Bad news for the GOP seems to be the common denominator as the one-on-one race for the white house opens today. Some examples:
Apparently John McCain hasn’t made much headway since he clinched the GOP nomination, at least in the Buckeye state. L.A. Times reporter Peter Walsten writes on the inept McCain campaign in Ohio.
Ditto in S.C., says MyDD‘s Jonathan Singer.
Jim Turner of TCPalm reports voters are bailing from the GOP on FL’s ‘Treasure Coast.’
The Southern Political Report‘s Hastings Wyman’s “The rise and fall of the Virginia GOP” reports on the “precipitous decline” of the “once-GOP stronghold into the Democratic column.”
Paul Rosenberg’s Open Left post “The Making of A Landslide–A Progress Report” sees huge Dem gains in party i.d., based on the latest Rasmussen polling data.
And Rosenberg flags a DCORPS study indicating significant Democratic inroads in 45 GOP-held districts.
Obama is taking his campaign into the belly of the GOP beast, report Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny in The New York Times.
GOP luminary Bill Kristol, says the McCain campaign “dog-paddles along.”.
Evangelicals are also unimpressed by the McCain campaign, reports Robert Novak.
And The Politico‘s Jonathan Martin catches “straight-talk express” McCain on a whopper.
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Democratic consultant Robert Creamer, author of this campaign’s political strategy “it” book, has an insightful HuffPo article, “Ten Key Steps to Put Obama Over the Top In November.” In one of the most interesting steps (#5), he urges:
…we also need mass mobilization that relies on “chain reaction contact” — where campaign activity explodes virally — geometrically — to involve millions and millions of self-initiating campaign activists. We need a campaign where millions of Americans wear Obama buttons, where people self-report to walk precincts and use online voter contact tools in droves.
Obama’s primary campaign provides a model, but now that model needs to explode into a social movement that defines the identity of its participants in the way the civil rights and anti-war movements did for an earlier generation. When they consider their role in this campaign, activists need to think about their participation the way volunteers in the civil rights movement thought about their roles at Selma — that they will proudly tell their kids and grandkids that they were there — that they played a part — in the transformational 2008 presidential election.
Obama has an inspirational message, and his campaign has a culture that could actually seed that kind of movement. And it is that kind of movement that could change the electorate so fundamentally that it makes states that are unthinkably Red into Blue states this fall.
A provocative idea, and one which plays to a unique Obama strength — and to a huge blind spot of our adversaries, as James Vega pointed out in a recent TDS post. Creamer’s article has several other ideas that merit support.
As the primary season comes to a close and the focus turns to the battle between the nominees apparent, it seems like a good time to wonder which, if any, tools have a credible track record in predicting the outcome of presidential races. In his post at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Alan I. Abramowitz argues that, yes, there is one device that has a very impressive track record, and one better than horse race polls — the “electoral barometer.” Abramowitz says of early horse race polls:
The problem…is that they are not very accurate predictors of the actual election results. Polls in the spring of 1988 showed Michael Dukakis with a comfortable lead over George H.W. Bush and polls in June of 1992 showed Bill Clinton running third behind both Bush and H. Ross Perot. So recent polls showing a close race between McCain and Obama may not tell us much about what to expect in November.
There is a better way to go, as Abramowitz explains:
Instead of using early horserace polls, political scientists generally rely on measures of the national political climate to make their forecasts. That is because the national political climate can be measured long before the election and it has been found to exert a powerful influence on the eventual results.
Three indicators of the national political climate have accurately predicted the outcomes of presidential elections since the end of World War II: the incumbent president’s approval rating at mid-year, the growth rate of the economy during the second quarter of the election year, and the length of time the president’s party has held the White House.
…These three factors can be combined to produce an Electoral Barometer score that measures the overall national political climate. The formula for computing this score is simply the president’s net approval rating (approval minus disapproval) in the Gallup Poll plus five times the annual growth rate of real GDP minus 25 if the president’s party has held the White House for two terms or longer. Mathematically, this formula can be written as:
EB = NAR + (5*GDP) – 25.
…A positive Electoral Barometer reading generally predicts victory for the incumbent party while a negative reading generally predicts defeat.
As for the track record, Abramowitz notes:
The Electoral Barometer has predicted the winner of the popular vote in 14 of the 15 presidential elections since World War II. There were five elections in which the Electoral Barometer was negative and the president’s party lost the popular vote in all five of these elections: 1952, 1960, 1976, 1980, and 1992. There were ten elections in which the Electoral Barometer was positive, and the president’s party won the popular vote in nine of these elections: 1948, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1984, 1988, 1996, 2000, and 2004.
Not too shabby. Abramowitz points out that the second quarter GDP figures needed to fill out the electoral barometer formula won’t be available until August. But preliminary stats look very encouraging for Dems:
…Based on President Bush’s net approval rating in the most recent Gallup Poll (-39), the annual growth rate of the economy during the first quarter of 2008 (+0.6 percent), and the fact that the Republican Party has controlled the White House for the past eight years, the current Electoral Barometer reading is a dismal -63.
Abramowitz argues that such an electoral barometer reading would result in a “decisive defeat” for the GOP, which could only be avoided in “an upset of unprecedented magnitude.” The ‘smart money’ crowd at Intrade.com, which also has a more impressive track record than early horse-race polls, seems to agree, with a 61.0 bid for Obama vs. 37.2 for McCain.
Tomorrow is a huge day for the Democratic presidential race, and Salon.com‘s Walter Shapiro has a preview of “The fight over Florida and Michigan,” as does Christi Parsons of the Chicago Tribune‘s Washington Bureau. L.A. Times political reporter Mark Z. Barabak addresses the issue in a FAQ format and Marie Horrigan of CQPolitics reports on the infighting among Michigan Dems over proposed solutions. See also MSNBC First Read, which names the 30 members of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee who will make the decision and also identifies the candidates 21 of them support (13 back Clinton, 8 favor Obama and 9 are uncommitted). First Read pundits Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro consider three possible outcomes of the Committee’s deliberations.
Eric Kleefeld riffs on “What’s Obama’s Route To The White House?” over at TPM Election Central, a good companion piece to Robert Creamer’s HuffPo article “Obama’s Path to Victory in November.”
Ilan Goldenberg, policy director of the National Security Network, has an article in The American Prospect, “It’s Time to Stop Talking About Soft Power,” which should be of interest to those who followed James Vega’s five-part series on Democratic policy and military strategy here at TDS.
Chris Kromm of Facing South mulls over Poblano’s 538.com simulations to answer an interesting question: “Election 2008: Are there any Southern presidential ‘swing states’?”
Paul Maslin, pollster for candidates Howard Dean in ’04 and Bill Richardson in ’08, tackles a question of increasing interest for Dems: “Will the youth vote win it for Obama this fall?”, also at Salon.com
Political Animal‘s Neil Sinhababu spotlights Nick Beaudrot’s Cogitamus posts featuring demographic analysis for assessing Obama’s perfomance in key GOP-held districts and Dems’ chances for winning those districts in November, both open seats and those with incumbents running. Beaudrot has confidence in Obama’s coattails and sees more than two dozen Dem pick-ups as a good bet. As Sinhababu explains of Beaudrot’s methodology:
The thinking is that demographics predict Obama’s performance…and Obama’s performance serves as a rough proxy for how Democrats will do this time around. It’s a neat way to identify races that may become unexpectedly competitive with Obama at the top of the ticket.
So if you’re represented by a Republican in the House, take a look at the spreadsheets (embedded into the page by the magic of Google Docs) and take a look at how the demographics project Obama’s performance, and how winnable your district is. We’ve won three straight special elections in places where Democrats don’t usually win, so it’s a good year to go after the local GOP congressman.
A lot of assumptions undergird Beaudrot’s model, but they are not out of line with recent polls. This could be a helpful tool for DNC/DCCC resources allocation.
Trial heats with prospective veeps probably don’t mean too much at this stage. But just for fun, check out SurveyUSA‘s horserace-with-various-veeps chart for swing-state Ohio (flagged by leftcoaster Steve Soto). The chart’s list is a little too short — OH Gov. Ted Stickland is not on it, maybe because he has sort of dissed the idea, albeit with a good sense of humor. But one former Dem candidate smokes the admittedly limited competition. NYT pundit David Brooks, on the other hand, would not be pleased by the performance of one of his GOP shortlisters, MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Brave New Films has produced a must-see video-clip at therealmccain.com, depicting John McCain’s amazing record of flip-flops on key issues and shattering his “straight talk” image. Viewers are left with the indelible impression that this guy will say anything to get elected, and thinks nothing of contradicting himself within seconds. The flick has gone viral and reached #1 in YouTube’s “News & Politics” category, and has elicited more than 600 reader comments at the website thus far.
In addition to the devastating main feature, the website also presents a collection of video clips of McCain’s ‘greatest hits,’ including “Bomb, Bomb Iran” and spotlighting his cozy relationships with fat cat lobbyists and his failure to support educational benefits for vets.
This is an absolutely extraordinary claim. In fact, it could very easily be dismissed as just another of McCain’s increasingly frequent “gaffes” or “blunders” except that it has actually become a critical pillar of the basic Republican “party line”–one that is particularly emphasized by the Wall Street Journal and other Rupert Murdoch-owned media.
Until a few weeks ago the standard way this was expressed was that the US was “on the verge of success or victory”. In the last 10 days, however, the rhetoric has actually been ratcheted up to an even higher level. In a major Wall Street Journal op-ed commentary on July 16th–one titled “The New Reality in Iraq”–Frederick Kagan, Kimberly Kagan and Jack Keane, all major military analysts, made the following quite breathtaking assertion:
Read the entire memo here.
Dems interested in the outcome effect of voter turnout scenarios for key constituencies should check out Josh Kalven’s excellent summary of an interesting study by “Poblano” an anonomous statistician/analyst who blogs at FiveThirtyEight.com. Kalven’s Progress Illinois post describes Poblano’s study as “a sophisticated regression model that uses state-by-state polling data to assess possible general election outcomes in individual states.”
Poblano has an impressive track record. He predicted Obama would win NC by 17 points (He won by 14) and he nailed the Indiana primary as 51-49 for Clinton, outperfoming five major national polling firms, according to Pollster.com‘s Mark Blumenthal. He comes up with some interesting findings for the nomination scenarios. On Obama vs. Clinton:
Poblano’s simulation engine has produced some fascinating results. According to his current data, the model predicts that Clinton would win four states against McCain that Obama is favored to lose (FL, AR, WV, OH). Meanwhile, Obama wins eight states where Clinton would likely fail (MI, WI, IA, CO, NM, NV, WA, OR).
Regarding the African American vote with Obama as nominee, Kalven writes of Poblano’s study:
With each 10 percent increase in black turnout nationwide, Obama gains an average of 13 electoral votes, while his chance of winning jumps by about eight points…Examining the full results, you can see a handful of states turn from red to purple – or from purple to blue – as African-American turnout increases…if 2008 turnout levels mirror those in 2004, McCain is predicted to win Ohio by 1.6 percent. But when you increase African-American voters by 20 percent, the state tips towards Obama, giving him a 0.3 percent margin of victory. Push that up to 30 and 40 percent and his edge increases to 1.2 and 2.1 percent, respectively.
Poblano finds similar results for PA, NC, VA, SC, FL and GA. Regarding the youth votes, he finds, according to Kalven:
Poblano found that increasing the youth vote by 25 percent would give Obama 16 additional electoral votes and boost his chance of beating McCain by nearly 7 percent (assuming that this group breaks 70-30 towards Obama):
And, for Hispanics:
Poblano’s baseline assumes a 60-40 split in Obama’s favor and each 25 percent increase in turnout boosts his chances of beating McCain by a little under 3 percentage points
Poblano finds a series of even more optimistic outcomes, when increased turnout of all three key Democratic constituencies combine in varying percentages. Says Poblano “…it’s a very robust scenario for him with a lot of Plan A’s, Plan B’s, and Plan C’s to win the election.”
Take a break from the rat-a-tat-tat of the horse race, and give a gander to Rob Capriccioso’s “Game Changer: Nationwide No-Excuse Absentee Voting” over at Campaigns & Elections Politics website. Absentee balloting has become an increasingly important factor in campaigns in recent years, with huge percentages of voters casting early ballots in states like California. But the patchwork of state laws regarding absentee voting falls well short of serving all voters who find it difficult to get to the polls on election day. As Capriccioso explains:
Currently, 21 states plus the District of Columbia restrict voters’ ability to vote absentee. In such states, the elderly, individuals with disabilities or an illness, and those who serve in the military are eligible to vote by mail. Excuses, like having to work, a lack of childcare, or jury service don’t cut it. Twenty-eight states now offer voters the option of voting by mail for any reason, and Oregon conducts its elections entirely by mail.
To help address the problem Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA) has introduced the Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act, which would permit every voter in every state the right to vote absentee for any reason whatsoever.
Some believe the bill would benefit the GOP. But as TDS co-editor Bill Galston points out in Capriccioso’s article:
“The traditional argument is that the more open the system is to people who are less strongly attached to it, the more likely you are to increase the share of young adults, first-time voters and moderates,” Galston said. “To the extent that that’s true, those factors would work to the advantage of Democrats.”
The legislation would likely lead to changes in the way campaigns are organized, as Capriccioso explains:
Instead of planning for one Election Day in November, campaigns would have to be prepared to compete in a series of mini-rolling elections in every single state. And the audiences they would be playing to would likely be more diverse, since younger voters, moderates and elderly voters often disproportionately take advantage of absentee voting, if it’s available.
The bill has been approved by the House Administration Committee. Similar legislation is expected in the Senate.