Won't Somebody Please Think About the Political 'Scientists'!?!

With all due respect to Helen Lovejoy, this isn't about just the children anymore.



Yes, that's right: My fellow political "scientists" and I are under attack. Well, our funding from the National Science Foundation is, at least, now that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has introduced an amendment to eliminate it. This quote from the senator's press secretary kills me:

"Political science would be better left to pundits and voters," said Don Tatro, Senator Coburn's press secretary, in an interview.

Indeed. I think Steven Taylor has put it best:

"I can readily accept the notion that there is a debate to be had about federal funding of research (and not just polisci work). That is perfectly legitimate. However, it would be nice if Coburn at least knew what he was talking about. ... It is flatly not the case that the University of Michigan’s work on American elections is somehow equivalent to election-night reporting and commentary. And while there are some bloggers who do attempt to engage in legitimate analysis, some of it truly empirical in nature as well, they are not the same thing as actual political science analysis."

There are some other great reactions out there as well from political scientists (see below). Look, no one wants their funding threatened (Remember the bear DNA study that was a part of the presidential campaign a year ago?) and it is natural for political scientists to want to fight this. But seriously, Senator, if you're going to make this argument, please come up with something better than, "CNN could do just as well." That's simply not true. And that's not just some ivory tower-dwelling political scientist saying that.

Andrew Gelman
Henry Farrell
Joshua Tucker
Matthew Shugart
Dan Drezner
Steven Taylor

Oh, and John Sides awarded Coburn the Cobie.


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FHQ Friday Fun: Things are More Fun in Iowa

September (State and Local) Primaries Are Now a Step Closer to Disappearing

State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/8/09)

FHQ Friday Fun: Things are More Fun in Iowa

...and that doesn't even count the presidential nomination races kicking off there every fourth year.

I can't believe I managed to hold on to this until Friday. Good stuff from Iowa:



Hat tip to Jonathan Martin for the link.


Recent Posts:
September (State and Local) Primaries Are Now a Step Closer to Disappearing

State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/8/09)

State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/8/09)

September (State and Local) Primaries Are Now a Step Closer to Disappearing

Senate Bill 1390 is now out of conference and has been passed by the House according to Ballot Access News. As FHQ discussed yesterday, this is the bill that requires all absentee ballots be printed and mailed off to military personnel overseas at least 45 days prior to the general election. This has the unintended effect of forcing states that hold midterm primaries in September to shift those elections to earlier dates. [Here is the complete list of states affected and a broader discussion of the implications.]

Below is a timeline of action taken yesterday in the House on the bill from the clerk of the House. They were treating the differences in the Senate bill coming out of conference as changes to the original House bill (HR 2647).

11:15 A.M. -

Amendment offered by Ms. Slaughter.

Upon the adoption of the conference report the House shall be considered to have adopted the concurrent resolution ( H. Con. Res. 196) making corrections in the enrollment of the bill H.R. 2647.

11:46 A.M. -

On agreeing to the Slaughter amendment Agreed to by voice vote.

On ordering the previous question on the amendment Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: 237 - 187 (Roll no. 764).

11:53 A.M. -

UNFINISHED BUSINESS - The Chair announced that the unfinished business was the question of adoption of motions to suspend the rules which had been debated earlier and on which further proceedings had been postponed.

H. Res. 808:

providing for consideration of the conference report to accompany the bill ( H.R. 2647) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2010 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, to provide special pays and allowances to certain members of the Armed Forces, expand concurrent receipt of military retirement and VA disability benefits to disabled military retirees, and for other purposes

On agreeing to the resolution Agreed to by recorded vote: 234 - 188 (Roll no. 765).

Motion to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection.

12:19 P.M. -

DEBATE - The House proceeded with one hour of debate on the conference report to accompany H.R. 2647.

1:30 P.M. -

POSTPONED PROCEEDING - Pursuant to the rule, the House postponed further proceedings on the conference report to accompany H.R. 2647 until later in the legislative day.

H.R. 2647:

to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2010 for military activities of the Department of Defense, to prescribe military personnel strengths for fiscal year 2010, and for other purposes

The previous question was ordered pursuant to the rule.

3:23 P.M. -

On agreeing to the conference report Agreed to by recorded vote: 281 - 146 (Roll no. 770).

Motions to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection.

3:24 P.M. -

Considered as unfinished business.

H. Con. Res. 196:

making corrections in the enrollment of the bill H.R. 2647

Pursuant to the provisions of H. Res. 808, H. Con. Res. 196 is considered passed House.

H.R. 2647:

to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2010 for military activities of the Department of Defense, to prescribe military personnel strengths for fiscal year 2010, and for other purposes

Yeah, that's a lot of legislative process to take in. The key is the enrollment part. That tells us that the bill has passed and the "unfinished business" is basically that the enrollment of the bill has to take place first before the bill is presented to the president.


Recent Posts:
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/8/09)

State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/8/09)

Remember that Defense Authorization Bill That Could Affect the Timing of Primaries?

State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/8/09)

[Click to Enlarge]

September surprises.

No, they just don't seem to work, at least not from the Deeds campaign's perspective. Bob McDonnell's thesis seemed to have made a dent in the summer margin between the Republican and his Democratic opponent during the latter half of September, but first Rasmussen and now the Washington Post have shown McDonnell stretching what was a shrinking lead a month ago back to around the ten point mark. [We'll set Survey USA to the side for the moment as the firm has consistently shown a much broader McDonnell advantage without terribly much fluctuation. FHQ isn't attacking the methodology just the fact that, unlike the two polls cited above, there really has not been that much change to speak of in the series of Survey USA polls out in this race since the June primary.]

2009 Virginia Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Deeds	McDonnell	Undecided
Washington Post	Oct. 4-7, 2009	+/- 3%	1001 likely voters	44	53	2

So while things may be looking down for Republicans further north in New Jersey, they have trended upward in the Old Dominion. Now mind you, Deeds has been creeping up in FHQ's averages through the last four polls, but that quartet of surveys has also seen McDonnell crest above the 50% barrier and pushed the Republican above that point here at FHQ. Deeds is currently at his highest point in our averages since early July, but he is being outpaced by his opponent at this point and McDonnell is in the drivers seat with just 26 days left until November 3.

[Click to Enlarge]

Recent Posts:
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/8/09)

Remember that Defense Authorization Bill That Could Affect the Timing of Primaries?

Predicting Presidential Elections from Biographical Information

State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/8/09)

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I don't know that there is much to say here. The race for governor in New Jersey is very simply getting tighter. Jon Corzine found himself again on top of the race in a poll for the second time this week, doubling his total of polls led from (way) earlier in the year. Now, that isn't to say that Chris Christie has lost the advantage -- he hasn't here at FHQ or elsewhere -- but the momentum is squarely against the Republican at the moment. And the sudden jump of independent Chris Daggett in the polls (especially this week into the mid-teens) seems to be drawing directly from the former US attorney. All three candidates are breaking new ground. Daggett is threatening to break the 10% mark, Corzine is inching toward 40% and Christie is now about to fall under 45% for the first time since FHQ began tabulating the averages of this race in mid-June.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Democracy Corps [pdf]	Oct. 6-7, 2009	+/- 4%	614 likely voters	41	38	14	7
Survey USA	Oct. 5-7, 2009	+/- 4%	639 likely voters	40	43	14	2

What brought us to this point today? Well, two new polls -- from Survey USA and Democracy Corps -- each showed one of the candidates up by three points. In other words, today's polls were statistical ties. Averaging across the two (without weighting), Christie and Corzine were knotted at 40.5% with Daggett laying claim to the support of 14% of the survey respondents.

With a tie basically prevailing here, every big event (and even some seemingly small ones unforeseen on the horizon) is magnified. As much as the debates may seem like non-starters nationally, they may matter from the perspective that they offer a chance for either major party campaign to shift the narrative coming out of the event and moving forward.

Again, Christie is ahead, but with just under four weeks left to go this one continues to get more and more interesting.

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Recent Posts:
Remember that Defense Authorization Bill That Could Affect the Timing of Primaries?

Predicting Presidential Elections from Biographical Information

The 2012 Presidential Candidates: Pawlenty and Petraeus

Remember that Defense Authorization Bill That Could Affect the Timing of Primaries?

Yeah, this bill.* Well, it looks as if S1390 will be voted on in conference today. The Senate version contains the provision that would require states to mail out absentee ballots at least 45 days prior to the general election (... a move that would cause September primary states -- not presidential primaries -- to be shifted to earlier dates to comply). The House bill for defense authorization did not contain this provision, so the conference vote will determine whether it is included.

Tracking...

Hat tip to Ballot Access News for the link.

*The original bill discussed was S1415, but the 45 day rules outlined in that bill seem to have been added into S1390.


Recent Posts:
Predicting Presidential Elections from Biographical Information

The 2012 Presidential Candidates: Pawlenty and Petraeus

State of the Race: New Jersey (10/6/09)

Predicting Presidential Elections from Biographical Information

Why crunch a bunch of numbers via regression to forecast a presidential election, when the candidates' biographical data seemingly gets you closer to the actual results? I don't know. This won't put number crunchers out of business (Good, I didn't waste 2008 after all!), but the findings from a study by Armstrong and Graefe do shed light on an interesting new avenue by which elections outcomes can be predicted. Here's how they constructed their model:

"We created a list of 49 cues from biographical information about candidates that were expected to have an influence on the election outcome. Then, we estimated whether a cue has a positive or negative influence on the election outcome. ... We distinguished two types of cues: (1) Yes / no cues record whether a candidate shows a certain characteristic or not. (2) More / less cues are more complex as they also incorporate information about the relative value of the cue for the candidates that run against each other in a particular election. In general, the candidate who achieved a more favorable value on a cue was assigned a value of 1 and 0 otherwise. For more information on the coding see Appendix 1. Finally, the sum of cue values for each candidate in a particular election determined his PollyBio index score (PB)."

And what did that yield? Out of the 28 elections between 1900 and 2008, the candidate with the highest PB index score won 25 times (see below).

Source: Armstrong and Graefe (2009). "Predicting Elections from Biographical Information about Candidates"

My first thought was, "I'll bet they missed the close ones." Well, those are the types of elections most of the forecasting models have the hardest time predicting. But that wasn't necessarily the case here. The Armstrong and Graefe model missed 1948 (Truman), 1976 (Carter) and 1992 (Clinton) and on the former two had company from other noted forecasting models. The only notable miss was Clinton's election in 1992.

"PollyBio failed in predicting the correct winner for the three elections in 1948, 1976, and 1992, in each of which an incumbent president was running. A look at the data helps to explain the failure for these three elections. Gerald Ford in 1976 and George Bush in 1992, who were both wrongly predicted to win, had particularly strong biographies. For our set of ‘yes / no’ cues, which did not include relative measures between candidates (like height, intelligence, or attractiveness), Ford and Bush achieved the highest score of all 56 candidates in our sample (together with Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 and William McKinley in 1900). By comparison, Harry Truman, who PollyBio failed in predicting to win the 1948 election, scored particularly low on the same set of cues. Being the only U.S. president after 1897 who did not earn a college degree, Truman achieved the lowest score of all incumbents in the sample. Among all candidates, only three achieved a lower score."

What was the common theme? A switch in power from one party to the other? They are all Democrats -- Southern Democrats at that (Fine Missouri's a border state.). No, those weren't it. All three elections involved incumbents. The model seems to do better in open seat races than in those where incumbents were involved.

So why wait for election day in 2012? Start comparing the bios of the prospective Republican candidates against Obama now. Who stacks up best? (My guess is Romney or Gingrich.) Hey, it is a race that involves an incumbent.

Hat tip to Political Wire for the link.


Recent Posts:
The 2012 Presidential Candidates: Pawlenty and Petraeus

State of the Race: New Jersey (10/6/09)

Here's what things would have looked like in New Jersey had the Rasmussen poll been released tomorrow.

The 2012 Presidential Candidates: Pawlenty and Petraeus

Jonathan Bernstein beat me to this, but this is something that I have thought more and more about recently. Why are members of the press and the punditocracy going out of their way to pretend that Tim Pawlenty is not running for president? As Jonathan noted:

"No, actually, it [not seeking a third gubernatorial term, starting a PAC, etc.] does mean he's running for president. It doesn't mean he'll still be running by the time we get to the Ames straw poll, and doesn't mean he'll formally announce a candidacy or wind up contesting primaries and caucuses. For now, though, Pawlenty is running for president, and there's no point in observers keeping to the fictions that candidates must observe (because of political convention, but also because of campaign finance rules)."

Is there anyone out there who thinks Pawlenty is not running for 2012? He may not be running in 2012, but he's aiming for it.

It's funny, John Zaller (UCLA political scientist) was at UGA about 18 months ago for a lecture and discussed the underlying model from The Party Decides. As he and his co-authors developed the model, Mark Warner served as the ideal combination of appeals to the various wings (interests, elites) of the Democratic Party. And it certainly looked in 2005-2006 as if Warner was going to run. He had finished his time as governor in Virginia, he had established a PAC and ventured onto the speaking circuit. Of course, not even six months after that appearance before the Netroots, Warner was out. Was Warner running for 2008? Yes, but he didn't end up running in 2008.

And Pawlenty doesn't even have a Hillary Clinton-type looming as the assumed standard bearer for the party.

And Petraeus?

Well, earlier in the week, The New York Times raised the possibility of a general with a smaller voice in/with a new administration being motivated to run against that administration in 2012. I'll admit that is an interesting theory -- it has definitely been talked about -- but even if his role has been diminished on matters such as Afghanistan, wouldn't there have to be a fundamental shift in the public's focus from domestic to foreign policy issues for the general to be an effective candidate? If Afghanistan deteriorates to the point that it supersedes the economy as the main issue in 2012 (and I suppose it could), then maybe. But what kind of chops does Petraeus have on domestic issues or more importantly economic matters? Is it just me or am I missing something here? Now, he could be a solid candidate, but we know nothing about his stances on things on the home front.


Recent Posts:
State of the Race: New Jersey (10/6/09)

Here's what things would have looked like in New Jersey had the Rasmussen poll been released tomorrow.

State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/5/09)

State of the Race: New Jersey (10/6/09)

[Click to Enlarge]

It is always one thing to say you're gaining on your competition, but to actually get in a position to surpass him or her is another thing entirely. And while Jon Corzine hasn't exactly been gaining on Chris Christie in the polls so much as Christie has been sliding, the incumbent is now within striking distance. Of all the poll releases since (the completely arbitrary date of) September 21, all six have shown a race within four points. [And depending on the sample sizes, all are within the margin of error.] And in the Fairleigh Dickinson poll out today, Jon Corzine has his first poll lead since January. One could say it has been a roller coaster ride. It has; just not for Corzine, who in the two polls released today reached the high water mark or his polling support this entire year. Despite that, Corzine has been stuck for the better part of the year in the 37-38% range in most polls while Chris Christie has been the one to see a dramatic rise into the 50% range and a subsequent fall since.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Rasmussen	Oct. 5, 2009	+/- 4%	750 likely voters	44	47	6	3
Fairleigh Dickinson [pdf]	Sept. 28-Oct. 5, 2009	+/- 4%	667 likely voters	44	43	4	5

Before we look at the broader picture, we need to make a side note about the Fairleigh Dickinson poll and Chris Daggett*. The independent candidate received 4% in the poll, but in a split sample question that named either Daggett or another independent candidate, Gary Steele, directly (as opposed to having either candidate volunteered by the respondent in the full sample question), Daggett garnered 17% of the vote. Steele pulled in 12%. In other words, there appears to be some apprehension among likely voters concerning the two major party candidates. The reason that FHQ used the volunteered Daggett results over the split sample results was that the split sample size was so small for a New Jersey-wide poll. In the interest of transparency, though, the results for that question (Corzine 38, Christie 37, Daggett 17) yielded averages of Corzine 38.7%, Christie 45.8% and Daggett 7.9%. The gap, then, between the Corzine and Christie would be the same, albeit with both candidates a sliver under where they are in the graphic above.

So where does that leave this race? Things certainly are tightening, but FHQ's graduated weighted average continues to show a pretty good lead for Christie. It is still above seven points, but only barely so. The remarkable thing is that now it is Christie who is basically in the same position he was in back in June following his primary victory. Meanwhile, Corzine, who was stuck on the line between 37 and 38 all summer is the candidate who is gaining (both recently and relative to his comparable numbers in June). Christie may be ahead, then, but that margin continues to shrink, or will if subsequent polls continue to show these dead heats.

...and there is no indication yet that we won't continue to see that. That makes for an interesting last month to this particular race.

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*Also note that Daggett has now been added to both the header graphic and the trendline graphic immediately above.


Recent Posts:
Here's what things would have looked like in New Jersey had the Rasmussen poll been released tomorrow.

State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/5/09)

Wow! Who Knew Independents and Libertarians (Among Others) Were Non-Partisan?

Here's what things would have looked like in New Jersey had the Rasmussen poll been released tomorrow.

[Click to Enlarge]

An update with the Fairleigh Dickinson and Rasmussen poll results is on its way.


Recent Posts:
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Wow! Who Knew Independents and Libertarians (Among Others) Were Non-Partisan?

Rove on Pawlenty in 2012