In the comments to Democratic Change Commission post I put up yesterday, Rob pointed out something about the late Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy last year that was running through my mind yesterday.
Rob writes:
"I know that I am slightly off topic here, but one of the tributes to Ted Kennedy is that his endorsement of the Obama candidacy was a key factor in Obama's nomination. As I recall, many commentators at the time suggested that the endorsement was a big blow to the Clinton campaign. I thought, though, in the aftermath it became a consensus opinion that none of the endorsements in that campaign meant much, even EMKs. Am I imagining something or is this point just part of the glow of appreciation of man who has just passed away?"
The underlying question is, "Did Kennedy's endorsement have an impact and if so, to what degree?" There's no doubt that it had an impact. But measuring the endorsement's influence is difficult. For starters, we know that the endorsements game is one of zero sums. If Barack Obama gets the endorsement, then Hillary Clinton cannot. [Well, I suppose flip-flopping superdelegates are an exception to that rule. John Lewis, I'm looking in your direction.] Beyond that, we also know that in a presidential primary election environment, where contests follow one another (or groups of contests follow other groups of contests), the easiest way to measure the impact is to see how elections results are affected following the endorsement. Now from a hypothetical standpoint, this impact would be the greatest within the political boundaries and among the constituency the endorser represents.
In 2008, Ted Kennedy's endorsement could have been hypothesized to have bolstered Obama's chances ahead of the Massachusetts primary. The timeline went like this:
January 27: Caroline Kennedy's op-ed endorsing Obama appears in the New York Times.
January 28: Ted Kennedy endorses Obama.
February 5: Clinton bests Obama in the Bay state by a count of 56% to 41%.
The immediate, back of the napkin reaction in our (UGA) discussion group, as I recall, was that the endorsement didn't seem to have had that much of an effect. Some of the reasons cited were that the endorsement was made too close to the actual voting in the contest (just a week prior), and that Massachusetts was one among MANY other states holding contests on February 5. Indeed, to that second point, the Obama campaign was focused on grassroots efforts particularly in the caucus states on February 5 and beyond. That excluded Massachusetts.
But that brings up an important distinction: short-term versus long-term influence of endorsements. Prior to and after February 5, it was becoming apparent that the Democratic nomination race would be one focused on the delegate count. That differed from past years where momentum quickly carried most eventual nominees to their party's nomination and delegate counts were an afterthought. But in 2008, everyone was focused on that counting to the detriment of everything else. Unlike other years, then, when a Kennedy-type endorsement, if it even came before the nomination was wrapped up, would have been rolled into the narrative of "Candidate X had the momentum and won the nomination," 2008 gave us a different angle. The race as it played out afforded us the opportunity to attempt to separate the long-term and short-term goals instead of having them overlap almost completely.
Again, in the immediate aftermath of Super Tuesday, the Kennedy endorsement seemed to have backfired. But as Obama ran up the score throughout his February streak of victories and finally won the nomination in the late spring, the Kennedy decision looked better and better.
If we step back and look long-term, the impact of the endorsement seems to have been that it helped Obama gain a foothold within the Washington establishment; a wing of the party that more often than not leaned toward Clinton. In that zero sum environment, then, Kennedy's endorsement did hurt Clinton's campaign, but only because it helped Obama's instead. But there's a spectrum there, right? Did it help Obama more or less than it hurt Clinton? Personally, I think it helped Obama more. Clinton was already doing pretty well among the Washington establishment. If you look at some of the posts over at DemConWatch just before Super Tuesday, you get sense of this. Upon Edwards dropping out just after the Florida primary on January 29, Clinton had a two to one (approximately) advantage in superdelegates over, but as Matt (DemConWatch contributor) pointed on the final day of the month, an interesting pattern was emerging among superdelegates. Obama was picking up momentum among the supers just before February 5; especially big name supers. The then-Illinois senator was outpacing Clinton and in fact gaining on her in that count.
Kennedy's endorsement was just a part of that gradual movement toward Obama and maybe even slightly ahead of the curve.
Note: I should mention that the view from the political science literature on the impact of endorsements is mixed. In many ways it is lacking mainly because of the issues I cited above. What is being influenced, in other words? Electoral outcomes are one possibility as are polling numbers in specific states whether measuring vote intention of overall approval. The problem with those measures is that there are obviously many other factors affecting their variation. Does that mean we pack it up and head home? No, but what that ultimately means is that we end up with mixed results ranging from an endorsement had no impact to an endorsement had a big impact.
UPDATE: Here are a few reactions to the Kennedy endorsement at the time:
ABCNews Political Radar
New York Times The Caucus
Here are a couple from The Fix (Washington Post): one and two
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Showing posts with label 2008 presidential election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008 presidential election. Show all posts
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Blame Palin?
John Sides over at The Monkey Cage, freshly back from the Midwest Political Science Association conference over the weekend, has an interesting post* up this morning from a paper that was presented there. The paper by Richard Johnston and Emily Thorson uses the 2008 National Annenberg Election Study to examine the relationship between the candidates' poll standing over the last few months of the election, survey respondents' economic evaluations and the presidential and vice presidential candidate favorability ratings over the course of that period as well.
The weird thing? McCain's polls numbers, overall economic evaluations and Sarah Palin's favorability track almost exactly. As John says, "It's eerie."
It is and this is all interestingly suggestive, but is it possible that Palin was something of a reverse Obama during the campaign. No, I don't mean ideologically; that's fairly obvious. My angle here is that during Obama's emergence prior to the 2008 primaries, the then-senator from Illinois was still an unknown quantity. Those on the left paid more attention to the build up to the nomination race more and some on that side attached their hopes and dreams to Obama's run. Obama, say, would have had more movement in his support numbers when information emerged (negative or positive) than if something newsworthy broke on Hillary Clinton.
Well, Sarah Palin was that unknown quantity on the Republican side, but she was introduced during a much more hyper-partisan period than Obama. Folks -- on the right especially -- attached their hopes and dreams to her in a way similar to what Obama enjoyed over a much less partisan period and over a much longer length of time. But because of the general election environment in which she was introduced, folks on the left and some in the middle attached their negative feelings on the economy and the general state of things to her -- and apparently the McCain campaign -- as well.
Very interesting stuff. And what's more, the economic evaluations fluctuate more than what I glean from Tom Holbrook they did in the NES.
*Head on over and check out the graphs. Great visuals of the trend.
Recent Posts:
Presidential Candidate Emergence: An Alternate Measure
The 2012 Presidential Primary Calendar (4/4/09)
Georgia in 2012: Back to March?
The weird thing? McCain's polls numbers, overall economic evaluations and Sarah Palin's favorability track almost exactly. As John says, "It's eerie."
It is and this is all interestingly suggestive, but is it possible that Palin was something of a reverse Obama during the campaign. No, I don't mean ideologically; that's fairly obvious. My angle here is that during Obama's emergence prior to the 2008 primaries, the then-senator from Illinois was still an unknown quantity. Those on the left paid more attention to the build up to the nomination race more and some on that side attached their hopes and dreams to Obama's run. Obama, say, would have had more movement in his support numbers when information emerged (negative or positive) than if something newsworthy broke on Hillary Clinton.
Well, Sarah Palin was that unknown quantity on the Republican side, but she was introduced during a much more hyper-partisan period than Obama. Folks -- on the right especially -- attached their hopes and dreams to her in a way similar to what Obama enjoyed over a much less partisan period and over a much longer length of time. But because of the general election environment in which she was introduced, folks on the left and some in the middle attached their negative feelings on the economy and the general state of things to her -- and apparently the McCain campaign -- as well.
Very interesting stuff. And what's more, the economic evaluations fluctuate more than what I glean from Tom Holbrook they did in the NES.
*Head on over and check out the graphs. Great visuals of the trend.
Recent Posts:
Presidential Candidate Emergence: An Alternate Measure
The 2012 Presidential Primary Calendar (4/4/09)
Georgia in 2012: Back to March?
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Now Why Didn't They Just Do This Last Week?
A little more than a week after posting the revealing Nearly Three Dozen GOP House Members Dodged Obama's Coattails -- an article that clearly laid out the number of president/House split districts in last year's election and thus indirectly the electoral vote total under a Maine/Nebraska system -- CQ finally followed with a piece that made mention of the 301-237 electoral vote advantage President Obama would have had under a system of congressional district electoral vote advantage.
No, they didn't have a map, but they include a pdf file with a nice breakdown of the totals by state:
[Source: CQ Politics -- Click to Enlarge]
Now why didn't I think of that?
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The Links (3/18/09): ANES Edition
More on 2008 Candidate Visits
2008 Presidential Candidate Visits by State and Party
No, they didn't have a map, but they include a pdf file with a nice breakdown of the totals by state:
[Source: CQ Politics -- Click to Enlarge]Now why didn't I think of that?
Recent Posts:
The Links (3/18/09): ANES Edition
More on 2008 Candidate Visits
2008 Presidential Candidate Visits by State and Party
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
More on 2008 Candidate Visits
Let's look a bit deeper at the 2008 presidential candidates data I posted the other day. Instead of looking at it in terms of raw percentage shares for each state, I grouped the states according to the size of those shares. These cut points are rather arbitrary, but it does drive home the point. Recall that if all states were created equally, each would receive two percent of the total number of candidate visits in each presidential cycle. And just by eyeballing it, that 2% mark is a good cut off for the uppermost grouping. That group, then, is comprised of those states that garnered at least a two percent share of total candidate visits. I wanted to allow for another couple of categories, but no natural breaking point really emerged. What I did was to set the upper bound of the bottommost grouping at .5%, but as you'll see below, an additional category could have been created to provide for further differentiation. [I'll discuss this a bit more below.] The resultant three groups, then were states that received a:
[Click Chart to Enlarge]
In other words, only nine states got anything more than a two percent share of candidate visits (including both parties' candidates). Over three times that many states had a less that half a percent share of overall visits during the 2008 primary campaign. Now, this lowest category could further be broken down into states that got less than .25% of visits and between .25% and .5%. That would basically split that group in half with the former group containing 14 states and the latter, 16.
Looking at those below that .25% line, half (7 states) had concurrent Democratic and Republican contests on Super Tuesday. Of the other seven states, four had their Democratic contests on Super Tuesday while the Republican Party's contests came later (after the point at which McCain had wrapped up the nomination). There are several factors at work here. First, size is a common theme among these seldom-visited states. I'll use electoral votes as a proxy here. Of those 14 (<.25%) states, all fell at or below the 10 electoral vote line and nine have five or less electoral votes. The other obvious points here are that competition for candidate visits matters, and so too does the fact that a contest may fall after the point at which the nomination has been decided. Small states already fighting for attention are even more up against it when there are, say, 25 other states going on the same date. The saving grace for those Super Tuesday small states is that their voters at least had the opportunity to weigh in on both nominations. And while those states with split GOP contests (the ones with Democratic contests on Super Tuesday) were able to avoid the competition for attention, they missed out on the attention altogether by being so late in the process. The voters in those states were in a lose-lose situation. But shifting back to those top nine attention-grabbing states, we see that they accumulated 84% (57% in Iowa and New Hampshire) of the total amount of attention. Now granted, the advance build up of visits in Iowa and New Hampshire in the year(s) prior to the presidential election year skews these figures to some extent. However, when the Iowa and New Hampshire visits are dropped altogether, there are still only 11 states overall with visits shares over 2%. That's a net gain of two states in that category, but the cumulative share of visits to that group of states now drops to just under 73% of the total. Whether Iowa and New Hampshire are withheld does not change the fact that this group of states had one or more of three basic properties. These states were early, big and/or the only event on a given date. Ah, but what happens when these figures are separated by party?
[Click Chart to Enlarge]
The distribution of visits across Republican primaries and caucuses didn't stray too far from the overall distribution above. But once the same procedure as in the above example is employed there are some subtle differences under the surface.
If the large collection of seldom-visited states is split along the .25% line, 18 of the 31 states fall below that line and 13 above it. The thing about the Republican nomination race was that it conformed for the most part to previous nomination races, and that leaves us with two main sets of contests: the compressed states held prior to the nomination being decided and those that are more spread out yet fall after the contest is over. Those are the two categories represented by an overwhelming number of those 18 states below the line. Just three of those states weren't either on Super Tuesday or after March 4 when John McCain became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.
On the flip side of the chart, those 7 states in that (>2%) category made up 84% (52% in Iowa and New Hampshire) of the Republican candidate visits. That matches the percentage in the overall case. Yet, if Iowa and New Hampshire are dropped from consideration, there are only six states that exceed that 2% level and they only comprise just under 70% of the total Republican visits.
[Click Chart to Enlarge]
In the Democratic contests, the distribution looks pretty much the same, but there is a trade-off between the lower two categories, with the the two being closer in frequency than they were in the previous two examples. Splitting the lowest category along the .25% line doesn't have the same effect as it did in the previous two instances. 20 states fall below that point and just six above it. Three-quarters of those 20 very seldom-visited states were on Super Tuesday. And that is telling. Since the Democratic race extended to the final contest, many more states had an opportunity to have attention that otherwise would not have. The states that paid the price, then, were those in the most compressed environment, Super Tuesday.
And the attention-grabbing states? Well, those seven states received just under 80% (62% in Iowa and New Hampshire) of the Democratic candidate visits. And that number hardly changes when Iowa and New Hampshire are dropped. However, double the number of states fall into that (>2%) category when the two lead-off contests are withheld. Those fourteen states make up 76% of the Democratic contests. Again, that speaks to the longevity of the competition on the Democratic side. The tie that binds those contests (with or without Iowa and New Hampshire) is the fact that most were stand-alone contests or on a date where there was far less competition for attention.
NOTE: I have to confess that I've put most of these last two posts together for an exercise on descriptive statistics that I'm doing in one of my classes. But I thought I'd share and provide a bit of background information in the process. That will help us down the road if I get around to doing a projection model for 2008 based on candidate visits.
Recent Posts:
2008 Presidential Candidate Visits by State and Party
Should Indiana Frontload in 2012? (Part Two)
Michael Steele by the Numbers
- 0-.5% share of 2008candidate visits
- .5%-2% share of 2008 candidate visits
- greater than 2% share of 2008 candidate visits
[Click Chart to Enlarge]In other words, only nine states got anything more than a two percent share of candidate visits (including both parties' candidates). Over three times that many states had a less that half a percent share of overall visits during the 2008 primary campaign. Now, this lowest category could further be broken down into states that got less than .25% of visits and between .25% and .5%. That would basically split that group in half with the former group containing 14 states and the latter, 16.
Looking at those below that .25% line, half (7 states) had concurrent Democratic and Republican contests on Super Tuesday. Of the other seven states, four had their Democratic contests on Super Tuesday while the Republican Party's contests came later (after the point at which McCain had wrapped up the nomination). There are several factors at work here. First, size is a common theme among these seldom-visited states. I'll use electoral votes as a proxy here. Of those 14 (<.25%) states, all fell at or below the 10 electoral vote line and nine have five or less electoral votes. The other obvious points here are that competition for candidate visits matters, and so too does the fact that a contest may fall after the point at which the nomination has been decided. Small states already fighting for attention are even more up against it when there are, say, 25 other states going on the same date. The saving grace for those Super Tuesday small states is that their voters at least had the opportunity to weigh in on both nominations. And while those states with split GOP contests (the ones with Democratic contests on Super Tuesday) were able to avoid the competition for attention, they missed out on the attention altogether by being so late in the process. The voters in those states were in a lose-lose situation. But shifting back to those top nine attention-grabbing states, we see that they accumulated 84% (57% in Iowa and New Hampshire) of the total amount of attention. Now granted, the advance build up of visits in Iowa and New Hampshire in the year(s) prior to the presidential election year skews these figures to some extent. However, when the Iowa and New Hampshire visits are dropped altogether, there are still only 11 states overall with visits shares over 2%. That's a net gain of two states in that category, but the cumulative share of visits to that group of states now drops to just under 73% of the total. Whether Iowa and New Hampshire are withheld does not change the fact that this group of states had one or more of three basic properties. These states were early, big and/or the only event on a given date. Ah, but what happens when these figures are separated by party?
[Click Chart to Enlarge]The distribution of visits across Republican primaries and caucuses didn't stray too far from the overall distribution above. But once the same procedure as in the above example is employed there are some subtle differences under the surface.
If the large collection of seldom-visited states is split along the .25% line, 18 of the 31 states fall below that line and 13 above it. The thing about the Republican nomination race was that it conformed for the most part to previous nomination races, and that leaves us with two main sets of contests: the compressed states held prior to the nomination being decided and those that are more spread out yet fall after the contest is over. Those are the two categories represented by an overwhelming number of those 18 states below the line. Just three of those states weren't either on Super Tuesday or after March 4 when John McCain became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.
On the flip side of the chart, those 7 states in that (>2%) category made up 84% (52% in Iowa and New Hampshire) of the Republican candidate visits. That matches the percentage in the overall case. Yet, if Iowa and New Hampshire are dropped from consideration, there are only six states that exceed that 2% level and they only comprise just under 70% of the total Republican visits.
[Click Chart to Enlarge]In the Democratic contests, the distribution looks pretty much the same, but there is a trade-off between the lower two categories, with the the two being closer in frequency than they were in the previous two examples. Splitting the lowest category along the .25% line doesn't have the same effect as it did in the previous two instances. 20 states fall below that point and just six above it. Three-quarters of those 20 very seldom-visited states were on Super Tuesday. And that is telling. Since the Democratic race extended to the final contest, many more states had an opportunity to have attention that otherwise would not have. The states that paid the price, then, were those in the most compressed environment, Super Tuesday.
And the attention-grabbing states? Well, those seven states received just under 80% (62% in Iowa and New Hampshire) of the Democratic candidate visits. And that number hardly changes when Iowa and New Hampshire are dropped. However, double the number of states fall into that (>2%) category when the two lead-off contests are withheld. Those fourteen states make up 76% of the Democratic contests. Again, that speaks to the longevity of the competition on the Democratic side. The tie that binds those contests (with or without Iowa and New Hampshire) is the fact that most were stand-alone contests or on a date where there was far less competition for attention.
NOTE: I have to confess that I've put most of these last two posts together for an exercise on descriptive statistics that I'm doing in one of my classes. But I thought I'd share and provide a bit of background information in the process. That will help us down the road if I get around to doing a projection model for 2008 based on candidate visits.
Recent Posts:
2008 Presidential Candidate Visits by State and Party
Should Indiana Frontload in 2012? (Part Two)
Michael Steele by the Numbers
Sunday, March 15, 2009
2008 Presidential Candidate Visits by State and Party
I don't know that I set out initially to put data directly up on this site, but since I've been looking into the candidate visits data from the 2000 and 2004 primary seasons (see here and here), I thought I might also look into the availability of similar data for 2008. The great thing about the 2008 cycle -- other than it being fantastic overall -- was that there was no shortage of data collection going on. The drawback in many cases was that it wasn't cataloged in a way that could naturally be transferred into a spreadsheet for the type of analyses I like to do. One case of this was the fabulous candidate tracker (with maps!) Slate.com ran during the primaries. The problem with Map the Candidates was that, despite the great documentation, there was only individual candidate aggregation of visits and not party by party visit tabulations. Easily remedied, right?
Well, that's what I've tried to provide below:
Let me add a few notes:
Recent Posts:
Should Indiana Frontload in 2012? (Part Two)
Michael Steele by the Numbers
GOP Temporary Delegate Selection Committee for 2012
Well, that's what I've tried to provide below:
Let me add a few notes:
- Only visits where there was an "active" competition going on were counted. That does include the Republican primaries after McCain wrapped up the nomination on March 4, but only because those contests were still scheduled to happen. In other words, there was some, albeit small, draw for the candidate(s) there. This also includes Democratic caucuses past their initial steps. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton showed up at the North Dakota State Democratic Convention in early April, for instance, after the initial caucuses took place on February 5. Those visits count. The two candidates were seeking delegates. GOP contests of a similar ilk were not included (though Ron Paul supporters tried to and in some cases did overrun some of those state conventions).
- I highlighted the top 5 states overall and for each party. The key is at the bottom of the spreadsheet. Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina (in that order) were the top three draws overall and for both parties. Florida was fourth overall and in terms of GOP visits. The half-delegation penalty by the Republican Party did not have an impact on Florida's share of attention and overall the Sunshine state was not terribly negatively affected by the Democrats stripping the state of its entire delegation for a period. Michigan wasn't hurt too badly either; garnering the fifth slot in the percentage of GOP visits. California drew that distinction overall, while Pennsylvania claimed the final spot for the Democrats. The rules mattered in this regard for the Democratic Party. All four exempt states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada -- placed one through four (Nevada was fourth), while the two penalized states -- Florida and Michigan -- fell much further back.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2009
2008 Electoral College by Congressional District
I have been wanting to look into this for a while -- just to compare the 2008 election under the currently configured electoral college to the electoral college under the Maine/Nebraska system -- but neither the data nor a good map made themselves available. And even though the Swing State Project has had the data on this up for a while, CQ drew my attention back to the issue yesterday. From those sources, it can be discerned that Obama won 242 congressional districts and McCain 193. [We know, for instance, that the Democrats won 257 seats in the House and the Republicans won 178. Further, Obama won 34 of those districts where a Republican candidate won the House seat. McCain was able to win in 49 districts where a Democrat was victorious in the House race. That's a net gain of 15 districts/electoral votes for McCain.]
[Click Map to Enlarge]
The map above isn't the greatest -- it doesn't, for instance, include Alaska and Hawaii -- but it conveys the point. [Plus, I've yet to see a map on this.] The dark-shaded districts are the ones where Obama or McCain and a Democrat or Republican House candidate, respectively, won the district. In the lightly-shaded districts, McCain and Obama won while a House candidate of the opposite party carried the congressional race. Now, it should be noted that some of the smaller suburban/urban districts don't show up as well as those districts larger in area. However, below you'll see the list of all 83 districts where the vote for president and House were split between the two parties. These seats, or at the very least a fraction of them, are where the battlegrounds will be in next year's midterms.
House seats aside, under the electoral vote allocation system used by Maine and Nebraska, the winner of a congressional district receives one electoral vote and the overall statewide winner wins the two electoral votes that represent a state's two senators. Adding the 56 electoral votes from the 28 states Obama won (plus the three electoral votes from the District of Columbia), the president's electoral vote total would have equaled 301. McCain, meanwhile, would have started off with more electoral votes from congressional districts alone to have suprassed his total under the current electoral college system (173 electoral votes). By adding in the 44 electoral votes for overall statewide victories would have brought the Arizona senator's total to 237 electoral votes.
The bottom line is that the Democrats gained in 2008from in the system as it is set up currently. And that is strange considering the party has been behind the eight ball in terms of the electoral college for the better part of a generation. If the system shifted to a completely Maine/Nebraska set up that would tilt things toward the GOP a little more. In the process, though, there would be a move from focusing on a handful of swing states to a finite number of swing districts. And despite the fact that a split between the presidential and House votes in a district does not make for a competitive presidential race in that district necessarily, we are talking about 83 such districts in 2008 from 37 states. From a strategic standpoint, it would be fun to see the system operate under this method for one election cycle.
[NOTE: I'd like to add a special note of thanks to those who contacted FHQ either via the comments or through email with corrections and/or suggestions. I think we've got it right now. The post is certainly better because of those comments.]
Recent Posts:
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[Click Map to Enlarge]The map above isn't the greatest -- it doesn't, for instance, include Alaska and Hawaii -- but it conveys the point. [Plus, I've yet to see a map on this.] The dark-shaded districts are the ones where Obama or McCain and a Democrat or Republican House candidate, respectively, won the district. In the lightly-shaded districts, McCain and Obama won while a House candidate of the opposite party carried the congressional race. Now, it should be noted that some of the smaller suburban/urban districts don't show up as well as those districts larger in area. However, below you'll see the list of all 83 districts where the vote for president and House were split between the two parties. These seats, or at the very least a fraction of them, are where the battlegrounds will be in next year's midterms.
House seats aside, under the electoral vote allocation system used by Maine and Nebraska, the winner of a congressional district receives one electoral vote and the overall statewide winner wins the two electoral votes that represent a state's two senators. Adding the 56 electoral votes from the 28 states Obama won (plus the three electoral votes from the District of Columbia), the president's electoral vote total would have equaled 301. McCain, meanwhile, would have started off with more electoral votes from congressional districts alone to have suprassed his total under the current electoral college system (173 electoral votes). By adding in the 44 electoral votes for overall statewide victories would have brought the Arizona senator's total to 237 electoral votes.
The bottom line is that the Democrats gained in 2008
[NOTE: I'd like to add a special note of thanks to those who contacted FHQ either via the comments or through email with corrections and/or suggestions. I think we've got it right now. The post is certainly better because of those comments.]
Recent Posts:
2008 Presidential Primary Calendar
2004 Presidential Primary Calendar
2000 Presidential Primary Calendar
Monday, November 17, 2008
Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain
I spent a lot of time last week looking at the county-level 2008 v. 2004 map that The New York Times was running online (see below). It really is a fascinating feature, but if you've been around here long enough, this doesn't really come as any surprise. I like maps. [Incidentally, you can now compare 2008 to the past presidential elections back to 1992. Just click on "Voting Shifts."]
[Click Map to Enlarge]
Anyway, the more I looked at it, the more it looked like something I had remembered seeing somewhere before. In fact, it was right here at FHQ. One of the things that the early days of this election year allowed us was this wonderful three month period after John McCain had wrapped up the Republican nomination, but in which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were still actively competing for the Democratic nomination. The polling that was released during that period produced what FHQ liked to call the McCain margin.* The formula was simple: Subtract Hillary Clinton's margin against John McCain in head-to-head trial heat polls in each state from the similar margin between Obama and McCain.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
Above is the final McCain Margin map from June 3; the day of the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota. Now what you see isn't anything groundbreaking, but the areas in green (those where Clinton was doing better against McCain than Obama was) overlap to a large degree with the Times map above. It is that same swath of land from Oklahoma eastward and north into Appalachia. Now, Massachusetts and New York would have given their votes to either Democrat, and neither ever seemed terribly viable in those Appalachian states, but at the time Florida, Missouri and Pennsylvania lent some validity to that Clinton campaign argument that the New York senator would fare better in the electoral college against John McCain than would her senate colleague from Illinois. As it turned out, Obama won two of those three anyway.
While things changed for Barack Obama after the economic crisis hit (and even before that, for that matter), the same areas that vexed him during the primaries, ended up going against him on November 4. But they would have gone against either Democrat, right? Well, I'm not so sure Hillary Clinton (and by extension Bill Clinton) wouldn't have made things interesting in Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia. I could see a scenario where she exchanged the 16 electoral votes from North Carolina and Nebraska's 2nd district for the 22 from the three states above. That could have drastically recolored that Times map (...with North Carolina being much lighter blue and Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia turning blue in the process.).
That would have given Clinton 371 electoral votes (to McCain's 167). Where else would Clinton have potentially been more successful? More vulnerable?
*In 2012 the McCain Margin will be redubbed the Obama Margin because, unless Obama fails over the course of the next four years, the president-elect will run unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Translation: we get to compare the various Republican candidates against how they are doing versus President Obama in each of the states. And we probably won't have to wait until 2012. There will likely be some state level polling done in some of the more competitive states in 2011. [And I'm sure we'll start seeing national level trial heats as soon as the 2010 midterm elections are complete.]
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[Click Map to Enlarge]Anyway, the more I looked at it, the more it looked like something I had remembered seeing somewhere before. In fact, it was right here at FHQ. One of the things that the early days of this election year allowed us was this wonderful three month period after John McCain had wrapped up the Republican nomination, but in which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were still actively competing for the Democratic nomination. The polling that was released during that period produced what FHQ liked to call the McCain margin.* The formula was simple: Subtract Hillary Clinton's margin against John McCain in head-to-head trial heat polls in each state from the similar margin between Obama and McCain.
[Click Map to Enlarge]Above is the final McCain Margin map from June 3; the day of the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota. Now what you see isn't anything groundbreaking, but the areas in green (those where Clinton was doing better against McCain than Obama was) overlap to a large degree with the Times map above. It is that same swath of land from Oklahoma eastward and north into Appalachia. Now, Massachusetts and New York would have given their votes to either Democrat, and neither ever seemed terribly viable in those Appalachian states, but at the time Florida, Missouri and Pennsylvania lent some validity to that Clinton campaign argument that the New York senator would fare better in the electoral college against John McCain than would her senate colleague from Illinois. As it turned out, Obama won two of those three anyway.
While things changed for Barack Obama after the economic crisis hit (and even before that, for that matter), the same areas that vexed him during the primaries, ended up going against him on November 4. But they would have gone against either Democrat, right? Well, I'm not so sure Hillary Clinton (and by extension Bill Clinton) wouldn't have made things interesting in Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia. I could see a scenario where she exchanged the 16 electoral votes from North Carolina and Nebraska's 2nd district for the 22 from the three states above. That could have drastically recolored that Times map (...with North Carolina being much lighter blue and Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia turning blue in the process.).
That would have given Clinton 371 electoral votes (to McCain's 167). Where else would Clinton have potentially been more successful? More vulnerable?
*In 2012 the McCain Margin will be redubbed the Obama Margin because, unless Obama fails over the course of the next four years, the president-elect will run unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Translation: we get to compare the various Republican candidates against how they are doing versus President Obama in each of the states. And we probably won't have to wait until 2012. There will likely be some state level polling done in some of the more competitive states in 2011. [And I'm sure we'll start seeing national level trial heats as soon as the 2010 midterm elections are complete.]
Recent Posts:
The Ads: Georgia Senate Runoff--UPDATED
Reform: First Up? The Texas Primary-Caucus System
Georgia Senate Election Certified
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The R Word: Was 2008 a Realigning Election?
The electoral college wrap up post got hijacked this afternoon by a comments thread that veered off into a discussion over this past election and whether it was one that has triggered a realignment. [Allow me a Seinfeldian moment: Not that there's anything wrong with that.] Let me reproduce those comments here and augment them along the way:
Rob started things out by linking to Jay Cost's piece that tied the events surrounding the economic collapse this fall to other historical corollaries: the Civil War, the gold standard debate and the Great Depression. [There were some nice maps there -- even some that had Long Island colored differently than the rest of New York -- but I was left wondering where the maps for the most recent elections were. I like maps. What can I say.] Cost has not been alone in this realignment discussion. In fact, John Sides over at the Monkey Cage was recently bemoaning the overabundance of realignment talk in the press following last week's election.
That aside, our discussion here has centered on a few basic ideas:
1) A realignment does depend on some sort of lasting change.
2) Much of this talk rests with how well Obama does over the next four to eight years.
3) And finally, how lasting the shift is depends in part on how the GOP responds and who they line up behind as the face of that response.
Scott thinks there has been one change that is likely to last as a result of Obama's election, though stops short of calling it a realignment:
Rob drops the first bomb here:
Time will tell.
Recent Posts:
2008 Electoral College Wrap Up
How Stuff Works: An Alaska Vacancy in the US Senate
More on the Georgia Senate Runoff
Rob started things out by linking to Jay Cost's piece that tied the events surrounding the economic collapse this fall to other historical corollaries: the Civil War, the gold standard debate and the Great Depression. [There were some nice maps there -- even some that had Long Island colored differently than the rest of New York -- but I was left wondering where the maps for the most recent elections were. I like maps. What can I say.] Cost has not been alone in this realignment discussion. In fact, John Sides over at the Monkey Cage was recently bemoaning the overabundance of realignment talk in the press following last week's election.
That aside, our discussion here has centered on a few basic ideas:
1) A realignment does depend on some sort of lasting change.
2) Much of this talk rests with how well Obama does over the next four to eight years.
3) And finally, how lasting the shift is depends in part on how the GOP responds and who they line up behind as the face of that response.
Scott thinks there has been one change that is likely to last as a result of Obama's election, though stops short of calling it a realignment:
"Not a "realignment." But for lasting changes, I'd identify this election as the last gasp of the anti-intellectuals on a national level. The percentage of Americans who are college-educated keeps creeping up, so it didn't quite work this time to pit "real" people against "elitists"--there are too many who side with the elitists in that division. And the demographics there will keep tilting further and further toward the educated.But Jack disagreed:
"It was once possible to espouse a kind of populism that set workers against landowners--but eventually, demographics shifted so that now too many voters own homes, and any attack on property owners would be political suicide. We've just crossed that Rubicon with education, and we won't be going back."
"I don't think populism which plays to the uneducated is dead. But the increase in education certainly requires one to be more subtle. One can't go around insulting educated Americans, but you can get away with playing up the virtues of rural American values, etc.I fall in the middle on this one. I certainly see some of what Scott is talking about, but if you read the back end of Adam Nossiter's article in The New York Times today and then look at those nice county maps they put up last week, there's still an area of the country that is seemingly being left behind in terms of education. But as John McCain's electoral college coalition proved, that group of states from east Texas and then fanning out to capture the Deep South and Appalachia, is not really the basis of a winning formula in the future. Playing to those states as the main cog of an electoral college coalition isn't a winning strategy but incorporating them somehow in a broader coalition -- something similar to the Republican Party Colin Powell envisioned in his endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press -- will be the only viable route. Of course, stories like that only buoy the hopes of Democrats. Whether that falsely buoys them depends in large measure on how well Obama does and who the Republicans put out there as the face of their party in 2010 and 2012.
"I've been reading a lot about the 'death of Rovian politics,' 'end of the politics of fear,' etc., and I've just had a hard time believing it. Just because it didn't work this year doesn't mean it will never work. After all, there were a lot of other reasons why McCain didn't win; they might work in a year in which the conditions are more favorable."
Rob drops the first bomb here:
"I heard on NPR that Newt Gingrich is planning on running in 2012. Here is a man who is brilliant and who can appeal to intellectuals as well as the uneducated. If Obama falters, Newt could be a very appealing candidate -- one who can appeal to the social conservatives despite his divorces. For those of you who think that 1996 finished him off, I point to the 1962 gubanatorial race where "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more", Bill Clinton's career-ending speech at the 1988 convention, and Hillary Clinton's national reputation in 2000. A Gingrich/ Palin primary contest could be as entertaining as the Obama/ Clinton contest this year!"Indeed, but Gingrich may be trying for a kind of reverse Howard Dean effect here. He and former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele are locking in a behind-the-scenes battle for the chairmanship of the RNC according to The Washington Times. To complete the reverse Dean effect though, Gingrich would have to lose this fight and then go on to win the GOP nomination in 2012. Throwing that idea out for a moment, if the former Speaker was to run in 2012, would that make Bobby Jindal the Mark Warner of 2012: an up-and-comer who drops out of the race before it even starts? And this on the heels of me thinking about Sarah Palin in terms of being a combination of John Edwards 2004 and John Edwards 2008. I think she has more Obama potential in her than Edwards though. But the next couple of years will give us a better idea as to whether she'll be a lasting figure in the GOP, much less someone who will attempt to prevent a lasting change from cementing.
Time will tell.
Recent Posts:
2008 Electoral College Wrap Up
How Stuff Works: An Alaska Vacancy in the US Senate
More on the Georgia Senate Runoff
2008 Electoral College Wrap Up
"How did we do?"
In the last week, several of our electoral college analyst brethren have asked about the level of accuracy each achieved. Let's have a look at how well and/or poorly FHQ did in that regard. [What, you thought we were going to be any different?] Below, you see how the race actually played out on election day, except now we've added some gradations to reflect states where candidates won by a substantial margin or where the final spread between Obama and McCain ended up being narrow.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
As Nate Silver explained recently, Obama could have given 9.3 points on average back to John McCain in every state and still have come away from Tuesday night's election with an electoral college tie. We have spoken time and again about the electoral college cushion Obama had in this race, but we have done so in terms of how many states past the victory line Obama's campaign was able to push. If George W. Bush would have given 9.3 points to John Kerry in 2004, Kerry would have been able to snatch up Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Arkansas, West Virginia, Virginia and Colorado to get to around the same number of electoral votes (360 EVs) Obama had in 2008 (365 EVs).
We knew, for instance, that when and if New Hampshire and Pennsylvania went for Obama on election day, that all it was going to take, given where Obama was likely to do well the rest of the evening, to push Obama over the top was the victory line state (Colorado) or some state below it. So when Ohio fell into Obama's column the race was over. And that can be seen on the Electoral College Spectrum for the final results above.
Great, FHQ's weighted averages granted us the ability to see that Obama would win and what states to watch on election night. Lots of people saw that coming. But where did FHQ fail to capture in its average what actually happened on election day?
[Click Map to Enlarge]
There were a handful of states that FHQ missed (...as did several other outlets). Most notably, North Carolina and Indiana turned blue for the first time in decades. We had discussed North Carolina at length during the last month of the campaign and the Tar Heel state's average had crept closer and closer to a complete tie in that time. But it never moved into the blue for Obama. Between the average and the actual outcome, North Carolina moved about a point on election day. So, while North Carolina wasn't correctly predicted, the result wasn't out of left field either. The state was already close and on the Watch List for a potential switch toward Obama.
Indiana, on the other hand, was a bit of a surprise given where the graduated weighted average has the Hoosier state ranked on the Spectrum. Consistently on the McCain side of both Missouri and North Carolina, Indiana jumped over two points on election day (from where FHQ's average placed the state and where it ended up after the votes were counted). Heading into the day, Missouri looked much more likely to end up on Obama's side of the ledger than Indiana. What's strange is how both those states split their votes between the presidential and gubernatorial level. Missouri gave McCain its 11 electoral votes while electing a Democratic governor and Indiana provided Obama with a narrow margin and at the same time reelected a Republican governor. Yes, local factors played a role in each case, but that's still an interesting occurrence.
[The final electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd congressional district was one that was never accounted for in our averages. Now that the first split allocation of electoral votes has occurred, that may be something that FHQ will have to attempt to factor in in subsequent cycles. But we'll talk about possible improvements momentarily.]
Also, when we compare the predicted map and Spectrum to the actual results above we find that while several states were correctly predicted, they were either more or less competitive than our averages would have let on. On the McCain end, Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and West Virginia ended up being less competitive than expected while South Dakota and Indiana and North Carolina, obviously, were closer to Obama on Tuesday than had been predicted.
On the Obama side, there were several states that were "off" in terms of how their averages and results matched up, but the rank ordering fell pretty much in line with what had been expected. Nevada ended up being much less competitive then the polling in the Silver state otherwise would have indicated. As UNLV political scientist, Dave Damore, told FHQ back in September, pollsters tend to oversample the the rural and more Republican areas of Nevada which in 2004 meant support Bush was overestimated in the polls conducted in the state. But even adding that 4-5 points to FHQ's average falls short of where the Silver state fell on November 4. What was the deal then? Well, it could be that we didn't have enough information on Nevada -- it certainly had fewer polls conducted within the state lines than many of the other toss up states -- or it could be that rural/Republican oversampling really overestimated McCain's support in the state.
[Click Figure to Enlarge]
But how well did FHQ's averages match up with where the individual states actually fell on election day? A simple bivariate regression with our averages as the explanatory variable and the actual results as the dependent variable show that the averages explained over 95% of the variation in the vote margins witnessed on election day. All 50 states are clustered pretty tightly around that regression line above. But how closely? And which states were problematic?
[Click Figure to Enlarge]
We can eyeball it or we can add a 95% confidence interval to the plot above. Sure, you can see that Alaska and Hawaii are outliers in that original scatterplot, but are there states that fall outside of that confidence interval? There are and we come full circle with the earlier discussion of Nevada. One of the potential problems with the Silver state that I mentioned was that there were fewer polls there than in other toss up states. If you look at the states that fall outside of the gray area in the second plot, you see that most of them are less competitive and thus less frequently polled states. That indicates that some sort of repeated simulation -- akin to what FiveThirtyEight, the Princeton Election Consortium or Hominid Views use -- could be useful in providing more information on those states and a greater level of confidence in their averages. Ah, something to work on for 2012. Isn't that just copying them? Yeah, but FHQ would remain different in that it would include all the older polls in a given cycle while the others phase them out gradually or focus on only the more recent ones.
On the whole, though, this first run in 2008 was a relatively successful one for FHQ in terms of the electoral college. 48 of the 50 states were correctly predicted with a simple weighted average and one of those two, North Carolina, was certainly within range of a switch heading into election day.
Recent Posts:
How Stuff Works: An Alaska Vacancy in the US Senate
More on the Georgia Senate Runoff
Omaha to Obama
In the last week, several of our electoral college analyst brethren have asked about the level of accuracy each achieved. Let's have a look at how well and/or poorly FHQ did in that regard. [What, you thought we were going to be any different?] Below, you see how the race actually played out on election day, except now we've added some gradations to reflect states where candidates won by a substantial margin or where the final spread between Obama and McCain ended up being narrow.
[Click Map to Enlarge]As Nate Silver explained recently, Obama could have given 9.3 points on average back to John McCain in every state and still have come away from Tuesday night's election with an electoral college tie. We have spoken time and again about the electoral college cushion Obama had in this race, but we have done so in terms of how many states past the victory line Obama's campaign was able to push. If George W. Bush would have given 9.3 points to John Kerry in 2004, Kerry would have been able to snatch up Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Arkansas, West Virginia, Virginia and Colorado to get to around the same number of electoral votes (360 EVs) Obama had in 2008 (365 EVs).
| The Electoral College Spectrum* | ||||
| HI-4 (7)** | ME-4 (157) | NH-4 (262/279) | GA-15 (159) | NE-4 (58) |
| VT-3 (10) | WA-11 (168) | IA-7 (269/274) | SD-3 (144) | KY-8 (54) |
| RI-4 (14) | MI-17 (185) | CO-9*** (278/269) | ND-3 (141) | LA-9 (46) |
| MA-12 (26) | OR-7 (192) | VA-13 (291/260) | AZ-10 (138) | AR-6 (37) |
| NY-31 (57) | NJ-15 (207) | OH-20 (311/247) | SC-8 (128) | AL-9 (31) |
| DE-3 (60) | NM-5 (212) | FL-27 (338/227) | TX-34 (120) | AK-3 (22) |
| IL-21 (81) | WI-10 (222) | IN-11 (349/200) | WV-5 (86) | ID-4 (19) |
| MD-10 (91) | NV-5 (227) | NC-15+1**** (365/189) | MS-6 (81) | UT-5 (15) |
| CA-55 (146) | PA-21 (248) | MO-11 (173) | TN-11 (75) | OK-7 (10) |
| CT-7 (153) | MN-10 (258) | MT-3 (162) | KS-6 (64) | WY-3 (3) |
| *Follow the link for a detailed explanation on how to read the Electoral College Spectrum. **The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, McCain won all the states up to and including Colorado (all Obama's toss up states plus Colorado), he would have 269 electoral votes. McCain's numbers are only totaled through the states he would have needed in order to get to 270. In those cases, Obama's number is on the left and McCain's is on the right in italics. ***Colorado is the state where Obama crossed the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line. ****Nebraska allocates electoral votes based on statewide results and the results within each of its congressional districts. Nebraska's 2nd district voted for Barack Obama on November 4. | ||||
We knew, for instance, that when and if New Hampshire and Pennsylvania went for Obama on election day, that all it was going to take, given where Obama was likely to do well the rest of the evening, to push Obama over the top was the victory line state (Colorado) or some state below it. So when Ohio fell into Obama's column the race was over. And that can be seen on the Electoral College Spectrum for the final results above.
Great, FHQ's weighted averages granted us the ability to see that Obama would win and what states to watch on election night. Lots of people saw that coming. But where did FHQ fail to capture in its average what actually happened on election day?
[Click Map to Enlarge]There were a handful of states that FHQ missed (...as did several other outlets). Most notably, North Carolina and Indiana turned blue for the first time in decades. We had discussed North Carolina at length during the last month of the campaign and the Tar Heel state's average had crept closer and closer to a complete tie in that time. But it never moved into the blue for Obama. Between the average and the actual outcome, North Carolina moved about a point on election day. So, while North Carolina wasn't correctly predicted, the result wasn't out of left field either. The state was already close and on the Watch List for a potential switch toward Obama.
Indiana, on the other hand, was a bit of a surprise given where the graduated weighted average has the Hoosier state ranked on the Spectrum. Consistently on the McCain side of both Missouri and North Carolina, Indiana jumped over two points on election day (from where FHQ's average placed the state and where it ended up after the votes were counted). Heading into the day, Missouri looked much more likely to end up on Obama's side of the ledger than Indiana. What's strange is how both those states split their votes between the presidential and gubernatorial level. Missouri gave McCain its 11 electoral votes while electing a Democratic governor and Indiana provided Obama with a narrow margin and at the same time reelected a Republican governor. Yes, local factors played a role in each case, but that's still an interesting occurrence.
[The final electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd congressional district was one that was never accounted for in our averages. Now that the first split allocation of electoral votes has occurred, that may be something that FHQ will have to attempt to factor in in subsequent cycles. But we'll talk about possible improvements momentarily.]
| The Electoral College Spectrum* | ||||
| HI-4 (7)** | ME-4 (157) | NM-5 (264) | ND-3 (381/160) | AK-3 (61) |
| VT-3 (10) | OR-7 (164) | CO-9*** (273/274) | GA-15 (157) | KY-8 (58) |
| DE-3 (13) | WA-11 (175) | VA-13 (286/265) | WV-5 (142) | TN-11 (50) |
| NY-31 (44) | NJ-15 (190) | NV-5 (291/252) | AZ-10 (137) | KS-6 (39) |
| IL-21 (65) | IA-7 (197) | OH-20 (311/247) | SD-3 (127) | NE-5 (33) |
| MD-10 (75) | WI-10 (207) | FL-27 (338/227) | LA-9 (124) | AL-9 (28) |
| RI-4 (79) | MN-10 (217) | NC-15 (353/200) | AR-6 (115) | WY-3 (19) |
| MA-12 (91) | PA-21 (238) | MO-11 (364/185) | TX-34 (109) | ID-4 (16) |
| CA-55 (146) | MI-17 (255) | IN-11 (375/174) | MS-6 (75) | UT-5 (12) |
| CT-7 (153) | NH-4 (259) | MT-3 (378/163) | SC-8 (69) | OK-7 (7) |
| *Follow the link for a detailed explanation on how to read the Electoral College Spectrum. **The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, McCain won all the states up to and including Colorado (all Obama's toss up states plus Colorado), he would have 274 electoral votes. Both candidates numbers are only totaled through their rival's toss up states. In those cases, Obama's number is on the left and McCain's is on the right in italics. ***Colorado is the state where Obama crosses (or McCain would cross) the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line. It is currently favoring Obama, thus the blue text in that cell. | ||||
Also, when we compare the predicted map and Spectrum to the actual results above we find that while several states were correctly predicted, they were either more or less competitive than our averages would have let on. On the McCain end, Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and West Virginia ended up being less competitive than expected while South Dakota and Indiana and North Carolina, obviously, were closer to Obama on Tuesday than had been predicted.
On the Obama side, there were several states that were "off" in terms of how their averages and results matched up, but the rank ordering fell pretty much in line with what had been expected. Nevada ended up being much less competitive then the polling in the Silver state otherwise would have indicated. As UNLV political scientist, Dave Damore, told FHQ back in September, pollsters tend to oversample the the rural and more Republican areas of Nevada which in 2004 meant support Bush was overestimated in the polls conducted in the state. But even adding that 4-5 points to FHQ's average falls short of where the Silver state fell on November 4. What was the deal then? Well, it could be that we didn't have enough information on Nevada -- it certainly had fewer polls conducted within the state lines than many of the other toss up states -- or it could be that rural/Republican oversampling really overestimated McCain's support in the state.
[Click Figure to Enlarge]But how well did FHQ's averages match up with where the individual states actually fell on election day? A simple bivariate regression with our averages as the explanatory variable and the actual results as the dependent variable show that the averages explained over 95% of the variation in the vote margins witnessed on election day. All 50 states are clustered pretty tightly around that regression line above. But how closely? And which states were problematic?
[Click Figure to Enlarge]We can eyeball it or we can add a 95% confidence interval to the plot above. Sure, you can see that Alaska and Hawaii are outliers in that original scatterplot, but are there states that fall outside of that confidence interval? There are and we come full circle with the earlier discussion of Nevada. One of the potential problems with the Silver state that I mentioned was that there were fewer polls there than in other toss up states. If you look at the states that fall outside of the gray area in the second plot, you see that most of them are less competitive and thus less frequently polled states. That indicates that some sort of repeated simulation -- akin to what FiveThirtyEight, the Princeton Election Consortium or Hominid Views use -- could be useful in providing more information on those states and a greater level of confidence in their averages. Ah, something to work on for 2012. Isn't that just copying them? Yeah, but FHQ would remain different in that it would include all the older polls in a given cycle while the others phase them out gradually or focus on only the more recent ones.
On the whole, though, this first run in 2008 was a relatively successful one for FHQ in terms of the electoral college. 48 of the 50 states were correctly predicted with a simple weighted average and one of those two, North Carolina, was certainly within range of a switch heading into election day.
Recent Posts:
How Stuff Works: An Alaska Vacancy in the US Senate
More on the Georgia Senate Runoff
Omaha to Obama
Friday, November 7, 2008
Omaha to Obama
Unless, Missouri somehow flips to Obama, this will be the final tally of the 2008 electoral college.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
Recent Posts:
A Slideshow Chronology of the Electoral College on Election Night
Frontloading and The Rules in 2008: The Maps
What About Nebraska's 2nd District?
[Click Map to Enlarge]Recent Posts:
A Slideshow Chronology of the Electoral College on Election Night
Frontloading and The Rules in 2008: The Maps
What About Nebraska's 2nd District?
A Slideshow Chronology of the Electoral College on Election Night
This isn't complete yet because of the 2nd district in Nebraska (...and Missouri, though it is shaded), but I wanted to go ahead and put it up. It is nice to the see the states gradually fill in. I'll update this and re-post it when everything else falls in line.
Recent Posts:
Frontloading and The Rules in 2008: The Maps
What About Nebraska's 2nd District?
The Georgia Senate Runoff
Recent Posts:
Frontloading and The Rules in 2008: The Maps
What About Nebraska's 2nd District?
The Georgia Senate Runoff
Frontloading and The Rules in 2008: The Maps
I took part in a forum on the [then] upcoming election earlier in the semester and put together some maps on the frontloading that took place prior to primary and caucus season kicking off on January 3. [My, how those ten months flew by!] There is also a map of the differing rules between the parties governing how delegates are allocated. I should have put these up at the time, but I was more concerned with another map at the time.
This first map lays out which states moved and which states stayed put. It needs another layer to it indicating the states that were already early, but that will be a map for a different time. The real message to take away is that there was a ton of movement this cycle compared to some other recent cycles. The striped states are states where just one party opted to move its contest. All were caucus states (at least for the contests moved). The opposite party in each case chose to stick with the state funded primaries, but had later contests as a result.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
Now let's look at contest type. First, the Democrats. The darker blue states are primary states while the lighter states are the caucuses. Obviously the number of caucuses is dwindling, but it is interesting to see where they are location-wise. Maine is the only state east of the Mississippi that continues to hold a caucus over a primary. Every other caucus state is in the heartland, from the upper midwest into the southwest. Florida and Michigan take on the stripes for obvious reasons. Both held primaries that were initially not counted in terms of delegate allocation. Texas is different because of its primary-caucus set up on the Democratic side.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
And the GOP? Well, the same trends that apply to the Democrats apply here also. Nebraska and New Mexico had Republican primaries and Democratic caucuses while West Virginia held a Republican convention and a Democratic caucus. Washington, like Texas on for the Democrats, has a hybrid primary-caucus system. But instead of playing out over the course of one day, as in Texas, the system stretched out over ten days. The caucus, which determined 51% of the delegates, was held on February 9 while the state's primary followed on February 19 and settled the remaining 49% of the delegates.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
Finally, let's dig a little bit deeper into the delegate allocation rules. It is one thing to discuss the type of contest, and while the Democrats mandate a proportional distribution of delegates based on the vote in each state, the GOP leaves it up to the state parties to decide how they will allocate delegates regardless of whether the state has a primary or caucus as its mode of delegate selection. The dark red states below are the ones the McCain campaign targeted -- the winner-take-all states. His wins in most of those winner-take-all states on Super Tuesday (California, New York, New Jersey and Missouri) all but assured the Arizona senator of the GOP nomination. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney seemingly took the Obama caucus strategy route, but without any of the benefits. All those caucus states from the map above are states -- due to that system -- which allocate delegates proportionally. That made it even more difficult for Romney or anyone else to catch McCain in the delegate count. Trading winner-take-all states for proportional ones on the Republican side is not a recipe for success.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
But GOP delegate allocation isn't a black and white issue. There were a handful of states that used a combination of proportional and winner-take-all systems to dictate how the delegates were divvied up between the candidates. The most common combination was for delegates to be awarded on both the state and county/congressional district level. Within a county or congressional district delegates were allocated on a winner-take-all basis while the statewide delegates would be determined based on whether the leading candidate exceeded a certain percentage threshold -- usually 50%. If that bar was cleared the candidate got all the statewide delegates and if not, they were allocated proportionally.
Let me close by addressing 2012 frontloading briefly. Unless President Obama completely tanks, the Democratic nomination will be uncontested four years from now. With just one contested nomination -- on the Republican side -- the amount of frontloading should diminish. We would expect this regardless of the number of nominations at stake simply because over half the country is already "early". If nothing is done to reform the system in the interim, though, there could be rogue states like Florida and Michigan but we would expect tat they would be predominantly Republican states since that party's nomination is the one at stake.
As I get more into dissertation writing mode over the next few months, there will likely be follow ups here (with maps of course.).
Recent Posts:
What About Nebraska's 2nd District?
The Georgia Senate Runoff
Obama is the Unofficial Winner of North Carolina
This first map lays out which states moved and which states stayed put. It needs another layer to it indicating the states that were already early, but that will be a map for a different time. The real message to take away is that there was a ton of movement this cycle compared to some other recent cycles. The striped states are states where just one party opted to move its contest. All were caucus states (at least for the contests moved). The opposite party in each case chose to stick with the state funded primaries, but had later contests as a result.
[Click Map to Enlarge]Now let's look at contest type. First, the Democrats. The darker blue states are primary states while the lighter states are the caucuses. Obviously the number of caucuses is dwindling, but it is interesting to see where they are location-wise. Maine is the only state east of the Mississippi that continues to hold a caucus over a primary. Every other caucus state is in the heartland, from the upper midwest into the southwest. Florida and Michigan take on the stripes for obvious reasons. Both held primaries that were initially not counted in terms of delegate allocation. Texas is different because of its primary-caucus set up on the Democratic side.
[Click Map to Enlarge]And the GOP? Well, the same trends that apply to the Democrats apply here also. Nebraska and New Mexico had Republican primaries and Democratic caucuses while West Virginia held a Republican convention and a Democratic caucus. Washington, like Texas on for the Democrats, has a hybrid primary-caucus system. But instead of playing out over the course of one day, as in Texas, the system stretched out over ten days. The caucus, which determined 51% of the delegates, was held on February 9 while the state's primary followed on February 19 and settled the remaining 49% of the delegates.
[Click Map to Enlarge]Finally, let's dig a little bit deeper into the delegate allocation rules. It is one thing to discuss the type of contest, and while the Democrats mandate a proportional distribution of delegates based on the vote in each state, the GOP leaves it up to the state parties to decide how they will allocate delegates regardless of whether the state has a primary or caucus as its mode of delegate selection. The dark red states below are the ones the McCain campaign targeted -- the winner-take-all states. His wins in most of those winner-take-all states on Super Tuesday (California, New York, New Jersey and Missouri) all but assured the Arizona senator of the GOP nomination. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney seemingly took the Obama caucus strategy route, but without any of the benefits. All those caucus states from the map above are states -- due to that system -- which allocate delegates proportionally. That made it even more difficult for Romney or anyone else to catch McCain in the delegate count. Trading winner-take-all states for proportional ones on the Republican side is not a recipe for success.
[Click Map to Enlarge]But GOP delegate allocation isn't a black and white issue. There were a handful of states that used a combination of proportional and winner-take-all systems to dictate how the delegates were divvied up between the candidates. The most common combination was for delegates to be awarded on both the state and county/congressional district level. Within a county or congressional district delegates were allocated on a winner-take-all basis while the statewide delegates would be determined based on whether the leading candidate exceeded a certain percentage threshold -- usually 50%. If that bar was cleared the candidate got all the statewide delegates and if not, they were allocated proportionally.
Let me close by addressing 2012 frontloading briefly. Unless President Obama completely tanks, the Democratic nomination will be uncontested four years from now. With just one contested nomination -- on the Republican side -- the amount of frontloading should diminish. We would expect this regardless of the number of nominations at stake simply because over half the country is already "early". If nothing is done to reform the system in the interim, though, there could be rogue states like Florida and Michigan but we would expect tat they would be predominantly Republican states since that party's nomination is the one at stake.
As I get more into dissertation writing mode over the next few months, there will likely be follow ups here (with maps of course.).
Recent Posts:
What About Nebraska's 2nd District?
The Georgia Senate Runoff
Obama is the Unofficial Winner of North Carolina
What About Nebraska's 2nd District?
As Rob pointed out in the comments section, the electoral vote for Nebraska's 2nd district is still undecided. You can see in the live blog from Tuesday evening [/Wednesday morning] that I made some mention of whether the whole slate of electoral votes in the Cornhusker state would go for McCain or be split in any way. However, I didn't account for that. Basically, I didn't have time to edit that into the map (...and probably should have made that change yesterday, but didn't) on Tuesday night.
The latest is that there were in excess of 10,000 early votes yet to be counted with McCain holding around a 600 vote lead. That hasn't changed since yesterday, and there doesn't appear to be any deadline or time at which we can expect to know the result (as with those Rockingham County votes in North Carolina the other day).
[Click Map to Enlarge]
With that in mind, we'll pull that electoral vote off the board and we'll color it in when the results are official. It appears as if Obama will take the district, though. If we focus on just those early votes -- and not the additional 5000+ provisional ballots -- if Obama gets the same 61% of the vote that he received throughout the rest of the early voting in the state/district (That isn't clear, but I suspect that refers to the district instead of statewide.), then the president-elect stand to gain about 2400 votes. Enough to pass John McCain, in other words.
Recent Posts:
The Georgia Senate Runoff
Obama is the Unofficial Winner of North Carolina
More on North Carolina: UPDATE
The latest is that there were in excess of 10,000 early votes yet to be counted with McCain holding around a 600 vote lead. That hasn't changed since yesterday, and there doesn't appear to be any deadline or time at which we can expect to know the result (as with those Rockingham County votes in North Carolina the other day).
[Click Map to Enlarge]With that in mind, we'll pull that electoral vote off the board and we'll color it in when the results are official. It appears as if Obama will take the district, though. If we focus on just those early votes -- and not the additional 5000+ provisional ballots -- if Obama gets the same 61% of the vote that he received throughout the rest of the early voting in the state/district (That isn't clear, but I suspect that refers to the district instead of statewide.), then the president-elect stand to gain about 2400 votes. Enough to pass John McCain, in other words.
Recent Posts:
The Georgia Senate Runoff
Obama is the Unofficial Winner of North Carolina
More on North Carolina: UPDATE
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Obama is the Unofficial Winner of North Carolina
Here's the story from the News and Observer. I'll have a map up in a while. The state won't become official until the provisional ballots are counted next month.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
Recent Posts:
More on North Carolina: UPDATE
What's the Matter with North Carolina?
Voting in Athens, GA: A Small Pictorial
[Click Map to Enlarge]
More on North Carolina: UPDATE
The News and Observer out of Raleigh is reporting that there are 18,000 ballots to be counted in McCain-leaning Rockingham County (in white below). McCain would have to get about 83% of those votes to tie or surpass Barack Obama and that would run above the proportion of votes has gotten in the county thus far. CNN has Rockingham County at 57%-42% in favor of McCain. If McCain gets 57% of those remaining 18,000 votes, he would only gain about 2000 votes on Obama and that won't close the gap nearly enough. Word out of Rockingham County is that they will have those counted by 5pm this evening. 30 minutes from now.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
So, it wasn't as dire as waiting a couple of days for provisional ballots to be sifted through.
...yet.
But we are getting closer to calling North Carolina.
UPDATE: There have been 26,000 new votes added to the tally at NBC and they have broken about half and half but slightly favor Obama (by 900 votes). And that obviously isn't cutting into that lead Obama has. NOTE: I have no idea if any of these 26,000 encompass any of the 18,000 Rockingham votes alluded to above.
Recent Posts:
What's the Matter with North Carolina?
Voting in Athens, GA: A Small Pictorial
Missouri to McCain
[Click Map to Enlarge]So, it wasn't as dire as waiting a couple of days for provisional ballots to be sifted through.
...yet.
But we are getting closer to calling North Carolina.
UPDATE: There have been 26,000 new votes added to the tally at NBC and they have broken about half and half but slightly favor Obama (by 900 votes). And that obviously isn't cutting into that lead Obama has. NOTE: I have no idea if any of these 26,000 encompass any of the 18,000 Rockingham votes alluded to above.
Recent Posts:
What's the Matter with North Carolina?
Voting in Athens, GA: A Small Pictorial
Missouri to McCain
What's the Matter with North Carolina?
The Charlotte Observer is reporting today that the hold up in North Carolina is because of the counting of provisional ballots.
[Click Map to Enlarge]
This is what happens when a typically reliable partisan state suddenly becomes competitive. He-e-e-e-y-y-y, what about Virginia or Indiana? Virginia wasn't that close yesterday and Indiana had a close contest dry run during the Democratic primaries. North Carolina? The Tar Heel state wasn't contested on the Republican side and Barack Obama won the state going away. The North Carolina Board of Election's first run under competitive circumstances was last night.
Recent Posts:
Voting in Athens, GA: A Small Pictorial
Missouri to McCain
Open Thread: The Morning After
"With all precincts counted, Obama leads McCain by about 11,000 votes out of more than 4.2 million cast. But state Elections Director Gary Bartlett said Wednesday morning that a small number of provisional ballots must be counted in the coming days."A couple of days?
[Click Map to Enlarge]This is what happens when a typically reliable partisan state suddenly becomes competitive. He-e-e-e-y-y-y, what about Virginia or Indiana? Virginia wasn't that close yesterday and Indiana had a close contest dry run during the Democratic primaries. North Carolina? The Tar Heel state wasn't contested on the Republican side and Barack Obama won the state going away. The North Carolina Board of Election's first run under competitive circumstances was last night.
Recent Posts:
Voting in Athens, GA: A Small Pictorial
Missouri to McCain
Open Thread: The Morning After
Voting in Athens, GA: A Small Pictorial
Here are a few shots of democracy at work in Athens, GA yesterday. Actual democracy at work not shown. As I said during the results live blog last night, we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the room with the voting machines. But Hillary Clinton can campaign mere feet from voting booths? Political science can only take you so far. Apparently taking pictures inside a polling station are beyond that point. And for the record, I did play the "I'm a political scientist" card.
Here's our polling station at Fire Station #7. See, no line. Well, not at 3:30pm in the afternoon. At 7:30am the line was out the door and around to the right there. The ladies checking IDs [Yeah, Georgia has one of those ID laws on the books too.] said that that traffic flow continued into the 11 o'clock hour and died down some after lunch.
[Click to Enlarge]
Poll working at its finest. Things had slowed down enough by the time that we got there to vote that these two poll workers could be greeters. The gentleman even walked over with my kids and let them hop on the back one of the many painted, plaster [Georgia] bulldogs around town.
[Click to Enlarge]
And finally, here is the door to the infamous Room of Democracy. They had 8 machines set up in there; an increase over the 4 or 6 they had four years ago. They had also added a nice provisional ballot station for this election. That certainly worked better than pulling those folks aside like they did in 2004 and loudly discussing where they were supposed to be.
[Click to Enlarge]
Bonus Picture: Yeah, that's me.
...as Joe the Plumber on Halloween. In the end I decided to take my own costume advice and go with Joe. Plus, I thought it would be nice for everyone to put a face with the name. Admittedly, it is a stupid looking face here, but I don't photograph very well, especially with a plunger by my side. There's a reason I'm an academic.
[Click to Enlarge]
Thanks to the good folks at Paisley Pictures for providing the pictures.
Recent Posts:
Missouri to McCain
Open Thread: The Morning After
Election Night Liveblog and Open Thread
Here's our polling station at Fire Station #7. See, no line. Well, not at 3:30pm in the afternoon. At 7:30am the line was out the door and around to the right there. The ladies checking IDs [Yeah, Georgia has one of those ID laws on the books too.] said that that traffic flow continued into the 11 o'clock hour and died down some after lunch.
[Click to Enlarge]Poll working at its finest. Things had slowed down enough by the time that we got there to vote that these two poll workers could be greeters. The gentleman even walked over with my kids and let them hop on the back one of the many painted, plaster [Georgia] bulldogs around town.
[Click to Enlarge]And finally, here is the door to the infamous Room of Democracy. They had 8 machines set up in there; an increase over the 4 or 6 they had four years ago. They had also added a nice provisional ballot station for this election. That certainly worked better than pulling those folks aside like they did in 2004 and loudly discussing where they were supposed to be.
[Click to Enlarge]Bonus Picture: Yeah, that's me.
...as Joe the Plumber on Halloween. In the end I decided to take my own costume advice and go with Joe. Plus, I thought it would be nice for everyone to put a face with the name. Admittedly, it is a stupid looking face here, but I don't photograph very well, especially with a plunger by my side. There's a reason I'm an academic.
[Click to Enlarge]Thanks to the good folks at Paisley Pictures for providing the pictures.
Recent Posts:
Missouri to McCain
Open Thread: The Morning After
Election Night Liveblog and Open Thread
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