By Alan Abramowitz
Perhaps you’ve seen or heard of an analysis by Michael Hout, a Berkeley sociologist, of the impact of e-voting in Florida. Hout and his associates claim that Bush did better than expected in the 15 Florida counties using e-voting. See the link below to their report.
I did my own analysis of their data. It does not support their conclusions. In fact, I find that Bush did slightly worse than expected in the 15 e-voting counties.
I did three things. First, I just compared the change in percent for Bush in Florida counties with and without e-voting. Contrary to their conclusion, Bush gained more support in counties without e-voting. Then I looked at a scatterplot of Bush2004% by Bush2000%. There is no indication at all here of any non-linearity in the relationship. Therefore, I cannot see why the Hout team added a quadratic term to the model. Then I did a regression analysis of Bush2004% with Bush2000% and a dummy variable for e-voting counties. The dummy variable had a negative but statistically insignificant effect. So if anything, Bush did slightly worse in 2004 in counties with e-voting when you control for his support in 2000. My guess is that this is because the e-voting counties tend to be in large metropolitan areas but Bush’s gains were greater in smaller, rural and exurban counties.

The new CBS News/New York Times poll suggests that, as indicated by the postelection DCorps poll, Bush doesn’t have much of a mandate for his policies and is unlikely to enjoy much of a honeymoon from a public that preferred him only marginally to John Kerry.
Bush’s overall approval rating in the poll is 51 percent and more people think the country is off on the wrong track (54 percent) than feel it is going in the right direction (40 percent). That’s a net of -14 on wrong track, actually slightly worse than recorded by CBS right before the election.
Bush’s approval ratings in specific areas, except for the campaign on terrorism, are all lower now than they were right before the election: 44 percent approval/48 percent disapproval on handling foreign policy; 42/57 on the economy; and 40/55 on the situation in Iraq. On the campaign against terrorism, however, his rating is 59/37, up 4 points since before the election.
The poll also finds more of the public uneasy (51 percent) than confident (47 percent)in Bush’s ability to “deal wisely with a difficult international crisis” and with his ability to “make the right decisions about the nation’s economy” (52/46).
On Social Security, by 51-38, the public thinks Bush is not likely to make sure Social Security benefits are there for “people like you”. Also, they don’t believe, by 51-31, that the Social Security system will be able to provide the proper level of benefits for them when they retire. However, the public is split on whether it would be a good idea (49 percent) or bad idea (45 percent) to let individuals invest part of their Social Security taxes on their own–Bush’s signature proposal in this area.
On corporate influence, two-thirds (66 percent) think large corporations have too much influence on the Bush administration, compared to just 19 percent who corporations have the right amount of influence and 4 percent who think they have too little (!).
On taxes, less than a third (32 percent) think Bush’s tax cuts since 2001 have been good for the economy (64 percent think they’ve been bad or made or made no difference) and only 31 percent think that additional reductions in taxes (another signature Bush proposal) would be good for the economy (62 percent think such reductions would be bad or make no difference). And, on the question of whether the temporary tax cuts passed in 2001 should be allowed to expire, more say they should expire (45 percent) than say they shouldn’t (41 percent).
On budget priorities, by more than 2:1 (67-28), the public thinks reducing the federal budget deficit should be a higher priority than cutting taxes. (No question was asked about spending on health care, etc. vs. cutting taxes, but that result would likely be even more lop-sided.)
On Iraq, for the first time since July, more say we should have stayed out of Iraq (48 percent) than say we did the right thing to take military action against Iraq (46 percent). Also, for the very first time, an outright majority (51 percent) says that the war in Iraq is separate from the war on terrorism (up 9 points since right before the election). Of those who say the war in Iraq is part of the war on terrorism (43 percent), 34 percent say it is a major part and the other 9 percent say it is a minor part. Finally, a plurality now say (46-45) that is not possible for the US to create a stable democracy in Iraq.
On the political parties, despite the Republicans’ gains in the 2004 election, the public now views the Democrats substantially more favorably (54 percent favorable/39 percent unfavorable) than they view the Republicans (49/46).
And as for that parity in party ID indicated by the NEP exit poll? It’s already gone, if it was really there to begin with. Confirming the Annenberg Election Survey results I wrote about a couple of days ago, the CBS/NYT poll now shows the Democrats with a 7 point lead on party ID (36-29).

According to the 2004 NEP exit poll, Democrats and Republicans were dead-even on party ID (37-37) in the 2004 election, a 4 point shift from the 39-35 Democratic advantage registered by NEP’s predecessor, VNS, in the 2000 election.
Did a shift of this size really take place in partisan allegiances of the American electorate? Given how much the NEP poll apparently had to weight down Kerry voters and weight up Bush voters to conform to the election result, there are certainly reasons to be cautious about that poll’s measurement of a characteristic so closely correlated with the presidential vote. It is also possible the NEP’s measurement reflects less a change in underlying sentiment among the electorate and more a change in who showed up at the polls on election day.
It doesn’t exactly settle the issue, but it’s worth drawing people’s attention to a report on party ID trends recently released by the Annenberg Election Survey. According to the report, in about 45,000 interviews of registered voters (RVs) conducted from December, 1999 through January, 2001, Democratic identifiers led Republican identifiers by 33.7 percent to 29.9 percent, a 3.8 point Democratic advantage essentially identical in size to that measured by VNS in the 2000 exit poll.
Annenberg conducted about 68,000 interviews of RVs from October 2003 to mid-Novmber, 2004 and found only a slight diminution in the Democratic party ID advantage to 2.8 points (34.6 percent Democratic to 31.8 percent Republican). That’s quite a different story than the one implied by 2004 NEP exit poll and, given the huge sample sizes in the Annenberg study, is certainly worthy of consideration.

A November 21st Washington Post article notes that Colorado provides lessons for the Dems. The article begins:

When Democratic state chairmen gather in Florida next month to lick their wounds from the Nov. 2 election, their agenda will include a careful study of one bright spot in a generally sorry performance: Colorado, a solidly red state that went almost completely blue this year.
Despite a large Republican advantage in registered voters and the popularity of President Bush, who carried the state easily for the second time, Colorado Democrats picked up a U.S. Senate seat and House seat that had been considered safe for the GOP. They reversed Republican majorities in the state House and Senate to take control of the legislature. And they backed expensive ballot measures that passed by large majorities despite opposition from the GOP.

A Nov 20th New York Times Op-Ed piece notes that environmental measures received wide support in last months election. Here are some excerpts.

Though nobody seemed to notice, Republican and Democratic voters seemed to be of similar minds on one issue this election: the environment. Across the country, in red states and blue states, Americans voted decisively to spend more money for natural areas, neighborhood parks and conservation in their communities. Of 161 conservation ballot measures, 120 – or 75 percent – were approved by voters. Three-and-a-quarter billion dollars were dedicated to land conservation.
…So what’s the story? Simply put, these measures unify Americans. It’s hard to be against new parks and trails, or to disagree with wanting to protect farms and forests from development. What’s more, voters have learned that these measures often provide local solutions to water-quality problems: preserving natural natural lands in watersheds can help protect drinking water sources or reduce storm-water runoff.
…True, this year’s election didn’t turn on environmental issues. But the voters sent a message anyway: whether we’re red or blue, we all have a little bit of green in us.

A November 12th National Journal article by Jonathan Rauch takes apart a series of myths about what the 2004 election signified. The first three paragraphs nicely sum it up.

The election of 2004 was one of the greatest of our era, but the post-election of 2004 was as bad as they come. Rarely have election returns been so widely but wrongly — in fact, dangerously — misconstrued.
A quick post-post-election exit poll: Which of the following two statements more accurately describes what happened on November 2?
A) The election was a stunning triumph for the president, the Republicans, and (especially) social conservatives. Because the country turned to the right, President Bush received a mandate, the Republicans consolidated their dominance, and the Democrats lost touch with the country.
B) Bush and the Republicans are on thin ice. Bush barely eked out a majority, the country is still divided 50-50, and the electoral landscape has hardly changed, except in one respect: The Republican Party has shifted precariously to the right of the country, and the world, that it leads.
Usual answer: A. Correct answer: B.

It gets better. Read it as a “pick-me-up” for Election Day blues.

Harpers’ Magazine contributing editor Greg Palast and Salon business and technology writer Farhad Manjoo continue the debate – discussed in posts here and here – regarding the possibility that John Kerry actually won Ohio

Andrei Cherny, writing in the New Republic, examines how Democrats talked about values during the New Deal era and how Democrats can revive that tradition today.

Writing in The American Prospect, Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute suggests why economic issues can still work for the Dems.

Between 2000 and 2004, there was a net shift of about 4 million votes in Bush’s direction. On November 9, I posted a brief analysis of where Bush’s vote gains came from by state. I now have had a chance to conduct some analysis of the county-level results from 2004 and they provide some very intriguing insights into the spatial distribution of Bush’s vote gains. These insights challenge the conventional wisdom about where Bush’s vote gains came from and appear to contradict the exit poll’s findings from this year about the spatial distribution of Bush’s gains.
First, my analysis finds that only about a quarter of Bush’s net vote gains from 2000 to 2004 came from the nation’s “ideopolises” (see this piece in Blueprint magazine for an explanation of the term) and three-quarters–the vast majority–came from less technically advanced metro areas and from rural areas.
Second, my analysis shows that Bush made gains across the board (sometimes less, sometimes more than the conventional wisdom has indicated) when you examine counties sorted into 10 categories, going from most urban to most rural. (This analysis uses the rural-urban continuum codes developed by Calvin Beale of the USDA’s Economic Research Service.)
Starting with the most urban counties, those that are central counties of large (1 million or more) metro areas, Bush improved his vote margin by 2.4 percentage points (i.e., he narrowed his margin of loss to about 55-44). His gains in these areas accounted for about 19 percent of his total net vote gain.
In fringe or exurban counties of these large metro areas, Bush improved his winning margin by 6.7 points (to 62-38). But because these exurban areas contain far fewer people than the central counties, Bush received only 13 percent of his vote gains from these counties.
More important to Bush’s vote gains were medium-sized metro areas (250,000 to a million in population), where he improved his winning margin by 3.5 points (about the national average). But because of the large number of people in medium-sized metro areas, Bush received over a quarter (26 percent) of his net vote gain from these counties.
In small metro areas (less than 250,000 population), Bush improved his margin by 2.4 points and received about 8 percent of his net vote gain.
Turning to nonmetro counties, which are typically considered “rural” and which have urban concentrations that range from a high of 50,000 a low of under 2,500, Bush did the best in nonmetro counties that are adjacent to a metro area and have an urban population of between 2,500 and 20,000. In these counties, he improved his margin by 6.4 points and received 15 percent of his overall net vote gain.
In the other five types of rural counties (see the rural-urban continuum codes cited above), Bush improved his margin by from 2.2 to 4.2 points and–putting all these other rural counties together–received 18 percent of his net vote gain.
How do these findings match up with the exit poll findings on Bush’s performance in different types of areas? Not very well at all.
Consider this: the exit polls say that Bush’s margin was compressed both in their “rural areas” category (shrinking by 3 points) and in their other nonmetro category, “cities and towns, 10,000 to 50,000 population” (shrinking by an astonishing 19 points, from a 21 point to a 2 point margin).
It’s very hard to square this with the findings cited above on Bush’s gains in all categories of nonmetro counties, from the most rural to the least.
Or consider this: the exit polls say that Bush improved his margin by an incredible 24 points (going from a 71-26 deficit to 60-39) in “cities of over 500,000” population and improved by an almost as stunning 17 points (going from a 57-40 deficit to dead-even) in “cities and towns, 50,000 to 500,000 in population”. But a glance at the findings above for the different metro categories fails to find anything even remotely consistent with these shifts.
While the exit polls use different categories (cities of different sizes, suburbs, etc.) that are not county-based, it would take a hell of a story to reconcile these findings by pointing to the differences between categories.
So put a big question mark by those exit poll spatial findings. They just don’t square with analysis of the actual votes that were cast and where Bush made his gains.
Much more of this county-based analysis to come! I’m just getting started and will shortly be taking a look at some of the more interesting states in ’04 election.