Monthly Archives: October 2008

What to Expect From Tonight’s Debate

By now you should be familiar with my warnings about pundit-driven interpretations of presidential debates, so I’ll just repeat the highlights:

  1. Debates rarely produce significant changes in the support for either candidate because most people interpret the results through their partisan predispositions.  For example, CBS reports that over 90% of Republicans who watched the Vice Presidential debate thought Palin had won, while over 90% of Democratic viewers thought Biden had won!  Presumably they watched the same debate!
  2. The post-debates assessments via instant polls, media pundits, and focus groups must be viewed with a critical eye, particularly in the case of instant polls.  Pay attention to the partisan weighting of the survey sample; a group composed disproportionately of Democrats will give the Debate to the Democrat, while a Republican-dominated group will give it to the Republican. Similarly, “uncommitted” viewers are not the same as “independent” viewers – indeed, they may not even be “uncommitted”.  For example, the CBS knowledge survey of 500 “uncommitted” voters who watched the vice presidential debate actually consisted of viewers who were in fact supporting one of the two candidates, but who claimed that they were uncommitted because they might change their mind!  In fact, surveys indicate the once a voter is committed to a candidate, they rarely switch allegiance to the other candidate.
  3. Similarly, be wary of “online” polls which are heavily biased according to who logs onto their site. Thus the online Drudge poll reported that those who voted on its online poll overwhelmingly thought Palin had won the debate.  That result says more about Drudge’s audience than it says about the debate.
  4. Ignore the pre-debate spin, particularly the effort by both camps to lower expectations for their own candidate, and raise them for the opponent. Already, the Obama camp is claiming that the “Town Hall” format favors McCain.  I know of no empirical studies that support this assertion.

With this in mind, what should we expect tonight?  Keep in mind that the target audience is not the Washington-NY media axis, or the pundits on the cable shows. Instead, both campaigns are focusing on the dwindling number of undecided voters who are still open to persuasion.  At this stage in the race, that number is roughly 5-8% of the likely voters.  Moreover, they are even more focused on the persuadable voters in the key battleground states.  So what must the candidates do to win their vote?  Pundits suggests that McCain should go on the attack, perhaps by resurrecting the Rev. Wright stories and playing Obama’s “ties” to the former terrorist Bill Ayers.  In my view this is the wrong strategy.  Let the town hall audience raise this issue. McCain should instead attack Obama on the basis of his policies, focusing primarily on the costs of Obama’s health plan and tax proposals.  He needs to sow doubts on Obama’s ability to solve the current economic crisis and instead convince voters that McCain is the true economic reformer.

Obama, meanwhile, has the easier task. He simply needs to continue to tie McCain to Bush and the current economic crisis, and continue to portray himself as the outsider who will bring change to Washington.  Above all else, he must not do what his campaign manager said he will do: engage in a mudslinging duel with McCain.  If McCain – or an audience member – goes on the attack by raising the Ayers/Wright issue, Obama should not respond in kind by raising the Keating Five issue, for example.  Instead, he needs to stay calm and stay out of the gutter of personal attacks.

I’ll be live blogging, watching the NBC feed. I encourage you all to log on to my website

https://sites.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/ and join the fun.  Just scroll down to the comments, write your post, hit submit and you are part of the solution, not the problem. That’s a good thing.

See you in a few minutes…

History Says the Race is Over, But What Does Palin Say?

Is this race over?  The political scientists forecast models, of course, suggested it was over in August because the underlying fundamentals of this race – the economy and voters’ desire for change – favored the generic Democratic candidate. But these models are premised on the idea that the presidential candidates do not make major mistakes and that nothing happens that alters those fundamentals.  Given the context in which this race is unfolding, is there anything that McCain can do to alter the narrative and win this election?

History suggests the answer is no.  No presidential candidate in the modern era, with the possible exception of Harry Truman, has come back from a 6% or greater deficit in the polls with less than 30 days in the election to win. As of today, Obama leads in the RCP average of polls by 6%.  To be sure, some candidates have come close. In 1976, Gerald Ford was 11% behind Jimmy Carter as late as Sept. 27, and 6% points down as late as Oct. 11 (all data from the Gallup tracking polls). But he gradually closed the gap as doubts about Carter’s inexperience grew, and on election eve, Gallup had the race a statistical tie.  Carter actually won the popular vote 50-48%.  The Gore-Lieberman ticket was at least 9% behind the Bush-Cheney ticket as late as October 19, 2000 among likely voters in the Gallup polling, but managed to pull ahead to win the popular vote if not the actual election. However, the Gallup tracking poll in 2000 was unusually volatile, leading some polling experts to suspect that its weighting of likely voters was not particularly consistent. So it’s not clear how useful that example is when projecting the current race.

What this history suggests is that campaigns are far less consequential than the media make them out to be. In 2004, fully 85% of voters never considered voting for the opposing candidate, at all.  No campaign event – no ad, no debate – was going to persuade them to vote for the other guy.  Surveys today suggest a similar dynamic: 85% of voters already have made up their mind regarding how they will vote, and that number grows larger on a weekly basis as the undecideds dwindle.

So, can McCain do anything to make this race competitive?   Yes, I think he can, but it’s a very very long shot. In two words, his strategy must be: Sarah Palin. Contrary to what may have been suggested by the punditocracy over the last week regarding whether Palin ought to be dropped from the ticket, she actually remains McCain’s biggest (and perhaps only) campaign asset. That is, she is the only element in the McCain campaign that can push the financial news off the front page, if only temporarily.  More importantly, she provides the best hope for swinging portions of the key demographic group in this race into the McCain column.  That demographic group is women.

Consider the breakdown of the two candidates’ voting coalitions to date.  Among men, McCain has consistently held about a 5% lead, 49-44, over Obama in the Gallup poll data (all data as of Oct. 1).  But among women he is running behind by 12%. As in 2004, then, when Bush owed his victory largely to increased support over 2000 among women, if McCain is to win he must narrow that gender gap by bolstering his support among women.  Note that among women, McCain does better among particular subgroups.  He leads among married women, women over 55, women who lack a college education, and he is tied with Obama among low to middle-income women.  In short, he polls more strongly among those women who supported Hillary Clinton in states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia – all key battleground states that he must hold if he is to win this election.

He also is competitive among a second group of women: independents.  Democratic women support Obama, 85-9%, while Republican women back McCain, 89-7%.  But among independent women, the race is much tighter, with Obama up 45-41%.  Not only is the race closer among independent women, there is also a larger undecided pool of some 14% of independent women.  Independent women, then, remain the largest remaining pool of persuadable voters.

What does this suggest?  If McCain is to win, he needs to go after independent women while strengthening his support among the disaffected Clinton supporters.  That means parking Palin in the battleground states and letting her work the crowds, where she is most effective at developing rapport with precisely this group of voters.  At the same time, she needs to ignore the Washington-NY press corps who are salivating at the prospect of reprising the Couric interviews.  Rather than allowing them to dictate news coverage, she needs to avoid the national news filter and instead meet directly with voters in battleground states, with direct news coverage access granted primarily to local media outlets.

A first step in this process of reaching out to independent women took place in Thursday’s much-watched vice presidential debate.  The “winner” of that debate, I suggested, was the candidate who could move these undecideds into their column.  In my next post I’ll begin to parse this data.  Who actually won the vice presidential debate?

History is running in Obama’s favor.  Can McCain break with the past?  Obama left the election door slightly ajar by not picking Clinton as his vice president.  In my view it is doubtful that Palin can wedge it open enough to overcome the fundamentals driving this campaign.  But the polling data suggests she remains McCain’s best hope for doing so.

Good News for Obama: The Status Quo Remains

To those of you who avidly consume the daily barrage of media stories about this presidential campaign, it may seem that the race has been filled with ups and downs, with the narrative changing on an almost daily moment.  Did Obama really insinuate that Palin was the pig with lipstick?  Will McCain take the conservative columnist’s advice to drop Palin from the ticket after the Couric interview?  Each day, the Chuck Todds tell us which candidate had a good day, and which did not.  But from a political scientist’s perspective, most of this is simply random noise that is peripheral to the fundamentals driving this campaign. When we step back from the daily “trees” of the media coverage to look at the forest that is the overall campaign, what is remarkable (and not unexpected) is just how few surprises there have been and how remarkably stable public opinion is.  I can think of only two change points in the campaign public opinion dynamics since Sept. 1, the unofficial start of the general election campaign.  The first occurred when Obama failed to put Clinton on the ticket, and McCain responded with the Palin appointment. That gave his campaign enough of a short-term bump to pull ahead of Obama in the daily tracking polls, and to draw roughly even in the electoral vote calculations. I said at the time, however, that – assuming Obama did not make any more mistakes – the Palin impact would likely recede as the economy reasserted itself as the primary campaign issue.  I did not anticipate just how quickly that would happen, however, in the form of the credit crisis.  That single-handedly put Obama back on message, reminded voters what this campaign is about, and eliminated the Palin bump.  Today’s unemployment figures merely serve to drive this point home.

The credit crisis, then, is the second big event of this campaign season. How big was this second event, in terms of its impact on the polls?  It was bigger than the Palin bump. On Sept. 8, at the height of the Palin-induced “surge”, McCain led Obama in the RCP tracking poll (remember my caveats about that poll) by about 3%, 48 to 45.  That tracking poll reflected surveys done in the period Sept. 5-7. On Sept. 7, Uncle Sam announced that they would take over the troubled mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and from that point on McCain’s lead began a slow downward trend that continues to this day. On Sept. 12, reports surfaced that insurance giant AIG was in trouble. McCain’s polling lead dropped to 2.3%. On Sept. 15, Lehman Brothers went belly up, followed shortly after by the government infusion of funds to rescue AIG. That day the Dow experienced its sharpest one-day drop since Sept. 11, 2001. Two days later, (remember the lag in the polls) McCain and Obama were tied in the polls. On Sept. 18, the Federal Reserve began pumping money into the financial system in a bid to avert a credit crunch and the following day the Bush administration announced a plan to purchase millions of dollars worth of bad mortgages.  By Sept. 25, when McCain announced plans to suspend his campaign to return to Washington, he was trailing in the RCP average by 3%, 47.8 to 44.5.  Although it appeared to me that he might have pulled a second “Palin” had he come out against the initial bailout plan which subsequently was rejected by the House, McCain did not take my advice.  Today, almost a month after his Palin moment, McCain trails Obama in the tracking polls by almost 6%, 49.1-43.5.  More importantly, he has lost ground among the undecided voters in several key battleground states.  (I will look at the state of the Electoral College more closely in a later post.)

What we see here is a stark reminder that most of the events cited as important by the pundits – including the Couric interview, comments of a conservative regarding Palin getting out of the race, or the two debates, are primarily noise that do little to shape the dynamics of the campaign.  Campaigns struggle to fashion the raw material that is reality into an effective campaign message, but there are real limits to their ability to do so.  And usually their efforts negate one another. I’ve seen only two fundamental mistakes in this race so far. The first was Obama’s decision to put Biden, not Clinton, on the ticket. McCain capitalized on that with the Palin pick. The second was McCain’s failure to use the credit crunch to his advantage to seize the high ground on the economy.  Obama did not really have to do much to capitalize on McCain’s mistake – he merely had to let the news coverage remind voters that the economy is a mess.

At the risk of repetition, this is why political scientists’ forecast models that are issued at the start of September, or earlier, can often accurately predict the outcome of the presidential race. In this election, the fundamentals – primarily the economy – favor the generic Democrat over the generic Republican candidate.  And neither actual candidate has done anything to change those fundamentals. The final proof, of course, will be whether the forecast models prove accurate.  Right now they are looking pretty darn good.

History suggests that with 30+ days left in a presidential campaign, the number of undecideds begin to dwindle, reducing the opportunity for a change in the campaign narrative.  Last night’s debate will likely give McCain a small boost among the disaffected Clinton crowd, particularly women.  But it is doubtful that it will push the financial news off the front pages for very long.  I will be checking the polling data on women and undecideds in the key battleground states to see whether there is a Palin effect that the NY-Washington media elite is missing. But I don’t expect to find one.

Live Blogging the Debate

Ok, time to place some bets:

1. Which network is the first to comment on Palin’s clothes?

2. Will the viewing audience outnumber the audience for the first presidential debate?

3.  Will anyone mention the Ifill controversy?

4. Will there be an equivalent of the “You’re no Jack kennedy” moment?

And they start:  She asks if she can call him “Joe” – very wisely, he calls her “Governor” at the outset.

9:08 The first soccer Mom reference three sentences in..there’s the target audience!

9:12  And she turns it back on Obama.  And the first jab at Biden at being part of the past….

9:13 First reference to hockey Moms and Joe six-pack.  Again, she’s on target with the target audience..

9:15 Biden is staying away from Palin, and attacking McCain – also very smart.

9:18 – She’s clearly going to get her points across, regardless of the question – again, smart strategy.

9:20 – When Palin wants to make a point – she looks in camera, not at Biden.

9:25 – They are hitting the major issues – give Ifill credit: taxes, and health care.

9:26 – Biden – slips in the “bridge to nowhere” – nicely done!

9:27 – Nice question from Ifill – what have you overpromised?

9:29 – When Palin is ready to pounce – she turns right to the camera.  Again, she simply moves the topic to  where she can score – this is a nice riff on having to undo Obama’s vote.

9:30  Biden does not want to get bogged down into explaining Senate votes here….

9:32 “It gets complicated”?  You never want to include that in an answer!

9:33 – “EAst coast politicians”!

9:34 – Palin must have been a grad student – she just answers the question she wants to be asked.

9:35 Climate change – not her best moment of the night…and Biden sees an opening.

9:37 Drill baby drill!

9:37  Uh oh – Biden alert!  He’s losing Pennsylvania!  Time to shut up – will Palin hang him out to dry here?

And she nails him!  There’s the coal rope line reference… she’s on her game so far…  And Biden is on the defensive….

9:40.  Is anyone else watching the CNN focus group in Ohio along with Brad?  How are they reacting?

ON to the surge – should be a winner for Palin, but this is Biden’s area.

9:45 – Palin’s use of Biden’s words against Obama was predictable but still effective.

9:50 – Finally, Biden ties McCain back to Bush.  Palin better be ready for this, because Obama used it effectively in the first debate.  …. too bad they moved on…

9:50 Doesn’t anyone know who is in the Ohio focus group – are they described as “uncommitted”, or “independent”?

9:51: Another set piece speech by Palin.  How are these playing?

OK, several of you said the Ohio voters are “uncommitted” – not necessarily “independent”.  As I noted at the outset, they are not the same!  Palins needs to win the independents…

9:55 Biden is very careful not to attack Palin – he attacks “John”, not “Governor Palin”…

9:56 Pssst… that country is Syria Joe!

9:58 – She’s painting broad themes, instead of getting bogged down in details.  And Biden is calling her on it. Nice retort by Biden – this may be the media sound bite that gets the play.. let’s see how she responds…

10:00 – Biden – wide open response here.  Let’s see if Palin can respond – what she should say is we’ve heard generals say the surge wouldn’t work in Iraq either (see Woodward!).  It’s a softball, but will she hit it?

10:04 She missed the easy response here.  So they will go around in circles…

10:07 Uh oh – I voted for Iraq before i voted against it….as one of you pointed out, this is the problem with being a sitting Senator – you have lots of votes to defend..

10:08 And Palin nails it!  Nicely done Governor… (And notice the reference to “you guys” – no accident!)

This is an interesting question – when to intervene?  I think Biden may be going too detailed here – what do you think?  How’s this playing?

The Palin wink finally appears!

Just how big is the Wasilia main street anyway?

10:13 – Hey Joe knows Main St. as well!  He shops at Walmart!  (He won’t be able to shop in Middlebury…)

10:24 Good question from the Fox/Singleton post – how’s the Palin perkiness playing in America’s heartland?

A shoutout?  She’s clearly learned from the Couric disaster….forget the SAT test and let Palin be Palin..

10:25 – The Cheney question doesn’t seem particularly relevant here…

STate motto for Alaska:  “A big state”

Palin also loves apple pie!  (but it’s an effective response).

Carlisle – most of her viewing audience doesn’t know who Winthrop is – they associate that phrase with Reagan….

“not got to allow”?

10:26 – Clearly Biden will not cede the change issue to McCain.

!0:27- I wondered when they would get to the Court.  Nice move by Biden to slip this in..

Palin doesn’t compromise her principles.  Nice touch.

Did you know Palin has a diverse family?  I thought so….

Closing statement time: Palin needs to read the Dickinson memo here.

Well, she didn’t get the memo… but you can’t go wrong fighting for freedom I guess.

OK, I’m going to refrain from the instant analysis – what did you think? Closing remarks are yours…

Dueling families….. but where’s the baby?

And Mom gets the baby!  Nicely done!

OK – a few thoughts:

First, Biden miscalculated in not attacking her. He let her off too easy. And this is the gender problem at work that I talked about in class.

Second, remember the complaint that McCain only looked at the camera?  Same with Palin – and it worked.  Her audience was in t.v. land.

Third, Palin clearly understands how to work a camera.

Fourth – Palin’s performance almost certainly ended the media hype questioning her place on the ticket.  She clearly demonstrated what was apparent to people who looked beyond the Couric interview and watched her these past weeks on the stump – she has charisma and is a definite asset to McCain.  This debate once again reminds viewers just how ill informed the pundits can be.

Fifth – Will this change the dynamic of the campaign?  I think the Republicans get a slight bump up in this, but the key issue is: how did it play among independents and women?  I think it will play well.  She has stopped the downslide created by the financial crisis – but for how long?  If I’m McCain I get Palin out there as much as possible – she is new, and she pushes the financial news off the front page.  When it comes to campaigning (if not set piece interviews), Biden doesn’t hurt Obama – Palin helps McCain.

It will be interesting how this plays out in the target audience: But McCain has some new life…

Remember my cautions about snap polls – look at the internals.

Things to look for tomorrow:

1. How many watched this debate?

2. How does the media spin it – what’s the sound bite?

3. How long will it push the financial issues off the front page (not long I think)…

4. Biden did as well as could be expected, but as I suggested at the outset, there just wasn’t much upside for him. This was all about Palin.

5. Most importantly, what impact will this have on women and the independents?

Great participation tonight, and excellent comments – much appreciated!  I’ll be on early tomorrow with the overnight reactions – remember my cautions….

Three Things to Keep in Mind Tonight

Some last minute thoughts before live blogging:

1. Instant polls.  Most of the networks will have their bevy of “uncommitted” voters wired up to give instant feedback on the debate.  Keep in mind the difference between “uncommitted” and “independent” voters – as we discussed in section today, they are not the same.  We know that “Uncommitted” voters who identify with a party are, in the end, likely to support that party’s presidential candidate, and evaluate their debate performance more positively.  They are not “truly” independent voters.  It is the independent voters that Palin must reach tonight if this debate is to change the underlying dynamics of this race.

2.  In a similar vein, be wary of media attempts to measure who “won” the debate using overnight polls of debate viewers, particularly if the polling firm does not provide a breakdown of the partisan composition of the viewing audience.  Recall that the CNN overnight poll that initially suggested Obama won the first debate oversampled Democrats.  Of the debate-watchers questioned in this poll, 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 30 percent as independents. As of the end of August, however, the actual partisan breakdown in the population as a whole was about 38% Democrats, 33% Republicans, and 28% independents. So, Republicans were undersampled by about 6%, Democrats oversampled by about 3% and independents oversampled by about 2%.  It’s not surprising, then, that the CNN poll of viewers judged Obama the “winner” by 13%, 51-38 in the poll.  To their credit, CNN acknowledged the sample bias and in their reporting were clear to state that, given the lopsided sampling, the debate was likely a draw. Not every network is so transparent with the internals of their polling, however.

3. Finally, the key measure when assessing the impact of the debate is not who “won”, but whether any voters’ minds were changed, and/or whether the truly independent voters were persuaded to back a certain candidate.  Very few pollsters bother to ask this question.

Ok, let the fun begin!