Florida and Michigan: The Elephant(s) in the Room

As Clinton's victories plunged the race for the Democratic nomination back into doubt yesterday, the Florida/Michigan question was brought up yet again. Ever since the two states held non-sanctioned primaries ahead of the February starting point for all states not named Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the idea of a do over contest has been floated as a possibility, albeit a far-fetched one. [FHQ should take this opportunity to remind its readers that this is an issue on the GOP side as well. Republican rules called for any state holding a contest awarding delegates before February 5 to lose half its delegation. And that includes New Hampshire, Wyoming and South Carolina. Iowa and Nevada were exempt because no delegates were at stake during the first rounds of their caucus processes.] The tension on the issue was ramped up further today as the governors from both Florida and Michigan (Republican governor Charlie Crist-FL and Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm-MI) issued a joint statement calling for their states' full slates of delegates to be seated at their respective conventions. This plea didn't fall on deaf ears at the DNC, where chairman, Howard Dean, was quick to issue a response. Essentially, his argument was that the states both held contests in violation of the national party rules and that they had until June 10 to submit and carry out a new delegate selection plan.

Round and round the merry-go-round goes. Let's break this situation down from the perspectives of each of the parties involved (The status quo takes this issue all the way to the convention and becomes another issue altogether, so our focus here will be on weighing the pros and cons of a do over caucus or primary for each group.):

1) The national parties:
(Pros)--With the hard line the DNC is taking, a revote is the best case scenario for them. Delegates are seated, voices are heard, rules are followed and you have a slate of convention delegates willing to participate in any rule making session involving the 2012 cycle. Oh and a convention fight is averted. Also, the candidates get to spend time in both states, building important organizations for the general election.
(Cons)--Does this solve the other problem facing the party--an near equal division of delegtates between the top two candidates vying for the nomination? No, probably not.

2) The state parties:
(Pros)--Delegates are seated, voices are heard.
(Cons)--$$$$. Where is the money to pay for an all new contest going to come from? The cost of the primary was a point of contention when the bill to move Michigan's primary was being debated in the state legislature there. I doubt with the economy heading south, that the legislature, the governor or their constituents will be willing to fork over the necessary cash to pull this thing off. That leaves the state party with the tab. They also have to swallow a bitter pill when having to basically cave to national party rules. [Of course they could continue the game of chicken and wait for the Rules and Bylaws committee to blink first before a floor fight breaks out at the convention. That falls in the "don't play with fire, Scarecrow" category though.] I'm not as clear on the economic situation in Florida, but the price tag for a do over would be considerable in a state of that size; big enough to scare off a GOP-controlled state legislature from acting. UPDATE: Now I have a better idea of the situation in Florida, thanks to The Caucus, via the Miami Herald. The state legislature won't be paying for a new contest there:

"Pointing to the state's grim economic outlook, state legislative leaders, all Republicans, ruled out paying for another primary. The Jan. 29 vote, which also included other statewide and local issues, cost about $18 million.

'There is no money this year,' said House Speaker Marco Rubio, the West Miami Republican who spearheaded the idea of moving up the primary date to increase the state's clout."

For the latest from Michigan, here's a story from the Detroit News (via The Caucus).

3) The candidates [This is a tough one because it differs from candidate to candidate.]:

(Pros)--For Obama, it means actually being on a ballot in Michigan. For Clinton it means getting a chance to actually beat Obama instead of the "artist formerly known as 'uncommitted'" in Michigan and to beat him again in Florida. Also, Obama likes caucuses. With Wyoming on Saturday set to be the last caucus before Puerto Rico in June, another series of caucuses would potentially be a welcome sign. For Clinton though, she'd have time to gear up for these contests in areas where she has some natural advantages (retirees in Florida and union members in Michigan).

(Cons)--For Clinton, if the contests are caucuses, it means going toe to toe with Obama in caucuses. But for Obama, it means that her campaign would have time to prepare. Also, as with the national party discussion, this doesn't necessarily solve the delegate division problem, which opens the door to the possibility of a convention battle.

What does all of this tell us then? Money and pride are standing in the way of all three parties coming together and hammering out a solution. That's not like politics at all. The state parties and Clinton know that they can take this as far as they want to knowing that the national party in no way wants this decision to go to the convention for fear of the ramifications in the general election. Of course that could cast Clinton in a selfish light; putting her personal good ahead of the good of the party. On the other hand, the national party and Obama (How's that for a team after Clinton appeared to be the establishment candidate before the contests started?) know that if Clinton prevailed in such a scenario, she could be at the head of a dysfunctional family known as the Democratic party; not an enviable position to be in for a general election. The compromise on this, if there is one, is going to prove somewhat elusive. As the Democratic party is apt to do, fairness will be included in this somehow. And that means making the sacrifices as near equal as possible for all parties concerned.

On to Wyoming! To Mississippi! To Pennsylvania!

Perhaps I should add a "WOOOOOO!!!!" at the end of the byline and finish off the "Dean scream" speech analogy. I'll pass.

Now that Texas and Ohio (Fine, Rhode Island too.) have sent the Democratic nomination race back into undecided territory, the focus shifts to the next round of states. [Didn't I lament the tendency to do this in my Nevada caucuses post-post-mortem?] Let's have a look at the particulars for Wyoming, Mississippi and Pennsylvania (A tip of the cap to thegreenpapers.com is warranted here. The information is from them.):

	Delegates	Event Type	Open/Closed?
Wyoming	18	Caucus	Closed
Mississippi	40	Primary	Open
Pennsylvania	187	Primary	Closed

Given the table, what are the first impressions of these contests? Well, as I said in the post earlier this morning, at first glance Wyoming and Mississippi appear to be in a group that can be considered Obama's bread and butter. Wyoming is a caucus and as we saw last night in Texas, Obama's power in those types of contests cannot be questioned. [Incidentally, Wyoming's is the last caucus of the 2008 cycle with the exception of Puerto Rico which brings up the rear on June 7. In other words, that well is drying up for Obama.] He has won all the caucuses but Nevada, but he got more delegates out of the Silver state than Clinton. Real Clear Politics doesn't have any polls up yet for either Wyoming or Mississippi and I wouldn't wait around on those. There are seven delegates that are directly awarded in the first step of the caucuses on Saturday, five more at the state convention in May and six superdelegates at stake in Wyoming.

Mississippi's contest is like many of the other contests across the deep South: the electorate is heavily African American tilting the state in Obama's direction. He won those states by an average of twenty-five percentage points (AL +14, GA +36, LA +22, SC +29--source: NYT Election Guide). The focus for the Obama camp will be on turning out the vote in the state's 2nd congressional district where most of the African Americans are and thus the largest piece of the delegate pie (7 delegates. The other four districts have five delegates each.). Applying the 25 point margin to Mississippi would give Obama a roughly nine delegate advantage coming out of the state which would get back a third of the net delegates he lost to Clinton during yesterday's contests (according to the AP delegate count). So while 40 delegates (minus seven superdelegates) seems like a drop in the bucket and can bolster the delegate advantage he holds currently.

The one quirk in Mississippi is that the contest is an open one. Now that the GOP race is over, could some Republicans cross over and vote for a candidate they feel would not stack up well against McCain? And could it amount to a difference in the outcome? Outcome, as in statewide percentage breakdown, slightly. Outcome in terms delegates netted, certainly. And the delegate count matters because things are so close.

But that leads to Pennsylvania. The six week charge to the Keystone state after Mississippi would be an intense one (One that party insiders may like to avoid. Could superdelegates intercede? Obama and the DNC may hope so, for different reasons.). [I find it interesting that Pennsylvania insists on being called a commonwealth, yet the commonwealth's nickname is the Keystone state.] That time span between contests becomes as important, if not more so, than the contest itself. I can't imagine a scenario where the tensions between the two campaigns doesn't turn extremely negative. It won't be a McCain-Huckabee affair. And that negativity could affect Pennsylvania in ways that no one could even begin to predict (Well, someone could try, I suppose.).

What I believe we'll begin to see though is that the candidates will begin to micro-target some of the congressional districts where the most delegates are at stake. The distribution of delegates within those nineteen districts ranges from three to nine. Over a six week stretch, you'll begin to see more attention paid to those delegate-rich districts. Another thing that has not been mentioned is that this stretch allows for a return to retail politics; negative retail politics, but retail politics nonetheless. Six weeks is a long time. And with only seven contests remaining after Pennsylvania (plus Guam and Puerto Rico), it isn't far-fetched to imagine an awful lot of focus on the commonwealth.

The rules in these three states are not unlike what we've seen in earlier primaries and caucuses, but the timing of them on the calendar leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Is Clinton Back? Delegates, delegates, delegates

And the race goes on. As James Carville said on Meet the Press on Sunday--speculating about what Clinton wins in Ohio and Texas would mean for the race--it helps her rewrite the narrative. And it does. Whether it was the ads or backlash against Obama or sympathy for Clinton doesn't matter. What last night's results mean is that the Democratic primary voters are still almost evenly divided as to who their presidential nominee should be. The Obama campaign's contention is that it still maintains a sizable lead in the delegate count and that the results from the four primaries last night do not significantly affect that lead. However, with the wins she managed yesterday, Clinton now has something to back up the argument that all Obama does is win in small and/or red states. All the while she's winning the states that are important to the Democrats in November.

The race now shifts to Wyoming this weekend and Mississippi on next Tuesday. On paper, both look like Obama territory. Wyoming is a caucus state and Mississippi has a high African American population on par with other states Obama has won (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina). But there is a catch. And for Clinton, it easily extends this race to Pennsylvania. [Well, I suppose the press is largely discounting Wyoming and Mississippi anyway; already having shifted the focus to the April 22 contest in the Keystone state.] Those are states and the fact that Obama should win them fits the newly crafted narrative of this race. He wins caucuses, small states and red states. She wins the big prizes. And that can't be welcome news for the Obama camp. If Wyoming and Mississippi are discounted, then his chances of shifting the tenor of this race [again!?!] are diminished in the process. So while Obama may have the delegate lead still, his campaign is now on the defensive.

Oh, and I suppose the supedelegates come into the picture at some point. If the contests between now and next Tuesday can't help Obama, then the report that surfaced yesterday that some number of superdelegates may break for him in the near future might. That becomes a contest of its own; one (and maybe only) that may possibly assist Obama in countering the Clinton wins from last night.

All the while, this race has devolved to certain point of negativity and is unlikely to return. And that brings us back to divisive primaries. If this Democratic race continues the slide into negativity, that affects the party's ability to heal those divisions before the convention and in the time between then and the general election. So McCain sits back and smiles, having wrapped things up officially last night. And who can blame him? The longer the Democratic race strings out, the better his chances in November seem to become.


RESULTS:

Ohio

Rhode Island

Texas

Vermont

I'll be back later with a look ahead to the rules in Wyoming, Mississippi and Pennsylvania. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of looking at polls of Wyoming Democrats.

This Used to be Super Tuesday: Results from Texas, Ohio and the Northeast

And we're off. Could the Democratic race enter the end game Barbara Norrander (2000) discussed in her JOP article? Today's primaries could prove decisive for the Democrats and should put McCain over the top for the GOP nod.

10:34pm: This is going to go on for a while. I'm off for now, but will be back in the morning with a wrap up. In the meantime, keep up to date online with the live blog over at The Caucus.

10:30pm: Things are tight in Texas. Ohio is giving Clinton a slight edge with many of the state's urban areas yet to report. And President Bush is set to meet with John McCain tomorrow and endorse him. McCain may want to avoid too many photos with the president. Of course, those may not matter in November if Clinton and Obama continue to tear each other apart.

9:55pm: As we approach the 10 o'clock hour, we can begin to reflect a bit on the night so far. McCain has wrapped things up on the Republican side. Exit polling out of Ohio (according to The Fix) is showing a very tight race there. As you begin to look at the Election Guide maps (Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, Vermont) on The New York Times site, you see a lot more purple (Clinton) than green (Obama). Of course, land doesn't vote, people do.
...unless those people are being "actively disenfranchised."

9:24pm: Huckabee concedes the GOP nomination to McCain. The last of McCain's challengers are out of the race now and he can officially shift gears toward the general election and toward unifying the Republican party behind him. Oh, I suppose he could continue to browbeat the Democrats too while he's at it.

9:23pm: The streak is over. Clinton has won in Rhode Island.

9:17pm: A conference call by the Clinton campaign to highlight the problems in Texas was overrun by an Obama lawyer who claimed they were only complaining because Clinton was losing. You can't make this stuff up. This is why I'm a political scientist. This night has shown one thing (Well, two if you count John McCain officially wrapping up the nomination.): if the Democratic race stretches beyond tonight/tomorrow, it will get ugly and potentially threaten the party's chances in November. That is on the table now.

9:06pm: McCain has been projected the winner in Texas by CNN. Oh, and they also mention that he's sealed the deal on the GOP nomination too.

9:01pm: The complaints have spread south, The Caucus is reporting:

Clinton Complaints: The Clinton campaign is holding a conference call right now to report irregularities in Texas, where they say voters are being “actively disenfranchised.”

Among the complaints, they say that at “numerous locations,” Obama supporters “have taken over the caucus and locked out Clinton supporters.”

Yeah, this race could get ugly if it stretches on past tonight.

9:00pm: Polls are closed in Rhode Island. Now the Texas caucuses are the only event in town. Everyone else is counting votes.

8:55pm: Rhode Island is up next as are the counties held open longer in Ohio and the Mountain time zone's areas of west Texas. All at the top of the hour.

8:40pm: Politico is the source for some juicy speculation. First they broke the story that Clinton may go after Obama's pledged delegates and now they report that Obama has silently lined up a slate of superdelegates who are set to announce their support in the near future. This slate may prove moot if Obama wraps things up tonight. That story remains to be told.

8:38pm: Polls have been held open longer in the Cleveland area to accommodate for the high turnout there today.
---from Politico.com via the Obama campaign

8:32pm: I missed it earlier, but the caucuses got under way in Texas at 8:15pm. Party business first or presidential preference? What will they do? Here's hoping for the latter. Otherwise, it could be a long night.

8:23pm: Ohio, we have a problem. Well, this is hardly scientific, but the counties are being shaded in on the Democratic map of Texas on the New York Times Election Guide. Ohio remains completely colorless. The Caucus via the AP is reporting that the Secretary of State in Ohio has asked for court permission to keep polling locations in Sandusky County, Ohio open until 9pm (see their 7:54 post)..

8:13pm: Ooh, The New York Times has moved the pretty maps from the state by state Election Guides up to the front page for tonight's contest.

8:06pm: Here come the lawyers. Both Democratic campaigns are complaining about voting problems in Ohio. See, I told you Ohio couldn't buy a break. If you recall the divisive primaries post from last week, you may want to mark tonight down as the official point at which competition changed to divisiveness. It has been brewing since the debates, but may boil over after tonight if the outcome is still undecided.

8:00pm: Polls are close in Texas (Well, the polls in the eastern time zone at least.).

7:44pm: I should note that McCain also won in Vermont (see story below on the Obama projection there). Vermont is a solid winner-take-all, so McCain takes all 17 of those delegates, inching closer to that 1191 mark he needs.

7:33pm: McCain is the projected winner of Ohio. With the system there winner-take-all both in congressional districts and statewide, his share of the 88 delegates at stake in the state should get him about half way to the 177 he needs to break the 1191 barrier and win the nomination.

7:30pm: Polls are closed in Ohio.

7:21pm: Ohio closes up shop here in just under ten minutes. I doubt we see such a rapid projection of the winner in the Buckeye state. Flooding caused some polling places to be moved to accommodate voters in the southern part of the state. Ohio just can't seem to buy a break during election time. Officials there certainly hope this isn't foreshadowing of things to come in November. Of course, that is the story USA Today ran last week: stating that higher turnout like the 2008 primaries, could mean problems once the general election rolls around.

7:00pm: Polls are closed in Vermont. Best to just get another win out of the way. Before you could blink, Vermont went, as expected to Obama. The Drudge Report is indicating that the exit polls in the other three states are deadlocked. That's to be expected to some extent, but if your the Clinton camp, you have got to be hoping that what once seemed like a done deal in Rhode Island doesn't end up being the last nail in the coffin tonight when polls close there at 9pm. Change is apparently the winning theme in the exit polls as well, pushing experience on the back burner. Again, the Clinton team better hope that they have been able to co-opt some of that change message that Obama has used effectively to this point.

Primary Day: The Texas-Ohio Edition [Vermont and Rhode Island too]

Welcome to this, the 14th round of Primary Season 2008. With a week off, the contests in Texas and Ohio have received a ton of scrutiny from all angles. So much so, that there has been a kind of calm before the storm (Well, not between the top two Democratic contenders.) as today's contests approached. The media have said what they're going to say about the rules in Texas and changes in voting method in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. With so much time (and so much is a relative term here) the void has been filled by Clinton attacks on Obama. That has been the new story/news story. And the momentum seems to be with Clinton on this; her campaign has planted the seeds of doubt on Obama. Oh sure, the source there is her campaign, but the polls that have come out in Texas and Ohio the last few days back that up.

The Real Clear Politics poll averages in those states showed movement toward Obama late last week in both states. In Texas, those averages gave Obama a slight advantage (within the margin of error) after having been down double digits just two weeks prior. Now, while the Texas race is still a dead heat, the recent polls are giving Clinton that slight edge there (still within the margin of error and still susceptible to Obama's caucus success during the state's delegate selection night cap). In Ohio, Clinton's double digit leads shrunk to as few as four percentage points late last week. With the exception of the most recent Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll (showing a tie), the most recent polls in the Buckeye state stretch the Clinton advantage back to around seven percentage points. So while claims that the infamous "3AM ad" (and that link has a further link to the 1984 phone ad that Mondale ran against Gary Hart as well) is the reason for the momentum shift may be spurious, on its face at least (and in the media) it appears to have had an effect.

Is all the momentum talk moot anyway? That's the contention of the Obama camp; which is claiming that narrow victories by Clinton in these states doesn't get her any closer in the pledged delegate count. The expectations game has been played by both sides on this one and how these contests and their results are perceived will depend to a large degree on how the media reports things tonight.

For those following at home the night will progress like this: Vermont's polls close first at 7pm (all of these times are Eastern). Even given the scant polling that is available from Vermont, it looks as if Obama will kick the night off with an easy win. Ohio strikes next with voting being cut off there at 7:30pm. Call it a hunch, but I doubt this one gets an immediate call/projection from any of the networks. What you might hear is, "too close to call." The polls in Texas close next at 8pm and will most likely resemble the Ohio situation from a half hour earlier. An hour later, voting in Rhode Island stops. Now this one looks like a Clinton win, but what Rhode Island does is keep the media paying attention to results. All the while, the Texas caucuses will have been going on. And Texas Democrats have adopted a system similar to the one used in Iowa to get "unofficial" results from the caucuses out in a quicker fashion. Whether those "results" come out before or after Rhode Island or in relation to the Texas/Ohio projections is a matter that will be solved tonight. Either way you look at it, with these contests potentially proving decisive on the Democratic side, it will be a fun night to follow.

[UPDATE: For those of you like me out there--without suitable cable access--ABCNews.com is streaming coverage of the returns tonight online. None of the three major networks is allotting any time to coverage of the presidential races tonight, yield to regularly schedule programming. ABC is awfully nice to give the online-only class a shot at actually seeing something on a primary night not named Super Tuesday.]

Texas Revisited

I was just alerted to a new layer in the Texas primary/caucus situation (Thanks to Dan Reed for the heads up on the column in the Houston Chronicle.) that may have some interesting ramifications for the Democratic race in the Lone Star state tomorrow and beyond. Sure the news out of Texas and the Clinton campaign has been that a challenge to the results of the primary/caucus could be imminent if they didn't appear be on the up and up (A Clinton win in the popular vote but an Obama edge in delegates won, for example).

Normally, I'd draw parallels between the Texas situation and the challenges brought by the Clinton camp over the casino caucuses in the lead up to the January Nevada caucuses. Texas, though, is different. [I know, a groundbreaking statement there.] Texas, like so many other states across the South and a few other districts across the country, must submit to a preclearance from the Justice Department under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Now, I'm assuming that the state Senate districts that have been the basis for dividing up the delegates available from the state, have been cleared by the Justice Department. While there may not have been close elections in presidential primaries, there undoubtedly have been close contests those state Senate seats and thus the potential for a challenge to the way those districts have been drawn. [No, competitive elections are not necessarily the root of these challenges, but they could trigger one--at least from the candidates' perspective.]

The primary then is not the problem. The caucus is. And that is where the questions arise here. Is the Texas caucus subject to these voting rights act challenges? Some party (individual/group not political party) could bring suit but it would be against the Texas Democratic party and and not the state itself. And that is where the Texas situation falls back into the same area that the Nevada challenge fell. Caucuses are party functions used to decide delegate allocation for the purposes of selecting the parties' nominees. The courts have a history of yielding to the parties (as they did in Nevada earlier this cycle) on these types 0f decisions, citing that the decision is one of party business. A Clinton challenge, if it comes to that, would have to result from an irregularity in the primary results and not the caucus.

From the looks of it DOJ will be in the Houston area monitoring polling places during the primary tomorrow. Sadly for Clinton though, those areas contain many of the African Americans that will be supporting Obama and thus not fertile ground for a challenge.

Divisive Primaries: 2008 vs. The Past

Last night's divisive primaries post and subsequent comments on The Monkey Cage (TMC) got me thinking about divisive primaries a bit more. And I'm wondering if what we call divisive primaries within political science is a blanket term that we use to describe several different but interconnected concepts. There are several layers to this:

Could it be that it is not the divisive primaries at all but the ability/inability to overcome them in a reasonable amount of time that has an effect on general election vote shares? Well, what does "reasonable amount of time" mean? It's a moving target. In 1980, that meant before the convention was over. Reagan and Bush joined forces on one side after a competitive primary fight, while Carter and Kennedy hardly came across as buddies at the Democratic convention. The result: the GOP ticket moved into general election mode while the Democrats continued to put the pieces together internally. [Paul Gurian gets a tip of the cap for placing this notion in my head. He may even be able to bolster the anecdote a bit if he reads this. He's also done some work in this area.] In other words, divisiveness on the Democratic side gave the Republican party a head start. In 2008, the worry for the Democrats is that the Obama/Clinton battle will cause a real rift in the party that won't be able to be healed enough before the election. Which brings us to...

Time, time, time.
The timing is a lot different now than it was thirty years ago. The prolonged primary seasons of the past gave way, for all intents and purposes, to the Super Tuesday model of presidential nomination by 1988 for the Republicans and 1992 for the Democrats. The time between Iowa and Super Tuesday shrunk during that interim, preventing insurgencies from being mounted effectively. If a challenge cannot gain steam then the likelihood of a divisive series of primaries developing decreases. [What's this, a benefit of frontloading? The drawback, of course, is that voters do not have the opportunity to fully vet the frontrunner/nominee, leaving them to suffer from what has been dubbed "buyer's remorse."]

But there's a tipping point here that fits in with this timing issue. At what point does competitiveness morph into divisiveness? This where the 2008 example could (when the history book is written on it) prove illustrative. Jacob Sohlberg, in the comments section over at TMC, alludes to this:

"The fighting candidates and their party get most of the media attention while the real competitor (say McCain) gets little. This is under the (strong) assumption that all news are good news."

And that's the thing: as long as the news is good. At what point does the positive competitiveness of the race for delegates turn into the negative, party-splitting divisiveness? Should Clinton do well in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday, then 2008 may have reached that point for the Democrats. But in the Super Tuesday era (1988/1992-2004), no challenger has been afforded such an opportunity. That era was marked by frontrunners who were able to snuff out insurgencies before competitiveness turned to divisiveness. [And just for the record, this is not an obituary for the Super Tuesday era, as I call it. 2008 may prove to be an anomaly and not a system changing election. Let's revisit this in four years and see.] Mondale quelled Gary Hart before a movement started (No, this isn't within the era I defined above but it is a good example.). George W. Bush kept McCain at bay. And Kerry silenced John Edwards. Competitiveness yielded to reality in all three cases before divisiveness took hold or could attempt to take hold.

What we see then is that the ability to stop competitiveness (My, doesn't that sound democratic. This is, of course, from the frontrunner's and national party's perspectives.) in its tracks is important. The GOP's unwritten strategy of going with an "heir apparent" as its nominee makes sense in this context. It helps avoid divisiveness. The onus is then on the Democratic party to steer clear of protracted nomination battles in their overall more competitive nomination process. Should competitiveness turn to divisiveness, then healing the divisions in a timely fashion (at least in relation to the opposing party) becomes the next obstacle.

The Governors on 2008 Frontloading

I originally had this in with the morning post, but it grew into a post of its own.

With the nation's governors in Washington this week for the National Governors Association meeting, Stateline.org got the some state executives to comment on the effects of moving their states delegate selection events (I know, it is weird for this blog to actually shift back to its stated purpose of covering frontloading, but still.). Most governors from states that moved forward seemed to be pleased with the results of moving. Tennessee governor, Phil Bredesen was the lone exception (at least among those cited in the article). He complained that Tennessee got lost in the shuffle on Super Tuesday. Of course he and the state legislature could have left well enough alone. In the lead up to 2004 the state moved to the second Tuesday in February. That would have been February 12 for the 2008 cycle; a far less crowded primary day with only the three Potomac contests being waged that day.

On the other hand, governors in later states came across as bitter, wanting to scrap the whole system of presidential selection. Why blame the system for the inner-workings of the states standing the way of that primary movement? Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania fell into that category, but the Keystone state is one that has had a legislature divided, with one party controlling one chamber and the other party the other chamber, for years now. Mississippi governor, Haley Barbour, also favored looking at alternative methods of presidential nominee selection. Of course the Magnolia state has been mired in a court dispute over the requiring of photo IDs at polling places that has been split along party lines. Waiting on that decision and whether it would be applied to the presidential primary next month affected the state's ability to move its primary.

It is funny to me that caucus state governors are touting their state's moves so gleefully. First of all, caucuses are traditionally (outside of Iowa) the redheaded stepchildren of the delegate selection process. With Obama's success (And Romney's too. No one is really taking about that. He did do well in caucuses.) in caucuses, that form of delegate selection has gotten a lot more coverage during this cycle. However, caucuses are easier to move than primaries (...the majority primaries that are controlled by state legislatures at least. Even party-run primary strongholds like Utah and South Carolina have opened the door to the state funding of those contests during this cycle.).

Caucuses typically fall under the control of the individual state parties and those entities can hold their delegate selection events any time they want to within the rules of the national parties. That effectively removes the fetters of partisanship from the equation. From time to time there will be division within the state party on a primary/caucus move, but not often (The Michigan example from this cycle comes to mind.). It is all about getting those benefits of being early and a state party can pull that off much more easily than a state legislature can, especially if said legislature is divided in some way between parties (And keep in mind that we haven't introduced the complexity of a governor affecting this decision also.).

I'll have more on this in the coming weeks and months as my dissertation on the subject progresses. With the Western Political Science Association's annual meeting looming, my paper on who is making these frontloading decisions will definitely work its way into the discussions here (See, it already has.) among other things.

Early Voting Analysis from Texas and the Events of February 27

With a couple of weeks between contests, the next round of primaries and caucuses are receiving the kind of scrutiny not seen since the pre-Iowa days (Remember those days...when we were still singing Christmas carols? This campaign has already been long and we aren't even out of February yet.). The rules in Texas and the playing field in Ohio have been examined within this space over the last several weeks. However, the broader political science community is starting to weigh in with some actual data from Texas. Now, while NPR will simply state, as they did this morning, that early voting had commenced in both the prized states of March 4, some have gone beyond that to look into what the early information (from the fifteen largest counties) released by the Texas secretary of state's office actually mean.

The folks at both Election Updates and The Monkey Cage have some interesting analysis and commentary on what is coming out of Texas. Former UT graduate student and current John Jay College professor, Brian Arbor has found that early voting turnout is up versus four years ago, and that the increase is in areas that have demographic characteristics similar to voters that have gone with Obama in other states. There are caveats to these findings, to be sure, but some of this information is backed up by Paul Gronke over at Election Updates, who has done a lot of research on the impact of early voting. He cites the Wall Street Journal article that discusses Hidalgo County having the highest proportion of early voting. However, it is also one of the counties in a state senate district that has the fewest delegates at stake; just two. So while Hidalgo is full of the Hispanic voters that Clinton has targeted and proportionally is voting early, it may not in the end help Clinton all that much.

Both points give Obama an edge and must be ominous signs to the Clinton camp in Texas.

In other news, NPR has been discussing the presidential race with noted conservatives this week. Grover Norquist's interview came up in the comments yesterday. This series of interviews has been fertile ground for one-liners. Norquist maintained that McCain played dead last summer (through no fault of his own) and ultimately benefited from the scrutiny his opponents underwent. Today, the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy chief, Richard Land, had a great comment about the Democratic race. He said that Clinton was "on a job interview" while Obama was "on a date." And that really is an interesting way to frame and a testament to the Obama momentum/movement within the Democratic party (and outside of it with independents).

John Lewis made it official yesterday: he's switching over to Obama in a nod to the voices of the constituents within his Georgia congressional district. Now I'll have to see if that change has been reflected in the running tally at Superdelegates.org and on their GEarth layer. This story has already played its way out because of the New York Times story recently, but it still isn't a welcome sign with the Clinton campaign.

Finally, New York mayor (I bet you think I'm going to say Rudy Giuliani. Nope, but I have written that phrase a lot during this cycle, though a lot less lately.), Michael Bloomberg, ended the speculation that he would enter the presidential race as an independent today. And that officially brings to a close the discussions of an all New York race. Yes, it was as recently as late last summer that that was a talking point within the live discussion group here at UGA. And at the time it seemed conceivable that it could happen with Clinton the frontrunner on the Democratic side and Guiliani leading in the polls amongst the Republican candidates. C'est la vie, all New York presidential race.

It's Official: Debates are No Substitute for Actual Contests

The consensus emerging today (and even last night as I came to the realization when MSNBC's online feed of the debate forced me to call it a night earlier than I had expected) is that last night's debate did little to change the course of the race for the Democratic nomination. Clinton did what folks who are not the frontrunner do: she attacked. Obama, on the other hand, filled the frontrunner role and played it safe, hovering above the attacks being levied against him. The movement toward Obama in the polls (via Real Clear Politics) in both Ohio and Texas back up that role assignment. In Texas the polls show a tie, if not a small Obama lead. Ohio's numbers show that what was once a double digit lead is now down to about six points. If that continues, then Tuesday night could provide some drama, especially after last night proved that a debate can only somewhat fill the void left by the absence of real contests. If only New Jersey has not switched primary dates a second time.

I'll keep it light for the rest of the post. There are some interesting links that have popped up recently that may be of some interest to the group.

1) If you have Google Earth installed on your PC, Mac or Linux box (Hey, the 1% of the population that uses Linux counts too!), be sure to check out the superdelegates layer that has been developed. Yes, the same thing is available on Google Maps, but you can't beat the animation that comes with Google Earth. Most of this can be linked to through Superdelegates.org (The .kml file that is necessary to run the script in GEarth there if you click on, "view the info on Google Maps and Google Earth" here or on that page.). The Monkey Cage (moderated by several of the faculty at George Washington University) has a link to the GMaps version.

2) It is a good day for The Monkey Cage here at FHQ. They also have a post linking to Thomas Holbrook's (of Do Campaigns Matter? fame) new Election08Data blog. There's some good stuff there already.

3) And while we're at it, and since they linked to my post on the Texas primary/caucus last week, here's the link to Election Updates, which lists Michael Alvarez, Paul Gronke, Thad Hall, Robert Krimmer and Melissa Slemin as contributors.