Democrats are going to the polls in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont today. And with Hillary Clinton appearing to have seized the late momentum in both Ohio and Texas, there are a variety of scenarios that could come out of the results. Noam Scheiber goes through them thoroughly today; Jonathan Chait does the delegate math; and Chris Bowers reports that HRC’s staying in at least until Pannsylvania next month unless she loses the popular vote in both TX and OH.

Daily Kos’ DHinMI has a very informative post about independent expenditures on behalf of the Democratic candidates in OH and TX. It’s basically a tale of the competition between three groups who have been supporting HRC almost from the beginning–the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Emily’s List, and the American Federation of Teachers–and two who have more recently endorsed Obama–the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers. Looks like SEIU in particular is really kicking out the jams for Obama in OH and TX:

Through the Wisconsin primary, the three groups backing Clinton spent about $4.4 million. In Ohio, they have continued the model of what worked well in the early states—lots of direct mail, probably directed at women, followed up with phone calls. In Ohio, they have boosted their program. Whereas in most states they appear to have sent about 6 pieces of mail, it appears that in Ohio their target audience has received up to 8 pieces. They have also run a small amount of media, and are now following up the mail with phone calls. The total expenditures come to about $500,000.
FEC reports indicate that SEIU will probably spend over 5 times as much as AFSCME and EMILY’s list in Ohio. They’ve spent $400,000 in mail, almost matching AFSCME and EMILY’s List. In addition to the mail, they have also spent $200,000 on phones, $425,000 on a paid canvass program, and $1.4 million on electronic media. All together, with staff, production and other expenses factored in, SEIU has spent over $2.6 million in Ohio.
Obama will benefit from other expenditures. While EMILY’s list has spent $140,000 in media in Texas—such a small expenditure suggests it’s probably Spanish language radio, or possibly cable ads on networks that focus on women, like Lifetime—SEIU has dropped over $1.7 million in to that state. They have spent $700,000 on media, almost $500,000 on a canvass program, $300,000 on phones and almost $300,000 on mail.
The amount SEIU has spent just in Ohio and Texas now equals the combined spending of AFSCME, the AFT and EMILY’s List from the start of the campaign through the Wisconsin primary.

If Obama manages to pull off wins in these two states, he’ll owe a lot to his new union friends.

With potentially crucial Democratic primaries on tap tomorow in Texas and Ohio, the polls are showing a close race in both states, but with significant variation. In OH, the polls range from a Suffolk University survey that has HRC up by 12%, to a Reuters/CSPAN/Zogby poll that has Obama up by 2%. In TX, the variation is a bit smaller, ranging from InsiderAdvantage’s 4% lead for Clinton to Rasmussen‘s identical lead for Obama.
As Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com has shown in separate posts on polling for TX and OH, underlying these different results are very different estimates of both turnout and of the demographic compositition of the primary electorate. If you are at all interested in polling, you should read Mark’s posts in their entirety. But the bottom line is that TX polls are all over the place in their estimates of Latino, African-American, younger-voter, and independent participation, while OH polls vary significantly in estimates of total turnout.
Blumenthal notes at the end of his post on OH polls:

The polls we have before us can tell us a great deal about how preferences differ across the key demographic and regional groups, but the tools of survey research are simply not powerful enough to predict who will vote with great precision.

That’s an important reminder.

Ron Brownstein has been staring at Democratic presidential primary exit poll trends between 2004 and 2006, and provides a pretty definitive report in a cover story for National Journal today.
You should read the whole thing, but here are his key findings:

The most dramatic changes are among young people, the affluent, and, to a lesser extent, women. As a percentage of the total vote, the share cast by voters under age 30 this year approximately doubled in Connecticut, New York, and Tennessee; rose by at least 40 percent in 11 other states; and jumped by nearly one-third in two more. Even more dramatically, voters earning $100,000 or more at least doubled their share since 2004 in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Virginia; affluent voters also increased their share by about half in seven of the remaining states and by at least 20 percent in three others.
The relative increase among women isn’t as great because they started from a larger base: Long before Clinton’s candidacy, women already cast a majority of votes in most Democratic primaries. But with this year’s continued growth, the party has tilted even further female. Women cast a majority of this year’s Democratic vote in every state for which an exit poll was conducted — and they made up at least 57 percent of the total in all but four states.

The other big trend Brownstein noted was in educational levels:

[J]ust before the Wisconsin primary in mid-February, ABC News polling director Gary Langer calculated that a cumulative majority of white Democratic primary voters in all of this year’s contests had college or postgraduate degrees — a remarkable tipping point for a party that since its 19th-century inception has viewed itself as the tribune of the working class

So does that mean voters who don’t fall into these categories are not participating in Democratic primaries this year at “normal” levels? Not at all:

The overall surge in Democratic participation this year means that in many states, even groups whose relative role is declining are voting in larger absolute numbers: Their share of the vote is shrinking only because they are not growing as fast as other components of the party’s coalition. (For instance, although white men’s portion of the Democratic vote fell in Massachusetts this year, the total number of white men participating in the state’s Democratic primary increased by nearly 75 percent over 2004, according to the exit polls.)

The donkey label is suddenly a big voter magnet again this year, and if Democrats can convert the trends Brownstein’s talking about into general election gains, it could be a very good November.

As the Democratic presidential nomination contest moves towards a potentially decisive phase, speculation continues to bubble up over the second name that will be printed on all those bumper stickers and buttons. The American Prospect site is curruntly featuring a discussion wherein some of its writers and friends make the case for their own choices, which is obviously tricky without knowing the Big Name at the top for sure.
Potential veep candidates profiled in this piece include Jim Webb, Kathleen Sebelius, Ted Strickland, Ken Salazar, Joe Biden, Janet Napolitano, and Brian Schweitzer, with very brief summary comments about Tom Vilsack, Evan Bayh, Bill Richardson, Mark Warner, Ed Rendell, Eric Shinsheki, and Wes Clark. The most surprising names mentioned are John Podesta and Gary Hart.

Officially, the Texas presidential primary is next Tuesday, but in reality, it’s well underway thanks to the state’s liberal early voting rules. And if early voting is any indication, the year-long pattern of heavy and disproportionately Democratic turnout in the primaries will be continued in the Lone Star State.
Check this out from today’s Dallas Morning News:

Six days into early voting – and with a week left – about 360,000 voters in the state’s 15 largest counties have cast early or mail-in ballots in the 2008 Democratic primary, compared with 120,000 in the Republican primary.
“It’s the intensity. The energy we’re seeing,” said Diana Broadus, election judge at one of Dallas County’s busiest early-voting locations, in Oak Cliff.
“They are coming in ready to vote. They want to make sure their vote is going to count.”
And they’re doing so at a record pace.
“We have already surpassed the total early-voting numbers for both the 1996 and 2000 elections,” said Scott Haywood, spokesman for Texas Secretary of State Phil Wilson. “At this point, it is a record.”
Both parties are seeing much higher turnout than four years ago – but it’s the numbers in the Democratic primary that are turning heads.
Democratic voters have so far dominated the early voting in Texas’ 15 largest counties.

Depending on how things turn out, there will likely be some speculation next Tuesday about which Democratic candidate benefitted the most from early voting. But putting that aside, it’s never a bad sign when voters rush to the polls.

NOTE: This is the fifth item in The Democratic Strategist’s Roundtable Discussion on swing and base voter strategies. It’s by Al From, Founder and CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council.
Print Version
Politics is littered with false choices – and, to me, no choice is more false for Democrats than choosing between a political strategy aimed at increasing our base vote and a political strategy aimed at winning over swing voters. To win elections consistently and build an enduring political and governing majority, we need to pursue both strategies.
I define base voters as those who reliably vote Democratic in every election whether we do well or poorly. In any election, they will likely be the largest bloc voting Democratic, but they are less than 50 percent of the electorate. We need to get every one of them to the polls – and we need to increase their numbers. That’s why we should pursue strategies to find and turn out non-voters who would surely vote Democratic if they made it to the polls.
Swing voters are those who vote Democratic in some elections, Republican in others. Even in today’s more polarized electorate, they swing back and forth between the parties. When enough of them join Democratic base voters in voting for us, we generally win. When too many of them vote for the other side, the Republicans win. We obviously need strategies to persuade swing voters to vote Democratic in each election – and we ought to take every opportunity we can convince them to change their voting habits and become reliable Democratic (or base) voters.

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NOTE: This is the fourth item in The Democratic Strategist’s Roundtable Discussion of swing and base voter strategies. It’s by Chris Bowers, co-founder of Open Left and Treasurer of BlogPac.
Print Version
In any discussion of “swing voters,” who are typically grouped by demographics or psychographics, it is first important to differentiate themselves from “swing states” in presidential elections. “Swing states” are the perhaps a dozen or so states with partisan voting tendencies in presidential elections that most closely mirror national partisan voting tendencies. In close presidential elections, “swing states” are the states that could narrowly vote for the nominee of either major party no matter who wins the national popular vote. As such, they determine the winner of the Electoral College, and are thus rightfully termed “swing” states.
“Swing voters,” or swing voting demographics, are typically defined as demographic groups with partisan voting patterns that closely mirror those of the national electorate as a whole. But a moment’s reflection should remind us that swing voters are not analogous to swing states. Eking out a narrow victory among such closely-divided groups as Catholics or self-identified “moderates” is meaningless unless it contributes to victory in swing states. The proper goal in appealing to swing voters—and for that matter, all voters—is to outperform historic partisan performance in as many demographic groups as possible, and by as much as possible, thus winning “swing states.”
It is in this fundamental sense that every voting demographic is a swing voter demographic, and the ancient dichotomy between swing and base voter strategies is largely a false choice.
I do not argue that “base voters”–those voters who always vote and who never split their tickets–do not exist. They do, and they are well known to local campaigns and precinct captains. But if any special messaging, campaign resources or assistance of any sort is required to bring a voter to the polls, then that voter is not a “base voter.”
If the outcome of a person’s vote is ever in doubt—because they may not vote, may vote Republican, may be undecided between the two parties, may be undecided between a major party and a third party, or may have a physical illness, disability or travel related conflict that could prevent him or her from voting–then that voter is a swing voter who must be targeted in some fashion by the Democratic campaign in question. If, in order to secure someone’s vote, it is necessary to appeal to that person with a partisan, progressive ideological message, that person is just as much a swing voter as someone whose vote can be secured through a message of bipartisan unity and an anti-ideological message of moderation and pragmatism. Beyond the individual level, unless a voting group has a partisan voting tendency of 100% in favor of a given party, and unless every member of that demographic will always vote without any prompting whatsoever, then it is always possible for the nominees of both major parties to outperform their historic vote share and historic vote total in every single demographic.
Consider, for example, that according to an analysis of national exit polls from the 2004 and the 2006 elections, in 2006 Democrats actually improved their overall share of the national vote more from Democrats, 2.4%, than from Independents, 2.1%. Even though John Kerry won 89% of the Democratic vote, by increasing the Democratic vote for Democrats to a record 93%, and by increasing the self-identified Democratic share of the electorate from 37% to 38%, Democrats gained more among self-identified Democrats than they gained among any other group. Further, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey, the largest gains Republicans made in partisan self-identification from 2000 to 2004 among any demographic group were born again / evangelical white Christians. As a group, at the end of 2004, white, born again / evangelical Christians self-identified as Republicans 8% more than they did in 2000, accounting for the largest partisan shift of any demographic group in the country. While self-identified Democrats would typically be viewed as “base” voters for Democrats, and while white, born again / evangelical Christians would typically be viewed as “base” voters for Republicans, those two groups were actually the two largest “swing” demographics in the 2006 and 2004 elections respectively. Even voting demographics with partisan voting tendencies that favor one party in the extreme should be viewed by both parties as swing demographics worthy of voter targeting efforts.
Every demographic is a swing demographic. It is possible for a nominee to improve on his or her party’s share of the vote in every demographic, and it is also possible for a campaign to increase the size of any demographic group as a percentage of the electorate. As such, at least in terms of votes, the swing voter versus base mobilization question is not a binary opposition, but rather a question of which voters can be captured for the least amount of campaign resources, and what sort of messaging will result in the largest number of votes possible. And it is over this issue of resources where the true base- versus-swing issue emerges.

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NOTE: This is the third item in The Democratic Strategist’s Rountable Discussion on swing and base voters. It’s by Brookings Institution senior fellow and TDS Co-Editor Bill Galston.
It’s hard to discuss “swing voters” without a precise definition of the term. The best I’ve seen so far is that of Northeastern University political scientist William Mayer: A swing voter, he says, is one who could go either way, one not so solidly committed as to make persuasion all but futile. Relative to committed voters, swing voters have mixed or balanced attitudes about the major-party candidates, as measured by the difference between the two on the American National Election Studies (ANES) so-called “feeling thermometer.” If the maximum theoretical difference is 100, corresponding to total approval of one candidate and disapproval of the other, voters who see a gap of 15 points or less constitute the pool of potential “persuadables.” Since 1972, swing voters, so defined, have averaged 23 percent of the total in ANES preelection surveys.
Mayer does not underscore a crucial point that emerges from his data: the ideological distance between the major-party candidates strongly affects the percentage of swing voters. In 1976, the Republicans nominated a moderate after a fierce intra-party battle, while the Democrats nominated a newcomer widely regarded as their most conservative candidate in decades. As a consequence, swing voters amounted to a full 34 percent of the electorate, by far the highest in any election in the past three decades. In 2004, by contrast, the Democrats nominated a Massachusetts liberal to run against a Republican who had governed as a movement conservative. In this context, swing voters amounted to only 13 percent of the total, by far the lowest in the past three decades.
This relationship has important consequences for 2008: the Democrats’ choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will shape, not only how swing voters will vote, but also how many swing voters there will be. Consider a recent Greenberg Quinlan Rosner/Public Opinion Strategies survey for NPR, which compares the two Democrats against McCain. In a Clinton/McCain contest, McCain receives 9 percent of the Democratic vote, while Clinton receives 5 percent of the Republican vote. In an Obama/McCain matchup, by contrast, McCain gets 18 percent of the Democratic vote and Obama, 13 percent of Republicans. Roughly speaking, a general election between Obama and McCain roughly doubles the number of partisans who can contemplate crossing party lines. All other things being equal, a less polarizing contest, when voters can see advantages and disadvantages in both candidates, will expand the pool of voters open to persuasion.
The net effect of this expansion depends on circumstances. The NPR survey indicates than McCain receives only 48 percent of Independents when facing Obama, versus 58 percent against Clinton. But because Clinton does a better job of consolidating the base, McCain ends up with same share of the total vote—48 percent—against each of the Democratic contenders.
A snapshot cannot foreshadow the dynamics of the general election, of course. The partisans of Sen. Obama can argue, plausibly enough, that wavering Democrats will “come home” as the differences between him and Sen. McCain are cast in higher relief. The partisans of Sen. Clinton can retort that this same process of differentiation will reduce Obama’s appeal to Republicans, and that in addition, as Independents learn more about the gap between his unifying rhetoric and his traditionally liberal position on the issues, some of them will switch as well. To pile uncertainty on uncertainty, the relationship between Independents and swing voters is loose at best: as Mayer shows, many Independents are covert partisans, and they make up only 41 percent of the total pool of swing voters. At this point, we have far more variables than equations, making prediction impossible.
What we can say is this: if a McCain/Obama contest did no more than increase the share of swing voters from its 2004 low to its post-1968 average, an additional 10 percent of the electorate would be in play after the parties’ conventions, shifting both campaigns away from all-out mobilization and toward persuasion. By contrast, if Sen. Clinton turned out to be as polarizing as her detractors maintain, the tone of the 2008 election could bear more than a passing resemblance to 2004 . . . which is not to say that the outcome would necessarily be the same.

With a lot of the focus of the Democratic presidential contest now shifting towards labor-heavy OH and PA, it’s significant that Barack Obama is picking up an endorsement from the Teamsters. This gives him endorsements from four of the seven unions of the Change to Win coalition (one, the Farm Workers, has endorsed HRC), and increases the possibility that the entire coalition could make its first-ever joint endorsement. Clinton, however, still has the lion’s share of endorsements by AFL-CIO unions, though not enough to make a federation joint endorsement likely.