The Next Supreme Court Justice

My quick take on the Souter replacement is that, with 59 Democratic senators and high popularity, Obama could nominate Pee Wee Herman to the Supreme Court and get him confirmed. But I'm no expert on this. The experts are my colleagues down the hall, John Kastellec, Jeff Lax, and Justin Phillips, who wrote this article on public opinion and senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominees. They find:

Greater public support strongly increases the probability that a senator will vote to approve a nominee, even after controlling for standard predictors of roll call voting. We also find that the impact of opinion varies with context: it has a greater effect on opposition party senators, on ideologically opposed senators, and for generally weak nominees.

More discussion, and some pretty graphs, below.

Kastellec, Lax, and Phillips use the method of multilevel regression and poststratification (Mister P, as we call it) to estimate public opinion by state, which is important for their goal of connecting state opinion to Senators' votes. Here is some of what they find:

Opinion about some of the justices varied a lot by state; see here:

And here are their graphs showing the connection between state opinion and senators' votes:

As they discuss in the article and show with a regression analysis, the correlation between state opinion and senators' votes remains, even after adjusting for senators' liberal/conservativeness. You can read the full article for more details.

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Elevated Risk of Tweets

People assume that because I'm a numbers geek, I'm also a technology and/or social networking geek. But that's not really the case. There are a lot of different types of geeks!

I've been particularly reluctant to get into the whole Twitter thing, mainly because I don't see how I can use it without either (i) creating more work for myself, or (ii) become too tempted to substitute 140-character snap judgments for detailed and thoughtful analysis of the sort this website is known for.

With that said, there are times when Twitter can be useful. We used it during the Democratic Convention in Denver when finding a stable Internet connection was more difficult than finding a Fred Thompson for President bumper sticker, and I'm going to be using it a bit more going-forward when I'm traveling or "on site" somewhere -- as I will be tonight at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

At times when I expect to be Twittering ... er ... tweeting ... you'll see an update box in the top right-hand corner of the page. At times when I don't expect to be tweeting -- which is the majority of the time -- the Twitter box will be given Baltic-and-Mediterranean type placement on the page or may be entirely absent. You can also follow our twitter feed at any time by clicking here.

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Bush May Haunt Republicans for Generations

Gallup has some fascinating data out, based on more than 120,000 interviews they've completed over the past four months, on the way that partisan identification breaks down by age:



Democrats, somewhat unsurprisingly, have the largest partisan ID advantage among Gen Y'ers, followed by among Baby Boomers. Republicans do relatively well (although are still at a net disadvantage) among Generation X'ers.

What's interesting, though, is what happens when we look at not these abstract generational categories, but rather at the following question: who was President when you turned 18? As annotated in the chart below, the popularity -- or lack thereof -- of the President when the voter turned 18 would seem to have a lot of explanatory power for how their politics turned out later on:

Partisan ID Gap, Based on Identity of President When Voter Turned 18


It's become common knowledge that the younger generation is highly predisposed toward Democrats. (Actually, that's not quite right -- they're more predisposed against Republicans than they are toward Democrats -- but the net effects on their voting behavior are probably about the same.) What's more remarkable, though, is how sharp the increase in the partisan ID gap becomes at about age 25. People aged 26-34 are pretty Democratic, put people aged 18-25 are really Democratic.

The former group came of age in the Clinton Era. Clinton, in the public's mind, is usually regarded as an average-to-slightly-above-average President, and the voters who came of age during his Presidency are associated with an average-to-slightly-above degree of Democratic affiliation.

The 18-25 year olds, however, came of age in the George W. Bush Era. And Bush, at least the vast majority of us think, was not a good President. In fact, most of us would say, he was a really awful President. And the people who turned 18 during his tenure are associated with extremely low levels of Republican identification.

The reason this is a real worry for the Republicans is because you can still see the echo of past Presidencies on the partisan ID trends today. Popular presidents are associated with above-average levels of party support among the generation that came of age during their time in office, whereas unpopular Presidents are associated with below-average ones. Moving backward in time:

George H.W. Bush, a roughly average President who was generally quite popular until roughly the last 12 months of his tenure, is associated with a slightly above-average amount of Republican support.

Reagan, a highly successful President who was popular throughout most of his term and may be even more popular today, is associated with a considerably above-average amount of Republican support.

Carter, a mediocre-to-average President, is associated with slightly below-average levels of Democratic support.

Ford, a mediocre-to-average President, is associated with average or slightly below-average levels of Republican support.

Nixon, who was reasonably popular before the Watergate Scandal broke but who is generally regarded as a very poor President today, is associated with below-average levels of Republican support.

Johnson, whose complicated time in office is generally regarded today as having been an above-average Presidency, is associated with generally above-average levels of Democratic support.

Kennedy, who was very popular throughout his brief tenure in the White House, is associated with above-average levels of Democratic support. (You can almost see the spike in popularity among 64- and 65- year olds, who would have been about 17 when Kennedy took office.)

Eisenhower, a popular and effective Republican president, is associated with significantly above-average levels of Republican support.

Finally, we get to Truman and Roosevelt, where things seem to break down a bit. Truman is regarded quite favorably by historians today but was unpopular for much of his tenure; he is associated with average-to-slightly-below levels of Democratic support. The numbers then bounce around a bit for FDR, perhaps because there aren't all that many people in their mid-80s and so the sample sizes are small.

In general, however, this points toward the idea that partisan identification -- while not exactly being "hard-wired" -- can be quite persistent as the voter moves through her lifecourse. Voters who came of age during the eight years of the Bush Presidency are roughly eight points more Democratic than the rest of the country; that advantage could be worth an extra point or two to Democrats throughout the next half-century.

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Hooray! The Second Derivative of the Unemployment Rate Improved!

A lot of people are excited today not because the unemployment rate is low (it's very high -- 8.9 percent), nor because the economy is adding jobs (it lost another 539,000 last month, according to statistics just released by the BLS), but merely because it's losing jobs less quickly. That is, the second derivative of the employment rate -- the change in the rate of change -- has improved. This is what the situation looks like:



The economy started losing jobs in January, 2008 and has continued to lose them ever since. The peak month for job losses -- so far -- was January 2009, in which 741,000 jobs were lost. The month at which the second derivative bottomed out -- the time when the rate of job losses was increasing the fastest -- came in November.

The $787 billion question, of course, is whether a decrease in the rate of job losses indeed portends a recovery, or whether such data is subject to false starts. Let's take a somewhat high-level view of the progress of the employment situation over the previous five recessions.

First, the recession of 1973-1975. The red bars indicate, by the way, when we were "officially" in a recession, according to the NBER:



This was, at first, a "jobless recession", the primary concern instead being the extremely high inflation rates triggered by (among other things) the oil crisis. The economy, however, began shedding jobs with a vengence in November 1974, with job losses peaking at 602,000 in December 1974 -- a rate that would be equivalent to about 1 million job losses given today's population. By January, 1975, however, it already looked like the worst was over, with job losses decreasing to 360,000, and indeed the economy had officially pulled out the recession by April and was adding jobs again shortly thereafter. Here, then, improvement in the second derivative does appear to have had some predictive powers. Next up, the recession of 1980:



This was a short-lived and relatively orderly recession; an improvement in the second derivative in June 1980 was followed by the end of the recession two months later. It was, however, followed not long afterward by a much worse recession...



Ah, the good ol' recession of 1981-82, the one to which the present one is most frequently compared. And note the presence of not one, not two, but three false starts. In February 1982, job losses slowed all the way down to just 6,000 jobs, but things got worse -- not better -- in March and April. Then in May, job losses slowed to 45,000, before accelerating again throughout the summer. Finally in August, job losses slowed from 343,000 to 158,000 before increasing again in September and October. This is the sort of example that should make us very cautious.

Next, the early 1990s recession:



There is arguably a false start here in September 1990, when job losses slowed from 208,000 to 82,000, although the recession had barely even begun then. The job-loss situation also appeared to be getting a bit better in December, 1990, but the peak month for job losses in fact wouldn't come until two months later in February.

Finally, the recession of 2001:



We have to include a lot of data here because employment didn't bottom out until June 2003 -- some 19 months after the recession had officially ended! Although the main period of job losses, from the summer of 2001 through the spring in 2002, proceeded in a relatively orderly fashion, there were still places where we could have been deceived. For instance, the economy began adding jobs in June 2002, but then lost them again for the next three consecutive months; a similar story took place in January 2003.

In sum, employment rate data is fairly stochastic, and if there is ample reason for optimism (and I believe there is), there is also ample reason for skepticism.

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Why Didn't Ridge Run?

I was a bit surprised by Tom Ridge's decision today not to run for the United States Senate today, and I think it's worth pausing for a moment to consider why he didn't.

Ridge has been, in his accomplished political career, a six-term Congressman, a two-term Governor, and a Cabinet member. About the only offices left for him to run for were the Senate and the Presidency. If Ridge was going to run for the Senate, it was going to be hard to find a better opportunity than this one, with Arlen Specter taking heat from all sides and polls showing Ridge and Specter in a toss-up. Pennsylvania's other Senator, Bob Casey, who is up for re-election in 2012, has considerably better approval/disapproval numbers than Specter and would presumably make for a much tougher target.

So Ridge, evidently, wasn't that compelled by the Senate on its own merits. But if you scratch Senate off the list, that leaves one of two possibilities: either Ridge is interested in being on a Presidential ticket, as he nearly was in 2008, or he is fed up with politics and happy enough to stay out of them entirely.

If the latter theory holds -- if Ridge is simply sick and tired of the whole business after a long career -- then we have an explanation which is both necessary and sufficient to explain his decision and we do not have much more analysis to do. But if Ridge is entertaining some possibility of being on a Presidential ticket, the decision becomes more interesting. Conventional wisdom would hold, after all, that one would want to run for lower office as a springboard to higher office. Moreover, no Senate race will receive more media exposure than Pennsylvania's in 2010 -- by declining to run, Ridge is turning down potentially tens of millions of dollars worth of earned media.

The problem, however, is that little matter of the Republican primary against conservative ex-U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey. It's unclear how likely Ridge would have been to defeat Toomey -- a Research 2000 / Daily Kos poll put Ridge 8 points behind, whereas a somewhat dubious-looking poll by Public Opinion Strategies -- commissioned by an RNC member who might have had an interest in persuading Ridge to run -- put him between 31 and 37 points ahead, depending on the presence of a third candidate, Peg Luksik.

But in either event Ridge, especially given that he is pro-choice, was going to have to find some way to placate the religious right and Pennsylvania's otherwise extremely conservative Republican primary electorate to defeat Toomey. And Ridge, as he told Michael Smerconish, evidently did not want to do that -- he did not want to have to pass a conservative "litmus test", to undergo the ideological gyrations that might be required to beat someone like Toomey. Perhaps this was simply a personal decision. But perhaps also, as Chris Cillizza suggests, Ridge thought the smarter bet was with the camp of the "establishment conservatives", who are urging more moderation and less attention to social issues, and less so with the "movement conservatives", who are calling for just the opposite. One also wonders whether Ridge's decision was influenced by the experience of his friend, John McCain, who bypassed him to pick a Vice Presidential candidate who would placate the base and -- after a few weeks in the sun for Sarah Palin -- wound up paying the price on November 4th.

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It Ain't Easy Being a Governor

In Tuesday's post on Tim Pawlenty, whose approval ratings have declined significantly over the last six months, I mentioned that it has been "a rough time for governors in general". This is true -- but I didn't realize quite how rough the times have been.

SurveyUSA regularly tracks gubernatorial approval in about a dozen states. The chart below provides each governor's approval ratings as of late last month as compared to six months earlier (late October, 2008) and one year earlier (late April, 2008).



From among the 12 data points that are common to all three surveys -- these are Bob Riley of Alabama, Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Chet Culver of Iowa, Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, Steve Beshear of Kentucky, Pawlenty, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, David Paterson of New York, Ted Kulongoski or Oregon, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Christine Gregoire of Washington, and Jim Doyle of Wisconsin -- the average approval rating has dropped from 50 percent a year ago and 54 percent six months ago to just 41 percent currently. All of these governors but Beshear have a lower approval score than they did a year earlier (although Jay Nixon of Missouri, who was elected in November, is doing significantly better than predecessor Matt Blunt).

Certainly, a number of these governors have had extraneous circumstances which may be negatively impacting their their ratings. David Paterson lost New Yorkers with his confused handling of naming a replacement for Hillary Clinton. Sebelius -- not without controversy -- just became a member of Obama's cabinet. Richardson was supposed to have been too, but flunked his vetting process. Kaine -- while not giving up his day job -- has become head of the DNC. Pawlenty has had the Franken affair to deal with (although, certainly, with this extra bit of context, it is much harder to attribute the decline in his approval to his handling of the recount).

Still, the decline appears to be widespread enough that excuses like this just won't cut it -- America is unhappy with their governors. And why shouldn't they be, when nearly every state has a budget deficit, and governors -- unable to raise revenue as the Federal Government does through deficit spending -- are faced with the Hobson's choice of either having to raise taxes or cut essential services during a recession?

With Democrats controlling 28 of 50 statehouses, Republicans would seem to be in a good position to gain back ground in 2010. Many states, besides, even under better times, have a tendency to alternate the party they like seeing elected to the governor's mansion.

On the other hand, of the 22 Republican governors, at least seven (Sarah Palin of Alaska, Charlie Crist of Florida, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Mark Sanford of South Carolina and John Hunstman Jr. of Utah) are considered serious contenders for a Presidential bid in 2012 or beyond. From that list, Palin, Crist and Palwenty are up for re-election in 2010. Although Palin and Crist began with extremely high approval ratings and probably stand to be re-elected in any event, it is not surprising that both have considered bolting for the Senate. Nor is it surprising that Sanford, who publicly engaged in a war of brinksmanship with his state legislature over his proposed rejection of some $700 million in federal stimulus monies, is not up for re-election, thereby giving him the freedom to posture before a national audience.

Here's one prediction: at least one serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2012 will be someone newly elected to his or her state's governorship in 2010. Assuming that the economy has begun to turn around by that point, that person stands to get credit for a recovery that they had little to do with -- they will be able to cut taxes or to restore services, and will inevitably be hailed as a genius for having turned a billion-dollar deficit into a surplus. But for gubernatorial incumbents, for whom the opposite dynamics hold, it may be rough sledding ahead.

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Sestak-Type Intraparty Challenges are Rare, But Not Without Precedent

It's somewhat rare for incumbent Senators to face credible primary challenges, and rarer still for them to face challenges from a sitting member of Congress, as Joe Sestak is considering doing against Arlen Specter and Carolyn Maloney is considering doing against Kirsten Gillibrand. However, these challenges are not entirely without precedent. Since 1994, a sitting member of the House of Representatives has challenged an incumbent Senator from his own party on four occasions; two of the four challenges were successful. Although this is a very limited sample size, this is a better record than sitting members of the House have compiled in challenging an incumbent from the other party; such cross-party challenges have been successful (meaning that the challenger won both the primary and general election) on just 7 of 25 (28 percent) occasions since 1994.

The four intraparty challenges were as follows:

In 1996, Sam Brownback, then the representative from Kansas' 2nd Congressional District, challenged Shelia Frahm, who had been appointed to the Senate by governor Bill Graves to fill the seat vacated by Bob Dole (who had quit the Senate to demonstrate his commitment to his Presidential campaign). Brownback defeated Frahm in the primary and won the general election.

In 2002, NH-1's John E. Sununu defeated incumbent Robert Smith to win the Republican primary, before going on to defeat Jeanne Shaheen in the general election. (Shaheen, as you know, would defeat Sununu in a rematch six years later). Smith, however, was a somewhat unorthodox Republican, having briefly left the Republican party to seek the presidential nomination of the U.S. Tax Party (now the Constitution Party) and then becoming an independent before returning to the Republican caucus.

In 2004, conservative U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey, then of Pennsylvania's 15th Congressional District, challenged Arlen Specter for the Republican nomination and nearly defeated him, losing by only 17,146 votes. Toomey's desire for a rematch, of course, is what prompted Arlen Specter's defection from the Republican Party.

Lastly, in 2006, Ed Case, the Representative from Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District, challenged longtime Democratic incumbent Daniel Akaka. Akaka defeated Case 54-45 and went on, as expected, to win the general election, beating Republican Cynthia Thielen.

The motivation for the challenge was different in each instance. Case, although clearly to Akaka's right, was running principally on generational themes, arguing that the 82-year old Akaka was a liability to Democrats if he were to die or retire from office, with his replacement to be named by Republican governor Linda Lingle. Frahm, being an appointed Senator rather than a true incumbent, was inherently somewhat vulnerable. But there was little ideological daylight between she and Brownback; Frahm's DW-NOMINATE score, in her brief tenure in the Senate, was a rather conservative +.523, and Brownback's in his first term was a nearly identical +.503.

The case of Sununu and Bob Smith bears some parallels with the situation that Arlen Specter now finds himself in. Smith had an orthodox but generally very conservative voting record. But Republicans, as the New York Times reported, were still furious with Smith for having temporarily left the party to run for President as an independent and were glad do see him go; many sitting Republican Senators in fact endorsed Sununu.

Finally, there is the case of Toomey, who was far to Specter's right and challenged him almost purely along ideological grounds.

If there's a lesson here, it's that such challenges are not undertaken frivolously. Brownback and Sununu, certainly, had good reason to think they would win, challenging a pseudo-incumbent and an incumbent who had made too many enemies within his own party, respectively. Toomey somewhat self-evidently had good reason to think his challenge might succeed. Only Case's instincts, in retrospect, were a little bit questionable, although even he came within single digits.

Sestak and Maloney are also likely to undertake their challenges only if they determine they have a good chance of success. The situation is so dynamic in Pennsylvania that it is probably too early to make an honest assessment of Sestak's prospects, but Maloney is already within 5 points of Gillibrand in a hypothetical matchup.

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Is America Still a Car Culture?

My new column at Esquire, which might represent the first time that a regression analysis has been seen in that magazine's pages, argues that the somewhat surprising decline in driving mileage is likely to reverse itself as there has generally been a significant lag in the way that Americans respond to changes in gas prices:

There is strong statistical evidence, in fact, that Americans respond rather slowly to changes in fuel prices. The cost of gas twelve months ago, for example, has historically been a much better predictor of driving behavior than the cost of gas today. In the energy crisis of the early 1980s, for instance, the price of gas peaked in March 1981, but driving did not bottom out until a year later.

Thus, the continued decrease in driving today reflects, in part, a delayed reaction to hundred-dollar-a-barrel oil. Maybe our commuter finally did get fed up and move his family to the city, but it took him until now to do so. The real test will come as the summer unfolds and Americans have had time to get "used to" lower gas prices.

Ford's stock, incidentally, is up about 7 percent today and more than 150 percent since the start of the year. Nevertheless, there are some signs that we are becoming a less car-dependent nation:

Between October 2004, when gas prices first hit two dollars a gallon, and December 2008, when they fell below this threshold, three cities with among the largest declines in housing prices were Las Vegas (-37 percent), Detroit (-34 percent), and Phoenix (-15 percent), each highly car-dependent cities. Conversely, the two markets with the largest gains in housing prices were Portland, Oregon (+19 percent), and Seattle (+18 percent), communities that are more friendly to alternate modes of transportation.

The rest of the column is available here.

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How to Get Elected to Congress With 11,956 Votes

Note: We are proud to bring you this article from Joshua Grossman, the founder of the outstanding website ProgressivePunch.org and a social entrepreneur with a background in a wide variety of endeavors such as co-founding North America's largest environmentally-friendly paper company, New Leaf Paper. Joshua has closely tracked politics in all 435 Congressional Districts across the United States since he was 13 years old when he memorized all the names of the members of Congress as well as their voting records and the political demography of their districts. Joshua will be a periodic contributor to FiveThirtyEight.com. Disclosure: Joshua is acquaintances with Parke Skelton, Judy Chu's campaign manager.

On May 19th there will be a special election in California’s 32nd District to replace Hilda Solis, who has become Barack Obama’s Secretary of Labor. Special Congressional elections are low turn-out affairs in general. That’s especially the case in low turn-out districts such as this one. The 32nd is one of many predominantly minority (Latino and/or African American and/or Asian) Congressional Districts in Los Angeles County, where winning the Democratic Party nomination is tantamount to winning the general election.

The Landscape: In special elections California has a “jungle” primary, where all candidates run against each other on the same ballot, regardless of party. If a candidate receives 50 percent + 1 vote then he/she becomes the new member of Congress from that district. If no one achieves a majority, then there is a run-off election. The run-off is NOT necessarily between the top two vote getters. In fact, in these heavily one-party districts, these run-offs are almost never between the top two vote getters. That’s because the top two vote getters, and often the top three or four, are Democrats. Run-offs in California special elections – if they’re needed – are held between the top vote getter from each party in the original jungle primary.

We have at least one recent precedent to get a better sense for what the results might look like. In the nearby 37th Congressional District there was a special election and run-off in June and August of 2007. Of the 265,000 registered voters in the 37th, 32,700 voted in the primary. A Democrat, Laura Richardson, won the hotly-contested primary with the grand total of 11,956 votes. The vast majority of the rest of the votes cast also went to Democrats. Turn-out actually declined further in the general election (held since Richardson won under 50 percent of the total vote in the primary) but Richardson won easily with a whopping total of 9,960 votes. Richardson has since distinguished herself in Congress largely by having defaulted on more home loans (eight) than any other member of Congress, perhaps giving her unique insight on America’s mortgage crisis.

Unions are often critical in these very low turn-out elections. They absolutely can be the determining factor as they were in Richardson’s win in the 37th, where they were angered with her principal opponent Jenny Oropeza. Oropeza had a very strong pro-labor voting record but had voted for some California state compacts with Indian tribes that possibly would have enabled Indians to keep unions out of Indian reservation casinos.

This election should see a higher turn-out – although still very low -- because several California budget ballot Propositions will also be voted on. Everyone’s confused by the propositions and grouchy with both Gov. Schwarzenegger and the legislature and the propositions are losing badly. On the other hand, Solis’ 32nd CD has even fewer registered voters than the 37th.

The Candidates: There are a lot of candidates running in the jungle primary, but by far the two most well known are member of State Board of Equalization/former Assemblywoman Judy Chu and State Senator Gil Cedillo. They’re really the only candidates with the name recognition and money to have a realistic chance of winning the election. Of course, they’re both Democrats.

The race is shaping up to be an interesting choice between geography and ethnicity. Chu is a decades-long office holder in the district going back to her days as Monterey Park City Council member. Cedillo actually doesn’t represent any significant part of this district at all in the state Senate. That’s the case even though state Senate districts in California are gigantic: there are only 40 state Senators from CA and there are 53 members of the US House, and so Cedillo represents more people in his current job than he would if he were elected to Congress. But California has term limits, and Cedillo is hungry for a new job. So why does Cedillo think he can win? Over 60 percent of the population of the district is Latino, while only 18 percent is Asian. Cedillo hopes that people will vote ethnicity and not for someone who has actually already represented them.

In the ultra-expensive Los Angeles media market – in which this district is entirely contained – the old-fashioned technology of mailers is critical. The LA Times lays this out. The core impact of a mailer, unless you can come up with a scandal, is in the endorsements listed. Many important Latino office holders in the district have endorsed Chu, as has Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and most local unions. On the other side Cedillo also has his share of elected official endorsements including Gloria Molina, the Los Angeles County Supervisor.

[Molina was once spotted purchasing bloomers by a Latina artist friend of mine in Los Angeles. The bloomers were so large and colorful that my friend had wanted them for a Christo-like art installation wrapping around the museum she works for in LA. Somehow she thought that if she approached Molina for an underwear tug-of-war after Molina grabbed them and explained why she wanted the bloomers, her organization’s appropriation for public art might have been slashed substantially.]

There’s no evidence to prove that Cedillo’s people are behind this, but there’s a very suspicious candidacy by someone named BETTY Chu. Betty is a cousin, albeit not a first cousin, by marriage of Judy Chu – and a Republican. Betty’s spending no money and has no chance to win. But she’s a current Monterey Park City Councilor and any votes cast for her likely come straight from Judy Chu’s total.

Judy Chu’s campaign was handed gift-wrapped a recent article in the LA Times outlining in full detail how Cedillo spent $185,000 on food, travel, lavish hotels, etc. on himself & various cronies. See what fun it is to spend your campaign contributions on the high life. There doesn’t seem to have been anything illegal since all the spending came from campaign funds, but one Chu campaign mailer pretty much reprints the LA Times article and lets voters form their own conclusions.

Cedillo has fought back hard with mailers attacking Chu’s record on the State Board of Equalization of issuing tax refunds to corporations that had contributed to her campaigns. The fact that the refunds were routine and that the headlines from newspapers used to illustrate the mailers were taken completely out of context from other articles is almost de rigeur in these types of campaigns.

Cedillo has made a bit of a name for himself in the California State Legislature as the leading advocate of allowing driver’s licenses for California’s vast population of undocumented workers but has overall a more pro-corporate voting record than Chu who has vowed to join the Progressive Caucus if elected and has been endorsed by the California League of Conservation Voters.

Predictions: If the unions do more than endorse and actively flex their turn-out muscle on behalf of Judy Chu the way they did last year for Laura Richardson, she'll be the next member of Congress from California's 32nd district. If the unions yawn, Cedillo could squeak it out. And the next Chu family reunion should be an interesting one.

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Is T-Paw Taking One for the Team?

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has thus far refused to sign an election certificate which would verify Al Franken as the winner of that state's Senate contest last November. For the time being, Pawlenty remains on reasonably firm ground, with Norm Coleman having appealed an election panel's ruling that declared Franken the winner to the state Supreme Court, a process which will take until at least June to resolve. With Republicans, however, seemingly being increasingly inclined to wait out a Coleman appeal not just to the state Supreme Court, but also to the U.S. Supreme Court, Pawlenty may face conflicts between what's best for the Republicans, and what's best for his own political future.

Arguably, in fact, the Franken affair is already impairing Pawlenty's political fortunes. According to polling from SurveyUSA, Pawlenty's popularity has suffered significantly since the November election, and he now has a net-negative approval rating, with 50 percent of Minnesotans disapproving of his performance and 46 percent approving. The Star Tribune has also found Pawlenty's approval to have declined to 48 percent -- against 36 percent disapproving -- the lowest figure it has tested, while polling from Public Policy Polling last month found just 46 percent approving of Pawlenty's performance (against 40 percent disapproval) and that some three-fifths of Minnesotans think he should certify Franken.



It is hard to know whether the decline in Pawlenty's approval is owing to the results of the Senate contest itself. Minnesota, like most states, is currently facing a budget crisis, and this is a rough time for governors in general.

What seems reasonably clear, however, is that Pawlenty does not have a whole heck of a lot of political capital to spare. It is intrinsically difficult to be a Republican in Minnesota, and his re-election bid in 2010 may already be in danger. If he is seen as dragging out the contest and carrying water for the national Republicans once the state Supreme Court rules, he may get himself in even more trouble.

One can imagine that Republicans are trying to placate Pawlenty through vague promises of support for his much-rumored Presidential aspirations in 2012. But is hard to know how credible such promises might be. Pawlenty lacks both the name-brand and the institutional infrastructure of candidates like Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, and he is certainly unlikely to become the Republican nominee if he loses Minnesota's governorship in 2010. Moreover, Pawlenty was already "used" by the national Republicans at least once -- back in August when he was the decoy for the rollout of Palin as their VP selection.

There is another way, of course, for the Republicans to prevent Franken from being seated: they can try and filibuster him. But then it would be John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell's hides on the line, and not Pawlenty's. The whole thing is increasingly starting to resemble the Coen brothers film Fargo, with Pawlenty and Cornyn playing Carl Schowalter and Gaear Grimsrud to Coleman's Jerry Lundegaard.

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In Which I Defend a Republican Pollster

Mark Blumenthal has the details on a budding controversy between Stan Greenberg, the co-founder of the Democratic polling organization Democracy Corps, and Ed Gillespie and Whit Ayres, the co-founders of the new Republican polling form Resurgent Republic. As Blumenthal notes, there is a bit of irony here, as Resurgent Republic was founded with the explicit mission of mirroring Democracy Corps' role at the nexus of testing public opinion and, as they put it, "shaping the debate over the proper role of government".

Greenberg's main beef is that Resurgent Republic's sample in their first national survey (.pdf) includes an implausibly high number of Republicans. He writes, in a letter addressed to Gillespie:

...I am perplexed that your first poll would be so outside the mainstream on partisanship. Your poll gives the Democrats just a 2-point party identification advantage in the country, but other public polls in this period fell between +7 and +16 points - giving the Democrats an average advantage of 11 points. Virtually all your issue debates in the survey would have tilted quite differently had the poll been 9 points more Democratic.

[...] If the Resurgent Republic poll is to be an outlier on partisanship, then I urge you to explain what about your methodology produces it - or simply to note the difference in your public release.

The 2-point partisan advantage that Resurgent Republic gives Democrats is the number you get if you include independent "leaners" in the tally. Without the leaners, as Ayres noted to Talking Points Memo, the Democratic advantage is 4 points. This is a matter of taste, I suppose, but I am inclined to give Ayres the benefit of the doubt here. When I was compiling data on the partisan ID gap last week, I treated "independent, lean Democrat" voters and "independent, lean Republican" voters as nevertheless being independents, which is the same practice that Pollster.com has adopted in its partisan ID tracking.

So let's evaluate a 4-point partisan ID advantage for the Democrats: is it proper to term this an "outlier", as Greenberg does?

The chart below provides the Democrats' partisan ID advantage from among the 19 national pollsters who have tested this question at least once within the last 60 or so days. The values run from an 18-point advantage for the Democrats on the high end, as indicated on the most recent CBS/NYT survey, to the 4-point advantage that Resurgent Republic finds:



Resurgent Republic, as we mentioned, finds the smallest Democratic advantage from among the 19 pollsters who tested the question. But, this does not necessarily make them an outlier. One thing to notice is that the bars in the chart above are color-coded. This time of year, when we're not in the midst of an election cycle, pollsters are pretty evenly divided between those who are testing likely voters, those who are testing registered voters, and those who are testing all adults. (Personally, if I were running a polling firm, I would lean toward all adults when this far removed from an election cycle, but that is a subject for another day).

The different sample frames are associated with different degrees of advantage for the Democrats:

Average Democratic Partisan ID Advantage
All Adults (10 surveys)                 11.8 points
Registered Voters --
without Resurgent Republic (5 surveys)   9.8 points
with Resurgent Republic (6 surveys)      8.8 points
Likely Voters (3 surveys)                7.3 points
-----------------------------------------------------
All Surveys --
without Resurgent Republic (18 surveys) 10.5 points
with Resurgent Republic (19 surveys)    10.2 points

Democrats have the largest partisan ID advantage -- nearly 12 points -- in the surveys that test all adults. This is followed by the registered voter surveys, where Democrats have a 9.8 point advantage without Resurgent Republic's results and 8.8 points with them, and then by the likely voter surveys, where they have a 7.3-point advantage (closely matching their 7-point edge on the 2008 national exit poll). This comports with the conventional wisdom, which holds that Democrats do proportionately better with "unlikely" or unregistered voters, who tend to be younger and less white (and therefore more Democratic, given recent trends) than their likely voter counterparts.

The point is that, if we're evaluating Resurgent Republic's results, we should compare them against other pollsters who applied the same sample frame, which is registered voters. The five other pollsters that looked at registered voters (FOX, PPP, Diageo/Hotline, Cook/RT and National Journal) gave the Democrats an average advantage of 9.8 points. This compares with the 4-point advantage -- actually, 4.5 points -- that Resurgent Republic gave them.

If we assume that the 9.8-point value is the "true" and correct result, then a 4.5 point advantage would not be all that out of line. Resurgent Republic's reported margin of error, given its 1,000-person sample size, is 3.1 points. However, this reflects the margin of error for one category only, such as the number of Democrats OR the number of Republicans, and not the difference between the two. The matter gets a bit more complicated still because Resurgent Republic in fact includes a third category -- independents. But if we assume that the "true" distribution of registered voters in the population is, say, 37.4 percent Democrat, 27.6 percent Republican and 35.0 percent independent (giving the Dems a 9.8-point advantage), the odds of the Democrats winding up with no more than a 4.5-point advantage in a 1,000-person sample is about 2 percent due to chance alone -- somewhat unlikely, but far from impossible. Moreover, since we do not have any a priori way of knowing the "true" number of registered Democrats and registered Republicans (many states either do not report registration figures, or do not require voters to register by party at all), it becomes harder still to characterize Resurgent Republic's results as an outlier.

What we can say, however, is that if Resurgent Republic consistently shows a smaller partisan ID gap than other pollsters, it will become progressively harder -- and will eventually become entirely impossible -- to attribute these results to chance alone. Instead, one of two things will become true: either Resurgent Republic is (intentionally or unintentionally) doing something wrong, or Resurgent Republic is right and everyone else is wrong (in which case, they had better be prepared to defend their methodology). So far, however, we can not say that Resurgent Republic has a consistent pattern of producing a sample frame favorable to Republicans because they do not have a pattern at all -- this was their first survey.

I suppose we could get all Bayesian and debate the probability that, given that Resurgent Republic is a proudly Republican pollster, they somehow put their finger on the scale, instead of letting the results fall as they might (and just so happening to come up with a Republican-leaning sample). But I don't particularly see what that exercise would accomplish. Resurgent Republic will presumably release many more surveys over the coming months and years: if they consistently show a Republican-leaning house effect then, believe you me, we'll be screaming from the rooftops about it. But so far, again, they have done nothing like this, because they only have one survey to their credit.

Another interesting portion of Greenberg's critique is when he discusses the marketing implications of Democracy Corps' philosophy on sampling:

One thing Democracy Corps has tried to do is be very “conservative” - watching very closely to make sure all our choices in survey design are well grounded or tilted against the Democrats, including the choice of “likely voters” that normally favors the Republicans. You have probably noticed that our job approval ratings for George Bush were almost always higher than the average of polls, just as our job approval ratings for Barack Obama are now somewhat lower.

Greenberg is right that Democracy Corps' horse race and approval rating polling has not shown a particular Democratic lean -- in fact, their horse race numbers last year had a slight (although not statistically significant) Republican lean. Should Ayres and Resurgent Republic follow his lead?

From a marketing perspective, they might do well to follow Greenberg's advice. Democracy Corps has built up a strong (and, in my opinion, well-deserved) reputation for accuracy in spite of their partisan affiliation.

But from a scientific perspective, I'd hope that Resurgent Republic simply tried to be as fair as possible and let their results speak for themselves. If Resurgent Republic did design a fair and unbiased survey, and literally just so happened to come up with results that included an unusually high number of Republicans (or for that matter, an unusually high number of Democrats), as will happen from time to time, I'd certainly hope that they reported those results as is. The very last thing I'd want to see a pollster do is to not report data because it was "politically incorrect" or otherwise bad for business for them to do so. SurveyUSA, which is a rather good pollster, at one point last year came out with a poll that gave John McCain a 20-point lead in North Carolina (a state which Barack Obama eventually won). SurveyUSA got a lot of crap for this, and it was clear at the time that the result was reasonably likely to turn out to be an outlier, but it's to their credit that they reported the result for what it was. Once a pollster starts to self-censor, we wind up with little more than their prefabricated opinions about what the world looks like.

I've largely defended Resurgent Republic here, but two other, more skeptical comments. Firstly, the most unorthodox result in their poll was not the Democrat-Republican gap, but the conservative-liberal gap. 47 percent of their respondents described themselves as "very conservative" or "somewhat conservative", versus just 23 who described themselves as "somewhat liberal" or "very liberal". This is a much larger advantage than conservatives had on the national exit poll, when 34 percent of voters described themselves as conservative versus 22 percent liberal (although, the results aren't directly comparable because Resurgent Republic uses the "very" and "somewhat" qualifications, whereas the national exit survey did not).

Secondly -- and this is something that Greenberg caught too -- I think Resurgent Republic impaired their credibility by inserting the loaded phrase "spreading the wealth" into a question about the economy; using one of Joe The Plumber's favorite catch phrases is not a good way to perpetuate the notion that you're acting in good faith.

Still, these are venal rather than cardinal sins, particularly for a virgin survey from a virgin pollster. I don't know Ayres or his partner Ed Gillespie, but they seem like sincere enough fellows, and their survey was excellent on disclosure and transparency issues. Presumably they are also smart enough to know that spin tends to get called out for what it is these days.

This website too, after all, is founded on the premise that one can have one's cake and eat it too -- that one can do good, fair, scientific work, while nevertheless being forthright about one's position along the political spectrum. I hope that I've earned and maintained your trust, and I wish Resurgent Republic the best of luck in earning it too.

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The Obama Bull Market?

The NASDAQ closed today at 1,763.56, gaining about 2.5 percent on the day to achieve its highest closing price since November 4 (Election Day, natch), when it finished at 1,780.12.

The NASDAQ was at 1,484.43 at noon on January 20th, at which point Barack Obama took over the Presidency. The NASDAQ has increased its value by approximately 19 percent since then, a span of 104.5 days. Per the compound interest formula, this translates to an 82.7 percent annualized growth rate.

Looking at the stock market, of course, is a relatively asinine way to evaluate the performance of the economy, much less the performance of the Presidency. But I think conservatives may have done themselves a real disservice by making the market the benchmark for Obama's success back when the major indices were slumping in late February and early March. The market was somewhat undervalued at that point by long-term measures like 10-year average P/E ratios, and the odds were pretty strong that it would produce above-average returns over Obama's term. It may not be a coincidence that Obama's approval ratings, which were declining over the first 50 days or so of his Presidency, have held steady since mid-March and perhaps even ticket upward -- his Gallup approval rating hit 68 percent yesterday (it fell a tick to 67 percent today), its highest figure since interviewing on January 22-24th.

There is risk here for Obama -- it is now much harder to make the case that the market is undervalued and volatility remains high by historical standards; a significant retrenchment is possible, as is a continuation of the bull market conditions of the past 60 days or so. But given the choice between having a leading indicator like the stock market be regarded as his economic benchmark or a lagging indicator like employment (where the numbers are still getting worse), Obama would take the stock market every time.

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What the [Bleep] Do We Know?

I have an interview up with The Economist magazine, which might still be the first periodical I'll pick up at an airport newsstand. Here's my favorite question-and-answer:

DIA: I've heard you say that baseball analysts put too much emphasis on what just happened. Is the same true of political analysts?

Mr Silver: For sure. And in baseball, at least, they're playing every year, whereas you only have a presidential election once every four years. The McCain campaign operated under the assumption that the political world hadn't changed since 2004—that Mr Obama couldn't turn out black voters or young voters, that swift-boating would work, that Mr Obama couldn't possibly win states like North Carolina and Indiana—and they paid a price for it. On the other hand, I think some Democrats might be a little bit complacent right now. There are a lot of things that can go wrong—both known unknowns and unknown unknowns. What if Afghanistan turns into the next Iraq? What if swine flu winds up killing several hundred thousand Americans? What if there's a nuclear exchange in Kashmir? What if there's a significant, unpredicted increase in the crime rate? Some of those things might hurt the Democrats and others might not, but there's a pretty decent chance that the core issues in 2012 will be things that we haven't even thought about yet.

The rest of the interview is here.

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Senate Rankings, May 2009 Edition

Races are ranked in order of their likelihood of changing parties (by November 2010, accounting for all factors such as potential retirements, primary challenges, and so forth.

Likelihood of party switch has increased since last month's rankings.
Likelihood of party switch has decreased since last month.

1. New Hampshire (R-Open)
Pennsylvania and New Hampshire had been battling back and forth for the #1 slot for the past couple of months. With the landscape in the Keystone State completely changing after Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic party, New Hampshire now has the stage to itself -- although there's some marginally bad news for the Democrats in the form of Paul Hodes' underwhelming fundraising numbers. Hence, the downward-pointing red arrow. Still, this looks like the cleanest path either party has to a pickup, with an open seat in a Democratic-leaning state.

2 . Missouri (R-Open)
In Missouri, conversely, the money numbers favor the Democrats, with Robin Carnahan having out-fundraised Roy Blunt about 2:1 in the first quarter. Although Missouri has gradually trended red at the Presidential level, Carnahan may simply be the more talented candidate and this increasingly feels like a lean Democratic race.

3. Connecticut (D-Dodd)
We're waiting for some fresh polling to see whether Chris Dodd has broken free at all from his post-AIG doldrums. In the meantime, GOP challenger Rob Simmons reported raising just $20 in the first quarter. But that might not matter, since the important thing about Rob Simmons is not that he's Rob Simmons but that he's not Chris Dodd.

4. Kentucky (R-Bunning)
A Jim Bunning retirement would help Republicans -- but perhaps not as much as you'd think in a state where Democrats still have a significant registration advantage. In addition (as with most things having to do with Jim Bunning), it's far from clear what's actually happening with respect to his retirement.

5. Ohio (R-Open)
Ohio is in perhaps the most advanced state of any of the 2010 races, with likely GOP nominee Rob Portman having raised $1.7 million in the first quarter and Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, one of two main Democratic rivals, countering with more than $1 million of his own.

6. Florida (R-Open)
We're hearing from Florida Republicans that nobody is quite certain whether Charlie Crist is in fact going to enter the Senate race -- possibly including Crist himself. Until we have news of his decision, this race is stuck in something of a holding pattern.

7. North Carolina (R-Burr)
Likewise in the Tarheel State, we're waiting on word from Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, whose entry would turn the race against unremarkable incumbent Richard Burr into a toss-up.

8. Delaware (D-Open)
Last month, we touted Delaware as a sleeper, pointing out that Republican Mike Castle, currently Delaware's at-large representative to the House, had an 8-point lead on likely Democratic nominee Beau Biden. Now, it looks like Castle's interest in the race may be more than hypothetical, as he told Roll Call that he's more likely to run for Senate than for re-election to the House. That statement can be interpreted in different ways since Castle, 69 years old and a stroke survivor, could easily choose retirement instead. But Democrats had better keep a close eye on this one or Joe Biden (assuming he's gotten over his fear of public transportation) is going to be spending a lot of time on the Acela commuting back to Wilmington to campaign for his son.

9. Colorado (D-Bennet)
Colorado moves up for the second consecutive month, this time on mediocre polling for Democratic pseudo-incumbent Michael Bennet, who has a net-negative approval rating and had better hope that the GOP doesn't organize around a strong opponent.

10. Illinois (D-Burris)
This is no longer the Roland Burris show, who polls at just 46 percent approval among African-American voters, just 29 percent among Democrats, and just 17 percent overall. But Lynn Sweet reports that IL-10's Mark Kirk is leaning toward an entry in the race, and Public Policy Polling has him competitive against several prospective non-Burris Democrats (although AG Lisa Madigan, probably bound for the governor's race, would crush him if she ran). In the long run, this race will probably gravitate toward the Democrats as candidates like Alexi Giannoulias improve their name recognition and the Blagojevich affair fades from memory. But it's a long way to the finish line, and Kirk is one of the few Republicans to have found electoral success in a Democratic-leaning district.

11. Nevada (D-Reid)
As Republicans scramble to find an opponent in what should be a good opportunity for them, Harry Reid has been busy raising money and now has more than $5 million in cash-on-hand.

12. Pennsylvania (R- D-Specter)
In some sense, this was the first victory of the 2010 cycle for the Democrats -- although considering Specter's voting record thus far, it looks as though it might be something of a Pyrrhic one. Nevertheless, this is now considered a Democratic seat, and this rating now reflects the Republicans' odds of winning it back in 2010, either against Specter or another Democrat like Joe Sestak.

A Republican comeback is unlikely if the uber-conservative Pat Toomey is the Republican nominee. But if ex-Gov. Tom Ridge runs -- and wins -- instead, he would be a formidable opponent. The catch is that it isn't clear how Ridge, like Specter a moderate, pro-choice Republican, will escape the problems that drove Specter from the party, as what's left of the GOP base in Pennsylvania is highly conservative and pro-life. We should know more in a week or so -- if you're a Pennsylvania voter and weren't at Citizens' Bank Park watching the Phillies and the Mets get rained out, you were probably getting nonstop phone calls from pollsters.

13. Texas (R-Open?)
Which is more likely -- that the last-place Houston Astros win the NL Central, or that Kay Bailey Hutchison is still in the Senate by June, 2010? Start printing those playoff tickets, because every indication we've heard and seen is that Hutchison is leaving the Senate to challenge incumbent governor Rick Perry, which would leave this race wide open. Democrat Bill White, the mayor of Houston, is raising serious money, while state former comptroller John Sharp is bankrolling his own million-dollar stake into the race.

14. Louisiana (R-Vitter)
This race is a Big Shiny Object which we continue to believe has been overrated by some other authorities. There is some rather ambiguous new polling out on Vitter, who retains a reasonably high approval rating in spite of the fact that many Louisanans would consider replacing him. The questions are how many of those Louisianans would consider replacing him with a Democrat in a state that increasingly leans red, particularly given that the Democrats are a long way from having identified a challenger.

15. Iowa (R-Grassley)
Once we get down into the mid-teens, we're basically looking for excuses to flag a race, and the fact that Grassley raised less than $300,000 in the first quarter makes us wonder just how certain Republicans can be that Grassley won't follow colleagues like Kit Bond and George Voinovich into retirement. If Grassley were to retire, then the Democrats, who might find willing candidates like Tom Vilsack, Chet Culver and Bruce Braley, would presumably become the favorites.

16. New York (Jr.) (D-Gillibrand)
New Yorkers remain highly skeptical of Gillibrand, but Republicans have at least three hurdles to overcome before defeating her. Firstly, Gillibrand is raising boatloads of money. Secondly, David Patterson is far more vulnerable than she is and will draw some of their talent away to the gubernatorial race. And thirdly, New York is still a highly blue state, as Jim Tedisco's inability to win in NY-20 (perhaps the Republicans' best district in the state) would tend to attest. Although George Pataki or Rudy Giuliani could make things interesting, Gillibrand is probably more vulnerable in the primaries than in the general election.

17. Arkansas (D-Lincoln)
Lincoln raised $1.7 million in the first quarter, which may further reduce the mostly-theoretical possibility that Republicans decide to mount a serious challenge to her.

18. Oklahoma (R-Coburn)
Some sleeper potential here, as Coburn raised virtually no money last quarter and seems exceptionally indifferent to the prospect of running for re-election. That could open the door to popular Democratic Governor Brad Henry or perhaps U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, who has dropped hints that he might be interested in an open-seat race.

19. California (D-Boxer)
I'd been so fixated on the Governator that I missed the fact that there has been some polling of Boxer versus Carly Firoina, who now seems like the more likely opponent. The Field Poll put Boxer ahead by 30 points in that matchup, whereas Rasmussen had her up by just 9 -- so goes it with polling this far in advance of an election. Although California is a tough state to gauge, Fiorina did not prove to have particularly adept political instincts while taking her turn as a spokesperson for the McCain campaign, and her fundraising base may also overlap heavily with that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman (who is getting serious about running for governor). I don't see it, frankly, but Boxer, who had a somewhat disappointing fundraising quarter, will need to remain on her toes.

20. Georgia (R-Isakson)
Well, there's new polling to suggest that Isakson could be vulnerable, but we remain a little skeptical after seeing what happened to Jim Martin once Barack Obama's name was off the ballot.

21. Wisconsin (D-Feingold)
Although previous approval polling had suggested some vulnerability for Feingold, SurveyUSA's latest installment has him at a relatively healthy +18 net. Feingold's strongest potential challenger, the conservative-but-telegenic Paul Ryan, also recently told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he wouldn't run against Feingold (reading between the lines, Ryan seems inclined to wait for Herb Kohl to retire instead).

22. Arizona (R-McCain)
Unlike Pennsylvania, Arizona retains a relatively broad and diverse Republican base, and so we don't see much risk of the Republicans getting Toomeyed by Minuteman founder Chris Simcox, who will challenge McCain in the primary.

23. Kansas (R-Open)
All the action is on the Republican side, as Kathleen Sebelius was finally confirmed to HHS and the Democrats don't yet have a declared candidate.

24. Hawaii (D-Inoyue)

25. Alaska (R-Murkowski)

26. North Dakota (D-Dorgan)
A nice 1Q fundraising haul by Dorgan reduces the already-slim chance that popular GOP governor John Hoeven might decide to challenge him.

27. Maryland (D-Mikulski)

28. South Carolina (R-DeMint)

29. Washington (D-Murray)

30. South Dakota (R-Thune)

31. Alabama (R-Shelby)
Shelby's approval ratings are surprisingly marginal, but don't hold your breath.

32. Indiana (D-Bayh)

33. Vermont (D-Leahy)

34. Oregon (D-Wyden)

35. Utah (R-Bennett)

36. New York (Sr.) (D-Schumer)

37. Idaho (R-Crapo)

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Supreme Court Picks: Little Peril for Presidential Approval

Few things capture the political class's attention like a botched or controversial nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The hearings over Reagan nominee Robert Bork, who was ultimately voted down by the Senate, or G.H.W. Bush nominee Clarence Thomas, who was barely approved after months of deliberation, are the stuff of C-SPAN legend. Even a nominee who never makes it to a floor vote, like George W. Bush's choice of the seemingly underqualified Harriet Miers, can potentially impair a President's credibility.

But are Supreme Court nominations really a substantial risk to the President? The answer is probably not, although there is certainly more downside than upside to the President in making his pick.

In the chart below, I've examined the effects on Presidential approval of the 29 most recent Supreme Court nominees, beginning with Dwight Eisenhower's choice of John Marshall Harlan in 1954, at which point the Senate Judiciary Committee began its modern practice of rigorously questioning a nominee's judicial philosophy. This list includes nominations to Chief Justice, which require separate confirmation hearings even if the nominee is already an Associate Justice on the Court. Of the 29 nominations, 23 were successful, achieving confirmation by the Senate, while the other six were unsuccessful.

The dates listed in the table are, firstly, when the nomination was first announced by the President, as determined through a New York Times archive search -- this date may differ, sometimes significantly, from when the nomination was officially submitted to the Senate. Secondly, I've listed the date when the nomination was resolved -- either by being voted upon by the Senate or when the nominee's name was withdrawn (as in the cases of Miers, Douglas Ginsburg, and LBJ's attempt to nominate Abe Fortas for Chief Justice).

We then list a President's Gallup approval and disapproval ratings in the last available survey conducted immediately prior to the announcement of the nominee, and the first available survey conducted immediately after the resolution of the nomination.



Although the sample size is quite small, failed nominations appear to be associated with a modest decline in a President's approval score. The average magnitude of the decline was about 3 points over our six cases, with a concomitant 3 point increase in a President's disapproval score. However, it is difficult to point toward a case where the botched nomination was catastrophic to a President's fortunes. Perhaps the closest exception is that of Miers, whose nomination was resolved in a relatively short time frame. George W. Bush's approval rating declined from 45 percent in polling conducted on September 26th-28th, 2005 to 39 percent on October 13th-16th, shortly following the announcement of Miers as the nominee, while his disapproval rating shot up from 50 percent to 58 percent. Indeed, Bush's approval ratings remained somewhat depressed after Miers' nomination was officially withdrawn on October 28th, 2005 and throughout the balance of his term, as he would never again achieve an apprval score as high as 45 percent.

Other failed nominations, however, were not associated with noticable declines in Presidential approval -- Reagan's botched nominations of Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg, in particular, had little observable effect on his popularity.

The 23 successful nominations, meanwhile, were also associated with a very small decline in approval of slightly more than 1 point, and an increase disapproval of about 2 points. However, it is not clear whether this trend is statistically significant, particularly given that (i) the averages are brought down by George W. Bush's nomination of John Roberts as Chief Justice, a relatively noncontroversial nomination which happened to occur at the same time that Hurricane Katrina was wreaking havoc on New Orleans and on Bush's approval, and that (ii) there is some secular tendency for a President's approval ratings to decline over the course of his term, whether or not he has a Supreme Court nomination pending before the Senate. A decline of a point or so in approval, in any event, is not really something for a President to lose sleep over.

An alternate framing is that there is little upside to a President in making a pick for the High Court. Counting both successful and unsuccessful nominations, only 6 of 29 were associated with an increase of any magnitude in a President's approval scores, while 20 of 29 were associated with a decrease. Think for a moment about the mechanics of making a Supreme Court nomination: A President's partisan base is usually counting on him to make an appropriately conservative (or liberal) pick, while his independent and moderate supporters are expecting him to make an centrist, nonideological selection. Everyone, meanwhile, is expecting for the pick to be impeccably qualified and to have an inscrutable personal history, but Supreme Court nominees -- being old, usually somewhat reclusive ex-lawyers -- are generally unsympathetic figures. The confirmation process, meanwhile, distracts from a President's ability to advance his agenda. Under these circumstances, it is hard to see how the President emerges as a winner, and even path-breaking nominations like Thurgood Marshall or Sandra Day O'Connor have been associated with declines in approval.

The absence of upside, however, does not necessarily imply the presence of substantial downside -- although clearly Obama, after the problems he encountered with Tom Daschle and Bill Richardson, needs to avoid someone who has been inadequately vetted. Moreover, we have not considered the effects on Congressional approval. It is perhaps noteworthy that in 1992 after the Clarence Thomas hearings, the Democrats gained no ground in the Senate and in fact lost ground in the House in spite of having won the presidency from George H.W. Bush.

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