Reader Feedback Wanted: New Electoral College Maps?

I've been tinkering around this week with a new map making utility based on the Google Chart API in R (via the Social Science Statistics Blog) and was thinking of switching out the new maps for the old ones.

The advantages? More color options. Red, orange and brown just don't cut for the Republican leaning states. Sure that color combination was unique, but it wasn't entirely intuitive in the way that dark red, primary red and pink are. Someone can look at that and see strong McCain states, leaning McCain states and toss ups trending toward the Arizona senator without having to scour a the map for a key.

The other advantage is that the "Where Democrat X Does Best" maps can be condensed into one map. With more than six colors at my disposal (the price for using a free, online map utility), it is much easier to show where Clinton and Obama are doing better than the other and by how much.

The disadvantages? Well, they are the same here as they are with any electoral college map. The result is typically a lot of red. Every map looks like a Republican landslide. But as I told my son today, "People vote. Land doesn't. Do you recall any dirt walking into the fire station to vote when we were there in February?"

"No."

"That's because land area doesn't vote."

Seriously though, you have a decision to make in this endeavor: use a regular map and have a lot of red (distorting the perception of who has the most electoral votes) or use a cartogram that distorts the map beyond recognition (but makes California look bigger than Wyoming to reflect which state has the most electoral college votes). The answer is that you maintain the state shape but expand or contract it in relation to the number of electoral votes. That's something Paul Gurian has been doing for years, but we haven't gotten that up and ready for primetime exposure in this forum yet. By the time of the general election hopefully we will.

Here, though, is what I've got now and would appreciate any feedback on. These are the maps with data updated through today sans analysis (There have been a ton of new polls this week so I'll let the weekly cycle complete itself before I fully comment on it).

The Clinton Map
Clinton: McCain:
272 266


The Obama Map
Obama: McCain:
274 264


McCain Margin
Clinton states (green): 13 Obama states (blue): 37
*The darker a state is the more it favors one candidate over the other.

The comments section awaits.

[Thanks to Robi Ragan for the link to the Soc. Sci. Stat. blog post.]

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Alaska + Wyoming = Obama + 1 Delegate

A week after Clinton emerged from the Colorado state convention with one extra delegate (compared to her estimated share in the precinct level vote), Obama returned the favor by duplicating his Nevada gain at Alaska's state convention last night. During the February 5 caucuses in the Last Frontier, Obama just missed out on gaining 10 delegates to Clintons 3. The estimated spread then was 9-4. The Obama campaign got just enough more support in the state convention to push that edge to 10-3. Factoring in the superdelegates (plus former governor, Tony Knowles as an add-on superdelegate supporting Obama), Obama will carry a 14-4 advantage over Clinton within the Alaskan delegation to the national convention.

The original precinct vote numbers didn't allow either candidate much room to maneuver in Wyoming. The predicted 7-5 split favoring Obama was what came out of the Democrats' convention in the Equality state last night. According to The Green Papers, 4 of the 5 Wyoming superdelegates have endorsed Obama, while the fifth remains undecided. There was no word on who the add-on superdelegate, determined at the convention yesterday, was backing between Clinton and Obama. UPDATE: The AP says that the Wyoming add-on did back Obama and so too did the one chosen at the Georgia state convention. In all, Obama picked up 4 delegates yesterday: one extra pledged delegate out of Alaska, add-ons in Alaska, Georgia and Wyoming.

So, Obama gained one delegate this weekend. That isn't a resounding finding in favor of the caucus question. However, the winner from the original step gained through the process in Alaska (albeit slightly) and that falls in line with what we witnessed in Nevada. The lack of shift in Wyoming is similar to what came out of North Dakota's convention at the end of March. Finally, Colorado has been the only caucus state to break with expectations, handing Clinton more support in the final step than in the original one. And the Kansas Democratic Party has yet to confirm the final numbers that I've seen floating around.

Up next? Well, Puerto Rico has its primary next Sunday, but Maine holds its state convention and has 24 of the state's 32 delegates at stake. FHQ will be back with more on that one later in the week.


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Alaska and Wyoming: State Convention Day (18 Delegates at Stake)

The weekend isn't just slow for political news. There isn't much going on by way of delegate selection either. Two of the least Democratic states have state conventions scheduled for today and offer both Clinton and Obama one last opportunity to shift the pledged delegate numbers in Alaska and Wyoming before the convention.

In Alaska, all 13 of the state's pledged delegates are on the line. If the convention voting follows the precinct/county level vote, then Obama will walk away with an estimated 9-4 advantage from The Last Frontier. That count is slightly more advantageous to Clinton since she was outpaced in the state's February 5 meetings by a 3:1 margin. Obama may be able to squeeze one more delegate out for a seven delegate advantage. That is Obama's best case scenario, whereas the 9-4 count is Clinton's best but Obama's worst case scenario. According to the party's agenda, that process should be completed by 10pm eastern. Also, as this is the state convention, one add-on superdelegate will be selected. As we saw with Kansas (another caucus state that leaned heavily toward Obama) last weekend, that person is likely to be (but not assured of being) an Obama supporter.

Further south and east of Alaska, Democrats in the Equality state are also meeting to put the finishing touches on their slate of pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer in Denver. Wyoming Democrats selected 7 of the state's delegates at the precinct meetings on March 8. Clinton was able to keep Obama from getting over 64% of the vote that would have given him a 5-2 edge among those 7 delegates. So, even though Obama received over 61% of the vote in the Wyoming caucuses, he only got just more than 57% of the delegates. For the Illinois senator to get anything more than a 3-2 split among the remaining 5 (state convention) delegates he'll need to get 70% of the vote. The most likely result, then, is that 3-2 split which will produce a final tally 7 Obama delegates and 5 Clinton delegates from the state. As with Alaska, Wyoming also has one add-on superdelegate to be allocated at the state's convention. And given the vote spread, that add-on is most likely to be an Obama backer. The delegate portion of the convention should be completed by around 8pm eastern tonight.

At the end of the day, Obama may be able to add one more delegate than has been estimated from these two state combined. That would fall in line with the results in Nevada (which was supportive of the caucus question hypothesis: A winner in the original step of the caucus or the presumptive nominee stands to gain as the process continues.

Hopefully the results are a bit quicker to emerge from these two states than they were from Kansas or Washington last weekend.


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Colorado Final Tally: Clinton Gains 1 Delegate

From the precinct level to the state convention, Hillary Clinton (ever so) slightly improved her standing in the Centennial state. The initial vote percentages (67%-32 in favor of Obama with 1% opting for "uncommitted") would have yielded a 37-18 delegate edge in a purely proportional system. With the process being filtered through both congressional district caucuses and Colorado Democrats' state convention last weekend, there were opportunities for each candidate to tweak those numbers. Granted, the movement that was witnessed from early February to last weekend could be due simply to the rounding of delegates during each step of the process. As I mentioned in the congressional district caucus post earlier in the week, there had been reports of the Clinton camp making efforts in the state following the initial defeat there. But as the good folks at Enik Rising point out, it all seems too little, too late for Clinton, especially when the alternate delegates are included in the equation (all are Obama supporters).

In the end, Colorado will send 36 Obama delegates and 19 Clinton delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver. And while this is a "victory" for Clinton in the delegate count, it is certainly outweighed by the much more skewed numbers (favoring Obama) coming out of Nevada last weekend as well. Skewed as Nevada may have been (in the translation from vote totals to actual delegates), the gain Obama got from the beginning of the process in the Silver state to the state convention was the same 1 delegate that Clinton got in Colorado. The result? A wash.

Of course, we're still awaiting word out of Kansas and Washington from last weekend. One blogger posted the results of the 8th district meeting in Washington and another has revealed the breakdown in the 3rd and an Obama slate of delegates to the convention from an Obama site (unconfirmed by the Washington state Democratic Party). By my count, that's 34 Obama delegates and 9 Obama alternates. That 34 is roughly equivalent to the percentage of the vote Obama received in the the state's February 9 caucus. That's 2/3rds of the delegates that were on the line in last weekend's congressional district caucuses. Obama got nearly 68% of the vote in the precinct level meetings.


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Clinton in 2012: The Caucus Quandary

Let's assume for a moment that Obama wins the Democratic nomination, but goes on to lose to John McCain in the general election. Let us also assume that Hillary Clinton is true to her word and campaigns vigorously and wholeheartedly for Obama ahead of said general election. Finally, let's assume that the rules governing the selection of national convention delegates is not altered in any significant way. Iowa and New Hampshire still get to go first, and the rest of the states inch ever closer to a national primary.

Would the Democratic Party automatically unite behind Clinton on November 5 following an Obama loss the day before (...or for that matter between then and the beginning of the 2012 cycle)? Whether the party does or doesn't is inconsequential because a challenger (or challengers) would emerge regardless. With Iowa set to lead off the process again (given no change in the rules), would Clinton have a problem in 2012? There has been an awful lot of talk about the caucus process during 2008. But because Clinton's performance was less than stellar in caucus states and because she and her surrogates have questioned the level of democracy inherent in them, would she have a problem in the first and most visible caucus? The Hawkeye takes pride in being the first caucus in the nation; a distinction that allows them to go before New Hampshire each cycle.

I don't doubt that Clinton would be more organized in caucus states if she were to run in 2012, but could her stance on caucuses in 2008 give an opponent, say (Sen.?) Mark Warner, an opening in Iowa? As Barack Obama proved, getting off to a good start and proving the viability of your candidacy can be hugely important. Yes, Warner's record and experience speak for themselves and he would potentially be an attractive candidate anyway, but could he (or any challenger) effectively use Clinton's late 2008 caucus position against her? If the economy has rebounded and the Iraq situation has calmed somewhat, then perhaps. But if that is the case, McCain would have a strong case to take to the American electorate and any Democrat (Clinton included) would find it difficult to topple him. If those issues are still the issues of 2012 and if the major Democratic candidates have largely similar methods of dealing with them (sound familiar?), then the caucus quandary could rear its head in Iowa.

The big issue for challengers to overcome would be the idea that 2012 is Clinton's turn. Undoubtedly, that would be a tough mountain to climb. But it looked like a tough mountain to climb in 2008 as well. And then Iowa launched Obama's candidacy. Barring any changes to the rules, though, Iowa will still have the first caucus in 2012.


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Rules Matter...but Luck Does Too

The Providence Journal's, Froma Harrop, ran a column of Clinton talking points this morning. In all the talk (both from her and separately from the Clinton campaign) of all the different metrics of nomination success, Florida and Michigan voter disenfranchisement and the undemocratic nature of caucuses, one thing continues to be underdiscussed in this Democratic nomination battle.

The bottom line is that RULES MATTER. We see the effects of those rules in a close race, but also see how adaptable each candidate's campaign is to those rules. Obama's campaign was better at foreseeing how the race would progress. PERIOD. Was that by design? Yes, but to a large degree there is some luck involved there. He had to have all the chips fall in just the right place for that plan to work. So while there may have been discussions within an Obama campaign still in its infancy then about a caucus strategy as early as last summer, they still needed Iowa or New Hampshire or Nevada or South Carolina to help even get his campaign to that point (the caucus phase between Super Tuesday and Wyoming a month later on March 8). Those Obama successes in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina were anything but given even at the outset of the 2008 calendar year.

Foresight and luck are the marks of a long shot winning the nomination. Arguably Obama is not, in 2008, the long shot that Jimmy Carter was in 1976. Both, however, were effective at navigating through the rules of the game. And things worked out the way both campaigns expected; both by design and through some luck. Carter needed early success in Iowa and New Hampshire to set him up for an elimination contest against George Wallace in Florida. He needed that elimination to claim the mantle as the southern (albeit more moderate) candidate in the race for the Democratic nomination.

In 2008, Obama needed a win, any win, among the early states to be seen as viable in the overall contest and heading into Super Tuesday on February 5. That he got a win in mostly white Iowa was certainly better than having broken through in South Carolina, where African Americans made up over half of the primary electorate. But his win in Iowa signaled to African Americans that he was viable to an audience broader than simply African Americans. Without that signal, the race may not have played out the way it did in South Carolina. The polls in the state prior to Obama's Iowa win showed a tight race between Clinton and Obama. And even then the endorsement of the influential, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), was still sought after by Clinton, Edwards and Obama to put any one of them over the top. But it was just before It wasn't until after South Carolina that the strained relations between the Clintons and the black community began to appear. Obama's campaign emerged from both state victorious and proved their knowledge of the rules by gaining one more delegate than Clinton in Nevada, despite losing the popular vote (That knowledge of the rules extended to subsequent steps in the Nevada process as well.). Obama's path, then, was not necessarily a clear one.

On the other hand, at the outset of the contests, Clinton's path to the nomination was the clearer one. But luck runs both ways and Clinton had some bad luck. Her campaign leaned way too heavily on the approaches to the presidential primary process of the past. But we all did. Why wouldn't both parties' nominations be settled by Super Tuesday? That's the way it had been in most nomination contests since 1988. [Of course, the Clinton campaign didn't fall back on those approaches enough to take her name off the ballot in Michigan for that state's non-sanctioned primary. That decision was curious at the time given her status as front-runner.] The Super Tuesday or bust strategy was fine, in and of itself, but they never had a Plan B in place if the states that held contests on February 5 didn't hand her enough delegates for the nomination. And they certainly didn't foresee Obama building a firewall in caucus states.

The message, as always, is that rules matter. And if your knowledge of them is anything less than full, then you are vulnerable to defeat. The discussion, then, is not one of whether caucuses are democratic, or popular votes should be the metric by which a nominee is determined, or of Florida or Michigan. That's a discussion that can be had by both parties when and if they seek to reform the process between now and 2012. The discussion is about a campaign that thought primary season would go one way and later discovered (the hard way) that they had guessed wrong.



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The Electoral College Maps (5/21/08)

In last week's glance at the electoral college, I argued that once there was more polling data, it would be easier to see whether Obama's post-North Carolina/Indiana inevitability (at least as it was designated by the pundits) had any effect on the electoral college projections. After all, if Obama was inevitable, the expectation would be to see his numbers rise while Clinton's numbers dropped. At the national level, that is exactly what the polls are indicating; Obama's lead over Clinton has risen to nine points.

On the state level? Well, the gains haven't been as noticeable there. There were 16 new polls this week in 13 states, and the net effect across both sets of hypothetical races was that Washington flipped from a McCain toss up to a Clinton toss up, handing the New York senator a six electoral vote advantage in the electoral college. However, the one caveat to the polling for the week was that Clinton has begun to be dropped from consideration by the polling firms. In three polls (Georgia, New Mexico and Pennsylvania), the Obama/McCain question was asked but the Clinton/McCain question was not. This isn't widespread yet, so the effect of a lack of data in her weighted average against McCain is minimal. When and if this trend increases as primary season wanes, we may begin to see a more static Clinton/McCain map and a more volatile Obama/McCain map (at least in relation to the Clinton map).

Though the outcome of the electoral college shifted very little this week, there were some notable changes. To the maps!
This week, having Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania on her side pays off for Clinton. Of course, it took adding Washington's 11 electoral votes to her total to push her over the top. As I mentioned, though, that's all it took to hand her an advantage over McCain, however slight. Again, this looks a lot like the Kerry and Gore maps from the past two cycles. Clinton picks up Florida and Ohio, but loses out in states like Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin and Oregon. McCain actually holds a forty electoral vote advantage (212-172) among states that are either strongly in favor of or leaning toward one candidate or the other. However, Clinton makes up a lot of ground in the swing states, picking up 100 of the 154 toss up electoral votes (states in purple and brown).

Does Clinton increase the number of states where she has a better McCain margin than Obama, though?
The only change there is that she adds New York. The amount of difference between Obama and the former First Lady there are minimal, though, as either Democrat is expected to win the Empire state in November. Clinton continues to hold an edge in McCain margin over Obama in the traditional, big swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The differences in those states are relatively small though (less than 5% in Pennsylvania and less than 10% in Florida and Ohio). Both Clinton and Obama win in Pennsylvania, but Obama comes out on the wrong end in Florida (McCain lean) and Ohio (Toss Up favoring McCain).
The McCain/Obama map is largely the same this week. The electoral college outcome is the exact same. McCain edges out Obama by the same two electoral college votes (270-268) that he did a week ago. In the states where they are either strongly ahead or hold a small but significant lead, McCain leads 213-207. Notably, the number of toss up electoral votes continues to drop in the McCain/Obama match up. McCain became more comfortable in Nebraska this week with that state moving from toss up to McCain lean. Among the remaining toss up states, Obama took 61 electoral votes to McCain's 57. The McCain/Obama race is close no matter how you cut it. They split fairly evenly the number of strong and leaning states and also evenly split the toss up states. The interesting thing is that the McCain/Clinton pairing now has more toss ups than the McCain/Obama race; a decided shift from earlier iterations of these maps.
While the number of toss up states has dwindled for Obama, he still maintains a higher McCain margin than Clinton in 35 states. However, the map is becoming more and more yellow. And a yellower map means that no matter who the Democrat is that faces McCain in November, the results are largely similar. It just happens that Obama hold the (slight) advantage in most of those states. The result is that these maps show that who faces McCain in November makes no significant difference at this point. The electoral college is close no matter who is paired with McCain and the margins in the swing states continue to converge. Clinton, however, has lately continued to contend that she would be the better general election candidate. That is not borne out here. She is doing better than she was, but she and Obama are in the same position relative to McCain.

The pundits calling the race for Obama after Indiana and North Carolina not only hasn't had an effect in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, but it hasn't driven any movement toward Obama on the state level like it has on the national level. At this point, it is not likely that any real change will occur in these head-to-head match ups until primary season is complete. Of course, that's only two weeks away. On to Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota.

***Please see the side bar for links to past electoral college comparisons.***


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Colorado Congressional District Caucuses Final Tally: 67% of the Vote, 64% of the Delegates

In Nevada there was a pronounced difference between the percentage of the vote both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama got in the first round of caucuses in the Silver state and the percentage of delegates each eventually got. And while there isn't a full picture of how things shook out in Colorado over the weekend, we now know the delegate breakdown from each of the state's congressional district caucuses. Of the 36 delegates allocated based on congressional district caucuses, Clinton improved slightly upon her initial numbers in the precinct-level meetings; inching up from around 33% of the vote there to about 36% of the delegates from the state's 7 congressional districts. This means that this increase is either a function of the math of the process (ie: dividing the delegates into each of the districts and then the potential for rounding up to the nearest delegate within each) or the reports that the Colorado Clinton supporters were out in full force in Colorado Springs this past weekend have some merit.

In any event, Clinton's gains, however slight, go against the prevailing hypothesis that emerged in the recent post concerning how Obama's "inevitability" following North Carolina and Indiana would affect him in the continuing caucus process. Again, we don't have the full picture of the Colorado delegate situation because the 19 state convention delegates have yet to be reported by the Colorado Democratic Party. It does, however, show that unlike Nevada, Clinton made gains in the arena where Obama had done best during this primary season: caucuses. Will that help her make a better case to superdelegates? Probably not. Not with a 10 delegate deficit (13-23) among just these 36 delegates.

I'll be back with more when the state convention numbers are posted.

Still no word out of Kansas either.



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And Off Again: Kansas Presidential Primary Bill Vetoed

Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius today vetoed a bill that would have established a presidential primary in the state for the 2012 presidential nomination cycle (via Ballot Access News). For the second straight year, then, Kansas' efforts to transition to a primary election came up short. Last year, the plan to create a primary and schedule it on the Saturday prior to Super Tuesday failed to make it out of the state legislature before the session ended. This year's version proposed the same Saturday before the first Tuesday in February date, but was hampered by the inclusion of a provision within the law requiring a photo ID at polling places in order to vote.

The quirk in all of this? Well, as I've been pointing out (see here, here and here), scheduling a primary on such a date would violate both major party rules on the matter. At least in terms of the rules as they were constructed for the 2008 cycle. Kansas would have faced losing half their delegates on the Republican side and (at least initially) all of their delegates in the Democratic process. Of course, all this assumes that the same rules from 2008 are used in 2012. With the GOP already advancing one plan aimed at reforming the presidential primary process, it is up in the air as to how the calendar will look four years from now. And that doesn't even include a discussion of what penalties the parties would impose on state violating any reformed rules. The reform process will undoubtedly be arduous enough even excluding the potential sanctions the parties would impose to keep all the states in line.

Speaking of Kansas, the Democratic Party there has told me that results from the weekend's state convention should be online some time tomorrow. I'll be back then with an update on how those 11 delegates were allocated.


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The Links for 5/19/08: Kentucky, Oregon, Electoral College Ties and More

Three cheers for Nevada! At least the Democrats in the Silver state were able to hold a state convention over the weekend and count all the votes in a timely manner (...and avoid Ron Paul supporters shutting things down). Obama ended up amassing 14 delegates to the national convention in Denver to Clinton's 11. In the other states FHQ was tracking over the weekend, well, there wasn't that much to track. In the void, the media reports (or lack thereof in the case of Colorado and Washington) seemed to fall back on the idea that the first step determined the allocation of delegates in those states. At least that was how the reporting on Kansas' state convention went (11 delegates were supposed to be at stake in the state convention phase of the Kansas delegate selection plan.). The focus there was on the lt. governor being named an add-on superdelegate (...and that he was backing Obama). Washington received nary a mention and the focus of the Colorado coverage was the senatorial nomination of Mark Udall.

There was news to be had, though. You just had to dig a bit. There was mention of the Colorado Democrats releasing their numbers sometime today in a live blog of Saturday's proceedings over at PolitickerCO. In Washington, information was tougher to come by. With 51 delegates on the line you wouldn't think so though. Enthusiasm seemed high at the 3rd District caucus and Obama emerged with a 4-2 delegate edge from the 8th, according to one participant. [I'll keep tabs on both situations as well as Kansas' throughout the day and post the results when they become available.]

In other news, there are actually a couple of contests occurring tomorrow. Maybe you've heard. Obama drew a huge crowd in Oregon yesterday and holds a slight lead over Clinton in the polls there. The one thing that could hamper his chances is the fact that new voters (a group that favors the Illinois senator) received two ballots (one partisan and one non-partisan). If both are mailed in, only the non-partisan one counts. That could hurt Obama's numbers on the margins. This has gotten a fair amount of media coverage locally in Oregon, so the word may have gotten out. The possibility is still out there, though. Also, CQ Politics has a look at the race in Kentucky up this morning and gives the advantage to Clinton. No surprise there, but the piece does provide a detailed examination of the race in each of the Bluegrass state's congressional districts. A tie is the best they see Obama doing in any of the six districts.

Speaking of ties, FiveThirtyEight.com has an interesting look at the potential for an electoral college tie between McCain and Obama in the fall. Beyond that, they go into the rules that would kick in should that tie occur and who would stand to gain from that. Given the shape of things on the congressional level now, the incoming House would give Obama the edge in a such a scenario. I've mentioned this before, but I'll do so again: If you haven't checked this site out yet, please go by and do so. Excellent analysis.


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