GOP Going the Caucus Route in Oklahoma in 2012?

"They just ignore us,” [Oklahoma state GOP Vice Chairman, Cheryl Williams] said. "With the caucus system, as has been proven with other states, we actually would gain some pre-eminence back in the party.”

I'll get back to that gem in a minute [because the logic there is puzzling to say the least]. But first the story.

The Oklahoma state Republican Party is meeting this next weekend in Oklahoma City to (re-)elect a chairman. No that's not that exciting, but [see there is a good part] rival factions are forming around candidates based on their support for or opposition to the party opting out of the state-funded presidential primary in 2012 to hold a caucus instead. The current chairman, Gary Jones, is against the idea, while the party's vice chair, Cheryl Williams, is for it. This isn't just about the mode of delegate selection; the split actually dates back to last year's primary and state convention. The latter had an impressive faction of Ron Paul support that now serves as the backbone of the support behind the caucus idea. This is actually a very interesting situation.

But why a caucus over a primary? And where, pray tell, does this idea that caucuses provide a state with a more advantageous position when compared with primaries. I've got to say that the political science literature does not back up that assertion (Gurian 1986, 1993). Granted, these perhaps should be updated, but the anecdotal evidence since that point tells a completely difference tale than the yarn Cheryl Williams is weaving. Sure, the Obama campaign was able to exploit the caucus rules to win the Democratic nomination, but that didn't give those states any more a significant position at the time. Ex post facto, yes, but not at the time. And it didn't really translate into any general election success either. Obama won an overwhelming majority of caucus states in the Democratic race (see Democratic map here), but that may [MAY] have only helped him in Colorado. But even that is a stretch. The president did fare better than his immediate Democratic predecessor in many of those caucus states, but Obama was doing better than Kerry across much of the country (ironically, though, not in Oklahoma).

I can only think of one reasonable explanation here. The faction within the Oklahoma GOP supporting the caucus move wants to cut ties with the date setting part of the Oklahoma state law concerning presidential primaries. In other words, here's the thought process: the state law says we get to go on the first Tuesday in February, and the national party says we can't go before then. Well, why not hold a caucus and challenge the pre-eminence of Iowa/New Hampshire? Yeah, this feels like a rogue move, and the fact that Ron Paul supporter are pushing it isn't helping that perception. But that's perhaps being unnecessarily harsh on the Texas congressman and his supporters. The Maryland GOP is still looking into holding a pre-primary caucus that would allocate a portion of the state's GOP delegates and would also jump the first in the nation caucus and primary.

Moves like these, if they come to pass, are of a type that are really going to put the onus on the parties to fix the primary problem. But this is a different challenge than Florida/Michigan. This isn't state governments challenging national party rules, but state parties challenging their national counterparts' rules. And that's entirely different kind of flying altogether.


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No Caucuses? North Dakota in 2012

Well, not exactly. However, just this past Wednesday (April 8), North Dakota Governor John Hoeven signed SB 2307 into law.

The intent of the bill? To repeal the state's presidential preference caucus.

Yeah, that sounds somewhat ominous, but it is more local quirk than anything. During the 2003 session of the North Dakota legislature, SB 2288 was proposed and passed (and ultimately became law). That started as a bill designed to coordinate both major parties' presidential preference caucuses at the state level (specifically the timing aspect). My guess here -- and it is an educated guess I'd like to think -- is that since neither party was utilizing the state's June primary as a means of allocating national party presidential delegates (instead opting to hold separate caucuses), there needed to be some effort to coordinate the parties' caucuses in order to maximize the state's impact on the nomination outcomes.

Under the new law, then, both parties had the opportunity to consult with and recommend dates (for the caucuses) to the North Dakota secretary of state, who would then designate a day (after Iowa and New Hampshire, but before the first Wednesday in March -- see NDCC 16.1-03-20 here) on which the caucuses would be held.

But here's the thing: no money exchanged hands (as evidenced by the fiscal note attendant to the original 2003 law). There was no money going from the state to the parties to fund or reimburse the parties for the caucuses. In other words, there is one thing that likely prevents the courts from overturning frontloaded primaries (specifically when there is a conflict between the timing designated by the state and when the party would actually like to hold its delegate selection event -- see Florida 2008) as unnecessary state government intervention in an internal party matter. The fact that the state is funding the election. And the state of North Dakota was not funding these caucuses. And "loose framework" though this may have been, it likely would have been a law that would have been struck down by the courts were it to be challenged.

For the 2004 and 2008 elections this wasn't a problem. The caucuses were held on the first Tuesday in February in each cycle. But in 2012, the parties will be freed from those previous restrictions to decide on their own when their presidential delegate selection events will be held. And for the first time since the 2000 cycle, that will mean that one party will not necessarily be restricted by the input of the other party in terms of when that date will fall. Republians in the state, then, won't be held hostage by the state because the Democratic Party wanted an earlier/later date than the GOP in the state wanted.

Interesting stuff from the Peace Garden State.


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2008 GOP Candidate Emergence, Part 2

This is part two in a series of examinations of the fluctuations in the volume of Republican candidate Google searches during the 2008 presidential election cycle. You can find part one (the invisible primary trends among the top six candidates) here.

As the figures in part one showed, once we get to the 2007 segment of the invisible primary time series, the exponential growth of Ron Paul's search volume detracts from our ability to see the trends among the viable Republican candidates vying for the GOP's 2008 nomination. When the Ron Paul data is suppressed, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee appear to be bigger players. Both at various points during the latter half of 2007 tower over their remaining competitors in terms of their Google search traffic. You can see that in the full (2005-2007) figure above, but the 2007 snapshot below is more indicative.

In many regards we can see both candidates spikes as inter-related. Huckabee didn't jump all that much after his win in the September Iowa straw poll, but his win there coupled with the failed roll-out of Fred Thompson's candidacy seemed to boost Huckabee's profile entering the caucuses in Iowa. Essentially though, we have two tracks going here; one representing each side of the Republican Party (in its simplest binary terms). Huckabee and Thompson best typified the social conservative wing of the party; the segment of the Republican base that seemed least represented by and least enthusiastic about this pool of candidates. So much of the Republican invisible primary was about either how McCain was attempting to appeal to those voters or who the alternative would be. Through that lens, Thompson/Huckabee was that alternative.

But there was another track here as well; a more moderate or economic conservative track. This was a three person race between McCain (once the Arizona senator's campaign hit the wall in the summer of 2007), Giuliani and Romney. Giuliani's progression throughout the year though isn't all that variable, and as such, this was more of a two person battle between Romney and McCain.
[This is where Glenn's point on polling the other day is interesting: Giuliani was leading many of the polls during 2007 (see below), yet had basically flatlined in terms of search volume.]

[Click Figure for Link to Actual Polls at Pollster.com]

And what we see in that 2007 Google search snapshot is that Romney rises and passes McCain as the Arizona senator is falling throughout 2007. The former Massachusetts governor, then stays ahead of McCain until the calendar turns and the contests begin. With those two simultaneous trends, the GOP side is a little more interesting from a candidate emergence perspective than the Democratic side. And that the search time series doesn't comport with the polling going on during the 2007 portion of the Republican invisible primary raises some questions for us to pursue here in the future, especially regarding Giuliani. Why is it that America's mayor was polling so well, but got so little interest online?

There seems to be a better match between the two metrics concerning the other candidates. Yes, there is a Huckabee lag from search data to polling and Romney is consistently behind, though, close to McCain during the final quarter of 2007. On the whole though, the rising and falling of each candidate roughly corresponds across both measures (it is a matter of shifting the whole line that differs across both) with the exception of Giuliani, whose numbers are widely divergent between the two.

These data are designed to elicit questions rather than answer them, and I think we've got that here.

Up Next: the GOP candidates in 2008


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2008 Republican Presidential Candidate Emergence: The View Through Google Trends

To avoid chart saturation here, I'll break this examination of 2008 GOP candidates into three parts. The first part will focus on Republican candidate emergence during the invisible primary, the second part will drop Ron Paul in the context of 2007 to better ascertain search volume shifts during the latter half of that year, and finally part three will look at how things changed once primary season began.

As I mentioned in the series of posts investigating the shifts in Democratic candidate search volumes, the early speculation following the 2004 election and entering the 2008 invisible primary centered on a potential John McCain-Hillary Clinton general election. Well, the US got half of that last November, but early on Google searches favored both the New York senator and the Arizona senator overall. On the Republican side, though, there certainly is McCain red hovering over the other colors across much of the 2005-2006 period. And that's somewhat in keeping with the "next one in line" nominations that the GOP has had more often than not throughout the last generation.

But the full invisible primary (2005-2007) time series does not really provide us with the true nature of McCain's search volume relative to his most viable competitors for the nomination (for reasons that seem obvious simply by looking at the charts, but that FHQ will get into momentarily). If we zoom in on each of the three years individually, though, we get a better glimpse of what McCain's real advantage was. Again, McCain's volume is ahead of the other five candidates through 2005 (other than when Fred Thompson shot up in the summer when Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement from the Supreme Court and the former Tennessee senator was named by the Bush administration as the head of an informal group to guide her replacement, John Roberts, through the confirmation process.). Now, it is important to note here that there are no doubt endogeneity issues here as the media coverage of events in the political realm certainly has an impact on the volume of search traffic for a particular keyword. In other words, a search for anyone of these candidates is not necessarily a presidential run-related search.

However, that certainly changes somewhat as attention shifts toward the presidential race at the conclusion of the 2006 midterms (see above). All six candidates see at least a modest jump following the elections that brought the Democrats back into control of both houses of Congress. Again though, McCain is ahead across much of that year.

Heading into 2007 that progression continues. Mitt Romney's stock rises and finally surpasses McCain during the summer 2007 low point for the Arizona senator's campaign. More interestingly, though, Fred Thompson's search volume increases upon the formation of his presidential candidacy exploratory committee. The online chatter behind his potential candidacy continued into the summer months. As McCain's prospects waned, Thompson's grew. But Thompson's strength was as a potential candidate. Upon officially entering the race in September 2007, the former Tennessee senator quickly underwhelmed hopeful conservatives, losing ground online.

Of course, much of this Thompson spike is -- which is really quite an interesting case of candidate emergence -- is clouded by the sudden and consistent growth of Ron Paul online. The Texas congressman's close in 2007 dwarfed even Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's heading into the election year. And those were two of the top three candidates in a Democratic field most Democratic voters were very enthusiastic about. Despite the following online (and this was something the power of which FHQ readers were recently reminded of), Paul just wasn't a serious candidate, and his numbers affect our ability to see the movement among the other five candidates who were all viable options heading into 2008.

Before examining the 2008 context, though, we'll look at the GOP invisible primary sans Ron Paul. Fred Thompson searches will appear much more significant and we'll better see the movement around other candidates (especially Mike Huckabee after his Iowa straw poll win and Fred Thompson's false start.). That's where we'll turn our attention next.


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What About 2008? Democratic Presidential Candidates Through the Lens of Google Trends

Yesterday, FHQ looked at the Google Trends search volume for the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates between 2005 and 2007. The goal was to look for the emergence of the candidates during the invisible primary. And what happened, on the Democratic side at least, was more a case of candidate displacement than candidate emergence. Barack Obama basically overtook John Edwards as the Hillary Clinton alternative.

Invisible primary aside, though, what does the search volume look like for each of the top five candidates once primary and caucus contests begin providing tangible results in January 2008?

Well, for starters, tacking on that extra year and the election day spike really dwarfs some of the earlier data. What's important, though, is that red line (Obama) spikes in early 2008 and stays above the yellow line (Clinton) through mid-June when Clinton's volume trails off. Sure this gives us some scale, but that election day jump for Obama is deterring us from seeing some of the changes from the invisible primary.

If we cut off the data at September 2008 -- just after the Democratic convention -- we lose some of the skew from that election day spike. Instead of one multi-colored line running across the bottom of the time series from January 2005 to November of 2006, we can actually see Hillary Clinton hovering above the other potential candidates instead of appearing to be one in the crowd (while still appearing to be at the top).

The picture is clearer still when just the 2008 data is isolated. Obama still is clearly ahead of Clinton throughout the time series, but there are certainly some fluctuations given the events on the ground. The space between Obama and Clinton is widest following Super Tuesday in early February and Obama's streak of wins to close out the month. Wright, bitter-gate and losses to Clinton in Texas and Ohio in March, however, closed that gap. Obama, though, maintains that lead, diminished though it is until the nomination contests end and Clinton withdraws.

Again though, much of this tracks with the events that were happening in the contest at the time, but Glenn does raise an interesting point. What does polling look like during this period? That's obviously another layer to add into this; one that Cohen, et al. (cited in original post) considered. In the original study, (actually Karol et al. 2003), they found that endorsements had three times the impact on polls than polls had on endorsements during the invisible primary period. No, that doesn't answer the question in the context of the primaries and caucuses, but it does indicate that polls (like the data here) are likely next in line on the causal chain behind events in the nomination race.


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From One Contest to Another: Ohio Redistricting Competition

Ohio Redistricting Competition

The goal of the Ohio Redistricting Competition is to demonstrate that an open process based on objective criteria can produce fair legislative districts in Ohio. During the competition, it is our belief that a robust public conversation about the process can occur, leading to the development of the best possible redistricting recommendations for consideration by the Ohio General Assembly.

The Ohio Redistricting Competition represents the culmination of over nine months of planning amongst the League of Women Voters of Ohio (LWVO), Ohio Citizen Action, Common Cause, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Former State Representative Joan Lawrence, and State Representative Dan Stewart.

--via the Ohio Secretary of State's website

This isn't filling out fictitious brackets for prospective presidential candidates. No, this is a far more involved simulation that folks in Ohio and outside its boundaries can participate in. Draw your own congressional districts. The contest sign ups end and the competition begins on Friday, April 10 and concludes on May 11.

Hey you get to use an online version of GIS software. How bad could it be? My only gripe is that the current number of districts are being redrawn. Ohio is likely to lose a congressional seat or two after the 2010 Census, so why not have this competition reflect that reality? [I suppose no one wants to admit that their state is losing clout.]

The rules of the competition and other information are at the site linked at the top.

Tip of the cap: John Sides at The Monkey Cage


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Newt on 2012: "We'll See"

Well, at least someone on UGA's campus had the gumption to ask the question I would have had I not had a laptop on my lap in a cramped balcony seat miles away from the nearest microphone. If a group from the School of Public and International Affairs won't ask then someone from the law school will.

That's apparently what happened. Gingrich had to finish up the Getzen Lecture and reception and move on to a similar engagement at the law school.

...where he was asked about 2012 among other things.

Here's the exact answer from the AP: "We'll see," he said about a possible presidential bid. "I want to focus for another year or two on how many solutions can we develop that are real and powerful."


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The other day I speculated about value of watching Google search trends as a means of tracking presidential candidate emergence. As I said in that post, it is one thing to look at that in real time, but quite another to look at how this looks over the course of an entire invisible primary period. Fortunately Google Trends has archived search data back to January 2004 and that affords us the opportunity to put this idea to the test in the context of 2008 presidential candidate emergence.

Now, keep in mind that this is an idea still very much in its infancy (and it may stay there given the limitations of the data and other complications). First of all, what you'll see below may not be tracking an organic growth and solidifying of support behind a candidate (or viability behind a candidacy) so much as a media-triggered urge to go find out something about a candidate. If we're looking for a causal chain, then, it may be something like:

endorsement/fundraising total --> news story --> internet search

In the context of a modern campaign built on social networking (via technology especially) the chain of events isn't as clear and regardless, all of the points in that chain have something of a recursive relationship anyway.

The other caveat is much more easily accounted for. Obviously, we'd expect the volume of searches to go up as a presidential election year approaches. That kicks the chain of events (in whatever order) into hyperdrive.

All caveats aside, though, how did this look in the context of the Democratic field of candidates as they emerged, announced and ran for the Democratic nomination between 2004 and 2008?

The expectation going in is that Hillary Clinton would dwarf all the other included candidates (and I just included FHQ's estimation of the top five candidates on the Democratic side) and at some point be passed by Barack Obama. And that is generally what we see in the full chart at the top. But it is easier to see Clinton's lead in search volume across all of 2005 and well into 2006 in the yearly snapshots. Around the time of the midterm elections in 2006 we see Obama's searches shoot up. The Illinois senator's numbers increased most likely because of his appearance on Meet the Press, where he discussed the possibility of a White House run. You'll also note that Edwards numbers also jump at the end of 2006 when he announced he would be seeking the 2008 Democratic nomination. There were similar spikes for Clinton and Obama when they announced during the first couple of months of 2007.

We don't see candidate emergence here so much, but we do see some candidate displacement. Hillary Clinton was very much a factor in the 2008 presidential campaign. In conversations I had here at UGA as early as 2005 the discussion centered on a Clinton-McCain general election in 2008. To some degree then, the story is more about the emergence of an alternative to Clinton. For instance, John McCain emerged as the alternative to George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries. Edwards actually runs ahead of Obama through 2005 and 2006 (minus the Obama MTP blip), but once Obama announced his bid, he consistently ran ahead of Edwards for most of 2007. Obama, then, displaced Edwards as the Clinton alternative and that was solidified by Edwards opting into the federal matching funds system for the primaries in the late summer/early fall of 2007.

Now, we are limited by this data to some degree. These are weekly snapshots of the candidates' positions relative to each other in terms of their individual search volumes. Daily accounts are available and would provide us with a richer story (especially vis a vis the "which came first the news or the search" conundrum), but that's a something for another day.

Up next? The 2008 GOP candidates.


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Live Blog: UGA Getzen Lecture featuring Newt Gingrich

Wrap Up: A very interesting lecture from someone who is high on the FHQ Elite Eight list for 2012. Some things mentioned to me at the reception afterward:

"Where were the solutions?"

"He was more partisan than I thought he would be."

Both were true and aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Several times Gingrich mentioned not getting into things because of time constraints. You can understand that, but when you're talking about such a fundamental restructuring of the federal government, people are generally going to want specifics. Of course, those were some of the same specifics people wanted from Obama throughout 2008. But that's life on the campaign trail.

Gingrich has a vision, but how compelling that story is -- in view of 2012 that is -- will depend on how Obama has been viewed. If Obama's version of change hasn't actually changed that much in Washington and across the country, that'll make a sweeping vision like Gingrich's much more palatable -- not that it isn't already. And this could be an interesting clash in 2012. Obama as the "government can work for you" candidate against Gingrich as the "government is inefficient if it is filtered through a broken bureaucratic system" candidate.

And what about that Jindal mention? Of course, that was couched after the fact as "Jindal won't be John McCain's age until after 2040." In other words, this guy's a future leader in the GOP.

I'll be back shortly with some more thoughts.

4:08pm: Ends on the Second Amendment.

4:04pm: Israel and Iran?

A: "Would not be shocked if Israel took pre-emptive action."

4:00pm: Government Shutdown?

A: It was healthy. "I have a different view on this than the media. We were the only Republican majority reelected when a Democratic president was being elected."

Downsizing/Restructuring?
A: Again, back to the bureaucracy. "Show me a bureaucracy that operates like the Toyota mode of production."

3:57pm: Global warming?

A: Green Conservatism (Contract with the Earth): Unelected Supreme Court and an unelected bureaucracy making these decisions. Carbon tax is akin to helping fuel China.

3:55pm: de Tocqueville's soft tyranny in the US?

A: Paraphrasing: A government that can fire the head of GM is a government to be feared.

3:51pm: Future of the GOP?

A: Name-dropping: Bobby Jindal!
GOP has to: 1) Worry about the GOP and not America.
2) Solutions, solutions, solutions
3) Work to bring together those who are not committed to a hard left ideology.

3:47pm: How would you describe America to the rest of the world given Obama's statement about American having been arrogant on the world stage?

A: Yes, there has been some arrogance, but would tell Europe that we are "partners in freedom," that the Europeans have to provide some help and not just talk.

3:41pm: Obama's foreign policy?

A: "I think he had a bad trip [abroad]." The French and Germans didn't give anything. North Korea tests a missile just before Obama is set to deliver a speech on nuclear disarmament.

Obama is at a defining moment. He has a choice between being Jimmy Carter and learning nothing or being John Kennedy and learning that the world is a tough place.

3:40pm: Q&A!

3:39pm: Everything hinges on fundamentally changing the way in which the government works, especially the bureaucracy.

3:35pm: The bottom line here is that outcome-based implementation of metrics can work to fix the bureaucracy around foreign policy, education, etc. to prevent the failure of the American civilization. In this case, we're talking about the US as the top nation in a unipolar world.

3:32pm: Values --> Vision --> Metrics --> Strategy

3:30pm: Nate Silver may like this talk. Gingrich just cited Moneyball as a good use of metrics.

3:27pm: Real change takes will-power. In the New York case of implementing this metrics-based reworking of the law enforcement bureaucracy, it meant manipulating the bureaucracy; forcing the old school thought process and people out.

3:21pm: The metrics approach to the bureaucracy management is borrowed from Giuliani's New York model.

3:19pm: Problems in foreign policy are similar to what the US faces in terms of health care: The bureaucracy is broken.

3:15pm: Hints of responsible parties here. A cohesive national party message. Not in 1994 with the Contract with America, but in 1980 with what Gingrich calls the 5 Capitol Steps.

3:10pm: Two questions: What is it that America has to do to survive (as a civilization)? How do you convince the American people to go along with it?

3:05pm: Topic: Effective American Policy in an Increasingly Dangerous World

3:00pm: Alright, we're waiting through the introduction of Mr. Gingrich here live in the UGA Chapel. It is difficult for FHQ to approach anything like this without a view toward 2012, so we'll be covering this with an eye toward that election.


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[Click Bracket to Enlarge or HERE for more Discussion at NPR]
[Image Courtesy of NPR]

Other than Ron Paul winning this thing, the process wasn't that unlike a typical post-reform primary season. The field of candidates got winnowed down, there were some upsets and surprises along the way, and ultimately one candidate emerged and became the inevitable nominee.

I wish I had kept closer tabs on the voting throughout the last few days. Political Junkie says Paul edged South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint by 13 points (Yes, edged considering the spread was 91-9 at one point early on during the voting.) with nearly one million votes cast. That the Paul lead was whittled down to a mere 13 points indicates that there may have been an anti-Paul voting faction out there. If this were an actual primary season context, it would have been indicative of buyers remorse having set in among Republican voters. Recall that Ron Paul was the candidate taking some anti-McCain votes during the 2008 primaries (especially after McCain had clinched on March 4).

Well, this has been fun and whether NPR does it again next year or not, FHQ will dust off its own bracket and see how it stands up to a year's worth of hindsight. All the while, we'll be hoping for a Carolina repeat in the basketball version.


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Earlier is Better (And not just during a presidential primary race -- After it too)