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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: June 2012

Why Democrats Should Ignore Swing Voters and Focus on Voter Registration and Mobilization

(Editor’s Note: We are extremely pleased to publish this significant strategic analysis by noted political analyst and TDS contributor Alan Abramowitz, the Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University)
With five months to go until Election Day 2012, all indications are that the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is going to go down to the wire and that the outcome will ultimately be decided by voters in 10-15 battleground states where neither candidate has a significant advantage.
In deciding how to allocate money and other resources in these battleground states, the key question facing the Obama campaign is how much emphasis to give to voter registration and mobilization versus persuasion of undecided and weakly committed swing voters. The conventional wisdom about the 2012 presidential election, trumpeted by most pundits and media commentators, is that the outcome will be decided by the swing voters and that the candidate who is viewed as closest to the center will have the best chance of winning their support. However, the evidence presented in this article, based on recent polling data from the battleground states, shows that Democrats have little chance of winning over many swing voters but a much better chance of winning the votes of the unregistered if they can get them on the voter rolls and turn them out on Election Day.
Swing Voters: Unhappy with Obama but Unenthusiastic about Voting
In order to compare the potential payoffs of a strategy emphasizing mobilization compared with one emphasizing persuasion, I analyzed data from a March 20-26 Gallup Poll in twelve key battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. This was the most recent battleground state polling data available for analysis. A total of 1046 adults were interviewed on landline and cellular telephones including 871 registered voters.
One important finding from Gallup’s battleground state poll is that there were relatively few swing voters in these swing states. Among registered voters, 49 percent supported Barack Obama and another one percent indicated that they leaned toward Obama while 41 percent supported Mitt Romney and another two percent leaned toward Romney.
The March 20-26 survey was conducted at a time when Mitt Romney was still battling with Rick Santorum for the Republican nomination. Now that Romney has locked up the GOP nomination, Obama’s lead in these battleground states may very well be smaller. What is striking, however, is that as early as March, relatively few registered voters were unwilling to state a preference in a Romney-Obama contest. Even combining leaners with the undecided, swing voters made up less than 10 percent of the electorate in these twelve states.
Still, with the race between Obama and Romney expected to be very close, even a small group of swing voters could decide the outcome. So who were these swing voters? To answer this question, I compared the characteristics and political attitudes of swing voters (those who were undecided or only leaning toward a candidate) with the characteristics and attitudes of registered voters who were supporting either Obama or Romney. The results are displayed in Table 1.
abramowitz_table_01c.png
The data in Table 1 show that compared with voters supporting a candidate, swing voters were disproportionately white and female. They were also much more likely to describe themselves as completely independent and much less likely to describe themselves as Democrats or independents leaning toward the Democratic Party than other voters. But the most dramatic differences between swing voters and voters supporting a candidate involved their opinions about President Obama and their enthusiasm about voting in 2012.
Swing voters had much more negative opinions of President Obama’s job performance than other voters. In fact their opinions were almost as negative as those of Romney supporters. Only 11 percent of swing voters approved of Obama’s job performance compared with 6 percent of Romney voters. In contrast, 92 percent of Obama voters approved of the President’s job performance.
But while swing voters were similar to Romney voters in their evaluation of President Obama’s job performance, they were much less enthusiastic about voting. Only 19 percent of swing voters described themselves as extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in 2012 compared with 47 percent of Romney supporters and 50 percent of Obama supporters. And 58 percent of swing voters described themselves as not too enthusiastic or not at all enthusiastic about voting compared with only 27 percent of Romney supporters and 21 percent of Obama supporters.
These findings suggest that efforts by the Obama campaign to persuade swing voters are likely to be unproductive and could even backfire. These voters have a decidedly negative view of the President and are very unlikely to vote for him. The best the Obama campaign can hope for is that most of these swing voters will stay at home on Election Day.
The Other Unknown in the Equation: Unregistered Voters
In addition to swing voters, there is another group in the electorate whose behavior has the potential to influence the outcome of a close presidential election–those who are not currently registered. In fact, in the Gallup battleground state poll there were almost twice as many unregistered voters as swing voters.
abramowitz_table_02c.png
Not only did unregistered voters outnumber swing voters, but their characteristics and political attitudes were very different from those of swing voters or those of registered voters. Table 2 compares the characteristics and attitudes of unregistered voters with those of registered voters in the Gallup battleground state survey. Unregistered voters were disproportionately young and nonwhite and, in marked contrast with swing voters, had more favorable opinions of President Obama’s job performance than registered voters. Most importantly, when asked about their presidential candidate preference, unregistered voters chose Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a better than two-to-one margin.
These findings suggest that the Obama campaign would be well advised to focus its efforts in the battleground states on voter registration and turnout rather than on trying to win over swing voters. However, unregistered voters, like swing voters, were rather unenthusiastic about voting. Getting them registered and to the polls could be challenging.
abramowitz_table_03c.png
But while unregistered voters in general were unenthusiastic about voting, unregistered Obama supporters were considerably more enthusiastic than unregistered Romney supporters. This can be seen very clearly in Table 3. Fifty-nine percent of unregistered Obama supporters were at least somewhat enthusiastic about voting compared with only 34 percent of unregistered Romney supporters. These results suggest that a strategy that emphasizes turning unregistered Obama supporters into Obama voters could pay significant dividends for the President’s reelection campaign in the swing states.
A Note on the Results of the Wisconsin Recall Election:
Turnout Key to Walker Victory

The level of overreaction to the Wisconsin results, even by some usually sensible folks like Ezra Klein and Greg Sargent, is excessive. This one election does not mean that we are now in a new, “post-Citizens United” era in American politics. It is not necessary to diminish the importance of the Supreme Court’s decision to recognize that, empirically speaking it is simply not why Barrett lost. He lost because, as the exit polls revealed, a lot of Wisconsin voters were uncomfortable with the idea of recalling a sitting governor in the absence of evidence of misconduct in office and because the Republicans turned out in larger numbers than Democrats. Massive advertising certainly played a role in the election but it wasn’t the key factor.
An examination of the voting patterns and exit poll results in Tuesday’s Wisconsin recall election indicates that, in fact, turnout was a key factor in incumbent Republican Scott Walker’s victory over his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. While there was a heavy turnout for a special election, the final total of just over 2.5 million votes fell well short of the nearly 3 million votes cast in the 2008 presidential election. And Republicans appear to have done a better job of getting their voters to the polls. Turnout for the recall election was 91 percent of 2008 turnout in suburban heavily Republican Waukesha County, the largest GOP county in the state, but only 83 percent of 2008 turnout in Milwaukee County, the largest Democratic county in the state.
The same pattern was evident in the exit poll results. The 2012 recall electorate was noticeably older, whiter, more conservative and more Republican than the 2008 electorate. Voters age 65 and older outnumbered those under the age of 30 by 18 percent to 16 percent on Tuesday. In contrast, four years ago, 18-29 year-old voters outnumbered those 65 and older by 22 percent to 14 percent. Most significantly, on Tuesday Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 35 percent to 34 percent according to the exit poll. Four years ago, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 39 percent to 33 percent.
Despite Scott Walker’s fairly easy win on Tuesday, Democrats apparently were able to retake control of the state senate by defeating one GOP senator. And Democrats can take heart from one result from the exit poll. Even with a Republican-leaning electorate, Barack Obama led Mitt Romney by 51 percent to 44 percent when exit poll respondents were asked how they would vote in the presidential election. These results suggest that, Obama should be considered a solid favorite to carry the state again, especially if Democrats turn out in larger numbers in November.


The Recall in Broader Perspective

No matter how much lipstick we put on the pig, there’s no evading the fact that Republicans beat Democrats in five of six elections in Wisconsin on Tuesday, one of the worst days Dems have experienced in recent years.
The Monitor’s Peter Grier piles on, quoting former PA Governor Ed Rendell, who said “It was a dumb political fight – I would have waited until Walker’s reelection…If we’re [peeved off] at what a person does in office, the answer is to beat them when they’re up for reelection” and former Rep. Barney Frank, who added “My side picked a fight they shouldn’t have picked.” Grier adds,

Plus, the recall election was a rerun of the state’s 2010 gubernatorial race, with Walker facing the same opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. The “Groundhog Day” aspect of the vote only added to voter perceptions that it was somehow a distortion of the normal political process, according to Rendell.

Yet Rendell and Frank, as well as triumphalist Republicans are missing the big picture. Broaden the time frame, and it becomes clear that the recall coalition helped to check Republican union-bashing.
Republicans made crushing of the labor movement a cornerstone of their grand strategy to clobber Democrats in November. By destroying public workers’ unions, especially in swing states, they hope to eliminate a major source of Democratic funding and campaign manpower. They won the Wisconsin battle, at least temporarily. But even there, they will be checked by Democratic control of the state senate, barring a corrupt recount. Their war is stalled.
Their union-bashing initiative was turned back, make that humiliated in Ohio, where Republican Governor Kasich ate a big plate of progressive Democratic crow. As E. J. Dionne, Jr. recounts,

It’s worth comparing what happened in Wisconsin with what happened last year in Ohio, where unions forced a referendum on the anti-labor legislation pushed through by Gov. John Kasich (R) and the Republican-controlled legislature. The unions and the Democrats won 61 percent in that vote, repealing the law. But this remedy was not available in Wisconsin…

After that heady experience, it’s understandable how WI Dems would think they could unhorse Walker. But it should now be clear that statewide recall elections are rarely good strategy. More importantly, Wisconsin progressives did not have the option of a referendum or initiative like Ohio. They needed to give Walker a big headache, and the recall looked doable in the early part of the mobilization. With benefit of hindsight, the recall effort should have been confined to members of the legislature and mobilizing to defeat Walker in the next cycle.
Last August Wisconsin Dems picked up two state senate seats as a result of the protests, and Tuesday they nailed a senate majority. “Voters used state Senate races to signal their dissatisfaction with Walker’s overreach and thus put the retained governor on notice,” notes Dionne. That’s an impressive victory for a statewide progressive coalition.
The Wisconsin protests may also have deterred union-bashing in neighboring Minnesota, where Republican state legislators decided not to push a right-to-work bill in the 2012 session. In Indiana, however, Governor Mitch Daniels signed a “right-to-work” bill into law on February 1.
Looking ahead, Republicans will be crowing about Walker’s big win and how they are going to replicate it all over the country. But Walker’s agenda will be hobbled by Democratic control of the state Senate. He will reign as a GOP golden boy for a bit, but the possibility of a criminal investigation looms over his near future. Walker knows that his little war on unions has had a price and there is more to come if he wants it. The lesson is not likely to be lost on more sober Republican governors.
In terms of national strategy, Dionne writes,

For the left, conservative hubris would be the best outcome from Wisconsin. Nothing would do more to push swing voters the progressives’ way. But liberals and labor are operating in a difficult environment. They need to pick their fights carefully and match their energy with a new discipline and a cool realism about the power arrayed against them.

As for organized labor, they clearly have work to do in promoting solidarity between public and private sector workers in their own ranks, as well as with unorganized workers across America. They also have to more effectively challenge the meme that public workers have extravagant pensions, propagated by Republicans who amplify a few horror stories as emblematic of public worker retirement benefits. To grow, they have to begin experimenting more creatively with new forms of union membership, benefits and recruitment.
Meanwhile, exit polls indicate Obama is still running strong in Wisconsin. There is also reason to hope that the coalition progressives put together will benefit Democrats in November and beyond. The Wisconsin progressive coalition and the Occupy campaigns have done a lot to energize and mobilize a movement for economic justice, which may yet prevail. In that context, Walker’s win shrinks considerably.


TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira: Public Opposes Repeal, Cuts in Obamacare

If the Supreme Court majority guts the Affordable Care Act this month, it will be ruling against the will of the American people, as indicated by a recent opinion poll. According to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking poll confirms that the public is not interested in repealing the Affordable Care Act, whatever its misgivings about the law. In fact, a plurality (47 percent) say they want to either see the law expanded (27 percent) or kept as is (20 percent), compared to 39 percent who want the law either repealed and replaced with a Republican alternative (18 percent) or repealed altogether (21 percent).

Nor is the public much interested in cutting funding for the Act, as Teixeira, notes:

And the public is strongly opposed to conservatives’ pet idea of cutting off funding for implementing the law if they are not successful in repealing it. Just 32 percent of those polled support such a move versus 58 percent who are opposed.

If the High Court’s forthcoming ruling has any regard for the overwhelming support of the public for keeping the law and strengthening it, the ACA will remain in force.


New Polls Illuminate White Working Class Concerns

Ron Brownstein has a couple of recent posts tracking white working class political attitudes that should be of interest to presidential campaign strategists. In “Working Class Whites Still Wary of Obamacare,” he explains:

The problem, as on almost all issues relating to government’s role, is centered on whites, particularly those in the working class. According to figures provided by Kaiser, in their latest survey, 35 percent of non-white respondents believe that the law will benefit their family. That compares to just 14 percent who believe they will be worse off (the remaining 39 percent don’t think it will make much difference). Whites offer nearly a mirror image: just 18 percent believe the law will leave their family better off, compared to 38 percent who believe they will be worse off as a result.
The skepticism among whites is most concentrated among whites without a college degree. Just one-in-seven of them believe health care reform will personally benefit them or their family. Among college whites about one-in-four expect to personally benefit from the reform.
Gallup Polling in March 2010 found that while few whites expected to personally benefit from the law, a majority of them believed it would benefit low-income families and those without health insurance. That suggested they viewed health care reform primarily as a welfare program that would help the needy but not their own families. Kaiser didn’t replicate that question in their latest survey, but it may have detected an echo of that sentiment in the finding that twice as many whites believed the law would benefit children than thought it would help their own family.

Ironically, adds Brownstein, “…non-college whites are uninsured at much higher rates than those with degrees; for that reason, the law would personally benefit far more of them than the college-educated whites who are somewhat more open to it.” Yet, “the targets of that effort remain entirely unconvinced that the law will benefit them. Rather than ameliorating their skepticism that government will defend their interests, it appears to have only intensified it.”
Brownstein warns that the skepticism about the ACA is “another brick on the load Obama is carrying with white working class voters, who appear poised in polls to reject him at levels no Democratic presidential nominee has experienced since 1984.”
In another post, “How Diversity Divides White America,” Brownstein addresses white working class attitudes towards immigrants revealed in the just released Pew Research 2012 Values Survey:

Among college-educated whites who identify as Democrats-an increasingly central pillar of the party’s coalition-over four-in-five say that the immigrants do not threaten American values. But nearly two-thirds of Republicans without a college degree-an increasingly central pillar of the GOP coalition-do consider immigrants a threat to American traditions…That overwhelming unease among the blue-collar (and older) white voters central to GOP electoral prospects today represents a huge hurdle for the Republican strategists who want the party to expand its Hispanic outreach.

One conclusion to be drawn from both of Brownstein’s articles is that the Obama campaign should upgrade it’s outreach to white workers as a large constituency which benefits from Obama’s reforms, yet remains unpersuaded — doubt which the Republicans are eagerly prepared to reinforce in their ad campaigns.


Political Strategy Notes

John Sides has some revealing graphics up at The Washington Monthly which demolish the myth of “Independent” voters as a large, politically moderate third force.
From John Nichols’ wrap-up “Recall Campaign Against Scott Walker Fails” at The Nation: “The failure of the campaign against Walker, while heartbreaking for Wisconsin union families and the great activist movement that developed to counter the governor and his policies, offers profound lessons not just for Wisconsin but for a nation that is wrestling with fundamental questions of how to counter corporate and conservative power in a Citizens United moment…The “money power” populists and progressives of another era identified as the greatest threat to democracy has now organized itself as a force that cannot be easily thwarted even by determined “people power…The right has developed a far more sophisticated money-in-politics template than it has ever before employed. That template worked in Wisconsin, on behalf of a deeply divisive and scandal-plagued governor…There was, as well, a huge problem with messaging as regards the recall itself. Walker’s theme for the better part of year–reinforced in paid advertising and constant appearances on his favored news network, Fox–was that the recall election was a costly partisan temper tantrum. The criticism was never really countered.”
The Progressive editor Matthew Rothschild has harsh words for the white house and DNC for avoiding Wisconsin, but gives Walker some credit: “As much as I can’t stand the man, Walker proved to be a formidable candidate. He stayed on message. He was a pesky debater. He was unflappable. He cultivated a down-to-earth image with his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up and his aw-shucks demeanor. And he said two plus two equals five with a straight face and basset eyes. Even as he had the worst jobs record of any governor in the country, he talked about how great he was creating jobs, and when the numbers weren’t in his favor, he wheeled out different numbers. Brazen, yes, but it worked…He flipped these numbers around by running ads on the airwaves all winter long, from Thanksgiving through the Super Bowl and right up to the Democratic primaries. Even on the night of those primaries, he was on the air bashing Tom Barrett.”
But Walker’s rising star may yet flame out in a swamp of criminal accusations, reports Matthew DeLuca at the Daily Beast.
Former Bush speechwriter/WaPo columnist Michael Gerson argues that the Wisconsin vote also reflects a legitimate concern about excessive pension commitments to public workers. He offers no Wisconsin data to support his point, but it would be interesting to find out if the pro-Walker ad campaign leveraged the meme.
Looking for an antidote to progressive demoralization in the wake if Wisconsin? Check out this program for the 7th Annual Netroots Nation, beginning today in Providence, RI.
Looking toward the next possible blow to Democratic prospects, Greg Stohr’s “Voting-Rights Surprise at High Court May Foreshadow Health Care” at Bloomberg Businessweek offers this chilling note: “The secret to successful advocacy is simply to get the court to ask your opponent more questions,” Roberts wrote in a law review article adapted from a speech he gave on Supreme Court arguments. More comprehensive studies have reached similar conclusions…The chief justice himself was one-sided in the health-care case, interjecting 23 times during [U.S. Solicitor General} Verrilli’s hour on the insurance requirement and only seven times as opponents of the law made their arguments. Kennedy interrupted Verrilli six times, compared with four times during the other side’s time.”
Mike Hall reports at AFL-CIO Now that “ALEC Resignations Grow, Pressure on Others Mounts“: “For those of us keeping score, 19 major corporations and 54 state legislators have cut their ties with the extremist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Now pressure is mounting for other major corporations to join the exodus from ALEC and its agenda of voter suppression, union-busting and immigrant bashing.”
L.A. Times reporters Jean Merl and Richard Simon say “California’s new setup a hurdle for Democrats’ bid to retake House.”


WI Recall: A Little Good News Amid Three Painful Lessons

There are two items of good news in the Wisconsin Recall Bummer. First, Democrats won back control of the state senate, with former Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine) defeating incumbent Van Wanggaard in a squeaker. As Lee Bergquist, reports in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,

Results posted early Wednesday showed Lehman with 36,255 votes to 35,476 for Wanggaard with 100% of precincts reporting. The margin of 779 could bring a recount.
…If Lehman’s win holds, Democrats assume a 17-16 majority, at least until next November’s elections. It’s unknown whether the Senate will convene in a special session before then…In November, 16 of the 33 Senate seats are up for election.
Wanggaard’s district – closely matched between Republicans and Democrats – covers much of Racine County. It’s been one of the most volatile in recent Wisconsin history, flipping back and forth five times between the two parties in the last 22 years.

Even if Lehman’s win sticks, Dems won’t be able to move any legislation past the state senate. But they should be able to check Walker and the Republicans to some extent.
The other piece of good news is that exit polls indicate that President Obama had a 9-point lead over Gov. Romney in the Wisconsin exit polls. However, as Chris Cillizza noted at The Fix;

…Exit polls show Walker winning 17 percent of Obama supporters — much higher than Democrat Tom Barrett’s 6 percent of Mitt Romney supporters. Overall, the electorate that turned out today is backing Obama by a significant margin: 52 percent to 43 percent.
Now, all of this comes with a giant caveat; the exit polls initially were pretty far off, showing a close race between Walker and Barrett. Thus, Republicans are casting doubt that they mean much of anything at all.

As for the painful lessons for Dems, you will find plenty of opinions across the blogosphere and MSM. Boiled down, one lesson is that recall elections are generally a tough sell. As Scott Clement, Peyton M. Craighill and Jon Cohen report in in another post at The Fix,

…About three in 10 said recall elections are appropriate for any reason, according to preliminary exit poll results. But the answer depends heavily on whether your party’s candidate is being dragged to the ballot box before their term is up. Republicans said by a near unanimous margin that recall elections are never appropriate or only appropriate in the case of official misconduct. But slight majority of Democratic voters said recall elections are appropriate “for any reason.”

Another lesson is that organized labor needs to do a better job of educating the public about their contributions and role in protecting the middle class. Too many voters seem to have bought into negative stereotypes about “big labor,” as a result of labor-bashing propaganda, which now seems to be an even bigger element of the GOP agenda. Unions need more assertive mass media/public education outreach.
A third painful lesson is that even great GOTV doesn’t necessarily trump money. Barrett was outspent 7-1, which can’t be unrelated to his defeat. An interesting question here is whether Walker also had energetic street-level GOTV or just an ad war edge.
If lessons are learned and strategy is tweaked accordingly, Democrats should be able to hone their edge for future campaigns.


On Wisconsin

The blogosphere is laden with interesting articles about today’s recall election in Wisconsin. At the Madison-based Progressive magazine, Editor Mathew Rothschild and Political Editor Ruth Conniff explain “What’s at Stake in Wisconsin,” to help set the stage:

After a year and a half of historic protests and unprecedented citizen activism, the recall is a referendum on whether grassroots, democratic action can overcome the power of money in the Citizens United era…In February and March of 2011, Wisconsinites organized the largest sustained mass rallies for public sector workers in the history of the United States and the biggest outpouring of labor activism since the 1930s…The whole country is waiting to see whether or not citizens can overcome the corporate takeover of government in Madison.

The Recall coalition has a compelling case for getting rid of Walker, as Conniff and Rothschild explain:

Walker has made the largest cuts to public education in the history of the state, eviscerating our top-tier public schools as well as a model university and technical college system. In the birthplace of the public employees’ union, AFSCME, he overturned public employees’ right to bargain collectively. He has moved to disempower the state legislature, do away with open meetings, and shred the robust regulatory apparatus that has made Wisconsin a model of good government, environmental protection, and progressive ideals.
…Even as Republican attacks on women were making headlines around the country, Walker was quietly signing legislation to make it illegal for women to sue for compensatory or punitive damages when they’ve been discriminated against in the workplace. He rolled back accurate, age-appropriate sex education. He cut funding for preventive health care at Planned Parenthood clinics. He banned private health insurers from covering abortion in state health insurance exchanges starting in 2014 in almost all instances. And he required a woman who is seeking an abortion to have a one-on-one consultation with a doctor prior to the procedure. The doctor must ascertain whether she is being pressured to have an abortion, and any doctor who doesn’t do that can be prosecuted for a felony.
…Walker and the Republicans pushed through legislation endangering Wisconsin wetlands…[pushed for] massive cuts to public education and an across-the-board attack on everything from labor rights to tenant rights, from health care for the poor to nursing home care for the elderly…As for Walker’s “jobs” agenda, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that Wisconsin had the single worst record in the nation for job losses from January 2011 to January 2012.
All of this in a legislative session that, the governor said, would be all about “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

It’s hard to name a major demographic group Walker hasn’t screwed in some way, other than wealthy Republican contributors. Also at The Progressive, Political Editor Ruth Conniff reports on Walker’s increasing legal problems and allegations that he is a target of a federal investigation into possibie criminal activity during his tenure as county executive and governor. Conniff says “Recent campaign finance filings show that Walker has transferred a total of $160,000 into a criminal defense fund–the only criminal defense fund maintained by a governor of any state in the nation.”
Since there is no indictment yet, Walker’s developing legal problems probably won’t be much of a factor in today’s vote. Regardless of the vote, however, Wisconsin voters could become increasingly sour on Walker and his party by November, especially if Walker’s legal problems multiply.
The most recent polls indicate a close election. John Nichols has a “A Wisconsin Recall FAQ” at The Nation, which sheds light on Barrett’s geographic strategy:

While the Democrat has to renew his party’s appeal statewide — after the disastrous 2010 election — his primary focus is on the Democratic heartlands of Dane County (Madison) and Milwaukee County, as well as industrial cities such as Sheboygan and Racine. Statewide, turnout fell from 69 percent in the very strong Democratic year of 2008 to 49 percent in the very Republican year of 2010.
Much of the falloff came within the city of Milwaukee, where 90,000 people who did vote in 2008 did not vote in 2010. Countywide, 134,000 people who voted in 2008 did not vote in 2010…Scott Walker’s winning margin in 2010 was 124,000 votes. A presidential-level turnout in Milwaukee County could reverse it with 10,000 votes to spare.
Will that happen? Probably not. Milwaukee turnout will need to be accentuated by a spike in turnout in Racine, a historical manufacturing city south of Milwaukee where voting in 2010 was way off from 2008.

Nichols notes that, not surprisingly, Mayor Barrett, former president Clinton and Jesse Jackson all three focused their campaigning in Milwaukee and Racine. Nichols adds “Both sides have put top recount lawyers on notice that their services might be needed. The Democrats have retained Mark Elias, who guided U.S. Senator Al Franken through his 2008-2009 recount fight in Minnesota,” adds Nichols. “Wisconsin law allows for a full recount — at no cost — if the margin in a contested election is less than 0.5 percent. The governor’s race could be that close, as could several of the state Senate contests.”
The New Republic explores possible counter-intuitive boomerang effects of today’s vote on the presidential outcome in November. Noam Scheiber worries that a Mayor Barrett victory over Governor Walker would encourage the Romney campaign to invest billions more in GOTV, but adds “…I do think a Barrett win would be better for Obama in Wisconsin, since it’s likely to deter Romney from going all-out in the state, while a Walker win would give Romney hope and probably demoralize Democrats there.”
Alec MacGillis’s TNR take is that a Walker win today could actually bode well for President Obama’s re-election:

…There are also going to be some swing voters who are going to be voting less on those big ideological questions than on the more general question of whether things are going okay. If these swing voters believe that things are gradually coming back in Wisconsin — no sure thing, given that the jobs expansion there has been less clear than in Ohio — they may decide to vote for Walker less out of ideological solidarity than because they figure it’s foolish to rock the boat with the rare act of a recall. And here’s the thing — to the extent that Wisconsin swing voters draw that conclusion about Walker, they may also be led to support Obama’s reelection, to stick with the guy in charge. Hard as it may be to believe, there is no question these Walker/Obama voters exist — after all, the same polls that have Walker ahead of Barrett in the polls tend to also have Obama ahead of Romney, albeit by a narrowing margin.

Walker may benefit from a belief that Recall elections should be used sparingly. As Citizen Dave Cieslewicz puts it in his post at The Progressive:

The most problematic issue for Barrett may wind up being voters who don’t like Walker’s policies but just don’t believe in recalls. Those voters probably believe that recalls should be reserved for criminal wrong-doing, and the John Doe probe of Walker’s county executive office aides might not be enough for them.

If Cieslewicz is right, much depends on how persuadable swing voters feel about recall elections in general, a good topic to probe in future polls.
The latest polls point to narrowing lead for Scott Walker, indications are it will be a close election. And regardless of the outcome, just making it a cliff-hanger would be a great victory for Wisconsin progressives. Perhaps even more importantly, it sets a solid organizational foundation for victory in the next progressive campaign.
In a way, the Wisconsin Recall has already won something important: showing how an energized, progressive coalition can inspire and educate millions of voters. As Katrina vanden Heuval puts the election in historical perspective in her WaPo op-ed:

…When the results come in, reflect on the vast organizing effort that brought Wisconsin to this moment — and imagine where it still has the potential to go. Elections are over in a matter of hours, but movements are made of weeks, months and years. The Declaration of Sentiments was issued at Seneca Falls in 1848, yet women did not gain the right to vote until seven decades later. The Civil War ended with a Union victory in 1865, yet the Voting Rights Act was not passed until a century later. Auto workers held the historic Flint sit-down strike in 1936-37, yet the fight for a fair, unionized workforce persists 75 years later.

Win or lose today, coming even close sustains hope and gives Dems leverage in the next election. That’s a victory worth celebrating.


Five Takeaways From the Primary Season

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Now that Mitt Romney is officially the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and we have some distance from the primaries that decided it all, it’s time to consider the lessons. Otherwise, poor memories, shaky analysis and self-serving spin will combine to congeal a conventional “wisdom” that is anything but.
As someone who obsessively chronicled every twist and turn of this very odd nomination contest for TNR, here are my five top takeaways:
1.Mitt Romney is a very lucky man. The Republican Party’s dominant conservative wing resisted his nomination as long and as hard as it could, but in the end, had no better options. Herman Cain was not ever going to win the nomination. Nor, likely, was the immensely vulnerable, highly unpopular Newt Gingrich or the extremist Michele Bachmann, both of whom were an oppo researcher’s dream. The two potentially viable rivals were Tim Pawlenty, who gambled everything and lost on the fool’s gold of the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa last summer, and Rick Perry, who ran one of those rare, amazingly inept presidential campaigns that are a constant reminder of the importance of minimal competence in politics. It’s a sign of Romney’s vulnerability that Rick Santorum–whose 2006 Senate defeat told you everything you needed to know about how well he wore on voters, and how much ammunition his record provided his opponents–came within a few thousand votes in Michigan of sending Mitt’s campaign into a potential death spiral and the national GOP into a panic. Anyone who tells you Romney’s nomination was pre-ordained by some iron law of succession or some shadowy “Establishment” was obviously not paying much attention to how the deal actually went down.
2. Conservatives reasserted their control of the GOP. You’ll also hear that Romney’s nomination was a victory for Republican “moderates” over “movement conservatives” or their latest grassroots incarnation, the Tea Party. Don’t believe it. Yes, hard-core conservatives would have preferred a different nominee–for the most part, someone who wasn’t running, like Jim DeMint or Mike Pence or Marco Rubio–but they had issues with virtually everyone in the actual field, and more importantly, they got what they needed from Romney, who was, as everyone seems to have forgotten, their own preferred candidate in 2008. He’s atoned for his health care heresy by promising about ten thousand times to repeal ObamaCare root and branch. He’s on board with the twin pillars of the Small Government counter-revolution, the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge, and the Ryan Budget. He’s foresworn increased taxes as any part of any budget deal, however large. He’s met all the basic social-issues litmus tests of the Christian Right. He was by most measures the hawkiest of all the candidates on foreign policy issues. And for good measure, he tacked hard right on immigration policy in order to croak Rick Perry. Thanks to his “flip-flop” problem and conservative hyper-vigilance, there will be no back-tracking by Romney between now and November, or most probably, between now and the end of time. Mitt’s no stubbornly independent cuss like John McCain. He’ll stay bought.
3. 2012 is not just “about” the economy. The primaries did not notably feature debates among Republican candidates about how, exactly, to bring the U.S. economy back. In part that’s because they were in total agreement on the big points: both fiscal and monetary stimulus of the economy are terrible ideas; excessive federal spending and extension of housing credit to irresponsible poor and minority folk caused the Great Recession; and a systematic agenda of universal deregulation, public-sector austerity, health-care rationing to reduce costs, restriction of collective bargaining rights, and high-end (including corporate) tax cuts are the prescription for recovery. That this is the conservative movement’s permanent non-cultural agenda for good times and bad is the tip-off that even the GOP’s “economic” plans are about an ideological commitment to smaller government–extending very nearly these days to a complete overturning of the New Deal and Great Society legacy–rather than any shrewd macroeconomic strategy. Beyond that, there is no question the primaries reflected an abiding preoccupation with cultural issues, whatever the candidates professed, viz. the endless angels-dancing-on-pins distinctions on whether to ban “abortifacient” contraceptives as well as clinical abortions, the war on Planned Parenthood, and the final plunge of the GOP (and for that matter, the Catholic Bishops) into full harness with the Christian Right’s long-standing position that church-state separation represents a “war on religion.” It’s hard to imagine much of anything about the subject-matter of the primary contest that would have changed had the economy been booming.
4. Super-PACs have changed politics. Whether it’s simply a matter of the drift towards uncontrolled campaign financing accelerated by Citizens United, or the hyper-mobilization of an unprecedented group of politically active billionaires, there’s no question the Super-PACs played a big role in the nomination contest. Newt Gingrich’s Palinesque media-bashing debate performances had a lot to do with his candidacy coming back from the grave twice, but he would have remained a novelty candidate like past debate phenoms had not it been for Sheldon Adelson’s decision to give him the resources to run an actual campaign. It was Romney’s Super-PAC that destroyed Perry in Iowa, Gingrich in Florida, and later on, Santorum in the Midwest. And when the losing candidates’ own sugar daddies (Adelson and Santorum’s friend Foster Friess) closed the checkbooks, it was all over. The same forces (and many of the very same people) may be about to save Scott Walker’s bacon in Wisconsin, and are in the process of challenging the assumption that the sheer power of paid media can’t win a presidential general election.
5. The crazy nomination process is here for another four years. The dog that didn’t bark in 2012 was the usual chorus of complaints about the crazy-quilt nominating process itself–the disproportionate power of the early states, and the buyer’s remorse of voters and elites stuck with a nominee they didn’t want. The stretched-out nature of the primary calendar–which kept Romney from formally claiming the nomination until late May–was part of that non-event. So, too, was the rapid consolidation of support behind Romney once he essentially clinched the nomination in Wisconsin if not earlier. There will be some grumbling about the procedural glitches that allowed Ron Paul’s minions to dominate delegate selection events long after the deal had gone down, but for the most part, minor adjustments should suffice. We’ll be stuck with the same crazy system in 2016.


Edsall: Demographics, Faith, Egalitarian Values Feed Polarization

Thomas B. Edsall takes some recent demographic and attitudinal trends out for a ramble at his New York Times ‘Campaign Stops’ blog, and comes across some interesting insights, among them:

In a study published in February 2008, the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life found that mainline Protestants, once the dominant force not only in politics but in the national culture, had fallen to 18.1 percent of the electorate, behind both Protestant evangelicals and Catholics – and barely ahead of the fast-growing category of “unaffiliated,” which reached 16.1 percent.
Although a majority of the American population today decisively self-identifies as Christian, at 78.4 percent, America and its politics have in fact become vastly more heterogeneous. The connection between religion and politics is very complicated, of course. On the one hand, many people do not feel their religious beliefs and their political beliefs are directly related, but for others the former determines the latter. Not to mention the fact that the tenets of Christianity are themselves subject to partisan and subjective interpretation.

That latter point comes alive in a survey by an April 2011 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, which asked respondents, “Is capitalism compatible with Christian values?” The results, as Edsall summarizes:

By two to one, 53-26, Democrats believe that capitalism and Christianity are not compatible. Republicans, in contrast, believe there is no conflict, by a 46-37 margin. Tea Party supporters are even more adamant, believing that capitalism and Christian values are compatible by a 56-35 margin.

You can imagine the field day neo-McCarthyist Republicans will have with that one. The findings are corroborated somewhat with other surveys cited by Edsall. The Public Religion Research Institute found, for example, that 70 percent of Democrats agreed that “one of the big problems of this country is that we don’t give everyone an equal chance in life,” compared to just 38 percent of Republicans. A healthy majority of Republicans, 54 percent, on the other hand, agreed that “it’s not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others,” while only 25 percent of Dems endorsed this view. Looking at all Americans, 53 percent agreed with the more liberal view, with 40 percent also embracing the more conservative perspective.
Edsall’s take on these and other survey data he presents is that “As presently constituted, the Republicans have become the party of the married white Christian past.” He rolls out an array of questions about how both parties will adapt to the demographic changes ahead, leaving his readers with an unavoidable conclusion that there is a well-rooted altruism/compassion gap which is reflected in party identification and economic philosophy.


Political Strategy Notes

How you can help GOTV in Wisconsin: The AFL-CIO has a widget you can use for making 15 GOTV phone calls.
Greg Sargent flags “
The Wisconsin debate moment everyone’s talking about” as a powerful energizer for the movement to recall Scott Walker and elect Tom Barrett. “Barrett attempted to use the moment to turn the tables on one of Walker’s main closing arguments — about crime stats in Milwaukee — and pivot back to allegations of Walker corruption. The exchange is heartening to labor and Dems because it’s the kind of charged debate moment that has at least the possibility of breaking through a bit and having an impact in a campaign’s final days…Many have observed that the Walker attack ad featuring the two-year-old child is not the kind of spot a campaign runs if it’s extremely confident of winning.”
At The Daily Beast Peter Beinart says Obama is right to continue attacking Romney’s record at Bain : “…Obama can’t win reelection simply with the votes of young, single, and minority voters. He needs to hold down his losses among blue-collar whites, a group with which he has always struggled. Using Romney’s stewardship at Bain to drive a wedge between him and the culturally conservative working-class whites whose turnout he desperately needs made a lot of sense, especially if the Obama campaign had tied Romney’s record at Bain to his support for unpopular Republican budgetary proposals.”
The Century Foundation is presenting a panel today from 12:00 to 2:00p.m. on “The Future of Labor Organizing” at their DC HQ and via webcast.
Key swing states are doing better economically. The Economist mulls over the ramifications, skeptically: “How much any of this will matter on November 6th is unclear. John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, argues there is little or no empirical link between a state’s economic conditions and its presidential voting. National economic conditions are far more important, probably because voters base their opinions on the national media, or national indicators such as the stockmarket…Moreover, if Mr Obama tries to take credit for good news in swing states such as Ohio, Virginia and Florida, he will have to share it with incumbent Republican governors equally intent on reaping the political benefit.”
At the Wonkblog, Ezra Klein explains why, contrary to media overreaction, the May jobs snapshot should not provoke mass weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Alan I. Abramowitz argues at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball that “Buying a Presidential Election? It’s Not as Easy as You Think.” As Abramowitz says, “The airwaves in the eight or 10 states that will decide the outcome of the 2012 presidential election will soon be saturated with ads supporting and opposing Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, all aimed at persuading a small group of undecided voters — less than 10%, according to most recent polls…These undecided voters are much less interested in the presidential election than those who have already chosen sides…The net impact of all of this advertising is likely to be minimal…Research by political scientists and evidence from 2012 polls in the battleground states suggests that the parties and candidates would do better to focus their efforts in these states on mobilizing their supporters rather than trying to persuade uncommitted voters.”
Also at Crystal Ball, Larry J. Sabato has a zinger for Gallup’s June polls: “Over the past eight elections, Gallup — the most recognizable of polling organizations — has only identified the eventual popular vote winner twice in its early June horse race polling…”
Jill Harris, managing director of strategic initiatives for Drug Policy Action, the political arm of the Drug Policy Alliance, has a WaPo update on the public’s views on marijuana laws reform, noting: “A new Rasmussen poll showed that 56 percent of Americans support the legalization of marijuana and only 36 percent oppose it. A Mason-Dixon poll conducted in May found that 74 percent of Democrats, 79 percent of Independents and 67 percent of Republicans believe that the federal government should respect state medical marijuana laws and not prosecute individuals who are in compliance with these laws…In blue Oregon and California and red Texas, candidates have just succeeded with a pro-reform message. As the momentum builds for marijuana legalization across the country, politicians will have no choice but to get in step with the public. And then we’ll really start to see things change.”
Everyone agrees that the economy is the most pivotal factor. But at The Hill, Alexander Bolton has a riff that should make political junkies of all stripes a little nervous, “Ten game changers that could decide the race between Obama and Romney.”