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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Ed Kilgore

Swing Voters and Ticket-Splitters in the Mountain West

NOTE: This is the sixth item in The Democratic Strategist’s Roundtable Discussion on swing and base voter strategies. Focusing on the Mountain West as a potential “swing region,” it’s by Joan McCarter, who is a Fellow/Contributing Editor at Daily Kos, where she posts as McJoan.
Print Version
Ed Kilgore began this roundtable discussion with two questions: are swing voters worth the trouble? Can Democrats win with base mobilization alone?
From a regional perspective, and specifically the region that currently holds the hopes of so many Democrats—the Mountain West—there’s little choice for Democrats but to find a way to appeal to swing voters. In the Mountain West region, comprised of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, Republicans hold about a 12 point registration advantage. The reality is that a Democrat doesn’t win in many parts of the region unless they can appeal to the always elusive independent or unaffiliated voter, not to mention some Republicans.
This isn’t a new phenomenon for Democrats in the West—it’s why you rarely find a Western Dem who is an enthusiastic supporter of gun control, for example. Finding avenues of nonpartisan, and even anti-partisan, appeal have been critical to the survival of the Western Democrat in the lean years since Ronald Reagan helped solidify the region as solidly red, as has keeping the national party at arm’s length. The key for the Democratic Party in shaping a strategy for the 2008 elections will be allowing Democrats running in the region to run with a high degree of independence from the national party’s message and structure. The key for Democrats running in the West will be to find those issues that can be branded as Democratic and that uphold our progressive values.
Note: this discussion has been well informed by a Democracy Corps survey and memo from April, 2007.
(1) Who are the swing and base voters?
In the Mountain West, swing voters can be just about any voter. While in each of the states the Republicans have a distinct registration advantage, that imbalance obviously doesn’t play out state-wide or in every race. Part of this is due to the inheritance of Western voters of the idea of the Western character. Paramount to that ideal is independence, an ideal that plays out politically to an extent in voting behavior. Historically, party structures in the Mountain West have been relatively weak; politicians are more likely to run as individuals first and members of a party second and voters pride themselves on voting for the individual, not the party. There’s a marked anti-partisan attitude among traditional Western voters.
Getting an empirical handle on the exact voter breakdown in some of these states to determine base vs. swing percentages is a challenge. If you take the last two presidential elections as establishing the base Democratic vote, the range is from 26 percent in Utah to 48.5 percent in New Mexico. It’s not a perfect measure for the voting demographics, but gives an essential baseline, particularly in states like Idaho and Utah where it takes a real yellow dog to vote for the Democratic nominee.
It’s important to note that, in the context of this region, anti-partisan is not the equivalent of bipartisan. Western voters are highly pragmatic, looking for problem solvers first, and ideological debate is of less interest than action on many issues. While they would like the parties to work together, it’s more important that things get done, even if that takes a bulldozer of a politician, like Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer was in the 2007 legislative session, to do it. Because the independently minded voter places a higher value on action than on compromise, contrast is more important than comity in appealing to them. The individual candidate is also more important than the party he or she represents for many Western voters.
Thus, the prototypical swing voters in the Mountain West are better defined as ticket-splitters than as “swingers.” They might be perfectly willing to send the Democrat that they know and trust back to the House of Representatives in DC, but if a fellow Democrat is running for another House or Senate seat, they’ll probably look to the Republican in the race, just to make sure their own sense of checks and balances is maintained. As a result, their ticket gets split.


“Rush” To Judgment

I guess we’d be derelict in faling to note the big political story of the day: the New York Times piece on John McCain’s questionable dealings with lobbyists, particularly a certain lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. There’s the story, and then there’s the story about the story, and it’s hard at this point to know where the evidence will lead next.
But it was amusing to watch certain conservatives who can’t stand John McCain, but who hate the New York Times, chase their own tails in reacting to the story.
As usual, Rush Limbaugh descended into madness most quickly and thoroughly. In an email to The Politico, Limbaugh said this:

The story is not the story. The story is the drive-by media turning on its favorite maverick and trying to take him out. The media picked the GOP’s candidate, the NYT endorsed him while they sat on this story, and is now, with utter predictability, trying to destroy him.

Gee, if only we’d known the New York Times had the power to choose the Republican presidential nominee. We’d have lobbied for Tom Tancredo.


Who’s More Electable?

(NOTE: As explained in an earlier post, this is a guest item from Jonathan Krasno, Associate Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University).
With John McCain the all-but-certain Republican nominee, the obvious question emerges: which Democrat is likeliest to beat him? This, of course, is a purely hypothetical question. John Kerry won the Democratic nomination in 2004 in large part because of the perception that he was the strongest candidate against George Bush. He lost, but we have no way of knowing whether John Edwards or Howard Dean would have done better. The same is true of many of the judgments that people make of candidates. We’ll never know whether Hillary Clinton would be a better president than Barack Obama, whether his foreign policy would work better than hers, and so on. The best we can do make an informed guess. On the question of electability, my guess without question is Obama.
The case for Obama as the strongest candidate comes from simple electoral math. The 30+ primaries and caucuses to date, plus the polls and the pattern of endorsements from red-state Democrats, show that he has more appeal to independents, to a handful of Republicans, and to casual Democrats than does Clinton. Clinton’s support is largely concentrated in core Democrats, the sort most likely to vote in primaries and the reason why she remains in serious contention despite a string of loses. Obama is almost certainly right to claim that he would be more likely to win over Clinton’s voters in the fall than she would be to win over his. Although widely interpreted as a reference to blacks, it is independent and Republican supporters who are most out of her reach. In short, Obama begins with a larger pool of potential supporters, one that encompasses the core Democrats currently on Clinton’s side and extends past them.
The key word in that last sentence is “potential.” The main knock against Obama as a candidate – and the main argument for Clinton – involves his ability to withstand the withering attack to come. Obama has enjoyed a charmed political life, with fawning press and weak Republican opposition. Can he maintain his exalted status a fresh, new voice (for change!) once the campaign really begins? The Clintons, after all, knocked him off his stride for several weeks after Iowa with some hardball tactics, although by South Carolina he managed to turn those tactics against them.
Once the campaign begins, the argument goes, Clinton is better prepared. She has been in the national spotlight since 1992, so she knows what the counterattack will be like and what she has to do to get beyond it. She won’t, like Kerry or Michael Dukakis, be surprised by an attack and lose an early lead. She is not invested in a holier-than-thou image, so she can throw some pretty sharp elbows and do whatever is necessary to win, etc. Furthermore, the strong economy of the Clinton years supposedly gives her a solid claim as the candidate best equipped to deal with recession, especially versus McCain.
All of that would be more convincing if Clinton were a proven vote-getter or a proven campaigner. She ran five points behind Al Gore in New York in 2000, two points behind Elliot Spitzer in 2006. (Her husband, his recent missteps notwithstanding, who is a better politician than she is, never managed to win a majority of votes nationwide.) I live in upstate New York and can confirm that whatever Clinton hatred that remains here is muted, proving that with time Clinton can win over her critics. She does not have the time to lavish attention on the whole country as she has lavished it on New York, to get people who discount her to pay attention. More important, against the toughest political opponent of her career in Obama, she has squandered a huge lead and a dizzying array of advantages. If Obama has run a better campaign for the nomination (aimed at appealing to people who will be swing voters in the general) why should Clinton be seen as the stronger candidate in the fall? It is certainly hard to discount his superior rhetorical skills and the organizational success of his campaign.
Nor does Clinton’s ability to match up against McCain on an array of issues seem like a big deal. One of the things that the exit polls have consistently shown is that Clinton and McCain, arguably the two biggest hawks on each side, have done better than their opponents with voters who favor a quick withdrawal from Iraq. What that suggests, of course, is that voters look at a variety of things besides issues. In Obama’s case it is his uplifting message of hope and change; in McCain’s it is his reputation for honesty. Against either one, Clinton’s mastery of the details of government seems wonkish and uninspired. Given the choice between going into the general election with the master of the economy or the charismatic apostle of change, I would opt for the generic message of changing the friendless status quo.
In other words, the argument for Obama is most electable is based on breadth of his appeal, while Clinton is favored for her supposed mastery of the process of running against Republicans. Of the two, the first seems more tangible and more valuable to me. The potential to bring more Democrats to the polls (especially young ones who could help the party in the future), the potential to win more independents and perhaps more than a sliver of Republicans, the potential to keep the Republicans in disarray rather than healing their divisions for them by nominating an opponent who instantly unites them – all these make Obama the stronger candidate. Obama will be savagely attacked, pulled off his pedestal (along with McCain), and possibly even fatally wounded in the process. But will he end up any more disliked or divisive than is Clinton already? Probably not. The campaign against her is, after all, in the midst of its second decade. It will cost the Republicans tens of millions to try to demonize Obama as effectively as they have demonized Clinton, and there is no certainty they’ll succeed.
One of the common observations about Obama is that he is a high risk, high reward candidate, while Clinton represents a surer thing. The risk is that, with his lack of exposure on the national stage, the bottom could fall out; the reward is that Obama fulfills his potential as a transformational candidate. I do not see him doing any worse than Clinton’s worst. But with the stars aligned for a Democratic victory in November, Democrats can afford to think big. Clinton can win a narrow victory, but only Obama can deliver a landslide.


Are Swing Voters Worth the Trouble? Can Democrats Win With Base Mobilization Alone?

NOTE: In this introductory essay for The Democratic Strategist‘s Roundtable Discussion, TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore reviews the history and significance of the perennial issue of base-versus-swing orientations for Democrats, and poses a series of questions whose answers have traditionally divided many observers: (1) Who are the swing and base voters? (2) What is their relative value? (3) What are the opportunity costs involved in reaching beyond the base to swing voters? (4) What’s the best long-range strategy for building an enduring Democratic majority?
While this decade has ushered in a variety of new strategic issues for Democrats, from Internet politics to turmoil in the labor movement, some issues are evergreen. And perhaps the oldest unresolved argument among Democrats is over the nature and electoral value of “swing voters,” those much-pursued and much-maligned counterweights to the Democratic “base.”
Though the debate over “swing voters” has been raging for decades, it’s hard to find a subject more bedeviled by definitional and empirical confusion, by straw men and false choices, and by very different evaluations of recent political history.
It’s this last factor that’s revived the swing voter debate among pollsters, political practitioners, academics, bloggers and journalists.
To cite the most simplistic versions of a common argument, in one narrative of recent Democratic electoral performance, Bill Clinton broke the party’s long presidential drought by intelligently targeting swing voters. His successors, Al Gore and John Kerry (along with congressional Democrats in most cycles between 1994 and 2006), failed to completely follow the Clinton template. Republican abandonment of swing voters (politically and substantively) led to the big Democratic midterm victory of 2006.
A competing narrative suggests that Clinton’s pursuit of swing voters alienated the party base, blurred essential distinctions between the two parties, and forfeited the Democratic majority in Congress and in the states, while failing to produce a presidential majority. Gore and Kerry failed to match Bush’s relentless efforts to energize the Republican base, and Democratic fretting over swing voters made the party a weak and ineffective opposition party. That finally changed in 2006, when a netroots-led mobilization effort based on maximum partisan differentiation produced a Democratic counterpart to the base-driven Republican landslide of 1994.
It’s notable that each narrative diverges sharply over interpretation of the 1994 debacle, the 2000 “draw,” and the 2006 breakthrough. And there is naturally (though not universally) a strong ideological underpinning to the debate, with those on the party’s “left” typically disparaging swing-voter-focused campaigns and governing strategies as unprincipled and disloyal, and those in the “centrist” camp often arguing that base-focused campaigns cede critical ground to the GOP and make effective governing impossible.
The base-swing argument has many variations, of course. Most centrists favor a party message and agenda that’s congenial to both base and swing voters, and at most suggest keeping highly partisan base mobilization efforts “under the radar screen.” And most progressives believe in swing voter appeals that don’t conflict with sharp partisan differentiation and ideological principles, even if they sometimes seem to yearn for an election (as some hope for in 2008) where swing voter appeals are no longer necessary. Both camps agree that exposing GOP extremism can be an effective tool for both base mobilization and swing voter persuasion.
But even if all goes well in 2008 and this dispute does not become a major point of contention among Democrats before November, it will remain a semi-submerged problem for any Democratic administration and Congress in terms of designing a governing agenda. And while it would be naïve to think that this ancient argument can be completely resolved here or anywhere else, it would be helpful to create some general agreement on the terms of debate, and on certain empirically verifiable common ground.


The Electability Debate Continues

As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to slug it out on the campaign trail, the question that continues to obsess political observers and many actual voters is which candidate would be stronger in a general election contest with John McCain. Here at The Democratic Strategist, we’ve decided to occasionally publish some expert thoughts on the subject, beginning today, when Binghamton University political scientiest Jonathan Krasno makes the case for Obama. (We’ll publish someone making the case for HRC before long).
But underlying this comparative debate is a slightly different one: what are the fundamentals of this general election campaign? What’s the baseline of support for the two parties? Does either Democrat begin with an advantage based on Bush’s unpopularity, the trend of independents towards Democratic voting exhibited in 2006, the the “enthusiasm gap” between Ds and Rs evidenced in this year’s primaries and caucuses, the issues landscape, or the ability of the two Democrats to bring in new voters or persaude swing voters?
As the list in the last sentence reveals, I’m in the optimist camp when it comes to overall Democratic prospects, whether our presidential nominee is named Hillary or Barack. But others disagree. I was talking to a colleague the other day, who after I declared myself “upbeat” about November, said: “Upbeat? Let’s see. Republicans quickly decided on a war hero loved by the news media. We’ve got a cage match with daggers between two demographically limited candidates. Wanna give me some of that kool-aid you’re drinking?”
This far out, of course, all talk about the general election is highly speculative. But given the magnitude of the stakes, it’s probably not premature.


Tracking Superdelegates

An aspect of the Democratic presidential contest that’s rapdily become accepted by both campaigns and most independent observers is that neither Clinton nor Obama is likely to nail down the nomination solely on the basis of pledged delegates awarded after primaries and caucuses. In a close race, that’s hardly surprising, since 19% of the convention votes are reserved for unpledged “superdelegates.”
Thus, technically, we are going to have a “brokered convention” in the limited sense that no one’s probably going to Denver with 2,025 pledged delegates. But obviously, if either candidate has a clear majority of both pledged delegates and of superdelegates, he or she will be the putative nominee, and the convention won’t be “brokered” in any meaningful sense.
There is at present a fair amount of disagreement about pledged delegate totals for each candidate, but that’s only because different observers use different assumptions about delegates “won” in primaries or especially caucuses, but not yet formally selected. Pretty soon, those counts will begin to solidify and converge.
But the picture is more complicated with superdelegates, whose allegiances can only be deduced from individual public statements and/or private commitments.
The Democratic Convention Watch blog has focused on this problem obsessively, and is independently trying to push superdelegates to declare or undeclare themselves unambiguously. At present, however, superdelgate counts diverge significantly. DCW itself has Clinton up 233-147. CNN has her up 234-156; CBS says it’s 210-142, and AP has it at 242-163. That’s a variation of 32 votes for HRC, and 21 votes for Obama.
Meanwhile, there’s a different sort of superdelegate tracking under way at OpenLeft, which has announced a “Superdelegate Tranparency Project” aimed at publicizing the primary and caucus vote preferences of each superdelegate’s constituency. The explicit goal of this project is to reduce the possibility that superdelegates will “overturn” a popular vote mandate for one of the two candidates. But since superdelegates are not apportioned according to any purely representative formula, it’s not clear to me, at least, that if every single one of them “deferred” to his or her “constituency’s” wishes, it would necessarily add up to agreement between superdelegates as a whole and pledged delegates as a whole.
That’s how murky this whole process has become, folks.
In the end, the whole problem would likely resolve itself if one candidate or the other got on a late “roll” in primaries and caucuses, won a comfortable majority of pledged delegates, and then enjoyed a stampede of support from superdelegates. But if that doesn’t happen, tracking superdelegates will become a major cottage industry.


Virginia Gleanings

As you probably know if you’re reading political blogs at this time of night, Barack Obama is romping to a big win in VA, winning (according to exit polls) nearly half the white vote, a majority of the Hispanic vote, and all but one region of the state (the rural western region going for HRC).
And John McCain has held off a tough challenge from Mike Huckabee in VA.
But there’s good news for all Democrats, including HRC supporters, in VA.
For one thing, Democratic turnout is running at nearly double the Republican turnout–in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since LBJ in 1964.
And for another, independents, who could vote in either primary, appear to have chosen Democratic ballots by nearly a two-to-one margin as well. And here’s the surprising thing: independents voting in the GOP primary spurned supposed indie-magnet McCain, going for Huckabee by a 43-34 margin, with Ron Paul pulling in 19 percent.


Uniting the Party: Who Faces A More Difficult Task?

(NOTE: This item is by Alan Abramowitz, who is Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and a member of The Democratic Strategist’s advisory board. It was originally published at The Daily Strategist on February 10, 2008).
Now that Arizona Senator John McCain has all but sewn up the Republican presidential nomination, the first task that faces him is winning over disgruntled conservatives, many of whom were supporting former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries. To that end, McCain gave a conciliatory speech on February 8th at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC, pleading with conservative leaders and activists to unite behind his candidacy.
Meanwhile the two remaining Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are locked in a tight battle that could go on for several more weeks and possibly continue all the way to the Democratic convention. This has led to growing concern among Democratic leaders that a protracted battle between Clinton and Obama could make it difficult to unite the party for the general election campaign.
It is clear that unifying their respective parties will be a key task for both John McCain and the eventual Democratic nominee. But for which party’s nominee will this task be more difficult? The answer to this question will depend in part on how deep the ideological divisions are between supporters of the nominee and supporters of the defeated candidates in each party.
In order to compare the difficulty of the task that John McCain faces with the difficulty of the task that will face either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I compared the ideological preferences of each candidate’s supporters based on data collected in the Democratic and Republican exit polls for California on Super Tuesday. I used exit poll data from California because California was by far the biggest prize in both parties, none of the candidates is from the state, and the primary was hotly contested in both parties.
I calculated the mean score of each candidate’s supporters on a five-point liberal-conservative scale that was included on the exit poll. The scores on this scale were 1 for very liberal, 2 for somewhat liberal, 3 for moderate, 4 for somewhat conservative, and 5 for very conservative. Thus a mean score of 3.0 would indicate that the average supporter of a candidate was right in the middle of the liberal-conservative scale while a mean score of 2.0 would indicate that the average supporter of a candidate was well to the left of center and a mean score of 4.0 would indicate that the average supporter of a candidate was well to the right of center.
The results of my calculations showed that the mean scores for Clinton and Obama supporters were almost identical: 2.5 for Clinton voters vs. 2.4 for Obama voters. In contrast, the mean scores for McCain and Romney supporters were quite distinct: 3.5 for McCain voters vs. 4.1 for Romney voters. The ideological divide between McCain and Romney voters was six times as large as the ideological divide between Clinton and Obama voters. And on this sort of scale with a very limited range, that is a very large difference.
The average Obama and Clinton voter was a moderate liberal. Similarly, the average McCain voter was a moderate conservative. McCain voters were about as far to the right of center as Clinton and Obama voters were to the left of center. But Romney voters were much further to the right of center. Given that Americans generally don’t like to place themselves at the extremes on these sorts of scales, it is striking that 40 percent of Romney voters in California placed themselves at the far right end of the scale. In contrast, only 12 percent of McCain voters placed themselves at the far right end of the scale and only 18 percent of Clinton voters and 22 percent of Obama voters placed themselves at the far left end of the scale.
These results suggest that despite clinching his party’s nomination much earlier than his Democratic opponent, John McCain may face a more difficult challenge in uniting his party’s voters than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Because supporters of Clinton and Obama have almost identical ideological preferences, it should not be difficult for either group to unite behind the other candidate if he or she wins the nomination. The winning candidate will not need to move to the left or right in order to win over supporters of the defeated candidate.
John McCain, however, may be forced to move further to the right in the next few weeks in order to win over disappointed supporters of Mitt Romney. In fact, this is precisely the course of action that is being urged on him by conservative spokesmen and it appears to be what he was attempting to do in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, a group that he shunned only a year ago. But this may be a risky strategy for McCain since it will delay if not prevent him from moving back to the center to appeal to independents and swing voters in the general election-a move that will be crucial if he is to have any chance of winning in November.


Maybe Close Race Not All Bad?

One of the most commonly heard concerns among Democrats these days is that the close race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will divide the party and sink it in November. So it was nice to read (via Daily Kos’ DemFromCT) this very different assessment of the meaning of the Democratic competition in the conservative Wall Street Journal:

For Republican strategists and leaders, facing divisions over presumptive nominee John McCain, the Arizona senator, and demoralized over President Bush’s and the party’s unpopularity, the potency of both Democrats’ candidacies is both fearsome and impressive.
“The Obama wave is unlike anything I have seen during my career. It would have totally swamped any traditional candidate,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducts The Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls with Democratic pollster Peter Hart. “The fact that Clinton is still standing and breaking even is actually a remarkable statement about how unique a candidate she is and what an exceptionally strong candidate.”

The title of the piece (by Jackie Calmes) is pretty reassuring, too: “Obama’s Extraordinary Wave Fails To Sink Extraordinary Foe.”
Now everbody can return to their regularly scheduled arguments about one candidate’s superior “electability” over the other, and regularly scheduled handwringing about the duration of this nomination contest.


McCain-Who?

Since it’s probably just a matter of time until John McCain wins the Republican presidential nomination, it’s not too early to speculate about his vice-presidential choice. And as Alan Abramowitz notes in the last post, McCain has some serious party unity problems.
Some non-Republican media types seem to think it’s obvious that McCain should go ahead and give Huckabee the veep nod, getting him out of the race and providing a congressional/gubernatorial, secular moderate/Christian conservative ticket balance. They do not reckon with the power of the Republican Conservative Establishment, which is much more formidable than any counterpart on the Democratic side. Uniting the Wall Street, K Street, Neocon and Theocon factions of the GOP, and broadcasting its views through the airwaves and blogosphere, this establishment dislikes Huckabee as much as or more than McCain. Whatever its theoretical electoral value, a Mac/Huck ticket would tear the fragile coalition that Bush and Rove built entirely apart. So it probably ain’t going to happen.
A Staff post the other day noted that the moneyed wing of the GOP, represented by the Club for Growth (or as Huckabee calls it, the “Club for Greed”), had weighed in with some suggestions for McCain’s running mate. A more interesting discussion is under way at National Review Online, where Lisa Schiffren reports on responses to an informal query about Veep possibilities at NRO’s blog The Corner.
The top vote getter there was newly elected Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who is an Indian-American and an adult convert from Hinduism to Catholicism. After promoting MN’s Tim Pawlenty, SC’s Mark Sanford, and CA’s Chris Cox for the veepship, Schiffren also mentions Alaska governor Sarah Palin, touted as a member of “Feminists for Life” and also as a former Miss Alaska.
Schiffren’s list shows how seriously conservatives are taking their various economic and cultural litmus tests for the national ticket–and also how far they may be willing to go to accept demographically unconventional candidates like Jindal and Palin who meet those litmus tests. Then again, the best bet for McCain’s running-mate is some white guy in a suit who satisfies the various conservative factions, and adds nothing to the ticket other than a tentative unity and the certainty that the Right will control the party, if not the country.