There's very little to say right now about the 2016 general election. I'm not going to say that there's no point at looking at changing demographics, or early financial mobilization, or whatever, but almost all of what you're going to read in 2013 and 2014 about the 2016 general election is going to be useless.
In particular, speculation about the electoral college is mostly a waste of time. So are the specific comparisons of how this or that candidate would do in the general election; even to the extent that candidates can matter, which is limited, it's very unlikely that we can say very much about how Chris Christie would do compared with Marco Rubio, or how Hillary Clinton would do compared with any of the alternatives. At least I'm not aware of any evidence that there's much of anything we can say at this point. It's also surely the case that most of the events of 2013 are going to be long forgotten by November 2016; not only the gaffes, but even substantial things such as votes in Congress and how laws are implemented. Well, not all of them will be forgotten, but few will have any effect on the 2016 general election vote. ACA implementation is a terribly important story, but will it change votes in 2016? Probably not. And probably not in any way that's easy to predict from where we sit now.
Again: that's not true of the nomination contests. Because, remember, the choice between Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker is a very difficult choice for most people who will be making that choice; the choice between (say) Cruz and Clinton, or between Chris Christie and Amy Klobuchar, would be a very easy choice for almost everyone.
So, yeah, go ahead and focus on the nomination contests...but it really is too early to be talking about the 2016 general election.
Showing posts with label presidential elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label presidential elections. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Friday, July 12, 2013
Patterns
Oh, I hate when this happens. Henry Farrell not only beat me to an obvious response, but came up with exactly the XKCD strip that goes with it.
I suppose I should back up. This is about a Megan McArdle item this morning...actually, two items, but the relevant one is a follow-up in which she defended her assertion of a 70% chance of unified Republican government after the 2016 elections. Why? Because there's only been one time since World War II that a president has been elected to replace a same-party president. Henry nails it:
Here's a three-step test to check to see if the pattern you've noticed is worth tossing into a blot post or not.
First of all, look at how many times the pattern has recurred. In McArdle's case, we're talking about times when a president stepped aside (making a same-party succession possible). That happened in 1952, 1960, 1968, 1988, 2000, and 2008. So her pattern, to begin with, is one out of six. That's perhaps something...but it's not exactly an Iron Law of Politics, is it? 0 for 10, or 1 for 50, would be a lot stronger.
Then, next, we can check the qualifiers to see if they're making the pattern look stronger. In this case, there's one: postwar. If we put that aside and go with "20th century," then we add 1908, 1920, and 1928 -- and get two hits, with TR/Taft and Coolidge/Hoover. Is there some special reason that the postwar era should be different? Not that I can think of, and if we include those the pattern drops to three in nine -- hardly something to get worked up about. Note that the more qualifiers you toss in, the more likely you are to be creating the pattern that you're seeing, so this is an important test.
What's next? Well, are the cases you are using strong evidence of something, or weak? Here, out-party replacements by Ike in 1952 and Obama in 2008 were both pretty solid...but so was George H.W. Bush's counter-pattern win. The rest were toss-ups: Nixon/Kennedy, Humphrey/Nixon, and Bush/Gore, with the latter of course counting the other way on the national vote. Overall, that seems a lot closer to a coin-flip than an Iron Law.
Actually, I suppose that this suggests a simple rule of thumb for presidential general election patterns: if the pattern depends on how one scores Bush/Gore, it's probably not a pattern worth caring very much about.
But of course, as Henry suggests, this kind of thing comes up all the time, and it's going to; we are pattern-finders. And yet it's unfair to say that reporters and pundits should rigorously test every pattern they notice. In this case, it is in fact probably true that extra terms in the White House make electoral defeat more likely...but to the extent that kicks in after two terms, it's going to be a fairly small effect.
So, go ahead and pattern-spot. Just be aware that (as Henry says) most patterns are garbage, so be careful -- and do a quick self-exam of your pattern before you invest any meaning in it at all.
I suppose I should back up. This is about a Megan McArdle item this morning...actually, two items, but the relevant one is a follow-up in which she defended her assertion of a 70% chance of unified Republican government after the 2016 elections. Why? Because there's only been one time since World War II that a president has been elected to replace a same-party president. Henry nails it:
Human beings are cognitively predisposed to perceive patterns in the world. Many, likely most of these patterns are garbage. Without good theories, and good ways of testing those theories, we’ll never be able to tell the garbage patterns from the real ones.Okay, but what we need is an intermediate step. I mean, sure, political scientists can look at election results carefully (that is, using the well-developed information we have about how US elections work in general) and get a general sense of which patterns to test for, and then design sophisticated tests to get that final step. But that's not available on the fly to lots of people who are still going to want to figure out what to do with a pattern they find. So what can we recommend?
Here's a three-step test to check to see if the pattern you've noticed is worth tossing into a blot post or not.
First of all, look at how many times the pattern has recurred. In McArdle's case, we're talking about times when a president stepped aside (making a same-party succession possible). That happened in 1952, 1960, 1968, 1988, 2000, and 2008. So her pattern, to begin with, is one out of six. That's perhaps something...but it's not exactly an Iron Law of Politics, is it? 0 for 10, or 1 for 50, would be a lot stronger.
Then, next, we can check the qualifiers to see if they're making the pattern look stronger. In this case, there's one: postwar. If we put that aside and go with "20th century," then we add 1908, 1920, and 1928 -- and get two hits, with TR/Taft and Coolidge/Hoover. Is there some special reason that the postwar era should be different? Not that I can think of, and if we include those the pattern drops to three in nine -- hardly something to get worked up about. Note that the more qualifiers you toss in, the more likely you are to be creating the pattern that you're seeing, so this is an important test.
What's next? Well, are the cases you are using strong evidence of something, or weak? Here, out-party replacements by Ike in 1952 and Obama in 2008 were both pretty solid...but so was George H.W. Bush's counter-pattern win. The rest were toss-ups: Nixon/Kennedy, Humphrey/Nixon, and Bush/Gore, with the latter of course counting the other way on the national vote. Overall, that seems a lot closer to a coin-flip than an Iron Law.
Actually, I suppose that this suggests a simple rule of thumb for presidential general election patterns: if the pattern depends on how one scores Bush/Gore, it's probably not a pattern worth caring very much about.
But of course, as Henry suggests, this kind of thing comes up all the time, and it's going to; we are pattern-finders. And yet it's unfair to say that reporters and pundits should rigorously test every pattern they notice. In this case, it is in fact probably true that extra terms in the White House make electoral defeat more likely...but to the extent that kicks in after two terms, it's going to be a fairly small effect.
So, go ahead and pattern-spot. Just be aware that (as Henry says) most patterns are garbage, so be careful -- and do a quick self-exam of your pattern before you invest any meaning in it at all.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Oh, I'm Going to Hate This In About Four Years
After Hoover was defeated in 1932, the next incumbent to lose in a general election was Ford, in 1976, followed in short order by Carter in 1980 and Bush in 1992. Add in Johnson in 1968, and incumbents are beaten all the time!
But now, with a run of three presidents who were successfully re-elected, get ready for it: you're going to be hearing a lot about how incumbent presidents can't lose under today's conditions. Here's a preview from Tom Edsall, who attributes this effect to campaign finance:
Now, as it happens, incumbents do win often -- not just for re-election to the White House, but for all offices at all times. After all, the one thing we know about incumbents is that they won! Usually, with basically the same electorate, or at least close to the same electorate, that they are facing in the next election. Forget about everything else, and just focus on that, and you'll expect them to win the next time. Indeed, there's really something wrong if they don't win more often than they lose; it would indicate to voters are constantly changing their minds, and that's not a positive sign.
I do think that the expectation to the contrary is based on a good government fantasy that every election should begin -- for every voter -- from square one, with voters carefully studying the positions on public policy issues from each candidate from scratch and deciding their vote based on an impartial calculus of exactly which candidate is best on those issues. Which is neither what happens in the real world or, I'd argue, would be any better than what actually does happen in the real world. (Worse? Well, I'm open to and willing to defend most methods for determining one's vote, but it wouldn't be a way I'd recommend).
I may say more later about the campaign finance specific stuff in Edsall's post, but look: this is coming. You get three straight re-elections, and people are going to believe that it's inevitable, and throw their favorite causes at this supposed effect. But it isn't inevitable. It's just worked out that way.
But now, with a run of three presidents who were successfully re-elected, get ready for it: you're going to be hearing a lot about how incumbent presidents can't lose under today's conditions. Here's a preview from Tom Edsall, who attributes this effect to campaign finance:
The ability of an unchallenged incumbent president to flood the airwaves during the summer of an election year, combined with the advantage an incumbent has raising general election money a full two years or more before the election, has significant consequences. Early money is crucial to the long-haul development and testing of high-tech voter contact research techniques. An incumbent’s built-in edge over out-party challengers, who must first spend millions to win the nomination, is now so strong that it almost guarantees two-term presidents.This, along with some stuff about how economic conditions in 2012 should have made for an easy Republican victory -- which ignores both the evidence of the political science modelers and the common sense intuition that maybe voters remembered when the crash happened.
Now, as it happens, incumbents do win often -- not just for re-election to the White House, but for all offices at all times. After all, the one thing we know about incumbents is that they won! Usually, with basically the same electorate, or at least close to the same electorate, that they are facing in the next election. Forget about everything else, and just focus on that, and you'll expect them to win the next time. Indeed, there's really something wrong if they don't win more often than they lose; it would indicate to voters are constantly changing their minds, and that's not a positive sign.
I do think that the expectation to the contrary is based on a good government fantasy that every election should begin -- for every voter -- from square one, with voters carefully studying the positions on public policy issues from each candidate from scratch and deciding their vote based on an impartial calculus of exactly which candidate is best on those issues. Which is neither what happens in the real world or, I'd argue, would be any better than what actually does happen in the real world. (Worse? Well, I'm open to and willing to defend most methods for determining one's vote, but it wouldn't be a way I'd recommend).
I may say more later about the campaign finance specific stuff in Edsall's post, but look: this is coming. You get three straight re-elections, and people are going to believe that it's inevitable, and throw their favorite causes at this supposed effect. But it isn't inevitable. It's just worked out that way.
Monday, January 28, 2013
The Tricky Math of Rigging the Electoral College
Rick Hasen has a good column about about the national GOP effort to get Republican-controlled legislatures in states which vote for Democrats in presidential elections to switch to apportioning electoral votes by Congressional districts. Mainly I agree with his bottom line: it's unlikely to go anywhere. In particular, he focuses, correctly, on some of the ways in which the incentives for the legislators and governors involved run against the incentives of national presidential candidates.
Hasen is certainly correct that there's nothing illegal or unconstitutional about the scheme. I don't really think he's right that Democrats have been overly hyping the thing, though; even if it's both legal and unlikely to happen, it's still pretty outrageous.
But it's worth going over again just how tricky the math of this scheme is.
Remember, while a national electoral-vote-by-Congressional-district plan would strongly favor Republicans, there's virtually no chance it could happen. So we're talking state-by-state "reform," which in practical terms means states with partisan control. Not only that, it means states with Republican partisan control which support Democrats in presidential elections. There aren't many of those!
Indeed, the 2010 GOP landslide sandwiched by two good Democratic years set up the rare situation in which there actually are several states which sort of fit. Which leads to columns noting how if all of them -- FL, WI, VA, PA, MI, and OH -- went for it, Romney could have defeated Obama.
But here's the thing. Outside of all the other reasons that it's unlikely, the math of doing it in a few selected states gets weird quickly.
That's because we don't know, in advance, exactly how the next election is going to turn out; nor do we know the exact rank of the states (that is, from most to least Republican).
The thing is that splitting the electoral votes is double-edged: it helps Republicans if Democrats win the state, but it helps Democrats if Republicans win it. That's true even if there is a strongly Republican bias; even if Republicans gain a lot more if Democrats win than Democrats do if Republicans win (say, a state with 20 electoral votes in which the districts will likely produce a 12-6 GOP edge in a close race), it's still a real problem for Republicans. That's the complexity of the situation that, say, Micah Cohen really overlooks.
See, the more Republican the state, the more Republicans would risk giving away electoral votes. But if they only do it in relatively safe Democratic states -- some subset of the six states mentioned above -- then the total electoral vote haul is less likely to make a difference.
And, again, we don't know the rank-order in advance. Could Ohio go Republican while Virginia and Florida go for the Democrats? Sure. And if Ohio is the only state that buys in and then goes Republican in an election which would have yielded a very slim GOP electoral vote edge, it could easily turn instead into a Democratic win. It's even worse...in order to do this the GOP needs to act now, before the risk that midterm elections make it impossible to do in some states -- but that also opens up the risk of a big Democratic win in one or more state followed by a flip back, thus potentially leaving the scheme in a "wrong" combination of states (such as only the most Republican-leaning one).
Not to mention that, as I said in the earlier piece, the people who actually have to support this -- elected Republicans -- are very likely to take the very fact of their election as a reason to be believe that their state is trending Republican, and therefore passing the measure would be counterproductive! When it comes to their own elections, I'm perfectly willing to believe that politicians are paranoid and would want the largest possible electoral advantage in their district; that's why bipartisan, incumbent-protection gerrymanders are more common than partisan, seat-maximizing gerrymanders.
But the point here is that even if state Republicans were perfectly willing to ignore their own incentives and instead do whatever the national party believed was best, it still would be extremely difficult to game out the proper combination of states in advance. If they could do the entire nation, then it would be easy. But since that can't be done, what remains just isn't very promising.
Hasen is certainly correct that there's nothing illegal or unconstitutional about the scheme. I don't really think he's right that Democrats have been overly hyping the thing, though; even if it's both legal and unlikely to happen, it's still pretty outrageous.
But it's worth going over again just how tricky the math of this scheme is.
Remember, while a national electoral-vote-by-Congressional-district plan would strongly favor Republicans, there's virtually no chance it could happen. So we're talking state-by-state "reform," which in practical terms means states with partisan control. Not only that, it means states with Republican partisan control which support Democrats in presidential elections. There aren't many of those!
Indeed, the 2010 GOP landslide sandwiched by two good Democratic years set up the rare situation in which there actually are several states which sort of fit. Which leads to columns noting how if all of them -- FL, WI, VA, PA, MI, and OH -- went for it, Romney could have defeated Obama.
But here's the thing. Outside of all the other reasons that it's unlikely, the math of doing it in a few selected states gets weird quickly.
That's because we don't know, in advance, exactly how the next election is going to turn out; nor do we know the exact rank of the states (that is, from most to least Republican).
The thing is that splitting the electoral votes is double-edged: it helps Republicans if Democrats win the state, but it helps Democrats if Republicans win it. That's true even if there is a strongly Republican bias; even if Republicans gain a lot more if Democrats win than Democrats do if Republicans win (say, a state with 20 electoral votes in which the districts will likely produce a 12-6 GOP edge in a close race), it's still a real problem for Republicans. That's the complexity of the situation that, say, Micah Cohen really overlooks.
See, the more Republican the state, the more Republicans would risk giving away electoral votes. But if they only do it in relatively safe Democratic states -- some subset of the six states mentioned above -- then the total electoral vote haul is less likely to make a difference.
And, again, we don't know the rank-order in advance. Could Ohio go Republican while Virginia and Florida go for the Democrats? Sure. And if Ohio is the only state that buys in and then goes Republican in an election which would have yielded a very slim GOP electoral vote edge, it could easily turn instead into a Democratic win. It's even worse...in order to do this the GOP needs to act now, before the risk that midterm elections make it impossible to do in some states -- but that also opens up the risk of a big Democratic win in one or more state followed by a flip back, thus potentially leaving the scheme in a "wrong" combination of states (such as only the most Republican-leaning one).
Not to mention that, as I said in the earlier piece, the people who actually have to support this -- elected Republicans -- are very likely to take the very fact of their election as a reason to be believe that their state is trending Republican, and therefore passing the measure would be counterproductive! When it comes to their own elections, I'm perfectly willing to believe that politicians are paranoid and would want the largest possible electoral advantage in their district; that's why bipartisan, incumbent-protection gerrymanders are more common than partisan, seat-maximizing gerrymanders.
But the point here is that even if state Republicans were perfectly willing to ignore their own incentives and instead do whatever the national party believed was best, it still would be extremely difficult to game out the proper combination of states in advance. If they could do the entire nation, then it would be easy. But since that can't be done, what remains just isn't very promising.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Rigging the Electoral College -- Get It Right
I was going to let this go, but I just saw Andrew Gelman's post about what a terrible idea electoral-votes-by-congressional-district would be, and that makes the third one (here's one of the others; I've lost the other one) I've seen that gets this wrong in the last 24 hours.
Hey, everyone writing about this: the Republican plan isn't electoral-votes-by-congressional-district. It's electoral votes by congressional district in the states where it would help Republicans (see, for example, here). In fact, it's probably better to just say that their plan is that electoral votes in every state should be apportioned in whatever way is best for Republicans. How do we know this? Well, RNC Chair Reince Priebus said so: “a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at.”
I still think it's far more likely than not that all of this will fizzle out; passing the plan requires state legislators to act against their personal and state interest and in favor of their national party interest, even putting aside the possibility that they would be subject to a vote backlash. But who knows -- it surely could happen, and certainly a fair number of Republicans are talking it up. Sure, it's fine to use it as an excuse to talk about various electoral vote schemes, as Gelman does in an otherwise perfectly fine, informative post. It's just that everyone should make clear exactly what Republicans are doing, and it's just not a national uniform plan.
Hey, everyone writing about this: the Republican plan isn't electoral-votes-by-congressional-district. It's electoral votes by congressional district in the states where it would help Republicans (see, for example, here). In fact, it's probably better to just say that their plan is that electoral votes in every state should be apportioned in whatever way is best for Republicans. How do we know this? Well, RNC Chair Reince Priebus said so: “a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at.”
I still think it's far more likely than not that all of this will fizzle out; passing the plan requires state legislators to act against their personal and state interest and in favor of their national party interest, even putting aside the possibility that they would be subject to a vote backlash. But who knows -- it surely could happen, and certainly a fair number of Republicans are talking it up. Sure, it's fine to use it as an excuse to talk about various electoral vote schemes, as Gelman does in an otherwise perfectly fine, informative post. It's just that everyone should make clear exactly what Republicans are doing, and it's just not a national uniform plan.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
What's With Virginia Republicans?
Yesterday I said that it's highly unlikely that states will actually adopt the "Pennsylvania plan" in which Republicans take advantage of GOP unified government in states which vote for Democrats in presidential elections to change the electoral vote allocation in those states, either to a district scheme (like the Maine/Nebraska system) or a proportional plan.
So as soon as I posted that, Dave Weigel reports that a Republican state senator from Virginia is pushing a district-based allocation there (and apparently it's spread to Ohio, too).
Well, we'll see.
As Steve Benen points out, Virginia has only gone to the Democratic presidential candidate three times in the last 60 years. It's even worse than that, however: in both 2008 and 2012, Virginia was still more Republican than the national tipping point. Basically, if the nation had moved five points toward Romney (with current rules and uniform swing), Virginia would have gone Republican, with Obama winning 272-266. As it happens this time around, either Pennsylvania or Colorado was next up, with either of them giving Romney a win. But wait! If it was neither PA or CO but next in line New Hampshire that flipped, Romney wins 270-268...and if Virginia had adopted the district allocation scheme, Obama gets four or five of their 13 electoral votes and wins the election.
The same thing, by the way, with Ohio, which is usually slightly more Republican than the nation as a whole. In the election we actually had, a district or proportional plan in Ohio would have given a few meaningless votes to Romney, but in a closer election Obama would be the one benefiting from the split.
If Republicans could force a district plan across the whole country, they would benefit. But doing it in selected states is extremely risky.
So what's happening in Virginia?
One possibility, the one that Benen draws out, is that Republicans are just very pessimistic there; they believe that soon it will be a solid Democratic state, and so they want to lock in rules that will work for them in those circumstances before they get a chance.
A second possibility is that Virginia Republicans, or at least some Virginia Republicans, are very stupid and do not realize that their partisan hardball is very likely to backfire.
And a third possibility is that Virginia Republicans have no intention of doing this, but that one state senator figured he could get some mileage out of proposing it.
My bet is on door #3. But who knows? I guess we'll see what happens, but I'll stick with what I said yesterday: I strongly suspect nothing will happen anywhere on this one.
So as soon as I posted that, Dave Weigel reports that a Republican state senator from Virginia is pushing a district-based allocation there (and apparently it's spread to Ohio, too).
Well, we'll see.
As Steve Benen points out, Virginia has only gone to the Democratic presidential candidate three times in the last 60 years. It's even worse than that, however: in both 2008 and 2012, Virginia was still more Republican than the national tipping point. Basically, if the nation had moved five points toward Romney (with current rules and uniform swing), Virginia would have gone Republican, with Obama winning 272-266. As it happens this time around, either Pennsylvania or Colorado was next up, with either of them giving Romney a win. But wait! If it was neither PA or CO but next in line New Hampshire that flipped, Romney wins 270-268...and if Virginia had adopted the district allocation scheme, Obama gets four or five of their 13 electoral votes and wins the election.
The same thing, by the way, with Ohio, which is usually slightly more Republican than the nation as a whole. In the election we actually had, a district or proportional plan in Ohio would have given a few meaningless votes to Romney, but in a closer election Obama would be the one benefiting from the split.
If Republicans could force a district plan across the whole country, they would benefit. But doing it in selected states is extremely risky.
So what's happening in Virginia?
One possibility, the one that Benen draws out, is that Republicans are just very pessimistic there; they believe that soon it will be a solid Democratic state, and so they want to lock in rules that will work for them in those circumstances before they get a chance.
A second possibility is that Virginia Republicans, or at least some Virginia Republicans, are very stupid and do not realize that their partisan hardball is very likely to backfire.
And a third possibility is that Virginia Republicans have no intention of doing this, but that one state senator figured he could get some mileage out of proposing it.
My bet is on door #3. But who knows? I guess we'll see what happens, but I'll stick with what I said yesterday: I strongly suspect nothing will happen anywhere on this one.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Don't Worry About the PA Plan
If you want to know why the Pennsylvania plan of rigging the Electoral College by having Republican majorities in the Keystone State change the way that electoral votes are allocated there is a bad idea in general, see Josh Putnam's excellent post on the topic. You remember -- this is the plan to neutralize the state in presidential elections by switching from winner-take-all apportionment of electoral votes to either a district plan or, now, splitting them by vote share. He's pretty mild on it, overall, concentrating on why the allocation is a poor one generally; he doesn't really go into why it's highly problematic for a party to constantly mess with the rules in such an ad hoc way in order to get the advantage.
But mostly, it's just not very likely to be a problem. The main thing here is that very few states which are reliably Democratic in presidential elections are going to have unified Republican government at the state level (and vice versa). Well, back up...first of all, the problem only arises in those states big enough so that how they split their votes will matter. Then after that, you need a state that's safely Democratic in presidential elections. If it isn't safe, then you run the risk of costing your own party!
And that's not all. After all, what matters here isn't how safe the state really is in presidential elections; it's what the incumbent Republican governor and legislature think. So for them to believe that neutralizing the state is good for a future Republican presidential candidate, they have to believe that their own elections were basically flukes. True, there are some who could acknowledge that, but I'd say it's more likely that they'll take their victories -- and remember, we're talking about unified control of state government, so it's a pretty wide win -- as signs that the state is trending to the GOP.
Everything to this point are reasons why there are only rare cases in which a state is going to find it in the national party's interest to pass this kind of plan.
The next step is that what's in the national party's (perceived) interest is unlikely to be in the interest of the state or the state party or the individual politicians. That's because each of them (the state, the state party, and the individual politicians) all have an interest in keeping their state as a major presidential battleground. The reason is the same in each case: resources flowing into the state are good, and national resources follow electoral incentives. It's possible that state politicians will nevertheless act out of national party interest, but it's not obvious they would do so at all.
And the last part? Generally, something like this doesn't just have to be favored by Republican politicians; it has to be a fairly high priority, or it won't get action. It's certainly something that will be perceived by everyone as a flat-out partisan move, and presumably Republicans who have won office in a Democratic-leaning state -- who, per above, believe that it's a Democratic-leaning state so they won't get too many chances -- won't want to pass too many flat-out partisan measures, and will have several items more important to them than a electoral college scheme that may never make any difference anyway.
Put it all together, and you're just not very likely to have this ever happen (and it's even less likely it would happen in more than one state, or stick around for long in that state). So: terrible idea, but not one to worry too much about.
But mostly, it's just not very likely to be a problem. The main thing here is that very few states which are reliably Democratic in presidential elections are going to have unified Republican government at the state level (and vice versa). Well, back up...first of all, the problem only arises in those states big enough so that how they split their votes will matter. Then after that, you need a state that's safely Democratic in presidential elections. If it isn't safe, then you run the risk of costing your own party!
And that's not all. After all, what matters here isn't how safe the state really is in presidential elections; it's what the incumbent Republican governor and legislature think. So for them to believe that neutralizing the state is good for a future Republican presidential candidate, they have to believe that their own elections were basically flukes. True, there are some who could acknowledge that, but I'd say it's more likely that they'll take their victories -- and remember, we're talking about unified control of state government, so it's a pretty wide win -- as signs that the state is trending to the GOP.
Everything to this point are reasons why there are only rare cases in which a state is going to find it in the national party's interest to pass this kind of plan.
The next step is that what's in the national party's (perceived) interest is unlikely to be in the interest of the state or the state party or the individual politicians. That's because each of them (the state, the state party, and the individual politicians) all have an interest in keeping their state as a major presidential battleground. The reason is the same in each case: resources flowing into the state are good, and national resources follow electoral incentives. It's possible that state politicians will nevertheless act out of national party interest, but it's not obvious they would do so at all.
And the last part? Generally, something like this doesn't just have to be favored by Republican politicians; it has to be a fairly high priority, or it won't get action. It's certainly something that will be perceived by everyone as a flat-out partisan move, and presumably Republicans who have won office in a Democratic-leaning state -- who, per above, believe that it's a Democratic-leaning state so they won't get too many chances -- won't want to pass too many flat-out partisan measures, and will have several items more important to them than a electoral college scheme that may never make any difference anyway.
Put it all together, and you're just not very likely to have this ever happen (and it's even less likely it would happen in more than one state, or stick around for long in that state). So: terrible idea, but not one to worry too much about.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Do Democrats Have a Structural Electoral College Advantage Now?
There are still more votes to be counted, but as of now the tipping point state was...Colorado, same as in 2008. They're still counting the votes in Colorado, but as of now Barack Obama's lead is an impressive 4.7 percentage points, larger than his leads in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. A uniform 4.6 point shift away from Obama would have given Mitt Romney those three states, while leaving Obama with Colorado and a winning 272 Electoral Votes.
Meanwhile, as I look at the results so far, Obama's lead in the national vote is up to 2.3 points, which makes his electoral college advantage just north of 2 percentage points. It's possible that the national lead will still grow a bit, which will mean that the apparent EC advantage will fade, at least unless the Obama lead in Colorado grows as well. It seems fairly safe at this point to say that it will be close to 2 percentage points.
First, that answers Sean Trende's (sincere and plausible) pre-election question about the difference between the state and national polls. As it turned out, the polling averages underplayed Obama's lead in both the states and nationally, but the gap between them was more or less accurate.
That gap is up a bit from the 1.7 point EC advantage that Obama had in 2008, and the small edge that John Kerry had in 2004 (when he came fairly close to winning Ohio while losing the national vote). Of course, everyone knows that the gap was in the other direction in 2000.
In other words, for three cycles now Democrats have been using their votes more efficiently in presidential elections.
We don't exactly know why, but it seems to me that it's a big question. It might have been a totally random effect of the ebb and flow of votes. I might have been an Obama-specific effect, having something to do with the particular appeal of Obama to some groups, or perhaps the particular antipathy towards him from others.
Or it could be structural, with (for now) Democrats just having a better distribution of supporters in presidential elections than Republicans.
It is rare in recent American political history for one party to have a persistent Electoral College advantage (compared to the national vote). Through 2004, there didn't seem to be any partisan advantage. Again, that certainly could still be true. It may disappear next time around.
But if it does persist, it's pretty enormous -- it would mean that Republicans begin presidential elections two points in the hole. Remember, this is apart from any advantage or disadvantage in the total number of votes. It's purely about how votes translate into wins or losses under the EC system. If, for example, the recent Democratic national vote victories (and remember, that's five of the last six elections) are a result of a mild national tilt towards them -- something that I'm certainly not claiming, but it's possible -- then this EC advantage would be above and beyond it. If, again, it's a long-term structural phenomenon.
It's going to be very interesting to see whether this distortion survives the Obama elections, and also whether Republicans will soon react to it by flipping in favor of reforming or eliminating the Electoral College -- and whether Democrats, who have been the anti-EC party at least since 2000, flip to support of that procedure.
Meanwhile, as I look at the results so far, Obama's lead in the national vote is up to 2.3 points, which makes his electoral college advantage just north of 2 percentage points. It's possible that the national lead will still grow a bit, which will mean that the apparent EC advantage will fade, at least unless the Obama lead in Colorado grows as well. It seems fairly safe at this point to say that it will be close to 2 percentage points.
First, that answers Sean Trende's (sincere and plausible) pre-election question about the difference between the state and national polls. As it turned out, the polling averages underplayed Obama's lead in both the states and nationally, but the gap between them was more or less accurate.
That gap is up a bit from the 1.7 point EC advantage that Obama had in 2008, and the small edge that John Kerry had in 2004 (when he came fairly close to winning Ohio while losing the national vote). Of course, everyone knows that the gap was in the other direction in 2000.
In other words, for three cycles now Democrats have been using their votes more efficiently in presidential elections.
We don't exactly know why, but it seems to me that it's a big question. It might have been a totally random effect of the ebb and flow of votes. I might have been an Obama-specific effect, having something to do with the particular appeal of Obama to some groups, or perhaps the particular antipathy towards him from others.
Or it could be structural, with (for now) Democrats just having a better distribution of supporters in presidential elections than Republicans.
It is rare in recent American political history for one party to have a persistent Electoral College advantage (compared to the national vote). Through 2004, there didn't seem to be any partisan advantage. Again, that certainly could still be true. It may disappear next time around.
But if it does persist, it's pretty enormous -- it would mean that Republicans begin presidential elections two points in the hole. Remember, this is apart from any advantage or disadvantage in the total number of votes. It's purely about how votes translate into wins or losses under the EC system. If, for example, the recent Democratic national vote victories (and remember, that's five of the last six elections) are a result of a mild national tilt towards them -- something that I'm certainly not claiming, but it's possible -- then this EC advantage would be above and beyond it. If, again, it's a long-term structural phenomenon.
It's going to be very interesting to see whether this distortion survives the Obama elections, and also whether Republicans will soon react to it by flipping in favor of reforming or eliminating the Electoral College -- and whether Democrats, who have been the anti-EC party at least since 2000, flip to support of that procedure.
Friday, October 19, 2012
A Better Case for the Electoral College
Good for Dan Foster of the National Review, an Electoral College supporter who presses the point even though it appears that there’s an electoral bias against his preferred candidate in this cycle. However, I strongly disagree with his case:
In short, the College reflects the formal and constitutional fact that the president is elected chief executive of a union of states — federated but sovereign — and not a glomeration of people. The executive of the Constitution, of the Founders, is president of the United States, not president of America…It affirms that we vote as citizens of the several states, not mere residents of arbitrarily drawn administrative districts.That’s a great defense for using an electoral college for the (non-existent) chief executive under the Articles of Confederation, but it doesn’t work at all under the Constitution of the United States, which is in the name of “We, the People,” and not the several states. We vote for federal offices as citizens of the United States, not as citizens of our particular states – which, after all, really do resemble “arbitrarily drawn administrative districts” quite a bit, especially outside of the original thirteen and, perhaps, Texas, at least if you squint hard enough. I mean, North and South Dakota? New Mexico and my native Arizona? Hardly. To the extent that was ever ambiguous, it was thoroughly decided by the Civil War and the subsequent amendments.
(And, no, that doesn’t kill off federalism, which has plenty of strong arguments apart from notions of sovereignty).
I’m mostly a marginal supporter of the Electoral College on other grounds, as regular readers may recall. For example, I like the Madisonian idea of overlapping but different constituencies for different offices. That case doesn't depend on any mystical reading of state's rights (why should I care that, as Foster points out, more states supported Bush than Gore? So what?). Instead, it goes back to the Framers' problem that they wanted to listen to Montesquieu, but discovered that in their Republic there were no separate estates to represent separately. There were only -- are only -- people. Nothing to be balanced!
On top of that, I still believe that the interests which benefit from the electoral college are, on balance, those that are hurt by other factors in the overall system. Currently, the states helped appear to be medium-size competitive states (Ohio most of all, but Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia and Pennsylvania are all in Nate Silver's top ten tipping point states right now). It's not as good as when California and New York were swing states, but it's still a different set than are helped by the Senate.
And I tend to think that the chances of a “wrong” result are small enough that it doesn’t bother me – just as I’m not bothered by the chance that there will be a split between the overall vote and partisan control of the House of Representatives. If there was a persistent large EC bias, that would be a different story, but it's usually under 1% and floats between the parties. If a "wrong" result happens in an otherwise very close race, I just don't see a convincing democratic case against it. I am bothered by the Senate, but alas there's nothing that can be done about that one -- and at any rate it's the malapportionment that bothers me and everyone else who complains about the Senate, not the very real possibility that even if the states were all of identical size that a party could still win a Senate majority with the minority of the overall votes.
But again: it's good to see people making arguments they support even when it goes against the short-term interests of their party.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Cranky Pre-Debate Blogging
Ezra Klein writes:
Second, and this doesn't get to his complaint, but it's worth pointing out that it's basically a miracle that we have solidly institutionalized debates in the first place. As I've said, if you like the debates, thank Ronald Reagan (and, to a lesser extent, Bill Clinton). Reagan didn't have to debate in 1984, and probably took on a fair amount of unnecessary risk by doing it. If he had chosen not to do it there's every chance the tradition would have died right there. By 1996, the norm was far better established, but Clinton still could have made unreasonable demands and hope that negotiations broke down.
And the third point...look, I've criticized aspects of the debates, and I agree with a lot of the specific complaints about the questions that were asked (or not asked) in the first two rounds this year...but the truth is that the format used in the first two debates quite properly, in my view, gave the candidates plenty of opportunity to change the subject and switch to other topics they believed were important. Too many questions about the deficit? Then a candidate had a great opportunity to say that the deficit isn't as important as...whatever is more important than the deficit.
And anyway, you know what? The truth is that the debates don't matter all that much, and even more to the point they shouldn't matter all that much. Something important wasn't discussed? So what. The candidates have had months to talk about what they want -- and have done so, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars of TV ads and other communication with the voters. I don't mind that we have debates; it's a worthwhile ritual, and a way of getting more politics where people will see it, and people seem to like them (including me!). But we shouldn't pretend that they show the "real" candidates, or that watching them is a good way of deciding one's vote choice, or that minor changes in format or question topics will affect much of anything other than immediate entertainment value, or even that they should be perfectly fair to, well, anyone. They're just not worth fighting about, really.
I hate that debate rules are effectively set by the campaigns rather than by a body representing voters.Okay, three things. First of all: the campaigns do represent the voters! Each candidate was duly selected by his political party; the parties are made up of....voters!
Second, and this doesn't get to his complaint, but it's worth pointing out that it's basically a miracle that we have solidly institutionalized debates in the first place. As I've said, if you like the debates, thank Ronald Reagan (and, to a lesser extent, Bill Clinton). Reagan didn't have to debate in 1984, and probably took on a fair amount of unnecessary risk by doing it. If he had chosen not to do it there's every chance the tradition would have died right there. By 1996, the norm was far better established, but Clinton still could have made unreasonable demands and hope that negotiations broke down.
And the third point...look, I've criticized aspects of the debates, and I agree with a lot of the specific complaints about the questions that were asked (or not asked) in the first two rounds this year...but the truth is that the format used in the first two debates quite properly, in my view, gave the candidates plenty of opportunity to change the subject and switch to other topics they believed were important. Too many questions about the deficit? Then a candidate had a great opportunity to say that the deficit isn't as important as...whatever is more important than the deficit.
And anyway, you know what? The truth is that the debates don't matter all that much, and even more to the point they shouldn't matter all that much. Something important wasn't discussed? So what. The candidates have had months to talk about what they want -- and have done so, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars of TV ads and other communication with the voters. I don't mind that we have debates; it's a worthwhile ritual, and a way of getting more politics where people will see it, and people seem to like them (including me!). But we shouldn't pretend that they show the "real" candidates, or that watching them is a good way of deciding one's vote choice, or that minor changes in format or question topics will affect much of anything other than immediate entertainment value, or even that they should be perfectly fair to, well, anyone. They're just not worth fighting about, really.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Q Day 1: Jobs Report
longwalkdownlyndale asks:
How important is today's jobs report (unemployment fell to 7.8%!) compared to the coverage of the debate? And do you know if this changes the "fundamentals" models in any significant way at all? Or are those sorta set predicting a close election with Obama as a slight favorite? Superficially it seems to me that it will squash the "Romney Won" debate meme and makes his over/under talking point about 8% unemployment look pretty foolish.Hey, I can outsource this one to John Sides, who has an excellent item up already:
The shortest answer is: probably not much. In my earlier post on late changes in the economy, I noted this line from Robert Erikson’s and Christopher Wlezien’s analysis of nearly 60 years of economic and elections data:The only caution I'd put on that last point is that press coverage isn't entirely predictable; it's certainly possible that the jobs report could be a blip in the economic reporting but go away by tomorrow while the debate stays in the news for a while, undisturbed.
…one can predict that actual vote from the current income growth about as well in April as in November. By April, the economic cake is largely baked.
Which is to say, late changes in the economy aren’t that consequential.
If this jobs report matters in any way, it is by shifting the news coverage of the campaign from “Obama bombed in the debate” to “Hey, unemployment fell!” This report is enough of a departure from previous reports to generate some positive news coverage. And this will help to displace the positive news coverage Romney was receiving as a consequence of his debate performance. Given that it’s this news coverage that would boost Romney in the polls, news coverage of the job report could—conceivably, possibly, maybe—limit the boost.
Generally, I've been saying the same thing for the last few months. The general condition of the economy is a slow, unimpressive recovery, but still a recovery. That probably points to a close race, with Obama having a slight edge. Back in the winter or spring, a good or bad jobs report could hint to that changing, but by now any indications about the future are basically irrelevant to this election, which means that as long as the report is within the general range that we're seeing (anywhere from 0 to 200K) it's likely to have very small effects, mainly (as John said) centered around short-term press coverage. The only change is that short-term press coverage in October is presumably more important than short-term press coverage was in July or August.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Elsewhere: Debates, Debates
I have two posts up at Plum Line today. The first was about how the debates don't matter to the horse race...truth is, by the time it went up this morning I'm really not sure it's necessary any more. There's been a fair amount of pretty good coverage about it all.
The second one, however, is about why the debates do matter: as rituals of democracy, for educating partisans, and for representation. So if you're looking for something to read before the debate and you've had it with hype debunking, you might want to click over for that one.
As I did during the nomination season debates, I'll be working the twitter machine during the big event, and then I'll be posting something elsewhere after it's over. If I have more, I'll wind up with something here later, but I don't really know whether that will happen or not. So in the meantime, feel free to use this one as a debate open thread.
Now I just have to figure out how to follow the Red Sox and Yankees games without missing the debate. Fortunately, I think it's pretty safe to ignore the Giants game tonight -- as the broadcast team has been saying, either the game in Los Angeles or the split squad over in Surprise (yes, I love that gag). For what it's worth, my prediction for the debate is that it'll be very tame, with hardly any fireworks. But who knows? After the seasons that the A's and Orioles had this year, I have to believe that anything is possible.
Pro-Pivot
NPR has a story up today about the horrors of candidates who duck questions in debates. Apparently there's a guy who is dedicated to eradicating this scourge:
Rogers and others worried about this -- and in my experience, most people are on his side, not mine -- in my view have a fundamentally wrong view of what debates are all about. It's basically a goo goo idea of debates...voters should come into the debates open-minded, the candidates should speak (rationally, honestly) about "the issues" in order to give voters a good rational basis for making vote choices based on those answers.
I think that's about 75% fantasy. Voters don't watch the general election debates with an open mind; virtually everyone who watches has already decided, or is leaning so strongly that we can probably speak of them as having decided but not realized it yet. Most undecided voters, at any rate, don't have strong views on most issues, so they're not going to choose based on carefully comparing the candidates' positions to their own, anyway. That doesn't mean that debates are worthless; I'll have a post later today on why I think debates are valuable anyway. But the implicit model here of what debates should be is mostly based on fiction.
(What isn't fiction? I like questions about public policy rather than clown questions about campaign events or gaffes or other nonsense. Also, I'm pro-honesty, at least within reason; I don't think candidates should outright lie about things, and I favor attempts to discourage that sort of thing).
At any rate: because I don't expect debates to offer a thoughtful discussion of The Issues which will allow voters to make rational choices based on the candidates' positions, which are revealed only thanks to clever questions by moderators, I have no problems with a candidate who ducks a question he or she doesn't want to answer. For the most part, I think what's valuable about the debates has to do with the candidates talking about whatever it is they want to talk about; indeed, I think what's valuable about the campaign is having the candidates talk about what they want to talk about. Yes, I'd like to nudge them a bit towards public policy and away from, oh, whether the other candidate was really a Soviet operative (an actual debate topic in 1992), and so I'd like decent questions. But beyond that -- hey, it's a skill to answer the question you want rather than the question you're asked; it's a skill to avoid talking about what you don't want to talk about without overly insulting your audience. It's fine if politicians demonstrate that skill during the debates.
Todd Rogers, a behavioral psychologist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, got interested in looking at pivots, or dodges, or whatever you want to call them, after watching the 2004 Bush/Kerry debate I quoted earlier.Well, I don't feel the same, so I'll try to explain.
To him, the dodging on both sides of that debate was enraging, and he couldn't understand why others didn't feel the same.
Rogers and others worried about this -- and in my experience, most people are on his side, not mine -- in my view have a fundamentally wrong view of what debates are all about. It's basically a goo goo idea of debates...voters should come into the debates open-minded, the candidates should speak (rationally, honestly) about "the issues" in order to give voters a good rational basis for making vote choices based on those answers.
I think that's about 75% fantasy. Voters don't watch the general election debates with an open mind; virtually everyone who watches has already decided, or is leaning so strongly that we can probably speak of them as having decided but not realized it yet. Most undecided voters, at any rate, don't have strong views on most issues, so they're not going to choose based on carefully comparing the candidates' positions to their own, anyway. That doesn't mean that debates are worthless; I'll have a post later today on why I think debates are valuable anyway. But the implicit model here of what debates should be is mostly based on fiction.
(What isn't fiction? I like questions about public policy rather than clown questions about campaign events or gaffes or other nonsense. Also, I'm pro-honesty, at least within reason; I don't think candidates should outright lie about things, and I favor attempts to discourage that sort of thing).
At any rate: because I don't expect debates to offer a thoughtful discussion of The Issues which will allow voters to make rational choices based on the candidates' positions, which are revealed only thanks to clever questions by moderators, I have no problems with a candidate who ducks a question he or she doesn't want to answer. For the most part, I think what's valuable about the debates has to do with the candidates talking about whatever it is they want to talk about; indeed, I think what's valuable about the campaign is having the candidates talk about what they want to talk about. Yes, I'd like to nudge them a bit towards public policy and away from, oh, whether the other candidate was really a Soviet operative (an actual debate topic in 1992), and so I'd like decent questions. But beyond that -- hey, it's a skill to answer the question you want rather than the question you're asked; it's a skill to avoid talking about what you don't want to talk about without overly insulting your audience. It's fine if politicians demonstrate that skill during the debates.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Who's Spinning Whom?!? 2
One more note on the whole question of debate spin, media interpretation, and the rest of it. Erik Voeten says:
Now, the study I referred to earlier cuts through that by just measuring people's reactions based on whether they were exposed to the filtered or unfiltered debate (or both). And that's a good approach to the question they were asking. But if your interest is in how and why debates are filtered as they are, well, that's a pretty tricky problem, it seems to me.
ps. as an aside: We should be careful not to suggest that debate performance doesn’t influence the media narrative. It does. But as John’s post notes, the effect of debates filtered by the media will differ from what the effect would have been if it had not been filtered.Yup. I mean, to take the extreme case: it's hard to believe that anyone could have watched the "oops" debate and not come away with any headline other than that Rick Perry goofed in a big way. Except...well, even that one isn't true, if we think about it. I mean, you could basically ignore Perry, and focus on the other candidates, and that would push "oops" to the side, right? Or you could, I suppose, do a substance-heavy analysis that ignored as much as possible the stagecraft and theater aspects. Or...well, I looked back at my own reactions, and while I immediately acknowledged the magnitude of "oops," my main focus at my Plum Line wrap was on Herman Cain, and then went into lots of detail on Cain's performance the next day. Which isn't to say that I was "right" or anything, just that a lot of what people (myself certainly included) see in this stuff is extremely subjective, and it's very difficult to sort out how much of the eventual version that people are exposed to once it's through the filter is the debate itself and how much is the filter.
Now, the study I referred to earlier cuts through that by just measuring people's reactions based on whether they were exposed to the filtered or unfiltered debate (or both). And that's a good approach to the question they were asking. But if your interest is in how and why debates are filtered as they are, well, that's a pretty tricky problem, it seems to me.
Who's Spinning Whom?!?
John Sides reports today on some research which confirms what we all basically know: winning the spin matters more than winning the debate. That is, as Kim Fridkin et al. find, reactions differed to a 2004 debate depending on whether people just watched the debate; watched the debate and news coverage; or just watched the news coverage. As John says, there's evidence from earlier cycles for the same effect.
What I'm wondering about, however, is how the spin is going to work this time around. Who is going to select the clips that everyone sees, which therefore become the memorable moments? How is it going to work? Who are the gatekeepers these days, and how do parties and campaigns influence them?
In the old days, the key players were the producers and pundits at the broadcast, and then cable, networks. They had the first word, influenced or not by campaign spinners, and presumably what they selected out in their immediate reactions would also lead the morning shows then play all day on the cable networks. Then in the somewhat less old days we had live-blogging and immediate post-debate reactions. My general sense is that bloggers had relatively less influence on general election debate reactions than on other stories, thus leaving the TV networks and their teams still the ones who were driving reactions, although I have no idea whether that's correct or not.
But at any rate, that's the old days. This is a case where it really Could Be Different now, thanks to twitter and YouTube. It was always true that the bulk of decisions about winners and losers and key moments were made before the debate was over (and the campaign actively worked to influence those choices before the debate was over), but most or all of that was happening at the debate site and among a fairly small group of people. Now, there's a whole second process going on, with a broader group of reporters, pundits, experts, partisans, and others all following each other on the twitter machine (yes, bloggers have been live-blogging debates for a few cycles now, but that's a much different thing). And then there's the YouTube side of it; these days, there's no guarantee that the clips selected by the networks are going to be the most seen clips.
Certainly during the GOP primaries the twitter chatter seemed to be how the national press formed its consensus about what had happened and what the key moments had been, and that was all happening immediately. However, general election debates are a whole different ballgame, so I suppose we'll see how it all turns out. One thing: this certainly seems to be an area for media studies specialists to do some very helpful research.
Important caveat: as John reminds us, most people who bother to watch the debates have already made up their minds, and therefore filter what they hear through those decisions. So debates aren't all that likely to make much of a difference one way or another, however the spin works. Still, debates can be important in other ways, and one way or another they certainly get a lot of attention, and therefore I'm definitely interested to see how they work this time around.
What I'm wondering about, however, is how the spin is going to work this time around. Who is going to select the clips that everyone sees, which therefore become the memorable moments? How is it going to work? Who are the gatekeepers these days, and how do parties and campaigns influence them?
In the old days, the key players were the producers and pundits at the broadcast, and then cable, networks. They had the first word, influenced or not by campaign spinners, and presumably what they selected out in their immediate reactions would also lead the morning shows then play all day on the cable networks. Then in the somewhat less old days we had live-blogging and immediate post-debate reactions. My general sense is that bloggers had relatively less influence on general election debate reactions than on other stories, thus leaving the TV networks and their teams still the ones who were driving reactions, although I have no idea whether that's correct or not.
But at any rate, that's the old days. This is a case where it really Could Be Different now, thanks to twitter and YouTube. It was always true that the bulk of decisions about winners and losers and key moments were made before the debate was over (and the campaign actively worked to influence those choices before the debate was over), but most or all of that was happening at the debate site and among a fairly small group of people. Now, there's a whole second process going on, with a broader group of reporters, pundits, experts, partisans, and others all following each other on the twitter machine (yes, bloggers have been live-blogging debates for a few cycles now, but that's a much different thing). And then there's the YouTube side of it; these days, there's no guarantee that the clips selected by the networks are going to be the most seen clips.
Certainly during the GOP primaries the twitter chatter seemed to be how the national press formed its consensus about what had happened and what the key moments had been, and that was all happening immediately. However, general election debates are a whole different ballgame, so I suppose we'll see how it all turns out. One thing: this certainly seems to be an area for media studies specialists to do some very helpful research.
Important caveat: as John reminds us, most people who bother to watch the debates have already made up their minds, and therefore filter what they hear through those decisions. So debates aren't all that likely to make much of a difference one way or another, however the spin works. Still, debates can be important in other ways, and one way or another they certainly get a lot of attention, and therefore I'm definitely interested to see how they work this time around.
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday to Avery Brooks, 64. I've bashed his performance as Sisko; in his defense, he mostly had to play off of the weaker half of the cast. And the Sisko/Dax friendship is terrific. In other random DS9 comments: my eldest and I think they should have done a spinoff starring Admiral Ross -- a sitcom, in which Ross goes about his day as the world's most boring character while unbeknownst to him all sorts of wacky things are going on. I suppose Troi could make a guest appearance in which she senses that someone is up to something...
Before I get any deeper into it, I better get to the good stuff:
1. Lots of Dartmouth profs talk about the debates.
2. Have to agree with Andrew Gelman on this one. Ronald Reagan was no moderate. Picked the right year to win the nomination; he would have lost in 1968 or 1976.
3. Monica Potts on last night's Warren/Brown debate. She doesn't convey the sense, however, of just how bad David Gregory was.
4. And Steve Kornacki has been doing a great job showing how Mitt Romney's party is constantly cutting off every good option he might have. Today's installment: immigration.
Before I get any deeper into it, I better get to the good stuff:
1. Lots of Dartmouth profs talk about the debates.
2. Have to agree with Andrew Gelman on this one. Ronald Reagan was no moderate. Picked the right year to win the nomination; he would have lost in 1968 or 1976.
3. Monica Potts on last night's Warren/Brown debate. She doesn't convey the sense, however, of just how bad David Gregory was.
4. And Steve Kornacki has been doing a great job showing how Mitt Romney's party is constantly cutting off every good option he might have. Today's installment: immigration.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Ignore The Electoral College! Follow-Up
I've been saying for months that it's best to completely ignore the electoral college until at least after the conventions. Well, unless you're making decisions about where to put resources if you're a presidential campaign; then you don't have much choice.
A little confirmation that it's good advice comes from Nate Silver's latest big look at the electoral college bias. He's been reporting for months that the electoral college had a slight bias for Barack Obama -- that is, if the election was a 50/50 tie nationally, the odds favored Obama to win the election because his votes were likely to be better distributed across the states. Except now...it's reversed.
I agree completely with Silver that whatever you think of his forecast model, this is exactly the stuff that he's going to get right. So I'm inclined to accept that if he says that's where the numbers fall, based on the polls he collected as of this post (yesterday morning), that's where they fall.
So what value added was there from paying attention to, say, how Florida looked back in May? I just can't see it. You were way better off getting a good estimate of how the election looked nationally (which at that point would have put very little weight even on national head-to-head polling), and then assume that you'll get more-or-less uniform swing. And that if it projected as very close, then the best thing you could say was "very close" -- you couldn't actually get any more accurate by looking at individual states.
What I'm not sure is whether there's any utility even at this point in looking at the individual state polling -- that is, if what you're really interested in is who is going to win the election. (Clarification: it's certainly worth it to look at individual state polling as part of figuring out the national situation; if we see Ohio and Florida and North Dakota and Utah all move two points to Obama, that tells us something about what's happening nationally, and the polling aggregators/modelers do and should use that information). I had been saying that now was about the time to start paying attention to the states, but I really don't know if that's true. After all, think about it this way: Silver had Wisconsin surprisingly close, and therefore it had moved up to the 4th most likely tipping-point state...but there's a new poll out today that puts Obama way up there, and I'm guessing that will be enough to move Wisconsin back to a uniform-swing state -- and far from the top of the tipping point state list.
Look, eventually, we know that we won't get 100% perfect uniform swing, and presumably a fair amount of whatever non-uniform swing will happen will be evident as soon as there's enough state-level polling information. Right? It's not as if we expect Ohio (or New Hampshire or Virginia or whatever) to suddenly veer off in the last few weeks, for the most part; we expect unusual swing to be the product of longer-term stuff than that. So presumably if there were enough state-level polls, we could pick up on some (most?) of it early on. It's just that it's not going to matter unless the race is very close, and if it is we still won't quite know enough to know about electoral college bias until, most likely, a bit farther down the line.
A little confirmation that it's good advice comes from Nate Silver's latest big look at the electoral college bias. He's been reporting for months that the electoral college had a slight bias for Barack Obama -- that is, if the election was a 50/50 tie nationally, the odds favored Obama to win the election because his votes were likely to be better distributed across the states. Except now...it's reversed.
I agree completely with Silver that whatever you think of his forecast model, this is exactly the stuff that he's going to get right. So I'm inclined to accept that if he says that's where the numbers fall, based on the polls he collected as of this post (yesterday morning), that's where they fall.
So what value added was there from paying attention to, say, how Florida looked back in May? I just can't see it. You were way better off getting a good estimate of how the election looked nationally (which at that point would have put very little weight even on national head-to-head polling), and then assume that you'll get more-or-less uniform swing. And that if it projected as very close, then the best thing you could say was "very close" -- you couldn't actually get any more accurate by looking at individual states.
What I'm not sure is whether there's any utility even at this point in looking at the individual state polling -- that is, if what you're really interested in is who is going to win the election. (Clarification: it's certainly worth it to look at individual state polling as part of figuring out the national situation; if we see Ohio and Florida and North Dakota and Utah all move two points to Obama, that tells us something about what's happening nationally, and the polling aggregators/modelers do and should use that information). I had been saying that now was about the time to start paying attention to the states, but I really don't know if that's true. After all, think about it this way: Silver had Wisconsin surprisingly close, and therefore it had moved up to the 4th most likely tipping-point state...but there's a new poll out today that puts Obama way up there, and I'm guessing that will be enough to move Wisconsin back to a uniform-swing state -- and far from the top of the tipping point state list.
Look, eventually, we know that we won't get 100% perfect uniform swing, and presumably a fair amount of whatever non-uniform swing will happen will be evident as soon as there's enough state-level polling information. Right? It's not as if we expect Ohio (or New Hampshire or Virginia or whatever) to suddenly veer off in the last few weeks, for the most part; we expect unusual swing to be the product of longer-term stuff than that. So presumably if there were enough state-level polls, we could pick up on some (most?) of it early on. It's just that it's not going to matter unless the race is very close, and if it is we still won't quite know enough to know about electoral college bias until, most likely, a bit farther down the line.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Catch of the Day
One for Nate Silver, for this about some new swing-state polls showing Barack Obama in the lead:
Now, we know that we don't really have uniform swing, and in a very close race it can matter a lot if Ohio, say, swings a bit more and Utah swings a bit less.
If it's not a close race, however, that stuff just doesn't matter. More than that: we're still more likely to be mislead by a state poll that's a bit off, especially a single state poll, than we are by just looking at the national polling averages and just assuming uniform swing. That's going to change some over the next couple of weeks, as we get a lot more state polls (meaning that we'll start having meaningful averages of state polling independent of the national polls), but we're not there yet.
Perhaps, at the risk of redundancy, I should explain a bit more. Say we get an Ohio poll today showing Obama +5. Well, what we want is to make an Ohio polling average. But if we're only getting one Ohio poll a week, then the previous one might be from right after the Democratic convention (maximum Obama bounce!) and the one after that from before either convention. So you can take a simple average of them, but that's pretty useless because what we want to know is opinion in Ohio now, and the other two would be dated. So our choice is just one poll (lots of uncertainty) or averaging using outdated polls (meaningless for assessing now).
The best of the polling aggregations sites (Silver very much included) can do a bit more -- they can take each state poll and adjust for how it compared to the national average at that point, thus deriving an estimate for a state that should be a bit more precise than uniform swing. And yet, I'm pretty skeptical that we can extrapolate forward from June to November when it comes to that. Given that once we get beyond a three point national lead the state swings become totally irrelevant, and even with a one point national lead the state swings are probably irrelevant, I'm really just fine with holding off until just after this point in the calendar before I pay any attention to the state estimates at all.
And: nice catch!
We have seen a shift toward Mr. Obama in the polls since the Democratic convention. It appears that if an election were held today, he’d win it by somewhere in the neighborhood of four or perhaps five percentage points.Remember, the first assumption should be uniform swing. If Ohio and Florida figure to be dead even if the national race is dead even, then they figure to show a five point lead for Obama if he's up five nationally. Indeed: if that's the situation, then a new state poll showing uniform swing isn't new information about that state.
If Mr. Obama is ahead by four to five points nationally, we’d certainly also expect him to post his share of leads by about that margin in swing states. Because of statistical variance and differences in methodology, some of the numbers are going to be a little bit better for him than others. But the consensus of the data ought to quite strong for him.
Now, we know that we don't really have uniform swing, and in a very close race it can matter a lot if Ohio, say, swings a bit more and Utah swings a bit less.
If it's not a close race, however, that stuff just doesn't matter. More than that: we're still more likely to be mislead by a state poll that's a bit off, especially a single state poll, than we are by just looking at the national polling averages and just assuming uniform swing. That's going to change some over the next couple of weeks, as we get a lot more state polls (meaning that we'll start having meaningful averages of state polling independent of the national polls), but we're not there yet.
Perhaps, at the risk of redundancy, I should explain a bit more. Say we get an Ohio poll today showing Obama +5. Well, what we want is to make an Ohio polling average. But if we're only getting one Ohio poll a week, then the previous one might be from right after the Democratic convention (maximum Obama bounce!) and the one after that from before either convention. So you can take a simple average of them, but that's pretty useless because what we want to know is opinion in Ohio now, and the other two would be dated. So our choice is just one poll (lots of uncertainty) or averaging using outdated polls (meaningless for assessing now).
The best of the polling aggregations sites (Silver very much included) can do a bit more -- they can take each state poll and adjust for how it compared to the national average at that point, thus deriving an estimate for a state that should be a bit more precise than uniform swing. And yet, I'm pretty skeptical that we can extrapolate forward from June to November when it comes to that. Given that once we get beyond a three point national lead the state swings become totally irrelevant, and even with a one point national lead the state swings are probably irrelevant, I'm really just fine with holding off until just after this point in the calendar before I pay any attention to the state estimates at all.
And: nice catch!
Friday, August 24, 2012
Catch of the Day
I know it's late on a Friday, but I didn't want to let this pass. Charlie Cook ran a column today claiming that Barack Obama should be toast based on the fundamentals, and, well, Matt Dickinson was all over it:
The good news is that I think on balance there's a lot more good information and analysis out there this cycle than bad. Okay, maybe that's not quite right, but the point is that there are quite a few people writing for relatively large audiences who get it. Just today, and reacting to Cook, Sean Trende at RCP has a very good post that looks at the economic models, and Jamelle also is on it with an excellent item over at Greg's place.
I'll go with Dickinson's for the CotD, but I recommend all three: nice catch!
In fact, those fundamentals – at least some of them – do not necessarily suggest that this race “should not be close.” As I noted in an earlier post, based on second quarter GDP growth numbers alone, history suggests Obama will win a smidgen more than 50% of the two-party popular vote. True, this doesn’t indicate a landslide victory for Obama, but neither does it suggest Romney should be winning this race, despite Cook’s assertion to the contrary.There's much, much, more. For those interested in the "fundamentals" debate, it's a very good primer and a very good state-of-the-race-right-now post. There's really no question about it; the "fundamentals" point to a close race. As I read it, it's a close race with Barack Obama as a slight favorite, but it really is a judgement call on which reasonable people can disagree. But, no, it's not reasonable at all to conclude that the fundamentals suggest a Romney landslide and that only differences in the candidates or electioneering skill is keeping it close. That's just wrong.
The good news is that I think on balance there's a lot more good information and analysis out there this cycle than bad. Okay, maybe that's not quite right, but the point is that there are quite a few people writing for relatively large audiences who get it. Just today, and reacting to Cook, Sean Trende at RCP has a very good post that looks at the economic models, and Jamelle also is on it with an excellent item over at Greg's place.
I'll go with Dickinson's for the CotD, but I recommend all three: nice catch!
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday to Chuck D., 52.
Quickly to the good stuff:
1. Andrew Gelman responds again on the electoral college. Must-read if you've been following the discussion.
2. Steve Kornacki reviews recent Democratic Keynotes Addresses. Fun.
3. I very much agree with David Frum about Ted Cruz and "the establishment."
4. And Emily Heil has a nice point about Mitt Romney's trip: he wasn't exactly well-staffed.
Quickly to the good stuff:
1. Andrew Gelman responds again on the electoral college. Must-read if you've been following the discussion.
2. Steve Kornacki reviews recent Democratic Keynotes Addresses. Fun.
3. I very much agree with David Frum about Ted Cruz and "the establishment."
4. And Emily Heil has a nice point about Mitt Romney's trip: he wasn't exactly well-staffed.
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