Where did Obama gain the most relevant to Kerry four years ago? I've seen dozens of theories floating about. but no systematic analysis. Usually, the theories floated are connected to the organization of the person doing the floating. For example, a member of a youth vote coalition will attribute Obama's victory to young voters, a spokesperson for a Lainto coalition will say it was Latino voters, a spokesperson for a women's organization will say it was single women, etc.
In order to try and provide more than just speculation and organizational trumpeting, in the extended entry I provide a table that shows Obama's shift from 2004 across every major demographic. Check it out.
When I tell people how well Obama is doing in the polls, here are three of the most common responses I receive:
"Yeah, but Kerry was winning at the end of the campaign, too."
"Yeah, but Kerry was way ahead among early voters, too."
"Yeah, but Republicans always do better in the final results than in the final polls." (GOTV and / or machine fraud are often cited as reasons for this one.)
All of these responses irritate me, both because they are all demonstrably false and because they are often accompanied by excess worrying. In the extended entry, I attempt to wipe away this worrying by actually showing how all three of those myths are false.
In terms of polling analysis, I feel as though I have morphed into one of the bi-partisan pundit concern trolls that dominate the big media commentariat whenever Democrats have gained the upper hand in our political discourse (calls for bipartisanship were far less common, of course, during the Republican trifecta). Pretty much no matter what the polling situation is, I stick to my constant refrain "the truth is in between."
Well, I am about to start that refrain again, this time when it comes to the dueling likely voter models floating around the polling universe. Nowhere is the discrepancy between likely voter models more pronounced than in the Gallup tracking poll, which publishes two separate likely voter models every day. One likely voter model, the "traditional" model, includes questions about past voting behavior and assumes 60% turnout of the voting age population. The other, "expanded" model does not ask about past voting behavior, and makes no assumptions about national turnout.
Most Democratic-leaning election websites have decided to use the "expanded" model as the daily Gallup tracking poll number, rather than the "traditional" model. This is the case at TPM, Pollster.com, and fivethirtyeight and, it would appear, among most of the commenters I read on Open Left. I haven't taken sides in this argument before, but I actually think it is a mistake to use only the "expanded" likely voter model and discard the traditional one entirely. As I always say, the truth is in between.
There is no question that the tracking polls have tightened compared to where they were from October 21st through October 27th (though not from where they were from October 15th through October 20th). However, I just did the 2:00 p.m. update to the Presidential Forecast, and state polling has pushed Obama out to his most secure lead of the entire campaign. And I added a lot of polls:
Five new Pennsylvania polls, four new Ohio polls, two new Florida polls, plus one new poll each from Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin added. Obama drops slightly in Florida, holds steady in Ohio, and improves everywhere else.
Obama's state by state situation is improving, even as the Pollster.com national tracker has dropped from Obama +8.8% on Saturday (his all-time peak) to Obama +5.8% today. However, according to my forecast, Obama now reaches 273 electoral votes in states where he leads by 8.3% or more, and hits 311 electoral in states where he leads by 6.5% or more. As I will discuss later in the day, I'm not alone in showing this vast Obama statewide lead, either. No doubt, on the surface it appears difficult to reconcile the tracking polls over the last couple of days with the state polling released over the same time period.
A partial explanation comes from the 2004 election, which Kerry lost nationally by 2.5%. Given 2004 results in the three most heavily polled swing states, Florida (Bush +5.0%), Ohio (Bush +2.1%) and Pennsylvania (Kerry +2.5%), and given an 8.3% national swing, those states are almost exactly where they should be right now. In my forecast, I have Obama +3.3% in Florida, which is 0.0% away from the expected result. In Ohio, I have Obama at +6.5%, only 0.3% away from the expected result. In Pennsylvania, I have Obama at +11.2%, only 0.4% away from the expected result. So, a partial answer is that there is no discrepancy between state polls and national polls, at least in the largest swing states. Earlier state and national polling diverged from one another in these states, but current state and national polling does not. This explanation also works for Wisconsin, where Obama is within 0.2% of his expected result given the national swing from 2004, and Missouri, where he is within 0.8%.
Still, that leaves a bunch of state polling in conflict with national polls. This week's polls from Colorado, Iowa, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina are all 2-4% more favorable to Obama than a simple 8.3% swing from 2004 can explain. In these cases, it can probably be chalked to a combination of several factors, including polling error, changing demographics, and improved Democratic campaign organization in these states. While 2-4% is a bit of a shift, it is not so large that a combination of such factors fail to provide a complete explanation.
This leaves Indiana, Montana, North Dakota and Virginia, where Obama is running between 7% and 12% of where he should be. However, Obama is equally under-performing relative to 2004 in a different handful of states, including Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Rather than a broad difference, it seems to simply be a regional shift.
So, there is your explanation for the state poll and national poll discrepancy: there isn't much of one at all.
A few days ago, I proclaimed that I expected the national polling margin to drop to 4-5%, and then stabilize. So far, my prediction is a little off, as the now eight tracking polls show a slightly larger, and growing, margin for Obama:
Complete Tracking poll average
Org
Obama
McCain
ABC
53%
44%
Gallup*
51%
44%
GWU
49%
45%
Hotline
47%
42%
Rasmussen
50%
46%
R2000
50%
42%
TIPP
46.7%
41.4%
Zogby
49.8%
44.5%
Mean
49.6%
43.6%
* = Gallup is an average of their expanded and traditional likely voter models
So, right now Obama's margin appears to be about 6.0%, a number with which every polling aggregation site comes with a couple tenths of a percent. So, at least for now, it turns out I was wrong about how much Obama's lead would drop. That's cool.
However, I still think that there is a good reason to expect the final polling margin to be 4%. The theory goes like this: in presidential elections, the average poll margin during the campaign equals the final poll margin at the end of the campaign. So far in this campaign, the all-time average has been Obama by 4%. As such, I predict it as the final margin.
Cries of "they stole the election through voting machine fraud" are a pet peeve of mine. To show why, I conducted a study of final week polls in the 42 Governor, Senate and House elections since 2004 that were decided by 10% or less. You can see the report here, and read the methodology here. These were among the findings (more in the extended entry):
Looking at the twenty states most commonly described as swing states in this election, the following table compares current, actual state polling to "expected" state polling. The "expected" numbers take the 2004 state-level result, and shift it 5.96% in favor of Democrats, given that Kerry lost the national popular vote by 2.46% but Obama leads the national popular vote by 3.5%. The current or "actual" state polling is taken from Pollster.com.
Expected Vs. Actual State Polls
State
Expected
Actual
Difference
Alaska
McCain +19.6
Obama +2.7
Obama +22.3
Colorado
Obama +1.3
Obama +0.9
McCain +0.4
Florida
Obama +1.0
McCain +1.4
McCain +2.4
Georgia
McCain +10.6
McCain +5.5
Obama +5.1
Indiana
McCain +14.7
McCain +0.6
Obama +14.1
Iowa
Obama +5.3
Obama +6.0
Obama +0.7
Michigan
Obama +9.4
Obama +5.4
McCain +4.0
Minnesota
Obama +9.4
Obama +9.4
As expected
Missouri
McCain +1.2
McCain +2.8
McCain +1.6
Montana
McCain +14.5
Obama +2.9
Obama +17.4
Nevada
Obama +3.4
McCain +2.7
McCain+6.1
New Hampshire
Obama +7.3
Obama +6.1
McCain +1.2
New Mexico
Obama +5.2
Obama +8.2
Obama +3.0
North Carolina
McCain +6.5
McCain +4.4
Obama +2.1
North Dakota
McCain +21.4
McCain +2.4
Obama +19.0
Ohio
Obama +3.9
Obama +3.6
McCain +0.3
Oregon
Obama +10.1
Obama +6.8
McCain +3.3
Pennsylvania
Obama +8.5
Obama +8.5
As expected
Virginia
McCain +2.2
Obama +0.9
Obama +3.1
Wisconsin
Obama +6.3
Obama +10.0
Obama +3.7
There is a lot to say about this table, but I am struck by Alaska, Florida, Montana, Nevada and Virginia. The reason these five stick out to me is that their changes actually result in the state slipping to the unexpected party. Overall, this a 32 electoral vote gain for Republicans, and a 19 electoral vote gain for Democrats, making for a net gain of 13 "expected" EVs for Republicans.
McCain is over-performing the most in Michigan and Nevada, while Obama is heavily over-performing in Alaska, Indiana, Montana and North Dakota. Otherwise, the states are petty much all where one would expect them to be. What do you see in these numbers?
When Clinton was elected in 1992, Trudeau gave his readers the chance to vote on what his presidential Icon would be. The choices both reflected Clinton's reputation for being wishy-washy: a flipping coin or a large waffle. The waffle got the most votes and became Clinton's official avatar. However, the waffle appeared infrequently after a while when Clinton's "waffling" became less of a hot-button issue and fewer people got the joke. Thus Clinton was most often portrayed by the "White House Dialog"
Also, remember when the 2004 Bush campaign ran ads of John Kerry windsurfing, and spent months trying to label Kerry a "flip-flopper?" During that phase of the campaign, Kerry's numbers actually steadily rose:
Charles Franklin has a new graph up that shows the national polling trends during the entire 2000, 2004, and 2008 campaigns. It is definitely worth a look:
The graph shows Kerry's, Gore's and Obama's national polling margin against the Republican nominee during the final year of each campaign. There are some very important lessons from this graph:
As of today, August 4th, Obama's current position (+3.3%) is superior to the best polling either Gore or Kerry ever enjoyed.
As of today, August 4th, Obama's current position is superior to any position he was in during the nomination campaign.
For all the talk of a polarized electorate, there has actually been substantial movement in the polls during the final three months of each of the last two campaigns. This could very well happen again, and it could happen in either direction. So, the campaign is nowhere near decided.
If there is a broader lesson to learn from this, I think it is that each campaign is different. We latch onto analogies from past elections, but 2000 and 2004 were completely different from each other in terms of their broad trends, even though they had similar results. And 2008 has started completely differently from either of those campaigns.
To get a bit tautological, the 2008 election is like the 2008 election. Obama is ahead by more than other Democratic nominees from this decade, but he is slipping. The situation would be better if he had 527s to attack McCain, but it is too late for that now. The Obama campaign probably does have an attack strategy on McCain prepared, but they might want to hurry up the timetable on that one, and ratchet up the rhetoric a bit. Otherwise, it is a little late for strategizing, and it is time to start executing plans that were developed months ago.
There has been a decent amount of discussion about "the new electoral map" that the 2008 election will create. Certainly, removing the polarizing George W. Bush from the ticket, adding an African-American nominee into the mix, and combining it all with a fifty-state strategy four years in the making, and there are bound to be changes in the partisanship of many states. In an attempt to determine just where partisanship is shifting, last night I spent the last three hours creating this map:
State by state partisan voting shift, 2004 election to July 2008
Solidly More Democratic (8.0% or more better than expected): 90 electoral votes
Somewhat more Democratic (3.0%-7.9% better than expected): 90 electoral votes
No significant change (Within 2.9% of expected): 230 electoral votes
Somewhat more Republican (3.0%-7.9% worse than expected): 95 electoral votes
Solidly more Republican (8.0% or more worse than expected): 33 electoral votes
In the extended entry, I provide an explanation for this map.
On a conference call with reporters a few moments ago, a senior McCain surrogate, Steve Forbes, recited a litany of things that Obama has supposedly flip-flopped on, and said that Obama had "changed his mind" on troop withdrawals from Iraq.
I think I have seen this line of attack before. In honor of the new, retro 2004 campaign, I will break out my American Idiot album, watch some old Arrested Development DVD's, and go to the matinee showing of Fahrenheit 911. I guess this retro craze is so severe that we really are running out of past.
Four years later, I have grave doubts that a "flip-flop" charge is actually effective in a political campaign, especially in an Obama vs. McCain campaign. Consider the following:
If Obama is Kerry, then McCain is Bush. Bush argued that John Kerry was a flip-flopper, and everyone remembers that charge quite well. As such, for the McCain campaign to argue that Obama is a flip-flopper should actually cause voters to compare McCain to Bush just as much as they might compare Obama to Kerry. Right now, being tied to Bush is a lot worse than being tied to Kerry.
Doesn't contradict Obama's image. Obama, unlike Kerry, has been running on his willingness to engage in bi-partisan compromise for over a year. So, it isn't clear how the "flip-flop" charge even goes against Obama's longstanding campaign promises. He has told everyone repeatedly that he will compromise, so it is unclear how attacking him for doing so will hurt him. (That isn't to imply that I think things like FISA are actually compromises, but it is how they are being portrayed in the media).
Do people even dislike flip-floppers? A January 2007 poll from Pew showed that 75% of voters like candidates who "are willing to compromise." That was slightly higher than the 67% of voters who like politicians who stick to their principles.
Overall, it is very hard to imagine this new line of attack against Obama will hurt him at all. In fact, looking at the national poll trend lines at Pollster.com, the only line of attack that has ever clearly damaged Obama was the Reverend Wright flap back in March. Outside of a precipitous, but temporary, drop in Obama's numbers during March, Obama's polling trends have been straight upward. So-called "Bittergate" in mid-April might have also caused a second, small, very brief drop.
Republicans are going to have to come up with something better than this kitsch, retro flip-flop line of attack if they want to beat Obama. Not to concern troll or anything, but if the only clearly demonstrable way that Obama has been damaged in this campaign was Reverend Wright, that is probably the type of attack they should be exploiting. It would be highly unsavory, race-baiting sorts of attacks, but just because it is unsavory and laced with bigotry hasn't stopped conservatives in past elections.
The black states are receiving both organizing fellows and television ads. The gray states receive either organizing fellows or television ads, but not both. The red and blue states are receiving neither, and are allocated according to their 2004 (and 2000) results. The fourteen highly targeted "black" states are all included in the eighteen states which the Obama campaign publicly claims it will target heaviest:
Hildebrand and Obama campaign manager David Plouffe have, in recent days, outlined the shape of the campaign. In an interview with Politico, Hildebrand said Obama would focus largely on 14 states George W. Bush won in 2004, plus one state Kerry won in 2004: New Hampshire, where Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton stage their first joint event Friday.(...)
"We're going to go in and play Nebraska 2, which is Omaha and surrounding [areas], in the hopes that we can pick up that one electoral vote," he said.
A presentation by Plouffe to donors, and Obama's own early advertising expenditures, add three more to that list of states to defend: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
In an interview, Hildebrand listed states in order of the margin by which Bush carried them: The closest four - Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Nevada - he said, would see "a ton of attention."
But he said Obama would campaign hard in 10 more states, with the candidate and his top surrogates spending time on the ground and his campaign spending money in the air. Those states are Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Virginia, North Carolina, Montana, North Dakota, Indiana, Georgia and Alaska.
The only real differences between the public Obama campaign statements and the targeting map are that the public statements remove New Jersey, Oregon and Washington (33 electoral votes), while emphasizing Alaska, Indiana, Montana, Nebraska-02 and North Dakota (21 electoral votes). Given that the highly targeted, black states are worth 177 electoral votes, and the "safe blue" are worth 167 electoral votes, this is really just trimming around the edges.
It is also worth noting that the highly targeted "black" states are actually pretty similar to the 2004 swing state map. In fact, if North Carolina and Georgia are removed, and the nearly identically sized Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon and West Virginia are added, then there is no difference between the highly targeted Obama states and the highly targeted Kerry states. In summary, the entire targeting difference is quite small:
--Newly targeted states (51 electoral votes): Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Montana, Nebraska-02, North Carolina, and North Dakota.
--Targeted states no more (31 electoral votes): Arizona, Arkansas, Minnesota, West Virginia
Given that John Edwards was Kerry's VP selection in 2004, it could be argued that Kerry targeted North Carolina four years ago, making the differences in the maps even smaller.
Overall, all this talk of a new electoral map seems a bit overblown to me, as Obama's targets match up about 80% of the time. The biggest difference, in my estimation, is the underlying, fifty-state effort from the DNC and the Obama campaign alike. With better funded state parties, DNC field organizers, Obama campaign staff, and a voter registration effort taking place across the country, we have a national, long-term effort in place working not only to win the White House, but also to build a working majority both in Congress and on the ground. That is the way the map is truly expanding, not just because Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Montana, Nebraska-02, North Carolina, and North Dakota are in competitive in this campaign.
Over the past week, a series of state polls with extremely positive results for Barack Obama have been released. If these polls are accurate, then Obama has taken large leads in New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a decent lead in Florida, and even a narrow lead in Virginia. Given earlier polls that showed Missouri to be a dead heat, this all seems to good to be true. After all, I am a Democrat, and so a lead like this makes me feel as though I am about to wake up in bed next to Susanne Pleshette.
Actually, however, this state polling projection is precisely where current national polling would project it to be. Pollster.com's national polling projection, which corrects for "house effects" from different pollsters and takes all polling firms into account rather than just those with the most recently released polls, currently shows Obama ahead by 5.6%. A 5.6% Obama lead would be a swing of 8.1% from 2004, when Kerry lost the national popular vote by 2.5% (actually 2.46%, but rounding is necessary in this case). If there was an 8.1% swing in every single state from 2004, we would end up with the following electoral college map:
Obama 336, McCain 189, Too close to call 13
With the exception of Nevada, this is precisely what current state polling projects. The two closest states in the above map would be Virginia (within 0.2%) and Missouri (within (0.9%). Remarkably, all polling conducted since Obama clinched the nomination actually shows Virginia and Missouri to be the two closest states in the nation, and all other states, except Nevada, falling into their above projected categories.
So, the state polls released over the last two weeks, which fladem today called "the best day of State Polling a Democrat has had since 1996," are not too good to be true. It is, instead, exactly where one would expect Obama's lead to be given current national polling and 2004 results. Even though Nevada might be out of whack, the above map really is where the election currently stands. We may be Democrats, but at least for now we can rest assured that we are winning.
Since everyone knows I live in Pennsylvania, over the past month, whenever I have talked to someone in politics who hails from a different state, I am always asked how intense campaign in Philadelphia is right now. My truthful answer is that it is a major event, and we are getting a lot of attention, but it still doesn't compare to either the final month of the 2004 general election or even the final two weeks of the 2007 mayoral and city council primaries.
Sure, back before the March 24th voter registration deadline, it was difficult to walk anywhere in Center City without a young, eager Obama volunteer asking if you were registered to vote. Sure, the sight of cable news trucks driving around the city has become a regular occurrence. Sure, frequently you will run past people talking about the primary on street corners, hear them on mass transit, or in pretty much every cafes or bar. Sure, there is at least one, and frequently more, campaign events to attend every night in the city. And yes, there are even a few campaign commercials. However, it still isn't anywhere near what happens to Philadelphia during a Presidential general election.
What I think some people miss is that if you live in a swing state, especially if you live in the second largest swing state in the nation (Pennsylvania), not to mention in the largest city in a swing state in the entire country (Philadelphia), then no primary could ever possibly reach the level of intensity of the 2004 general election. Four years ago, campaigns and outside groups spent more than $50,000,000 in Pennsylvania. Nearly six million people in Pennsylvania voted. The entire city of Philadelphia was one long parade for John Kerry during the month of October, culminating in a 120,000 person rally featuring Bill Clinton one week before the election. During the final two weeks, it quite literally was difficult to walk down the street even in my West Philly neighborhood without being canvassed, seeing a pro-Kerry / anti-Bush sign, or hearing a van drive by promoting the Democratic ticket. That was an intense campaign. What is happening here now, while certainly a spirited election, just isn't in the same league of intensity. Turnout, spending and campaign rallies won't even reach one-third of the levels they hit in 2004.
As intense and record-breaking as we perceive this primary to be, it still doesn't compare to general elections. To put this in perspective, so far roughly as many people are voting in Democratic primary states as voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988 (source). While that is excellent for a primary, it just doesn't compare to a general election, much less a general election in a top five swing state. Consider, for example, how Obama has gained significant ground in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina over the last two weeks. This isn't just momentum--it is also part of the longstanding pattern in this primary campaign where Obama makes up ground in states once the campaigning starts in earnest. This is bears such a strong resemblance to the way that challengers always make up ground on incumbents once the campaign begins in earnest, that it is difficult to draw any other conclusion that a large percentage of primary voters are not paying very close attention until the campaign shifts to their home state.
Just wanted to offer that perspective. Sure, it is a spirited campaign here in Philadelphia, but it just doesn't compare to what the city is like during general elections in presidential campaigns. Anyway, I'm off to my local ward meeting, where tonight we make our endorsement for President. I will be arguing the case for Obama, and wearing the cool button on the right, which the President of the Drexel Democrats made for me. It is in the best spirit of DIY online, progressive campaigning. I'll be back with an update on the meeting at around midnight, after pub trivia.
Four years ago, John Kerry became the presumptive Democratic nominee on March 2nd. His Republican opponent was George Bush, who had already united the Republican Party, built the largest financial warchest in Presidential campaign history, was hovering at just over 50% in approval rating, and had been running against John Kerry for a entire month based on over two years of opposition research. Given all of those advantages, George Bush still only defeated John Kerry by 2.46% nationwide, and narrowly won the Electoral College in Ohio under dubious circumstances.
Considering the far more favorable climate to Democrats have in 2008, the growing conventional wisdom that the still undecided Democratic campaign will somehow hurt the eventual Democratic nominee strikes me as bogus. If we have a nominee on March 4th instead of March 2nd, that is a difference of only two days. Further, during the next few weeks, both of our candidates will be running advertisements and receiving huge press in key swing states like Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. When it is all over, we will have a Democratic nominee with a lot more money than Kerry, a much higher name ID, a far less unified Republican Party, and a much more favorable political climate. Adding on an extra month actually strikes me as very good for Democrats, rather than something to worry about.
However, what happens if the nomination goes on after March 4th? As I explain in the extended entry, this could be something of a problem.
What follows is a multiple regression analysis that attempts to predict a candidate's 2008 vote share based on the 2004 vote shares of candidates in the same city. I've run the regression on all New Hampshire towns that had at least 100 Democratic voters in 2008, weighting larger towns more heavily.
This regression produces a number of coefficients that represent how much support was transferred from one candidate to another. For example, if the coefficient between John Kerry and Hillary Clinton is .73, that means that for every percentage point that Kerry had in a district in 2004, Hillary tended to pick up .73 percentage points in 2008.(...)
Liberman
.66 Clinton
.15 Obama
.05 Richardson
-.16 Edwards
It might also be helpful to turn these numbers around and look at where each of the '08 candidates' support is coming from.(...)
Obama
.93 Dean
.45 Clark
.38 Edwards '04
.15 Lieberman
.09 Kerry
Poblano's analysis means that Barack Obama is winning virtually all Dean voters from 2004, and a plurality of Clark voters from 2004. In other words, Barack Obama has combined the coalitions of the two main netroots fueled candidates in 2004. It certainly shows, too, given that Obama has raised more money from small donors than Dean and Clark combined from four years ago, and that he is drawing crowds even larger than the ones for Dean that caused the media to ooo and aaahhh four years ago.
So, let's see here: a campaign that uses extensive internet organizing, huge campaign rallies, heavy youth and creative class support, a record breaking number of small donors, a fulfilled promise of record turnout, and combination of Dean and Clark voters to force the best possible candidate the Democratic establishment could offer down to the wire?. Correct me if I am wrong, but in terms of structure, that seems to be exactly what the emergence of the progressive blogosphere suggested could happen in a Democratic Presidential primary in 2004. Just because the campaign in question was not, seemingly, single-handedly plucked from relative obscurity by a few prominent bloggers does not mean the Obama campaign is not using the exact same energy and exact same new, political trajectory that the blogosphere was riding back in 2003-2004.
Barack Obama's campaign is the manifestation of the contemporary progressive movement after it exploded from its original early adaptors and disseminated widely into American culture at large. What Obama is doing would simply not be possible without the explosion of new progressive activism that started in the late 1990's with such seemingly disparate events as the founding of MoveOn.org, the Seattle WTO protests, and the multiple outrages over the 2000 Presidential election. Hell, no matter the problems we have with him at different time, Obama was really the first netroots candidate to be elected to the Senate. In Chicago in early 2004, I saw him use the Dean coalition plus African-Americans (and a colossal, timely, flame-out by a self-funded front-runner) to win his Senate primary. Obama was also the only top-tier candidate who opposed the war from the start this time around, and I don't think you will find Obama's campaign is to the right of Dean's on pretty much anything.
It feels like the butterfly effect, the Frankenstein monster, or some sort of self-mutating computer virus. The political zeitgeist that the progressive blogosphere first seized upon five or six years ago was released into the population at large and came back, unexpectedly, as the Barack Obama campaign. That energy certainly didn't turn out with the same rhetorical approach it started with, but otherwise it is nearly structurally identical. In other words, the whole people-powered thing turned out exactly the way we planned it would, only that it sounds a little different. It is like a bunch of loose molecules forming a cloud, once the energy that started almost ten years ago grew, it took on a like of its own, reached a critical mass, and seized onto the first available nucleus. Soon enough, we will find out whether that could covers the Democratic Party in a flood.
In shades of Kerry and Edwards from four years ago, National Journal has produced new rankings that show both Clinton and Obama shifting their voting record to the left during an election year:
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal's 27th annual vote ratings. The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., the other front-runner in the Democratic presidential race, also shifted to the left last year. She ranked as the 16th-most-liberal senator in the 2007 ratings, a computer-assisted analysis that used 99 key Senate votes, selected by NJ reporters and editors, to place every senator on a liberal-to-conservative scale in each of three issue categories. In 2006, Clinton was the 32nd-most-liberal senator.
Of course, it should be noted that this means they only differed on ten votes:
In their yearlong race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama and Clinton have had strikingly similar voting records. Of the 267 measures on which both senators cast votes in 2007, the two differed on only 10. "The policy differences between Clinton and Obama are so slight they are almost nonexistent to the average voter," said Richard Lau, a Rutgers University political scientist.
Also, it should be noted that Progressive Punch produces very different rankings between Clinton and Obama. According to their metrics, Clinton ranks 29th in 2007-2008, while Obama ranks 43rd. When the "chips are down" on the most important votes, Lifetime, Clinton comes in at a tie for 17th, with Obama ranks 24th.
Still, I think the National Journal results are a hopeful sign that progressive and liberal pressure had a positive impact on how Clinton and Obama both voted in 2007. Primary campaigns are one of the few instances where we can leverage pressure, and just like in 2003 it seems to have worked. Their rankings make me feel a bit better about both Clinton and Obama, and a bit better about preferring Obama to Clinton.
A Nevada judge says Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich must be included in Tuesday's candidates' debate in Nevada.
Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson says if Kucinich is excluded, he'll issue an injunction stopping the televised debate.
I think this is the right decision, even if I'll be watching the Michigan returns more than the debate. If nothing else, Kucinich does offer a different perspective. Further, a four-person debate won't be that crowded.
Also, I was looking at the polling history of Nevada, and I think the results of the Research 2000 poll (O 32%, C 30%, E 27%) that came out today is even more significant than first thought. While Mason-Dixon showed a close campaign in Nevada well before Iowa (Clinton only led 34%--26% in their most recent poll), the previous Research 2000 poll from mid-November has shown Clinton ahead 45%-20%-12%. While there is good reason to doubt all primary polling after New Hampshire, and good reason to doubt a new frontier like the Nevada caucus in particular, it now seems likely to me that Obama is ahead in Nevada.
Also, I wonder if this is a pattern we will see in more upcoming states: Clinton does worse in causes than she does in primaries. In 2004, John Kerry took 50.2% of the caucus vote, but 61.0% of the primary vote. Dean, by contrast, took 13.9% of the caucus vote, and only 5.5% of the primary vote. In fact, four of Dean's five second place finishes all took place in caucus states: Michigan, Washington, Maine and Nevada. Now, as analysis from poblano suggests, Clinton seems to have many of Kerry's voters, while Obama has many of Dean's voters. I think campaigns that are heavy on activist volunteers, like Dean and Obama, have something of a built-in advantage in caucus states. Activists are more likely to attend low turnout caucuses, while primaries have a larger rank and file population. If this is the case, it should bode well for Obama in the following February 5th states, all of which are caucuses: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico and North Dakota. Edwards should also do better in caucuses than he does in primaries. Still, both of them will need to start winning primaries in order to take the nomination.
Bill Clinton today defended a state NEA-backed lawsuit over caucus sites, saying that all Democrats should play by the same rules.
Clinton was asked about the suit this morning by a student at Green Valley High School, located in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson. He said that, in essence, state Democrats made "a special rule only for" members of the Culinary union, the most powerful in the state, to be able to caucus at their work sites rather than at their home precincts. "I think the rules oughta be the same for everybody," he said. "I question why you would ever have a temporary caucus site and say only the people that work there -- i.e. the people that we know are going to vote in a certain way or we think they will -- should be able to caucus here. I think that we oughta make it more possible for everybody to vote."
(Of course, we'll ask again: If the Culinary Workers had endorsed Hillary, would there even be a lawsuit? And if so, would Bill be defending it?)
Ugh. Once again, I'll just wonder why there is such a big hub-ub about these at-large precincts now, several months after they were first instituted. I'll also wonder what defending this lawsuit will do to Democratic attempts to prevent Republicans from suppressing voters in the general election. Doesn't anyone remember that this is why Bush is in the White House at all? Gross.
Poblano has conducted an interesting analysis of the New Hampshire vote in 2004 and 2008, using a multiple regression analysis on a town by town basis. The purpose of the analysis is to estimate who 2008 supporters of Clinton, Obama and Edwards backed in 2004. Since the study is based at the town level, rather than the more precise individual voter level, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, it is a compelling insight into the different coalitions within the Democratic Party:
This regression produces a number of coefficients that represent how much support was transferred from one candidate to another. For example, if the coefficient between John Kerry and Hillary Clinton is .73, that means that for every percentage point that Kerry had in a district in 2004, Hillary tended to pick up .73 percentage points in 2008. (…)
Clinton
.73 Kerry
.66 Lieberman
.18 Clark
.12 Edwards '04
-.05 Dean
Obama
.93 Dean
.45 Clark
.38 Edwards '04
.15 Lieberman
.09 Kerry
Edwards (2008)
.37 Edwards '04
.37 Clark
.24 Kerry
.15 Lieberman
.00 Dean
As Matt noted yesterday, the campaign seems to be coming down to identity politics. Activists and campaigns seem ready to play full hands of age, race and gender cards. With Obama relying primarily on non-Kerry supporters in New Hampshire, in order to win the nomination nationwide he will need both the overwhelming backing of African-Americans and a large influx of new primary voters. Otherwise, Clinton's domination of the Kerry vote will simply be too much. In 2004, Nevada was one of Kerry's best states, as he secured 64% in the February 14th caucuses. If Clinton's campaign really is the Kerry and Lieberman coalitions reborn, while Obama and Edwards are splitting the remainder, then Clinton probably wins out. Older women are the largest identity group in the Democratic primary electorate. It will take both a nearly unified, and greatly expanded, progressive creative class plus African-American coalition to have any chance against her.
Obama is surging to victory in New Hampshire, currently holding a 7.6% lead across a remarkable eleven polls taken since Iowa. That makes his post-Iowa bounce anywhere from 10.6%--16.2%, depending on how one calculates polling averages. At this rate, he should be able to surge into a national lead by Friday, at the latest. While there is no guarantee that such a lead will last, and no guarantee that Obama will go on to win the nomination, clearly he is the frontrunner right now. An Obama nomination appears to be the most likely outcome of the Democratic primaries right now.
In some ways, an Obama victory would be a very, very good thing. The truth is that, as a nation, we failed from 1994 to 2007. We failed to expand health care coverage. We failed to stop the increasing corporatization of our lives and vicious exploitation of the Third World. We failed to close the income gap, either nationally or internationally. We failed to stop global warming. We have failed to respond to the threat of peak oil. We failed to stop a Presidential election from being stolen. We failed to stop the war in Iraq. The end result of these failures is that the Apollo Program of this era in American history is the war in Iraq. That's right--instead of doing something like, say, going to the Moon or stopping global warming, we invaded Iraq. In every political aspect, America has failed its generational role as a world leader in the post-Cold War era. While I refer to this as a generational failure, it is not limited to Americans of any age group. It isn't a failure of Boomers or Gen X or the Silent generation, or any of that. It is a generational failure in the lifespan of our country where we failed to live up to the promise of our nation. All adult Americans alive during that time period share a role in our failure.
