Comments on FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: The Real Problem with The Senate's Small-State Bia...

This is CRYING for a scatter plot. State populatio...

2009-08-05T10:46:59.124-04:00

This is CRYING for a scatter plot. State population vs. special interest fund %. Dots colored by party. PLEASE

Herb Kohl runs for Senate on $20,000. That's two o...

2009-08-04T15:02:26.623-04:00

Herb Kohl runs for Senate on $20,000. That's two orders of magnitude less than the next cheapest campaign (not counting Burris). Oh, and the money he finds under the cushions in his couch.

I'm rather curious why Sen. Thune (R-SD), who come...

2009-08-04T09:33:32.125-04:00

I'm rather curious why Sen. Thune (R-SD), who comes from a state that has just over 800,000 people, has raised nearly $20 million.

@Just John: You could be on to something. I have ...

2009-08-04T08:00:49.879-04:00

@Just John:

You could be on to something. I have long thought that when people work in a city (as I have most of my life) the wider range of people, cultures, religions, crime, wealth, and power (from zero to scary) does a great deal to convince one of liberalism and some form of social safety net.

Spend time in NYC or Dallas and you realize poverty and bad education and lack of medical care all breed crime, gangs, and hopelessness that ends in drug addiction or prostitution, and it is all in a self-perpetuating feed back cycle.

And it doesn't take long to see that simply more police force is treating a symptom and not a cause, and the people cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps because --- They are poor, uneducated, sick, powerless and defeated.

One reason I am a liberal is not because I am a bleeding heart, it is because I am a mathematician and engineer. I have worked with smart people of every race and gender, and what I see in these defeated denizens of the city is wasted potential. A better safety net could have saved them, and made them productive members of society, or at least not criminals.

Perhaps those rednecks that don't live in cities, or only see them on TV, are simply unexposed. If they lived here, and saw the magnitude and effect of the problem, perhaps then they would realize their standard prescriptions for solving it (religion, self-reliance, etc) have been tried and are ineffective, and perhaps with a little personal witnessing of the suffering they wouldn't be as detached and dismissive of the problem as they seem to be.

Just John, MARYLAND. One big city - Baltimore Ci...

2009-08-04T06:02:11.710-04:00

Just John,

MARYLAND.

One big city - Baltimore City

Several high population counties/cities, but in one corridor (w/% for Kerry in 2006/ % for Obama in 2008):

Baltimore County - 51.6/56.2
Baltimore City - 82.0/87.2
Howard County - 54.0/60.0
Montgomery County - 66.0/71.6
Prince George's County - 81.8/88.9

Although Baltimore City is the 'big city' in Maryland, it actually is only the fourth largest jurisdiction in the state, with Montgomery, PG and Baltimore counties all larger.

The GOOPer areas of Maryland are low population areas - the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland.

Even Anne Arundel County (fifth largest jurisdiction w/more than 500,000 pop.) is showing some signs of trending Dem: in 2000, it went 44.7% for Gore; in 2004, it went 43.1% for Kerry; in 2008, it went 48.2% for Obama.

Also:

Delaware does not have a 'major city' within the state, but more than 60% of the state's population is in New Castle County, within just a few miles of Philadelphia.

As for New Jersey, it is split between Philadelphia (in the south) and NYC (in the north). As an example, south of Trenton, you'll find many more Eagles fans than Giants and/or Jets fans.

Mike in Maryland

My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/0284889341225109596

Nate, this won't do: "there is a correlation betw...

2009-08-04T04:12:03.953-04:00

Nate, this won't do:

"there is a correlation between the size of a state and how Democratic it tends to vote in elections for national office, although the relationship is not as strong as you might posit (Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii are small states too)."

It's not the size, per se, of a state that matters. The greatest predictors, as far as I can tell, is whether the state contains a big city or collection of cities that dwarfs the rest of the state.

(My argument is not valid for the South or Utah or Texas or New England, where other factors work heavily against one party. But smart folks have documented those realities far better than I ever will.)

CA - SF plus LA plus SD
OR - Portland
WA - Seattle-Tacoma
NV - Vegas
NM - Albuquerque, plus medium-sized liberal bastion Santa Fe thrown in for good measure
CO - Denver, and Boulder acts like Santa Fe, only more so
IL - Chicago
NY, CN, NJ - The Big Apple
PA - Philly and Pitt
HI - Honolulu
RI - Providence
MN - MSP area

All those states are highly Republican-leaning outside of their large cities. The thing is, those population centers totally dominate the state, turning them into so-called "blue states" when really they're just blue-city-dominated states."

(I live in WA. Seattle is bluer than the sky, but the rest of the state is purple or blood-red.)

True swing states like FL and OH and IA and MO and now VA have their own category. They're special.

Like I said, discount TX and GA from my list. For now. Still, they're trending blue, it seems.

WY, ID, MT, Dakotas, - no truly big cities.

Someday I'll back this up with numbers. When I get some free time.

bradams said... Why is public financing of campaig...

2009-08-04T01:49:57.383-04:00

bradams said...
Why is public financing of campaigns not being discussed as a solution to this problem?

Mainly because the SCOTUS won't allow it - that 'freedom of speech for corporations' thinking.

Mike in Maryland

My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/0284889341225109596

Why is public financing of campaigns not being dis...

2009-08-04T01:46:26.195-04:00

Why is public financing of campaigns not being discussed as a solution to this problem?

http://www.publicampaign.org/ has a lot of information on the Fair Elections Now Act.

rosmer said... it is not that small-state senators...

2009-08-03T22:31:11.353-04:00

rosmer said...
it is not that small-state senators must rely more on PAC money. As many pointed out, it also costs less to run in a small district.

Tell that to the politicians in Delaware, where at least 60% of the population lives in the Philadelphia media market, one of the ten largest media markets.

Tell that to the politicians in New Hampshire, where the overwhelming media market is Boston, one of the ten largest media markets. Oh, and about 60% of the New Hampshire population lives in that Boston media market.

West Virginia? A bit more spread out - northern West Virginia is in the Pittsburgh media market (one of the 40 largest media markets), eastern West Virginia is in the Washington, DC, media market (one of the ten largest media markets). but, but, but, central and southern West Virginia IS in a small media market = the Charleston media market (if you don't count the parts of southern West Virginia in the Roanoke, Virginia, media market).

And then there are the larger states that have multiple media markets that require a LOT of money to effectively campaign in the entire state:

Florida has multiple media markets - Jacksonville, Orlando, Tallahassee, Miami, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale, to name a few.

Ohio has multiple media markets - Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo, Dayton, Pittsburgh (in Pennsylvania), Detroit (in Michigan), Fort Wayne (in Indiana), to name a few.

Indiana has multiple media markets - Chicago (in Illinois), South Bend, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Lafayette, Columbus, Bloomington, Evansville, Terre Haute, Cincinnati (in Ohio), Louisville (in Kentucky), to name a few.

A simplistic 'small population state means low cost campaign' is, well, simplistic and has little to no basis in reality. Those simple little things called FACTs, maybe?

Mike in Maryland

My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/0284889341225109596

Hawksmoore said... If I want to smoke more than is...

2009-08-03T21:49:47.483-04:00

Hawksmoore said...
If I want to smoke more than is allowed by government regulation,

Either you are parroting some quack's talking point, or you don't know what you are typing.

Can you tell us where any government regulates how much a person can smoke (I presume you are discussing tobacco products?)? Citation of such regulation would be of great assistance.

Mike in Maryland

My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/0284889341225109596

Carey said: "The most recent comprehensive ranked...

2009-08-03T18:41:59.282-04:00

Carey said: "The most recent comprehensive ranked listing of PAC contributions I can find right now is this one:

http://pac.leadershipinstitute.org/20052006/index.cfm?sort_id=alpha" and "So the axiomatic claim that the biggest PACs favor Democrats would appear to be a stupendous whopper."

First, Carey, I'm not a Republican. Second, I was using the same site that Nate used http://www.opensecrets.org/

If you went there you would see that out of the top 20 PACs, seven are union and 17 of the 20 heavily support Democrats over Republicans. This is data for FY 2010. It makes sense too, since Democrats are in control of both the House and the Senate.

And in terms of objective amouints of corporate ca...

2009-08-03T18:26:29.109-04:00

And in terms of objective amouints of corporate cash, Max Baucus, "The Montana Betrayer", takes in more than nearly all senators, competing only with Mitch McConnell and Jon Cornyn. He need never dine alone, as the saying goes...

Isn't that striking to see how red the top of that...

2009-08-03T16:35:48.629-04:00

Isn't that striking to see how red the top of that list is and how blue the bottom is? I particulaly love seeing Franken on this list at the bottom. This certainly is a telling visual representation of where the influence of special interest money goes.

Nate is not only the numbers wizard, he's a visual artist, too.

Proportionally-elected Senators would offer no eas...

2009-08-03T16:09:52.497-04:00

Proportionally-elected Senators would offer no easy targets for special interest money.

If the money problem derives from the Senate's structure, then we can a) fight an endless battle of reforming the money problem, with lawmakers and campaign contributers each trying to outthink the other, or b) change the way Senators become elected.

I don't think the former is workable; see 527s. I don't think the latter is unworkable; after all, there is already a growing movement for popular instead of electoral selection of our POTUS.

Ten (of 23) of the Top 30 in PAC ratio are members...

2009-08-03T16:08:47.930-04:00

Ten (of 23) of the Top 30 in PAC ratio are members of the Finance Committee. I'm sure a clever formula could be developed to assess which Senate Committee's were more under the sway of PAC money, I'd bet Finance wins going away.

A quick look at opensecrets data suggests as much, but a more sophisticated evaluation that included time served on the committee (and considered that members serve on multiple committees), might indicate more.

Yet Vermont seems to point to the flaw in your tre...

2009-08-03T15:56:05.556-04:00

Yet Vermont seems to point to the flaw in your trend.

Sanders, from a very small state, has one of the lowest percentages coming from PACs: 2.3%. His colleague in the Senate, Leahy, likewise has lower PAC contributions than the median.

In fact, I'd posit that Sanders would be unable to get elected in a bigger state, since very few corporate donors subscribe to his politics. It is only in small states that more radical progressives can even run a viable campaign, given their general lack of corporate support.

Clearly, your trend of attacking small states isn't based entirely on reality.

Railing against the tide just isn't going to make ...

2009-08-03T15:43:41.438-04:00

Railing against the tide just isn't going to make a difference. The Senate is what it is.

Ergo, if it's about the money, then that's where we should be focused, not on trying to change the way Congress is set up!

@Dave "Back in 2006, I did a calculation of the r...

2009-08-03T15:39:10.936-04:00

@Dave

"Back in 2006, I did a calculation of the representation of the 58 senators (nearly a party-line vote)who voted for Sam Alito to join the SCOTUS. Would you believe they represented fewer people (49.8%) than the 42 senators who voted against him? This always made me chuckle whenever I heard some Republican talk about the "will of the people" when it came to allowing a simple majority vote to pass something. What a crock!"

The next step would be to look at the margin of victory for each senator to get an idea of how many people in that state agreed with their senator's vote. Cuius regio, eius religio is soooooo 16th century.

The next step would be to use divination to parse this issue from the hundreds of others that influenced each individual's vote, and then correct for factors like lower turnout in less competitive races and the fact that some Americans are not psychic and didn't know what their Senator would do if Alito came up for confirmation and that Senator was whipped by their party...

I agree that arguing for passage of something based on its being "the will of the people" is dubious; this being a representative republic pretty much enervates both that type of analysis and your attempted rebuttal of it.

Furthermore, a large percentage of people believe some 9/11 "trufer" theory or a "nirther" theory, or doesn't believe in evolution, or believes crap about fluoridation or vaccination or economics...something being the will of the people isn't as compelling as it could be if the people were different!

This is a very interesting analysis. But I would o...

2009-08-03T15:37:50.277-04:00

This is a very interesting analysis. But I would offer an alternative explanation: it is not that small-state senators must rely more on PAC money. As many pointed out, it also costs less to run in a small district.

I think it is more the case that small-state senators are cheaper to get! A given amount of money means 10 times more to them than to a big-state candidate who needs a much bigger war chest overall.

Perhaps one way to reform the Senate to make it re...

2009-08-03T15:17:04.774-04:00

Perhaps one way to reform the Senate to make it representative (but still retain it as an institution, a smaller counterpart to the House) would be to derive its composition from the share of the total popular vote each political party gets.

Electing the POTUS and the House would stay the same. And every two years, 1/3 of the Senate comes up for election, and across the nation voters can choose which party they want to see control the Senate.

PND, I think you are missing Nate's point. Obvious...

2009-08-03T15:15:59.281-04:00

PND, I think you are missing Nate's point. Obviously all politicians raise money. Its part of the game after all. Obviously not all that money comes from PACs, but lets not forget that PACs exist solely to extract political advantage for there causes.

From profnickd: For example, Al Franken "only" re...

2009-08-03T15:09:49.131-04:00

From profnickd:

For example, Al Franken "only" received about $26K from corporate PACs -- but he received $1.1 million from law firms.

The claim that Al Franken received 1.1 million dollars in donations from law firms is an out-and-out lie. Opensecrets clearly shows the 1.1 million dollars as "Lawyers/law firms", and breaks it down by individual and corporate donations. Corporate donations account for only $17,000 of that. Al Franken received 1.1 million in contributions from individual lawyers.

But hey, why not lie to complete strangers in order to indict another complete stranger's opinion?

PND, Don't recite dittohead talking points. Its...

2009-08-03T14:58:32.968-04:00

PND,

Don't recite dittohead talking points. Its bad for your IQ.

Trial lawyer, for example, is both a misused term by the GOP and not a synonym for law firms. Every trial has lawyers on both sides, some who represent individuals but many more who represent corporate interests. Personal Injury and consumer protection law is just a small segment of cases, and the defendants in those cases use trial lawyers to protect corporate interests (mainly insurance companies and manufacturers). The membership of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the highest self-selecting organization, is composed mainly of people who do trials between companies over IP, antitrust and other issues that have nothing to do with the supposed evils of the GOP boogeyman.

Even if "trial lawyers" were all scumsuckers, there's no link between them and law firm donations. For every guy advertising on the side of a bus, there are a dozen "white-shoe" firms in NY, SF, LA and cities big and small all over this country that have nothing to do with that kind of work. Law firms (and their donations) lean depending on what they do, where they are and who makes up their membership. Those with lobbying arms almost universally give to both sides today, and gave heavily to GOP candidates during the heyday of K Street. The big firm I worked with was well known as supporting GOP candidates (the managing partner was a Pioneer for W), but there were also some prominent Dem supporters.

Nate have you seen this brief analysis on the impa...

2009-08-03T14:52:38.808-04:00

Nate have you seen this brief analysis on the impact the 'Table for Six' has had on the stock of some major health insurance companies? Worth a look and it would be interesting to see what your take is.

http://baselinescenario.com/2009/07/31/the-value-of-not-having-the-public-plan/

Okay. I know that Sen. Kohl (D-WI) tends to run un...

2009-08-03T14:49:11.558-04:00

Okay. I know that Sen. Kohl (D-WI) tends to run unopposed because of his massive personal wealth, but really? Less than $20,000? That puts him several orders of magnitude below any other senator who's been in office since 2003. Can anyone offer an explanation for this? Is it just a different set of rules for the super-rich, even in the Senate?

Thanks.