By Alan Abramowitz
Democrats can’t win by mobilizing the base alone–they need a candidate and a message with broader, at least slightly broader, appeal. Still, Kerry did not do badly for a Massachusetts liberal. This was no 1984 or even 1988. Only a 3 point margin in the popular vote and with another 150,000 votes in Ohio, Kerry would have won the electoral vote. (That’s kind of a scary thought though. The electoral college could really misfire pretty badly, much worse than in 2000, and in either direction.)
2008 really should be a better chance for Dems to win the White House if we have a strong candidate and a strong message. Here’s why–the time for change factor kicks in for us. And it’s pretty big. Since WW II there have been 7 presidential elections in which a party had held the White House for just one term. The incumbent party’s candidate won 6 out of 7 (only Carter lost) with an average popular vote margin of 11.6 percent. There have been 8 elections in which a party had held the White House for two terms or more. The incumbent party’s candidate won only 2 and lost 6 with an average popular vote margin of -0.9 percent. This pattern goes all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century and the “time for change” factor has a significant effect on the outcomes of presidential elections even when you control for the incumbent president’s popularity and the state of the economy–there is about a 5 point penalty if you’ve held the White House for 8 years or longer. Add that 5 points to Kerry’s 2004 total, and you win easily.
Ruy Teixeira’s Donkey Rising
Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution participated in an online chat on The Washington Post website yesterday, where he answered questions about Tuesday’s election results–many of them on the minds, I would imagine, of those who visit this site. All Mann’s answers are lucid and perceptive; I strongly recommend you checkout the transcript of his chat as an aid to your reflections on the election.
By Alan Abramowitz
The exit polls missed the mark very badly last night (before they were reweighted to correspond to the actual results). The national exit poll consistently showed Kerry leading by 3 points–just the reverse of the actual vote. The Ohio exit poll had Kerry up by 4 and the Florida exit poll had it tied.
What happened? Some combination of bad precinct samples, resopnse bias, or failing to accurately account for early and absentee votes must have been at work. Whatever it was, it was a major problem. In 2000, the national exit poll also overestimated Gore’s vote, but not by nearly as big a margin.
Why did Kerry lose the popular vote? Basically this was a rerun of 2000. Almost every state, and every big state, went the same way it did in 2000. It looks like the only switches were New Hampshire for Kerry and probably Iowa and New Mexico for Bush, although those are not certain (and, in fact, New Hampshire is also extremely close). But Kerry got killed in the South and that appears to have also dragged down several Democratic Senate candidates.
I think that Democrats need to think very hard about the lessons of this election, regardless of what happens in Ohio with the provisional ballots. We lost the popular vote and probably the election to a Republican incumbent with a horrible record. It is going to be very difficult to win a presidential election unless the Democratic candidate can do significantly better in the southern and border states. More thoughts to come later.
The exit poll results, both national and state, cited in my previous post have now been substantially revised and do not look particularly favorable to Kerry. While some of the patterns discussed previously remain, others have changed fairly dramatically. Much more discussion to follow, of course, but way too tired to pursue it now.
No doubt everyone has seen some version of early exit poll results circulating around the web. Here is a version of those results that allegedly hails from around the 6pm hour and was posted on the Daily Kos. I have received pretty much identical numbers from several other good sources so these results are probably as reliable as anything else we can get at this point. Extreme caution is advised, of course, but these results do look quite favorable for Kerry:
Kerry Bush
PA 53 46
FL 51 49
NC 48 52
OH 51 49
MO 46 54
AR 47 53
MI 51 47
NM 50 49
LA 43 56
CO 48 51
AZ 45 55
MN 54 44
WI 52 47
IA 49 49
But here are some other early results that have received less attention. These results come from the national exit poll on the CNN website and, presumably, other sites as well. Now, these results can change and undoubtedly will in some respects. But if they wind up being close to the final results, there’s a reasonable case to be made that CNN has already let the cat out of the bag in terms of the final result.
That’s because CNN has posted data which indicate the overall popular vote result is 51-48 Kerry. If that holds up, it is not impossible for Bush to nevertheless win an electoral vote, but it is very, very improbable. A three point popular vote margin should translate into a substantially more lopsided margin in the electoral college in favor of John Kerry.
Here are some other potentially significant results from these early national exit poll results (Kerry number always given first):
1. Substantially smaller gender gap (54-45 women vs. 47-51 men). But change relative to 2000 is mostly the shrinking of Bush’s lead among men (11 points in ’00, 4 points this year)
2. Bush is only winning white men by 17 points; in ’00 he won this group by 24 points.
3. Current results indicate minorities are 23 percent of the vote, which is 4 points higher than in 2000. These results shows blacks as 11 percent of the vote (vs. 10 percent in ’00) and hispanics as 9 percent of the vote (vs. 6.5 percent in ’00). In terms of support for the Democrats, these results show blacks supporting Kerry 90-10, very similar to ’00 results (so much for that absurd Joint Center poll that had Bush’s black support at 18 percent). Asians are supporting Kerry by 23 points (61-38), a fairly big jump from the ’00 54-41 Democratic margin. On the other hand, these results show Hispanics supporting Kerry by only 56-41, compared to 62-35 in ’00. If this result holds up (and this is one I would expect to change), it’s quite a surprise.
4. Young voters (18-29) are going heavily for Kerry, 56-43 though these results do not show an increase in young voters as a proportion of the electorate (17 percent this year vs. 17 percent in ’00)
5. Union household members are 24 percent of voters (down slightly from ’00’s 26 percent level) and support Kerry by 61-38 (slightly larger margin than ’00’s).
6. Kerry leads among independents by 7 points (compared to a 2 point Democratic deficit in ’00) and leads among moderates by 16 points (compared to a Democratic lead of 8 points in ’00).
More on these data later. But note this: CNN has now started posting their state level exit polls as soon as the polls close in that state. Take a look. Based on these data, Kerry seems very, very likely to win.
UpCATEGORY: Ruy Teixeira’s Donkey Rising
John Kerry leads George Bush 50-47 percent of nation-wide LV’s, according to the final Harris Interactive Online Survey, conducted 10/29-11/1. Kerry also leads Bush 48-47 percent of nation-wide LV’s, according to the final Harris Interactive Telephone Survey. Both poills indicate a surge for Kerry over the previous Harris Poll. The Harris report on the poll notes “If this trend is real, then Kerry may actually do better than these numbers suggest. In the past, presidential challengers tend to do better against an incumbent President among the undecided voters during the last three days of the elections, and that appears to be the case here. The reason: undecided voters are more often voters who dislike the President but do not know the challenger well enough to make a decision. When they decide, they frequently split 2:1 to 4:1 for the challenger.”
The Harris Poll in three key states also affirmed the strong likelihood of a Kerry victory:
Florida – Kerry leads 51-47 percent of LV’s
Pennsylvania – Kerry ahead 50-48 percent of LV’s
Ohio – Kerry up 51-47 percent of LV’s
As the Harris report concluded, “Assuming the forecast is correct, Kerry is likely to win all three large states, and almost certainly the White House along with it.”
John Kerry leads George Bush 50-49 percent of New Hampshire LV’s, with 1 percent for Nader, according to a University of New Hampshire Survey Center Poll, conducted 10/28-11/1. The poll also found that Kerry leads among NH Independents 48-41 percent and 51-42 percent among “swing voters.”
John Kerry leads George Bush 50-47 percent of Iowa LV’s in the final SurveyUSA Poll, conducted 10/31-11/1. The poll also found that Kerry has a 20 point lead among Independents (57-37 percent).
John Kerry and George Bush are tied at 48 percent of nation-wide RV’s in the final Marist Poll, conducted 11/1. The Poll also found that Kerry leads Bush 50-49 percent of LV’s, and Bush’s approval rating was 49 percent.
It’s been a general tendency throughout this election campaign, but it is quite striking how well Kerry is doing among independent voters in the various pre-election polls that have been recently released. If Kerry’s lead among independents holds up, it will be very, very difficult for George Bush to win this election.
Here’s why. Averaging the last eight national polls for which I can obtain relevant data, Bush is running about a 7 point higher margin among Republicans than Kerry is getting among Democrats. That’s actually worse than Bush did in 2000, when he ran an 8 point higher margin among Republicans than Gore did among Democrats.
Then bring in our independent voters. Right now, Bush is averaging about a 7 point deficit among independent voters, compared to the 2 point advantage among these voters he had in 2000, a 9 point swing against him among independents.
So Bush seems likely to do slightly worse than 2000 in terms of receiving higher margins, relative to the Democrats, from his own partisans and very likely to do much worse among independent voters than 2000. Given that he actually lost the popular vote in 2000 by half a percentage point, he therefore has no chance of carrying the popular vote, or even coming close, unless he can change something else in his favor to counter these negative trends.
That can only be accomplished by erasing the Democrats’ traditional turnout advantage in Presidential election years (Democrats generally run 3-5 points higher as a proportion of voters). In fact, these data suggest that, given the deficit Bush is likely to run among independents, simply erasing the Democrats’ turnout advantage would likely not be enough; Republicans would actually need a turnout advantage of their own–perhaps a point or two–to prevail.
How likely is this? Not particularly. Such a radical shift in turnout patterns is only possible with a high mobilization of Republicans that is not counterbalanced at all by mobilization of Democrats. Does that sound to you like a description of this year? Not to me either; on the contrary, Democrats and Democratic institutions are exceptionally mobilized this year and it seems likely they, not the Republicans, will win the turnout wars.
And, if that‘s true, there is no way the Republicans can recover from the way independent voters are swinging against them–not only on the national, but also in key states like Ohio and Florida.
Ohio: In 2000, Bush carried Ohio independents by 16 points (!); this year, he is dead-even with John Kerry among this sector of the Ohio electorate (Gallup Ohio poll, October 29-31)
Florida: In 2000, Bush and Gore were about even among Florida indpendents; this year, Kerry leads Bush by 5 among these voters (Gallup Florida poll, October 28-30).
Election day seems likely to be independents’ day–to Bush’s bitter regret.
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