The race in Ohio

I got polled last Sunday (at 3pm) by Rasmussen.  I live in the Ohio's swing-district-of-all-swing districts, so it was thrilling to think that my opinion would actually be listed to.  A few interesting things about the poll.  It was a robo-poll which moved along at a fair clip.  There were a few demographic questions in the middle of the poll.  It gave the option to vote for Barr, Nader, and McKinney.  The most interesting question was, "If you had to make the toughest decision of your life, who would you ask, Barack Obama or John McCain?"  

In the local paper here, the fact that McCain was up in a poll (not the Rasumussen one) was front page news.  Of course, McCain was not really up in the poll--he had 48, Obama 42, but the margin of error was 3.3% so it's a statistical tie.  

Obama is having difficulty in Ohio.  It's the same old story--people feel uncomfortable with him waltzing in and taking over the country.  And why shouldn't they?  Obama's inexperienced.  He's not tried and true.  There are plenty of good reasons to be skeptical of Obama without being racist.  There was a forum last week in West Virginia blaming racists there for not supporting Obama.  I heard the same opinion from a WV native at APSA in Boston.  I said recently here that there was no way that Obama could win West Virginia; however, he's been creeping up on McCain in the polls, to the point where they're basically tied in the Mountain State.  

In Ohio, there was an Obama volunteer who had a hilarious venting in the letters to the editor section of my local Sunday paper.  It was well-reasoned, even eloquent, if it wasn't so sarcastic.  The lady was choking on her own disbelief that people would support McCain/Palin.  It was an interesting snippet of the race, because this lady obviously has knocked on a lot of doors, or made a lot of phone calls, or both, and has heard the same thing over and over--that people relate to McCain (and especially Palin) in a way they don't with Obama.  

That's why money is not so much a factor in this race.  Obama might raise more, and will continue to be able to raise more while McCain's finished (he's taken his $84 million of government money and can no longer accept private donations), but both have enough money to compete, and that's all that matters.  Obama poured money into Ohio and PA in the primaries, and he got creamed by Hillary.  Money is not the answer.  It pays for legions of enthusiastic volunteers to become disillusioned and crabbed like the lady who had to vent in public about how stupid the people are who she's trying to pursuade to vote for Obama.  

The polls are meaningless (almost)

Polls at this point in time are absolutely worthless in terms of their predictive value. At this time last year, if you had believed the polling, Edwards or Hillary would have won Iowa. Or nationally, Rudy Giuliani would be the Republican nominee! See what I'm saying?

Intrade is no better, pace Michael Brendan Dougherty. Buying Obama and McCain futures this time last year would have netted you a small fortune (more so with McCain, but also with Obama).

CBS Horserace writes:

In those blue states being talked about by Republicans as possible targets, Obama is doing more than holding his own. In Pennsylvania, the RCP average has Obama up by 7 points. In Michigan, it’s a 7.2 point lead, 11.2 points In Wisconsin and 12 points in Minnesota. When it comes to those states Obama is looking to flip into the Democratic column, the race is much closer. McCain holds an average lead of just 0.7 points in Virginia and just 3.8 points in North Carolina. Obama meanwhile leads by 3.6 points in Colorado and holds a slight 0.5 lead in Indiana. And in Nevada, it’s a dead heat. Meanwhile, some of the more traditional swing states look to be tilting slightly towards the Democrat. Obama holds the lead in poll averages in places Republicans have won in recent cycle. He’s up 4.5 points in Ohio and 2.5 in Missouri. Obama is holding strong in Iowa, with an average 7.4 point lead. McCain clings to a 2.2 point average lead in must-have Florida and New Hampshire is a toss-up. In other words, Obama is looking much stronger in the states Democrats have relied on in the past two close elections while appearing to make real inroads in traditional Republican states and competing very well in big swing states like Ohio.

Stuart Rothenberg says the bellweather states will be Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, Nevada and Michigan. Obama has small leads in all of these, except in Michigan where he's up by 7+.

Obama is doing the right things right now; moving to the center during the summer when nobody's paying attention; grabbing all the headlines (for those who are) by going overseas. The trip is looking like it will be a masterstroke; Barack looks presidential, McCain is diminished by comparison.

Could Obama slip up and harm his candidacy? Of course, but that can happen with anything. He's dominating the airwaves so far and will continue to with his overseas venture. The more people just get used to the idea of Obama being their president, representing them to foreign leaders, etc., the better off he is.

He's got four months to do this, yet the drawn-out primary campaign helped immensely. Obama was not dropped on us from heaven; he had to earn it gradually over a grueling schedule of primary after primary. All these voters seeing his name on the ballot, hearing about him on the local news. And the campaigning sharpening his presidential campaigning skills. I will repeat until doomsday comes that a plethora of democracy only helps a party (and the US as a whole) and the people who only see the divisiveness have no imagination and miss the big picture entirely.

So to pose the question put by CBS Horserace (not excerpted) why isn't Obama up by more? I think the answer is that the heat has not yet been put on John McCain. McCain is benefiting from the surge's short-term success, and the fact that the economy dominates the headlines distracting people from Iraq. People are not thinking about the election. When they do the poll numbers will move around. No doubt McCain will have a lead at some point in time. But there is plenty of ways for Obama to go after McCain, and not a whole lot of ways for McCain to go after Obama, except alterization, the impact of which is/will be blunted by the fact that Obama has/has had time for people to get used to him. The media fawning all over him doesn't hurt, along with the fact that McCain has finally met his match in the media-darling category; now he's standing in the way of what the progressive media elites most desire, which is new for him.

The Battleground States

The video posted below shows David Plouffe (the genius for the Obama campaign who saw early on that the primary could come down to delegates, and urged aiming for delegate-rich contests) mapping out Obama's strategy in the general. That strategy is, hold on to the Kerry states, and go on offense against some Bush '04 states.

He claims that Obama is doing well in the Kerry states, so that McCain doesn't have many opportunities to go on offense. He's right. The WSJ poll above of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan show Obama with leads right now beyond the margin of error. Of course that could change. But as of right now it looks good for Obama to hold onto the Kerry states.

Kerry got 251 electoral votes, 19 shy of winning. Where can Obama get these 19 votes? I've posted my analysis of swing states at the bottom of this blog for easy reference. Of course Ohio or Florida would do it. A combination of Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado would do it as well.

I'm going to be doing a series on this blog on the political situations for the campaigns in the states, starting with the battleground states. It's a fun way to pass a lazy summer. [I am no longer planning on doing this. Jay Cost is doing a great job of this over at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/]

Bosnia story is Hillary's watershed

Hillary's predicting a close race in PA. I think PA is going to be another Ohio. That is, if Hillary wins, but it is actually close. Then Obama fans are going to stage an intervention and press her very hard to drop out. She won't, but they'll continue the pressure.

Hillary has to be so furious at Obama. Her $20 million month gets overshadowed by Obama's $40 million. But under normal circumstances $20M would be an incredible haul, and everyone would be lauding Hillary for doing such amazing fundraising. (McCain hasn't released his figures yet, but he raised $11M the month before.) Instead the story is how exhausted her fund raisers are as she falls behind Obama.

A new poll in PA shows a race too close to call, and everyone's going crazy over it. One poll does not a trend make. However, there is a definite trend of Hillary slipping in the last week. Why is that?

The reason is the Bosnia story sinking in. That was just a killer for the Clinton campaign. That is the kind of thing that reminds everyone of what they don't like about the Clinton's--the petty lies. This is what killed Gore in 2000: he tried to distance himself from the Clinton's, but then got caught up in a bunch of petty lies, at which point the Bush campaign started gaining traction in the polls.

I talked with a non-political person last weekend who was utterly dismissive of Hillary because of her Bosnia story. It is the most damaging thing, practically, she could have done. It not only rekindles the bad Clinton memories, but also highlights the main flaw of her argument against Obama--that he's not experienced--by pointing out that even though she was in the building when the big decisions were being made, she wasn't necessarily involved in making them, and desperately wants to make it seem like she was.

The Bosnia story might turn out to be the point in which Hillary lost the nomination.

Hillary up in swing states

Democratic bloodletting will continue for a long while; probably to the convention.

And here's why: each candidate is basically flawed. After a long string of votes and media coverage, we can abandon hypotheses and now state with certainty the score.

And that is: Hillary Clinton is unlikable, Barack Obama is untested. This was the narrative each campaign was trying to exploit in the other's. And they both succeeded all too well. Obama portrayed himself as above the fray, a shot at Hillary's divisiveness and unlikability. Hillary portrayed herself as experienced, a shot at Obama's lack of that particular commodity.

None of this is new. Except for the fact that now we can say that both were right. Obama did not have enough votes from voters who were sick of the Clinton's to put him over the top, and Hillary did not have enough votes from voters who wanted to stick with a known entity to put her over the top.

So the speculation can end. Hillary's strategy worked; Obama's strategy worked. We know that now. But there's nowhere to go from here.

All these calls for Hillary to drop out (Leahy, various and sundry pundits), are extremely counter-productive for Democrats. First of all, it becomes a self-fulfilling promise to say "it's hurting the party for Hillary to stay in." Why not focus on the high turnout? A little democratic competition is supposed to be healthy. This sounds stale coming from the candidates; other Dems should say it.

Secondly, that is even more true when you consider that there's no way in heck Hillary will drop out. She's going to win PA. Then she'll look like a big winner, and the narrative of all these stories on how she's only got a 5% shot at the nomination will be dropped in favor of something else completely. Obama's (extremely weak) statement saying she should stay in might have been motivated by the whole don't-look-like-you're-picking-on-a-girl strategic consideration, but it could also have the (wise) motivation of managing expectations. If Obama's the presumptive nominee, why would a crucial state like PA not rally behind him? Doesn't bode well for future coverage.

And there's the argument that she'll be the stronger nominee, that's buttressed by recent polls.

From Reuters:

She also runs better against the likely Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio -- all important swing states in the general election.

In a general election matchup in Florida, McCain closely trails Clinton 42 percent to 44 percent but McCain leads Obama, who would be the first black president, 46 percent to 37 percent, according to the poll.

"The difference between Clinton and Obama in Florida is the white vote," said Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

In Ohio, Clinton has a 48 to 39 percent lead over McCain after months of too-close-to-call results, the poll found. In an Obama-McCain matchup, Obama gets 43 percent against 42 percent for McCain.

In Pennsylvania, Clinton tops McCain 48 to 40 percent and Obama leads the Arizona senator 43 percent to 39 percent.

Among Pennsylvania Democrats, Clinton leads 54 to 37 percent with women and ties Obama with men at 46 percent support.

The crucial stat

No, that's not a typo. PA is the crucial state right now, but the crucial stat is below:

From ABC News:

In a recent Gallup poll, almost 30 percent of Clinton supporters say they'd go for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., over Obama if Clinton loses the nomination; 19 percent of Obama supporters say the same.

Yikes. This is a rock and a hard place. Blacks are a crucial Dem constituency, voting for Kerry 9-1 in '04, and making up 20% of his voters. If they jump ship for a Hillary candidacy, this would be disastrous for the Dems in the general. I have been listening to these callers to C-Span bashing the Clintons and making just this threat. Not that the Clintons don't deserve it, after the ghettoization strategy in SC (though this was Bill off the reservation, not a calculated campaign tactic, if we believe the NYTimes).

Yet there could be even more white voters who would jump ship with an Obama candidacy.

Things change daily, but Clinton is suffering right now from her enhancement of her Bosnia trip. This is literally what killed Gore's candidacy in 2000. If Gore hadn't been caught in those petty lies which I don't even remember anymore, he would have been president. Hillary's fumble is in the same category. This kind of thing just reminds people why Obama is so attractive--change from Bush without having to go back to all the Clinton rehash.

I think the superdelegates are going to close their eyes and go with Obama, hoping that he'll bring the party together better than Hillary could.

Hillary doing better in the polls

I'm watching Amy Walter of Hotline on C-Span, and she's reporting favorable poll results for Hillary.

Clinton leads McCain, 51-46.

Clinton leads Obama in primary voters 49-42.

Both of these are big turnarounds from the polls of recent history.

Clinton has also doubled her lead in PA since the OH primary, from 6 points to 12 points.

But she's ceding North Carolina, which has a high percentage of black voters.

Men like Obama

Obama got 58% of the vote and 40 delegates last night, to Hillary's 41% and 28 delegates. Obama continues to win the upscale demographic and younger voters.

Obama trounced Hillary among men, 67-31, and they were even among women. His overwhelming victory is squarely due to male voters. Why do men like him so much?

51% of the electorate chose Obama as the candidate they think is most qualified to be commander-in-chief. That's down from his total of 58%. I'm not too surprised by that, because exit polls are often worthless because voters treat them like pop quizzes--did you pay attention to the campaign, and can you match the candidate with the qualities they are purported to have? The word "qualified" is a tip-off to check Clinton, if you really are a with-it voter.

But, amongst those who chose Obama as most qualified to be commander-in-chief, these voters almost to a man (or woman) voted for Obama. The same exact pattern happened in other states, like Missouri, New Mexico and Connecticut.

I think this is telling. Is it possibly the "pop quiz question effect"? Perhaps. But it seems to me that if anything, it is Clinton who has been emphasizing the "leadership from day one" and the experience to handle complex issues, such as foreign policy, which Obama does not have. I've blogged before about the gender effect on the commander-in-chief perception issue, and it seems like it could be hurting Hillary here among male voters who want a strong leader.

The voters who said gender was important to them (only 15% of the electorate) voted for Clinton, 63-37. This means that only 5% of Obama's 58% said that the fact that he was a man was important to them, and the other 53% said it was not a factor. But I don't think that means it doesn't necessarily work on a subconscious level.

Polls in NH

John Zogby buttressed my point about Hillary's tearing-up being a possible, even likely cause of the polls being wrong in NH.

State of the race

From super-blogger Chris Bowers comes the above charts on the state of the race so far. A couple notes. First of all, Romney should be considered the front-runner, not Giuliani. The national polls don't matter, and Romney can finance his own campaign to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, so the cash on hand is no impediment for him. Wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, and Romney would have a huge edge on Giuliani. Secondly, Obama is making inroads in Iowa at the expense of Edwards. Hillary's lead in Iowa could change as the campaign steps up, and as Obama starts spending his cash. These races are up in the air.

The echo chamber

A Jay Cost update...

I try to keep this blog regularly updated with what the best election blogger in the blogosphere, Jay Cost, is saying. This week, his HorseRaceBlog at RealClearPolitics has a response to Adam Nagourney's article on Hillary's vincibility. I linked to this article in my pre-debate reflections. Both Cost and I agree with it, and Cost adds a quibble with Nagourney's failure to clarify the meaning of summer polling results. In Cost's view summer polls are only a reflection of elite dialogue. That dialogue is reflected in polling results. I've discussed Cost's idea of the "echo chamber" before. It's completely accurate, in my view--ordinary people have difficulty figuring out which candidate is which. Their opinions are set for them by opinion leaders. Or to put it a better way, they don't yet have opinions because they don't have enough information to have opinions, and so they are basically playing a game of "guess the answer" to a trivia question when polled. That is to say, when asked a question by a pollster, they are trying not to look stupid. Cost gives an example of a not-unintelligent layman mixing up Giuliani and Romney's narratives to illustrate the point.

This is not our typical view of polls. If it were, we would pay a lot less attention to them. But then the media wouldn't be able to generate as much news and excitement from the expensive polls they commission. So the media is not going to blow the cover on the whole scam, and tell us straight up how meaningless it is. It's satisfying to have bloggers like Cost in tune with what is really happening in the race.

Oh, how the polls can change

At this point in the presidential race, national polls are to be ignored, as I've mentioned before. There are some national poll results out today, so make sure to ignore them. (They show Giuliani continuing his long slow decline, and McCain making his inevitable comeback--there's no place to go but up from where he was in early August.)

At the Gallup blog at USA Today there are some interesting historical comparisons:

In late August, early September 1987, Michael Dukakis was already at 13% of the Democratic vote, in second place only to Jesse Jackson, who had 19%.

A Sept 13-15 1991 Gallup poll showed the following standings for the Democratic candidates:

Mario Cuomo 31%
Jesse Jackson 14%
Jerry Brown 11%
Tom Harkin 5%
Douglas Wilder 4%
Bob Kerrey 4%
Bill Clinton 3%

Well, what happened? The biggest change was the December 1991 decision by New York Governor Mario Cuomo not to run for his party’s nomination. That opened everything up. Bill Clinton went from 6% in a late October, early November Gallup poll (with Cuomo included) to 17% (just behind Jerry Brown) in a Jan 3-9 Gallup poll (with Cuomo not included).

In 2003, while John Kerry was not technically the front runner in September, he was close. A Sept. 8-10 Gallup poll showed this:

Dick Gephardt 15%
Howard Dean 13%
Joe Lieberman 12%
John Kerry 11%

The trajectory of the 2004 Democratic race showed Wesley Clark charging a little in late September, then a major Dean surge late in the year, then the famous Dean implosion, and then Kerry running away with the nomination by late January.

The polls tell us the current state of things. But events always intervene. Gallup tries to play it off as if only one candidate exiting a race will shake it up, but there can also be candidate blunders, bad campaigning, or just a lack of likeability. Hillary is riding high in the polls now, but upon closer inspection voters might decide she's really not the one to carry the party mantle to victory. This could happen--voters don't make up their minds until the last minute. They can say they like this candidate one day, then another one the next, but they don't really pay attention until the end. That's why polls, especially national polls, at this point are next to worthless and predict absolutely nothing.

The Republican race--a new poll

This blog has been very high on the Huckster's chances in the last couple weeks. Right now, according to a LA Times/Bloomberg poll, Huckabee is polling 6% in New Hampshire. That's neck-and-neck with Ron Paul, who's polling 5%. Here's the numbers in NH for the rest of the candidates:

Romney 28%
Giuliani 23%
Don't Know 13%
McCain 12%
Thompson 11%

Though he might not have national name-recognition yet, Romney is the Republican front-runner and Giuliani is trailing him. This is an extremely fluid Republican situation. Here's my prognosis. McCain could very well pull out before the voting starts, but that seems unlikely at this point. That he stages a comeback is also very unlikely though. Thompson might be a two-and-half-month flameout and pull out before voting starts. Giuliani will not do well in Iowa, and will be in the position of Lieberman and Clark last time on the Democratic side, faced with the overwhelming free-media tide of a Romney or Huckabee. Where are all these votes going to shift to? That's the question. After a Thompson flameout, a Gingrich candidacy might be in the offing. But the beneficiaries will be Romney and Huckabee. Paul might gain some support but without being a serious contender, even in New Hampshire.

Electability and the Democratic candidates

What is "electability"? It is a very real factor in primary elections. It is the answer to the following questions: Can the candidate win the general election? Can he or she be president? Can he beat the other party's candidate by appealing beyond the base of his party? The answer to these questions do sway voters. Voting for a loser or voting for a candidate who is too far out of the mainstream to win is not very palatable for a lot of voters. It is an intelligent way to size up candidates--it's not smart to marginalize your own party, but make as broadly attractive as possible. The electability narrative is one that any front-runner candidate has to tackle. Howard Dean got smeared on it in the weeks before Iowa.

The electability angle is frustrating to the ideologues who want their party's nominee to be a strong public voice for the issue positions that most of the active party members hold. It seems to argue that people should vote against their interests and beliefs and try to project how other people who don't have the same issues and beliefs will vote. And of course they aren't doing it alone, but are fed a narrative by the mainstream media, which is controlled by (fill in the blank: liberal elitists or corporate interests). Chris Bowers has complained about this recently.

But thinking about who is the most electable is really the smart thing to do. What Bowers doesn't mention is that at the beginning of the Rasmussen Report he cited, it referenced an earlier report on the lack of perceived ideological differences between the candidates.

Here's Joe Klein a few days ago on Obama and Hillary:

Both candidates are emphasizing the exact same issues and they are saying almost the exact same things about those issues. The consultants and their focus groups have never seemed more powerful. Health care for every single American (except that neither has produced a plan to do that--Obama's lacks a mandate and we'll see about Hillary's, when she launches in a couple of weeks). Energy independence. End the war. Restore America's place in the world. Raise up the middle class. End cronyism. Both candidates have populist flickers, and name the Insurance companies, Big Oil, Big Pharma as corporate evildoers.

Especially if the differences on substance are not large, voters should go with the most electable candidate. It's the smart thing to do. And primary voters are the smartest, most well-informed voters. Turnout is under 20% in primary elections; the Iowa Democratic caucus in 2004 was 6% of all registered voters. These are not stupid ignoramuses but the cream of the electoral crop.

Here's the original report Bowers was responding to: Rasmussen reported Friday on the issue of "electability" and the Democratic candidates:

If nominated, Clinton is considered at least somewhat likely to win by 53% of all voters. Fifty-four percent (54%) say the same about Edwards and 55% about Obama. However, 24% of all voters say that if Clinton is nominated, she is Very Likely to win it all. Just 17% say that Obama is Very Likely to win the White House while 16% say a victory in November is Very Likely for Edwards.

The picture looks much different, however, among unaffiliated voters. Among this important segment of the voting population, 50% say Obama is at least somewhat likely to win if nominated. Forty-eight percent (48%) say the same about Edwards and just 42% see a Clinton victory as Somewhat or Very Likely.

Name recognition and the candidates

As any student of American politics knows, name-recognition is a big political asset in a campaign. If nobody knows your name, you have to spend a lot of money on advertising to get your name out there.

The reason is that there are some people who go into a voting booth and vote for the name that seems familiar. To people who follow politics regularly, this can seem incredible. But it's true. I've done it before. When you are in the voting booth, it is hard to admit to yourself that you are ignorant and should not be voting at all. So you convince yourself that you are making an educated choice by voting for the name that seems more familiar.

But does this hold for the top of the ticket? Everyone has to know the names of presidential candidates by the time the general election rolls around. It's probably true that this is attenuated, but it is also definitely still present even in the high-profile presidential race. FDR knew it was.

There is another factor in name-recognition, and that is being comfortable with the name you are picking. If you are named Zoe Weirdo it is harder to get elected. Like every negative, of course, you can turn your name into a positive. By campaigning and getting people to have good associations with your strange name you can boost your name-recognition. But the degree to which this is under a candidate's control is likewise attenuated at the presidential level.

A big criterion for evaluating presidential campaigning is whether the candidate "looks presidential." Can people envision the candidate as their president? This is maddeningly superficial, but there's no way around it. 2004 was the first time since the advent of television debates between the presidential candidates that the taller candidate has not won the general election. If you are short and dumpy it's harder to win. If you look and talk like Fred Thompson and are a popular actor, it's a huge edge.

In light of my previous dumping on Fred Thompson's chances, the question arises, how far will appearances and name-recognition take you? Since it is still early yet, the important question at this point is how much the poll results is just a function of name-recognition, and therefore subject to quick change as people get a little more exposure to the candidates and are forced to make up their mind because the election is next Tuesday.

There's some interesting stories on these topics. Gallup has a poll which gives strong evidence that on the Democratic side, Hillary's lead is not due to superior name-recognition. While 94% of Democrats are familiar with Hillary, 85% are familiar with Edwards and 84% with Obama. As voters become more familiar with Edwards and Obama, Clinton's lead will not necessarily shrink.

On the Republican side, the recognition of major candidates Giuliani/McCain/Romney/Thompson is 91/87/64/56. When the lack of familiarity with all of the candidates is factored in, Giuliani's lead disappears. It goes to Thompson. This makes for a volatile race, especially if, as I suspect, actual campaigning will make the bloom come off the rose for Thompson's candidacy.

The last element is the funny-name-factor. This CBS poll asked people if the name "Barack Obama" would be an impediment to him getting elected. Here's the poll's results:

With his mixed-race ethnicity, foreign-sounding name and international background, Obama may have additional hurdles to clear with some voters. A sizable minority of voters thinks Obama’s name may work against him. 38% think that many people would have a problem voting for Obama because of his name. 58% think that won’t be a problem. Democratic primary voters are similar.

And when asked early in the questionnaire what comes to mind when they hear the name Obama other than running for president, one in 10 voters mention his name -- that it is a foreign-sounding name, or that it reminds them of Osama bin Laden or terrorism. 9% mention that he is a Senator, and 6% say that he is African American.

I remember watching Morning Edition many months ago when a caller asked the question, "Do you really think American's are going to vote for a person named 'Barack Obama' for president?" I think it is clear that it is an extra hurdle for his campaign.

Here's some interesting commentary on all this from Pollster.com.

Religion and the 2008 race

Pew has a short study out this week on religion and the presidential vote. The conclusion might be surprising: religious differences between Republican and Democratic voters (the "religion gap") are greater than the gender gap and the class gap.

This gap relates to ideology, with religiosity (measured by church attendance) being positively correlated to conservative positions on political issues and negatively correlated with liberal positions, as was shown in the Baylor religion study which came out a year ago. The same pattern occurred with evangelicalism and biblical literalism.

In a Pew report in February, 61% of Republicans were more likely to support a presidential candidate who was a Christian, compared to 32% of Democrats.

The main factoid that stands out in this week's report is contained in two graphs that show the compositions of Bush's and Kerry's coalitions in the 2004 vote by religion and religiosity. Together the top three categories on these graphs were 49% of Bush's vote and 44.1% of Kerry's vote.

The largest single chunks of those coalitions are telling. The largest category in the Bush coalition was "evangelical protestants attending church weekly": 22.8% of Bush voters. The largest category in the Kerry coalition was "unaffiliated": 19.2%.

This it seems to me is the stark religious divide in presidential elections. The two parties have two very different bases when it comes to religious style. Many Kerry voters in 2004 are pleased by a secular campaign and turned off by overt religiosity, while the opposite is true for many Bush voters for whom his religiosity was a very attractive feature.

The next two largest chunks are also very interesting to compare. They are both the same: "less observant mainline protestants" and "less observant non-Latino Catholics." They form important parts of each candidate's coalition. Less observant mainline protestants were 14.3% of Bush's coalition and 13.8% of Kerry's, and less observant non-Latino Catholics 11.9% of Bush's coalition and 11.1% of Kerry's. Bush won both groups.

Religion in presidential politics is mainly a matter of rhetoric and style. Its importance cannot be discounted, as we are seeing with Romney. David Brooks had a great op-ed during the 2004 race. Here's a section of it:

Clinton made this sort of faith-based connection, at least until he sullied himself with the Lewinsky affair. He won the evangelical vote in 1992, and won it again in 1996. He understood that if Democrats are not seen as religious, they will be seen as secular Ivy League liberals, and they will lose.

John Kerry doesn't seem to get this. Many of the people running the Democratic Party don't get it either.

A recent Time magazine survey revealed that only 7 percent of Americans feel that Kerry is a man of strong religious faith. That's a catastrophic number. That number should be the first thing Kerry strategists think about when they wake up in the morning and it should be the last thing on their lips when they go to sleep at night. They should be doing everything they can to change that perception, because unless more people get a sense of Kerry's faith, they will feel no bond with him and they will be loath to trust him with their vote.

Yet his campaign does nothing. Kerry talks about jobs one week and the minimum wage the next, going about his wonky way, each day as secular as the last.

It's mind-boggling. Can't the Democratic strategists read the data? Religious involvement is a much, much more powerful predictor of how someone will vote than income, education, gender or any other social and demographic category save race.

I noticed after this op-ed piece came out that Kerry started talking about the importance of his Catholic faith, about being an alter boy, etc. etc., which I don't believe he had previously.

The median voter model as traditionally understood, which I've discussed before, might very well be a good model on religious rhetoric for Democratic candidates. Find ways to appeal to the more secular Democratic base during the primaries but then reach out to more religious voters in the general election. The problem is that because it is a matter mainly of style and rhetoric, in other words not issue positions, this kind of shift can seem artificial. It certainly did with Kerry.

With all this in mind, let's look at the "God question" in the last Democratic debate (transcript here, video here.)

Here's the question:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me move on now. We've got a question -- we've got an e-mail question from Seth Ford of South Jordan, Utah.

And he said, "My question is to understand each candidates' view of a personal God. Do they believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened?"

Here's the answer the front-runner gave:

CLINTON: Well, I don't pretend to understand the wisdom and the power of God. I do believe in prayer. And I have relied on prayer consistently throughout my life. You know, I like to say that, if I had not been a praying person before I got to the White House, after having been there for just a few days I would've become one.

This got some laughs, but not as many as Kucinich's answer:

KUCINICH: George, I've been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying to God you were going to call on me. And my...

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

And I come from a spiritual insight which says that...

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a direct pipeline, Congressman.

(LAUGHTER)

KUCINICH: I come from a spiritual insight which says that we have to have faith but also have good works.

KUCINICH: So when we think of the scriptures, Isaiah making justice the measuring line; Matthew 25, "whatever you do for the least of our brethren"; where the biblical injunction, "make peace with your brother" -- all of these things relate to my philosophy.

Now, the founders meant to have separation of church and state, but they never meant America to be separate from spiritual values. As president, I'll bring strong spiritual values into the White House, and I'll bring values that value peace, social and economic justice, values that remember where I came from.

Thank you.

By the way, this last "thank you" made the whole answer seem like a phony rehearsed stump speech, and nearly ruined the effect Kucinich was looking for.

But even the ultra-liberal Kucinich makes an appeal to his religious values at the same time he references the separation of church and state. It seems like the Democratic candidates grasp the importance of seeming religious.

But here's Obama's answer:

OBAMA: I believe in the power of prayer. And part of what I believe in is that, through prayer, not only can we strengthen ourselves in adversity, but that we can also find the empathy and the compassion and the will to deal with the problems that we do control.

Most of the issues that we're debating here today are ones that we have the power to change.

We don't have the power to prevent illness in all cases, but we do have the power to make sure that every child gets a regular checkup and isn't going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma.

We may not have the power to prevent a hurricane, but we do have the power to make sure that the levees are properly reinforced and we've got a sound emergency plan.

And so, part of what I pray for is the strength and the wisdom to be able to act on those things that I can control. And that's what I think has been lacking sometimes in our government.

We've got to express those values through our government, not just through our religious institutions.

This answer fell flat on the religion question we are considering. This doesn't come out in the transcript as much as the video. He spoke without much passion. He didn't relate his answer to his own faith except for a couple mentions of prayer. He brought everything back to secular values. With the whole debate about secular values, this question was a golden opportunity to talk about one's own religious values, but he didn't. This is not to say his response wasn't good or well received--it was the only one to get applause (except Kucinich's joke). It was good, but came off as too cerebral. This style might be a problem for Obama, but perhaps is negated by Hillary's style.

There is a reason behind this response perhaps. Obama's supporters are wealthier, more educated, and more informed that Clinton's supporters, though the former are less numerous than the latter. They former are also probably more secular. Obama could be appealing to his younger, wealthier, better educated demographic, which according to the Baylor study is a more secular population.

On a side note, Obama's supporters are more likely to turn out to vote. As Pollster.com reported: "The hard core Democratic primary electorate was both older (53% over 50) and better educated (46% college degree) than all Democratic identifiers and leaners (43% over 50 and 39% with a college degree)."

Hillary and Giuliani, primary elections and the general election

Pew has an interesting poll out on the two front runners. Here's the most important numbers, besides Hillary's high negatives (which has gotten so much press coverage):

84% of Republicans view Giuliani favorably, with 21% viewing him very favorably.

88% of Democrats view Hillary favorably, with 38% viewing her very favorably.

65% of the general public views Giuliani favorably, with 14% viewing him very favorably.

55% of the general public views Hillary favorably, with 20% viewing her very favorably.

It's the "very favorably" within the parties which is the natural base of support for the candidates to lean on in the primaries--Hillary has a big base within the Democrats. Surprisingly, she also has a 6-point edge among the general public over Giuliani in the "very favorably" category, which is not perhaps what you would expect. The write up for the poll did not make a big deal about this, and it is probably not out of the margin of error.

What does this tell us? Giuliani's support is wide but not deep. Hillary's support is deep--some people really like her--but as we've heard constantly about her high negatives, not that wide. Her response in the Iowa debate was that any Democratic nominee was going to face a "Republican attack machine" which would result in high negatives. This is posturing but is almost certainly true.

And that gives Hillary an edge in the general election that gets lost in the talk about high negatives. All the dirt has been aired already. It's boring. Why dredge it up? Doing so is not salient for voters, just as attacking Clinton in 1998 was not salient. Tim Carney made that point on Washington Journal this week, and it's exactly right. Democrats concerned about the Clinton-family psychological drama do have something to worry about, but that worry should be concerned about what voters think about Bill roaming around the White House with nothing but time on his hands, and whether that is too weird or not. But not previous scandals. Hillary has done a brilliant job on a difficult high-wire act of neutralizing them, and they will be impossible to resuscitate.

Hillary conquering Iowa?

According to a new NewsMax/Zogby poll of registered Democrats in Iowa, Hillary is up with 30%, Edwards is at 23%, and Obama 19%.

That sounds impressive, until you read that the margin of error in the poll is plus-or-minus 4.5%. In fact that means it's a dead heat between Hillary and Edwards, since Hillary's lead over Edwards is not greater than the doubled margin of error.

But of course, "Hillary conquers Iowa" is a much much catchier news item than "Nobody knows who will win Iowa."

Hillary has moved up 6 points since May in the same poll, and that is news. But she still does not have the kind of lead Romney has in Iowa, where he's up 33-14 over Giuliani, with Thompson (we can call him by his surname now that Tommy Thompson has dropped out) at 12%.

Gay issues a drag for Democrats? A new poll...

There's a debate tomorrow night between the Democratic presidential candidates on LGBT issues, raising the question of how this issue set plays in presidential politics. This article from the Politico reported on a Quinnipiac poll in the crucial battleground states of Florida, OH, and PA. As the article points out, " No one has won the White House since 1960 without carrying two of those three states."

It goes on:

The Quinnipiac poll of voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked whether they would be more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate supported by various interest groups. The margin of error in the polls was 3 percent.

In Ohio, 10 percent of voters said it would make them more likely, 34 percent said less likely -- a more than 3-1 ratio -- while 54 percent said it would not make a difference. Among independent voters, perhaps the key to the state’s 20 electoral votes, 12 percent said it would make them more likely, while 28 percent said less likely.

Florida voters were similarly disposed. Ten percent of them said they are more likely to vote for a candidate backed by gay rights groups, while 28 percent said they were less likely and 60 percent said it would not make a difference. Among independents, 9 percent said more likely, 18 percent said less likely.

Pennsylvania is the one of the big three states that Democrats carried in 2000 and 2004 but there, too, more than twice as many voters -- 28 percent -- said it would make them less likely to support a candidate as the 11 percent who said it would make them more likely. Among independents, 14 percent said more likely, 19 percent said less likely.

In all three states, sizeable majorities of voters said they believe that homosexual behavior is "morally wrong" rather than "morally acceptable" -- 55-30 percent in Ohio, 53-34 percent in Pennsylvania and 51-35 percent in Florida. Yet more than half the voters in each state say they favor some form of legal recognition for gay couples.

I'm reminded of a particularly striking comment made by a caller into C-Span two years ago. He said he'd like to be a Democrat, but that party had been "tacking against Western Civilization for so long that voters like him are forced out." And he ended by saying: "And we're not coming back."

The conventional wisdom on the gay rights issue is that young people are more tolerant than their elders, and thus the inevitable drift of policy is in favor of gay rights. There's some data here from Pew. That could well be true. A lot of things could happen to affect the drift of policy and culture on this issue set. But there is also the life-cycle effect, which makes it more difficult to extrapolate what exactly their opinions are in the future. People tend to become more conservative with age. As you settle down, get married, and start building a family one's outlook changes. I remember a graduate student telling me a number of years ago about how her whole perception of life changed when she had a child. Suddenly, you care more about good schools, about crime, about preserving certain standards in the local community where that was not the case before.

Whatever the future holds, in this presidential election the question is whether the Democratic or Republican side of the coin holds an electoral advantage. The story quoted above is somewhat underwhelming, as the percentages of people saying it would make them less likely are more than likely going to be voting Republican anyway. But then you get to the part about independent voters. The percentages of more likely to less likely were 28-12 in OH, 18-9 in FL, and 19-14. This is not a winning issue for the Democrats in the presidential election ahead. The debate this week comes early enough that the eventual nominee can perhaps deemphasize his or her positions by the time November '08 comes around, but as 2008 Central put it when they blogged the last Democratic debate and this issue came up, "The Republicans are taping this." For the people for whom the issue makes a difference, the other side can pound away at it through targeted messages.

There's also the question of turnout. An LA Times blogger has this story about turnout in the gay and lesbian community. Here's the crucial portion:

The study this spring by San Francisco-based Community Marketing Inc. found that an eye-popping 92.5% of gay men reported that they voted in the 2004 presidential race, and almost 84% said they cast ballots in the 2006 midterm election. Among lesbians, the results were almost as impressive; nearly 91% said they voted in 2004; for the midterm, the figure was 78%.

By comparison, the Washington-based Committee for the Study of the American Electorate put the turnout for all Americans eligible to vote at about 61% in 2004 and roughly 40% in 2006.

Taegan Goddard got this response from a political scientist:

As a political scientist, the gay turnout story infuriates me, because it ignores everything we know about how people over-report their turnout behavior. In the American National Election Study (the highest quality election survey done in America), over 70% turnout is reported. Considering that Community Marketing is a no-name polling outfit which may have low response rates (and hence nonrandom selection), and that a survey targeting gay respondents has political undertones, it is not surprising that such a high (inflated) turnout rate was gotten. The miniscule margin of error is irrelevant—the survey is subject to much greater errors beyond sampling error including social desirability bias, non-response bias, etc. Based on these concerns, I really doubt that gays turnout at a higher lever than non-gays. I think it would be good to caveat these stories in the future

Polls--how they work

A neat article from New Hampshire Pols on the polling process provides some insight on the challenges of doing polls through an interview with Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

First,

the Survey Center contracts a company to put together a list of random numbers in New Hampshire using a process called random digit dialing. According to Smith, "every household telephone number in the state has the chance of being selected."

Problems arise however because some people do not have a landline phone:

Smith said these people make up such a small part of the voting population, about 3 percent, that it has very little effect on polling outcomes. He added that this is particularly true in New Hampshire where cell phone reception is spotty to non-existent in some regions. Also, people who only use a cell phones usually are people in the demographics that vote the least, like young people and people in transit.

By federal law pollsters cannot call cellphones. This is a problem that will only get larger. Smith downplays it now, but he doesn't really have any choice but to downplay it because there are not any other options.

After weeding out disconnected and business numbers, the staff begins calling. If a person is not home, Smith said the center calls the number up to eight times trying to reach someone. If the center does identify a possible subject at the number, the staff will attempt to reach that person eight more times.

"We really work hard to get the randomly selected households," Smith said. "We don't just go for what's easy."

Because statistics show that certain segments of the population, like women and senior citizens, are more likely to answer the phone, Smith said the center asks to speak with the person with the last birthday in the household. This way, Smith said, the staff can get the most random sample possible.

After going through all this trouble to follow true random selection, you don't have to get a huge sample for the poll to be accurate:

The Survey Center usually interviews about 300 to 400 voters, depending upon how much the client is willing to spend. This takes three to five days. Smith said he's found that after 100 or so responses, the poll results don't tend to change that much.

But that's not the end.

He then weights the polling sample depending upon the demographics of those who answered. For instance, about 60 percent of Democratic primary voters are women, so the answers from women voters might get a slightly higher weight in that poll. Geographic location of the subjects' homes and past polls also factor into the weighting process.

Weighting has always troubled me. It seems to presume that our voting choices are determined by demographic characteristics. It reflects the built-in conservatism of polls, by smoothing out the result with past results. After going through so much trouble to get a random sample, the proportion of the sample is then made to be "correct" according to the census demographic account. Since it smooths out different poll results to decrease the differential between them, it makes polling look more scientific, because the only check we have on polls to see if they are correct is other polls. There is no real measurement to see if a poll is baloney or not, except election day. And only the polls taken right before election day can accurately predict that result.

This brings us to the last topic of interest in the article, how to weed out non-voters.

Some polling organizations may use all adult residents or all registered voters as a sample, but Smith said he has found using these sample groups doesn't always reflect an accurate picture of the voting population and he prefers to find the likely voters.

"We're interested in the people who are actually going to show up," he said. To that end, Smith said he has developed an effective method to determine likely voters.

By asking questions in a certain order, Smith said he can get a better picture of who is just saying they will vote and who is more likely to show.

First, the polling staff asks if the person is registered and under what party. If a person is not registered, the chances they will vote go down slightly, but because residents can register on Election Day, this answer does not exclude anyone.

Next, the subject is asked how interested he or she is in the election. If a person is not registered, but is very interested, that person is more likely to register later and ultimately vote, said Smith. If the person is not interested however, the chances that person will vote again goes down.

Finally, the polling staff asks the subject if he or she is going to vote. Smith said he's found that if you ask people initially, ‘are you going to vote?', they almost always say yes. However, if someone says he is not interested in the election and isn't registered, chances are he will admit he wasn't planning to vote either, said Smith."We want to encourage people to tell us they are not going to vote," Smith said. "[The method] gives people a context to drop out."