the CDU, the Christian-Democrat party, which has its roots in the late 19th century/early 20th century Catholic CENTRE party, which as the name suggests was pretty centrist (as pretty much all Christian-Democratic parties are).
The CDU regards itself as centrist and in the eyes of the Glenn Becks of this world, the party might even be called socialist (whatever that may mean in such deranged minds).
And if you look at CDU policies, well, they correspond to what moderate US Democrats like say McCaskill or Mark Warner campaign for.
Oh, or take Sweden. Their centre-right party is called the "Moderate Party". They're libertarian/centrist. No genuinely conservative party there either. Indeed, I think the same also holds true for Belgium and the Netherlands (though those two countries have anti-immigrant right-wing populists).
It's in Britain, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe where you get full-blown conservatism.
So no, it's not at all idiotic to fathom a future without a "serious conservative" party in the US. I dare say that whatever party might be the main centre-right option in the US in 30-40 years will resemble the centrism of mainstream European Christian-Democratic parties. That party will be pretty environmentalist, not nativist, perfectly at ease with homosexuals, welcome a limited role of the government in healthcare, and while not happy with abortion laws, will have essentially given up on that fight.
In other words, that party won't bear any resemblance to today's GOP (and my money is that that party won't actually be the GOP).
Why? Just look at the Millenial Generation and their political convictions and values. Theirs will reshape the whole political map of the US. The trends are very clear.
> I used to believe that people voted mostly on economics. Most people vote their values and identity.
Dopper, certainly the case in the United States. But in Western European countries, you don't have the same cultural polarisation and hence economic interests tend to weigh heavier.
I think that in 30-40 years the US culture war will be pretty much over and the main parties differ not as much on the contentious cultural issues of today.
> People there is NO CHANCE of the GOP going away get real!
The Federalists and Whigs went the way of the dodo... And a very excentric Perot who actually at one time backed out of the race, won 19% in '92.
Now imagine if someone of the stature of say Colin Powell were to run and build a new party?
Take Britain. Also a first-past-the-post system. Labour emerged from nowhere in the 19th century. The Whigs went essentially extinct. The LibDems (SDP) vaulted to a strong third-party standing from basically nowhere. The Scottish Nationalists also emerged from nowhere and now govern Scotland!
My money is on a new major centrist party emerging in the next few decades. Think a "Unity '08" type effort with a Powell-type nominee and many prominent backers.
The only chance the Republicans have is to adopt Obama as their own. Back him on everything, call him a moderate who's so willing to work across the aisle that he may as well be a Republican. Get people on the left so annoyed that Obama is more of a moderate Republican than any type of Democrat that they run a liberal against him the primary. Then roll the dice on a charismatic "compassionate" conservative. Sell Obama as a moderate to weaken his base, then remove your support at the end and leave him alone in the middle fighting shots from both sides. He might still win, but it'll cost him and the Dems enough to make it a worthwhile strategy. Basically you want to turn him into Leiberman, hated by both sides.
Of course Republicans aren't smart enough to run this strategy, and they'd have to start it now for it to work.
If this were Free Republic or Red State, this would have been a much shorter article:
Become more conservative.
I always imagine elections like a big, heavy lever. Take the 2008 results, pull the lever towards Obama and he'll deepen Indiana, North Carolina, and Nebraska 2nd. Also, he'll pick up Missouri, Montana.
If you keep pulling it towards Obama, he'll pick up Arizona, Georgia, the Dakotas, South Carolina, etc...
The opposite happens if you pull it towards Obama. It would be a fun little interactive game to be able to pull the lever back and forth and watch how the votes and color depth of each state changes.
Jeff-the myth that the US will become the first Western country in modern history without a serious conservative party. Idiotic.
Honey, the Republican party is not a serious party at all anymore. They just say things like "drill, baby drill" and are afraid of what happens if Sonia Sotomayor is menstruating. They are acting like petulant pre-teens instead of a major political party. Pathetic.
I am sure the Republicans will be back but not in this current birth-certificate hunting bat shit crazy incarnation that we have now.
Let's not forget 3 things:
#1 There's been a sea-change. The landscape was teed up for the Dems as Bush and company were a disaster.
#2 Similar to 1980 after Carter, when Reagan emerged, in 2008, we have a party role-reversal. Obama is a dominant figure following a poor Presidency of W., similar to Reagan following Carter. He's virtually unbeatable. Yes, a chunk of the population doesn't like him. But, the big reason they don't like him is because he's powerful, popular, and can get things done that they don't like. This is a very similar landscape to what Reagan had. In 1984 Reagan was completely unbeatable. I'm not sure Jesus Christ could have beaten him. Same can likely be said for Obama in 2012, regardless of what happens between now and then, the question will be would someone else have done better. 1/2 the country will not say yes.
#3 The GOP has no decent up and coming candidates to choose from. There are no contenders. ZERO. Think about it, at this stage, 3 years out, us plitical junkies always know the possible contenders that could win. There are no decent candidates. Romney is the only one I see as a conceivable winner and that would require a Joseph Smith type miracle!
BOTTOM LINE: Obama will be President for 8 years, period.
Andrew, all the nitpicks about this post aside, do you really think it was necessary to write a post whose point, essentially, is "All the Republicans need to do to come back is accrue a larger share of the popular vote"?
It seems (especially given this site's propensity for detailed political analysis) oddly tautological.
...100s of posts, over a couple years.Really?
On a website with a URL that was first registered on Mar 7, 2008?
Years?
Really?
The idea that the Electoral College forces candidates to campaign more diversely than a popular vote election is purely myth. The criticism of the popular vote is that a candidate would only have to campaign in the top 20 most populous cities in America. But, in the current system, the candidates can really focus on only three states - Pa., Ohio and Fla. In every election since 1896, sans one (1960), the candidate that won two of those three states won the election. It's why gun control and abortion are disproportionately bigger issues in presidential elections than they should be, given the pulse of the nation.
beavis, okay maybe since March of '08, just seemed like a couple of years, sorry for the exaggeration.
steelers, good point about PA, OH, and FL. Also, with media coverage, the logistics have changed, popular vote or a hybrid is probably fairer than electoral college. In 1960, the only reason that's an exception to the rule is Kennedy pulled Texas with LBJ, otherwise there are no exceptions. I live in Texas where I can be guarantedd my vote is absolutely worthless :), oh well.
only one oerson pisagrees with you...david plouffe...he says national vote doesn't matter...that the election is a giant puzzle of states...and i'd put my money on him (with real exerience) vs. some theory.
"There's not a lot of evidence that you can easily push buttons and swing particular voting blocs or states."
But there is evidence that you can easily push buttons and swing the nation? Of course the Republican's need a national swing to get it all back.
Andrew,
How surprising to see such a direct response! Thank you for the in-depth elaboration.
I can see the argument that we don't live in a world where candidates win by targeting specific states, though conversely, it's a tough claim when it's so obvious that there are states shamelessly neglected by both parties.
There's not a huge drive for votes, for instance, in New York or California, because of the intractable Democratic presence there. Nor is there a large drive in Texas, Utah, or Idaho, due to the Republicans' insurmountable leads in those states.
So if you're going to bring the question into the macro, by asserting that we need a countrywide swing of 4%, then I must ask:
What might precipitate this swing? Is it something the GOP might engineer intentionally, or do they just need to cross their fingers and pray that something happens to spoil the Democrats' political fortunes?
Thanks,
-Jon
P.S. What's your opinion on the National Popular Vote Bill?
Ways the Republicans can win the Presidency in descending order of likelihood:
(1) third party candidate
(2) extremely moderate GOP candidate
(3) country shifts to right
(4) economy sucks leading up to election
(5) major scandals rock democrats
(6) foreign policy/national security fiasco
Realignment is realignment and my best guess is that 2008 was realigning. That means the Democrats will generally start out with a favorable electoral state map for years to come. Republican campaigns will have to make strategic and tactical descisions designed to win enough states to secure 270 electoral votes. That's how things work in the United States and there's little reason to think things will change anytime soon.
Off topic, this seems to be as good a place as any to dump some pollster comparison info regarding the 51 states/district elections in 2008 that actually determined who became President of the United States in 2009.
Nine pollsters polled in nine or more states in the ten days prior to the election. More than one of the nine polled in 29 states. Determination of who was "closest" to the true result in those 29 states is based on polling/victory margin followed (where there were ties) by candidate percentages. Ties remained in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri and North Carolina so the "closest" total is 34. The pollsters in order from "closest" by percentage:
PPP (closest in 7 of 15)
CNN/Time (closest in 4 of 10)
Strategic Vision and Zogby (closest in 3 of 9)
Research 2000 (closest in 5 of 16)
Rasmussen (closest in 6 of 26)
Survey USA (closest in 4 of 18)
ARG (closest in 2 of 14)
Mason-Dixon (closest in 0 of 14)
The 29 states are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida (Survey USA), Georgia, Illinois, Indiana (PPP), Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri (PPP, Rasmussen & Zogby), Montana (ARG), Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina (ARG & PPP), Ohio (CNN/Time), Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
All polling info was obtained from the RCP polling archives. This was mostly an exercise in confirming my sense that Rasmussen, while doing a good job in polling the meaningless national contest, did a mediocre job in polling the meaningful state contests.
Couple of quick points, firstly charles suggests that the UK Conservative Party leader is only elected by it's MPs. That used to be correct, but ultimately now the leader is elected by a national vote of all of the parties members. It can be argued that Conservative Party MPs are typically more right wing than the ordinary members. But one of the reasons the Conservatives have appeared to moderate is the power of party leaders in the UK. Although I would personally suggest that David Cameron is in fact pulling a bit of a George W Bush, by coming across as far more moderate than he really is.
I would also suggest that the GOP is merely in a period of decline and not in terminal decline. I liken there situation now to 1933 and they are in a less hopeless position than then. My personal view is that social conservatism, as it exists today at least, has run it's course, but the party can and will recover. Whether that happens in 4 or 8 years or longer depends on how happy the party is leaving social conservatism behind. It's going to be a trade off as social conservativism will always sell in rural areas. But it's increasingly unlikely to gain votes in urban areas. That being said economic populism, a low tax message is likely to sell at some point.
John M. said...
Republicans can . . . suggest a reformulation of affirmative action along the lines of helping people from lower-income backgrounds rather than people of a certain race.
And that is just the excuse the racists need to hire non-whites only ("We hired the poor man"), and also hire males only ("We didn't find any qualified females").
Reminds me of the stunt the GOOPers pulled in the South, especially in North Carolina. During reapportionment, they drew several minority-majority districts. Doing so, they took several lean Dem districts, pulled most of the solid Dem precincts into a couple of (now) solid Dem districts (that also just happened to be majority AA), and turned the other lean Dem districts into lean GOOPer districts (and basically white). Yes, they increased the number of AAs in Congress, but that increase was MORE than offset by the decrease in moderate Dems who would have supported most bills positively affecting minorities, and replaced them with GOOPers who treated any and all bills positively affecting minorities as toxic. Gain two or three, lose seven or eight. Is that progress?
So yes, go ahead and push for the change in affirmative action focus, and you'll just play right into the racist and GOOPer hands.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
A.Smith said.........
I think we've been mostly focusing on electoral map math because the last couple of elections (not counting 2008) were close enough that the math mattered. I agree but isn't the difficulty for candidates, their organisations and their parties that no-one knows how close the election turn out on the day. Even,
in 2008, McCain at one point closed the gap with BO to a fraction. So, party strategists have no option but to play electoral map maths. Literally, a few thousand votes in a few states decided the 1976 and 2000 elections i.e. two out of the last nine elections. How many political operatives let alone candidates would say let's not worry about a few thousand votes in a couple of states as it might only give me an 11% better chance of winning? So,
parties will continue to play the electoral map maths game within the context of the bigger, national picture. however, I agree with Nate that the bigger picture IS the big picture.
Yes the commenters are correct when we say that things look bad for Republicans in 2012, but it is only 2009. Remember how Democrats felt in 2005, after having just watched the man we all felt stole his first victory as he was being sworn in for his second? Remember how we were all certain that Al would run again or at least, that Hilary would?
It is not so easy to project candidates years in the future, so we might assume a more humble posture with respect to whether or not Republicans will find a candidate who can give them that 4% net gain.
My money is on Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. Right frm the start, he removesa state Obama won and he will have deep familiarity with the issues in both IA and MN - not to mention MI too. How strong does the President look if Republicans swing rght at the heart of Obama country?
Derrick Nijel Gibson: Remember how Democrats felt in 2005, after having just watched the man we all felt stole his first victory as he was being sworn in for his second?I was devastated regarding 4 more years of Bush, but 2005 was a very, very bad year for Bush. He started out with a 50% approval rating (which is very bad for an incumbent). His veep wasn't running in 2008 (not that Cheney would have had a chance in hell of winning a national election) and there was no one person clearly waiting in the wings for the Republican party. Even worse is the administration's most spectacular failure (from which Bush and the Republicans never recovered from), Katrina, was just around the corner. I think that really drove home for most Americans how incompetent he really was.
In contrast, the Democrats were energized as never before in 2005. There was a strong feeling of "No More". I continued to register young voters, and there were thousands of others doing the same. We had a definite strong front runner waiting in the wings for 2008 (who knew it wasn't going to be her?) and we had a fantastic head of the DNC with a strategy for all 50 states which paved the way for Obama's nearly blow out win.
At this point the Republicans wish they were in our position from 2005.
I think the Republicans are in deep trouble in the short term, but they cannot be discounted over the long term say 2016 or 2018 or so. I know some hear the death bells of the Republicans, but eventually the extreme right wing will eventually realize that it has to nominate a moderate candidate to win a national election.
Andrew Gillman said, "That's just not the world we live in. We live in a world of approximate uniform swing." looking at the data aren't there two factors here.I agree that regionalism has declined since WW2 e.g. The Deep South, Yankee North-east etc. However, looking at your scatter-plots doesn't the data heavily suggest that uniform swings occur on a lower national swing e.g.2008 while
bigger national swings create more state outliers e.g.1952? Just a thought?
Derrick Nijel Gibson: You assume that Mitch Daniels would have some sort of boost or something in states with issues that are close to that of his own?
That is almost never the case. For example I remember early on in the 2008 election everyone argued that McCain had a good chance of winning New Mexico for the exact same reason.
- New Mexico borders Arizona.
- similar demographics
- VERY similar issues
- They both border Mexico
Yet New Mexico went for Obama by a 15 point margin, and that was a state bush won by 1 point in 2004 making that a 16 point swing from 2004...a much bigger swing than most states.
The "He's from my state" advantage is good for 7 points
The "He's in a states thats....uh....kinda like mine.." advantage is good for maybe 1 point.
Besides...Indiana and Iowa and minnesota are not even that similar anyways.... They are not even in the rust belt like Indiana is. You might be able to argue it would give him a tiny boost in Ohio and MI. But sure as hell not even to make him remotely competitive in MI.
And what makes you think Mitch Daniels would win the republican nomination anyway? What makes you think he can come out as a dark horse and beat Romney, Gingrich, Huckabee, etc?
Jeff wrote:
" all designed to further the myth that the US will become the first Western country in modern history without a serious conservative party. Idiotic."
The Republican Party will still be there, of course. They will just be concentrated in the South and the "Mormon Belt", and continue to draw 43-47% of the national vote. They will be unable to take the WH, which I think is what the "spin" you are railing against is really saying.
The real "path back to power" for the conservatives is the creation of a third Party of moderates, and the conservatives forming a coalition with it. That would take time and money, however, as well as sufficient vision among the Republican leadership to organise such a massive effort.
In effect, the Republican Party has made a suicide pact with its base. To a large extent, whatever new public face the leadership decides to show will be neutralised by the electorate's real-life interactions with the frothing and irrational base and their intolerance of dissent and non-conformity.
The Republicans have established an "all-in" model that leaves very little room for capitalising on a slow erosion of Obama's popularity. Thus, a voter is either "all-in" or "all-out". Someone considering making a jump to the GOP on one issue is expected to embrace an assortment of fairly repellent notions and ideals, because one must be "all-in".
The only way this model works is if there is very strong national resentment of Obama due to scandal or incompetence. But in this eventuality, the GOP would win anyway - without the "all-in" model.
On the Democratic side, one sees the "herd of cats" model in which opposing views have always been the norm, and in which uniformity of opinion is nearly unthinkable. It's much easier to draw and retain voters with that model, absent any very dramatic event (e.g. 9/11, jingoistic war fevers).
The Republican punditry simply reinforces it's erosion of credibility when it casts Democrats as uniform, cultish, reciters of talking points. My greatest fear has always been of a moderate Republican Party that peels off disaffected Democratic constituencies one by one.
Thankfully, the GOP has done Obama a great favour by forcing those disaffected constituencies to accept radical evangelical social positions, Randian economic principles, nativism, jingoism, and hostility to those who aren't "one of us" in any of thousand different ways. In for a penny, in for a pound for Republicans, it would seem.
Besides...Indiana and Iowa and minnesota are not even that similar anyways.... They are not even in the rust belt like Indiana is. You might be able to argue it would give him a tiny boost in Ohio and MI. But sure as hell not even to make him remotely competitive in MI.
I agree. Obama got a bump in Indiana, but that was more because a good portion of western Indiana is in the Chicago media market.
That being said, I do not know much about Mitch Daniels. Is he a moderate? I would be surprised if he was. The Republicans best bet for 2016 (I really think 2012 is likely off the table) is a governor from a blue state. Just like Clinton was able to get elected in a more Republican era, a governor that has had to moderate his/her conservatism has the best chance in a general. The question would be could he/she squeak through in a primary?
Hawaiians voted in 1956?
There's been a lot of talk recently of a political realignment, and I strongly disagree. Certainly some groups that tend to vote for one party have been on the rise, and the other party has had a run of bad luck. (Would we be discussing this "realignment" if Gore won in 2000, presided over 9/11 and then lost to, say, Giuliani or McCain in 2004?)
Realignment is when a significant block of voters shifts their party allegiance en masse and with some degree of loyalty, thereby changing the very structure of the parties. The most recent realignment was in the South. Working class white Southerners used to be solidly Democratic. Enraged by Truman's support of civil rights, they abandoned the national party's nominee and ran Strom Thurmond as a Dixiecrat/Independent/Democrat. Through the fifties, the politics of the South were unsettled, but the Deep South was still generally favorable to Democrats. That is until LBJ and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Southern whites ran to the GOP in droves and have never returned.
In Mississippi, Dems got 94% of the vote in 1944, and 13% in 1964. In Alabama, Dems got 81% of the vote in 1944, and LBJ didn't even have ballot access in 1964!
Which state in the 2008 election showed that kind of shift from 20 years earlier? None, because there's been no wholesale change in the parties' constituencies. In 1988, George HW Bush was working with a party composed of small town and rural folks, military voters, business leaders, white evangelicals, white southerners, small business people, small government types, libertarians, the NRA, professionals and a dwindling number of intellectual conservatives. Dukakis played well to urbanites, feminists, environmentalists, ethnic and racial minorities, labor unions, liberal whites and teachers. Do these lists sound familar? They should because these are basically the same two coalitions that the parties had in 1964, and the same basic coalitions we see today.
What's changed since 1964 and 1988 to today? Well, by 1988 the LDS vote was no longer evenly split, as it was in 1964; the Saints were probably just a lagging indicator of the GOP southern strategy. Professionals have shifted away from the GOP, though not in overwhelming numbers and not with an obvious degree of loyalty. Democrats have consolidated their stength among blacks, though it could be argued this was simply a reaction to and a corollary of the loss of southern whites and Democrats' support of civil rights. People with college degrees have trended Democratic, though not in huge numbers comparable to the shift in white southerners from 1944 to 1964.
And that's the point really, there's been no seismic shift in the electoral coalitions.
Now, if abortion and gays somehow became a non-issue and evangelicals and devout Catholics were to start voting in favor of programs to help the poor, giving Democrats 80% of their vote, that would be a realignment.
Or, if liberal whites and environmentalists left the Dems and joined the Greens for a generation, the Democratic party would shift solidly to the center, and gain the last of the moderate Republicans. We could see Presidential elections being fought either with a 25-50-25 split, shifting coalitions or the GOP fading into third party status, with a right of center Democratic party.
Basically anything that an observer a few years before wouldn't respond to with, "That seems unlikely to the point of being impossible", I don't think counts as a realignment.
I think just picking out a guy who ticks a box like 'he's from a state Obama won' is not a winning mentality. Firstly the GOP needs to work out what and who it wants to represent. I think it's tough to imagine exactly how the part recovers in time for either 2010 or 2012. I think one important aspect to remember is how generically unpopular the GOP is. I can't think of a time when either party has been that unpopular. The Republicans are not in a position that is similar to the Dems in 1989 or 2005. They do have to rehabilitate the brand. That's not impossible, but with a lack of leadership, and in particular new leadership, that's not easy to do.
Nosimplehiway, I don't entirely disagree with your analysis, except to say that realignment is a long term change it's not a knee jerk change. Where you have begun to see a realignment is in the west and North West. Out west red states have begun to go purple. And purple states are bluer. Take New Mexico. That's looking very blue at the moment.
@Nosimplehiway
You make some valid points, but you also make a logical fallacy. The realignment of the south was a huge realignment. Maybe a once in a century one. That doesn't mean there aren't or can't be smaller realignments. One type of realignment is the growth in size of a group.
For example Southern Protestant and Maxon Dixon border state left mainline churches and became more evangelical. This caused a realignment. You list racial minorities, but the fact is group has had huge growth. From a total of 10% (black + latino + Asian) to about 27%. Think about how mainly Catholic immigrants realigned Yankee strongholds from 1850-1920.
Growth this big causes realignment. Look at California it went from Reagan to a true blue state because of the phenom.
@Derrick Nijel Gibson
Mitch Daniels will run but in 2012. He is a very cagey man. He knows that a pragmatic conservative has little hope of winning the nomination in 2012. Conservative want a red meat conservative. He would be a very good candidate for the national GOP but I don't see him trying to fight a headwind and beat an incumbent. He also would face the same problem Sanford is going to face as IN doesn't have a good economy. SC economy is really bad. But if the economy in those states are good enough to take away this issue in 2012, the national economy will be better an Obama will be a lock to win. Why would Daniels risk it in 2012 when he has a cleaner shot in 2012.
Expecting the possibility of Hispanic Republicans flipping their collective gourds at the race-based attacks of people like Newt Gingrich, is why I blogged earlier this week about how the Sotomayor choice could well help Obama in 2012:
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/05/politically-potent-sotomayor-choice.html
As for Andrew’s “approximate uniform swing,” Hispanics aren’t uniformly distributed, so that comment’s just a non sequitur.
Obama is vilified by a minority of voters that know they're powerless to stop the juggernaut. This is virtually identical to Reagan. Without a freakish, unique situation, Obama cannot be beat in 2012, just as noone stood a chance against Reagan in 1984. It almost doesn't matter what happens over the next 3 years as long as it's not something completely bizarre. The Republican Party should try to reinvent itself as a fiscally responsible party, not hung up on social values, and moderate and aim for 2016 and to gain back some of theground they've been losing in the last couple election cycles in legislatures, governorships, etc. Trying to beat Obama in 2012 will be futile. He's virtually unbeatable.
Dopper:
Yes, it's actually the cumulative effect of multiple small realignments. Another example would be the youth vote, which at one time went strongly for Reagan. Or the emerging generational schism among evangelicals. Or the precipitous decline in demographics such as the Angry White Male and the "security mom".
What is of more concern, however, is that the Republicans seem to be remarkably ill-equipped to reverse these trends.
It's as if they have willingly gone into the fight with one arm tied behind their back and wearing a blindfold in some weird effort to appeal to the "rope-and-blindfold demographic".
Their major ideological thrust has been that a <4% increase in the marginal tax rate of $250K+ incomes is turning America into Cuba overnight.
The only people that buy that are those that are already on their side to begin with.
The smart political strategies have disappeared from the Party. They are not only rudderless, but they seem to believe that rudders are the manifestation of Lucifer Himself and that they are better off without one.
In short, they have absolute faith in the swing of some mystical pendulum, but are doing their damnedest to keep it from swinging.
The Democrats can, to a considerable extent, simply sit back and let demographics work for them and watch the GOP run a steady trickle of their own supporters out of the Big Tent.
Just the obvious re: trends ie young voters are trending heavily progressive and older white Rep voters are visiting St. Peter at the pearly gates on a daily basis.
Also, the Rep party, let alone an individual viable candidate, hasn't had an original thought/idea in (16) years.
Gore lost because of god, guns and gays and a Monica bj, plus he was a god awful national candidate, much like McCain, Palin, Romney, Gingrich, Perry, Sanford, Pawlenty, Huckabee etc. Yes Virginia, there are no Reagans on the horizon.
As has been mentioned the power of incumbency and likability are the key. Just ask FDR and Reagan.
The Reps have in essence turned into the Dems as their fear factor and evangelical mentality no longer can push them over the top after (8) years of cheney/bush incompetence, corruption and constitutional violations.
Yes, the cheney/bush legend looms large as the Party of NO!!! marches on ...
Oh the irony of Obama totally discombobulating the party of Lincoln! The Reps had (1) hope in 2008 ie the "Bradley Effect." Sorry!
I digress
Oh yea, you cannot win by subtraction, simple math lol btw Obama got (((32 million))) more votes than Mondale in 1984, whereas McCain got 5.5 million more votes than Reagan in 1984. A difference of 26.5 million! Not a good trend for Reps, eh.
The Rep party appears as it is: old, white, angry, sour grapes and still hasn't recovered from a bi-racial candidate kickin' their butts. Whereas Obama is likable, competent, obviously passed the C-in-C test to get elected, has mastered the internet re: campaigning, is a master fund raiser, stays on message like Reagan, etc, etc.
Again, I digress, but, but, but 2012 is an eternity away so in the interim, let the discussion continue lol
take care, blessings
I should state upfront - unequivocally - that I am not a press agent for Mitch Daniels. I am someone who noted with interest that in the same year which Senator Barack Obama became the first Democrat since LBJ to carry the State of Indiana, Mitch Daniels won an overwhelming re-election victory there. Knowing - as we all do - that the Republican turnout was depressed, due to the lackluster candidate they pro-offered, I asked myself the same question we can assume Mitch is asking: "How would I do head to head against President Obama?"
If the economy rebounds, then Indiana rebounds; how will that success be apportioned between the Governor and the President? Each will make their case and each has their own partisans, but a state that went for Obama because of his strength in the Chicago media market has to be considered in play when the state's own popular governor is in the race.
After all, was it not only the presence of McCain that kept Arizona on the side of the Republicans?
So Mitch puts Indiana in play, what else could he do? Well, we can look at the turmoil in the automobile industry and conclude today that MI will be in play four years from now - for the right Republican candidate. And despite Iowa entering its third straight term with a Democratic governor, that is a state where traditionally Republicans play well. GWB won here twice, so we cannot just assume it is locked for President Obama. Furthermore, Pawlenty has managed to win in Minnesota for two-terms and he has a relatively strong Republican machine in a state with a fractured Democratic Party. Pawlenty has a higher national profile than Daniels currently, but he is even more suspect than Daniels by the Southern conservatives that dominate the party. Daniels was the OMB director in the first term for GWB, so he does have some credentials there, without ties to the completely ignominious end of that administration. So we know Republicans can win in MN and Daniels is of that type - in a way that Palin and Huckabee are not. And while a Romney might play nice in these states, even he would not fare as well here as Daniels (if IN is not an exact match to MN, imagine how far removed is a venture capitalist from MA) and Romney can never win the hearts of the Southern conservatives. The governor of Indiana knows how to speak to folks in places Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia - three states with Democratic governors who did not turn out for the party to elect President Obama.
Daniels will speak to those voters about jobs lost in coal country and how they are being left behind by the "Green Energy" hype from Obama, which will surely just be ramping up in 2012 and not yet have reached the steam of 2016 - which is why he will not wait for that election cycle.
I cannot see a better candidate for the Republicans than Daniels - which is why they probably will not nominate him.
For more on how Mitch is already selling himself for 2012:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/eye-on-2012/can-mitch-daniels-save-the-gop.html
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/ii_20090427_3477.php
Daniels is a Republican who sees value in infrastructure and while Democrats might argue with how he leased the tollway, it has given his state funds to make it through this slowing economy without needing to raise taxes. Also note in that National Journal article how he embraced the stimulus package, without vilifying those who voted against it - including his state's Republican Senator!
Which state in the 2008 election showed that kind of shift from 20 years earlier?None, obviously. I actually think the last realigning election may have been in 1968 and my use of "realigning" is almost purely generational and regional. I'm of the opinion that the aligning election took place in 1800 and that the realigning elections since have occurred in 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, 1968(?) and 2008(?). The intervals are important to my use of the word.
Now to region as I don't have much time and regional changes are something I track. You used a 20 year interval above so I'll do two lists of states comparing 1988 to 2008 and leave it to you to decide whether there is something going on regionally. The change in the two-party vote from 1988 to 2008 is +7.6% Democratic. There are 24 states that shifted by more than that to the Democratic nominee. In order from the greatest they are: Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Jersey, Maine, Maryland, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Virginia, Florida, Michigan, New York, Indiana, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Colorado, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Washington and Ohio. There are 10 states where the Republican nominee did better in 2008 than he did in 1988 (also in order from best): West Virginia, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, Alabama, Kansas and Iowa.
Going into the 2008 election I really had my doubts about realignment as a continuing phenomenon. The thing that's most changed my thinking (I'm muxh less of a skeptic) is the reaction to the 2008 result among those who identify as Republicans and get media exposure.
In a related post, GM can become profitable again by being more efficient and making cars that more people want to buy.
Jen said...
I agree. Obama got a bump in Indiana, but that was more because a good portion of western Indiana is in the Chicago media market.
Jen,
Yes, western Indiana does border eastern Illinois. But to say that 'a good portion . . . is in the Chicago media market' and think that applies to politics in a one to one relationship is incorrect.
Lake County is the northwestern-most county in Indiana, and abuts Chicago's SW side. Lake County has the second highest concentration (numbers-wise) of minorities in the state of Indiana, and is a reliable Democratic vote.
However, go just one county south of Lake County to Newton County, and you start getting into very strong GOOPer territory. Newton County went 54+% for McCain in 2008.
Just south of Newton County is Benton County. Benton went 57+% for McCain.
Just to the east of Newton County is Jasper County. Jasper went 59+% for McCain.
All of those counties would be considered 'Chicago media market' counties, but that didn't have much affect on their votes. Yes, all of them voted less for McCain (by about 8-10%) in 2008 than for little shrub in 2004, but the fact remains that they still went for McCain. A lot of that was because many got fed up with the lies from the GOOPer candidates, and (since that area is not a fundie hotbed) were not that enamored with SarahP - in fact, many were scared thinking about her in the VP slot. On a state level, though, Mitch Daniels (GOOPer) won those counties fairly comfortably in his Gubernatorial election.
To see how the elections in Indiana played out, go to 'Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections' (http://uselectionatlas.org), click the 'Election Results' tab near the upper left corner. On the next page, in the 'General by State' drop-down box (near the top of the page), click 'Indiana' and scroll over the various counties.
Note - Leip started his mapping when some media outlets were coloring the areas won by the Democrats in red, GOOPers in blue. That is the color scheme he chose, and never switched it, so where you see blue on his maps, it is GOOPer, red is Dem.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Jen said...
I do not know much about Mitch Daniels. Is he a moderate? I would be surprised if he was.
Daniels was little shrub's OMB chief from 2001 into 2003, when he resigned to run for Governor of Indiana.
He won reelection in 2008 for a number of reasons, but mainly because the Dems couldn't find a strong candidate to run against him. Six weeks before the election, the polls were showing that Daniels held only a 4-6 point lead, although he eventually won by a 58-40% margin. Remember, the first two years of little shrub's administration was when the majority of his tax policies were enacted, and a lot of the deregulation took place.
In just over two weeks, Indiana's state legislature will be called back into a special session to pound out a budget. The Dems are saying education is underfunded in Daniels budget, Daniels is saying the Dems budget is overfunding education by one billion dollars. MAJOR philosophical divide there, and would be a lot of pay dirt for any opponent of Daniels, especially a more liberal opponent.
Indiana just went through a very 'contentious' revamp of the property tax system. The results of that are still in the process of shaking out, and I've heard that many are very unhappy, so they expect that further changes will be made. If further changes are made, expect another very contentious fight.
Daniels is of the opinion that taxes must be cut, so he is part of the 'cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes' school of thought that is so prominent in the GOOPer base these days. That will help him in some areas, but not in others.
Another move that Daniels made was leasing the Indiana Toll Road to a foreign consortium for 75 years. That consortium will have the authority to raise tolls, and there will be no ability to use political pressure on how little or how much they go up. Many in Northern Indiana don't like it, and the dislike will likely go higher the higher the tolls eventually become.
All in all, Daniels is not the best-liked governor, and is cut from the same, or similar, cloth that little shrub came from.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
It's extremely unlikely that Indiana would be a tipping point in 2012. The real question is there a conceivable scenario where a GOP candidate could take back Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. I'd argue it's almost impossible. I see this President as the Democrat's version of Reagan 2.0 in his mastery of public appeal. The only people that don't like him are the chunk of the Republican party that would never like a Democrat and are threatened by him because of the policies he enacts. The only differences being Obama is a little more intelligent, Reagan was a little more charismatic, Obama has a little more on his plate than Reagan did and a little more of a governing majority, but the similarities are vastly more important and striking. He takes over the office after a failed Presidency and a tidal shift in the voters, ie realignment. He is seen as the trusted advisor and "King of the World", ie regardless of what problems he has to deal with and how he has to deal with them, he will be viewed as the best one to tackle the problems by over 1/2 of the country and most of the world. His administrations mastery over the public domain, media, etc. is virtually impossible to overcome. The other party is scared of him and have no likely good challengers. If I was a betting man, I'd needed at least 15-1 to conisder betting on the GOP candidate in 2012.
Who is the leading candidate as of 2009 for 2016 for the Dems? Schweitzer, Clinton, Kaine
Although what you say is absolutely and obviously true Andrew, I think your boss and most readers know it so quit being a smart ass and go back to your own site.
Umm, I want to post on why the sky is blue, with the scientific facts, does that make me 538 quality too?
Nosimplehiway said...
The most recent realignment was in the South. Working class white Southerners used to be solidly Democratic.
Wrong. Working class white Southerners have always been ultra-conservatives, and used to be anti-Lincoln Republicans. When the GOOPers began pushing their party to the right, then extreme right, that's when the working class white Southerners started to vote for the GOOPers. And even before that, they were voting against the Democratic candidates:
1948 - Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina cast Electoral votes for Thurmond's State's Rights candidacy, the most conservative candidate on the ballot.
1952 and 1956 - Eisenhower was seen as having more of the same Lincoln-Republican philosophy, so the working class white Southerners fell back to their accustomed voting pattern of voting for the Democratic candidate.
1960 - Mississippi sent 8 'unpledged' electors rather than vote for the 'liberal Kennedy'. Alabama sent 5 electors pledged to Kennedy, but 6 'unpledged' electors.
1964 - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina (along with Arizona) voted for Goldwater as a result of the civil rights legislation that LBJ was pushing through Congress.
1968 - Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia voted for George Wallace's American Independent Party rather than vote for the 'liberal' Nixon or the 'very liberal' Humphrey.
1972 - Nixon won all the above Southern states with at least 65% of the total vote, largely because of the 'ultra liberal' McGovern on the Democratic ticket.
1976 - Carter won the working class white Southerners mostly because of two facts:
He was a fellow southerner; and
He was perceived as a moderately conservative fellow southerner. That changed in 1980, though, when only Georgia went for Carter, and that only because he was a native son of the state.
1992 - Even though Clinton was 'Bubba' and a fellow southerner, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina voted for Bush as he was the more 'conservative' candidate. Even Clinton's home state of Arkansas cast only 53.21% of its votes for the native son.
The move by the working class white Southerners was not to the GOOPers, but to the party that they saw as more 'conservative'.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Still waiting for that regression analysis of the times you take a crap as reported on your twitter account
Derrick Nijel Gibson:
I think a Mitch Gibson nomination swings Indiana, but not Iowa. Additionally, Bush II lost Iowa in 2000 and squeaked a win in 2004. I don't see Iowa in play unless the top of the ticket is actually an Iowan.
Mike in Maryland:
Thanks for the info on Daniels.
I hear you. I do think that the media market overlap did help Obama. However, on further thought, what else helped was putting actual effort into winning it by the Obama campaign.
It sounds like Mitch Daniels is conservative, but not necessarily crazy like some of the potential 2012 nominees like Sanford or Gingrich.
Todd Dugdale:
Your post at 2:36 was quite insightful. Particularly:
Their major ideological thrust has been that a <4% increase in the marginal tax rate of $250K+ incomes is turning America into Cuba overnight.
The only people that buy that are those that are already on their side to begin with.
The smart political strategies have disappeared from the Party. They are not only rudderless, but they seem to believe that rudders are the manifestation of Lucifer Himself and that they are better off without one.Thanks for a great post!
Eric- I think Schweitzer, because I don't know if Clinton is interested in running again. Kaine is a bit of a non-entity and I do not think head of the DNC is a great springboard for the nomination. He might make a good veep candidate for Schweitzer though.
Fred- I think Andrew was just pointing out that Republicans are not in the same position as the Dems were in 2000 and 2004 where they needed to flip a few states. He was just pointing out that having an electoral college strategy is rather silly when you just lost by over 8% nationally.
Loomis News- Pretty cranky post there buddy. :) The Twitter corner doesn't slow down my loading time, but for a while the Senate rankings were, though they are more useful than the twitter feed.
There is no way to get around looking at a Presidential election state by state. The prior trend data is an indicator but does not account for game changing events. The loss of the industrial base and auto production is a game changer as was the hands off the banking and most other industries.
The population shifts and increase of women and hispanics are not reflected in prior data, nor the negative numbers to the GOP in General.
Looking at the historic margins between R and D state by state is an essential tool. The trend data is clear and coming up with a scenario that suggests that the GOP can win it all in the near future not a viable prediction looking at the data.
Why do so many people think Schweitzer will get the nomination in 2016?
Hes far too conservative to win a democratic primary. For example he's more pro-guns than many republicans.
Plus he's from Montana....its only got three electoral votes anyways. He's nothing to get excited about folks...
Hillary would be pretty old come 2016. My guess is that another Dem woman might have a shot at 2016 though, maybe Senator Klobuchar or Senator McCaskill as two names that come to mind. Maybe a governor who gets elected next year might be a good bet. I think Schweitzer's moment may have gone before 2016, so I wouldn't put money on him. Truth is I don't think the Democratic Party really has a front runner for the post Obama era just yet. Might be interesting if Biden decided to step down after a term as VP (not something personally I would put my house on!)But that would be Obama's best chance to nominate his own successor.
The one thing that the Democratic Party needs to be careful about is making sure that someone or a collection of people get enough prestige and attention so that there isn't a massive void post Obama.
The bottom line it is difficult to see how the GOP can run the table and win back anything in the near future. The lack of leadership has the party fractured and now the premise is how it can win by giving up on one of the fastest growing demographic groups in America.
Nate, the question is not how can the Republicans win without Hispanics, its how can it win without Hispanics, women, people of color and younger voters?
In terms of Hillary, she will be older but cannot be counted out. The Democratic bench is larger, more diverse and inclusive and the old tag line of liberal Democrat is much less of a negative than the Republican brand name.
The 2012 election will begin in earnest in the next 18 months and it is difficult to see how the Republicans can overcome their national PR problem as long as Cheney, Rove, Newt, Rush and Palin are their poster children.
Plus he's from Montana....its only got three electoral votes anyways. He's nothing to get excited about folks...
Yeah because Clinton came from such a large and "important" state.
I don't think the Democratic Party really has a front runner for the post Obama era just yet.
There doesn't need to be one. If Obama loses in 2012 then 2016 is still the target for Dems.
Look at the 1976 election. Was Reagan really considered the front runner in 1977? Was Clinton considered the front runner in 1988(he didn't even run) or was even widely known outside Arkansas? It wasn't until December 2007 that Obama was really considered a threat to Clinton.
Anyone who is a front runner now for the republican nomination for 2012 has no real chance.
Whomever is the 2016 Dem nominee is likely someone not widely know today or is not considered presidential material right now.
Beavis,
I don't disagree that the Democratic Party doesn't need a front runner, I was simply pointing out that there isn't one yet, and that the party as a whole does at some point (not soon mind) need to think about that, so that it doesn't get to January 2016 without some idea of who it wants to be the nominee.
But Ronald Reagan was THE frontrunner for the 1980 GOP nomination after the 1976 GOP nominating convention. Having stepped aside relatively graciously in the end for Gerald Ford, he had an awful lot of sympathy within the party, to the extent that the GOP field in 1980 was Ronlad Reagan and a collection of stop Ronald Reagan candidates.
Bill Clinton's example is a better one. Having bombed as a keynote at the 1988 DNC, I don't think many people would have tagged him as the 'front runner' but he fitted the biography that a lot of Democrats were interested in- A moderate Southern Democrat, youngish, with proven popular appeal. That and an assist from Al Gore not wanting to run through 1991 and 1992 after Al jr had been involved in an auto crash (am I getting the detail there right?) made Clinton the favourite coming into 1992, against a very thin Democratic field.
It is fair to say that George W Bush wouldn't have been a front runner for the GOP nomination of 2000 in 1992, or that Obama wasn't even on the radar in 2000 for the Democrats. 2016 is a long way away, and typically Presidential candidates make there reputation during the Presidency of the guy they want to replace. The tough thing for a Democratic hopeful in the lead up to 2016 is how to make a name for yourself whilst your party is in the White House. Which is one reason why the White House tends to swap parties reasonably frequently, on an 8 year cycle.
The tough thing for a Democratic hopeful in the lead up to 2016 is how to make a name for yourself whilst your party is in the White House. Which is one reason why the White House tends to swap parties reasonably frequently, on an 8 year cycle.
Which is why Biden should gracefully step aside in 2012 for a possible heir apparent.
I am undecided about whether or not Biden being replaced would be a good thing. Do you really want to relegate a bring young thing to the obscurity of the Vice Presidency? They could be doing more productive work in the Senate or a Governors Mansion? Also they don't then become a lightning conductor for whatever dissatisfaction the party might have with the Obama administration by then.
That and the fact that Biden is enormously likeable. I think for all his gaffes he in the end is a positive for the Obama administration, and was so for the campaign. Also it might dupe the GOP into picking another young but very not ready VP candidate in 2012, by assuming the way to combate Biden's age would be with a young candidate.
But I do see the logic of Obama pointing to someone and saying 'thats my successor.' So I am really not quite convinced in either direction, I don;t think the positives are enough to say do it for sure, but I think there is a case for saying that its worth doing.
The Democrats have 6 1/2 years to have a leader emerge and there quite a number of possible candidates.
The Republicans have 1 1/2 years to find someone who can win a National election in a party that is splintered, with a narrowing appeal.
If President Obama's popularity numbers stay in a decent range the VP hardly matters.
The GOP has the more immediate problem to include the likely loss of 2 more seats in the Senate and a huge hill to climb in the house that could get bigger.
Perhaps Jeb Bush could run in 2016 which would help in Florida and Texas.
On 2016... I find a bit disconcerting the talk that the party needs to chose a frontrunner or heir apparent, and not only because of how far away it is. The idea of party elites choosing a successor is a bit skin-crawling to me. Forgive me for stating the obvious but the entire idea is that the voters decide their nominee in the primary. The last 3 Democratic nominees who won the presidency did not begin the primary process as the front runner.
That said, I think, Hillary will be the frontrunner if Obama is popular as he completes a 2nd term. In the last 50 years, 4 presidents completed a 2nd term, W the only one who did so unpopular. The other 3 (Ike, Reagan and Clinton) were all succeeded as the nominee of their party by their VPs. Of those VPs, Bush Sr won and Nixon and Gore came very close. So, depending on issues are central then, it seems a high-ranking member of the departing administration is well-positioned to be seen as the torchbearer of a direction many want to continue in. That would bode well for Biden more than a (by then, former) Secretary of State were that Secretary of State not 5 years younger than he would be at 73, have a massive fundraising and campaign organization waiting for her, be one of the most famous people in the world and the icon for a women's movement that will maybe be more impatient after the combination of such a narrow miss in 2008, and witnessing another barrier's historic fall the same year. Depending on issues, she might get upset by someone like Schweitzer as she did by Obama, but if she were interested (probably a good bet), she's a good bet to be the nominee.
Of course, the PUMAs continue to scream about Obama and Hillary may suffer the consequences, particularly among African-American voters if they don't, well, shut up.
Also, I'd be very, very, surprised if Biden were not the VP nominee in 2012. Not like Obama to make that kind of change.
If PUMAs don't shut up I mean. They are insufferable.
A different way to think about "realignment" elections is in terms of regional power, particularly in terms of which regions the winning Presidential candidates come from. If we divide the country into the Union, the Confederacy, the Territories, and Pacifica based roughly on 1861 lines, there have been three periods:
1) From the Founding up to the Compromise of 1850, the Confederacy dominated: 9 out of 12 Presidents. Measured by time, the Southern lock was more extreme, 50 out of the 62 years, since all the Northern Presidents were one-termers: Adams Sr. repudiated in the party-aligning 1800 election, which was also a repudiation of dominance by the Yankee financial and proto-industrial interests in favor of agrarian populism; Adams Jr. sneaking in during the 1824 oddity of an election, with no real chance at re-election; Van Buren badly mishandling the South on the Texas issue.
Viewed from this perspective, the 1860 election did not enrage the South simply because a President was elected with zero support from them (Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in most of the states that seceded), but because their former stranglehold on power had already eroded a decade earlier, and the 1860 result only confirmed that this trend was accelerating.
2) From then until the JFK assassination, the Union ruled for most of 113 years: Wilson should be considered an exception, since although he came to national prominence in New Jersey, he was originally from Virginia and retained a very Southern outlook all his life; but Truman was from the Union not the Confederate part of Missouri; and while Eisenhower was born in Texas, he spent much of his life in Kansas and should really be counted as our only President from the Territories (william Jennings Bryan, George McGovern, and Bob Dole are other candidates from there; obviously it is the most difficult region to win from).
Throughout this whole time, basically: the South was Poison. JFK's choice of LBJ as a running mate was however a gesture to the region, a sign that its influence was coming back.
3) Since then, until last November, the Presidency was shared between the Confederacy and Pacifica: Gerald Ford was an accidental exception (and Bush Sr. still had a lot of Yankee in him despite his attempts to act Texan). The Republicans' Southern strategy forced the Democrats to pick a lot of Southern candidates as well: Yankee candidates like Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry fared embarrassingly badly.
And we should note that the Pacific winners (Nixon, Reagan) were not from the California of "San Francisco hippies" that looms so large in stereotype, but from the California of Orange County and the interior agricultural lands. Thus, while Obama could be said to be from Pacifica because of his Hawaiian birth, he is not at all in this tradition; better, in view of his Columbia/Harvard/Chicago career, he should be called the first Union candidate to be elected since JFK (Ford wasn't elected!)
The big picture here: the South has a very distinctive cultural and political outlook. A major question in American politics has always been: to what extent can the South win some support, from the more southerly parts of the North, or more recently from conservative parts of the West who share an aversion to the Northern establishment? Right now, the attitudes of the South look to be Poison again in enough of the rest of the country to lock such politicians away from the levers of national power. If this continues long term, then Obama's election was a realignment on the scale of the troubled decade leading up to the Civil War: let us hope that this time the Southerners don't get so crazy-angry as to tear the country in half.
I am a student of political history as well. The changes in the country have been in some cases slow but profound. Technology particularly in the information age has enlightened many providing factual information across boarders where in the past the news was regionally based and to some extent biased.
The record of Politicians from the far reaches of the country can be quickly researched and their record or lack their of can be presented to the electorate. Look how quickly Sarah Palin resume was published. The ability of an unknown to emerge to political prominence is now highly unlikely. The Republicans brilliantly painted the media as liberal while creating their own juggernaut in talk radio and then with Fox, that in combination with the evangelical movement secured the south and west.
The demographics of the south have changed the dynamics with the loss of jobs in the textile and furniture-manufacturing sector and scandals that tarnished conservatives. The increasing number of non-white male voters has changed the complexion of the South and deteriorating economic climate is a problem for the GOP.
Texas was a historically a Democratic State and absent a favorite son and the increasing number of Hispanics Texas is postured to change from the Republican column. The Republicans were able to paint Gore and Kerry as liberal Democrats soft on the Military and big on social programs. The past 8 years most of which with Republican control of all 3 branches of government have tarnished the GOP to the point where the fear of a so-called liberal Democrat has all but been erased.
I would not be surprised if Georgia were to turn Democratic in 2012 and thought that possible in 2008
I have written off the GOP for 2012 as an impossible task. While the economy will still be weak, the GOP (Cheney, Rove, Rush) has been doing real damage to the image of the Party and those wounds will not heal quickly.
2016 will largely depend on how President Obama and the Democrats comport themselves. It is far too early to tell who the players will be but the Democratic bench appears more solid and diverse than the Republican. The once solid Republican South is less so today and in the future.
ON the recent realignment from Democratic majority to GOP parity (I wouldn't go as far as majority), a lot of that had to do with an historic realignment in the South. The Southern Economy and culture tends to make it socially conservative but economically more interventionist. The GOP were quite cunning in downplaying the economic conservatism since the 60s in deference to social conservatism. Social Conservatism particularly came to a form through civil rights, to start off with, and spread as a reaction to the liberalism of the 60s. The GOP saw that by locking up the south with this formula it could also make gains in other areas as well. (The west principally).
The Democrats have no played down their socially liberal policies and therefore have begun to make inroads, first in the West, but slowly in the south, especially in states where there is a higher African American population. The problem the GOP has is that years and years of bashing social issues, that the Northern cities are quite happy with the status quo, many many Northern states are turning away from the national Republican Party. The issue for the GOP then is how to regain a foothold in the north, without losing a grip of the South.
I would be interested to see the Demographic polling data for the Southern States over time.
While we believe that hispanics, non-whites, and women are of increasing importance, what does the data reveal over time?
I am curious if the data shows who influenced the vote and if there is a real trend.
I am not at all persuaded that the Republicans CAN regain any foothold in the north, without giving up its grip on the south. The southern cultural attitudes have become repellent to too many people outside the south, and this is too publicly salient to be papered over.
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