Presidential election results are often pictured through electoral college maps, a useful and simple tool. Looking at the competition of the two parties throughout time provides a quite interesting exercise. Certain states turn blue, then red, then blue again. Others stay the same color. One election the map is filled with red; the next election blue makes a comeback. And on and on it goes.
This is in fact quite deceiving. What the electoral college does not show is the history of third-party challenges to the two-party system. In 1992, for instance, presidential candidate Ross Perot finished with 18.9% of the vote - yet not a single state in the 1992 electoral college showed his third-party run.
Since 1992, however, third-parties have had quite a rough run. This graph shows the third-party vote after that year:
The most dramatic reversal in the pattern of electoral maps in US history between two presidential elections separated by just 8 years.
What possible reason could account for that???
Yesterday, Rachel Maddow did a segment "We Can Fact-Check, Gov. Barbor", which I think astutely recognized at least one part of an unfolding dynamic: It's not just Glenn Beck, there's a expanding effort to pull a Karl Rove against Obama, and re-position the Republicans as the post-racial party, as illustrated by an interview that Haley Barbour did with Human Events in which he tried to portary himself as part of the first generation of South--Republican's, natch!--who grew up with integration and experienced it as no big deal.
Of course, Barbour was lying through his teeth. Integration was barely getting started when he was in college, and he placed his own children in private academies that were all-white until the last year his eldest son was in attendence. Her guest, Eugene Robinson, outdid himself, and even pointed out the unusual nature of the 1964 election in which Goldwater, who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, only carried five Deep South states plus his native Arizona. But he didn't bring the full weight of this fact to bear, which I think can only be gained by comparing the 1964 map with the 1956 map. The 1956 map was the most stripped-down version of the Democratic "Solid South" which can be found from 1876 onward (except for the Dixiecrat Revolt eleciton of 1948). And the 1964 map, just 8 years later, was an almost exact mirror image. Taken together, the two maps are perhaps the most dramatic representation of the overwhelming power of race in American politics you will ever find.
As the Republicans struggle mightily in the next two years to eradicate that history, we progressives would do very well to start amassing such images, particularly campaign ads, that can--at a single glance--bring the past that Republicans desperately want to eradicate, replace and re-write--vividly to life.
This is the last part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Ohio. The previous parts can be found here.
Republican Ohio
What parts of Ohio vote Republican?
All of it, of course, except for the parts that vote Democratic.
That is a pretty facetious answer to a fairly serious question, but there is something to it. Blue Ohio has a set of defined, separate characteristics. Red Ohio does too, but not to the same degree. It is far easier to describe Democratic Ohio than Republican Ohio.
The following map is a good beginning in exploring Republican Ohio.
These are the places which most heavily supported John McCain (for those who are curious, the most Democratic counties were Cleveland, Toledo, Ohio University, and Youngstown). An analysis of these below.
This is the second part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Ohio. Part three can be found here.
Unlike Florida and Pennsylvania, Ohio cannot be easily divided into geographically distinct regions (although they do exist). Instead, I will be examining it through the lens of both partys' strongholds in the state.
History
During the late eighteenth century Ohio was a consistently Republican state, the equivalent today of North Dakota or Arizona. Democrats often came close behind - four or five points - but never quite won the state until 1912. Their stronghold lay in a ring of rural counties populated by German immigrants (a pattern that has completely disappeared today). But this was never enough to overcome Republican strength everywhere else.
It was Franklin Roosevelt who changed this pattern forever.
Forgive me if a diary of charts seems dry--the purpose behind it is anything but. I think of it in terms of things I talked about or alluded to in Dollhouse Lessons: Echoing America, like Echo's learning to read, finding ways to remind herself, and looking for ways to wake others up. The purpose is to clear our heads of ghosts and demons that scare us off from seizing the historical opportunities before us. Versailles is blinded by its own gossip and selective short-term memory. Our answer should rely on reality-based, long-term vision--a combination of deep compassion, common sense, rigorous analysis and bold imagination. To accurately see ourselves in history is key to accurately seeing how we can break the narrow bonds of short-term rear-view thinking. That is the purpose of this diary. We need to wake up.
Three weekends ago, I wrote a diary, "Reagan Did NOT Win A Realigning Election In 1980". I wanted to show conclusively that the 1980 election didn't look anything like the commonly-recognized realigning elections, such as 1932 and 1896. In addition to the macro-political event of a political party disintegrating (the Federalists in the 1820s, the Whigs in the 1850s), I identified two metrics to identify a realigning election--one for the House, the other for the Presidency. (The Senate was not directly elected for more than half our history, so it's not suitable to use.) The idea of both was simple: a realignment ought to show a significant before/after shift--and it ought to show up in both metrics. If there is no such shift, then there is no realignment. (Unless, of course, the complete collapse of one party makes use of the metric superfluous and/or problematic.) The comparisons of 1980 to 1896 showed quite clearly what this shift looked like in the House (1896), and what its absence looked like (1980):
Of course, simply presenting these in isolation raises the question of how significant the 11+ point shift in House balance for 1896 really is, historically speaking. And the same can also be said about my presidential metric. This was actually a rather atypical election, since the GOP didn't pick up seats that year--it lost a good number in a counter-swing election after winning two consecutive wave elections. While realigning electios generally involved two consecutive wave elections paired with a decisive party-changing Presidential election, this is the only time that the Presidential election came after both wave elections. And yet, a strong GOP majority remained even after this anomalous House election.
For me, this leads toward shifting focus to the longer patterns of political ebb and flow, a perspective from which the nature of specific biennial and quadrennial elections is more easily understood in comparison to others. Instead of cherry-picking whatever particular fact pops out of us to prove or disprove a favored or disfavored argument, we look to find a consistent guide for analyzing all in a common framework.
In a post on May 28th called A Successful Presidency, I wrote about the last few failed Presidents (LBJ, Ford, Carter, George H.W. Bush) before this last one, George W. Bush, who is arguably one of the two worst ever. After discussing these four, all of whom faced strong primary challengers from their disgruntled base, I wrote:
What happened in every one of these cases was that the President started with a lot of goodwill and support from the general public, but when they ran into trouble later in their term, the base turned on them, and once that happened, it was impossible to contain the damage. The reason for this is simple: your base is who fights for you and defends you when you are in political trouble, and if they aren't backing your play, you get cut to the bone- the damage goes deep. Trouble comes to every President, but you can survive it if you have troops on the ground who keep defending you and fighting your battles for you.
I raise this now because trouble has clearly come to this President; the economy is not getting better for most regular folks anytime soon, health care is in the balance, the Obama approval ratings keep dropping. I believe that the key to Obama's success at this fundamentally critical juncture is whether the President can get his base excited about him again, get them engaged in fighting by his side on the tough battles ahead. Health care reform will not pass without intense Democratic and progressive activism. Neither will the energy bill stuck in the Senate, or the banking regulations bill waiting for committee action in the fall, or the immigration fight next year.
News 21, a project of the Knight Foundation out of UC Berkley has a new website - What's At Stake in 2008, that looks at policy and politics in America in 2008, and the current state of the American Dream. As part of that project, they've produced these incredible state-by-state maps of the US illustrating youth turnout in 3 major elections: 1972, when young voters first received the right to vote; 1996, the nadir of youth turnout; and 2004, the year that the trends we are seeing come to fruition today first started to gain traction.
Interestingly, it's on a map like this that the importance of election day registration becomes clear. While youth turnout was up across the board in 2004, it was strongest, or at least above average, in states that have some form of election day registration: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon (vote by mail), etc. Other factors, like competitive races, swing state status, and the size of local field ops also make a huge difference, but EDR can increase turnout by 10 - 12% according to studies by Demos.
Of course, the big question on everyone's mind is, what will this map look like in 7 days?
Note: I inadvertantly posted a shortened version of this yesterday--and somehow LOST the original version, to boot. So I'm replacing the earlier diary with a re-creation of the original.
Sure, we know that the idea of a vast conspiracy of individual illegal voters stealing our democracy is delusional. But just how delusional?
Well, by one simple metric the answer is 100%. The type of voter fraud that Republicans are alleging is known as "voter impersonation"-someone shows up to vote pretending to be someone else. That sort of voter fraud is virtually non-existent. I say "virtually," since it's really not possible to be 100% sure, but suffice it to say that when Mickey Mouse gets registered to vote, he never shows up to cast a ballot.
But we can look at this through another lens: How much voter suppression can alter an election, and how often does that happen? This is a fair question, since voter suppression is inevitable, if not always intentional, outcome of the "voter fraud" fraud. And here the answer turns out to be quite remarkable.
One perspective was provided this week when ACORN released a report "Adding Insult to Injury: Foreclosure Victims in Danger of Poll Challenges" (PDF), which showed the following potential impacts from a threatened-but later denied (only in Michigan) potential GOP tactic: using foreclosure lists to challenge voters at the polls:
In six states, the margin in the 2004 Presidential Election was smaller than the number of people who have faced foreclosure in 2008: Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin.
State
Foreclosure Filings in 2008
Potential Voter Disenfranchisement
Margin in 2004 Presidential Election
Florida
287,210
551,443
380,978
Michigan
87,608
168,207
165,437
Nevada
66,018
126,755
21,500
New Mexico
3,369
6,468
5,988
Ohio
93,757
180,013
118,775
Wisconsin
16,157
31,021
11,384
In July and August alone, there were enough foreclosure filings in Nevada to impact the outcome of the Presidential election. In fact, Las Vegas alone had 39,042 foreclosure filings during the first half of 2008, far more than the 21,500 margin in the Presidential Election in 2004 for the entire state. Similar efforts concentrated in Milwaukee could result in disenfranchisement of 12,622 potential voters, while the margin in 2004 for the state of Wisconsin was 11,384. In Albuquerque, there were 1,770 foreclosures filed meaning 3,398 voters could be challenged while the 2004 margin was only 5,988 for the entire state of New Mexico.
Concentration of efforts to challenge foreclosure victims in urban areas of Ohio and Florida could disenfranchise a large enough portion of voters to impact the Presidential election. There have been 56,279 foreclosure filings in Ohio's five largest cities during the first half of 2008 meaning a potential 108,056 voters could be disenfranchised for foreclosure caging if efforts are concentrated in those metropolitan areas.
Of course, no one expects the entire foreclosed population to be challenged and denied the right to vote. Nor do we expect them all to be voting the same. But, still, ACORN's analysis shows us quite clearly that--unlike the trumped-up fantasy of voter fraud--the danger they are pointing to is the right order of magnitude for actually being able to change the outcomes of the presidential election in a half a dozen states. That's a very important, very fundamental point.
In comments Friday to Chris's diary, Presidential Forecast, October 24th , fladem argued that there was a much greater chance of later volatility in the race than people were anticipating, that historically, there was a 50% chance of a 5-point swing or more, which could go either way, and that therefore McCain had a 25% chance of winning, rather than the 3.7% that 538.com is projecting.
It's good to be challenged like this, with a well-considered data-driven argument. It makes you think more carefully, and not get intellectually lazy. That said, I think it's pretty clear that fladem is wrong on this one, and I want to quickly run down why. The reasons range from macro to micro, but most of all, they gain from being mutually reinforcing. Fladem's argument and my response on the flip.
A comparison of presidential and congressional polls this cycle quickly shows that Obama is running well behind congressional Democrats. However, in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004, the Democratic nominee for President outperfomed the collective Democratic result for the national U.S. House elections. It's true:
Last weekend, in "The 'Mapping-Changing' Meme In Historical Perspective, 1896 To Date", I looked at the changing patterns of electoral maps from 1896 to date, taking them in series of time periods. In this diary, I want to step back an look at the overall patterns, and see if there aren't some lessons we can learn from them.
I looked at all the maps, and tried to come up with a sensible way of grouping them. The discussion below is based on that grouping, but I'm open to suggestions about other ways of grouping them as well. I'm going to be working at three levels in this diary. The lowest level-which I'll get to last-is that in which every map appears, and they are all shown in their groupings. The middle level-which begins below the fold-shows one representative map for each of the groups. The top level-shown immediately below-groups all the Democratic-leaning maps and all the Republican-leaning maps together into two supergroups.
Democratic Vs. Republican Maps
The archetypal Democratic victory of the past 100 years was Roosevelt's re-election in 1936. The archetypal Republican victory of the past 100 years was Nixon's re-election in 1936 1972. Roosevelt's victory was a resounding affirmation of the New Deal. It's hard to believe it, but Republicans actually thought they were going to win in 1936, and a bit winning issue for them was going to be.... Social Secutiry! With the government taking money out of people's paychecks-and no one getting anything back, at first, the Republicans thought they had themselves a sure-fired winner. On the other hand, Nixon's 1972 victory was all about "us" vs. "them"--but he did not threaten the core New Deal accomplishements, and in fact, he used cooperation with the still-powerful, still-liberal Democratic Congress to help give him the freedom to act in the areas he really cared about-primarily foreign relations.
Twelve years later, Ronald Reagan would win a similarly strong landslide, basically on much the same terms-even though the foundation was far more questionable. Reagan was much more hostile to the New Deal than Nixon had been, and the Congress was weaker. But while programs were cut back, the post-double-dip recession boom provided enough short-term prosperity that most folks simply weren't thinking about such things, so it was relatively easy to keep them out of the debate-especially with Walter Mondale talking about raising people's taxes. Thus, what these high-level maps have to tell us is that Democrats win when the issues of public welfare and the common good are front and center, while Republicans win when such issues can be shunted aside, one way or another, and issues of identity--"us vs. them"-come to the fore.
Not a real surprise, you say? Well, maybe not. But if not, then why does virtually every Democratic candidate ignore the power of Roosevelt's message? Bill Clinton, for one, did not. He ran as an economic populist. Governing, not so much. But he knew what to tell people, and won eleciton by comfortable margins.
Here's another way to look at the two groups of maps, in terms of recent victories by the two parties. The maps are quite similar. But Clinton won a cluster of key states in 1996 that Gore did not.four years later. A principle reason was that Gore simply lacked Clinton's capactity to campaign as a populist:
On the flip, we look at the wider variety of map groups associated with each party's success in different forms at different times.
The term "map-changing" has become one of those buzzwords this election cycle. It was, like most buzzwords, high on sizzle, low on steak. Why? Because candidates don't change maps-map-changing conditions change candidates-at least, successful ones. Which means, in effect, that any Democrat who won the nomination this time had a decent shot at becoming a map-changing candidate. To see why this is so, I've assembled a series of maps showing all the presidential elections from 1896 to date, so that the the progression of changes can readily be seen. At the end, I'll return to the current election, and dove-tail with the analysis in the previous diary, looking at what sort of map-change we can expect if all the swing states looked at go the Democrat's way. Of course, there's no guarantee that will happen-but that's what real map-changing elections are all about-sailing with the flood of a rising tide, and taking all the credit for the work of the elements.
It's a funny thought for me to settle on now, with a huge election test looming on Super Tuesday. But it's the one that has slowly been working it's way up from my sub conscious mind, and now that it's arrived I'm looking at it, and it's looking back at me. Over the last six months I have seen an extraordinary amount of very negative adjectives and names attached to Hillary Clinton on political discussion boards. Down right evil words used to describe her, with "unlikable" firmly lodged at the benign end of the available spectrum. But I am not finding her unlikable at all. I am seeing much to admire about Hillary instead.
It occurred to me, how would it effect me if that type of bitter derision and accusatory hatred was aimed toward me every day? And not just by those who I can understand may have good reason to be my enemy, but also by those whose goals and vision for America I too share. A whole lot worse than it has effected her was my very quick and certain answer for myself. And Hillary has been dealing with this, to greater and lesser extents daily for over 15 years. All because she long ago dedicated her life to making a positive difference in other people's lives.
There is much talk lately about a Clinton team decision to use negative campaigning against her Democratic opponents for President. There are lots of ways to go negative but none of them are positive contributions to a real debate on issues. No one "likes" negative campaigns, least of all the voters, but they persist anyway based on the persuasive argument that negative campaigns often are highly effective in winning elections. While undoubtedly that is true, they are less effective winning Democratic Primary contests. By and large the voters who participate in Democratic Primaries are drawn toward candidates for positive reasons, and they appreciate a substantive discussion on the issues more so than average voters. One thing Hillary Clinton is not is dumb. Why then, at this stage in the Democratic Primaries, has her campaign begun to go negative in selected instances? I suggest it's because she started out at a disadvantage compared to the other candidates.
Well me either and I'll tell you my main reason. The U.S. Senate could vote to gather up every loose saber littering that chamber's floor to lock safely in the attic and what this White House would hear are sabers being rattled while they were carted off. But I'll tell you something I don't like almost if not equally as much as Clinton's Kyle - Lieberman vote. By and large I am upset by how anti-war grassroots have seized on Clinton's vote to use as a primary season football at the expense of trying to lesson the risk of war with Iran.
Essentially the primary reaction of most anti-war grassroots activists to the passage of Kyle -Lieberman by the U. S. Senate has been to blast Clinton for her vote and use that vote to argue against her Presidential candidacy. I know I am over simplifying, but the most common line of attack seems to be that by voting for Kyle- Lieberman, Clinton gave political cover to Bush/Cheney that will make it easier for them to attack Iran while they still are in office. Let's step back and look at that for a second. Maybe several LONG seconds.
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