Category Archives: More

*With apologies to the Boston Herald.

I’m going to need some time to analyze the data from last night’s election, but I wanted to make four quick points and show some preliminary analysis from Charles Franklin, just to whet your appetite.  But first, for those of you who had to dash off to work and didn’t catch the final results,  Coakley closed the gap a little as some of the big urban areas finally began reporting.  The final tally, pending final certification, looks to be about 52-47, exactly where the preelection polls had it.    In looking at the total votes and their distribution statewide, two things are clear (and Franklin has a good post on this here):  Brown basically recreated the McCain coalition from 2008, but actually drew 105% of McCain’s presidential vote in the state. That’s right. In a special election Brown won more votes than McCain did here in the presidential election.  Coakley, in contrast, drew only about 56% of Obama’s supporters.  When you look at the distribution of votes, however, it almost exactly duplicated the location of support for Obama and McCain in 2008.  So there wasn’t a wholesale redrawing of voter coalitions that did it for Brown so much so that his supporters were far more energized.  This chart by Franklin plots Brown’s vote as a percentage of McCain’s (x-axis) and Coakley’s as a percentage of Obama (y-axis).  Coakley doesn’t come anywhere near Obama’s total in any city or town, while Brown exceeds McCain’s pretty much everywhere.

(The way to read the chart is to find the 100 percent marker on the relevant axis – bottom axis for comparing Brown to McCain, left-hand side axis for comparing Coakley to Obama.  If the red dot is to the right of that 100 mark on the bottom, Brown beat McCain in that town.  If the blue dot is above that 100 mark on the side axis, Coakley beat Obama.   Clearly she didn’t even come close – onoly one blue dots is even above 80%, never mind 100%).

And now for the repercussions:

1. To their credit the major media outlets are hedging their bets somewhat, but the dominant analytic frame seems to be that, as the NY Times put it, “It is hard not to view that as a repudiation of the way Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have run things.”   I don’t think this is true.

2. The Long Knives Are Out.  Much as predicted yesterday, Obama’s aides are running away from the Coakley campaign and results as fast as they can.  Inevitably some critics will suggest that Obama never should have campaigned on her behalf, since it is now easier to make the case that this vote is a repudiation of him and his policies.  I don’t think this is true.

3. Everyone is trying to read the tea leaves regarding 2010 – what does this portend for the midterms?  To answer this, we have to know what drove the vote in Massachusetts, and see whether those conditions exist nationwide.  I’ll try to address this.

4. What will happen with health care?  It is remarkable how little impact the results from last night are having on advocates on both sides of the issue: supporters of the current Senate bill are saying “push it through now” and opponents, on both the Left and the Right, are saying, “See?  I told you passage is a mistake!”   I think saner heads will prevail and the rush to pass the current Senate bill will slow.

A final point.  Today is Obama’s anniversary: one year in power.  Think back to all those 100-day meditations trying to assess the state of his presidency.  Seems pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it, that the media actually persists in trying to come to some assessment after he’s been in office three months.   Yes it does.

Predictably, much of this conversation is taking place without much data to support it.  I need to take some time to address lingering items from my day job (this race has been a fulltime occupation for close to a week now) but if I can, I’ll try to address all four issues in subsequent posts – with at least some data to support my argument!   So stop by again later today and the days to come.  And if you were one of those who hit on this site for the first time last night and you want regular email notifications regarding when I post, let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

Once again, thanks for all the comments and participation last night.  Really a historic night.

Oh, and the t-shirt contest will remain open for another day.

More in a bit.

On this past election night, I was pleasantly surprised to read that Doug Hoffman, the conservative candidate vying to win the special election in New York’s 23^rd congressional district, had quickly and graciously conceded the race when results seem to indicate that he would lose to the Democrat Bill Owens.   Although the race was close, and only 93% or so of the vote was in at the time, Hoffman trailed by some 5,335 votes.  Moreover, it appeared he had underperformed in districts, such as Oswego county, where he hoped to roll up a big margin. Evidently this convinced him to concede the race even though he was within 4% of Owens with several thousand votes yet to be counted.

By not contesting the results, Hoffman allowed Nancy Pelosi to swear Owens into office in time to vote in favor of the Democratic health care plan – a not insignificant event since the vote was relatively close in the House, with the legislation passing by a scant five votes.  Owens took office even though the election results had not yet been certified and with most of the absentee ballots, of which some 10,000 had been mailed out, yet to be counted.

Now, however, it appears (courtesy of Pollster.com) that Hoffman’s concession may have been premature.  It turns out that in the flurry of recording incoming results, the vote totals coming in from some of the precincts were incorrectly reported.  After reexamining the totals, election counters discovered a 1,200 vote error in Hoffman’s favor in Oswego County and smaller errors in other precincts.  Owens’ lead has now dropped, with all precincts reporting, to 3,176, according to a Watertown Daily Times article (link courtesy of Pollster.com).  However, there are still the bulk of the absentee ballots to be counted.  Under New York law, military and overseas ballots received by November 16^th (but postmarked by Nov. 2) are eligible to be counted. (Standard absentee ballots had to be returned by Nov. 8 if I understand the election law correctly).  Interestingly, most of these absentee ballots were likely filled out before Republican Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the race and told her supporters to vote for Owens.  So most experts believe the absentee ballots will favor Hoffman.  However, they don’t think that will be enough to swing the race his way, since the best estimate is that there are “at least 5,400 absentee ballots” left to be counted, a process that begins Tuesday.  That makes it appear almost impossible for Hoffman to make up a 3,176 vote deficit, given the breakdown of the vote so far.  He would have to vastly outperform his results to date to win.

Here are the most up-to-date unofficial results from the state board of elections, as reported in the Watertown Daily Times.

That’s a hefty deficit in the context of the remaining absentee ballots. But Hoffman may not have to beat Owens when all the votes are in.  Instead, all he needs to do is to come close enough to justify a recount, which – given the heightened national interest in the election – would undoubtedly lead both national parties to bring in the big guns (not to mention lawyers and money) to engage in still another protracted recount.  Remember, this race took on symbolic significance in large part because the media viewed it as a referendum on Obama as well as an indication of the relative power of conservative versus moderate elements in the Republican party.  The Vice President visited the district, and both parties poured money into the race, with the Republican contributions being split between Hoffman and Scozzafava.

But does the race really matter beyond the media hype?  Isn’t this just one seat out of 435?  Consider this: the House presumably has at least one more significant vote on health care coming up, when it debates the final legislation that will come out of the House-Senate conference.  It is not inconceivable that this conference bill will be even more controversial – as would be the case if still contained the antiabortion language and was shorn of the public option. Democrats may see their left wing lining up with Republicans in opposition, in which case every single vote will matter.  If Owens is engaged in a lengthy recount, his election may be invalidated, pending official certification by the New York election officials, costing the Democrats a House vote.  Or – and this is more of a long shot – Hoffman may be declared the winner.  In the event of a close House vote, this could be the difference.

Unlikely?  Yes.  Impossible?  No.

Cue Warren Zevon.

Addendum (2:37 pm)  In response to a couple of student emails: No, I don’t know whether, once having been sworn in,  a Representative’s appointment can be “rescinded” during a recount, but before the results are certified. I suspect not, although it certainly raises some sticky ethical issues.  Nor do I know under what circumstances a recount is triggered under New York state law.  I will try to get answers to both very good questions and post them here, but if any of you are election experts, please post what you know in the comments section…

An advantage that political science has over journalism is the ability to revisit an issue as new data comes in.  Under the relentless pressure of daily deadlines, journalists rarely if ever have an opportunity to come back to a story unless circumstances are such that it becomes newsworthy again. Political scientists, in contrast, can revisit an issue endlessly until they come to some common understanding regarding its main features.

A case in point is the recent off-year elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia.  For the most part, journalists are already moving on as new stories – the health care vote, the Ft. Hood attacks – take the headlines.  But political scientists are still crunching the data, trying to determine the causes and significance of the Republicans victories. Toward that end, Charles Franklin published a column yesterday suggesting that rather than diminished turnout, what primarily drove the election results was a shift in voter preferences away from supporting Democrats and toward supporting Republican candidates.

As Franklin wrote, “The shifts in outcomes between the 2008 presidential and 2009 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia were driven far more by shifts in voting preferences among groups than by changes in turnout across those groups. Only age groups show consistently substantial changes in relative share of the electorate. Vote preference, in comparison, shows quite large shifts between election years. While one narrative of the 2009 election was changing turnout motivation, this turns out to be substantially false. Instead, changes in candidate preference drove the Republican wins in both New Jersey and Virginia.”

In my posts leading up to and after the election, I made a slightly different claim: without dismissing the impact of changing preferences, I argued that the results were largely due to lower turnout, particularly among the president’s party supporters, that is characteristic of these off year elections in both states going back almost 40 years.  Franklin, however, downplays more than I the impact of lower turnout for a very simple reason:  exit polls in both states indicate the proportion of particular groups who voted last Tuesday did not differ enough from their proportions in the 2008 presidential elections in both states to explain the different results.  Using exit polls from both elections, Franklin looks at nine different ways to categorize voters, including partisan affiliation, race, gender, and age.  His results are captured in this chart.

Note the arrows – the longer the arrow, the bigger the shift in that group’s preferences from 2008 to 2009. (A purple color indicates that the group as a whole shifted support from one party to the other.) Although the details are hard to see, what it shows in a nutshell is a significant shift in voting preferences away from the Democratic candidate in key voting blocs, including 18-29 year olds, those without a college degree, independents, rural voters and males.  The most significant shift, however, is among Independents. In Virginia, 49% of independents supported Obama in 2008, but that dropped to 33% who voted Democrat in the gubernatorial election.  In contrast, the preferences of neither Republican nor Democrat partisans shifted as much across the two elections.  The story is similar in New Jersey, as the following table indicates.

Here 51% of independents supported Obama in 2008, but only 30% supported Corzine (the Democratic candidate) in 2009.  Support among Democrats for the two candidates in 2008 and 2009, in contrast, didn’t change as much, while “Republicans came home to their party a bit, from a 14 percent defection rate for Obama to just 8 percent defection to Corzine.” And, as in Virginia, Franklin found “substantial movement” in voter preference among other key groups, including 30-44 year olds, moderates, whites, Hispanics and males.

How do I respond to Franklin’s argument?  He is a first rate scholar who has presented an interesting (and provocative) argument. In the end I stand by my initial claim: that the results reflect a combination of lower turnout and a change in voter preferences linked to local issues and candidates in both states, rather than any referendum on Obama. As Franklin acknowledges, turnout in the two gubernatorial races decreased by almost half from what it was in 2008.  As the following two tables show (source here), this is not unusual; turnout is always lower in the off-year elections than it is in presidential years in both states.

Franklin argues, however, that the lower turnout is not the primary explanation for the shift in voter preference from Democrat to Republican in 2008 to 2009.  But I think it explains some of it. Note that exit polls show that there is a decline in the share of the electorate who are Democrats, and an increase in the proportion who are Republican. Moreover, the exit poll data show that there is a shift among the various age groups as well. In Virginia, the 18-29 year olds dropped 11 points, from 21 to 10 percent of the electorate, from 2008 to 2009.  Similarly, the 30-44 age group also declined, from 30 to 24 percent.  In contrast, the proportion of 45-64 year olds and those aged 65 and up increased. A similar shift by age occurs in New Jersey, with 18-29 and 30-44 year olds showing a decline as a proportion of the electorate, while those aged 45 and above took an increasing share in 2009 over 2008.  So at least some of the results reflect a shift in the voter pool.  So I remain convinced that different levels of turnout within key subgroups explain some of the shift.

Franklin suggests, however, that these shifts are not the biggest factor in the different results from 2008 to 2009. Instead, he notes that in both states there was a significant shift in support, from Democratic to Republican, among Independents.  In thinking about his argument, I do worry about the “squishiness” of the independent category.  Because the relative proportion of the electorate who calls themselves “independent” did not change much from 2008 to 2009, but their support for Democrats declined significantly, Franklin argues that preference changes primarily drives the results. But we know from other studies that independents include a substantial number of “leaners” who typically prefer one party to the other. My worry is that the depressed turnout in 2009 reflects the absence of a substantial number of “leaners” who are predisposed to vote Democratic.  That is, the pool of independents is weighted more heavily to Republican leaners in 2009 compared to 2008.

Nonetheless, in the end I don’t necessarily disagree with Franklin’s argument that a shift in voter preferences explains a good deal of the decline in support of Democrats across the two elections.   Indeed, I argued as much in my earlier posts – but I suggested the shift in preferences was not because of changing opinions toward Obama, but because local issues overrode national concerns in these off-year elections. And in fairness to Franklin, nowhere does he suggest that the shift in preferences reflects changing attitudes toward Obama – he is only suggesting that voters, particularly independents, were less likely to vote Democrat in 2009 than they were in 2008.  That shift in preferences might be entirely due to local factors, including issues and the candidates on the ballot.

In short, I remained convinced, in the absence of additional evidence, that the two off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia cannot be viewed as a referendum on Obama or his policies.  I don’t, however, disagree with Franklin’s argument that the results reflect both turnout and a change in voter preferences, although we might disagree on the relative weight to place on both factors.

I hope this gives you a better sense of how political science works.  Believe it or not, we do try to – or at least I try to – base our arguments on the available evidence, rather than on our own political predispositions. When additional data comes out that suggests I am wrong, I will be the first to post it. I hope that’s why you come to this blog.

In my last couple of posts I explored the degree to which the national news media can be considered biased. I argued that if bias exists, it is not likely a function of journalists’ own political ideology, which admittedly tends for most to lean left, but instead reflects a “structural” bias rooted in the economics of the news business, particularly the need to maintain an audience and to generate stories within a rapidly accelerating and increasingly competitive news cycle. Today I want to explore an example of that structural bias in action, by focusing on the coverage of three elections: governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia, and the special congressional election in New York’s 23rd district, all to be held this coming Tuesday.  The dominant news narrative suggests that the outcome of these elections ought to be interpreted as a referendum on the Obama administration.  Consider David Broder’s take, which captures the prevailing narrative quite well: “The first key votes of the Obama era take place this week, not on the floor of the House or Senate, where health-care legislation still languishes, but in Virginia, New Jersey and northern New York state, where President Obama’s endorsements of threatened Democratic candidates will test his political clout a year after his own election.”  Or Michael Barone’s here: “In other words, the 2009 contests are a reasonably fair test of the strength and durability of the Democratic majority that Obama and his ticket-mates assembled in 2008, a majority that was only made possible by gains in hitherto Republican territory.”

This narrative serves journalists well, because it allows them to tie three otherwise disparate events into a unified story that provides an easy–to-assess gauge of Obama’s political clout.  Moreover, these races, according to this narrative, may provide early signs regarding the likely outcome of the 2010 midterm elections, as this story suggests:

“If Republicans seize the governors’ mansions in both states, the embarrassment will be acute. That is just what happened in both New Jersey and Virginia back in 1993 before the Republicans seized control of the US Congress the following year, dealing a crippling blow to the newly minted Democratic president of the time, Bill Clinton.”  So, according to the prevailing narrative,  the results are significant on several levels – as both an indicator of Obama’s clout and an early signal regarding the 2010 midterm elections.  Obama’s supporters, like E.J. Dionne, fearing Republican victories in all three races, are already trying to craft an explanation that fits within this broader narrative – namely, that Democrats who lose did so because they didn’t tie themselves closely enough to Obama (see story here).

On the other hand, the White House is already distancing itself from Tuesday’s anticipated results for fear that, in the event of a potential Republican sweep, the prevailing media narrative will be that Obama’s political clout has weakened. At the same time, however, Obama is making last minute visits to both Virginia and New Jersey in an effort to prevent that occurrence.

There is only one problem with this dominant narrative: it is almost certainly wrong.  Rather than a referendum on Obama’s political clout, these three races will be largely decided by factors that have nothing to do with Obama or his policies – although they will, in the case of the two governor’s races, have something to do with the presidency.

Consider the upstate New York congressional race first. In New York, the 23^rd congressional district has been represented by a Republican dating back at least to 1993 (as far back as I’ve looked) and no Democrat has received as much as 40% of the popular vote in that time. Even in 2006, the year of the Democratic surge in the House, incumbent Republican John McHugh crushed his Democratic opponent in the 23^rd district by more than 30%. Polls suggest that the current Democrat candidate, Bill Owens, is not going to top the 40% mark either, and that his only hope for victory is that Republican voters split their votes between conservative candidate Doug Hoffman and Republican Dede Scozzafavo, who in the last day pulled out of the race precisely to prevent that from happening.  Polls suggest there has been a last minute surge to Hoffman, as Republicans coalesce behind his candidacy.  In short, as those of you live across Lake Champlain can attest, this is Republican territory and has been for far longer than Obama has been president.  He can’t be blamed for Owens’s defeat. Similarly, if Owens were to win, it would have little to do with Obama and everything to do with the split vote among Republicans.   Indeed, Hoffman’s advertising, which I get to see from across the Lake, has been trying to tie Owens to Nancy Pelosi – not to Obama!  Moreover, should Owens win he would almost certainly be defeated in two years by a Republican candidate.

What about the two governors’ races – can’t they be reasonably viewed as a referendum on Obama and his policies?  Only tangentially, and not for the reasons suggested by the dominant news narrative. Both elections will likely turn on whether the depth of the anti-incumbent sentiment fueled by job loss and the economic downturn can offset demographic trends that have favored Democrats in recent years.  In New Jersey, the incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine has lost popularity after a divisive budget battle with the state legislature against the backdrop of the economic slump and charges of corruption and a crumbling road system. But what about Virginia?  Here there is no incumbent in the race, since the current Governor Tim Kaine, a Democrat, is prevented by state term limits from running again. That leaves an open race between Democrat Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell – surely this can be viewed as a referendum on Obama, particularly in a state that is trending Democratic and which he won in the 2008 election?

I think not. To understand my reasoning, note the following pattern: since 1977, the party that won the White House the year before has lost the Virginia governor’s race every time, regardless of the president’s party. (Virginia began its off year elections in 1857, New Jersey began its in 1847.) A year ago, Obama won the presidency, so if the pattern holds, the Republican candidate, McDonnell, ought to win election as Virginia’s next governor.  And, if polls are an accurate barometer, he is poised to win handily. If so, this would mean this pattern has held for nine straight gubernatorial elections. In political science, that’s as close to a “law” explaining a political phenomenon that one is going to find!  But what’s the basis of this pattern?  It primarily reflects structural dynamics derived from the different levels of voter turnout in presidential versus gubernatorial election years. Take a look at the following chart (source here):

Note that in presidential years, turnout is much higher than during the off-year elections. The decline in turnout in the governor’s race, I argue, occurs disproportionately among those voters who supported the winning presidential candidate during the presidential election.  It follows, then, that the opposing party candidate benefits from the lower turnout in the governor’s race the following year.  And that, I believe, is why McDonnell is likely to win on Tuesday: the decline in turnout from the previous year is likely to be greater among Democrats than Republicans.

If McDonnell wins in Virginia, then, it ought not to be seen as an indication that Obama’s political clout has lessened (or that Deeds failed to use Obama effectively). To believe that we need to believe that every president has suffered a similar loss in clout dating back to Carter in 1976.  A simpler explanation for the pattern is that turnout invariably favors the candidate of the out party – regardless of who the president might be.  This may not make for a compelling news story – it tells us nothing about Obama’s “clout”, or about what’s likely to happen in 2010.  But for a political scientist, it’s the story that matters.  (As further evidence that the Virginia and New Jersey results don’t tell us much about midterm results, note that both states elected Democrats in 2001 – and Republicans went on to gain seats in the 2002 congressional midterm elections)

Come Tuesday, then, when the news reports begin writing the final paragraph to the prevailing narrative that sees these elections as a referendum on Obama, you will know better.  It’s all about the fundamentals.

Addendum (7:40 pm): the New York Times is reporting that, in a surprise twist, Republican candidate  Dede Scozzafava is endorsing her Democratic opponent Bill Owens in New York’s 23d district race.   I have absolutely no idea what impact this endorsement will have on the race, but it does provide further evidence supporting Republican claims that Scozzafava’s views were out of step with Republican voters in the district.