1. Reconciliation! 2. ??? 3. Profit!

I'm a little surprised that some people are still pushing a "reconciliation only" strategy on health care, particularly when passing the Senate bill with a "sidecar" of fixes through reconciliation would quite clearly be the dominant strategy. But just suppose that the only two options are "reconciliation only" and to pass the Senate's bill as is.

Let's take another look at that Kaiser poll I cited earlier today and look at the popular elements of the health care bill -- those which poll at a net favorability of +10 or better. Which could be implemented through a "reconciliation only" strategy? It's hard to say for sure, but here is a reasonable guess given the constraints imposed by the process:



You could probably -- not certainly -- get a public option through reconciliation, and the public option is popular, polling at a net +22. However, there are are least five provisions which are more popular than the public option that you almost certainly couldn't get through reconciliation only, including the insurance exchange, guaranteed issue, allowing children to stay on their parents' plans though age 25, guarantees on the acturial value of private insurance policies, and limitations on age rating. Nor could reconciliation ban gender rating or or eliminate lifetime coverage limits, which also poll well.

"Reconciliation only" might be better than the status quo. But it's almost certainly worse than the Senate's bill, as is. And it's categorically worse than the Senate's bill with a reconciliation sidecar. But why take half a loaf when you can get a quarter?

p.s. For those who don't catch the reference in the headline, the background is here.

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Health Care Polls: Opinion Gap or Information Gap?

Over at The Atlantic, Megan McArdle takes issue with my contention that a lot of the public's distaste for the "Democrats' health care bill" is based on misinformation:

Now, on one item, the "anti's" are pretty obviously wrong--the program was pretty clearly better for people like me with pre-existing conditions. But all the rest of it is debatable. Obviously, Nate believes that the bill will improve things like out-of-pocket costs and choice of doctor. That's why he supports it. But those aren't scientific facts; they are opinions. [...]

[When] I look at the polls, most of the concerns are pretty reasonable. People aren't responding to "lies". They are saying that they do not believe administration claims that this program will reduce the budget deficit without impacting quality of care--a pretty safe bet, to my mind. But even if you disagree, it is not crazy and delusional to believe that government programs often do not deliver what the politicians who enacted them promised. It's a pretty safe reading of history, actually.

Reasonable minds can come to the conclusion that the bill is bad policy, and people are also 100 percent within their rights to believe that the bill might be bad for them for self-interested reasons (if they make greater than $200,000 per year and would be subject to the increase in the payroll tax, for instance.)

With due respect to Megan, however, the debate over health care is not playing out like the one in elite circles of public opinion, in which Ezra Klein and I represent the pro-bill coalition and she and David Brooks the opposition. As this month's tracking survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation makes clear, there are a lot of beliefs the public has about the bill which are objectively wrong.

The following table combines two sets of questions from the Kaiser survey, each of which ask people about the individual components of the bill. One set of questions asks people whether they believe that the bill contains each provision; the other set, which I've tabulated on a net basis, asks them whether they'd be more or less likely to support a bill if it contained such a provision.



What we see is that most individual components of the bill are popular -- in some cases, quite popular. But awareness lags behind. Only 61 percent are aware that the bill bans denials of coverage for pre-existing conditions. Only 42 percent know that it bans lifetime coverage limits. Only 58 percent are aware that it set up insurance exchanges. Just 44 percent know that it closes the Medicare donut hole -- and so on and so forth.

"Awareness", by the way, might be a forgiving term in this context. For the most part in Kaiser's survey, when the respondent doesn't affirm that the bill contains a particular provision, he actually believes that the bills don't include that provision. 29 percent, for instance, say the bill does not contain a provision requiring insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions; 20 percent think it does not expand subsidies.

How would public opinion change if people were fully informed about the content of the bills? It's hard to say for sure, but on average, the individual components of the bill are favored by a net of +22 points. An NBC poll in August also found that support went from a -6 net to a +10 when people were actually provided with a description of the bill.

Obviously, it's not as though this is going to do much to help the bill's popularity in the immediate term. But in the long term, once people actually see the go bill into effect, their perceptions are liable to improve, in ways that might help the Democratic party. Although there are a few things like the individual mandate which the public obviously does not like, most of the other components of the bill are things they are liable to be quite pleased with and to find quite reasonable.

Lastly, it's much harder to read the opinion polls as a "mandate" against the health care bill when much of that opinion is based on demonstrably false beliefs, some of which have been perpetuated deliberately by opponents. And it's much harder to know how the Democrats ever expect to pass a health care bill or similarly complicated policies like cap-and-trade if they wither in the face of polls that reflect less a disparity of opinion and more a poverty of accurate information.

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Senate Rankings: Post-Masspocalypse Edition

We are transitioning, a little earlier than I'd planned, into a more or less fully automated version of our Senate race rankings. From now until November, our rankings will be based entirely on polling and other objective variables, with one important exception that I'll explain in a moment. But first, let's get the bad news out of the way for Democrats:



Right now, the program is showing that Democrats will retain an average of 54.7 seats in the 112th Congress. The distribution, however, is slightly asymmetrical, so the median number is 54, and the modal number is 53.

And things could, potentially, get a whole lot worse than that; the program recognizes that the outcome of the different races are correlated based on changes in the national environment. Between the surprise in Massachusetts, and races like California and Indiana which are potentially coming into play, there's about a 6-7 percent chance that Republicans could actually take control of the Senate, and another 6 percent chance or so that they could wind up with a 50-50 split. On the other hand, there's still a 7-8 percent chance that the Democrats could regain their 60th seat if the national environment shifts back in their direction.

I've already incorporated a couple of improvements to the algorithm that we used in 2008. For one thing, as our Presidential model used to do, the program now builds in a 'trendline adjustment' in races where the polling is stale. Although it hasn't been exceptionally dramatic, Democrats have lost a net of 3-4 points over the past 60-90 days, and several races that once looked like toss-ups are now better thought of as leaning Republican.

Another improvement -- also borrowed from the Presidential model -- is that we're now incorporating an adjustment for house effects. For whatever reason, the house effects are fairly strong this cycle -- if Rasmussen and Research 2000 poll the same race, the Research 2000 survey will typically show an outcome about 6 points more favorable to the Democrats than Rasmussen does.

Lastly, as you'll see below, I've modified the program to handle cases in which the identity of the candidates isn't known -- which is the case in most of these races given that all but a handful have a competitive primary in one or both parties. And this is where the subjective part comes in: I'm eyeballing the primary polling and other news items to estimate the chance of each candidate becoming his party's nominee -- the black numbers you'll see in the tables below to the left of the Democratic candidate's name represents the likelihood of each permutation of major party candidates. FWIW, I'm not trying to be 100 percent comprehensive here about things like unexpected retirements; this ought to be a decent, but fairly rough guess about the most salient combinations.

As in the past, the Senate algorithm is based on a combination of polling and regression analysis. In fact, because a lot of these races haven't been polled adequately, the regression component takes on a fairly large weight. The variables in the regression analysis are a state's PVI, an average of the candidate's approval and favorability ratings in races featuring an incumbent, and a variable that runs from 0 to 3 to reflect the highest office that each potential candidate has held, which scales as follows:

3. Current or former governor or senator.
2. Current or former U.S. Rep.; other statewide elected office; mayor of large city.
1. State legislature; mayor of small city; other non-trivial elected office.
0. No substantial experience as elected office-holder.

Eventually, we'll compliment or substitute this variable with fundraising data, but since a lot of potential candidates have not yet filed for office or did so only recently, the FEC data is not terribly informative and won't be for some time.

OK, enough window-dressing ... here are the Senate races ranked in their traditional order from most to least likely to change parties:



Dems have virtually no chance of hanging on in North Dakota. I not sure why people are classifying this as anything other than safe GOP.



This was a tough enough state for Democrats in 2008 and in the 2010 environment ... look out. Lincoln's polling is about where it "should" be, according to our regression analysis. The prospective primary candidate, Lieutenant Governor Bill Haller, would do roughly as well.



This is a very heavy lift for Harry Reid -- if he's the candidate, we have him at less than a 20 percent chance of holding onto his seat. There's plenty of polling in this race and while there are a few incumbents who have come back from the sort of hole he finds himself in, it's awfully rare. Although PPP's polling showed that Shelly Berkley's numbers weren't any better than Reid's, the algorithm begs to differ: she's an experienced office-holder, and it's hard to do worse than an approval rating of about 40 percent. A long-shot candidacy by Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman could actually make Dems the favorites here.



Surprised that the computer liked this one as much as it did, but Pat Toomey's lead is only growing in the polls and Specter's approval ratings are fairly wretched. Joe Sestak might be a marginally better choice, although he hasn't really clicked in the general election polling. Exit question: would the Democrats have been better off had Arlen Specter never switched parties?



I'm actually a touch more optimistic than the computer on this one since what little I've seen of Jane Norton hasn't impressed me, but the cycle has turned sour on the Democrats while they were busy getting their act together in Colorado. Bennet's approval ratings are middling enough that it's a toss-up as to whether he or Andrew Romanoff would be the better general election candidate.



Delaware's ranking has moved down a bit in relative terms as other races have lapped it, but not so much in absolute ones. Still, this is one of the more salvageable races for the Democrats if Beau Biden is the candidate.



Although Alexi Giannoulias isn't a terrific candidate, Illinois is blue enough that he's the favorite if he wins the primary next week. The other Democrats poll several points behind him and lack the experience of having run a statewide campaign.



Finally, our first Republican-held seat! It's nothing that Robin Carnahan is doing wrong, but her polling has started to have a little bit more trouble weathering the national storm.



Here's a surprise -- although not really to the Republicans, who keyed into the opportunity almost immediately after Scott Brown's victory. Indiana, last year aside, is still a fairly red state, and the political climate over the past year hasn't permitted conservative Democrats like Bayh to stay smilingly above the fray. One caveat: the computer stupidly doesn't distinguish between Mike Pence and John Hostettler, because neither candidate has been polled and the only variable it uses to distinguish them is their highest level of office achieved (both have been U.S. Representatives). But Hostettler is a notoriously weak candidate and Pence, I'm sure, would be a strong one.



Undoubtedly the most boring race of the cycle -- both Democrats poll about equally against Rob Portman.



Paul Hodes might be saved if the Republicans nominate a wingnut rather than Kelly Ayotte.



Speaking of which, the Republicans are potentially taking a risk in Kentucky if they nominate someone who's never run a campaign before rather than their Secretary of State.



This is an interesting one. Boxer, whose approval ratings have been tepid, was probably going to get a bit of a mulligan if the politically daft Carly Fiorina had been the nominee, but Tom Campbell, who just entered the Senate race, would be a more formidable threat. Boxer is the favorite nevertheless, but any scenario in which the Republicans hope to pare the Democrats down to 49 or 50 seats will probably have to run through California.



It's probably generous to Charlie Crist to suggest that he's even-money to win the primary at this point. The Meek-Rubio polling has been all over the place as neither candidate is terribly well known outside of his base.



Tommy Thompson could be threatening, but Feingold's approval ratings are robust enough that he'll only have trouble against more the generic GOPers if the national climate goes from bad to nightmarish.



Winnable with a tip-top campaign for the Democrats. Elaine Marshall looks like the best candidate.



A lot of scenarios that are hard to game out, made more complicated by the fact that Kristin Gillibrand's approval ratings are all over the board depending on which poll you look at. But the algorithm's basic intuition seems sound: a straight toss-up if George Pataki is the nominee, and otherwise Dems will probably need to screw up to lose the seat.



A non-generic Republican would have a fighting chance, but Patty Murray's approval ratings have been reasonably sound.



Not the right cycle to win a race like this.



Johnny Isakson's approval ratings are fairly mediocre, but Dems don't really have a candidate.



Linda Lingle's probably not quite competitive enough to warrant the gamble here.



Wyden shouldn't have any problems.



Democrats need to have a contingency plan here in case J.D. Hayworth is the nominee; a non-generic candidate like Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon would likely be competitive.



Democrats likely need a scandal or gaffe to have much of a shot here.



How bad would this cycle be for Democrats if Chris Dodd were still the candidate?



It's something of a moot point now, but it's disappointing that Democrats never mustered a candidate here back when the cycle was looking more competitive.












As you might imagine, this is quite a bit of work, so the Senate race rankings will continue to be updated only on a monthly-or-so basis until we get a little deeper into the cycle.

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Will the Base Abandon Hope?

Imagine for a moment that you're a liberal. Oh, I know, that won't be a stretch for some of you. Over the years, you've developed a pretty thick skin, since while you've won an election now and then, you haven't had too many policy victories since ... well, since forever.

But in the back of your mind, there's always been hope. You have a deep sense of conviction -- deeper, you think to yourself, than conservatives -- that your positions are true and right and that sooner or later (more likely later) the rest of the country will wake up to this. You pride yourself on being patient, pragmatic, sensible. But you can't be a progressive, can you, without believing in some sort of progress?

So then Barack Obama gets elected, whose very trademark is Hope, and whose very election signifies progress. He promises a lot of things, and you look over the political horizon and see large Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, a logjam of popular, progressive initiatives, and a neutered and discredited opposition party. And you think to yourself: "Well, knock on wood, but this looks pretty fucking good!".

And for a little while, things are pretty fucking good. Al Franken -- Al Franken! -- wins in Minnesota! Arlen Specter switches parties! Man, Republicans are so screwed! The stimulus wasn't perfect (you're vaguely worried about a couple of things that Krugman said) but you think to yourself: We're going to be in the majority for a LONG time. There's no need to blow our wad all at once.

Over the summer, the unemployment rate continues to go up, and the President's approval rating continues to go down. But all of this seems like a natural enough part of the political process -- the same economic cycles that got your candidate elected were going to cause Obama a few problems, weren't they? The cute wittle tea parties have evolved into the town hall meetings -- those are a little scary, actually. But the Democrats bounce back as resolved as ever to pass a health care bill, and the President makes a strong speech. And there's always Sarah Palin to make fun of.

In the fall, you begin to see some of your friends on the left question the President. You remind yourself that you're the Adult in the room, and that some people are never going to be happy -- don't they remember Ralph Nader? Truth be told, you have a few questions yourself, especially about the health care bill. But slowly and surely, it's working its way through Congress.

The Democrats lose a couple of elections in New Jersey and Virginia -- and man, what the hell did Maine just do on gay marriage? Copenhagen goes to shit. But then, on Christmas Eve, Ben Nelson votes for the health care bill! It's not quite the bill you'd like, but it's an awfully nice holiday gift -- the biggest progressive achievement in years.

After the New Year, there are a few more signs of trouble. A bunch of Democrats retire. Polls -- not just Rasmussen -- show Obama's approval below 50 percent. Then one shows that things are closer than expected in Massachusetts, where they're having an election to replace Ted Kennedy. A Republican can't possibly win the Kennedy seat, can he?

Yes. He. Can.

Oh, shit.

Which brings us to where we are today.

When I used to play a lot of poker, the times when I'd go on the worst tilt were when I'd been having a pretty good session, making some money, and then started to catch a few unlucky breaks (or so I told myself). So long as I was still ahead on the evening, I was usually OK. But if I dipped into the red -- well then, look out below.

That's what a lot of liberals are feeling like today. Their profit had been slowly whittled down, but things were more or less all right. And then just when it looked like they were going to win a huge pot -- health care -- the Republicans caught their one-outer in Massachusetts. (Hey, doesn't that dealer look a little bit like Martha Coakley?)

It might have been a bad beat -- it's easy to forget today that the White House and the Congress had successfully shepherded health care reform to the one-yard line. But that doesn't remove the hurt, and it doesn't put the money back in your wallet.

When this sort of thing happens, it's usually a good idea to take a break and do a lap around the casino. Maybe play a few hands of blackjack, if you're into that sort of thing. But suppose that, when you do this, every friend that you bump into has just taken a bad beat too! They're every bit as panicked as you are!

All right -- enough with the analogies. But it would be hard to overstate just how demoralizing this particular sequence of events has been for base Democrats. And when people get demoralized, they tend to dig in and make their problems worse.

That holds for voters, certainly, but unfortunately it also seems to hold for Democratic members of the Congress. What they need to remember is that while financial reform and the bank tax are the jobs bill are nice -- things that certainly ought to appeal to swing voters and which could mitigate some of the electoral damage -- they mostly fall into the category of cleaning up the mess. Financial reform isn't what gets any Democrat out of bed in the morning. Things like health care, a climate bill, expanded rights for gays, women, and lesbians, a fairer tax code -- those are the things that signify progress, the promise of which keeps people motivated for the long run. The risk is that, when we get to November, the base looks at the fact that significant progress has not been made on any of those core, defining issues, that the political and procedural hurdles are immense, that Democratic majorities will (at best) shrink, and that the party leadership seems nonchalant in good times and panicky in bad ones. And they'll conclude that the progressive party is incapable of making progress.

And in the short run, saying "ooh, Republicans are scary!" might not make as much difference as you think -- at least not to base voters. That works when Republicans have a chance to implement their agenda, an opportunity which -- even if Democrats were to lose 70 seats in the Congress -- they would not have because of President Obama's veto pen.

Now, look, political cycles are moving faster and faster, and the probability of a turnaround in the momentum back toward the Democrats, even in the near term, is probably greater than generally acknowledged -- even if we can neither identify nor predict the precise mechanism by which this occurs. But I worry that the upside is limited if the base is burned out -- at best toward a Clintonian second term (treading water, competent) and not Reaganesque one (realigning). And these things tend to have a self-fulfilling quality to them -- if the base doesn't believe that you can actually push the country in their direction, they become less likely to donate to you, work for you, and vote for you, and that in turn makes such successes harder to achieve. I don't know if the Democrats have any good moves right now, but watching the base give up hope isn't one of them.

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Is Health Care Reform the new Iraq War?

Here's the New York Times' David Brooks in a snappy back-and-forth with Gail Collins yesterday:

Let’s say we had a year-long debate in the run-up to the Iraq war. Let’s say at the end of that debate, 33 percent of Americans thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq, 46 percent thought it was a bad idea and the rest weren’t sure. Then let’s say that there were a bunch of elections in places like New Jersey and Virginia in the middle of this debate and George Bush’s party lost them all badly. Let’s say at the end of this debate there was a senate race in Wyoming in which a Democratic candidate made preventing the war a central plank in his campaign. Let’s say Bush went out to Wyoming and told voters they had to support the Republican to save the Iraq invasion. And let’s say the Democrat still went on to win that Wyoming Senate seat by more than 5 percentage points.

Would you have advised George Bush under these circumstances to go ahead and invade Iraq? [...] Or would you have said, George, I know you really want to invade Iraq. I know you think an invasion will do a lot of good for the world. But the American people are pretty clear about this issue. Maybe you should show a little doubt. Maybe you ought to listen and give this whole thing a second look.

Here's the problem with that analogy. Imagine that we had this debate over the Iraq invasion, and there were some legitimate differences of opinion. But one side was mostly telling the truth and the other side was mostly confusing the public and telling lies. At the end of the debate, opinion polls reflected that the side telling lies had persuaded a majority of the public, and we went ahead and launched the war.

Oh wait -- that actually happened?

The Iraq War was fairly popular at the time it was initiated ... about 60 percent of the public supported it, give or take, depending which poll you look at. It was authorized by the Congress overwhelmingly, including by a majority of Senate Democrats -- not just Blue Dogs but also John Kerry, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, among others.

And we know how that one turned out.

The Bush Administration, of course, told some big whoppers to get us into Iraq. Maybe there was a humanitarian or realpolitik rationale for invading anyway, but that's not the story, by and large, that they were pitching to the public. Instead, the sales pitch was based on WMDs and Saddam's alleged connection to Al Qaeda, both of which have been proven to be false.

Brooks' analogy to the debate over health care, then, is somewhat ironic: once again, one side has told a lot of lies to help alter the course of public opinion. Some of these lies, like death panels or the government takeover meme, are not very subtle. Others are a little more clever: the notion, for instance, that we could easily require insurers to cover all people with pre-existing conditions without either adopting an individual mandate or substantially escalating premiums.

And those lies have had an impact. Let's look at, for example, at what opponents of the bill believe, according to the latest Pew poll:



Among those opposed to the health care bill, majorities think that their choice of doctors would be impaired, their out-of-pocket costs would go up, their wait times would increase, and the quality of their care would suffer. Meanwhile, only 27 percent of Americans opposed to the health care bill -- and only 39 percent overall -- believe that their ability to get coverage would improve if they had a pre-existing condition.

If that's what people believe, then forget a majority -- it's amazing that health care has even the 40 percent support that it does. But these beliefs range from mostly and probably untrue to completely and demonstrably untrue.

This is not to suggest that there aren't legitimate reasons to oppose the health care bill. It's expensive and creates a huge new entitlement. It's impact on bending the cost curve is marginal, at best. It reduces Medicare spending. It arguably entrenches the system of private insurance. It contains an individual mandate that might be a bad deal for some people. And some people would be impacted more directly, such as those subject to the excise tax or the millionaire's tax.

Nevertheless, polls have consistently shown that support for the health care program increases dramatically -- probably to a plurality and possibly to a majority -- when you provide them with a neutral and accurate description of what the legislation actually contains.

One can come to a reasonable argument against the bill, as Brooks ultimately did. But the debates in Congress do not resemble the genteel tête-à-tête that he and Gail Collins have in the New York Times. Not all of this, by the way, is the Republicans' fault. From Day One, the Democrats have done a poor job of selling the health care bill, in large part because they were so busy fighting with themselves about it.

But how can you do what Dianne Feinstein did, and tell ABC News, in essence -- well, the liars won, so we should give up?

I think we do go slower [on] health care. People do not understand it. it is so big it is beyond their comprehension. And if you don’t understand it when somebody tells you it does this or it does that and it’s not true, you tend to believe it, even though it isn’t true. It’s hard to debunk all of the myths that are out there.

How is this morally, tactically, or politically acceptable? How can you expect to keep the majority when you have an attitude like this?

Why not instead say something like:

Well, you know what, what Massachusetts tells us is that we haven't done a very good job of explaining our values to them. Maybe we need to take a step back and have that conversation with them. And some of our opponents have been made that job more difficult by telling them things that just aren't true. But we believe that, when people learn what's really in the health care bill, they're going to realize how much good it does for our country. And that's what we were elected to do -- to get our country back on track after eight years of a government that misled the American people and produced the worst crises since the Second World War. We understand that people are scared and upset about the tumultuous times that we face and they have every right to be. But we have to continue pressing forward.

Why hasn't there been a single Democratic Congressman who made a statement like this? Instead, we have people like Feinstein, who voted for the Iraq war and who curls into a defensive crouch every time that the Democrats lose an election.

There's more than one way for democracy to become dysfunctional. One way is if the Congress consistently adopts policies that the American people don't support. Another is if one of the major political parties routinely misleads the public to manipulate public opinion, and the other party aids and abets them by behaving like a bunch of gutless wonders who can't see farther than the next midterm. Neither outcome is desirable -- but Iraq ought to be a reminder that the latter is every bit as much a threat to our democracy as the former.

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Scott Brown is More Liberal Than Olympia Snowe, and Now He’s Pivotal, Too

More from University of Chicago professor Boris Shor. First, the punch line:

I [Boris] disagree with Josh Tucker that the election isn’t that consequential. First, the pivotal Senator will now be a Republican, not a Democrat. The parties put a lot of pressure on moderate members of Congress to vote one way or the other; it’s often unsuccessful, but its a pretty powerful source of influence. Second, that pivotal Senator will be Brown, not Snowe (if my prediction proves accurate). Finally, this pivotality will exist on every issue, not just health care reform, which probably just expired in its current form. Not too shabby as a consequential election, right?

Now, the background:

Scott Brown won the special Senate election in Massachusetts over Martha Coakley yesterday. . . . based upon his voting record in the Massachusetts State Senate as well the Votesmart surveys of MA state legislators (include his own from 2002), I [Boris] estimate that Brown is to the left of the leftmost Republican in the Senate, Olympia Snowe of Maine [typo fixed] and to the right of the rightmost Democrat in the Senate, Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Just as important, Brown stands to become the pivotal member of the Senate—that is, the 60th least liberal (equivalently, the 40th most conservative)–a distinction previously held by Nelson.

These figures come thanks to the hard work of UCLA political scientist Jeff Lewis who keeps an archive of almost up-to-the-minute votes in Congress, and Stanford political scientist Simon Jackman who calculates current ideological scores for all members of Congress in the current 111th Congress, past and present.

By dropping Senators no longer in office in this Congress, I [Boris] created a dual Google Docs spreadsheet ranking of current US Senators before Brown’s election, and afterwards. It can be found here. The crucial columns to focus on are the first one, containing the ranking, and the third one, containing Jackman’s best estimate of their ideology (the final three columns express the uncertainty surrounding the estimates – ignore this for now). For a graphic version of this data, click here.

Before yesterday’s election, the 60th senator was Ben Nelson. This ranking made Nelson uniquely powerful . . . After Brown’s election, however, the picture changes. Paul Kirk, the appointed temporary replacement for Edward Kennedy who is estimated to be the third most liberal Senator, leaves. Brown, who’s to the left of Snowe but to the right of Nelson, enters. He therefore becomes that pivotal 41st vote to sustain a filibuster and deadlock legislation (or the 60th vote to end a filibuster and pass it).

How far to the left of Snowe and how far to the right of Nelson is Brown? It’s difficult to tell exactly. In the spreadsheet, I put his score (in Jackman’s scale) at 0.299, or a smidgen to the left of Snowe (0.300). But he could just as well be just a touch to the right of Nelson (0.138), too. And his drifts left and right will be watched very carefully by President Obama and Congressional and party leaders, given his likely newfound status as the filibuster pivot. That’s a lot of power.

Boris is a professor, not a pundit, so he follows up the dramatic claim with some thoughtful discussion:

Could I [Boris] be wrong? Yes. It’s possible Brown turns out to be more conservative than we would have expected given his rather liberal state legislative record. At last night’s victory speech, he laid out a number of conservative policy positions.

The observation that politicians are ideologically consistent as they move throughout their careers (“they die with their ideological boots on” in Keith Poole’s memorable phrase) is true on average, not in every case. What could make him more conservative? The party could pull him in that direction. Or maybe presidential considerations (Obama has made the hearts of all State Senators full with ambition) will pull him to the right.

But let’s be realistic. Scott Brown is a politician, not a kamikaze pilot. As David Mayhew argued in 1974, the first and proximate goal of politicians in the United States is to get re-elected. Brown will have a far harder time in 2012 against some credible, seasoned Democrat who won’t get surprised again (or run so badly). Turnout will be higher in that presidential year, meaning the Democratic base will be far more evident at the polls. And the Democrat will get to ride Obama’s coattails, influencing independents in the Democratic direction. And Brown doesn’t have that many years to build up the incumbency advantages that other freshman Senators get. He won’t have brought home as much bacon, and he won’t have risen too far in Congress.

All in all, 2012 will be a very tough election for Brown. So what will the soon-to-be-worried Senator do to enhance his electoral chances? He’ll take the public opinion pulse of his state very, very carefully. And his state is amongst the most liberal in the country. Unless he aims to run for President in 2012 (pro-choice Republicans do well in Republican primaries, right?), his liberal constituency and a desire for re-election will inevitably pull him to the left. Sure, he is far more conservative than Kennedy, Kirk, or Coakley, but that’s immaterial. Brown’s a liberal Republican, and now he’s pivotal.

I just have one question. Don't we usually think of the most pivotal senator being the median (#50 or 51), not #60? I understand what Boris is saying about the filibuster and his point about it coinciding with the party divide. The flip side of this, though, I'd think, is that if the Democrats don't have 60 votes, maybe they'll do more with 50, so the pivotal point will move?

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Post-Partisanship Epic Fail?

David Leonhardt at the New York Times has this smart take on the now-imperiled health care bill:

The bills before Congress are politically partisan and substantively bipartisan.

What does that mean? The first part is obvious. All 60 Senate Democrats and independents voted for the bill, and all 40 Republicans voted against it. The second part is the counterintuitive one. Yet it’s true.

The current versions of health reform are the product of decades of debate between Republicans and Democrats. The bills are more conservative than Bill Clinton’s 1993 proposal. For that matter, they’re more conservative than Richard Nixon’s 1971 plan, which would have had the federal government provide insurance to people who didn’t get it through their job.

Emphasis mine. Back in 2008, the smart liberal spin on "post-partisanship" -- one which I frankly bought into -- is that it was in part an effort to put a popular, centrist sheen on a relatively liberal agenda. Instead, as Leonhardt points out, what Obama has wound up with is an unpopular, liberal sheen on a relatively centrist agenda.

It's not just on health care -- but let's talk about health care for a moment. The bill that the Senate Democrats passed did not substantially restructure the system of private insurance, nor the health care delivery system. It did not include a public option. It did, rather, about the minimum that you could do if you want to prevent people with pre-existing conditions from being denied health care. You can't require insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions unless you're willing to put a mandate into place (otherwise, everyone's premiums would rise substantially). And you can't put a mandate into place without having some reasonably generous subsidies (otherwise, a lot of folks would go broke.) The Senate's bill was about the least radical way to achieve something approaching universal coverage that can be imagined. It is nevertheless a bill that would do a tremendous amount of good for a tremendous number of people, and so I've advocated for its passage. But with the possible exception of Wyden-Bennett (which not identifiably left or right although much more radical than what the Congress is considering), virtually any attempt to achieve universal coverage would be further to the left of this bill.

The stimulus? The pricetag was much less than what most economists were advocating for. And about half of it was tax cuts -- although you'd never know it from the White House's poor messaging on the subject.

Cap-and-trade? It's a market-based solution, and one that includes significantly less ambitious emissions targets than have been adopted by virtually any other Westernized country. The version of the climate bill that the Senate would consider would in all likelihood have included offshore drilling and an expansion of nuclear energy, making it almost literally identical to the one that John McCain advocated on the campaign trail.

The War in Afghanistan was escalated. Robert Gates is still the defense secretary. Obama's foreign policy has been prudent, but hardly dovish.

The bailout? It was a continuation of a policy adopted under the Bush Administration -- an exceptionally unpopular one, but not one that's identifiably liberal or conservative.

Obama has adopted a few progressive social policies, like the hate crimes bill and the fair pay act, which he perhaps does not get enough credit for. They also happen to be things which are supported by an overwhelming majority of the population. He hasn't pushed on ending Don't Ask Don't Tell (even though that too polls well) or repealing the Defense of Marriage Act. His position on same sex-marriage -- civil unions, but not marriage itself -- is the centrist, plurality position. His Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, was a good one, but not one of the more liberal nominees that he might have considered.

Financial reform? The House's bill was fairly watered down, and the Senate's bill will be more so. Nevertheless, Republicans opposed it uniformly, even though polls show the public overwhelmingly favors stricter regulation of Wall Street.

A jobs bill? The House's version is quite centrist, consisting of about $50 billion apiece in infrastructure projects, tax breaks, and aid to state and local governments. But not a single Republican voted for it.

What's more alarming still is that some of the policies which have become unpopular -- like the health care bill and arguably the stimulus (although the polling is more equivocal there) -- did not start out that way. With the exception of the bailouts -- a policy which the White House certainly wasn't pursing for political expediency -- virtually every policy that the Democrats have advanced polled reasonably well when it was first proposed. It did not always end up that way after it had been through the legislative meat grinder. The reflexive Republican opposition to virtually any policy that the Democrats advanced -- they've overwhelmingly opposed policies as benign as delaying the digital TV changeover date! -- has in retrospect been exceptionally effective.

This is not to suggest that the Democrats should say fuck it all and adopt an agenda that really is leftist -- it couldn't get the support of the Congress anyway -- although there are important exceptions where the liberal alternative (the public option being a good example) polls better than the centrist one.

But the problem, it seems to me, is not so much with the policy but with the messaging. Most of the policies that the Democrats will consider in the spring -- in particular, the jobs bill, the bank tax, and financial regulation -- do poll well, for the time being. The Democrats cannot necessarily count on them ending up that way, however, if their track record over the last year provides any guidance.

I absolutely acknowledge that the White House has inherited an exceptionally difficult situation, one made much more difficult when the economy continued to bleed 700,000 jobs per month in January through April. Many of the problems that they have encountered, I would not have seen coming, and many of the mistakes that they have made, I would have made too.

But the Democrats do have the benefit of hindsight now -- and they ought to take advantage of it. For one thing, they need to be very careful about rewarding Republican nihilism. The best case is when you can simultaneously achieve both a policy and a political victory. More often, especially given the structural constraints imposed by the Congress, you'll have to settle for one or the other. But I would be very careful about any course of action which concedes victory to Republicans on both levels. Mistakes were made along the way to health care reform, but you've paid the political price for health care: now pass the fucking thing.

As for the rest of the policies in your portfolio, take an inventory and figure out which have the votes to pass right now (through reconciliation where prudent), which can't be passed no matter what, and which could be achieved but will require some expenditure of political capital. And then on the other axis, wargame everything and figure which it would be to your benefit to have an extended public debate about (this would almost always be for political theater rather than policy reasons), which you should put up to vote, but as quickly as possible, and which ought not to see the light of day.

I know: easier said then done. But henceforth the Democrats, from the White House on downward, have gotten a remarkably poor return on the investment of their political capital. The failures are more tactical than strategic. But to do what Democrats usually do, and crawl into a shell in the face of adversity, is not advisable.

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Let's Play the Blame Game!

When a Democrat loses a federal race in Massachusetts, the default assumption ought to be that several factors are to blame.

Clearly the national environment has gotten worse for the Democrats since Barack Obama's inauguration one year ago. This has been obvious from Congressional generic ballot polling, Presidential approval polling, early polling of 2010 senate races, the number of Democratic retirements, the outcomes of New Jersey and Virginia, the tenor of the political discourse in the country, and so forth. But perhaps it is somewhat more bad than we had previously realized.

Clearly also, the quality of the candidates and the campaign matters a lot, especially in open seat races. Although it might seem strange to have a Republican Senator from Massachusetts, it is not dramatically more strange than having a Democratic Senator from Alaska or Nebraska, or a Republican Representative from New Orleans, all of which our Congress already had before tonight. Martha Coakley, needless to say, was not a good candidate and did not run a good campaign.

Finally, there is a third category: contingencies specific to Massachusetts, but not specific to Coakley. This was a state in which Democrats had twice changed the rules governing Senate succession, first in 2004 to prevent then-governor Mitt Romney from appointing a Republican to take John Kerry's seat (should he have been elected President), and then again last year to allow Deval Patrick to appoint an interim appointee. Moreover, because it was a special election, the time frame of the campaign was dramatically compressed, making it harder to define the Republican opponent or to recover from any initial missteps in the campaign. Lastly, Massachusetts is unusual in that it already has universal health care and the Democratic health care plan would not do it much good, which allowed the Republican to promise to oppose it without looking like a typical partisan hack.

***

Overall, we have a 31-point swing in the vote to explain: from Barack Obama's roughly 26-point victory in November 2008, to Martha Coakley's roughly 5-point loss today.

At a bare minimum, 10 of those points must be assigned to the national environment. Generic ballot polling suggests that the Democrats' position has worsened by a net of 10 points since November 2008, from winning the House popular vote by 10 points in 2008 to being dead even with Republicans today.

Also at a bare minimum, 11 points of blame should be assigned to Coakley. That represents the difference between the 58 percent of vote that she received at her high-water mark in the polls to the 47 percent she received on Election Day. A fairly large number of voters, it appears, actually turned away from Coakley; it was not just a matter of undecided ones turning toward Brown.

That leaves us with 10 more points of blame to assign; let's just dole those out as evenly as possible, giving 3 more points to Coakley, 3 more points to the national environment, and 4 to Massachusetts-specific special contingencies -- it gets the extra point because it hadn't received any yet.

That would make the final score: national environment 13, Coakley 14, special circumstances 4.

If you follow through on the math, this would suggest that Coakley would have won by about 8 points, rather than losing by 5, had the national environment not deteriorated so significantly for Democrats. It suggests that the Democrats would have won by 9 points, rather than losing by 5, had the candidate been someone other than Coakley. And it suggests that the race would have been a 1-point loss (that is, basically too close to call), rather than a 5-point loss, even if Coakley had run such a bad campaign and even if the national environment had deteriorated as much as it has, but had there not been the unusual circumstances associated with this particular election.

Obviously, this is a rather imprecise and unsophisticated exercise. But each of those implications feels about right to me. Maybe you'd do the math a little differently. But don't be sparing with your blame; there's plenty of it to go around.

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On the Future and Branding of Scott Brown

Scott Brown won. To borrow and paraphrase a line from The Candidate, “Now what?”

There are many potential political fates, I suppose, but three seem most likely to me:

1. Scott Brown, fleeting placeholder and short-term hero. He’s the flavor of the month, disappears out of view into the Senate, loses in 2012 when the Democrats have a credible and aggressive candidate running in a presidential cycle.

2. Scott Brown, long-time Senate partisan anomaly. Brown wins re-election in 2012, emerges as a Republican cornerstone in the Senate in a state where his party normally fares poorly. (Think retiring Sen. Byron Dorgan.)

3. Scott Brown, rising star in a party desperate for fresh faces. Not quite Sarah Palin superstardom, but Brown is immediately elevated to role of GOP icon—a party savior, the guy the GOP sends around to raise money and stump for other Republicans, and so forth.

If I had to bet, I’d pick the last. Why?

Because all the elements are there:

*Brown won a symbolically powerful political victory that, in a bat of a political eye, instantly nationalized his brand in a way that a win during a regularly-scheduled November election rarely does. (The most recent case of a candidate so immediately break into the national conversation during a regular election night—no less, during a presidential cycle—was Barack Obama.)

*He did so in a very liberal state to replace the person who, other than perhaps the Clintons, has served as the most convenient and useful bête noire for Republicans and the conservative movement more specifically.

*The GOP is starving for somebody in Washington who is young, telegenic, compelling and doesn’t come across as either a nay-saying scrooge like Mitch McConnell, or a young but wooden conservative firebrand like Eric Cantor.

*Let’s face it: Brown has the look of a presidential candidate.

I’m not sure if Massachusetts—like Connecticut, as we learned during the 2000 campaign—allows a candidate to run both for Senate and be on the national ticket. Maybe Brown will be unable to harbor any hopes of being a national candidate because he’ll be busy trying to survive an electoral assault to prevent his re-election to the Senate.

But if not, he’s going to be a short-lister for every GOP presidential contender. It doesn’t matter if he emerges as a great legislator or policy mench in the next two years: Scott Brown will be known as the “guy who took away the Democrats’ (supposedly) filibuster-proof majority,” the guy who “sent a shiver down the spine of the Obama Administration,” and, of course, the “guy who won Teddy’s seat.”

You can’t buy branding like that.

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Defying Odds, Republican Brown Becomes Next Senator from Massachusetts

In an outcome that would have been unthinkable just weeks ago, Republican Scott Brown has become the Senator-elect from Massachusetts.

The margin is currently 52-47. It is more likely than not to tighten slightly as much of the outstanding vote is in Boston, but all networks have called the race and Martha Coakley has conceded.

As one would naturally expect from an election in which the Republican won Massachusetts, Brown outperformed typical GOP margins in every corner of the state. But the swing tended to be largest in red-leaning and swing areas in central Massachusetts. Coakley's numbers were relatively good in Western Massachusetts and a handful of left-leaning suburbs, but underwhelming in Boston itself.

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Six Quick Things

1. Election days are really boring.

2. Taken in a vacuum, newspaper reports about turnout would have me feeling pretty upbeat about Martha Coakley's chances.

3. Taken in a vacuum, insider buzz (including buzz about mood at Coakley HQ) would have me feeling completely despondent about Coakley's chances.

4. Bookmark this post from Swing State Project, which provides detail on benchmarks that Coakley/Brown need to hit in every city in the Commonwealth.

5. Rasmussen will have some sort of quasi- exit poll survey thing out at 8 PM. I'm happy that they're doing this, since the regular exit polling firms didn't get their shit together in time to survey this race, but I'd interpret the topline results with extreme caution for a number of reasons.

6. We're going to handle tonight like we did the November 2009 election, which means twitter for quick-react kind of stuff and the main blog for slightly longer items.

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Are Coakley Voters Too Ashamed to be Polled?

Tucker Carlson has this report from spinmeister extraordinaire Frank Luntz:

Just about every election night, Republican pollster Frank Luntz assembles a focus group of likely voters to help predict election results. Tonight you can see Luntz interview an assembly of Massachusetts voters on Fox at 9:10 p.m. EST.

But you probably won’t see all the work that went into it. As of late this afternoon, Luntz was still scrambling to balance his focus group with supporters of Democrat Martha Coakley. “I just lost another one,” Luntz growled over his cell phone from a hotel ballroom at Logan Airport. In the last 24 hours, six Coakley voters have dropped out. By contrast, Luntz hasn’t lost a single supporter of her opponent, Scott Brown.

The problem isn’t money. “They’re getting paid well,” Luntz says, “probably more than they’re making at their jobs. And they still don’t want to do it.”

Instead, says Luntz, they’re ashamed. “They don’t want to be on television defending Martha Coakley. It’s passé. It’s socially unacceptable. I never dreamed I’d see Democrats in Massachusetts embarrassed to admit they’re Democrats.”

I'd say this is either a really bad sign for Martha Coakley or a really good sign. The way in which it could be a really bad sign is obvious. But how could it be a really good sign?

Because Luntz isn't having trouble finding Coakley voters so much as he's having trouble finding Coakley voters who are willing to go on camera and talk about their candidate. And if people aren't willing to go on camera and talk about their candidate, they also might not be willing to talk to a pollster about their candidate. If there is non-response bias in the polls, which is basically the way that Coakley wins this, then this sort of anecdote that would be archetypal of that.

See also: Shy Tory factor.

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Martha Choakley?

It's still not entirely clear to me that Martha Coakley will lose today. As I wrote previously, beyond the poll numbers, which have indisputably trended toward Scott Brown over the past month, almost every intangible--at least the ones the media reported and thus formed the contest's overall narrative--favor Brown, as did the scheduling and timing of the race.

Still, this is Massachusetts, and this is Teddy Kennedy's seat. Even though a short, six-week race in February of an off-year cycle is more than the normally disadvantaged, minority Republicans could hope for, that argument could be turned inside out, too: I mean, how much damage can a majority-party standard bearer like Coakley do to herself in such a short time?

Quite a bit, apparently. If she loses today, this may forever be remembered as the "Martha Choakley" race.

Look, Coakley cannot be blamed for the features of the race that are and were beyond her control: The state of the economy; her party's unified control of state and national goverment; the president's lagging approval numbers; the fact that she suffered all the burdens of being an "incumbent" with few if any of the actual advantages of incumbency.

Nevertheless, and with specific regard to the candidate and/or campaign effects of this race--the things within Coakley's control--so much went afoul:

*She allowed Brown to turn the race into a personality, rather than an issue/policy choice. Aside from healthcare and the implicit notion that Coakley would be a stand-in vote for the deceased icon whose seat she would be filling, what was the Coakley "platform"? Unless you are a particularly dynamic or celebrity-like candidates, when you are the nominee of the favored party in the state you want to avoid allowing the race to devolve into a personality contest. In 2006 in Maryland, where I teach, that's what Michael Steele tried to do against clear statewide favorite Ben Cardin. Cardin won the election, but Steele kept the race to 10 points in a bad Republican year in a state John Kerry won by 14 points just two years earlier in a better Republican cycle.

*She seemed unncertain about how closely to align herself with the Democratic establishment, either in the state and/or nationally. Was using Vicki Kennedy the right choice? Probably, but maybe not; perhaps some voters viewed it as some combination of heavy-handed, maudlin or desperate. Should President Obama (or President Clinton) have been summoned sooner, or maybe not at all because nationalizing the race only going to remind voters that she represented Washington's in-party? My feeling is that, had she done a better job establishing an independent, policy-based identity after winning the nomination, she could have avoided bringing in the big, national guns; but once she started to tank, there was not enough time to recover and she had not choice but to call for help. So it was the right decision, but a decision that could have been obviated.

*Those gaffes. Conservative talk radio, where Curt Schilling already had a built-in following, loves episodes like the Red Sox blunders Coakley made because they meet the three criteria for a good talk radio story: The details are easily accessible to listeners because there's not too much complex or heavy policy content and there is a clear, repeatable fact or quote that encapsulates the story; the story can be personalized to an individual or set of individuals, who can then be mocked or demonized; and, finally, the episode fits neatly into a pre-existing frame, in this case the "out-of-touch" character of Democrats/liberals. This was a slow, fat pitch right down the middle for Schilling, Brown and the GOP to whack. (Yes, I know Schilling is a pitcher--I'm a Sox fan!--so the fat-pitch metaphor is backwards in this case, but you get the point.)

All campaign results are a function of three things: 1. The rules and structure of the election system; 2. The political context of the race, which includes everything from political/electoral environment of the moment and the underlying partisan/ideological disposition of the electorate; and 3. Campaign and candidate effects. Brown had the advantage on #1; despite the bad economy and anti-incumbent and anti-Washington and anti-Democratic sentiment, Coakley had the overall advantage on #2, even if it was a smaller advantage than usual for a Democratic candidate in Massachusetts. But again, the first two factors were largely beyond her control.

What Martha Coakley presumably did have control over was her campaign strategy and message--the third and, for her, potentially fatal factor. In any case, we'll know pretty soon whether she can pull off what will now be regarded, amazingly enough, as a last-minute "upset" win.

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White House Readies Gamble On High-Speed Ping-Pong

Here's an emerging bit of conventional wisdom that I have reason to believe is accurate:

The White House's announcement yesterday that it will schedule its State of the Union address for next Wednesday, January 27th, an earlier date than most insiders expected, is surely not coincidental and reflects a desire to pressure the House into voting for the Senate's version of the health care bill almost immediately, assuming that Scott Brown defeats Martha Coakley in Massachusetts tonight.

The pitch that the White House and Nancy Pelosi will make to the Democratic members of the House is a difficult one and will need to be extremely well executed, but is likely to consist of one or more of the following arguments:

(1) President Obama can deliver a home-run speech when he needs to and will deliver a home-run speech on January 27th that features a sharp pivot toward more populist economic policies, such as a bank tax, financial regulation, and a jobs bill.

(2) The White House already got the 60th vote that was going to be the most difficult to get: Ben Nelson's to push them past the finish line on health care. On most other issues, they may not have had 59 votes anyway. In other cases still, the White House will be more amenable to using reconciliation, which was designed for precisely the sort of fiscal measures they will be considering in the spring and summer. Scott Brown's vote may not be in play in the immediate term, but could be in the medium term, essentially leaving the Democrats in the same position they were before Arlen Specter defected. And the Democrats' shaky 60-seat supermajority was not doing them much good as far as optics and public perception went.

(3) The White House's tone will change to reflect the new math. It will be less even-tempered with the Republicans in Congress, while at the same time being more identifiably populist to moderate and independent swing voters. It will focus almost exclusively on things that poll at 50%+ or that are necessary to keep the country running. This may include some initiatives where they don't expect to receive Republican votes; such measures will be pushed to the floor quickly, forcing Republicans to cast a roll call vote to filibuster them rather than making disingenuous objections to the press.

(4) Some grievances that House members may have with the Senate's health care bill can be resolved through reconciliation in the Senate. The long time-frame before implementation provides a window of several years for this to be accomplished.

(5) Although there has been considerable damage extracted from the debate over health care, there is reason to believe that most of it is in the past. The health care bill itself has not become any more unpopular than when the Senate passed it in November. The party will not do itself any favors by having passed a health care bill through both chambers, only to see it implode.

(6) Near-term political fallout from passing health care may be mitigated somewhat by Republican giddiness over Scott Brown's victory and coverage of the SOTU.

Some of this is spin and some of it isn't, and all of it will place tremendous pressure on the White House to perform more effectively in 2010 than they did in 2009. But it's not an unsellable message.

The question is whether the math is there to pass the Senate's bill. Jonathan Cohn presents the optimists' case and David Dayen the pessimists' one. I am somewhere on the fence. I agree that at a minimum, the Democrats will lose some (although perhaps not all) votes from the Stupak block. There's also Robert Wexler's retirement to contend with. On the other hand, the Senate's bill is closer to what some Blue Dogs in Congress had wanted in the first place, and several of them who voted against the House's version had indicated a willingness to vote for a Senate-like measure. Some other possible sources of votes are Dennis Kucinich and Eric Massa, the two Democrats to have opposed the House's bill from the left, and any members who voted against the House's bill initially but are now planning to retire. Three Democrats -- Bart Gordon, John Tanner, and Brian Baird -- who voted against the House's health care bill have since announced plans to retire.

The greatest advantage that Pelosi has under the ping-pong scenario is that this really is an ultimatum case: while there is some negotiation to be had, in terms of how the Democrats will reward members who vote for the bill, the text of the bill itself cannot be changed one iota. It's take-it-or-leave-it, and so there are fewer possibilities for brinksmanship gone awry.

The greatest disadvantage, of course, is the possibility of mass panic, resulting not just from Coakley's loss but also from retirements, worrisome polling, and a toxic media environment. 2010 has gotten off to a really bad start on so many levels for the Democrats.

I'm reminded a bit of what happened to the New York Mets after their spectacular playoff collapse of 2007, the second-biggest choke in baseball history, after which the Mets surprisingly did not fire their manager, Willie Randolph. The collapse had been so sudden, so total, and so unexpected that the the Mets sped straight through anger and immediately into grieving, and you don't fire anyone during a wake. (Randolph was fired once the Mets came to their sesnes 69 games into the 2008 season.)

The Democrats will be in a similar state of mind if Coakley loses tonight, and the White House's idea will be to give them something to focus upon before the the numbness wears off and the pain sets in. It might not work, but the State of the Union is fortuitously timed, and perhaps the only chance that Democrats have to turn Plan B into Plan B-plus. The only prediction I'd make is that ping-pong will happen quickly, or not at all.

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25% ≠ 0%

Right now, our trusty little model of Massachusetts gives Martha Coakley just a 25 percent chance of prevailing tomorrow. Intrade also puts her odds at about 1 in 4. My subjective assessment might be a little better than that, but not much.

People are acting, however, as though 25 percent is the same as zero percent. And -- as disappointing as it might be to be in this position -- obviously it is not. This is not some basketball game where the score suddenly became Brown 75, Coakley 25; a 25 percent chance of winning means, quite literally, 25 percent.

Of the 86 elections that we made calls on the morning of November 4th, 2008, only 6 (the Senate election in Minnesota, and the Presidential elections in Florida, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina and North Dakota) featured contests in which the trailing candidate had a 25 percent or better chance of prevailing. The outcome of this election remains more uncertain than that of at least 90 percent of other elections, even if it's less uncertain than it was 24 hours ago.

And yes: this is directed mostly toward my friends on the left. I would say the same to my friends on the right, but I don't think that they need the reminder; the energy, focus and enthusiasm of those in the online right has been something to behold, and will be a force to be reckoned with even if their candidate should lose this race.

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538 Model Posits Brown as 3:1 Favorite

The FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecasting Model, which correctly predicted the outcome of all 35 Senate races in 2008, now regards Republican Scott Brown as a 74 percent favorite to win the Senate seat in Massachusetts on the basis of new polling from ARG, Research 2000 and InsiderAdvantage which show worsening numbers for Brown's opponent, Martha Coakley. We have traditionally categorized races in which one side has between a 60 and 80 percent chance of winning as "leaning" toward that candidate, and so that is how we categorize this race now: Lean GOP. Nevertheless, there is a higher-than-usual chance of large, correlated errors in the polling, such as were observed in NY-23 and the New Hampshire Democratic primary; the model hedges against this risk partially, but not completely.



Coakley's odds are substantially worse than they appeared to be 24 hours ago, when there were fewer credible polls to evaluate and there appeared to be some chance that her numbers were bottoming out and perhaps reversing. However, the ARG and Research 2000 polls both show clear and recent trends against her. Indeed the model, which was optimized for regular rather than special elections, may be too slow to incorporate new information and may understate the magnitude of the trend toward Brown.

At the same time, pollsters are more error-prone in special rather than general elections, as in other types of elections (like primaries) where turnout is hard to model. In addition, the polling may not just be error-prone but also biased in one direction. In particular, polling in comparable elections in the past, in which a Democratic or Republican candidate was facing an unusually vigorous challenge in a very blue or very red state, have tended to underestimate the performance of that candidate by an average of 2.3 points.

The 538 model builds in a de facto hedge against this by adjusting the polling average for the demographics of the state in accordance with our established procedures. Without such a hedge, it would regard Brown as better than an 85 percent favorite. However, the model is not hedged fully, as it gives Coakley a 1.3 point "bonus" rather than the 2.3 point margin by which candidates in her position have traditionally outperformed their polls. With a 2.3 point "bonus" instead, Coakley's odds of victory would be approximately 40 percent.

If significant, correlated errors in the polling occur, it is most likely to be the result of response bias, owing to the substantially greater enthusiasm of Scott Brown voters, who may be more willing to answer a pollster's phone call after having been besieged by calls from both campaigns over the past several days. Some of the pollsters' findings, like a mid-40s approval rating for Obama among 'likely' voters, are hard to reconcile with the turnouts in New Jersey or Virginia, with evidence from national polling trends, or with anecdotal reports of potentially very high turnout. A variety of factors, ranging from the increasing use of IVR polls and short sampling periods, to the unusual partisan composition of the Massachusetts electorate (which is plurality independent), to the generally inexperienced polling firms which have surveyed the state, could make these effects more likely.

In addition, there is a small chance that movement toward Coakley could occur after the pollsters have left the field. Until very recently, most voters assumed that Coakley would win; the fact that her chances are now imperiled could motivate more of them to vote, or to avoid casting a "protest vote" against her for one of her opponents. However, the chances are perhaps just as good that her voters become too despondent to turn out, which could produce a fairly substantial victory for Brown

Overall, while I would probably take Coakley's side of a 3:1 wager, her situation looks to be increasingly difficult. She is basically relying upon getting solid turnout from a "silent majority" of voters who have done little to make themselves seen and heard. We know that there are a huge number of potential such voters in Massachusetts, which remains a very blue state and which until the past three weeks had not behaved unusually in any obvious way. But the pollsters are no longer seeing and hearing from them.

Addendum: There are many assumptions in this model which may not be valid; they are discussed at considerable length here. Although I believe that these are generally a fairly well-balanced set of assumptions relative to the universe of possible assumptions (i.e. alternate sets of assumptions would tend to cluster around the 25 percent number), it is hard to know for sure. Voters and political operatives should continue to proceed as though every vote matters, as we are still well within the range where small, decimal-point shifts in turnout could have a comparatively large impact on each candidate's chance of prevailing.

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The Coakley-Brown Intangibles

I don't doubt or have anything to add to Nate's various polling analyses, but as he noted to me by email, there remains a very real chance of non-response bias in these polls. Still, the swirl of last-minute reports about this or that external or internal poll result confirms that we can be certain tomorrow's results will not be a typical Democratic blowout in Massachusetts.

So what will win or lose this tight race for either Martha Coakley or Republican Scott Brown?

A lot of the chatter surrounds intangibles. And on balance, most of the intangibles in the contest seem to point to a Brown victory:

*Coakley's fumbles. She's made two--not one, but two--Red Sox-related gaffes. Though most people who get their political information from Curt Schilling were probably not going to vote for Coakley anyway, calling Schilling a Yankees fan is beyond dumb. And in a short-sprint, low-information race, such moments are ideal fodder for "out-of-touch" narratives. Knowing who the heck Curt Schilling is won't lower healthcare premiums or pay for grandma's medication, but geez. One Sox gaffe ought to be enough to shut up a candidate on the subject. (Unless I missed something, John Kerry didn't compound his "Manny Ortiz" blunder in 2004.) But a second gaffe?

*Brimming conservative confidence. Conservatives are also chirping about big buzz at Brown rallies. And however much liberal nerves are soothed by President Obama's last-minute visit to the state, his inability to draw crowds like those he did 2008 is causing further crowing.

*The combination of anti-incumbent sentiment and anti-Democratic sentiment. Coakley is not literally an incumbent, of course. But as a stand-in for Teddy Kennedy she actually has it worse than an incumbent because at least endangered incumbents have deep connections to voters, a track record of porkbarreling and constituent service to point to, and related brand name advantages.

*A chops-licking opportunity. As if all the above were not enough to stoke conservative excitement, taking Kennedy's seat at a moment when the healthcare package is still not passed would for Republicans be like finding both a bike and a pony under the Xmas tree. The fact that voting is taking place in a mid-January special election in an midterm election season helps, too. This is a perfect storm for Massachusetts Republicans.

So...stick a fork in Coakley, she's done--right? Not so fast.

First of all, any chance Brown had of sneaking up on her is now gone. The closeness of the race is generating high passions--cautious excitement on the right, worry bordering on panic on the left. But in Massachusetts you don't want high passion and level of attention on both sides if you're a Republican; you want an asymmetrical level of passion favoring your side. You want to catch the Democrats napping all the way through to Election Day. That almost happened. But Coakley and state Dems--especially the unions--and the White House all awoke before it was over. We'll see if they rose from their collective slumber too late.

Second, intangibles make for good copy but campaign media narratives tell an incomplete tale. Whatever unions and the Democratic machine are doing, and whether it will be enough or not, their actions are simply less newsworthy than a Sox-Yankees comment, or a Schilling blog post, or whatever Scott Brown did or said at a Tea Party rally.

Third, we'll finally get a certifiable test of whether the Obama political machine has applicability for Democrats other than himself. As Mother Jones' Nick Baumann reports, the White House has gone all in with the Organizing for America list Obama built in 2008.

All of which is not to say Coakley will pull this out. I think it would be crazy to make a wager either way. There are too many unknowns. At this point, a Coakley victory would be the "surprise" outcome, which shows how much the tables have turned in the Bay State. But it would not be that surprising. Intangibles matter but they aren't everything.

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Obama Approval Under 50 Percent Among Massachusetts Likely Voters?

The National Review's Jim Gergahty tweets: "Can Obama really save Coakley if PPP puts his approval/disapproval split at 44/43?"

If the electorate which turns out tomorrow is this indifferent about Obama, I have little doubt that Coakley is headed for defeat. But I think we have to place into context just how lopsided turnout would be if indeed we see an electorate that is split 44/43 on Obama. Here are some of the relevant numbers, both in Massachusetts and nationally.



Three pollsters -- Suffolk, MRG and PPP -- all place Obama's approval between a net +1 and a net +5, and each have the raw approve number under 50 percent. Those numbers are basically identical to how Obama's polling nationally at the moment -- and this is Massachusetts.

Of course, some of those national polls are of registered voters or adults rather than likely ones, which is the whole rub. But in New Jersey this November, the electorate which turned out was +15 on Obama, basically identical to the +16 margin by which he carried the state in 2008. The news was much worse for Democrats in Virginia; Obama was a -3 there, after having carried the state by +6 -- producing a 9-point "turnout gap".

Obama carried Massachusetts by 26 points in November 2008. (His approval among registered voters there also appeared to be about +24 as of November 2009). So, if Democrats suffered from the same turnout gap in Massachusetts that they had in Virginia (which was billed as catastrophic at the time), Obama would be at a +17 or so. Instead, you have several pollsters showing him at a +1 or a +5 -- which would imply a turnout gap of 20 or 25 points, more than twice as bad as the one Democrats suffered from in VA.

Sure, a lot has happened since November. But Obama's approval ratings are basically unchanged since then, both among all voters nationally and the liberal ones who populate Massachusetts.

Of course, there are other differences between Massachusetts and NJ/VA. In particular, special elections generally have lower turnout than odd-year ones, and Coakley is arguably a worse candidate than either Jon Corzine or Creigh Deeds, which is quite a feat to pull off.

Nevertheless, if Coakley loses, I tend to think it will be more along the lines of the Rasmussen scenario, where Obama's approval rating is somewhere safely into the 50s but a lot of voters are just turned on by Brown or turned off by Coakley and don't want to reward her for having run such a lousy campaign. It's fine to ask whether Obama can save Coakley if his approval split is 44/43 -- but in addition to using polls to ask questions about the political environment, we should also use the political environment to ask questions about the polls.

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A Hung Parliament? (From the Gallows, Perhaps?)

Coming off three straight electoral victories in 1997, 2001 & 2005 under the leadership of Tony Blair, the governing Labour party in the U.K. is in real trouble. Behind in the polls by about 9-10 points and limping along with their smallest majority since they took power of the House of Commons in the 1997 landslide, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has just a few months to engineer a radical turnaround. Indeed, some observers have remarked that the real question is not whether Labour will win (they won't, many say) but instead how long they will be out of power.

At the same time, the Tory opposition has had a relatively difficult time capitalizing on the weakness of Labour. Opinion polling numbers for the Conservatives have been steadily rising since the end of 2007, following the close of Gordon Brown's honeymoon with the British public after he became P.M. in June of that year. However, the 2009 expenses scandal, which triggered a cratering of public support for both the big parties, slowed most of the Tories' momentum. In addition, the leader of the Conservatives, David Cameron, has yet to "seal the deal" with many British voters. Born, bred and educated in quite privileged environs (he's an Eton & Oxford man), Cameron's charismatic style often comes across as suspect to the voter. Though clearly a talented leader, he nonetheless sometimes seems very much the snake-oil salesman.

This post launches FiveThirtyEight's coverage of the U.K. general election, where we will follow the campaign numbers and narrative from Her Majesty's domain for the next few months. Of course, we must intentionally be vague regarding the time frame for the election and our coverage, as the date of the polling has not yet been set.

By law, the current Parliament must end by midnight on the 10th of May and a general election must be held within 17 days (not including weekends or official holidays). This means that 3 June is the latest that the 2010 election could occur, barring unforeseen official days of mourning or celebration (luckily the USA v. England World Cup match will not take place until 12 June). On the other hand, though quite unlikely, Brown could call a snap election today and with the Queen's consent, the UK public would be voting mid-February.

The new Members of Parliament (MPs) will be elected to the House of Commons from 650 geographic constituencies (up from 646 in the 2005 election), a system that was mimicked in the creation of congressional districts in the United States. Based on population distribution and allocated by a series of "Boundary Commissions," 533 MPs will come from English districts, 40 from Wales, 59 from Scotland and 18 from Northern Ireland.

About 65 thousand people are represented by each parliamentarian, with the MPs from the smaller UK nations -- Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland -- tending to have slight overrepresentation. In contrast, in the United States, the average district of a member of the House of Representatives contains more than 650 thousand people, with smallest states also having significant overrepresentation. The last time population per Representative in the U.S. Congress was as low as it is now in the House of Commons was after the 1840 census.

Similar again to the U.S. (or should we say, the U.S. system is similar to this), the House of Commons districts use a "first past the post" system, where only the vote totals in each constituency are considered, as opposed to any national vote share number. As seen in systems of this sort, first past the post voting tends to push out third parties except where they are highly regional, sometimes called "Duverger's law." Accordingly, British politics have long been dominated by the push and pull between the Labour party and the Conservatives.

However, with strong regional identities (including language and national boundaries), third parties have an important role to play in U.K. elections. Unlike in the U.S. Congress, third parties hold a significant number of seats in the House of Commons; currently 104 MPs (16 percent) come from parties other than Labour or the Conservatives.

The largest third party, and indeed the most influential, is the nationally-competitive Liberal Democrats. Established in 1988 through a merger of the Liberal party and the Social Democratic Party, the "Lib Dems" regularly pull 20 percent or more of the national vote in general election, as compared to 30 to 40 percent for the big parties. However, they have never won more than 10 percent of the seats.
Other minority parties that are more regionally centered have been able to capitalize on their small level of support because it is focused in just a few districts. Here are the 2005 numbers for all the parties who got at least 100,000 votes and won a seat (the far-right British National Party and the Greens both got about 200,000 votes but no seats for the above reasons).


With the two biggest parties under-whelming the voting public with their programmes and politics -- for example, a few rogues in Labour recently tried to remove Gordon Brown as the head of the party -- the chances of result where no party has a majority of the chamber's seats is increasingly possible. If the Lib-Dems creep above 20 percent, regional parties perform strongly, and the race between Labour and the Tories tightens further, the chances of a so-called "Hung Parliament" are increasingly likely. This has not occurred since the 1974 election, where a botched coalition building attempt by the Conservatives allowed the Labour government to remain in power, call and narrowly win a new election and govern until the end of the decade.

At the same time, huge anti-incumbent sentiment among the public, particularly after the messy expenses scandal, major economic impacts of the recession, and general frustration with the two big parties, has prompted a huge wave of retirements, particularly from Labour. More than 120 members are expected to retire, nearly 20 percent of the chamber. I guess they are trying to avoid being part of a hung Parliament -- that is, Parliament hung out to dry by the voters.
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Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international affairs columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com

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