UPDATE: Congratulations to the Saints and the city of New Orleans! Although it was mostly about the talent on the field, this game could do a lot of good for smarter NFL strategery. Expect a lot more onside kicks next season!
--- Let's take a quick look at the Saints' decision to go for the touchdown on fourth down and about a yard-and-a-half with 1:55 to go in the first half. Although Pierre Thomas got stuffed, it was probably the best play by a wide margin.
How come? Because even if you miss, the Colts are pinned inside their own 2 yard line. This makes a lot of difference: having the ball on your own 1 or 2 is worth about -1.5 points, according to David Romer's seminal paper (that is to say, the value of possession is outweighed in this instance by your incredibly poor field position). Conversely, having the ball on the 20 or thereabouts after a made field goal and a kick-off is worth +0.5 points -- your opponent has a positive scoring expectation. (There's also the case of a missed field goal, in which the Colts would have the ball at about their own 9; that's worth -0.5 points.)
Overall, considering both the Saints would score on the play and what they'd do to the Colts' field position, their decision matrix looks something like this:
We say a touchdown is worth 6.5 points, for example, which is the value of the 7 points you score less the 0.5 points in expectation you lose by giving the ball back to your opponent on their 20. The other cells in the matrix are calculated in the same fashion.
Assume that you have a 98 percent chance to make the field goal from the 1-and-a-half. Using the matrix above, that means your expectation from kicking is a net of +2.46 points.
What if you go for it instead? How often would you have to score the touchdown in order to make going for it the right play? Only about 20 percent of the time -- the main reason being, again, that failing to score but sticking your opponent on their own 1 yard line is almost as good as converting the FG but giving the ball to the opponent on the 20.
Certainly, a consideration of the scoring margin (the Saints trailed by 4), the short clock, and the opponent (the Colts can move the ball in a hurry) also deserve consideration here. But those considerations cut both ways and would probably not outweigh the ample mathematical justification for going for the touchdown. Sean Payton made the right call.
UPDATE: How about that onside kick to start the second half?
Once again using the estimates from Romer's paper, giving yourself possession on your own 45 (if you recover the kick) is worth +2.0 points; giving your opponent possession on your 45 is worth about -2.3 points. Compare this with giving the opponent their ball on their 20 after a regular kickoff, which is worth -0.5 points ... although often they'll return the kick and wind up with slightly better field position than that, so let's call it -0.7.
Given those estimates, the onside kick breaks even if you convert it about 37 percent of the time. And according to Football Outsiders, "surprise" onside kicks are in fact recovered in the neighborhood of 55 percent of the time or so. So this, too, looks like a good call -- and probably something that teams should be doing a little bit more often than they do.
Depending on where you're betting, you can get the New Orleans Saints as anywhere from 4 to 6 points underdogs, although the average seems to have settled upon 4.5.
This makes for a fairly significant cushion. Between 1999 and 2008, 28 percent of NFL games were decided by 4 points or fewer, and 31 percent were decided by 5 or fewer (see below). So with the Saints side of this bet, you're basically getting them every time that they win as well as about 30 percent of the time that they lose:
Sure, caveats apply: 4.5 points isn't as many in a game between two high-scoring teams as it would be between defensively-oriented ones (and Super Bowls in particular tend to be high scoring.) Still, with anything greater than a 3 point spread, Vegas is rendering a pretty concrete judgement as to which it thinks is the better team: in this case, the Indianapolis Colts. But is this justified on the basis of the evidence?
From my point of view, I don't really see it. The Colts may be the better team and are probably the favorites today, but I don't see them as being definitively and demonstrably better. Throwing out the weeks when the teams weren't trying but counting the playoffs, the Saints have scored an average of 34 points per game and allowed 21; the Colts have scored an average of 28 and allowed 17 -- no clear edge there. The Colts played a somewhat better schedule, but systems which account for that -- see the 'PREDICTOR' version of the Sagarin ratings, for instance -- consider the teams to be about equal.
So do more sophisticated systems. Football Outsiders, who know their stuff as well as anyone, consider the game to be a toss-up. Accuscore thinks that the Colts will win about 55 percent of the time but that they should be just 2 or 3 point favorites, not 4.5 or 5. Meanwhile, computer models developed by the Wall Street Journal and Indiana University give the Saints a (very, very slight) edge.
A lot of the Vegas sentiment, undoubtedly, is because the Colts turned in a considerably more impressive performance against the New York Jets during Championship Week than the Saints did against the Vikings -- a game they were lucky to win. In general, however, it's a trusism that people overemphasize the most recent events when making predictions -- the Championship Game won't necessarily have a lot more predictive value than, say, Week 12. And the Colts' performance also came against the New York Jets, one of the weaker teams to have made the AFC Championship in some time. Had the Saints played the Jets, their performance might have been just as impressive. In fact, they beat the Jets 24-10 -- about the same margin as Indy's 30-17 win -- at home in Week 4.
The Saints and Colts actually have had five opponents in common this season, not counting the Colts' Week 16 and 17 games against the Jets and the Bills, respectively, when they weren't playing their regulars. The Saints won by the larger margin against 4 of the 5 teams -- and the tally would be 5 of 6 if we counted the Buffalo game -- although Indy makes up a lot of ground because they clobbered the lowly St. Louis Rams whereas the Saints had one of the worst games of their year against them:
And yes: I do watch a lot of football. At no point during the season did I think: Wow, Indy is clearly the best team in football (the closest I came to that feeling for any team this year was for the Saints, after they crushed the Patriots 38-17 in Week 12). I thought the Colts were a very, very good team, but were probably a bit fortunate to have gone 14-0.
Again, you can certainly argue that Indianapolis is the better team. Peyton Manning is an incredibly impressive football player, their defense is pretty clearly better, and they've been a bit more consistent from week to week. Were this a pick 'em, I'd probably go with the Colts. But if you're getting the Saints and 4.5 or even 5.5 points, you should take them.
My official prediction, just for fun: Colts 31, Saints 27.
Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with [2/10 of a senator] working on behalf of the millionaires. Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year. . . . Or how about if senators represented particular demographic groups, based on gender and race? White women would elect the biggest group of senators -- 37 of them, though only 38 women have ever served in the Senate.
I don't know how well all of this would work in practice--for one thing, I wouldn't want the senator who represents two-year-olds to be anywhere near the nuclear button--but I agree that ideas of fairness and political representation are subtle.
Along similar lines, here is my response to economists who complained that there were not enough economists in elective office:
I was curious about this so I looked up some statistics--not on Congress but on the workforce. According to the 2001 Statistical Abstract of the United States, there were 139,000 economists employed in the United States, which represented 0.1% of the employed population. 1% of 535 is about 1/2, so with at least two economists in Congress, the profession is hardly unrepresented.
139,000 is a crude estimate because it presumably represents the people whose job title is "economist" (and thus wouldn't include, for example, Matt Kahn, who originally raised the "not enough economists in Congress" issue and whose job title is "professor"). But, even throwing in all these economics professors and various other practicing economists, I still don't think it would add up to the half-million that would be necessary to reach 2/535 of the employed population.
This is not to debate the merits of the argument--perhaps Congress would indeed be better if it included more economists--but rather to note that people with this sort of job are a small minority in the U.S. (In contrast, there were 720,000 physicians, 170,000 dentists, and 2.1 million nurses, and 1.7 million health technicians in the U.S.)
To put it another way, without reference to economists (or to the 2.1 million "mathematical and computer scientists" out there): the Statistical Abstract has 260,000 psychologists. Certainly Congress would be better off with a few psychologists, who might understand how citizens might be expected to react to various policies.
I'm willing to believe that the country's 890,000 lawyers are being overrepresented, but what about the 114,000 biologists? A few of these in Congress might advance the understanding of public health. And then there are the 290,000 civil engineers--I'd like to have a few of them around also. I'd also like some of the 280,000 child care workers and 620,000 pre-K and kindergarten teachers to give their insight on deliberations on family policy. And the 1.1 million police officers and 340,000 prison guards will have their own perspectives on justice issues.
So I think that representation is a tricky issue. Most of us would probably like more "people like us" in Congress, but that's tough with only 535 seats to go around, and given that there are a lot of politicians already out there (many of whom are lawyers) who you'd be competing with.
Does it make a difference? Maybe so. In his article, "Does the Numerical Over-Representation of the Upper Class in U.S. Legislatures Matter?", Nicholas Carnes finds:
Throughout America's history, most political decisionmakers have been highly-educated, wealthy individuals from prestigious, high-paying occupations. . . . On balance, this study's findings suggest that the numerical over-representation of affluent Americans in elected offices promotes more conservative economic policy outcomes, although not for the straightforward reasons that political observers have often suggested.
P.S. One suggestion that's come up from time to time is to form the Senate from a national random sample of adults. This would give you all the representativeness you'd want.
P.P.S. Apparently the House has four (former) blue-collar workers: Phil Hare of Illinois, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, Mike Michaud of Maine, and Bob Brady of Pennsylvania. I don't know how many former nurses, police officers, or child care workers they have.
In a move that is as blatantly political as it is overdue, Gordon Brown this week announced his support for a referendum on the so-called "Alternative Vote" proposal that has made its way around for the last few years.
Known to the rest of the world as the "Instant Run-Off," the proposed new system is far from the proportional representation system that dominates continental Europe. However, it is would have an important impact on the numbers game in UK politics, particularly in close elections like this one.
We will start with the figures about what would mean in an electoral context, understanding that, of course, it would not be in place for this election given the need for a referendum beforehand.
The main added-value of the AV (we'll use the British acronym for now) is that it allows voters to rank their choices, rather than just voting for one prospective MP. In effect, you can still cast that initial protest vote or two without losing the chance to cast your final lot with the lesser of the two remaining evils if your top choice candidate does not make it. In an American context, it would be like if in 2000 all the Ralph Nader voters in Florida could have had their votes switched to their second choice candidate in the case when no candidate reached a majority initially.
If enacted, this would likely have an important impact on quite a number of House of Commons constituencies. In the last general election in the UK (2005), only 220 seats were won with a majority of the voter -- just barely above one-third of the House of Commons' 646 constituencies. Among the major parties, Labour fared the best, with almost 37 percent of their seats won by majority, while the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had far fewer, along with the regional parties.
In some cases, mainly in places with strong regional parties, small parties can capitalize on the split vote to prevail. For example, in the "Bethnal Green and Bow" constituency of east London, the left-wing Respect party was able to beat out a safe Labour MP with just 35.9 percent of the vote to Labour's 34.0 percent.
However, in most cases it is the large parties (Tories and Labour) who profit from the current system, where the first past the post system casts a bit of a chilling effect on voters who would otherwise vote for third parties. For example, in the Ynys Mon constituency of Wales, the Labour MP prevailed with just 34.6 percent of the vote, followed by the regional Plaid Cymru party candidates 31.1 percent, an independent right-wing candidate with 14.7 percent, the Conservative Party's 11 percent and the Liberal Democrats 7 percent.
So what is the political imperative for Brown to push this proposition forward at this time? Quite simply, it is to appeal to the Liberal Democrats, with whom lie Labour's likely remaining chance at staying in government. In the case of a hung parliament, as we discussed a couple weeks back, the Lib Dems will hold an important swing position.
According to pollster Angus Reid, about 40 percent of Britons would vote in favor of the AV scenario if given the chance, as compared to 31 percent for the present system. At the same time, 6 percent said they would not vote at all and 23 answered "Don't know." However, a majority (52 percent) said that they would welcome a referendum on this issue, while just 20 percent said they would not (28 percent not sure). There was a slight regional variation on the vote, with Scottish, Welsh and English Midlands voters more in favor of the AV than the rest of voters (London, England South and England North).
This indicates good politics for Brown, though the media and most political elites see apparent pandering at play. And for the Lib Dems, who are the clear targets of the policy, this could mean important gains if enacted.
In 2005, there were 32 seats where the Liberal Democrat candidate was within 20 percentage points of the winner, who was either a Tory or from Labour, where the winner got 40 percent or less of the vote.
In each of these cases, the Lib Dems could win by taking half the votes from the losing major party candidate and be victorious (as long as there was no other competitive third party, like a regional party). For example, in Hampstead and Highgate (in north London), the Lib Dem candidate has performed successively better over the last three elections. An AV swing from either or both of the big parties toward the Lib Dem could result in a pickup.
Is it enough to get Nick Clegg and his team on board with Labour in the case of a hung parliament? Certainly not. But the joint draws of a slightly improved electoral landscape and the trapping of governing office may be hard to pass up. Is not the purpose of politicking to finally get to the levers of power?
Next up in our UK general election coverage: We will tackle the troublesome problem of translating national horserace numbers into actual MP totals, something that every observer of the election is trying to negotiate. --- Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international affairs columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com
How snowed in is Washington right now? So much that the Democratic National Committee had to ship in local College Democrats to fill the seats vacated by DNC members who could not make it to town for the party's winter meetings. Despite the quiet streets outside and a mostly empty hotel, those who trudged over to the Capital Hilton--I live six blocks away, so it was a short trek--got a glimpse of President Obama in fired-up mode.
Speaking for about 20 minutes, Obama received strong applause for victory-lapping several accomplishments of the previous year: fighting for "equal pay for equal work" (Lily Ledbetter Act), expanding healthcare insurance to cover "four million more children"; the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor; and pushing to allow gays to serve in the military. (Full remarks not yet posted to White House website, but I'll try to update later once they are; the president did hit similar themes earlier during the Winter meetings at this fundraising dinner and fundraising reception.)
His biggest applause line, however, was not for an accomplishment but the promise to to continue fighting for his endangered healthcare reform plan. "Just in case there's any confusion out there, let me be clear: I'm not going to walk away from healthcare reform." Obama continued to hit themes he's been stressing since the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts and during his recent State of the Union speech: his administration inherited a lot of pre-existing problems; change will be tough to come by, especially with special interests blocking reform; doing the right thing isn't always popular. "So if you look at a tally of the things we said we would do –- even in the midst of this extraordinarily challenging economy –- we’ve kept our promises," he said. "We’ve kept our commitments.".
He tried to calm the implicit worries many Democrats in the room no doubt harbor about the political situation facing the party:
I was talking to Michelle the other day–-Michelle is always a good barometer–-and, you know, the front page was, oh, what’s Obama going to do to get his poll numbers up, and, are the Democrats all in a tizzy and this and that. And she said, you know, listen, if you're the average family, if I'm a mom out there and I'm working and my husband is working but we’re worried about losing our jobs, our hours have been cut back, the cost of our health care premium just went up 30 percent, the credit card company just jacked up our interest rates 39 percent, and our home value has gone down by $100,000, our 401(k) is all banged up –- and suddenly somebody calls up and says, "So, how do you think President Obama is doing right now?" What are they going to say? What are they going to say?
He talked about how rough things are for many Americans and what needs to be done to reverse the political and economic situation, saying this:
"But here's what everybody here has to remember: That's why I ran for President. That's why you worked so hard to elect a Democratic Congress. We knew this stuff was tough. But we stepped up because we decided we were going to take the responsibility of changing it. And it may not be easy, but change is coming."
In explaining the slow pace of change and promising it's eventual arrival, Obama took some thinly-veiled shots across the partisan divide, too.
"Some of the steps we took were done without the help of the other party, which made a political decision all too often to jump in the backseat, let us do the driving and then critique whether we were taking the right turns," Obama said. "He also said people in Washington needed to worry "less about scoring political points and more about solving problems," and acknowledged that "sometimes we may be working against the prevailing winds--even a blizzard."
But the main theme was, to borrow a phrase from his predecessor, "stay the course." "I know we went through a tough year," said Obama. "But we've gone through tougher years," and proceeded to invoke Jefferson, FDR, John and Teddy Kennedy in a finishing flourish that brought DNC members to their feet.
It's clear that the White House's has changed its tone and posture in the weeks since Brown's victory. The president is more aggressive about pointing to administration successes. There's a bit more finger-pointing and blaming of Republican obstructionism. There have been greater calls for bipartisanship and more promises to listen, but also a more aggressive interface with the minority opposition, such as Obama's visit to the House GOP last week. (With an whiff of triumph, the president also mentioned that visit during his DNC speech.) And, finally, there is a "fired up, ready to press forward" tenor to allay the fears of nervous fellow Democrats.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the current employment situation report on Friday. As such, it seems appropriate to take an in-depth look at the overall employment situation in the U.S. Most of the information contained herein on the methods of collecting employment statistics is found here.
Data based on household interviews are obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a sample survey of the population 16 years of age and over. The survey is conducted each month by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics and provides comprehensive data on the labor force, the employed, and the unemployed, classified by such characteristics as age, sex, race, family relationship, marital status, occupation, and industry attachment. The survey also provides data on the characteristics and past work experience of those not in the labor force. The information is collected by trained interviewers from a sample of about 50,000 households located in 792 sample areas. These areas are chosen to represent all counties and independent cities in the U.S., with coverage in 50 States and the District of Columbia. The data collected are based on the activity or status reported for the calendar week including the 12th of the month.
Data based on establishment records are complied each month from mail questionnaires and telephone interviews by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in cooperation with State agencies. The Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey is designed to provide industry information on nonfarm wage and salary employment, average weekly hours, average hourly earnings, and average weekly earnings for the Nation, States, and metropolitan areas. The employment, hours, and earnings data are based on payroll reports from a sample of over 390,000 establishments employing over 47 million nonfarm wage and salary workers, full or part time, who receive pay during the payroll period which includes the 12th of the month. The household and establishment data complement one another, each providing significant types of information that the other cannot suitably supply. Population characteristics, for example, are obtained only from the household survey, whereas detailed industrial classifications are much more reliably derived from establishment reports
The household survey provides information on the unemployment number, which decreased from 10% to 9.7%. This was a very good number because of the following computation issues. The civilian labor force increased from 153,059,000 to 153,170,000 (or an increase of 111,000). This number is the denominator of the unemployment percentage calculation. The number of unemployed decreased from 15,267,000 to 14,837,000 (a decrease of 430,000). This means the unemployment rate actually decreased because the number of people unemployed actually decreased; in other words, the drop in the unemployment rate was not caused by computational issues. This is obviously a very good development.
Additionally, consider this chart of the unemployment rate from the report:
Since mid-Spring the unemployment rate has fluctuated between ~9.5% and 10.1%. While the overall level is not good, it does indicate the overall unemployment rate may be topping out.
The household survey also provides information about the amount of time people have been unemployed. Consider the following charts as a time series. First, people are laid-off. Then they are unemployed for a certain amount of time.
Let's start with the 4-week moving average of initial unemployment claims (this number is not from the household survey). This number has been dropping for most of the year. However, it rose to a very high level and is currently above levels associated with an expanding economy. In other words, the number of people entering the ranks of the unemployed is decreasing, but it is still at high levels.
The number of people unemployed for 5 weeks or less is decreasing, and has been for about half the last year. Also note this number is starting to approach the levels associated with an expanding economy (the levels seen between 2002-2008).
Once someone is unemployed for 5 weeks or longer, the odds are they will remain unemployed for a longer period of time. While this chart of the number of people unemployed for 5-14 weeks appears to be topping out it is still at high levels. Also note this number is far above levels associated with an expanding economy (by about 1 million to 1.2 million), indicating it will take some time to bring it back to healthy/normal levels.
While the number of people unemployed between 15 - 26 weeks appears to be topping out, it is also at high levels that will take some time (as in years) to bring back to normal levels.
And regrettably, the number of people unemployed for over 27 weeks is still increasing.
There are a few other data points from the household survey to highlight. First, consider the following unemployment rates by educational level achieved. The first number is for January 2009 and the second is for January 2010:
Less than high school diploma: 12.4%/15.2% High School Graduates, no college: 8.1%/10.1% Some college or associate degree: 6.4%/8.5% Bachelor's degree or higher: 3.9%/4.9%
These unemployment figures paint a very interesting picture that has profound policy implications. Either the economy needs to start creating jobs for those with less than a college education (a highly unlikely development as will be explained below) or the workforce needs to increase the number of people with higher education.
Here are the same percentages (the unemployment rate for January 2009 and January 2010) of various age groups.
16 to 19: 20.9%/36.4% 20 to 24: 12.4%/15.8% 25 to 34: 8.1%/9.9% 35 to 44: 6.6%/8.5% 45 to 54: 5.9%/7.6% 55+: 5.3%/6.8%
Should the increase in the the unemployment rate for teenagers be a concern? I would argue no, largely because the primary "job" of a teenager is to be a student. The same argument could be made of the 20-24 crowd as they should also be in some type of educational situation. The increase to 9.9% in the 25 to 34 age group is disturbing, as is the increase to 8.5% in the 35 to 44 age group.
Finally, the number of people who were employed "part time for economic reasons" decreased from 9,165,000 to 8,316,000. This is another healthy development.
Let's turn our attention to the establishment survey.
Let's start with the total number of establishment jobs in the US (seasonally adjusted). The above graph illustrates two important and disturbing points. First, the US now has fewer jobs than the lowest point of the previous expansion. All the jobs gained during the last expansion have been wiped out. Secondly, the current total number of seasonally adjusted establishment jobs in the US is lower than the beginning of the decade.
Simply "eyeballing" the chart, we can see the US has lost over 8.2 million jobs in this recession (roughly 138,000,o00 to a little below 130,000,000).
Eyeballing this chart we have see the number of construction employees has dropped by about 2 million (approximately 7.6 to 5.6 million).
The manufacturing picture is very interesting. Notice that a large number of manufacturing jobs lost in the first recession of the decade were never replaced. Next, note manufacturers started to shed jobs in early/mid 2006. From this level manufacturing has lost about 4 million jobs (approximately 22 to 18 million).
Totaling construction and manufacturing jobs we get ~6 million. In other words, about 73% of the jobs lost during this recession came from two economic sectors -- construction and manufacturing.
Let's focus on manufacturing for just a moment. Manufacturing job losses account for a little under 50% of the total job losses (approximately 4 million of the 8.2 million jobs lost). Also note that after the first recession of the decade manufacturing jobs did not meaningfully increase. This is largely because of automation and technology replacing people. The same is true today -- perhaps more so. Assuming increased automation continues, the possibility of a large percentage of manufacturing jobs lost during the recession coming back is slim at best.
Combine the construction and manufacturing jobs lost data with the unemployment rate by educational achievement data from the household survey and you get a very interesting picture.
The great recession wiped out lower education/manual labor jobs. And the experience of the manufacturing sector after the last expansion indicates those jobs aren't coming back.
As you may be aware, I've teamed up with a group of about 50 other thinkers, bloggers, insiders and outsiders to help promote the idea of Question Time -- a regularly held, televised and webcasted forum in which the President would take questions from Members of the Congress, much as President Obama did with the Republican House delegation on January 29th and members of the Democratic Senate yesterday. This is truly a bipartisan endeavor, with everyone from Markos Moulitsas to Grover Norquist on board.You can sign our petition to Demand Question Time here, and follow us on twitter here.
Just a brief word about why I've signed onto this cause: perhaps I'm an idealist, but I tend to think that the lack of open, unmediated, and honest dialog between members of Congress, between the Congress and the Executive, and between both Congress and the Executive and the public, is the greatest threat to the efficacy of our democracy today. While structural constraints like the filibuster certainly also play a large role, these structures are nothing new -- it's the ways that our political culture have evolved around them that may be more problematic. In particular, it seems to me that there is a need for conversations that are not staged, that are not reduced to 30-second soundbytes, and that are not filtered through the lens of the media. A Question Time period, if reasonably well structured, could be a significant step toward achieving that goal. Politics needn't always be zero-sum, particularly at the time when our country faces a number of threats -- from the economy, to Islamic and other forms of radicalism, to the aggregation of power by elites, to the the changing climate -- in which we will all sink or swim together. That's why you're seeing Democrats and Republicans, technocrats and populists all working together to agitate for Question Time.
Earlier today, I was forwarded a comprehensive report on Question Time periods written by Matthew Glassman, an analyst for the Congressional Research Service, which contextualizes them relative to both the experience in parliamentary systems, of which they are a common facet, and relative to the American experience. Calls for question time periods are not new and have been proposed periodically by members of both the Executive and Legislative branches, including William Howard Taft, Walter Mondale, Estes Kefauver, and candidate John McCain among others. But, obviously, they have yet to become a regular feature of American democracy. Our hope, then, is more to make the issue a little "stickier" in the eyes of both the public and our elected officials and less to advance some specific proposal.
Nevertheless, the details of the idea may matter -- from my vantage point, for example, President Obama's session with the House Republicans, which seemed more spontaneous, was considerably more constructive than his session with the Senate Democrats, which felt more staged. Therefore, I am going to address a handful of questions that Glassman raises in his report, as well as a couple of others that are salient to the conversation. The opinions expressed herein are mine alone and do not reflect an official position of the Demand Question Time coalition.
How Often Would Question Time Occur? In parliamentary systems, question time periods may occur weekly (the United Kingdom) or even daily (Canada), but the American appetite for consuming political news is perhaps somewhat more limited. In addition, we have a relatively strong Executive Branch which has many other duties and responsibilities, including international diplomacy which requires frequent travel. The right balance, it seems to me, is monthly sessions, probably lasting between 60-90 minutes. The Congress and the President would probably need some discretion on when to schedule these sessions within each month, but a prime time slot on a Sunday through Thursday night, when TV audiences are the largest, would probably be most desirable.
Which Executive Branch Officials would participate in Question Time? In most parliamentary systems, not only the Chief Executive but also members of his cabinet officials take regular questions from the legislature, either simultaneously or in separate sessions. The latter function, however, is arguably replicated to some extent by the Congressional Committee system, and would surely draw less public attention. My interest, then, is primarily on the President himself.
How Would Questions be Chosen? This is the one issue on which I feel most strongly: I think it is essential that the questions be chosen in some random order. Absent this, there is too much opportunity for questions which are less spontaneous and more staged, and for "back bench" members of the Congress -- whom are equal to any others in the eyes of the Constitution -- to play a subservient role to those who are more senior, more vocal, or (as unfortunately was the case in the session with the Senate Democrats) who might derive more electoral benefit from posing questions.
In particular, I would probably design a procedure something along the lines of the following. In advance of each session of Question Time, members of the Congress who were interested in posing a question would indicate as such to the Speaker of the House. They would not have to disclose their question in advance. A list of those members of the Congress who were interested in asking a question would be posted immediately in advance of the session on the Internet.
After that, the interested members would simply be selected in a random order to pose their questions, as is done in the United Kingdom, the lone constraint being that no party could ask more than three questions in a row (provided that there remained at least one question in the queue from the other party). Members of the Congress could not jump into our out of the queue once the session had begun.
Would a Question Period be Bicameral? It seems preferable to me to have Question Time be both bipartisan and bicameral. The larger the number of members of Congress who have the opportunity to pose questions at any given time, the less opportunity there would be for coordination, such as by leadership, that would serve to make the questions more self-serving and less spontaneous.
How Would a Question Time Period by Initiated? There are basically three options: formally via either Constitutional Amendment or via statute, or informally through custom. Of these, an informal structure clearly seems the best to me, at least initially. A Constitutional Amendment would require several years to implement, in the unlikely event that it could be implemented at all. A statue in the absence of an Amendment, meanwhile, might run into Constitutional problems, since it's not clear that the Congress can compel members of the Executive Branch to appear before them without violating separation of powers. Therefore, the hope would simply be that Question Time would become a regular and highly popular feature that would take on something of its own momentum. Indeed, I am optimistic that once the practice got started, it would be hard to undo, as the Executive would lose significant face if he refused to answer the Congress's questions.
What Rules Would Govern Floor Procedure? It's likely that at least some governing rules would need to be adopted by the House and the Senate, particularly if question time took the form of a formal session of Congress. Glassman's report suggests that it would probably be easier to adopt a new set of rules than to adapt ordinary Congressional procedure. I don't yet have an opinion about how strictly things like the time alloted to each question and answer would need to be constrained, as it is likely that the balance between informal etiquette and formal procedures would evolve somewhat organically over time. It seems desirable, however, that any procedures would tend to give less power than more to the floor leadership, and more power rather than less to the individual members who are elected directly by the public.
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Time for me to get a late dinner, but please let me know what you think with your tweets and your comments, and don't forget to sign that petition.
New candidate or potential candidate developments in the Senate races in Delaware and Indiana: In Delaware, New Castle County Executive Chris Coons is in the race to challenge Mike Castle for VPOTUS Joe Biden's old seat, and in Indiana former U.S. senator Dan Coats is hinting strongly at making at run at incumbent Democrat Evan Bayh.
Delaware is the "First State," so we may as well start there. Coons is officially in, and as reported by The New Journal, issued a statement saying: "People here in Delaware are hurting, and Congress has failed to deliver the change we voted for in 2008. I’m running to bring new energy and a new approach to Washington." That's an interesting, almost cryptic statement from the two-term and term-limited county exec, given that he wants to be the state's new Democratic senator and the Democrats presently control Congress by wide margins. I suppose that Coons' statement might be interpreted to imply obstructionism by Senate Republicans, but it sound eerily like the message that Scott Brown rode to victory in Massachusetts. Given that, like Brown was at one point, Coons is about 30 points behind Castle, the state's popular at-large Congressman, perhaps Coons' bid to run for Congress by running against Congress ain't such a bad idea, however odd it may seem. Turning to Indiana, the state that witnessed the most dramatic partisan turnaround between the 2004 and 2008 presidential cycles, the Coats' announcement signals that (a) the GOP smells blood in the water in the Hoosier State; and (b) there must be a sufficient amount of blood if the somewhat anemic Coats is going to jump in. I mean, this is a guy who rose to power on the political back of Dan Quayle. Coats may have some 'splaining to do, however, reports Politico's Ben Smith: The former senator is registered to vote in Virginia, not Indiana. Gonna be tough to run against Washington as an "outsider" when you live in the DC suburbs and have been voting there for about a decade.
Oh, and I cannot help but send a reminder to politically vulnerable Evan Bayh, who has been a partisan gadfly for the president and Harry Reid: Taking a posture against one's party in order to assert one's independence and moderation doesn't necessarily insulate you from attack by the other party. If Coats runs, watch how quickly he paints you as a lockstep liberal lackey for the Obama agenda, Senator.
I'm not going to comment too much on the topline findings of the Daily Kos / Research 2000 poll, of Republican identifiers, which many others have written about extensively. What I found more striking, actually, were the cross-tabs. On just about every question, the results showed essentially no difference based on age, gender, race, or geography -- once we've established that you're a Republican, these differences seem to be rendered moot.
Take, for instance, the statement that "Barack Obama is a socialist", which 63 percent of Republicans agreed with in the poll. How do the responses to this question break down by demographics? Well, they don't -- the percentage is just about the same for all groups.
How about the idea that Obama should be impeached? The same pattern holds:
About 36 percent of Republicans in the poll said they didn't think Obama was born in the United States (another 22 percent weren't sure.) We see a few regional differences on this item -- higher in the South and lower in other regions -- but otherwise the percentages are fairly constant.
Is Obama a racist? The roughly 11 percent of Republicans who are nonwhite were much less inclined to think so, but otherwise there are no real differences.
Moving on from Obama to some policy questions -- should openly gay people be allowed to serve in the military? Only some very slight age and regional differences on this one:
Sex-ed in public schools? Flat across the board.
Amnesty for illegal immigrants? Nonwhite Republicans are about twice as likely to think so, but otherwise there are no real differences.
Let's try an electoral question -- who has Sarah Palin as their first choice in 2012? Although once again nonwhites are out of step, none of the other differences are statistically significant.
This doesn't, by the way, mean that all Republicans are the same -- clearly there is some diversity of opinion within the party (although they're relatively small). What it does mean is that these ideological differences are just about all there are. If you take two Republican Congressional candidates and put them in the same primary, the outcome is liable to be the same whether that primary takes place in Alabama, Michigan, Idaho or Rhode Island, and whether the electorate is older or younger, more male or more female.
This accounts for what might be the Republicans' greatest strength as we head into the November midterms as well as their greatest liability. The strength is that they can somewhat comfortably adopt a nationalized, one-size-fits-all message. They don't have to worry about the constellation of constituencies that Democrats have: labor voters, Baby-boomer liberals, blacks, Hispanics, college-educated technocrats, libertarianish younger voters, etc. Their base is the same pretty much everywhere, and actuating a strategy that appeals to that base is not challenging.
The liability, meanwhile, is that while the Republican base might be the same pretty much everywhere, the rest of the electorate isn't. Some states and districts have different ratios of Republicans to Democratic and independent voters. Moreover, they have different types of Democratic and independent voters, some of whom may be amenable to the Republican message and others of whom won't be.
Thus, the Republicans are more likely to make suboptimal electoral decisions in individual districts -- we have a fresh example from last night, in fact, in IL-10, a D+6 district where the Republicans nominated the conservative Bob Dold rather than the moderate Beth Coulson. But the Democrats are likely to have a difficult time articulating an optimal national message -- and perhaps as a result a more difficult time governing.
As of this writing (1:31 AM Illinois time), Bill Brady has just a 546-vote lead on Kirk Dillard in the Illinois Republican gubernatorial primary.
And things are liable to get closer before the end of the night. How so? Because essentially all of the outstanding vote is in Cook County (Chicago), where Dillard is picking up 18 percent of the vote so far and Brady just 5 percent. If I project out the remaining Cook County precincts based on the previous ones, I show Dillard picking up another 800 votes and Brady another 225. That would make the statewide margin Dillard 154,876, and Brady 154,877 -- an advantage of literally one vote for Brady.
EDIT: In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, incumbent Pat Quinn is performing slightly better than his statewide numbers in Cook County and it looks like his ~7,000-vote advantage over Dan Hynes will expand rather than contract. There might be a recount but unless there are mass irregularities or whole stashes of ballots that haven't been counted yet, it is unlikely to change the outcome.
At midnight EST, the big news from Illinois is that the two favorites to win their respective nominations for race to fill the US Senate seat formerly held by President Obama have won, but both primary contests for the IL governor's race are squeakers too close to call.
State treasurer Alexi Giannoulias bested four other contenders to win the Democratic nomination for Senate, with former Chicago inspector general David Hoffman finishing second by about five points, 39 percent to 34 percent, with 96 percent of precincts reported. On the Republican side, Congressman Mark Kirk captured 57 percent of the vote, trouncing his five opponents, none of whom got more than 20 percent.
The gubernatorial primaries are more interesting, as the margins in both races are less than 1 percent as of this writing. State senator Bill Brady has a slim lead of a little more than 1,000 votes over state senate colleague Kirk Dillard in the Republican contest; meanwhile, Democrat Pat Quinn, who succeeded scandal-plagued Rod Blagojevich one year ago this week, is hanging on for dear life against Comptroller Dan Hynes.
Short of winning Ted Kennedy's former seat (check), winning the president's former Senate seat carries significant symbolic value to Republicans. As Nate wrote recently, Giannoulias is expected to be a solid favorite over Kirk--but we've heard that story before. The question now is whether the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Republican donors around the country will risk committing resources to Illinois or target more promising races.
[Obama and Gibbs reinforce] the same talking point: The public’s lack of robust support for healthcare reform legislation is based on misunderstanding engendered by the debate, the process, and the strong forces arrayed against the bill.
We don’t necessarily see it in the data. When we ask Americans why they oppose healthcare legislation, the two dominant responses are: “cost” and “too much government involvement.” Neither of these objection categories reflect -- at least not directly -- a failure to understand the specifics of what is in the bill. Or personal self-interest. The objections appear to be more global in nature.
Here, again, is the survey that Newport refers to; it asked an open-ended question about what "concerns" people had about the health care bills and then broke those numbers down between those people who supported the bill and those who opposed it. I've reproduced their numbers below the fold.
There are relatively few items in this tally that unambiguously reflect either legitimate reasons for opposing the health care bill or unambiguously reflect false beliefs. The former category would probably include: "Overall costs to government, taxpayers" (7 percent of those opposed to the bill), increased taxes (5 percent), "how it will be paid for" (3 percent), and the individual mandate (3 percent). Perhaps also the public option belongs here (7 percent) -- it was still "alive" at the time Gallup's survey was conducted (although there are a lot of people who don't know exactly what the public option is). If we do count it, these probably legitimate concerns amount to about 25 percent of those opposed to the bill, or 12 percent of the country overall.
On the other hand, there are also relatively few concerns that unambiguously seemto point toward false information. "Coverage for illegal immigrants" (4 percent of those opposed to the bill) is probably one. Items like "ability to get needed care"/rationing/wait times (4 percent), "being able to see current doctors" (3 percent) and "effect on quality of care" (8 percent) most likely also fit into this category, although even here there is some ambiguity.
And in most other cases, there is a lot of ambiguity. The largest single reason for opposition that Gallup identifies -- 28 percent of those opposed to the bill -- is what they call "government-run healthcare / bureaucracy / socialized medicine / government takeover". Perhaps there are a few people in this group who have legitimate worries about the government's ability to effectively regulate insurers or believe that the imposition of additional rules and regulations may carry unintended or undesirable consequences. But phrases like "socalized medicine" and "government takeover" are talking points that more likely than not are symptomatic of incorrect beliefs about what the health care bill would actually do.
A lot of categories are like this. The category "effect on senior citizens/Medicare" (5 percent) for instance -- does this reflect legitimate concerns about the savings that the bill would try to achieve in Medicare, or people worried about death panels and the plug being pulled on granny?
Finally, there are quite a few people who don't know why they're opposed -- 9 percent of those opposed can't cite a reason at all, another 6 percent simply say they don't understand the bill, and a further 9 percent say "costs", but don't specify which type of costs they're concerned with.
This isn't really a criticism of Gallup's survey -- unlike the Kaiser poll that I've cited frequently, they weren't really trying to test people's knowledge about the bill. But also for that reason, it can't really be used to refute Kaiser's data. People, to use Newport's term, may have concerns which are "more global in nature" -- but why do they have those concerns? (If I ask you: "why do you oppose the health care bill" and you say "because it's bad", we haven't really learned anything.)
In a perfect world, indeed, what I'd like to see is a survey that even more explicitly related people's knowledge about the bill to their beliefs and overall impressions about it. You might ask a battery of questions related to:
-- Overall support/opposition to the bill. -- Knowledge of bill contents. -- General beliefs about the bill (e.g. effect on coverage, costs, premiums, etc.) -- Self-rating of informedness (about the bill and about politics in general) -- Change in support based after being read various descriptions of the bill. -- Volume and type of news sources consumed. -- General political ideology. -- Demographics.
I'm not going to design a whole survey in a blog post, but you get the general picture. You'd need to design the survey fairly carefully, but you could probably get pretty close to an objective answer about how much of the opposition to the bill (and the support for it) was indeed based on false beliefs about its contents.
By no means do I think it a slam dunk that passage of health care reform would be a boon to the Democrats in November. My arguments are really geared more toward the long term, both in terms of the Democrats reminding their voters that their party still stands for something, and in terms of passing a policy which, if the experience with RomneyCare is any guide, will eventually turn out to be quite popular. And of course, there's the whole matter of the 30-some million uninsured people that the bill would cover and the lives that it would save.
Still, in making the near-term political case against passing health care reform, Megan McArdle in fact makes a point that argues strongly for "getting it done".
There is nothing good you can say about an actual bill that you couldn't say about a bill that you voted for, but didn't pass. It's true that this is going to make campaigns hard next fall. But at least now Democrats can say that they thought the better of it. What's their excuse if they pass it?
Thought better of it? Health care reform has been at the core of the Democratic agenda for literally the better part of a century. It has taken on different manifestation at different times, but it is really the one unbending constant.
So now you're going to say that in six months the Republicans -- who offered no serious alternative to health care reform and who (in some cases) helped deceive the public into believing that the bill does all sorts of things that it does not actually do -- have convinced you that this policy your party has been championing for decades was a bad idea? That one special election in Massachusetts changed your mind about a bill that you'd spent your whole life campaigning upon and probably in fact voted for for as recently as November or December?
Megan has a generally heterodox set of political viewpoints so perhaps this is more difficult for her to envision than for someone like me -- who votes for Democrats 90-95 percent of the time and whose views are fairly conventionally left-of-center on most issues. From my point of view, this is the equivalent of a Republican saying: "You know what, my opponent is right -- lower taxes are a bad idea on principle." It's a stake in the heart of the liberal/progressive value system.
But even for a voter who is less well-informed and is only picking up an impressionistic residue of each candidate's message, there's something to be said for Bill Clinton's statement that "When people are insecure, they'd rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who's weak and right." If you've conceded that one of your ideas -- one of your most important ideas is a bad one -- why should the public trust any of the other ideas that you have? Instead, they're going to say: Well, thank you Mr. Blue Dog -- I'm glad you've come around to my way of thinking on this. Now I'm going to vote for the guy who didn't have the bad idea in the first place.
The one thing that Democrats categorically don't want to do is concede that their ideas on health care reform were wrong. Blame Republican obstructionism, blame the recession, blame Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman for gutting the bill of its core values. All of these arguments are ... unconvincing (particularly the bit about obstructionism -- Democrats still do have the votes to pass the bill on their own) ... but they're not actually dangerous to the future of the Democratic Party, as this argument will tend to be.
I'm picking on Megan a little bit here and perhaps using her as a bit of a strawwoman; she makes a number of good points in her article, which you should read in full. But the point is, if the Democrats don't pass health care reform will have to address the fundamental question that Megan brings up -- which is, why did you change your mind? And their potential answers to that question range from unpersuasive to suicidal.
On Tuesday, Illinois will become the first state to hold its primaries for the 2010 elections. Three of the four key races -- the Senate nomination on the Democratic side and the gubernatorial nomination for both parties -- are reasonably close and should provide for a fairly exciting night of return-watching. But it's the Senate primary, featuring Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman, and Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson, which has drawn the most attention.
The race is for all intents and purposes between Giannoulias and Hoffman; Jackson, a former communications spokeswoman for Rod Blagojevich, will probably be limited to 15-20 percent of the vote, mostly coming from Chicago's predominately Afrian-American South Side. Hoffman, however, has gradually been creeping up on Giannoulias, the front-runner.
As there is relatively little policy daylight between the two leading candidates -- although Giannoulias has the endorsement of the unions and is regarded by most observers as being a hair to Hoffman's left -- the issue of "electability" has loomed large, as Democrats are understandably nervous about dropping yet another blue-state Senate seat to the formidable Republican nominee Mark Kirk. And both sides are making electability arguments that are, to my mind, somewhat superficial.
The case for Giannoluias rests in the polling. An average of the two most recent polls, from PPP and Rasmussen Reports, shows Giannoulias leading Kirk by a margin of 42-36.5 (+5.5 points), but Hoffman trailing him 37-39.5 (-2.5 points).
I've suggested before that Giannoulias looks as though he would have a better chance in a general election. This is based on a relatively unsophisticated evaluation of the polling and the fact that Giannoulias has held elected statewide office before (a factor which has some predictive value).
To repeat myself again: this is a very simplistic analysis. Giannoulias has better statewide name recognition than Hoffman, and it's often the case that the candidate who is less well-known (in this case, Hoffman) has more room for growth in his numbers. At the same time, Hoffman has not just been faring worse against Kirk on a marginal basis but also in an absolute one: between the two polls Kirk gets 39.5 percent of the vote against Hoffman, but 36.5 against Giannoulias. This is different than in, say, Pennsylvania, where Joe Sestak fares slightly worse on a marginal basis against Pat Toomey than Arlen Specter, but also limits Toomey to a smaller fraction of the vote (with more voters going into the undecided column) -- a pattern that is more commonly associated with a name recognition gap.
In sum, I think the Giannoulias people can make a reasonable argument on the basis of the numbers, but it's hardly a definitive one.
The Hoffman argument, on the other hand, is based not on the numbers but rather on the perception that Giannoulias is tainted. Indeed, for some weeks now, Hoffman has been running "Alexi the Unelectable" ads on FiveThirtyEight and on other websites which are widely read by opinion-makers. (Full disclosure: FiveThirtyEight uses two external buyers to handle its advertising; I do not vet individual ads, either before or after the fact, unless they are grossly offensive or fraudulent or endorse a cause which I find profoundly morally objectionable.)
In recent days, these arguments have escalated, and indeed have been voiced emphatically by some liberal blogs, because of the news that Broadway Bank, a Chicago-based institution in which the Giannoulias family has a substantial ownership stake, is struggling financially and has been told by the FDIC that it must raise additional capital and meet certain other requirements or may risk being taken over and put into receivership. The regulatory action post-dates both the PPP and Rasmussen polls. Giannoulias, who maintains a 3.6 percent ownership stake in the bank and formerly worked as its Vice President, has somewhat awkwardly avoided questions about the regulators' requirements.
Although these things may be problematic for Giannoulias, let's be very clear here: there is no "scandal" involving Broadway Bank, either proven or alleged, and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous. Broadway is a relatively small and fairly conventional community bank which like many other banks (both small and large) is now struggling financially. The regulatory action is fairly commonplace and reflects concerns over the bank's solvency but not about the legitimacy of its business.
Certainly, one can reasonably argue that whether or not there is any actual scandal involving Broadway Bank, it's a bad environment in which to be associated with a bank of any kind and particularly one which has made some poor loans and which is struggling financially. One can also reasonably argue that, although there is no actual scandal involving Broadway Bank yet, perhaps there is some statistically elevated likelihood of one going forward. Nevertheless, certain of the anti-Giannoulas arguments are not a whole lot more sophisticated than Bank! Rawwwwr! Bad! and are far more conjectural than their dramatic headlines would suggest.
FiveThirtyEight does not endorse candidates. And I'm no longer a resident of Illinois, so I haven't given the first thought to who I would vote for in this race. Nevertheless, if you're a (Democratic) voter in Illinois, please resist skin-deep arguments about electability. On the one hand, although Giannoulias has fared better in the general election polling, such polls have fairly limited predictive value so far in advance of a general election, may be somewhat out of date, and could easily be outweighed by other evidence. On the other hand, Hoffman's electability arguments, particularly those involving the recent regulatory actions on Broadway Bank, have also been overstated in many cases and do not warrant the panicked reaction that some Democrats are now having about the race.
