Sending Out an S.O.S.

A couple of times each week, I get e-mails from concerned citizens -- almost always Democrats -- who ask why I don't devote more time to issues like vote fraud, and are convinced that the Republicans are going to "steal" the election from Barack Obama.

This is a pretty natural fear to have after 2000. However, if there is actually a recount, or some other kind of rules dispute around the election, it is more likely to be resolved in the Democrats' favor. That is because, of the 15 most important states according to our Tipping Point metric, the Secretary of State is a Democrat in 11 of them, and the governor is a Democrat in 12 of them. The tally follows below the jump.

State         SOS        Governor 
Ohio          Democrat   Democrat 
Michigan      Republican Democrat
Virginia      Democrat   Democrat
Iowa          Democrat   Democrat
New Mexico    Democrat   Democrat
New Hampshire Democrat   Democrat 
Florida       Republican Republican
Pennsylvania  Democrat   Democrat
Nevada        Democrat   Republican
Indiana       Republican Republican
Montana       Republican Democrat
Oregon        Democrat   Democrat
New Jersey    Democrat   Democrat
Wisconsin     Democrat   Democrat

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Bayhdenkabelius

Marc Ambinder raises a simple but important point about the Democratic veepstakes:

Item: the Democratic National Convention Committee confirms that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has been given a Tuesday night speaking slot. Evidence that she won't be chosen as vice president?

Not really. The convention schedulers and Obama's VP team are entirely separate and segregated.

It's been a lot of fun, but we've probably been guilty of overinterpretation. Having been a partner in a small business, I can attest to the fact that rumors are contagious, and that the risk of leaks is an exponential function of the number of people let in on the secret.

The fact is that if the convention planners and schedulers in Denver know the identity of Obama's Vice Presidential selection, that means a lot of people know. And if a lot of people know, that means the media would know.

But the media doesn't know.

Ergo, not very many people do know. Perhaps only some combination of Obama, Axelrod, Plouffe, Gibbs, and the candidate him or herself, if the candidate has been chosen at all.

Ergo, we know nothing.

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Today's Polls, 8/13

Our busiest polling day in several weeks:



Let's get the easy ones out of the way first. Kansas and New Jersey were two states that the campaigns talked early on about being competitive, but they have since retreated into their respective red and blue corners. Each of these polls have moved slightly toward Obama from their previous edition, but otherwise there's nothing to see here.

Wisconsin may have tightened some; McCain's 5-point deficit in the Strategic Vision poll is the closest he's been in any individual survey since April. Still, the race has consistently polled outside the margin of error, and Strategic Vision's polls are notoriously Republican-leaning -- their only prior poll of the state, taken at about the time of the Democratic primary in February, had Obama ahead by just one.

We're listing a different result from the Franklin & Marshall poll of Pennsylvania than some other outlets, using Obama's +8 among registered voters rather than his +5 among likely voters. A couple of weeks ago, in the brouhaha over the Gallup-USA Today poll that showed a huge likely/registered voter split, we established a policy of deferring to the registered voter version of a poll when given the choice, until the time of the first Presidential Debate on September 26, after which we will switch to the likely voter version. There is some evidence that likely voter models are more accurate near to the election -- but very little that they work this far out, and in fact there is some evidence to the contrary.

Of course, it is relatively unusual for a pollster to list both registered voter and likely voter numbers -- most just pick one or the other. But when in doubt, we're going to defer to allowing voters to speak for themselves -- which means using the registered voter version until there is a good empirical argument not to.

That notwithstanding, the difference between a +5 and a +8 hardly matters, considering that Pennsylvania has been polled extensively, and not really shown any daylight for John McCain in a couple of months now.

Nevada has been one of the most vexing states to us poll junkies, with only Rasmussen surveying the state on a regular basis. Their latest result has McCain up by 3 -- a reversal from last month, when Obama had pulled into a 2-point lead. As I said last month, I think these numbers may be lowballing Obama somewhat, considering that the Democrats have made significant gains in party registration, something which might be hard to detect in a poll (like Rasmussen's) that weights based on party ID.

Lastly, two polls out of Virginia show the race essentially tied: McCain leads by one point in the Rasmussen poll, the same margin he held last month, and by a fraction of a point in the first InsiderAdvantage survey of the state. The last six Virginia polls have all been in a tightly-banded range between McCain +1 and Obama +2, and it looks like the state may come down to turnout operations.

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Road to 270: Indiana

Note: Over the course of the next two months, we will be previewing the Presidential Election matchup in each of the 50 states. The previews are built around a key set of demographic variables in each state. We begin this morning with the Hoosier State, Indiana.

PERHAPS NO STATE better embodies the difference in philosophy between the McCain and Obama campaigns than Indiana. For Obama, it represents a chance to rewrite the conventional wisdom and redraw the map: Indiana has gone Democratic just once in the past 15 elections, but Obama is serious about winning it, with intentions of opening as many as 30 field offices in the state. McCain, meanwhile, is acting as though he is calling a bluff; his campaign has not been advertising there, nor has it devoted any resources to the ground game. What gives each campaign such confidence about their prospects?

Key Demographics



Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apprent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.

What McCain Has Going For Him

History. Not only has Indiana voted Democratic just once since World War II, but it has also voted more Republican than the nation as a whole in each of those elections. Indiana voters are moderate on pocketbook issues, but conservatives on cultural ones, and as of 2004, the Republicans had a 14-point advantage in party identification. Indiana has a Republican governor who will probably win re-election, and Republicans control 33 of Indiana's 50 seats in the State Senate. Indiana also has one of the nation's toughest voter ID laws, which has been upheld in the face of court challenges. In addition, its polls close early, by 6 PM local time, which tends to limit participation, especially among shift workers. Indiana is among the top states in the country in vehicle miles per capita, so issues like the gas tax could prove to be an effective wedge.

What Obama Has Going For Him

A lot of little things, which might add up to a big thing. Indiana has the most manufacturing-intensive economy in the country, with 18 percent of its jobs in the sector; Illinois-based unions are used to working its territory. Approximately 20-25 percent of the state is in the Chicago media market, and Obama overperford in the Northern portion of the state during the Democratic primaries. Indiana has several major colleges and universities, and an above-average number of young voters. Obama has outfundraised McCain in Indiana better than 2:1. The Bayh brand name remains extremely powerful in the state, and Evan Bayh can be an effective surrogate, whether or not he is Obama's vice president. Obama has a head start, having focused intensely on the state during the primaries, and essentially keeping his organization intact since then.

What To Watch For

Democrats have not made a serious effort to compete in Indiana since at least 1988, when Dan Quayle was George Bush's VP nominee and effective cordoned the state off to Michael Dukakis. And since the state has usually held a late primary, it had not gotten much attention during the nomination process.

The essential question then is whether there has been some sort of latent Democratic vote in Indiana that the Democrats simply haven't bothered to fight for. Indiana has generally had one of the lowest turnout rates in the country, which might be a consequence of its early poll closing times, but might also reflect the apathy caused by the lack of attention paid to it. That alone might not be enough to make the state competitive. But when coupled with the fact that the Democratic nominee is a Midwesterner from a neighboring state, that the state's blue-collar economy is really struggling, and that one campaign is invested in the state when the other isn't, you might have the right mix of circumstances necessary to tip the state.

Geographically, Obama will need to carry Marion County (Indianapolis) -- which John Kerry won by just 2 points -- by perhaps as many as 25-30. He will have to do even better than that in the Northwest suburbs. And he will have to hold his own in the Northeast portion of the state -- losing by not more than 5 or 10 points -- while keeping Southern Indiana to within 20. If he is able to accomplish substantially all of those things, the math will be there for him.

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Warner Will Be Dems' Keynoter [UPDATED]

A little birdseed for the night owls out there: the AP is reporting that ex-Virginia governor Mark Warner will deliver the Tuesday night address at the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Senate candidate and former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner is scheduled to deliver the Tuesday night keynote address at this year's Democratic National Convention — the same role that launched Barack Obama to national prominence four years ago.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival during the Democratic presidential primaries, is also scheduled to speak that night, Aug. 26. But Warner is being given the plum position, according to an e-mail that Obama campaign adviser Mike Henry sent to Virginia supporters late Tuesday.

I have to confess to being a little bit surprised by this. Contrary to the reporting of some outlets, Hillary Clinton had never formally been guaranteed the keynote slot -- rather, she had merely been guaranteed a prime-time speaking slot on Tuesday. But the perception out there was that Tuesday would be "her" night, and we can expect some growling from the PUMAs about Hillary being snubbed.

One would hope, however, that the Obama campaign was not so callous as to give Warner the nod without vetting/negotiating their position with the Clintons -- perhaps in exchange for the prime-time slot that Bill was given on Wednesday night. To have had Hillary keynoting on Tuesday and then Bill headlining on Wednedsay -- he will surely upstage the VP's speech -- might have risked a Clinton overdose. There are risks in doing things this way too, however.

Biggest loser in all of this? Tim Kaine, who if given the VP slot, might seem like sloppy seconds next to Warner.

MORE GOSSIP: As a couple of commenters have pointed out, there are some interesting tea leaves to read here regarding Kathleen Sebelius.

According to the Kansas City Star:

Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will speak at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

The Democratic National Convention Committee said Tuesday that McCaskill will speak on the convention’s opening day, Aug. 25, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Obama. They will talk about national unity.

Sebelius — a co-chairwoman of the convention — also will address the delegates, a party spokeswoman said, although the exact day and time has not been decided.

And here's what Sebelius told CQ Politics on Monday:

On Monday, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Obama adviser Anita Dunn announced the themes for the various nights of the convention, including "Securing America's Future" for the third night, when the vice presidential candidate will speak.
When asked whether the thematic choices could be read as an indication that the VP pick would be someone with a strong background on veterans issues, according to CQ reporter Marie Horrigan, Sebelius said that nothing should be read into that.

"Every potential vice presidential choice also has a speaking slot and so nothing should be read into themes or issues or ideas," Sebelius said.

So every potential vice presidential choice has a speaking slot. Kathleen Sebelius has a speaking slot. Except, unlike Claire McCaskill, or Mark Warner, or Ted Strickland, or Hillary Clinton, the Democrats are not yet ready to assign her a specific slot. She is, to my knowledge, the only Democrat thus far guaranteed a speaking slot without having a particular night assigned to her.

To be fair, a lot of people speak at the convention, so the mere fact that Sebelius has a slot shouldn't mean all that much. But it certainly seems that she's (still) on the short list. I would also note that there would be a certain symmetry to the following pattern of speakers:

Monday -- Michelle Obama
Tuesday -- Hillary Clinton, Mark Warner
Wednesday -- Bill Clinton, Kathleen Sebelius
Thursday -- Barack Obama

You would have, essentially, three "couples" speaking: Michelle and Barack to bookend the convention (the present), Hillary and Bill in the middle (the past), and then Warner and Sebelius (the future), who aren't a couple, but who hit many of the same themes.

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Today's Polls, 8/12

Yet another pollster has weighed in on Florida, and they have good news for John McCain. This time, it's InsiderAdvantage, which shows McCain with a 4 point lead. This is InsiderAdvantage's first poll of the state, and consists of a small sample size -- barely more than 400 people. Nevertheless, this is about where Florida feels like it should be. True, as the InsiderAdvantage write-up notes, Barack Obama has been investing a ton of advertising money into Florida. On the other hand, he's coming back from margins that consistently showed him 7 or 8 points behind earlier in the cycle -- and while McCain hasn't invested on the airwaves, Florida is the only state where he has an advantage on the ground, with more than 30 field offices open.

SurveyUSA has new polls out in North Carolina and Kentucky. The North Carolina result is McCain +4, a nominal decline from his 5-point lead last month, but essentially the same result we've seen in poll after poll of North Carolina for months and months. McCain's lead in Kentucky is 18 points -- a significant improvement from his 12-point margin in SurveyUSA's last poll in mid-June, but a long way behind some of his previous margins in the state, as SurveyUSA had shown McCain ahead by as many as 36 points earlier on.

The poll getting the most buzz today is in Alaska, where Hays Research Group shows Barack Obama ahead by 5. For the time being, however, I am not including this poll in our averages. Although the poll was published on the Hays website in full view of the public, the fine print says that it was paid for by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which qualifies as a Political Action Committee (as well as a union that endorsed Obama). I have e-mailed the pollster to clarify the origins of this poll and may include it based on their responses to those questions -- however, for now, I am considering it an internal poll and leaving it out. For those of you who are desperate for some fresh numbers in Alaska, I did come across this poll from Ivan Moore, which had John McCain 2.4 points ahead of Obama as of mid-July.

Obama's overall win percentage has ticked upward a bit to 65.4 percent, its highest point in a couple of weeks, largely because Obama has held a pretty decent position in the national tracking polls for several days running now. But really, there's been very little movement in this race for nearly a full month.

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Senate Polling Weekly Update, 8/12

This is going to be a brief update; there were few dramatics in the Senate numbers this week. But there is one exception, and it is good news for the Republicans. In Oregon, Gordon Smith has opened up a lead over Jeff Merkley; a new Rasmussen poll shows Smith ahead by 6 points, and SurveyUSA , which is polling this race for the first time, has him up by 12. There is, at this point, a fairly clear dividing line between the five GOP-held seats that the Democrats appear likely (Colorado, Alaska) or nearly certain (Virginia, New Mexico, New Hampshire) to pick up, and everything else.

It may be out of the Democrats' power to gain a 60-seat majority by means of a piecemeal approach. Instead, they will need something that shifts the national numbers in several races at once. For the time being, their numbers are moving in the wrong direction, as Republicans have ticked up slightly in generic ballot tests.

Also, the Democratic challenger has been determined in two races. In Georgia, Jim Martin will challenge Saxby Chambliss. Martin has a better chance at making a race of it than his opponent in the primary run-off, Vernon Jones, but remains about a 20:1 underdog according to our metrics. And in Tennessee, Bob Tuke is the choice; he's about a 100-to-1 longshot to upset Lamar Alexander.

Polls follow.

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Spears-Hilton Week Over, McCain's News Coverage Falls Again

The Clintons’ re-emergence into political storylines last week reversed John McCain’s temporary catch of Barack Obama in news coverage, according to newly-released Pew findings.

The fluctuation in coverage of McCain compared to the steadiness in coverage of Obama mirrors the complaint from Republican corners that McCain’s team has been reactive and struggled to provide a clear and consistent message beyond “Don’t vote for Obama.”



The level of McCain's media attention undulates with the traction of any specific way McCain articulates that core argument. Spears-Hilton gained McCain more attention because it was a surprising and original angle for attacking Obama. But the upshot remains: McCain is dependent on Obama for his messaging; Obama’s messaging is independent. Notice how flat the line is for Obama coverage. McCain’s line is all over the graph. That’s a strong statistical signal McCain’s message team is not in full control.

Notice the Boston Globe's recent visual depiction of the different most prominently featured words on each candidate’s official blogs.



Little wonder that stories about McCain are more easily pushed aside; McCain’s own stories are mostly about Obama; McCain gets more attention by attacking in unexpected ways – Spears-Hilton Week was unusual and so the "Look what McCain’s doing!" and "What is McCain thinking with this?” stories led to his tying Obama that week in news coverage.

But unless and until John McCain can consistently drive a message untethered to Barack Obama, expect to see the news coverage graph to stay the same – a stable Obama line and a zigzagging McCain line.

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Black Vote Was Invisible To Penn

There are three demographic variables that explain almost all of the votes in the primary -- gender, party, and income.

-- Mark Penn, 3/19/07.

Each of these factors, of course, was important in determining candidate preferences in the Democratic primaries. But Penn gives short shrift to the most important demographic variable of all, which was race. (Penn did reference race in the sentence that follows this passage, but does so only in passing -- "Race is a factor as well, but we are fighting hard to neutralize it.").

Let's look at a simple chart:



This tracks Hillary Clinton's performance among black voters over the 18 months of the primary campaign -- first using a series of public polling numbers, and then from South Carolina onward the actual voting results. Clinton began with, roughly speaking, a 20-point advantage over Obama among black voters; this was temporarily diminished by the excitement surrounding Obama's entry into the race in early February, but had worked itself back up to as many as 24 points by October.

Some of Clinton's support was undoubtedly very soft. Between October and November, Obama moved from about 20 points behind among black voters to essentially even with them, as the campaign coverage picked up, Obama had a chance to introduce himself, and Clinton had a few stumbles. There was relatively little negative campaigning during this period. But it was the period in between "now the fun part starts" and "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina" when the bottom really fell out, with Clinton losing about 60 points' worth of African-American support in a month's time. And things actually got a little bit worse thereafter, with Clinton going from a -60 among black voters in South Carolina and Super Tuesday (a margin that might have allowed her to salvage the nomination) to a -80 in the primaries that followed.

Overall, Clinton lost 100 points of support among black voters in about 120 days: a truly remarkable achievement. Since black voters make up about 20 percent of the Democratic primary electorate, a 100-point swing among black voters translates to a 20-point swing among all voters. And that, essentially, was how the primary was lost. In national trial heats, Obama was polling about 20 points behind Clinton throughout most of calendar year 2007, and wound up polling about 5 points ahead of her for most of the period after Super Tuesday. That is a 25-point swing, and 20 of those 25 points came from black voters.

It is clear from reading the Penn Memos that the Clinton campaign had very little idea this was coming. There is abundant discussion about how to squeeze every last nanometer of a vote out of groups like "waitress moms", but very little substance about how to build or retain their support among African-Americans. Penn revealed himself as a pollster rather than a strategist; polls are inherently backward-looking, whereas a good strategist must anticipate future trends.

The question is whether this was more or less inevitable, or caused by specific behavior of the Clinton campaign. If the former, the Clinton campaign would still have had to chart a different strategic course. Penn had carefully constructed what amounted to a 55 percent coalition, but it was one that implicitly leaned on support from working-class blacks, and especially working-class black women, without which 55 percent quickly dissolved to 47 percent. If she had understood the softness of her African-American support, Clinton might have been able to target a different demographic instead, such as 18-39 year old white women, which might have implied a toning down of some of her experience rhetoric and more emphasis on her being a trailblazer.

The other option, of course, is that the Clinton campaign deserved every last black vote it didn't get. After reading some of the race-baiting rhetoric in Penn's memos, it is easy to jump to this conclusion. Penn, certainly, comes across as too cute by half, thinking he could press the narrative of Obama being un-American without the black community -- not to mention the (predominantly white) liberal blogosphere -- picking up on the subtext.

Clinton, to her credit, declined to press many of Penn's more venomous lines of attack, although they came out occasionally through surrogates, including Clinton's husband. More fundamentally, though, one senses that the Clinton campaign simply took the black community for granted, and didn't understand how certain of their core lines of argument might go over with African-Americans. In particular, Clinton's claims to being experienced were always fairly specious, considering that she had spent barely more time in elected office than Obama (less, if you count his years in the Illinois State Senate) and had relatively few accomplishments to her name (there is a humorous passage in one of the Penn Memos in which he begins to recite Clinton's legislative achievements, but is unable to provide more than one example thereof).

The point, certainly, is not that Clinton's "experience" argument was some kind of racist dog-whistle. But it was far less self-evident than Penn (and Clinton) seemed to assert, and raised the question of what exactly did give Clinton the right to take the first bite at the apple. If Clinton, by contrast, had campaigned on life experience rather than work experience, that might have resonated with a broader series of voters, including minorities. Clinton was effective when she campaigned on her biography, but she did far too little of it.

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Today's Polls, 8/11

Four polls are out today, but the Presidential race looks to have settled into something of a steady state.

In Colorado, a Public Policy Polling survey has Barack Obama ahead by 4 points. The margin is identical to a poll conducted last month, although each candidate has gained a point against undecided.

In Virgina, it's McCain by one in a new SurveyUSA poll. SurveyUSA's Virginia numbers have fluctuated somewhat wildly over the course of the cycle, with margins ranging from Obama +7 to McCain +12, but this is a modest improvement for McCain from their late June edition, when Barack Obama had led by 2.

Lastly, Rasmussen Reports polls have Barack Obama ahead by 5 points in Iowa -- down from 10 last month -- and ahead by 10 points in Oregon -- up a tick from 9 points last month.

Let's set Virginia aside for a moment, as well as Oregon, which has never looked especially competitive and where neither campaign is doing any advertising. It's Colorado and Iowa, along with New Mexico, that form Obama's firewall. If Obama holds the Kerry states but wins those three, he doesn't need to win Ohio, Florida, or any of the higher degree-of-difficulty states. And so far, Obama's lead in these states has been very consistent. In 16 Iowa polls conducted since Super Tuesday, Obama has led all 16. In 11 New Mexico polls over the time span, he has led 9, been tied in one, and trailed in the other. And in 14 polls of Colorado, he has led 11 times, trailed twice, and been tied once.

If I were John McCain, I'd be very skeptical about my prospects in Iowa, where I didn't really campaign during the primaries and where my agricultural policies are unpopular. Likewise, I'd look at Obama's strong national numbers among Hispanics, and conclude that New Mexico is probably moving in the wrong direction. Which means that I'd be devoting an awful lot of resources to Colorado, possibly conceding states like Pennsylvania and Minnesota in order to do so.

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The Georgia Conflict and the Case for Clark

Barack Obama is fortunate that the conflict in South Ossetia has occurred during the Olympics, depriving it of some of it of the coverage that it otherwise might receive. He is also fortunate that Americans don't have much attention span for foreign affairs outside of matters involving Iraq and Al Qaeda.

That is not to endorse McCain's more hardline stance toward Russia, the particulars of which this blog has no standing to comment upon. I have no doubt, however, that the lingering memory of the Cold War makes an anti-Russian stance an easier sale from the standpoint of electoral politics.

But the unscripted drama in the Caucasus also serves as a thought experiment of sorts, especially as it regards Barack Obama's VP selection. Would Obama be better off if he had, say, General Wesley Clark flanking him right now?

I think absolutely so. The reason does not necessarily have to do with Clark's experience per se. Rather, it is a question of how well positioned Obama is to win arguments about foreign policy on the campaign trail. In this case, it is Obama's position, rather than McCain's, that is closest to the consensus of NATO -- as well as, ironically, the Bush Administration. But in matters of global affairs that Americans don't know very much about -- and again, pretty much everything but Iraq, Al Qaeda, and perhaps Israel qualifies there -- they are more likely to defer to the brand name opinion on foreign policy, which means John McCain's

In this case in particular, the Obama side has some good arguments to make about Georgia -- for instance, that our moral authority to condemn Russia for its actions is undermined by our own invasion of Iraq, and that our tactical position to place our footprint in the Caucasian theater is undermined by the number of troops we have committed to Iraq. But these are big picture, macro-level arguments, and ones that require the right salesperson. Someone like, say, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

To be clear, while these arguments hold to a certain extent for someone like Joe Biden, they are mainly an argument for Clark in particular. Joe Biden has a lot of credibility on foreign policy, but the aesthetics of what he could do on the stump and in interviews aren't really a match for those of a bona fide, ex-General. Biden might leave Obama better equipped to defend news cycles in which something like the South Ossetia conflict is the central topic; Clark might actually be able to win them.

UPDATE: Chris Bowers points to some other interesting tea leaves on Clark. And Clark is surging on Intrade right now, essentially turning the Big Four (Bayh, Biden, Sebelius, Kaine) into a Big Five.

UPDATE x2: For the record, if I had to rank Obama's potential VP choices -- culling from the quasi-official short list plus a couple of other names that are trading well on Intrade -- my choices would probably look something like this:

1. Clark
2. Schweitzer
3. Sebelius
4. Bayh
5. Clinton
6. Biden
7. Kaine
8. Reed
9. Nunn
10. Hagel
11. Dodd

This is opinion, not analysis.

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Why Howard Wolfson is Out of a Job

Not to re-litigate the Primary Wars -- we're in a snarky mood this morning -- but Howard Wolfson tells ABC News that, were it not for John Edwards, Hillary Clinton would have beaten Barack Obama in Iowa:

Obama won 37.6 per cent of the vote. Edwards won 29.7 per cent and Clinton won 29.5 per cent, according to results posted by the Iowa Democratic Party.

"Our voters and Edwards' voters were the same people," Wolfson said the Clinton polls showed. "They were older, pro-union. Not all, but maybe two-thirds of them would have been for us and we would have barely beaten Obama."

Iowa actually didn't turn out to be that close, with Obama defeating Edwards by 7.9 points and Hillary Clinton by 8.1 points. For Clinton to have beaten Obama, she would have needed (as Wolfson correctly points out) about two-thirds of those Edwards voters.

The thing about Iowa, however, is that unlike virtually any other electoral contest, second choices matter, since Democratic caucus rules dictate that a voter may caucus for her second-choice candidate if her first choice does not achieve the 15 percent of the vote required for viability. As such, Iowa pollsters did a lot of work in trying to determine voters' second choices. And in virtually every survey, Clinton did rather poorly as a second choice: an average of several surveys in December showed that she was the second choice of about 20 percent of voters, as compared with 25 percent for Obama and Edwards (an even later version I have sitting on my hard drive showed the second-choice breakdown as Edwards 30, Obama 28.5, Clinton 23.5)

So the odds are that, if John Edwards had dropped out on the morning before the Iowa caucus, Obama would have won by more points rather than fewer.

It was also the case that Barack Obama appeared to get the lion's share of Edwards supporters once Edwards dropped from the race:



This is not to say that Edwards couldn't possibly have impacted the race in ways that were favorable to Barack Obama. He was probably useful to Obama, for example, in attacking Clinton early on, increasing her negatives without Obama having to pay the price. His endorsement of Obama in May was undoubtedly a big assist to Obama's endgame.

But Wolfson is making a much cruder sort of argument based on the polls, and the evidence cuts against him.

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The Persistent Myth of the Bradley Effect

Many commentators -- the preponderance of them conservative but also some liberals -- take it as an article of faith that the current polling numbers overstate Barack Obama's position because of the so-called Bradley Effect: the notion that some material number of voters will lie about their intentions to pollsters, claiming that they will vote for a black candidate when in fact they will vote for the white guy.

A fairly typical example comes in the form of a blind quote from a Democratic strategist this morning at The Politico:

A huge challenge for Obama, insiders say, is simply determining how much skin color will matter in November. Race is nearly impossible to poll – no one ever says “I’m a racist” – and no campaign wants it revealed they are even asking questions on the issue.

“It’s the uncertainty that kills me – we know it’s going to be factor, but how big a factor?” asks a Democratic operative with ties to the Obama camp. “How do you even measure such a thing?"

Is there really so much uncertainty as this "operative" implies? Black candidates run races every cycle for the Congress and for the Governor's Mansion, and academics have spent copious time dissecting those results. And while we've never before had a major party nominate a black man for President, we did just finish an exceptionally competitive primary campaign in which a black candidate ran against an extremely popular white candidate with more than 35 million voters participating.

As we have described here before, polling numbers from the primaries suggested no presence of a Bradley Effect. On the contrary, it was Barack Obama -- not Hillary Clinton -- who somewhat outperformed his polls on Election Day.

The table below reflects 31 states in which at least three separate polls were released within 14 days of that state's primary or caucus. We compare the final trendline estimate from Pollster.com against the actual results from that state:



On average, Barack Obama overperformed the Pollster.com trendline by 3.3 points on election day.

There are some important differences by region. Using regions as defined by the US Census Bureau, Barack Obama overperformed his polls by an average of 7.2 points in the South. This effect appears to be most substantial in states with larger black populations; I have suggested before that it might stem from a sort of reverse Bradley Effect in which black voters were reluctant to disclose to a (presumed) white interviewer that they were about to vote for a black candidate.

Obama also outperformed his polls in the Midwest and the West (although there is not much data to go on in the latter case). The one region where Hillary Clinton overperformed her numbers was in the Northeast, bettering the pre-election trendline by 1.8 points. Recall that the Bradley Effect phenomenon describes covert rather than overt manifestations of racism. It may be that in the Northeast, which is arguably the most "politically correct" region of the country, expressions of racism are the least socially acceptable, and that therefore some people may misstate their intentions to pollsters. By contrast, in the South and the Midwest, if people are racist they will usually be pretty open about it, and in the West, which is nation's most multicultural region, there may be relatively little racism, either expressed or implicit.

The good news for Barack Obama is that, among the Northeastern states, only New Hampshire appears to be competitive -- and Obama would gladly trade a Bradley Effect in New Hampshire for a reverse Bradley Effect in a state like North Carolina. (Pennsylvania, it should be noted, is also defined by the Census Bureau as being in the Northeast, but in terms of political demography, it shares far more in common with the Midwest).

So why do we keep hearing so much about the Bradley Effect? Apart from the fact that it is a good way to fill column space on a slow news day, it seems that there are three or four reasons why the myth perpetuates itself:

1. Misunderstanding the Bradley Effect. Denying the existence of the Bradley Effect does not mean denying that some people vote on the basis of race. I have no doubt that some people will vote against Barack Obama because he is black. Indeed, I suspect that almost all of us either know such people, or know people who know them (friends and relatives of friends). I also have no doubt, by the way, that some people will vote for Barack Obama because he is black.

But the Bradley Effect is not an argument about whether people vote based on race. It's an argument about whether people will lie to pollsters. So long as race-based voters are honest about their intentions, Barack Obama's position is no worse than it appears to be in the polls.

2. Confusing Past with Present. There is fairly strong academic evidence that the Bradley Effect used to exist back in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, the evidence is just as strong that it does not exist any longer. The people who vouch for the existence of the Bradley Effect are not wrong so much as they are relying on dated evidence.

3. Confusing Exit Polls with pre-Election Polls. Unlike the normal, pre-election polls, exit polls conducted on the day of the election did substantially overstate Barack Obama's margins throughout the primaries. This is something to keep in mind at about 5 PM on November 4, when Matt Drudge and Jim Geraghty begin to leak exit poll results. It is not anything to worry about now, when we are trying to forecast the outcome from pre-election polling.

Nor is it clear the the discrepancies in the exit polls have anything to do with race; John Kerry, somewhat infamously, also underperformed his exit polls. The mechanics of conducting an exit poll are rather haphazard, involving a bunch of college kids and temp workers running around outside a polling place with clipboards and attempting to pass out survey forms to every Nth voter who leaves the ballot booth. This is not much easier than it sounds, and introduces a lot of human error and other forms of sample bias. For this reason, exit polls are not really intended to be used as they so frequently are in the panicked hours before ballot counting begins -- the results need to be calibrated and weighted, and exit polling firms rely on comparing their polls against actual voting results in order to do so.

4. Cherry Picking Results. The notion of the Bradley Effect gained a lot of currency after the New Hampshire primary, when Hillary Clinton did much better than anyone expected and won the state. However, the 8.9-point gap separating the pre-election polls and the actual results in New Hampshire represented only the seventh-largest error in the primaries. There were bigger discrepancies in Iowa, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin and Mississippi, all of which favored Barack Obama. These discrepancies did not receive as much attention as New Hampshire because they did not change the outcome of the election. But mathematically speaking, they were just as important.

A related phenomenon is that the media often cherry-picks polling results within a given state. The Zogby poll that had Barack Obama ahead by 13 points in California received widespread attention; the SurveyUSA result that had Clinton 10 points ahead did not. Over the course of the primaries, polling results that had Barack Obama performing well generally made for better copy, since until at least mid-February, Obama was considered the underdog. But an informed reading of the polls, such as the Pollster.com method, reveals that Clinton did not overperform in states like California and Ohio nearly so much as the media tried to imply.

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Travel Globally, Attack Locally

In the last day or two, we’ve seen the pattern emerge of two very different advertising strategies that make sense for each campaign's needs.

To have an electoral chance, John McCain’s camp has to make Barack Obama unacceptable, and they need to reach as wide an audience as possible to virally spread attacks on his character. They need to deputize as many citizen smearers as possible to go forth and spread the word that this guy can’t be trusted to lead. It’s not so much the issues – Democrats have too large an edge in the generic policy preference in this cycle and Nate’s innovative graph shows Obama is squarely in the Democratic policy mainstream – it’s Obama’s personhood that must be undermined in order to differentiate him from the hypothetical generic Democrat.

To that end, the McCain camp has gamed out the back and forth. McCain’s group raises fear about Obama, Obama calls out the behavior as fearmongering by trying to remind people he's different, McCain replies that Obama is playing the race card. This is catnip for the media. As Chuck Todd said the other morning, any day that race is the topic (regardless of who’s right about who played the race card) is a bad day for Obama.

Obama’s contrasting strategy: Only go negative in substantive ways on a local level. In Ohio, Obama is blasting McCain on the local impact of the loss of 8,000 jobs in the DHL-Airborne Express fallout. Campaign manager David Plouffe says everyone in the Cincinnati and Dayton markets will know that ad by November 4. In Nevada, Obama has an ad hammering McCain on the local substantive issue of Yucca Mountain.

This localized negative ad strategy dovetails with the Obama campaign’s focus that national tracking polls don’t matter, only winning the states it has to win does. Obama’s team beat the inevitable Clinton machine in no small part because it outhustled and precisely targeted its resources to win very specific battles en route to the overall win. It understands the approach we take here at FiveThirtyEight, which is to focus on electoral math and state-by-state polls with an eye toward heavy localized organizing.

Obama’s strategy is probably optimal; he has to be very careful with his own negative ads, despite the gnashing of teeth by some in Democratic corners that he launch heavy blanket offensives that change the media storyline (hint: it would be, “with his negative ads, is Obama really a new politician?”). Obama’s brand, for better or for worse, is about the toxic effect in out politics of character attacks and the politics of personal destruction. McCain’s camp is surely salivating at the opportunity to use the fact of any negative advertising to label Obama as fraudulent. But if the ads themselves are about a specific issue, it prevents the media from being able to discuss the implications of a negative Obama ad without explaining the dispute, thus amplifying the substance of the Obama claim.

Given that the Democratic primary lasted so long, Obama’s team had the opportunity to test state-specific messaging in nearly every state (Michigan and Florida being key exceptions). One would expect this iteration of campaigning to be much more well-informed with internal polling about what issues have traction where. Keep an eye out for this pattern of hitting McCain hard and locally on an array of hot button issues that remind voters how mad they are at Republican policies (see: wrong track).

Incidentally, if Nate hadn’t posted about John McCain using $6M to go negative during the Olympics, I would have. Wow. Last week, we speculated that even if McCain bought ad time, he’d use it for personal branding because surely, nobody would be so stupid as to punctuate the uplifting Olympics with personal partisan attack ads.

Obama’s Olympic “Hands” ad celebrates American ingenuity and runs for 15 seconds before you have any idea it’s even a political ad. There’s Michael Phelps setting world records, there’s Morgan Freeman’s powerful voiceover in Visa ads celebrating the human condition, then there’s a guy telling you how dangerous his political opponent is. Way to keep the mood going. Grinch, indeed.

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