Sasha Issenberg’s Slate.com post, “The Death of the Hunch,” provides a revealing look at the wonky side of campaign strategy, specifically “experiment-informed programs” to gauge the effects of messaging on different constituencies. As Issenberg, author of the forthcoming “The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns,” explains,

…The strategy was put into play even before Romney emerged as the Republican nominee. There was the late-November advertising run on satellite systems that the campaign called “tiny,” and then silence until a brief January broadcast-buy across six states focusing on energy, ethics, and the Koch brothers. An isolated flight of brochures about health-care legislation hit mailboxes in March, timed to Supreme Court arguments on the subject. In voluminous (if not easily audited by outsiders) online ads and targeted email blasts, the campaign has addressed seemingly every topic or theme imaginable: taxes paid by oil companies, the “war on women,” and a variety of local issues of interest in battleground states.
If these forays seem random, it’s because at least some of them almost certainly are. To those familiar with the campaign’s operations, such irregular efforts at paid communication are indicators of an experimental revolution underway at Obama’s Chicago headquarters. They reflect a commitment to using randomized trials, the result of a flowering partnership between Obama’s team and the Analyst Institute, a secret society of Democratic researchers committed to the practice, according to several people with knowledge of the arrangement. (Through a spokeswoman, Analyst Institute officials declined to comment on the group’s work with Obama and referred all questions to the campaign’s press office, which did not respond to an inquiry on the subject.)
The Obama campaign’s “experiment-informed programs”–known as EIP in the lefty tactical circles where they’ve become the vogue in recent years–are designed to track the impact of campaign messages as voters process them in the real world, instead of relying solely on artificial environments like focus groups and surveys. The method combines the two most exciting developments in electioneering practice over the last decade: the use of randomized, controlled experiments able to isolate cause and effect in political activity and the microtargeting statistical models that can calculate the probability a voter will hold a particular view based on hundreds of variables.

Issenberg goes on to explain how the ‘E.I.P.’ process is conducted, painting a provocative picture of what is likely the most intensely data-driven presidential campaign ever. (for another interesting article on the topic, see Issenberg’s earlier New York Times article, “Nudge the Vote.”) And, if President Obama wins in November, a share of the credit may go to the rigorous empirical grounding of his message strategists.

Andrew Sullivan has some advice for the Obama campaign up at his perch at The Daily Beast:

Here’s how I’d summarize the argument I think works best for Obama:
“I inherited a financial and economic disaster and two wars that did not end in victory. I have prevented a second Great Depression, restored job growth, saved our auto industry, restored financial stability, ended one war and wound down another, but we need more. We need investments in infrastructure, reform of immigration, and continuation of my education reforms. And we need a sensible approach to debt elimination. My policy is to cut entitlements, cut defense and slash tax loopholes and deductions so we can get higher revenues from those who have done extremely well these past three decades. My opponent refuses to tax the extremely wealthy at the same rates as ordinary folk, and wants to cut the debt solely by cutting entitlements for the old and sick, while increasing defense spending and cutting taxes even further. We all know we are going to have to retrench. Would you rather do it with me guarding the core of the welfare state or with Romney-Ryan who want to end it with a solution that Newt Gingrich called ‘right wing social engineering'”?
I think you have to have this positive contrast to balance the brutal attacks on Romney in advertizing, or risk losing that critical ingredient that made Obama Obama: a sane reminder of the actual policy choices we face, and a reasoned centrist approach to solving them. Alas, after the heat of a brutal partisan pushback from the GOP from Day One, that positive vision is not so present this time around. It needs to be brought back.

Sullivan also has “three key” soundbite-sized questions he feels that the Obama campaign should pose to voters:

Would you rather cut the debt by slashing entitlements alone – or do you favor a balanced approach, with increased taxes on the wealthy, retrenchment of defense and reform of entitlements?
Would you rather a president who wants to launch a war against Iran or a president who will do all he can to avoid it?
Do you want repeal of a healthcare law that guarantees available private insurance even to those with pre-existing conditions? If you are under 26, and on your parents’ health insurance, do you want to lose it?

Keeping those questions front and center will help secure victory for Obama, Sullivan feels. Though progressive Dems will gag on some of Sullivan’s suggestions, it’s hard to argue with his concluding sentence, “Waiting for better economic numbers and pummeling Romney’s favorables is not, in my view, a superior strategy.”
Obama did OK in ’08 without Sullivan’s advice, and centrist candidates have not exactly been lighting the electorate on fire thus far in 2012. Yet there are undoubtedly centrist voters still out there in significant numbers, waiting for a clear statement of principles that resonates with them. In a close election, offering them a little encouragement with some of Suillivan’s points may not be such a bad idea.

This article, by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
At my father’s funeral, the presiding minister, Ebb Munden, was a man who had been one of my dad’s closest friends. Ebb talked about how the last time he had gone to see my dad before he lost consciousness, he had been very emotional but that my dad had comforted him by gripping his hand and telling him it would be alright, that my dad was at peace and Ebb should be too. The lesson was that even at our physically weakest we could still be helping other people and making things better in the world.
I was thinking of that this past weekend when I went to see my brother Kevin back home in Lincoln, Nebraska. Kevin is one of those people who followers of Ayn Rand’s philosophy would call a leech on society — Rand believed that people with disabilities were leeches and parasites on society, and that the “parasites should perish.” Kevin’s birth father broke a chair over his head and gave him brain damage, making him developmentally disabled and making it hard for him to speak clearly. He came to my family when we were both 11 years old, and has been not only my brother but one of my closest friends ever since. As an adult in recent years, his body has continued to betray him as he is hard of hearing, can’t see well, and has muscular dystrophy. Recently he had to go into the hospital for major surgery and then developed pneumonia — his muscular dystrophy makes it especially tough to recover from all this.
For all of that, though, Kevin still contributes to the world around him, just as he always has. He has always shown great tenderness to the people around him, and still does. He can’t talk right now because he is on a ventilator, but his expressive hands still say a great deal. After I was watching him go through strenuous rehab exercises, I came over to him after he was done and asked how he was doing, and he just grinned and patted me on my too-big tummy, not only telling me he was okay, but that maybe I should be doing more exercise too. Even with all the tubes attached to him, he was still up for playing catch with a plastic ball in his room. He still had smiles for, and played ball with, a 5-year-old girl who came to see him. One of the nurses at the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital told me how touched she had been when he gave her a hug even though she was doing painful rehab exercises she knew he didn’t like. He still gave me all kinds of trouble, taking delight in showing me two stuffed dogs people had given him because he had named the big dog Kevin and the little dog Mike. And when I had to leave to go the airport and had tears in my eyes as I was leaning down to hug him goodbye, he rubbed my head to comfort me. I had come to comfort him in his time of pain, and he had comforted me even more. Kevin being a part of my life has been such a gift to me, and has made me 100 times better a person.
Kevin has also shaped my values and philosophy of life, and given me a perspective on policy issues. Conservatives are obsessed with the idea that somewhere, somehow there are lazy “undeserving” welfare recipients, but more than 90 percent of government support dollars go to the elderly, people working hard but are still below the poverty line because of low-wage jobs, and very disabled people like Kevin — those whose middle-class families like mine would be plunged into poverty if we had to pay for all their medical costs on our own.
It is Kevin who I think of when I see that the Ryan-Romney budget slashes money from Medicaid and from the Social Services Block Grant, a fund specifically targeted to help states meet the needs of their most vulnerable citizens. It is Kevin who I thought about when the audience at a Republican debate cheered about a man who had no health insurance dying. It is Kevin who I thought of when an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference laughed and cheered when Glenn Beck gleefully proclaimed that “in nature, the lions eat the weak.”
A society that does not value my brother Kevin at least as much as it does the Wall Street titans who grow rich as they speculate with other people’s money, and use the tax code to write off the debt they use to buy and sell companies regardless of the consequences to the families who work there, is a sick society. A government that would cut support to middle-class families trying to support their disabled children so the wealthy can get more tax breaks — a government that actually decides to help the wealthy and powerful more than the poor and disabled — would be a government with no decency. That is what Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the Republicans are proposing for us. Their hero Ayn Rand would be proud.
I have many reasons for working to oppose Romney’s policies. I think his economic policies are a disaster for an economy still weakened by allowing Wall Street to run roughshod over the rest of us for the first decade of this century. I’d like for people to have access to contraceptives, and all of us to have access to quality health care. The idea of appointing more Supreme Court Justices who support cases like the Citizens United ruling that have allowed “corporations are people, my friends” is destructive to our democracy. But even if all of that wasn’t there, I would only need one reason to oppose Romney’s policies, and his name is Kevin.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,” TDS C o-Editor Ruy Teixeira reports that “Americans’ support for legalizing same-sex marriage has reached its highest level yet.” Teixeira continues:

In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 53 percent of respondents said they supported legalization versus just 39 percent who opposed it. The 14-point pro-legalization gap is the largest margin the poll has ever recorded. It is also the first time that strong support for legalization (39 percent) has been larger than strong opposition (32 percent).

And President Obama’s support of same-sex marriage is also supported by most Americans, according to Teixeira:

The same poll finds high public approval of President Obama’s decision to support marriage equality: 51 percent support his decision versus 41 percent who oppose it.

It certainly appears that the opposition to same-sex marriage is becoming “a dwindling minority,” as Teixeia puts it. “The country is moving on.”

(This article by leading pollster James Zogby is cross posted from the Huffington Post)
Republican presidential challenger, Mitt Romney was given credit last week for refusing to endorse a proposed ad campaign that sought to link President Barack Obama with the controversial sermons delivered by his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. In doing so, Romney appeared to be demonstrating the same streak of decency that wouldn’t allow him to join in with the silly “birther” cabal, or the “Islamophobic” hysteria when these tendencies were all in vogue.
So far, so good. But before pinning any medals on Mitt Romney, it is important to note some worrisome signs indicating that he and his campaign may have opted for a more subtle approach to establishing the “otherness” of Barack Obama.
The more ham-fisted approach was used in 2008 by then vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. It was both divisive and a failure. Beautifully cataloged by radio and TV personality, Bill Press, in his new book, The Obama Hate Machine, the GOP and their media echo chamber engaged in a multi-pronged assault against Obama in an effort to paint him as “radical,” “foreign” and “different than the rest of us.” He was “Muslim,” “associated with terrorists,” “of foreign birth;” a “Black militant,” “not a loyal American,” or a “Marxist” — all of which Press termed “the ‘othering’ of candidate Obama.”
Republicans failed to defeat Barack Obama in 2008. But their efforts did leave a deep residual mistrust of the President. For example, recent polls show that an average of 40 percent of Republican voters in Southern states do not believe that Obama was born in the United States (and is, therefore, ineligible to be president) and more than a quarter of all Republicans still believe that Obama is a Muslim.
There was also a more subtle approach to establishing the “otherness” of Obama, and it had its roots in the 2008 Democratic primary. A memo prepared back then by Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Mark Penn, pointed out the “diverse multicultural background” of her opponent, suggesting that “it exposes a very strong weakness for him — his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine Americans electing a president… who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and values.”
Based on this assessment, Penn then asked, “How we could give some life to this contrast without turning negative?” And he answered his question with the following advice:
“Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America… and talk about the… deeply American values you grew up with… Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches, and values. He doesn’t. Make this a new American Century, etc… Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds.”
While candidate Clinton rejected this approach, her surrogates, at times, did not. In any case, this Penn memo proposing a more subtle “othering” of Obama appears now to have been picked up by team-Romney in 2012.
Earlier this week I received a mass fundraising mailer from the Romney campaign. It included a glossy full color photo of the candidate in wrinkled jeans and wind-breaker, standing in front of a weathered barn emblazoned with a massive American flag. Under the photo was written:

“James,
Thank you for believing in America as much as I do…this is a moment that demands we return to our basic values and core principles.
Mitt Romney”

The fundraising letter that accompanied the photo featured, on just its first page, in only 15 lines of text, the words “America” and “American” 10 times. The letter began: “I believe in America… I believe in the American Dream. And I believe in American strength.” And continued: “This election is a battle for the soul of America.” It concluded by asserting that this campaign is “to reclaim America for the people.”
While only a touch more subtle than the rejected “paint him with the Jeremiah Wright is a radical brush,” the net effect of this Romney mailing is the same. In case you missed the point: Mitt Romney is the “real” American; he is the one who believes in “American values;” and he alone is fighting for the “soul of America.”
And the subtext of the message, in case you missed that: Obama is different; he’s not like “us;” his ideas are foreign; and he and his supporters believe in values that are un-American.
So while claiming to be the higher road, this GOP approach invites the same conclusion and opens the door to same bigotry that has for four years now tarnished our national discourse.
This election can be about many things. It can be about approaches to job-creation, or philosophies of governance, or character, or even qualities of leadership. But in a time of great national stress, faced, as we are, with a struggling economy and an unsettling and rapidly changing world, what this election debate should not be about are subtle or not so subtle digs calling into question the “patriotism” or “otherness” of the incumbent.

Join Daily Kos and Democracy for America in signing their petition thanking all of the attorneys general who are fighting against Citizens United
Late last year, the Montana Supreme Court made the first crack in Citizens United by upholding a century-old state law banning direct corporate spending for or against candidates in state elections. Not long afterward, a right-wing group asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule that decision. Now, as the U.S. Supreme Court considers the case, the attorneys general from 22 states and D.C. have filed an amicus brief supporting Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock’s bid to maintain limits on corporate spending in state elections.
With nearly half of all states on board, this is the largest coordinated legal effort against Citizens United yet. Winning this lawsuit would immediately curtail the corrosive effect that unlimited corporate dollars are having on our democracy at the state level, and also be a major step toward overturning Citizens United nationwide.
Please join with Daily Kos and Democracy for America by signing our petition thanking all of the attorneys general who are fighting against Citizens United. We will send them the signatures.
Keep fighting,
Chris Bowers
Campaign Director, Daily Kos

The following article, by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
When I worked in the Clinton White House, I was always struck by how far off the conventional wisdom usually was in terms of how President Clinton’s big speeches played with the public. For the State of the Union and other big speeches, there was almost an exact inverse reaction between the way the D.C. pundits reacted and how much voters liked it — the more the D.C. guys hated the speech, the more the public usually liked it in the follow-up polling we were doing. It got to the point where I would cringe when one of the D.C. experts said they liked something Clinton did, because I feared what that would mean for our poll numbers.
I am seeing the same thing today in the Bain debate. When the beltway establishment attacks, I cheer. That is especially true having seen some focus group and polling data: when voters understand what kind of business Bain Capital is, and what Romney did when he was there, they hate it. Swing voters understand Bain to be vulture capitalism, as Newt Gingrich so accurately put it — vulture capitalism at its worst. Cripple companies with debt, lay off workers and cut their wages and benefits, outsource jobs to countries like China, sell off valuable assets, and then use tax loopholes to walk away with millions. Bain made money even when the companies they bought went bankrupt — sometimes because the companies went bankrupt. You explain to voters what Bain’s business model was, and they find it appalling — probably because it is.
In addition to D.C. types always tending to be out of touch with what real people believe, there is the bought off factor. Take the Democrats who are complaining the loudest. They are the exact Democrats you would expect to complain about this kind of strategy. Cory Booker is in office today because of the massive amounts of money he raised from Wall Street, including partners at Bain Capital itself.
Harold Ford, who has made Wall Street his home after raising millions from the financial industry in his political career, is the only Democratic candidate in a targeted Senate race to lose in 2006, and then went on to chair the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization that went down in flames shortly after he took over as chairman. After those two brilliant political endeavors, Ford announced that he might run against Kirsten Gillibrand for Senate in New York because he was so upset that Democrats were beating up so much on poor old Wall Street, but didn’t do it when his polling shockingly told him that voters hated Wall Street.
Ed Rendell works for a firm with a bunch of Wall Street investors as clients. Dianne Feinstein’s husband is in the financial industry, and Wall Street has been one of her main sources of political money. When I was working on financial reform issues over the last couple of years, Mark Warner was arguably Wall Street’s biggest Democratic advocate on the Hill. These folks are all big time Wall Street Democrats, and their opposition to the Obama campaign’s Bain message could not be more predictable.
Here’s the deal about this election year: Democrats are going to have blow off these attitudes by their Wall Street gang if they are going to have a chance to win this election. The voters who will decide this election are mostly in two categories: Latinos, the young, and working-class unmarried women who all should be Democratic base voters but are too hard hit by this economy to care much about voting; and working-class white swing voters.These are exactly the kinds of voters who are in an ugly mood about this economy, and they remain deeply angry that the Wall Street execs who destroyed the economy were bailed out and then got big bonuses the very next year instead of going to jail or at least being fired. Although voters think both parties are in bed with the big bank special interests, they tend to blame Obama for most of this, especially those swing voters.
Telling the story of Bain Capital and talking to voters about how they made their money sets this election up perfectly for Obama — as long as people (a) understand how Bain operated, and (b) have some evidence that Obama’s values are the opposite of Bain Capital’s values. Obama has to have credibility in being willing to call out and hold the big bankers accountable. Voters are getting a pretty good sense that Romney is Wall Street’s friend, and I think they are going to be easy to convince that being Wall Street’s friend doesn’t help create jobs, since it didn’t work for Romney in Massachusetts (46th in the country in job creation), and it didn’t work for George W. Bush. But Obama has to keep the heat on Bain, and he has to show he is going to put the heat on Wall Street in general.
The Obama campaign needs to confidently ignore the whiny Wall Street Democrats. They have no credibility, and their political advice is poison. And the Obama administration needs to roll over the pro-Wall Streeters in their own midst by giving the financial fraud task force more resources and by squeezing the biggest banks with tough regulatory action.
Voters are in a foul mad. They are itching to blame someone for this ugly economy. A lot of people blame Bush quite a bit, but he has been gone too long and he is not on the ballot, so Obama can’t rely on that. Ultimately, most of the blame will fall on either Obama or Wall Street — and the Jamie Dimons and Bain Capitals of the world. Democrats better hope it is the latter.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Mitt Romney’s history at the helm of Bain Capital tells us a lot about the kind of leader he would make as president.
First, of course, it demonstrates conclusively that he has absolutely no experience “creating jobs.” Bain Capital was not in business to “create jobs” — it was in business to “create wealth” — for Mitt Romney and his fellow Wall Street investors. When Bain bought businesses that happened to create new jobs, that was entirely incidental. And when Bain-owned businesses laid off workers, cut wages, eliminated pensions or health care benefits — or went bankrupt — that was incidental as well.
Romney and the Bain crew couldn’t have cared less whether their actions created jobs, eliminated jobs, or destroyed entire communities so long as they served their one and only purpose: making themselves and their colleagues very, very rich.
Now I’m not arguing that there is anything wrong with making yourself rich. But it has absolutely nothing to do with “creating jobs” — as the 750 workers at the 100-year-old GST Steel in Kansas City discovered when, after Bain took over their company, Bain loaded it with debt — milked it of cash and bankrupted the company — but still walked away with millions.
Turns out the landscape is strewn with cases like GST — American Pad and Paper (AmPad) in Indiana, Dade Behring in Florida.
And whether or not there are other “success stories” where new jobs were created is completely irrelevant to the central point that Romney has never demonstrated he “knows how to create jobs in the private sector.” Romney was very good at extracting wealth for himself and his friends. He viewed the workers with about as much concern as you might give to a fly you flick off your desk or swat on a hot summers day.
To Romney, workers — and the jobs they filled — were nothing but expendable means to an end.
But that’s not all his experience with Bain can teach us about Willard Mitt Romney. It tells us that he is used to playing by a different set of rules from ordinary Americans. Romney and Bain helped to create a new rulebook for the American economy — one that ultimately helped lead to the economic disaster that came to a head in September 2008.
Most people think it’s great for businesses and investors to make money. The ability to own a business and make money provides one of the major engines that has made the American economy the largest and most innovative in the world.
And we all know that some businesses fail and others succeed.
But in order for the rules of the economic game to send the right signals to incentivize innovation and efficiency, they have to work both ways. Investors win if they create successful, productive, growing businesses. They lose if they invest in businesses that are unsuccessful, inefficient or unproductive.
Romney and Bain played by a different set of rules. Their rules were simple: heads I win, tails you lose.
What ordinary Americans find so outrageous is not that people in American can make money, but rather that the folks on Wall Street make millions on businesses that fail.
Bain often did leveraged buyouts. It used the businesses it intended to buy as collateral to borrow the money to buy them. Then the partners at Bain transferred cash from the companies they bought into their own pockets — in the form of fees and “returns on investment.” If the company ultimately ran out of cash, shut down, laid off its workers, too bad — they still walked away with millions. If they succeeded and stayed in business, so much the better.
Bain structured deals where they couldn’t lose.
The problem is that ordinary Americans don’t play by rules that allow them to make money whether or not they succeed.
If most Americans are fired from their jobs, with the exception of unemployment insurance, their income stops.

Read more…

Ed Kilgore blogs at Political Animal on Mitt Romney’s messaging strategy, which allows him to parrot ad nauseum “the economy is tanking and it’s Obama’s fault” in response to just about any question that pops up, while the base and the GOP echo chamber handle the culture war dirty work. As Kilgore explains:

…Team Mitt wants to talk only about the economy, his party’s conservative activist “base” and its media affiliates keep wanting to talk about everything else. We saw this over and over again during the Republican primaries, and we saw it again yesterday when the Romney campaign had to quash the very idea of a Super-PAC ad campaign raising the culture-and-race-war spectre of Jeremiah Wright.
…Fortunately for Romney, a lot of non-economic itches can be scratched by incessantly claiming that Big Government caused the recession or is impeding the recovery. Maybe you support “entitlement reform” because you are furious at the looters who are living at the expense of the hard-earned tax dollars of the virtuously well-off. Mitt won’t often “go there,” but he’s for “entitlement reform” on ostensibly economic grounds, so you’re on his team. Maybe you hate “ObamaCare” because you think it’s encouraging the Second Holocaust of legalized abortion, or enabling young women to have sex, or robbing seniors of the Medicare benefits they earned to give health care coverage to shiftless minorities. Mitt won’t talk about that, but he’s promised to kill ObamaCare as fast as he can, so that’s enough. Maybe you are upset about environmentalism because you view it as a front for neo-pagan assaults on the God-given dominion over the earth you are supposed to enjoy. Mitt wouldn’t put it that way. But he will argue for scrapping environmental regulations tout court to free up the Great American Job-Creating Machine and bring down gas prices. And maybe you hate public education because you view “government schools” as satanic indoctrination centers for secularism, and colleges as places where elitist professors mock traditional values and let young women have sex. Mitt won’t come right out and talk about any of that, either, but he frowns on federal education programs because we just can’t afford them.

It’s sort of a ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. As Kilgore concludes, “…in a certain sense, the entire Romney campaign is one big dog whistle aimed at appealing to persuadable voters on the single issue of the economy, while letting the restive “base” hear all sorts of other things involving cultural resentments and the desire to return to the good old days before the New Deal and the 60s began to ruin the Founders’ design and defy the Creator’s moral code.”
It’s probably a sound strategy, given all of the booby traps that come with engaging in cultural warfare. it also helps avoid Romney’s extraordinary proclivity for flip-floppage on controversial topics.

This interview by DemFromCT is cross-posted from the Daily Kos:
William Galston is a noted scholar (formerly the Saul Stern Professor and Dean at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland) and experienced political hand (Bill Clinton’s Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy in the ’90s) who is currently the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
This past week, Dr. Galston released a white paper, titled “Six Months to Go: Where the Presidential Contest Stands as the General Election Begins.” It caught my attention since that’s a topic of great interest to us, and I was pleased to see some familiar themes (see Things that matter in the presidential election, and things that don’t) covered in the paper.
Six topics in particular were the focus:
• An examination of polling results and public attitudes toward both candidates and important issues of the day.
It remains to be seen whether the negative perceptions of Romney that resulted from the nominating contest will endure. For the time being, at least, Obama enjoys a sizeable advantage on a host of personal qualities. He has a narrow edge in most of the key swing states. And his path to 270 electoral votes is easier than Romney’s. In short, he begins the general election contest with a modest advantage, which adverse developments at home or abroad could eliminate or even reverse. The 2012 election will be hotly contested, and the victor’s margin is unlikely to approach Obama’s seven-point edge in 2008.
• The mood of the country
Reflecting diminished confidence in government and public life, younger Americans are more likely to view the American dream as resulting from personal achievement. They are also less likely to give priority to ensuring opportunity for all members of society. Because they cannot rely on government for financial security, they experience increased pressure to provide for themselves and their families. But they are not confident that they will be able to do so if current trends continue.
• The issues
Every survey finds that economic issues dominate public concerns. The most recent survey of the Pew Research Center asked respondents to rank eighteen issues on a four-point scale from “very” to “not at all” important. Eighty-six percent said that the economy was very important, with jobs a close second at 84 percent. By contrast, four hot-button social issues–immigration (42 percent), abortion (39 percent), birth control (34 percent), and gay marriage (28 percent)–came in at the bottom.
• Ideology
The election of 2012 takes place against the backdrop of a political system that is more polarized along partisan and ideological lines than it has been for many decades–indeed, if standard political science measures are correct, since the 1890s. This fact has already reshaped the campaigns of both the president and his challenger.
• What kind of election will 2012 be?
It appears that 2012 will be more like 2004–a classic mobilization election–than either 1992 or 1996. Like George W. Bush, Barack Obama has turned out to be a polarizing president who has induced many voters to choose sides very early in the process. So the enthusiasm of core supporters–their motivation to translate their preferences into actual votes–will make a big difference.
• The Electoral College
The focus of this paper thus far has been on the national electorate. But of course we do not have national elections. As the 2000 election painfully reminded us, the structural difference between the national popular vote and state-by-state results can sometimes be consequential.
But it is important to keep 2000 in perspective. The Electoral College comes into play only when the popular vote is narrowly divided. If a candidate wins the popular vote by as little as 2 percent, it is very unlikely that the loser can win a majority of the electoral votes.
Dr. Galston was kind enough to respond to further questions we had about November 2012.
Daily Kos: A variety of sources (economic forecast models, online betting forums, pundits, polls) agree with your assessment of a close election, but one that Obama modestly leads. Short of a change in the economy (i.e assuming we continue with a slow but steady recovery and no euro shock), will this be the way it winds up? Is there any way this will not be a referendum on Obama? Can Obama make it a choice between him and Romney as in 2004?
Bill Galston: In my article, I argue for two basic propositions. (1) Elections involving incumbents are first and foremost referenda on their records. (2) In 2012, it’s Obama record on the economy that matters more than everything else put together. Compared to other recent elections with incumbents running, the economy right now is neither strong enough to guarantee victory nor weak enough to ensure defeat. If it gains momentum, Obama will win with room to spare. If it weakens further in response to the European crisis, the odds are that he’ll lose.
This is not to say that the public’s judgment of Romney is wholly irrelevant. If the people decide that he’s not an acceptable replacement for Obama, the president will be reelected despite widespread disappointment with his performance. But that’s not why Kerry lost in 2004. The right analysis, which I lay out in my paper, is that Bush did just well enough during his first term to earn an approval rating of about 50 percent, which turned out to be his share of the vote.
Daily Kos: Why the discrepancy between the state polls (Obama, e.g., leads in OH and VA) and the (currently close) national indicators (see above)? When do the state and national polls start to be meaningful, given that 2/3 of the electorate say they have made up their mind?
Bill Galston: The state polls are starting to reflect the tight national race. Obama is behind in Florida and North Carolina and is no better than tied in Ohio and even Wisconsin. In the end, the electoral college majority can diverge from the national popular vote majority only when the national margin separating the major party candidates is very thin–say, one percent. If the margin is even two percent, the odds that the popular vote loser will win an electoral college majority are extremely low.
I’d start paying attention to the polls right about now, because they are leading indicators of the kind of election this will be if the underlying conditions don’t change much between now and November.
Daily Kos: Pew’s Center for Excellence in Journalism notes a steady diet of unfavorable news coverage of Obama. Does this matter?
Bill Galston: Not much. When an incumbent is running, the people already have a ton of information, so additional information via the press is less significant than it would be if the candidate were running for the first time. In addition, most people are more inclined to trust the evidence of their own senses than they are the judgments of journalists.
Daily Kos: Why does Obama have so much trouble with the older white vote? Does the recent polling from Stars and Stripes suggesting Obama does well with military voters surprise you?
Bill Galston: There are a number of factors. From the start, Obama’s appeal was strongly generational. Older voters don’t understand him, and vice-versa. In addition, older white voters are less accepting of the new multi-ethnic America that Obama symbolizes. The recent Census Bureau report that a majority of births are now to non-white parents will strike some older white voters as a threat that the country they have known all their lives is slipping out of their grasp.
As for military voters, two points: (1) Obama is getting much higher marks for his conduct of defense and foreign policy than for his stewardship of the economy. Along with other Americans, military people like his aggressive conduct of the war on terrorists. Indeed, it appears that Obama has neutralized–at least for now–longstanding Democratic vulnerabilities in this area. And (2), the Obama administration has worked hard to earn the trust and support of veterans. It has been particularly forceful in areas such as health care and rehabilitation for wounded veterans, and in recent months it has been emphasizing employment opportunities for former military personnel as well. Gen. Shinseki is getting high marks as the VA Secretary.
Daily Kos: What story is the media missing in the early going? What should we be paying more attention to?
Bill Galston: On the substantive front, the performance of the housing market and Obama’s record in dealing with it are sleeper issues. From an electoral standpoint, reporters should be asking some hard questions about key “blue states” such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If Obama can hold them, then Romney’s path to victory remains narrow. If not, the challenger’s options multiply.
Thank you, Dr. Galston.