A Rainbow Nation, But a Polarized Electorate

South Africa may have become the first World Cup host not to qualify for the second round, but that hasn't stopped South Africans of all races from celebrating Bafana Bafana. The 2010 Cup has been promoted as the Rainbow Nation's coming-out party on the world stage. If the 1995 Rugby World Cup--when Nelson Mandela famously donned the Springboks' jersey--was a moment of post-Apartheid reconciliation, this was the time for a transformed, multiracial South Africa to showcase its achievements.

Traditionally, soccer has been the sport of Black South Africans, with rugby preferred by Whites and Coloureds. (And sport, like everything else, was obsessively racialized under the Apartheid regime.) Even today, despite sixteen years of democracy and numerous integration initiatives, Bafana are overwhelmingly Black and the Springboks overwhelmingly White.

Black and White South Africans' lingering sportive differences mirror electoral differences. South Africa has had four National Assembly elections since the arrival of "one person, one vote" in 1994. In each of them, the African National Congress (ANC)--the party of Madiba and liberation--has won with over 60% of the vote. As South Africa's president is elected by the National Assembly, the majority party controls both the executive and legislative branches.

This does not prevent debate and dissent, however. President Thabo Mbeki faced a great deal of intra-party resistance to his HIV/AIDS policies, and lost the ANC leadership contest to Jacob Zuma in 2007. In September 2008, the ANC leadership ousted Mbeki as president six months before his term ended. Kgalema Motlanthe took over as a caretaker president until the April 2009 election, which Zuma won.

My colleague Daniel Berman described the electoral mechanisms that kept the National Party (NP) in power during the Apartheid years. The ANC requires nothing so complicated: a system of proportional representation and an electorate that remains overwhelmingly loyal are enough. But while the ANC is the preference of Black South Africans (79% of the national population), it receives paltry support among Whites (9.6%). Coloured (8.9%) and Asian/Indian (2.5%) voters are the "swing" demographics that determine how big the ANC's majority is.

In the 2009 election, the top three parties were the ANC, the Democratic Alliance (DA), and the Congress of the People (COPE). The DA, headed by former Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille, is a centrist, good-government coalition that is still largely perceived as the "White party." COPE was formed by Mbeki-loyalists who splintered from the ANC. While COPE was initially anticipated to be a serious challenger to the ANC, it ended up taking less than 10% of the vote.

The racial breakdown listed comes from a March 2009 poll and is subject to the caveats of all pre-election polls. (South Africa does not have the extensive, demographic-based exit polling of the US.) Still, it paints a heavily polarized picture: less than five percent of Whites intended to vote ANC, while a trivial number of Blacks supported the DA. The numbers among Coloured and Asian voters are more mixed. Indeed, it was largely due to a poor showing among Coloureds that the ANC lost the two-thirds supermajority necessary to make constitutional changes.

When South Africans elect the National Assembly, they simultaneously elect the legislatures of each of their nine provinces. The ANC has continuously controlled the provincial legislatures of all but two: KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. The latter, home to Cape Town, is one of only two provinces without a Black majority. (Coloureds constitute a slight majority.) It continued to support the National Party in the 1994 election, and has recently emerged as the DA's stronghold. In KwaZulu-Natal, the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) won the 1994 and 1999 elections. Since Zuma, a Zulu, became leader of the ANC, the IFP's support has waned. By contrast, Gauteng--the largest province and home to Johannesburg--votes similarly to the country as a whole.

While the DA is now a moderately strong opposition, the ANC is likely to govern South Africa for a long time--though maybe not until Jesus comes. As long as memories of Apartheid remain personal, the Black majority will continue to vote for the party that gave it the right to have rights. Fortunately for South Africa, the ANC is a multiracial, broad-spectrum coalition that incorporates a great deal of internal dissent. (Witness the Mbeki-Zuma schism.) ANC politicians have diverse views on issues of free trade, social equality, crime, development, public health and foreign relations. And while the ANC has been plagued by corruption, its internal factions give it the ability to correct itself. This capacity for self-correction, combined with a free press and strong institutions, keeps South African democracy secure.

But for all its institutional security and stability, South Africa has been a one-party state since 1948. (With a shift from NP hegemony to ANC in 1994.) South Africa has never experienced something other democracies take for granted: a change in governing party through a free and fair election. When that happens, South Africa will have experienced a transformation worth a hundred World Cups.

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The Virtues of Standing Fast: The Lessons in the Fall of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

It’s not often that a leader who came to office with the highest popular vote total for his party in nearly three decades is ousted before he has had a chance to face the voters a second time. Its even rarer that his fall follows two years as one of his country's most popular Prime Ministers. And it is almost unheard of for a party insider to call his leader a crypto-fascist. Yet that is exactly what an Australian Labor Party insider used in regards of now-former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, noting that “This crypto-fascist made no effort to build a base in the party. Now that his only faction, Newspoll, has deserted him he is gone."

The fall of Kevin Rudd, Australia’s first Labor Prime Minister in 11 years, came as a shock to observers with few expecting it to occur as quickly or decisively as it did. Less than a week ago he appeared largely secure, and while a number of commentators, including myself for fivethirtyeight.com, were working on pieces suggesting he faced challenges as his government appealed to the Australian people for a second term, few expected the collapse to come so quickly. All in all, the leadership coup which toppled Kevin Rudd occurred in half a day, with less than twelve hours between the announcement of a challenge by his deputy, Julia Gillard, and his decision to resign in the face of almost certain defeat.

The immediate cause of the coup was the crushing defeat suffered by Rudd’s Labor party in a by-election at a state level in the New South Wales seat of Penrith. Normally this might not have mattered immensely, but the by-election is likely to be the last major electoral battle that will occur in Australia before the country goes to the polls, perhaps as early as August. With signs ranging from the decision of both parties to have their retiring members make their valedictory speeches this month to reports that both the governing Labor Party and the opposition Liberal National Coalition have reserved space for campaign headquarters, all indications seem to point to new elections.

As such, the result in Penrith took on a serious note. While Penrith was not a completely safe Labor seat -it required a swing of 9.2% to deliver it to the Liberals, substantially above the 6.9% they needed to win government at the state level - Labor had failed to win it only once in the last 40 years. In the end however, it was not the result that shocked observers so much as the margin by which it was delivered. The Liberals recorded a swing of nearly 26% in the two-party preferred vote, Australia's system of preferential voting, which is similar to the proposed alternative vote electoral system being discussed in the UK.

To be fair, the shift represented by the Penrith by-election is not unknown - a similar by-election in Sydney in the fall of 2008 showed a swing of 23% to the Liberals. Nevertheless, it was a mortal threat to Rudd exactly because of the reasons outlined by the Labor insider above. Rudd, who had been swept to power on a campaign focused on bringing about change after eleven years of conservative rule, had alienated every major constituency in his party such that the only thing keeping him in office was his popularity. And when that was gone, to paraphrase the insider “so was he.”


Below are the results of the Penrith By-Election:

Party	2007	2007 2PP	2010	2010 2PP
Labor	48.7%	59.2%	24.4%	33.7%
Liberal	32.6%	40.8%	50.9%	66.3%
Green	5.6%		12.6%
Christian Democrats	6.2%		4.5%
Other	6.9%		8%

At first it may not seem apparent why Rudd’s fate may be important beyond the shores of Australia. But in many ways Rudd’s election and subsequent problems mirrored those of another candidate of change, and his difficulties may well preview the challenges Obama would have faced had he buckled and failed to pass health-care in February, as many observers urged him to do. And the lesson from Australia seems to be a reinforcement of the axiom that “one who stands for nothing, is nothing.”

At first, any comparison between Australia and the US may seem odd. Australia, after all, has a parliamentary system of government in which the Prime Minister is elected by a majority of the House of Representatives rather than the voters directly. Yet, it is arguably one of the most “presidential” of the Westminster systems, one in which leaders debates are an electoral institution, rather than a novelty as in the UK, and where party loyalty is often far more mutable. Partially this is due to the preferential voting system that makes minority governments all but unheard- of, and partially to the dominance of the political system since the Second World War by a few strong individuals. While the total number of Prime Ministers at 11 is only one-less than the UK had over the same period, 4 of them accounted for 43 years between them, with Liberal Robert Menzies serving for 16 consecutive years in the 1950s and 60s. John Howard served for 11 years from 1996 to 2007, and if his triumphs in 1998, 2001, and 2004 were about his leadership style, so too was his defeat in 2007.

John Howard, while undoubtedly being a strong Prime Minister, was never quite a popular one. He was too conservative in politics and too abrasive in style to enjoy the sort of broad popularity that a Blair or Reagan enjoyed. His victories in 1998 and 2001 were close-run things, with the Liberal-National Coalition losing the popular vote to the Labor party 51-49 in the former, and winning it by the same margin in the latter. In between the two, he recorded some of the lowest poll ratings ever achieved by an Australian Prime Minister. Yet when it mattered the voters were there. In a sense one could draw a parallel with former US President George W.  Bush, and not just because of the close personal relationship between the two men and similar politics.

Howard’s political trajectory followed a similar pattern to that of his American counterpart. By 2004, it seemed his luck might well have run-out. With an unpopular war in Iraq and with voter fatigue dragging him down domestically it seemed his luck had run out, but a controversial Labor leader, and a strong campaign, allowed him to win another term by a surprisingly large margin.

After 2004, George Bush had the luxury of not having to consider reelection, and was content to watch his political situation deteriorate over the next few years with something akin to equanimity. Howard, who should likely have retired after his triumph, instead seemed revitalized by it, launching an agenda more ambitious than ever. Even as the 2007 elections approached he seemed utterly convinced he could repeat his 2004 feat, despite polls showing his party down as much as 20 points in the polls.

Unfortunately what he had not bargained on was that the new Labor leader would be an inoffensive former diplomat, Kevin Rudd, who calmly ran a campaign focused on restoring Australia’s place in the world. This meant restoring relations with countries like Indonesia, improving relations with China, and dealing with challenges like global warming, which Rudd declared was the “greatest moral challenge of our generation”.

By contrast the Liberals had few issues, and with even the US seemingly turning against George Bush, Howard’s strongly pro-American tilt was a liability. Howard, speaking about the threat international terror, immigration, and staking out socially conservative views, seemed out-of-date in late 2008. In the end, the Labor party won a comfortable victory, and Howard’s humiliation was made complete when he lost his own seat.

Kevin Rudd took over as one of Australia’s most popular politicians, but things seemed to move much less rapidly than many of his supporters had hoped. Rudd reiterated his determination to keep Australian troops in Afghanistan, and went so far as to block a number of progressive policies, intervening to invalidate a law passed by the local government of the Australian Capital Territory legalizing Gay Marriage.

On the major issue, global warming, and its policy heart, the Emissions Trading Scheme or ETS, effectively identical Obama’s proposed “Cap and Trade” system, the government seemed in no hurry. The inclination seemed to be to wait for Barack Obama to take office in the US to join a world-wide effort rather than to push it through unilaterally. While it was widely noted that the Liberal-National Coalition’s strength in the Senate allowed them to block it, it was also noted that the Prime Minister in Australia has the ability to call a so-called “double-dissolution” election in which both the House and the entire Senate are up at one time, rather than half the Senate being elected in 3 year increments as is normal. It was noted that the Labor Party’s lead in the polls; as much as 20 points throughout much of 2008 and early 2009, would likely have allowed them to win a majority on their own in such an election, and a guaranteed one when combined with the Greens.

Rudd’s confidence was likely increased by the chaos in the opposition. Peter Costello, Howard’s deputy and presumed successor, retired from politics after the 2007 defeat, and Malcolm Turnbull, a moderate Liberal from Sydney, was narrowly defeated by the mostly unknown but more right-wing former Defense Minister Brendan Nelson, who struggled to break double digits in polls on the preferred Prime Minister. In June of 2008, Nelson, trailing by 30 points, and tired of sniping from the Turnbull camp, called a surprise leadership ballot, which he perhaps less surprisingly lost. Malcolm Turnbull, the charismatic moderate from Sydney took over the leadership.

On paper Turnbull should have improved things for the Liberals. He was modern, socially liberal, and believed in fashionable things, including sharing Rudd’s belief that battling climate change was the moral issue of our time. Initially he did improve things marginally. But he faced the problem facing any leader ideologically out of step with his party – constant back-stabbing, incessant negative leaks to the media, and constant plotting. That he proved gaffe-prone did not help matters, and as he consistently failed to make headway against Labor’s lead in the polls, back-room sniping and leaking turned to outright rebellion.

Rudd seemed to assume that he could rely on Turnbull to at least pass Cap and Trade through the senate at any time, while at the same time hoping that doing so would maximize damage to the opposition. As such they seemed to deliberately strong out the issue so as to maximize the damage to Turnbull, while still expecting him to help pass it. He might even have been able to, or at least able to deliver enough abstentions among his senators for it to pass had Rudd returned from the Copenhagen conference in 2009 with a plan for worldwide action under American leadership. But if Copenhagen was a temporary setback for Barrack Obama’s plans to battle climate change, it was a disaster for Rudd’s. It left Australia to act alone, in the middle of a recession, and this was something the Liberal senators and the party refused to do. In December of 2009, Turnbull was challenged for the leadership, and lost the run-off not to the expected winner, Joe Hockey, but to one of the most right-wing members of the former Howard Government, former Health Minister Tony Abbott. Abbott rapidly moved to block the ETS program in the Senate, and Rudd, rather than facing down the senate with a double-dissolution, announced that implementation of the ETS would be delayed until 2013 at the earliest.

From that point on nothing has gone right for the Labor government. In December, the Labor party still had a lead of 16 points in the Morgan poll, as opposed to 2 points last week. On paper this should not have been the case. By all accounts, the nomination of the Conservative Abbott was universally expected to seal the doom of the Liberal party. A former trainee priest dubbed the “Mad Monk”, Abbott is an outspoken social conservative who had a history of opposition to gay rights, abortion, and stem cell research, and favored a tough line on both immigration and aboriginal policy. Many Labor members rejoiced at the thought of running against what they saw as the the worst example of the Howard years.

And perhaps that has been Labor’s problem. With any action on ETS delayed until 2013, and the federal government not only taking an oppositional stance to social reforms like gay marriage but outright blocking them at the state level, Labor has had little to run on except opposition to Abbott. And it is far from a foregone conclusion that such a strategy cannot work. Howard famously managed to turn 2004 Labor leader Mark Latham into a figure of hate, the success of which is testified to by a June 15^th poll finding that only 4% of Australians had a favorable opinion of Latham, compared to 61% with a negative view. But the Labor attacks on Abbott have so far failed to take effect, and if anything have backfired. When Abbott first became leader, Rudd led him in the Morgan poll’s preferred Prime Minister Question by a 60 point margin, 78% to 18%. Last week that lead had shrunk to 48% to 38%, a lead of 10.

Part of the problem may have been that the Howard years aren't looking quite so bad as they did a few years ago. Contrary to being a hated figure, as he arguably was when he left office, Howard, according to recent polls, is now viewed the most favorably of any Prime Minister of the last 30 years, with 51% having a “good” impression of his tenure compared with 26% who rated it generally poorly. This is far better than Rudd or Abbott’s numbers which are 38/34 and 30/34 respectively. And polls show that the public does not see why they should reject Abbott because of his “extreme” positions on global warming or gay marriage when the Rudd government has demonstrated similar positions.

As a result, despite the efforts of the Labor party to make the upcoming election about Abbott and the opposition, increasingly it was shaping up to be referendum on the incumbent government, and one that  Rudd looked very likely to lose. As Julia Gillard, his deputy, noted in her challenge, by dropping ETS, Rudd abandoned any affirmative reason to support Labor. At the same time by adopting conservative issues on foreign affairs and social issues, he made it difficult for Labor’s attacks on Abbott to stick. After all, how could Abbott be an extremist if the government held generally the same views on the issues? In the end, the government was left with a campaign based on running as the lesser of two evils, without any clear way of distinguishing themselves as the lesser of the two.

While his failure to make progress against Abbott was the final nail in the coffin for Rudd, his rise and fall has implications for politicians outside of Australia. In the US, where Democrats lack the option of dropping Obama before the midterms, or even realistically before the 2012 elections, they are putting their faith in Sarah Palin and the “extremist” Tea Party to save them from defeat by alienating middle-of-the- road voters. There is a warning, however, in Rudd’s failure, for Democrats who expect a fear-mongering campaign against Palin or the Tea Party movement to deliver them victory. The reason the Labor party is currently being forced to run a campaign based around demonization of the leader of the opposition rather than their own achievements is because they are perceived as having so few achievements to run on. Obama too faces disenchantment with his base, and if voters in Australia do not let fear of the “extremist” Tony Abbott prevent them from voting out Kevin Rudd, then perhaps Democratic strategists should find a better strategy than simply waiting for their opposition to destroy themselves.

The evidence indicates that contrary towards the accepted view, obstruction, even of an ostensibly popular program like the ETS, actively helped the opposition by rallying their own supporters and dispiriting the government's, whereas the opposition's support for the plan under Turnbull only divided them and made them look disorganized. In fact, that obstruction arguably moved the debate, making ETS unpopular, and forcing the government to drop it from their political platform. This is not to say that the Liberal-National coalition will win; they are still marginally behind within the margin of error in polls, and there is still significant infighting over candidates in winnable seats, including two who are under the age of 21, and facing challenges for that reason. But obstruction has carried them from the threshold of a historical defeat in 2008 and 2009, to the verge of victory in 2010.

Obama did not imitate Rudd in retreating when health care ran into difficulties, and Rudd’s fall provides evidence that as bad as the political fallout from that passage might be, that the consequences of the abandonment of such an effort after so many resources were expanded on it would have been far worse. Nevertheless, Obama should be worried that if obstruction still manages to carry the otherwise unelectable Mr. Abbott to Canberra, that perhaps he needs another strategy other than running against Republican extremism if he wishes to win reelection.

This piece was composed by Research Assistant Daniel Berman. Originally composed with the intent of predicting Rudd's future difficulties, it ended up cataloging his fall, reminding us all of the mortality that faces world leaders each and every day.

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Why We Have U.S.-Ghana at Even Money

Nice goal, boys.

I've gotten a couple of e-mails asking why the Soccer Power Index regards the United States as only about even-money in its second-round match against Ghana even though it has the more favorable ranking by some margin -- it was 16th in the world in the SPI rankings prior to today's games, whereas Ghana was 32nd.

The main reason is simply that we assign a home continent advantage bonus to Ghana (and the other African clubs), assuming that playing in your home continent is half as valuable as playing in your home country. I know, the African nations haven't played very well this year -- but they also haven't been disastrous given injuries, some tough draws, and the fact that none of them were really in top form heading into the tournament. In any event, there's pretty strong evidence that home-continent advantage exists, both from our research, others' research, and anecdotal evidence: look how Europe performed in 2008 as opposed to 2004, for instance. A relative handful of matches aren't really enough to undo that. But if you did remove the home-continent advantage bonus, the United States would be 60-40 favorites. (Hypothetically, if the game were played on U.S. soil, we'd be 79 percent favorites to advance, and if it were played on Ghanian turf, just 37 percent; home field advantage is very important in international football.)

The other reason is that, while the United States has a considerably stronger attack/offense rating (2.32 rather than 1.44; the numbers roughly correspond to the number of goals that would be scored against the 75th strongest team in the world on neutral turf), Ghana's defense rating is stronger (0.80 versus 1.03; lower numbers are better in this case). SPI's win probability estimates are not completely linear and what we've found is that the defense rating tends to be somewhat more important in games played against teams in the top several tiers of international football, which describes most every team that will play in the knockout stages unless New Zealand somehow makes it.

And this is not a very defensively-minded U.S. club: we're a fit, uptempo, attacking team, which makes for really exciting soccer -- but also one that can concede a lot of good opportunities to opponents, whereas it's typically been some of the stodgier, more conservative sides that overachieve in the knockout stages. I don't think we should change a thing, by the way, as the differences are quite minor mathematically speaking, but this is something that could come into play at the margins.

SPI is a pretty blunt instrument, so if someone wanted to make the case that there's a clear favorite here, I probably wouldn't debate them. For instance, it only "knows" via indirect evidence that Michael Essien is injured for Ghana. It assumes that the same basic strengths and weaknesses that apply in the first 90 minutes carry forward to extra time, when in fact our strong fitness could give us an advantage there. And although it doesn't assume that penalty kicks are random -- there is actually a decent amount of skill there, from what we've found -- it does so in a fairly indirect way, and won't know for instance that Landon Donovan has a reputation as a very strong penalty-taker and Tim Howard a very strong penalty-saver.

Still, from the football I watched in this tournament, I had the impression that the U.S. and Ghana played about equally well: the U.S. got 5 points out of its group to Ghana's 4, but their group was somewhat tougher. Both teams had one really poor half -- the first half against Slovenia for us, the second half against Australia for Ghana, when they failed to score against 10 men -- but otherwise played quite solidly, without exactly making it look easy.

Undoubtedly, however, these are benchmark games for the United States. It's not easy to beat Ghana in a World Cup played in Africa, and it's certainly not easy to beat a team playing as well as Uruguay should we get them in the quarterfinal. But these are the kinds of matches we'll have to start winning, and with some consistency, if we're going to progress into the next tier of international football.

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Most People Like Health Care Reform, Unless They're Over 65

Latest Gallup poll (from Jonathan Chait).

Are we surprised? From 2004 data:



P.S. I'm not trying to say that the Gallup Poll (or Chait's mention of it) was a waste of time. Although this finding did not surprise me, certainly things have changed since 2004, and it's completely reasonable to report the latest poll findings.

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Should the Republican Party Move to the Center on Social Issues?

According to Tom, Ruy Teixeira recommends that Republicans move to the center on social issues. Based on my analysis with Jeff Cai of 2004 survey data, though, we don't see much gains from either party by moving to the center on social issues (although, yes, the evidence is that the Republicans would benefit, ever-so-slightly, by a move to the left). The real gains would come if the Republicans move to the left on economic issues. Again, this is from 2004 data, and, even beyond timeliness issues, I'd like to see some replication of this result before I fully believe it. Still, I'm surprised that Teixeira seems to be prioritizing social issues and demographic/ideological appeals over more basic taxing-and-spending issues.

The other thing is that positioning isn't all. We estimate that even a large policy shift would only have brought the Republicans an extra 2 percentage points of the vote. Most elections are decided by more than 2 percentage points, so it can sometimes be a good strategy to stand firm and wait for the pendulum to swing back to you.

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The Emerging Republican Minority

The Center for American Politics' Ruy Teixeira, one of the top political demographers in the country, has a new paper out in which he examines the two major party coalitions, with a focus on the current and future prospects of the Republican Party. For the GOP, says Teixeira, things look grim, in large part because the country is becoming less white and more educated. He provides specific data showing how college educated voters are growing, and non-college educated shrinking, as shares of the electorate; likewise for the growing non-white v. shrinking white populations.

"The Democratic Party will become even more dominated by the emerging constituencies that gave Barack Obama his historic 2008 victory, while the Republican Party will be forced to move toward the center to compete for these constituencies. As a result, modern conservatism is likely to lose its dominant place in the GOP," he writes, adding that "the Republican Party as currently constituted is in need of serious and substantial changes in approach."(Emphasis mine; will return to this point momentarily)

OK, not much new or surprising here in terms of the trends; those who follow these political-demographic patterns know the basic contours of the projected population trends moving forward. What's interesting are the recommendations Teixeira offers--to Republicans, as opposed to Democrats, the target audience for much of previous writings--for how to deal with the challenges of the population changes ahead.

Specifically, he recommends that the GOP do some or all of the following (taken verbatim from the report):

*Move to the center on social issues. The culture wars may have worked for a while, but shifting demographics make them a loser for the party today and going forward. A more moderate approach would help with Millennials, where the party must close a yawning gap, and with white college graduates, who still lean Republican but just barely. The party also needs to make a breakthrough with Hispanics, and that won’t happen unless it shifts its image toward social tolerance, especially on immigration.

*Pay attention to whites with some college education and to young white working-class voters in general. The GOP’s hold on the white working class is not secure, and if that slips, the party doesn’t have much to build on to form a successful new coalition. That probably also means offering these voters something more than culture war nostrums and antitax jeremiads.

*Another demographic target should be white college graduates, especially those with a four-year degree only. The party has to stop the bleeding in America’s large metropolitan areas, especially in dynamic, growing suburbs. Keeping and extending GOP support among this demographic is key to taking back the suburbs. White college graduates increasingly see the party as too extreme and out of touch.

*In the long run the GOP has to have serious solutions of its own that go beyond cutting taxes. These solutions should use government to address problems but in ways that reflect conservative values and principles. Antigovernment populism is something the party is clearly comfortable with— witness its evolving line of attack on the Obama administration. But it’s likely not enough to just denounce the other side and what they have done or propose to do in populist terms.

In short, the “party of no” has a limited shelf life. That strategy might help the party make significant gains in 2010, but it will not be enough to restore it to a majority status.

What's interesting to me about most of Teixeira's suggested changes is that the GOP is either not doing them, or doing something close to the opposite. If anything, the opposite is happening. Indeed, the single biggest storyline of the past year for conservatives and the Republican Party is the rise of the tea party protest movement.

On immigration, if anything the GOP has taken a turn toward anti-amnesty, fence-building xenophobia. The Republicans may have eased off the gas pedal somewhat on tax-cutting, but the conversational shift to deficit reduction and fears of growing government size still carries strong and familiar anti-government overtones. There seems to be less Republican focus on hot-button issues like evolution/creationism or global warming--which presumably turn off many college-educated whites by dint of their anti-empirical and anti-intellectual content--but that is a matter of salience and decibel level rather than a transformation in the party's issue positions or platforms.

In the near term, as Teixeira correctly points out, the GOP needs little more than an anti-Democrat pushback message: on TARP, size of government, health care spending, whatever; they don't need an affirmative case. (The Democrats benefitted despite not really pushing all that much in the way of new ideas during the 2006 and 2008 cycles, because "not Bush" was a sufficient battle cry.) But in the longer term, the Republicans need new ideas that are rooted in some recognition of the changing demographics of the country, something that conservatives including Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, David Frum, and Michael Gerson have been advocating for some time now.

The nature of the GOP's demographic-electoral problem is three-fold. First, the challenge of trying to evolve and adapt is itself limited by demographics because the GOP's older and whiter residual white minority coalition is simply less amenable to the sort of changes it would take to modernize the party. Second, so many of the figures within the party who might be able to lead a center-right revival have been beaten in recent cycles, with the old Ford/Dole/Rockefeller wing decimated by the 2006 and 2008 cycles. (Relatedly, it doesn't help when people like Frum are cast out from their intellectual circles.) Finally, it is simply not in the nature of conservatism to foment change or be out in front of demographic and social changes: Conservatism works best as a reaction to--not necessarily reactionary, but a reaction nonetheless--to oncoming, rapid changes.

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Unsurprisingly, People are More Worried About the Economy and Jobs Than About Deficits

Jeff Lax sends along this good catch from Ben Somberg, who noticed this from Washington Post writer Lori Montgomery:

If Congress doesn't provide additional stimulus spending, economists inside and outside the administration warn that the nation risks a prolonged period of high unemployment or, more frightening, a descent back into recession. But a competing threat -- the exploding federal budget deficit -- seems to be resonating more powerfully in Congress and among voters.

Somberg is skeptical, though, at least of the part about "resonating among voters." He finds that in four out of five recent polls, people are much more concerned about jobs than about the deficit:

A Pew Research / National Journal poll from early June asked "Which of the following national economic issues worries you most?" Number one was "job situation" with 41%. "Federal budget deficit" got 23%.

An NBC / Wall Street Journal poll from early May asked "Please tell me which one of these items you think should be the top priority for the federal government." Sure enough, "job creation and economic growth" won with 35%. "The deficit and government spending" got 20%.

A Fox News poll also in early May got even more dramatic results. "Economy and jobs" topped the priority list with 47%, while "deficit, spending" garnered only 15%.

A CBS / NYT poll in early April found 27% prioritizing "jobs", 27% the "economy" and 5% prioritizing "budget deficit/national debt."

In the USA Today / Gallup poll from late May . . . participants were asked "How serious a threat to the future well-being of the United States do you consider each of the following." For "federal government debt", 40% said extremely serious, 39% very serious, and 15% somewhat serious. For "unemployment", 33% said extremely serious, 50% said very serious, and 15% said somewhat serious.

a newer Gallup poll, from a week ago, asking "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?" finds the economy and jobs on top. "Economy in general" gets 28%, "Unemployment/Jobs" gets 21%, and "Federal budget deficit" gets 7%.

The Washington Post's own polls have not asked a question that directly addresses the matter.

I haven't looked at these polls myself, but based on the above, Somberg seems to have a point.

This is not to say that Montgomery's "economists inside and outside the administration" don't have a point. Maybe it is a good idea to raise taxes and cut spending now, or maybe it's better to take more debt now and plan to pay it off in a few years. My macroeconomic expertise hovers around zero, so I'll offer no expert opinion on that one. But I'd have to see some better evidence before I believe that the deficit is "resonating more powerfully" than unemployment/recession in the opinions of voters.

P.S. To be fair to Montgomery, it looks like Somberg picked her worst paragraph. She follows up with something that sounds a lot more reasonable:

Polls show most people don't think Obama's first stimulus package worked, and they are sending mixed signals about whether Washington should spend more on jobs or start minding the national debt.

I could believe that people are "sending mixed signals" in polls. Again, I haven't looked at the poll numbers, but it could very well be, for example, that, even if people don't care about the deficit, they could still be suspicious of "federal spending." It all depends on how it's framed, right? For example, the Somberg considers deficit talk to be part of "conservatives' dream universe," but, to the extent that deficit-cutting is done by increased taxes on the upper-income brackets, it could be more of a conservative's nightmare. Tax cuts sound good, spending cuts sound good, lower deficits sound good, but spending on particular items sound good also. Ask the right questions and you can get all sorts of incoherent views from the public. This is not to say that public opinion doesn't matter, just that people are ultimately asking their leaders to make decisions that lead to good economic decisions (leading to jobs and economic growth). From a public opinion standpoint, my impression is that things like deficits are just a means to an end, and basically I think Somberg is getting things right in his criticism. I think Montgomery is right that public opinion is relevant in regard to trust in Obama and the Democrats to enact good policies; she just has to be a bit more careful in her specifics.

P.P.S. Jon Cohen writes:

The blog you mention cites good-quality polls that all make the same point: that head-to-head, voters see the economy as a bigger priority than the deficit. There is no dispute about this; the economy is the clear No. 1 issue.

However, none of these data contradict what the Post story in question says about public attitudes:

1) the deficit has become increasingly important as an issue ... polls from '08 to '09 showed a jump in voter concern with the issue specifically, as well as higher prioritization of deficit reduction over increased spending. Not much has changed in the past months on this, but it's a significantly different landscape to late '08/early '09;

2) few credit the economic recovery package -- only about a third of those polled in the most recent Post-ABC survey said the stimulus package has lifted the economy; and

3) there's divided opinion about what to do now ... e.g. see April CBS-NYT poll ... 50 percent said feds should spend money to create jobs, while nearly as many, 42 percent, said not spend money and instead focus on deficit reduction.

My reply: I quoted Lori Montgomery writing, "a competing threat -- the exploding federal budget deficit -- seems to be resonating more powerfully in Congress and among voters." The above discussion is all about the voters, not Congress. If by "resonating more powerfully," Montgomery meant "resonating more powerfully than unemployment/recession," then I think she's contradicted by the survey data. But it's possible that she meant "resonating more powerfully than before," in which case Cohen has a point.

In any case, I agree with Cohen that, even if people are more concerned about the economy than about deficits, they may very well be skeptical about deficit financing as a remedy to economic ills. As noted above, I thought Montgomery's "mixed signals" comment was completely reasonable.

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Utah Primary Results

Of the two nationally significant races in Utah tonight, one has long been resolved: Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson is beating progressive challenger Claudia Wright by better than a two-to-one margin. There will be much discussion in the aftermath about the extent to which Wright, who forced a primary by denying the incumbent 60% of the delegates at the state Democratic convention, threw a scare into Matheson for his Blue Dog ways, perhaps getting the attention of other Red State Dems who take base voters for granted. But for now, Matheson is enjoying a pretty solid win.

In the Republican Senate primary, however, AP has just called the race for Mike Lee, who's held a narrow lead over Tim Bridgewater throughout the evening. With 85% of the precincts reporting, Lee is leading by about three percent of the vote, or just under 5,000 votes. But Bridgewater's wafer-thin lead in Salt Lake County--and his advantage in rural counties that are already mostly in--is not going to be enough to overcome Lee's margin in the other major population centers. So in this battle of conservatives to replace the already-discarded Sen. Bob Bennett, the favorite of many national conservatives like Jim DeMint and Erick Erickson has prevailed.

The spins wars after this primary will be interesting. As I noted in the preview for Utah, Tim Bridgewater strikes most people as, well, very, very conservative, favoring abolition of personal and corporate income taxes, the phasing out of several major federal Departments, voucherization of Medicare, and partial privatization of Social Security, along with a hard-line anti-abortion position. But the Lee's national supporters treated Bridgewater as essentially a clone of Bennett (who endorsed him), and the runoff as the final effort to rid Utah of RINOs.

There's nothing much in tonight's results to indicate an ideological split in the Utah GOP electorate between these two candidates. But if Lee and Bridgewater do ultimately come to be seen as representing starkly opposed forces in the conservative movement and the GOP, then the center of gravity in the Republican Party really has moved right in a big hurry, and the much-desired "true conservative" mantle will come with a much more exacting test of fidelity to the cause.

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NC Runoff Results

As in SC, the runoff contests in NC have provided a relatively early night for political junkies watching the Democratic Senate race and a scattering of Republican House contests.

In what was expected to be a very close race, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall has beaten former state legislator Cal Cunningham comfortably for the right to take on Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who is theoretically vulnerable but has been free to raise cash while Democrats wrangled over their nomination. With nearly complete results in, Marshall won 60-40; the one public poll of the race, back in mid-May, had the two tied at 36%. Looking at returns from Wake, Durham, and Mecklenburg Counties, it appears Marshall was able to put together her vote with that of third-place primary finisher Ken Lewis (an African-American), though such characterizations must take into account the fact that total turnout was down more than 60% between the primary and the runoff. Clearly Cunningham's aggressive runoff campaign, which focused on claims of superior electibility, did not strike many sparks; he made almost no geographic gains in the runoff. His landslide loss is rather humiliating for the DSCC, which recruited him for the race.

In any event, Marshall is well-known in the state; has won statewide four times (the first time defeating NASCAR legend Richard Petty); and having now twice faced nationally-recruited opponents in Democratic primaries (losing to Erskine Bowles in 2002), can claim some distance from the national party. But she'll have to swim upstream to establish herself as a credible opponent to Burr in this year's political climate.

The marquee race among House GOP runoffs in NC was in the 8th District, where Republicans consider incumbent Democrat Larry Kissell vulnerable, and to the disappointment of both Democrats and aficianados of china-shop-bulls, self-funded candidate Tim D'Annunzio was beaten soundly (61-39) by party establishment favorite Harold Johnson. In the 13th district, the news of Tim Scott's SC victory will be burnished by tonight's win by another African-American Republican, Bill Randall, who made news during the campaign by suggesting that the Obama administration somehow colluded with BP to create the Gulf Oil Spill. Randall, who had Tea Party backing, will be a distinct underdog to Democrat Brad Miller in November.

And in a much more heavily Democratic district, the 12th, 2002 and 2004 House candidate Greg Dority won the nomination to face Rep. Mel Watt on a message arguing that the USA "is being systematically looted by artificially low interest rates, endless government bailouts and a path toward socialism that strangles the initiative and prosperity of small business." That's quite a mouthful.

NC will get a lot of attention in November as one of three southern states carried by Barack Obama in 2008. But given the palpable sense of popular disinterest in today's chance to exercise the franchise, candidates may have to get the attention of voters first.

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SC Runoff Results

Just a bit over two hours after the polls closed in South Carolina, most of the nationally significant Republican contests have already been decided, and you can bet the story line, particularly in the conservative media, is going to be all about the victory of a diverse set of candidates running on a non-diverse conservative "outsider" message.

Asian-American Nikki Haley is romping to what will probably be a two-to-one victory over Gresham Barrett in the gubernatorial runoff. African-American Tim Scott is beating Paul (Son of Strom) Thurmond handily in SC-01. And incumbent Republican Bob Inglis, he who voted for TARP and dissed Glenn Beck, is being trounced by Tea Party favorite Trey Gowdy. Put aside the individual candidates and their individual races, and it's clear the harder-core conservative is winning everywhere in this very conservative state. It's a good night for the Tea Party folk, the Club for Growth (which endorsed not only Scott but also Jeff Duncan, who narrowly beat anti-abortion activist Richard Cash in the race to replace Gresham Barrett in Congress), RedState, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint (who didn't have to play in any of these races to emerge as the spiritual father of the SC GOP), and the ghost at the banquet, disgraced lame duck Gov. Mark Sanford.

Haley's winning everywhere in SC other than a few upstate counties in Barrett's base. Scott's winning Charleston County by nearly three-to-one. Gowdy's winning big in Inglis' Greenville County base. There's not much ambiguity or drama about the results, and though you are going to hear a lot in the next day or two about Haley's and Scott's "personal stories," the real story is ideology, which trumped every other factor. In particular, it's clear that Nikki Haley not only didn't suffer from, but actually benefitted from, two poorly documented allegations of marital infidelity (indeed, her original accuser endorsed her) and various ham-handed slurs about her ethnicity and religion.

So in terms of personalities, this is indeed a very new day for South Carolina Republicans. But looking at it from another angle, the Palmetto State has simply confirmed its ancient reputation as a fine stomping ground for the more aggressive forms of conservatism.

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That Giant Leaking Sound

Let me follow up Nate's post below by asking some questions about the oil spill and its political-electoral implications. What are the long-term political costs to Barack Obama and the White House, and perhaps congressional Democrats by extension, of the Gulf oil leak disaster? How much is Obama to "blame" and how "responsible" is he to solve the problem? And how much, if at all, will Rep. Joe Barton's apology mitigate the political damage for the president and Democrats this fall?

To be honest, I'm not really certain about the answers to any of these questions. For one thing, voters tend to blame or credit presidents in indiscriminate and perhaps incoherent ways, for example, giving them more credit than they deserve for good economies and more blame than they deserve for bad economies. Second, blame and responsibility tend to be conflated when they are not, in fact, the same thing. When something goes wrong, sitting presidents tend to suffer criticism at least equal to but often exceeding their contributions to causing the problem (blame) and/or their ability to solve or reverse that problem (responsibility). If you initiate a war against Iraq, you are both responsible to win it and also to blame if things go poorly because, well, you started it. If aliens land from another planet, as president you are responsible to do something about their arrival, even if you are entirely blameless. But polls often do not tease out such distinctions. They ask for simple approval or disapproval of response, which makes it hard to disentangle how much of presidential dissatisfaction is the result of voters blaming presidents and how much is voter unhappiness with presidents living up to their responsibilities to fix problems regardless of whom voters blame for their making.

Of course, over time presidents tend to assume greater blame even for problems not of their making. This is a byproduct of the high public expectations for the office itself. For example, Obama's disapproval marks on the economy have steadily risen during the course of his now 17 full months in office. But do Americans blame him? Yes and no. No, because a slight plurality of Americans (mostly Democrats and liberals, I presume) still blame Obama's predecessor George W. Bush more than Obama for the generally bad state of the economy. But yes, because the number who blame Bush has been steadily slipping while the number blaming Obama has been steadily creeping upward. In a way, this makes perfect sense: As Obama's inauguration day moves further into the past, Obama has accordingly and steadily moved from a position of being largely responsible but not blameworthy for the economy to largely responsible and increasingly blameworthy for the economy.

As of today, according to a new Pew poll, public disapproval for BP's response to the spill remains higher than for the Obama Administration: 49 percent give BP a "poor" rating, compare to 35 percent for the Administration. However, a new CBS/NYTimes poll also out today reveals that Americans don't think Obama has a "clear plan" to fix the leak. Sixty-one percent say the president's reaction was too slow, and 67 percent say the president's team could do more to clean the spill. But again, a higher share (81 percent) say BP could be doing more on the clean-up.

That said, going after the BP executives and extracting the $20 billion in remediation and compensation is exactly the right political play for the Administration. And Joe Barton's foolish apology must have brought huge sighs of relief to White House advisers--not because it shifts blame to Republicans, but because it keeps the focus of voter blame on BP more than on the White House.

However, as Nate says above, all bets are off in terms of the political-electoral impact on Obama if the oil is still gushing after Labor Day. That's when summer vacations end and the ramping up period before the midterms begins. By then, some of those not already frustrated with the Administration's response will have become frustrated, and some of those already frustrated will have become more so. The point is that time is rarely on the president's side in such situations, because the natural inclination of voters is to steadily shift not just responsibility but blame onto the shoulders of whoever occupies in the Oval Office. That may not be right or fair, but that's the political reality.

Yes, Obama's numbers have flattened out. Yes, Barton's stupid apology to BP provided a temporary release valve (ok, bad metaphor) for the growing discontent with the Obama administration. Yes, the dumb statements by BP officials have deflected blame away from the White House and to the oil company. But in the long run, the nature of contemporary American politics--especially given the growing, even outsized role and expectations for presidents--is such that most of the responsibility and most of the blame inevitably gravitate toward to the White House. That giant leaking sound you hear is time catching up with the Obama Administration. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

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Ratings on Obama Oil Spill Performance are Flattening Out, For Now

I owe my editor about 8,000 words by tonight, so I'm not going to be as talkative as usual, but this is fortunately one of those cases where the picture pretty much tells the story. This is what we get if we take all the polls that have been conducted on Obama's handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and simply draw some basic polynomial regression lines to get a trend.



There's not really been much movement here for the past three weeks or so. One poll actually shows Obama's numbers improving slightly, although still in the red. But a few probably obvious thoughts.

1) Obama is fortunate that BP has bungled the handling of this as much as it has, and that certain Republicans have played to type.

2) It sometimes seems like whatever question you ask about Obama these days, somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of the country are going you a favorable response, and somewhere between 40 and 50 are going to give you an unfavorable response. The number of swing voters seems to be relatively few, which may suggest that November's election will be more about turnout than anything else (not necessarily good news for the Democrats.)

3) Although I don't know that there's any way for the President to look good from having 60,000 barrels of oil a day spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, one wonders if these numbers wouldn't be close to reversed (50 percent approving and 45 percent disapproving instead of the other way around) if the Administration hadn't seemed to downplay or overlook the magnitude of the disaster in the first 20 days or so. That does seem to be a pattern with this White House: they're a little passive at first, on issues ranging from the stimulus to the oil spill to health care, and are always running somewhat from behind.

4) In terms of their overall political trajectory, one of the biggest negatives for the Democrats may be that this issue (appropriately, to some degree) drowns out any other political conversation and makes it hard for them to get traction on anything else. On the other hand, considering that the economic indicators have contained more negative than positive "surprises" lately, and that with one or two partial exceptions, Democrats haven't really figured out a way to steer legislation through the Congress without costing it 10 points' worth of popularity, maybe that's just as well.

5) Needless to say, all bets are off if the oil is still spilling after Labor Day.

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World Cup Knockout Round Scenarios

The more interesting discussion at this point is probably not who is going to advance, the scenarios for which have become fairly straightforward for all but a couple of teams, but instead what it means for the knockout round. Let's take a look at SPI's estimates of the probabilities of each team finishing in each of the 16 slots that FIFA has designated for those happy teams who will continue to play soccer after Friday.



Before we proceed, let me emphasize again that the percentages listed herein reflect the probability of each team finishing in each particular slot, e.g. 1st place in Group A. In some cases, these results are a bit paradoxical. Ghana, for instance, are actually the most likely team to qualify from Group D, but they are not most likely to finish in 1st place (Germany is), nor in second (Serbia are). A similar problem manifests itself in Group C for Slovenia. A more prominent example is Spain, which is about a 70 percent favorite to qualify but is less likely to do so in first place than Chile, or in second place than Switzerland. You can see a team's overall chance of advancement in the table we maintain in the upper right-hand corner of the page, and which is updated a couple of times per day.

The second thing to notice is that with just one or two exceptions, everything remains quite fluid. What are those exceptions? Argentina is almost certain to win Group B, Holland is almost certain to win Group E, and Paraguay are about 87 percent likely to win Group F. Otherwise, it's a little tenuous to bet on whose exactly who is going to finish exactly where.

Still, there are some interesting scenarios. Perhaps the most important is who finishes first in Group A, which will be resolved by the Uruguay-Mexico match later today. Whoever finishes first should get a hugely favorable draw: South Korea, most likely, in the Round of 16 (and that's the downside case: it could be Nigeria or Greece), and then any of a hodgepodge of teams in the quarterfinal, Serbia and England being nominally the most likely but very possibly also Slovenia, the USA, or Ghana. It could also be Germany, but that's less likely as Germany will probably qualify first, and be in the other half of the bracket, or not at all. While Serbia and USA are no pushovers and England may not have written their last chapter in this tournament, you don't usually get a more favorable path than that into the semifinals. And then you win one game on penalties and another where the bounces just break your way, and Mexico or Uruguay could be the Cinderella story of the century.

Not that we should necessarily be thinking of them that way: both Uruguay and Mexico are strong football teams on their own merits, but a little bit of luck helps too. Conversely, the second-place finisher in Group A will draw Argentina. And if they somehow win that match, very possibly Germany. Good luck with that.

The dynamics in the match could be a little weird: both teams guarantee qualification with a draw, but with France and South Africa down by multiple goals, their position is unlikely to be imperiled even if they lose. Uruguay do qualify first in the event of a draw with Mexico, so look for them to slow down the pace early, but should they fall behind, it would probably behoove them to go for the equalizer -- and risk falling behind by two goals -- unless the France-South Africa result looks especially lopsided. With their shapeshifting style, they should be fine. And Mexico would obviously be silly to play for the draw, and they won't.

The other interesting case is in the bottom half of the bracket, where Portugal and Brazil will be playing for first place in Group G. It was the conventional wisdom for awhile (which I helped to perpetuate) that you'd rather finish second in Group G than first, since that way you'd avoid Spain in the Round of 16. But after yesterday's action, Spain are more likely to qualify first, which they do with a win over Chile provided that Switzerland doesn't wallop Honduras, than second. Meanwhile, those times that it doesn't get Spain, the first-place finisher will most likely get picante Chile, while the second-place finisher will more likely get room-temperature Switzerland.

So you'd indeed rather finish first in Group G than second. Or would you? While contra conventional wisdom, the Round of 16 matchup is liable to be easier, you'll probably get Holland in the quarterfinals. Or perhaps Italy, for those of you who insist that the Azzurri will magically become threatening even though they drew with New Zealand and haven't won a match against another World Cup team in more than a year. On the other side of the bracket, your Round of 16 game could be brutal, but your quarterfinal opponent will most likely be Paraguay, or perhaps Denmark or Japan.

But there's a counter-counter-weight to this if you look all the way forward to the semifinal. The team finishing second in Group G, if they're fortunate enough to win their first two elimination matches, seems likely to run headlong into Argentina in the semis -- and if it isn't Argentina, it's liable to be Germany. Meanwhile, the team finishing first, if they can beat the Dutch, could then take a breather against one of the Cinderellas: Uruguay, Serbia, maybe Mexico, South Korea, etc. Again, not to dismiss these teams, some of which are dangerous, but you'd rather hope that someone else knocks off the confident-looking Argentines than have to do so yourself.

Overall, winning Group G seems not disadvantageous, and may in fact be advantageous after all -- there's certainty no reason to besmirch the integrity of the sport. I'd frankly think there is more likelihood of shenanigans in the Ivory Coast - North Korea matchup, should the outcome start to look like an American football score (e.g. 10-3).

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Redefining Acceptable Ideology: Utah Primary Preview

It might seem odd to some readers to devote an entire post to Utah's primary tomorrow, but there are a couple of contests--the Republican Senate primary, and the 2d District Democratic House primary--that raise some very interesting national issues. To put it simply, the Bridgewater-Lee Senate primary could reflect a significant redefinition of the boundaries of "movement conservatism," while Claudia Wright's challenge to Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson could show the limits of rank-and-file tolerance for Blue Doggy heresy even in tough political territory.

The really big news in the Republican Senate contest in Utah happened last month, when incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett finished third at a state convention, making him ineligible for the primary. Tim Bridgewater, who finished first, and Mike Lee, who finished second, are both very conservative by national standards. Both have significant Tea Party support. Both obviously bucked the national GOP by taking on Bennett.

But Lee's supporters (including the potent combination of FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth, plus Jim DeMint's PAC and RedState's Erick Erickson) are treating the primary as little more than a continuation of the RINO-safari that culminated in
Bennett's defeat.

DeMint (responding to a pre-convention mailer apparently sent out by a former Bennett staffer suggesting that the South Carolinian favored Lee to encourage dumping of Palmetto State nuclear waste in UT) has gone medieval on Bridgewater:

Last night, I learned that Mike Lee’s opponent — Tim Bridgewater — sent out a last-minute mailer telling Utah Republicans that I am supporting Mike Lee so nuclear waste can be transferred from my home state of South Carolina to Utah…

This accusation is a disgraceful LIE from a desperate candidate. My involvement in the Utah Senate race has been to provide positive support to Mike Lee, a man with the character and integrity we desperately need in the U.S. Senate. Mr. Bridgewater’s malicious and dishonest attacks on me and the state of South Carolina only confirm he would fit in all too well with the Washington establishment….

[Bridgewater has] been telling voters that he’s a businessman but as someone who ran a small business for over twenty years, I can tell you that gaming government programs does not make you a businessman. It makes you a lobbyist

Whoa! But DeMint's not alone. Erick Erickson, who's been pounding Bridgewater from the moment his earlier campaign to get rid of Bennett looked likely to succeed, made this assessment of Lee's rival just prior to the May state convention:

[L]et’s go over what we know about this guy:

1.Supported NCLB
2.Supported Medicare Part D
3.Uses government subsidies, grants, earmarks and loans for businesses he has dealings with.
4.Was Western States Coordinator for John McCain in the 2008 Republican primary for president
Does this sound like a Senator who would work to correct the ills that Senator Bennett has left in his wake?

I hope the Republican delegates in Utah don’t fall for another Bennett in conservative clothing. We will just end up with more of the same

This is interesting not only because Bennett's RINO status seemed a little dubious to many Republicans, particularly outside Utah, but because Bridgewater is hardly a western version of pre-party-switch Arlen Specter. He favors repeal of the 16th Amendment authorizing the federal income tax, along with abolition of corporate taxes. He proposes a five-year phase-out of all funding for the federal Departments of Education and Energy, and also of all federal land management programs. Yes, he was endorsed by Bennett, but was also endorsed by defeated convention candidate Cherilyn Eagar, a social conservative activist who was herself endorsed by Eagle Forum's movement conservative warhorse Phyllis Schlafly.

It's not at all clear what will happen tomorrow. The only independent poll of the primary, from the Deseret News, has Bridgewater ahead of Lee 42-33, with a quarter of "very likely" voters still undecided. An internal Lee poll has him up by an identical nine points, 39-30. But however it turns out, I suspect the national entrail-readers will interpret the contest as an outsider-establishment, conservative-moderate test that is really not borne out by the two candidates' backgrounds and issue positions.

On the Democratic side in Utah, the state's lone Democratic congressman, Jim Matheson (son of the late Democratic Gov. Scott Matheson), was forced into a primary after leading retired school-teacher (and out lesbian) Claudia Wright by a narrow 55-45 margin at the state convention. Wright's campaign is in no small part fueled by anger at Matheson's consistent opposition to health care reform legislation.

There has been some talk among conservatives of Republicans backing Wright's challenge to Matheson on grounds that she'd be easier to beat in November. But that's a bit of a reach: while Democrats do (unlike Utah Republicans) let any registered voter participate in their primary, Republicans they have their own red-hot Senate primary. And in the independent ranks, conservatives are more likely to be attracted to Matheson than to be willing to cast tactical votes for a more progressive candidate.

The recent Deseret News poll shows Matheson leading Wright 52-33. He is very likely to win, but even so, a close race will be interpreted as a leading indicator of the peril moderate-to-conservative Democrats court by opposing major progressive initiatives, even in a place like Utah.

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Preview: Runoffs in the Carolinas

Primary runoff elections, those quaint southern holdovers from the populist and Jim Crow eras, will take place tomorrow in North and South Carolina. Thanks to angles involving sex, race, religion, and all sorts of skullduggery, the SC Republican gubernatorial runoff has received far and away the most attention of the contests, even though there's little mystery about the outcome. If Nikki Haley loses, it will be one of the great electoral upsets of recent history. By contrast, the Democratic senatorial runoff in NC could go either way, though primary front-runner Elaine Marshall has to be the narrow favorite over Cal Cunningham. There are also several competitive GOP House runoffs in the two states, including one that is likely to snuff the career of Rep. Bob Inglis.

The brief (two-week) SC runoff campaign has been a bit anti-climactic. By winning 49% of the vote in the primary, Haley made her nomination all but certain barring something very weird. Palmetto State Republicans have held eleven statewide runoffs since 1970, and only once, in the 2006 Lt. Gov.'s race, has a candidate topping 40% in the primary failed to win the runoff (and in that case, the second-place finisher who ultimately won was the incumbent, Andre Bauer, who had 37% in the primary).

Moreover, Haley had enormous momentum coming out of June 8, and an endorsement from the third-place finisher, Attorney General Henry McMaster. But her strangest endorsement by far was from the very man who plunged the entire campaign into turmoil shortly before the primary: blogger Will Folks, who accused Haley of having a brief affair with him when he worked on an earlier campaign.

About the only thing that Haley's runoff foe, congressman Gresham Barrett, has had going for him is a decent financial advantage since June 8, but Haley's quasi-celebrity status has largely neutralized that. And as in the primary, Haley's ham-handed detractors have been her best asset, viz. high-visibility attacks on the sincerity of her conversion to Christianity.

As Haley continues to roar towards victory even as she plays the grass-roots right-wing underdog to the male and allegedly too-moderate GOP establishment, her campaign has become something of a surrogate 2012 presidential struggle, with Sarah Palin getting credit for a well-timed endorsement prior to the primary, and Mitt Romney (whom Haley endorsed in 2008) personally campaigning with her in the runoff.

In GOP House runoffs in SC, local prosecutor and Tea Party favorite Trey Gowdy is expected to end the House career of upstate Republican Bob Inglis, who made the mistake of voting for TARP. Gowdy beat Inglis 39-28 in the primary. In the low country 1st district where the GOP incumbent is retiring, the runoff winner will be historic in any event: state rep. Tim Scott, an African-American, ran first in the primary (with 32%), and is a narrow favorite to beat Charleston County Council Member Paul Thurmond (who won 16% in the primary), son of Strom. Scott has the momentum, the national support (most recently from Sarah Palin), and the "true conservative" mantle, while Thurmond's been endorsed by several lower-order primary candidates, including one with another famous name, Carroll Campbell III.

In NC, the Democratic battle for the nomination to face Sen. Richard Burr is hard to call. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall led the first round 36-27 (the state's threshold for avoiding a runoff is 40%), with African-American legislator Ken Lewis, who has since endorsed Marshall, finishing a strong third with 17%. There's not much relevant precedent for how primary finishers do in runoffs in this state (at least since establishment of the current 40% threshold); in two recent Democratic runoffs (2008 Labor Commissioner and 2004 Superintendent of Public Instruction), the first-place finisher won one and lost one.

The only public poll, by PPP on May 12, showed the two candidates tied. Marshall is benefitting from grassroots progressive support; Cunningham (an Iraq War vet) was recruited into the race by the DCCC. Turnout is expected to be down well more than a half from the primary, and up to a third of the vote could be ballots cast early.

The most notable Tar Heel congressional runoff is in the 8th district, where Republicans are choosing an opponent for potentially vulnerable Rep. Larry Kissell. The first-place primary finisher, self-funded hard-core-conservative Tim D'Annunzio, faces milder-mannered Harold Johnson. According to a recent PPP poll, Johnson is consolidating support from other defeated primary candidates, and leads the flamboyant D'Annunzio 49-39.

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Santos Wins Convincingly in Colombia

After an exciting election campaign that saw the emergence of serious centrist contender for the presidency in Colombia, former Defense minister Juan Manuel Santos yesterday won a convincing run-off with 69.1 percent of the vote to challenger Antanas Mockus' 27.5 percent.



The overall result was no surprise, given Santos' strong showing in the first round of the voting, where he 46.6 percent to Mockus' 21.5 percent. However, the increase in Mockus' share of the votes in the second round was less than expected. When we analyzed this run-off after the first round of voting, we did it under the assumption that there would be no drop off in turn-out.

In fact (and this should have been expected), about 1.7 million voters who showed up for the first round decided not to vote for the run-off.


Using the basic ideology of the candidates who were knocked out of the first round to allocate their first round supporters to either Santos or Mockus, we expected Santos to pick up about 1.7 more million votes, and Mockus to earn 2.6 million more votes.


In fact, Santos pulled half a million more than that, for a total improvement of 2.2 million votes, while Mockus picked up just half a million votes. We can guess that the vast majority of the 1.7 who did not vote in the second round were expected Mockus supporters who sensed the futility of the run-off, given Santos domination of the first round. At the same time, we likely underestimated the percentage of Lleras supporters who would switch to Santos, which would net Santos another half million to a million voters.

In the end, though initial polling suggested that the establishment was going to be tested, the security-first approach of Santos -- carrying forth the Uribe banner -- continues to broadly resound with the Colombian populace.

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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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