Georgia Senate Runoff: Early Voting (Day 2)

Yesterday, we got our first glimpse at the early voting statistics for the Georgia Senate runoff. We also raised the question over the potential impact the staggered starts to early voting in the 159 counties across Georgia might have for the fortunes of the two candidates involved. First, let's incorporate the new data from yesterday and then I'll make some further comments on the staggered early voting starts.

[Note: I should add that early voting began in Fulton County on Tuesday and not on Wednesday as I said yesterday. In other words, there was only a one day lag for one of the most Martin-friendly counties in the Peach state. There were conflicting reports on the Fulton situation, and I opted for the AJC report, thinking it would be the most reliable. I was wrong. The Secretary of State still has a list of when early voting will take place and in which counties. But I'll have more on that in a moment.]


So, what's new?

• With Fulton added to the mix on Tuesday, the African American proportion of early voters increased, but only by a couple of percentage points. But at just under a quarter of the early votes, the African American proportion still lags almost ten points behind where it did over the course of the entire general election early voting period.
  

• Once the second day numbers are added, we also see that the female percentage of early voters increases by a modest amount. Like the African American vote, though, the percentage of women voters lags behind the overall proportion during the general election early voting.

• Also be sure to note that the spreadsheet now has tabs at the bottom for additional statistics on each of the individual days of early voting thus far.
  

The overarching message? Well, for starters, we may not want to read too much into the early voting numbers in a runoff election. [But you know I'll read into them, don't you?] Both of the demographic breakdowns above don't particularly favor Jim Martin's in his quest to reverse the general electorate's candidate preference ordering in the runoff. But let's look at the when each of Georgia's 159 counties actually started (or will start) early voting and see if the late starting counties favor one candidate over the other. First, how did the general election look on the county level? The typical red for Republicans, blue for Democrats color scheme applies.

[Click Map to Enlarge]

Now, let's remove the counties that started early voting on Monday. [I would say on or before Monday, but the two counties -- Gordon and Richmond -- that began early voting last Friday are shaded in dark gray below. However, neither is included in the analysis that follows. The same is true of the two counties -- Towns and Treutlen -- on which the the secretary of state's office still has no early voting information. They are shaded in pink on the map below. Finally, the two counties in light bluish gray -- Madison and McIntosh -- are counties where there is no early voting. Advance voting will start on Monday in both areas. Both Madison and McIntosh are included in our analysis.]

[Click Map to Enlarge]

What can be gleaned from that map? At first glance, not much. Just eyeballing the red and blue counties -- those counties that started early voting after Monday -- doesn't really turn up any noticeable trends. Once we combine the information from both maps, though, we start to get a clearer picture of whether one of the candidates benefits from the staggered starts to early voting. On November 4, Saxby Chambliss won 121 of Georgia's 159 counties. Of those 121, 45 counties started their early voting operations after November 17. Jim Martin, on the other hand, won 38 counties on election day and 18 of those had late starts to early voting.

Yeah, but Georgia isn't under the county unit system anymore, is it? So the county counting is irrelevant. That's true, so let's look at the proportion of the November 4 vote total from each of those collections of counties. I've removed Allen Buckley's vote total, and as a result, I'm just looking at the share of the two-party vote each candidate's late-start early voting counties comprises. [Yeah, I agree. "Late-start early voting counties" is confusing.] Basically, the result is a wash. The 45 Chambliss counties that began (or will begin) early voting after Monday made up 12.3% of the two-party vote on November 4, while the 18 Martin counties (including Fulton) that got off to a late start in early voting accounted for 11.77% of the total two-party vote during the general election. If anything, then, Chambliss is at an ever so slight disadvantage due to the staggered start to early voting in counties across the Peach state. Again though, it isn't by much. And with the proportion of early African American and female voters down from where they were during the general election's early voting period, it may not matter anyway. That drop likely outweighs any disadvantage Chambliss may be getting because counties he won on November 4 are off to a late start in early voting.

Let me note again today that I'll be updating this data daily and that I'm still trying to track down the day-by-day data for the general election's early voting period. That information will help to a more informed projection of the runoff vote. Also, tomorrow I'll add in a map to reflect the different start dates for each county's early voting windows.


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Georgia Senate Runoff: Early Voting (Day 1)

Below are the numbers from the first day of early voting in the Georgia Senate runoff:


Now, you can also get this data from the Georgia Secretary of State's web site, but I've augmented the numbers to include the percentages and the totals by gender and race.

So, what do we know after one day of voting in the Peach state?

• Turnout is down, but that's not a surprise. Barely 13,000 votes cast is a fraction of what we were seeing early on in the general election early voting. [I'm still trying to get a hold of the day-by-day data on this in order to draw a proper comparison.]
• The percentage of African American participation is down. This isn't a fair comparison, but over the entire early voting period for the general election, blacks made up nearly 35% of early voters (via Michael McDonald). For that proportion to sink to 22% is not good news for Jim Martin.
• The female percentage of the early vote is also down; another possible omen for Martin. Again, according to McDonald, women made up over 56% of early voters prior to the November 4 election. That proportion is now down to just under 48%.

Alright, now that we've got the numbers out of the way let's add in the caveats.

• Monday, the only day reflected in these numbers, was only the first day of early voting in some counties throughout Georgia.
• African American-heavy counties, like Fulton, don't start until Wednesday. You'll notice that the spreadsheet doesn't have Fulton among the top five counties for early voting. Fulton was the number two county overall for early voting ahead of the general election. So pack up those doomsday scenarios for Martin for the time being.
• I spoke with someone at the Elections Division at the Secretary of State's office today and was told that some counties would not be offering early voting at all. What!?! They instead are offering only advance voting. The difference is that there are more locations for advance voting but over a shorter period of time.

All this staggered starting to the early voting brings up an interesting question: What impact will it have? I took a lot of flak in the comments section last week for giving the general election's county results in the Senate race an electoral college treatment. In light of these differing windows of early voting, though, it really could have an impact on turnout. In other words, if the counties that have early voting the longest are Chambliss counties, the the Republican incumbent could potentially bank some votes in a way similar to what Obama did nationwide in the presidential race.

The complicating factor is that a county like Fulton will only have the final three business days of this week and the first three business days of next week -- truncated due to the Thanksgiving holiday -- for early voting. And those advance voting-only counties will only have the three days next week. Again, if those are predominantly Martin counties, then the challenger may be getting the short end of the stick. And to think, there was all this fuss over the Republicans having lengthened the time between the general election and the runoff when they reinstituted the 50% rule for the runoff. The talk over the last week or so here in Georgia was that the extra week would give enthusiastic Democrats even more time to vote. Well, not if they can't. So, the 50% rule hurt Chambliss, but the time between the general and the runoff may not.

I'm going to be augmenting this daily (Well, week-daily as there won't be any new data on the weekends.) as we approach election day on December 2. I'll add in the new data each day and share that with everyone, but I also hope to, as I said, get a hold of some other data in order to potentially make some projections. Stay tuned.


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I spent a lot of time last week looking at the county-level 2008 v. 2004 map that The New York Times was running online (see below). It really is a fascinating feature, but if you've been around here long enough, this doesn't really come as any surprise. I like maps. [Incidentally, you can now compare 2008 to the past presidential elections back to 1992. Just click on "Voting Shifts."]

[Click Map to Enlarge]

Anyway, the more I looked at it, the more it looked like something I had remembered seeing somewhere before. In fact, it was right here at FHQ. One of the things that the early days of this election year allowed us was this wonderful three month period after John McCain had wrapped up the Republican nomination, but in which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were still actively competing for the Democratic nomination. The polling that was released during that period produced what FHQ liked to call the McCain margin.* The formula was simple: Subtract Hillary Clinton's margin against John McCain in head-to-head trial heat polls in each state from the similar margin between Obama and McCain.

[Click Map to Enlarge]

Above is the final McCain Margin map from June 3; the day of the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota. Now what you see isn't anything groundbreaking, but the areas in green (those where Clinton was doing better against McCain than Obama was) overlap to a large degree with the Times map above. It is that same swath of land from Oklahoma eastward and north into Appalachia. Now, Massachusetts and New York would have given their votes to either Democrat, and neither ever seemed terribly viable in those Appalachian states, but at the time Florida, Missouri and Pennsylvania lent some validity to that Clinton campaign argument that the New York senator would fare better in the electoral college against John McCain than would her senate colleague from Illinois. As it turned out, Obama won two of those three anyway.

While things changed for Barack Obama after the economic crisis hit (and even before that, for that matter), the same areas that vexed him during the primaries, ended up going against him on November 4. But they would have gone against either Democrat, right? Well, I'm not so sure Hillary Clinton (and by extension Bill Clinton) wouldn't have made things interesting in Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia. I could see a scenario where she exchanged the 16 electoral votes from North Carolina and Nebraska's 2nd district for the 22 from the three states above. That could have drastically recolored that Times map (...with North Carolina being much lighter blue and Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia turning blue in the process.).

That would have given Clinton 371 electoral votes (to McCain's 167). Where else would Clinton have potentially been more successful? More vulnerable?


*In 2012 the McCain Margin will be redubbed the Obama Margin because, unless Obama fails over the course of the next four years, the president-elect will run unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Translation: we get to compare the various Republican candidates against how they are doing versus President Obama in each of the states. And we probably won't have to wait until 2012. There will likely be some state level polling done in some of the more competitive states in 2011. [And I'm sure we'll start seeing national level trial heats as soon as the 2010 midterm elections are complete.]


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Since yesterday, when I saw it five or six times during regional football coverage, I've been trying to track down the latest ad from Saxby Chambliss. Essentially the ad is a remix of the ad "Martin Economics" that ran during the last week or so of the general election campaign (see below). The basic point? Obama's (...and by extension Martin's) tax plan(s) is (are) bad for Georgians. The new version ends with Chambliss promising to lower taxes.



But Chambliss is not alone here. In fact, the DSCC has been quite involved in this campaign over the final weeks of the general election campaign. But Martin, too, has an addition to the discussion as well.



The ad, "Recession," may as well be called, "In His Own Words." It opens, as you can see above, with Chambliss saying, "We may not be in a recession. I don't know what that term means." Yeah, that one is in the same vein as "Read My Lips" and "The Fundamentals of the Economy are Strong." And the intent is exactly the same: Paint your opponent as out of touch on the most salient issue of the 2008 campaign. 61% of voters polled (...in the exit polls) called the economy the "most important issue" and 49% of those went for Martin compared to 47% for Chambliss. That's a pretty even division, and tells us why both are continuing to revisit the issue in ads. If anyone can claim any advantage on the issue before December 2, it could make the difference.

And for the record, the footage of Chambliss in that new Martin ad is from this cycle. Yeah, the topic is timely enough, but still. Those are current Chambliss signs in the background, though.

--------------------------------------
UPDATE
Oh, and here is the latest ad from the NRSC on behalf of Chambliss. There's some good imagery in this one. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer make appearances at the end with Martin's "crazy" picture being blocked out by the words "Liberal Jim Martin" with Pelosi prominently displayed to the right. The "Out of Touch" charge on the economy is the issue of this runoff. Both candidates are saying the other is more out of touch on the economic situation.




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Reform: First Up? The Texas Primary-Caucus System

Sure the election just ended but why not strike while the iron is hot, right? Well, that's what Texas Democrats are doing. After the Lone Star state's primary handed Hillary Clinton an important comeback victory on March 4 to go with the New York senator's wins in Ohio and Rhode Island, the caucus portion of Texas' delegate selection process favored Obama. And even though the caucus accounted for roughly one-third of the delegates, Obama's edge in that side of the contest gave him enough of a delegate lead to take the state overall.

But some people didn't like that and the Texas Democratic Party is reviewing the process, which on Friday meant the party hearing from members about the primary-caucus system. Here's a report from an Austin-area TV station:


The thing that gets me (Well, other than the claim that the legislature is required to make a change to the system.*) is that it really won't matter for Texas Democrats in 2012. Unless the Obama administration is a complete failure, there will not be a contested primary on the Democratic side in any state, much less Texas. But as I said when I led this post off, why not strike while the iron is hot? If the party, or any of its members, wait to change the way delegates are allocated in the Democratic nomination races in the election years ahead, it's best to do it when there is some controversy to help grease the wheels. This particular delegate allocation system does seem like a relic of the transition from a primary to a caucus in Texas, but unlike most other states that have switched, Texas has let this play out for almost 30 years by not dropping the caucus altogether. I would assume that most of that is due to the fact that other than in 1988, Texas just wasn't a big player in deciding either nomination. And what that meant was that some of the rules that are only now being scrutinized weren't being looked at at all.

For more on the Texas system, have a look back at our run through Texas during the 2008 cycle.

*The claim on both the report and the blog post I got this news from (h/t, by the way to Change the Caucus) that a change to the system requires action on the part of the Texas state legislature is news to me. Unless there is a new rule that I haven't been let in on, it is up to the state party, not the state legislature to decide the method by which delegates are allocated. In most primary states the state parties typically go along with the state-funded contest -- the one put in place by the state government -- and this isn't really an issue with the caucus. But that doesn't match up with the reporting on this. The Republicans in Texas, for instance, don't have a caucus like the Democrats do, just the primary. If the GOP in the state wanted to add one they wouldn't need approval from the state legislature unless that state was paying the bill. They aren't. The nightcap caucus is something the Democratic Party pays for and is thus in no way beholden to the Texas state legislature in any way.

-------------------------------------------
Thanks to Anon4:25 for pointing out a necessary clarification to this post in the comments section below. I certainly painted this caucus issue in black and white terms but didn't account for the gray area in between. In the scenario posited by Anon., it isn't the caucus that's at stake, but rather the proportion of delegates that that portion of the process receives.

And that raises a good question for the comments section: What is a good or proper balance between the primary and caucus if the caucus is kept?

In 2008, the caucus delegates made up just over one-third of the total "pledged" delegates. How far should that be dropped? A quarter? A tenth? Another way or asking this is to ask whether the impact of the caucus is diminished to the point that the party-building and local organizing that CBSmith mentions isn't possible because there isn't a significant enough motivation to participate? Or is that what the state party wants?


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There will be a runoff between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin. [Now, there's a shock!]

Early voting for the December 2 runoff will start as early as Monday (November 17) in some counties and no later than Wednesday (November 19) according to Secretary of State Karen Handel's press release yesterday.

One other interesting fact about the rules behind the runoff system in Georgia is that when the 50% plus one vote threshold was reapplied to statewide races in 2005, the interim period between the general election and the runoff election was expanded from three weeks to four weeks. I suspect that is due in large part to the potential for overlap with the Thanksgiving holiday, but I can't verify that. One thing is for sure, the advance voting week will fall during Thanksgiving week and has been condensed from five days to just three as a result.

What's the difference between early and advance voting, you ask? Well, in Georgia it seems to boil down to a matter of the number of voting locations. Early voting is confined to one location per county but over an extended period of time (September 22-October 31 for the November 4 election), whereas advance voting has a greater number of polling places in the larger counties during just the business week (Monday -Friday) prior to the election.

Some of Jim Martin's success in the general election was dependent upon early and advance voting and that was driven in large part by the efforts of the Obama campaign to get out the (early) vote in Georgia. We have talked about Obama as a wildcard in this runoff race, but whether he appears in Georgia between now and December 2 -- John McCain and Mike Huckabee have already lined up stops to campaign for Chambliss -- may not matter as much as the remnants of the Obama campaign's infrastructure in Georgia (and from workers pouring into the state from other locales) banking those early votes for Martin as they did for Obama prior to November 4.

Question for the comments section: What impact might that extra week between elections have on the outcome? I can see it going both ways: the enthusiasm behind Martin dies down or another unintended consequence of the GOP-driven law change -- more time for Martin to mobilize -- coming back to haunt them. Thoughts?


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Now here is an interesting twist to the Florida primary debacle of 2008 and it has implication for the future of frontloading.

The Case: Ausman v. Browning

The Argument: The Florida legislature violated the national Democratic Party's right to free speech when the legislature set the Sunshine state's primary for January 29, 2008. In other words, the national party was unable to choose its nominee in Florida according to the Florida Delegate Selection plan approved by the Rules and Bylaws Committee. [Yeah, remember them?]

This is fairly significant (...whether it is getting much press or not). If there is one thing we know about the courts' involvement in these sorts of disputes, it is that they typically side with the parties. A recent example of this was when the within-casino caucus sites were challenged by the Clinton campaign before the Nevada caucuses last January. The courts yielded to the parties (and the pre-approved delegate selection plan) in that instance.

One byproduct of the plaintiff winning this case (...and any subsequent appeals) is that, if anything, states, and the actors setting the date on which their delegate selection event is held within them, would seemingly have to adhere to the delegate selection plans that are usually due in to the national party by the end of the summer before a new election cycle begins. For 2008, both national parties had September deadlines. In Florida and Michigan in 2008, those plans were violated when their legislatures shifted up their primary contests.

The bottom line is that the national parties would gain a bit more power in this process based on the approval power they would (and do, for that matter) hold over states' delegate selection plans. So, if the courts validate these plans from each state, they essentially become something similar to a binding contract on allocating delegates. And the date on which a primary or caucus is held is a vital component of those plans.

Does that prevent rogue states from popping up? No, but it does give the national party some potential legal standing to challenge them in court if it were to come to that. This case reaches "one to watch " status here at FHQ.


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For a look at the 2012-2020 electoral college map based on the 2010 Census click here. And for look at how those changes would have affected the 2008 presidential election click here.

There is no shortage of projections on how the 435 House seats will be reapportioned following the 2010 Census and like anything else, they range from modest changes to volatile, far-reaching changes. [And you can also see Nate Silver's attempts to update the 2007 projections -- the basis of both the linked projections above -- here.] What's funny is that both the links cite the same source, Election Data Services, yet describe very different projections. Well, the CQ article cites EDS while The Washington Times uses a combination of the EDS projections and those from Polidata. The Polidata end seems to be adding all the volatility. As such, I'm going to lean on the more conservative EDS projection (Silver's is in between but closer to EDS.).

[Alright, get to the point. How's the map going to look in four years?]

Well, here you go, complete with map and seat gains/losses:

[Click Map to Enlarge]

I jokingly ended the electoral college map slideshow with a blank map that had the election date of the 2012 election on it. But that one wasn't accurate; it didn't reflect the changes due to reapportionment that will happen between now and 2012. So what do we know about the changes? As all the articles that discuss the upcoming apportionment typically say, the South and southwest gain while the Rust Belt and into the northeast states continue to lose seats. But a blank map isn't really telling you a whole lot, is it? How about a real world application?

What would the McCain-Obama contest have looked like if this projected 2012 map was used instead? [Well, I made that one too.]

[Click Map to Enlarge]

McCain would gain three electoral votes on Obama and that is it. For the record, the Polidata projection, wacky as it is, would only yield McCain a few additional electoral votes. In a year that tilts toward the Democrats, those changes are manageable, but in a year with conditions triggering a more competitive contest, those changes might help the GOP. Then again, if the changes in Colorado and Nevada are lasting, Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia remain competitive, and Arizona and Georgia continue to trend toward the Democratic Party, they may benefit the Democrats.

UPDATE: One other way we can look at the changes more in-depth is to examine how that six electoral vote shift toward McCain in the projected 2012 apportionment changes the outlook on the Electoral College Spectrum. So, we can see how/if the campaigns' target states would have shifted if the map was different.

In September 2008, there was a time when Colorado or New Hampshire would have put Obama or McCain over the top in the electoral college. If Obama had won all the states favoring him up to and including Colorado the president-elect would have netted 269 electoral votes. The same was true of John McCain in terms of New Hampshire. Obama would have needed New Hampshire and McCain would have needed Colorado to cross the 270 electoral vote threshold. But Colorado eventually swapped positions with New Hampshire and moved into sole possession of the "victory line" distinction. To win Colorado, then, meant that the winner was the victor in the presidential race (...if they won the other states ranked behind the Centennial state).

Would that have been the case, though, if the 2012 map were in place for this past election?

The Electoral College Spectrum*
HI-4 (7)**	ME-4 (155)	NM-5 (260)	ND-3 (377/164)	AK-3 (62)
VT-3 (10)	OR-7 (162)	CO-9*** (269/278)	GA-16 (161)	KY-8 (59)
DE-3 (13)	WA-11 (173)	VA-13*** (282/269)	WV-5 (145)	TN-11 (51)
NY-30 (43)	NJ-15 (188)	NV-6 (288/256)	AZ-11 (140)	KS-6 (40)
IL-21 (64)	IA-6 (194)	OH-19 (307/250)	SD-3 (129)	NE-5 (34)
MD-10 (74)	WI-10 (204)	FL-28 (335/231)	LA-8 (126)	AL-9 (29)
RI-4 (78)	MN-10 (214)	NC-15 (350/203)	AR-6 (118)	WY-3 (120)
MA-11 (89)	PA-20 (234)	MO-10 (360/188)	TX-36 (112)	ID-4 (17)
CA-55 (144)	MI-17 (251)	IN-11 (371/178)	MS-6 (76)	UT-6 (13)
CT-7 (151)	NH-4 (255)	MT-3 (374/167)	SC-8 (70)	OK-7 (7)
*Follow the link for a detailed explanation on how to read the Electoral College Spectrum. **The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, McCain won all the states up to and including Colorado (all Obama's toss up states plus Colorado), he would have 274 electoral votes. Both candidates numbers are only totaled through their rival's toss up states. In those cases, Obama's number is on the left and McCain's is on the right in italics. ***The point between Colorado and Virginia is where Obama crosses (or McCain would cross) the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. Obama would need Virginia and McCain would have needed Colorado to have surpassed that barrier. That line is referred to as the victory line. Under the actual 2008 electoral college distribution, Colorado was the state that each candidate needed to cross 270.

Well, no. That reapportionment-triggered shift toward McCain would have brought Virginia into the mix on the cycle's final Electoral College Spectrum. As was the case in the Colorado/New Hampshire situation, no one state would have been the Victory Line state. Instead, the possibility of an electoral college tie would have been put on the table. Both Virginia and Colorado would have to be won fo either of the candidates to pass the 270 electoral vote barrier. Of course, Obama won and held a six state cushion beyond that, but if the race had been, say, five or six points closer, Virginia would have been in play and the likelihood of an electoral college tie would have increased substantially.


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The electoral college wrap up post got hijacked this afternoon by a comments thread that veered off into a discussion over this past election and whether it was one that has triggered a realignment. [Allow me a Seinfeldian moment: Not that there's anything wrong with that.] Let me reproduce those comments here and augment them along the way:

Rob started things out by linking to Jay Cost's piece that tied the events surrounding the economic collapse this fall to other historical corollaries: the Civil War, the gold standard debate and the Great Depression. [There were some nice maps there -- even some that had Long Island colored differently than the rest of New York -- but I was left wondering where the maps for the most recent elections were. I like maps. What can I say.] Cost has not been alone in this realignment discussion. In fact, John Sides over at the Monkey Cage was recently bemoaning the overabundance of realignment talk in the press following last week's election.

That aside, our discussion here has centered on a few basic ideas:
1) A realignment does depend on some sort of lasting change.
2) Much of this talk rests with how well Obama does over the next four to eight years.
3) And finally, how lasting the shift is depends in part on how the GOP responds and who they line up behind as the face of that response.

Scott thinks there has been one change that is likely to last as a result of Obama's election, though stops short of calling it a realignment:

"Not a "realignment." But for lasting changes, I'd identify this election as the last gasp of the anti-intellectuals on a national level. The percentage of Americans who are college-educated keeps creeping up, so it didn't quite work this time to pit "real" people against "elitists"--there are too many who side with the elitists in that division. And the demographics there will keep tilting further and further toward the educated.

"It was once possible to espouse a kind of populism that set workers against landowners--but eventually, demographics shifted so that now too many voters own homes, and any attack on property owners would be political suicide. We've just crossed that Rubicon with education, and we won't be going back."

But Jack disagreed:

"I don't think populism which plays to the uneducated is dead. But the increase in education certainly requires one to be more subtle. One can't go around insulting educated Americans, but you can get away with playing up the virtues of rural American values, etc.

"I've been reading a lot about the 'death of Rovian politics,' 'end of the politics of fear,' etc., and I've just had a hard time believing it. Just because it didn't work this year doesn't mean it will never work. After all, there were a lot of other reasons why McCain didn't win; they might work in a year in which the conditions are more favorable."

I fall in the middle on this one. I certainly see some of what Scott is talking about, but if you read the back end of Adam Nossiter's article in The New York Times today and then look at those nice county maps they put up last week, there's still an area of the country that is seemingly being left behind in terms of education. But as John McCain's electoral college coalition proved, that group of states from east Texas and then fanning out to capture the Deep South and Appalachia, is not really the basis of a winning formula in the future. Playing to those states as the main cog of an electoral college coalition isn't a winning strategy but incorporating them somehow in a broader coalition -- something similar to the Republican Party Colin Powell envisioned in his endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press -- will be the only viable route. Of course, stories like that only buoy the hopes of Democrats. Whether that falsely buoys them depends in large measure on how well Obama does and who the Republicans put out there as the face of their party in 2010 and 2012.

Rob drops the first bomb here:

"I heard on NPR that Newt Gingrich is planning on running in 2012. Here is a man who is brilliant and who can appeal to intellectuals as well as the uneducated. If Obama falters, Newt could be a very appealing candidate -- one who can appeal to the social conservatives despite his divorces. For those of you who think that 1996 finished him off, I point to the 1962 gubanatorial race where "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more", Bill Clinton's career-ending speech at the 1988 convention, and Hillary Clinton's national reputation in 2000. A Gingrich/ Palin primary contest could be as entertaining as the Obama/ Clinton contest this year!"

Indeed, but Gingrich may be trying for a kind of reverse Howard Dean effect here. He and former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele are locking in a behind-the-scenes battle for the chairmanship of the RNC according to The Washington Times. To complete the reverse Dean effect though, Gingrich would have to lose this fight and then go on to win the GOP nomination in 2012. Throwing that idea out for a moment, if the former Speaker was to run in 2012, would that make Bobby Jindal the Mark Warner of 2012: an up-and-comer who drops out of the race before it even starts? And this on the heels of me thinking about Sarah Palin in terms of being a combination of John Edwards 2004 and John Edwards 2008. I think she has more Obama potential in her than Edwards though. But the next couple of years will give us a better idea as to whether she'll be a lasting figure in the GOP, much less someone who will attempt to prevent a lasting change from cementing.

Time will tell.


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2008 Electoral College Wrap Up

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2008 Electoral College Wrap Up

"How did we do?"

In the last week, several of our electoral college analyst brethren have asked about the level of accuracy each achieved. Let's have a look at how well and/or poorly FHQ did in that regard. [What, you thought we were going to be any different?] Below, you see how the race actually played out on election day, except now we've added some gradations to reflect states where candidates won by a substantial margin or where the final spread between Obama and McCain ended up being narrow.

[Click Map to Enlarge]

As Nate Silver explained recently, Obama could have given 9.3 points on average back to John McCain in every state and still have come away from Tuesday night's election with an electoral college tie. We have spoken time and again about the electoral college cushion Obama had in this race, but we have done so in terms of how many states past the victory line Obama's campaign was able to push. If George W. Bush would have given 9.3 points to John Kerry in 2004, Kerry would have been able to snatch up Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Arkansas, West Virginia, Virginia and Colorado to get to around the same number of electoral votes (360 EVs) Obama had in 2008 (365 EVs).

The Electoral College Spectrum*
HI-4 (7)**	ME-4 (157)	NH-4 (262/279)	GA-15 (159)	NE-4 (58)
VT-3 (10)	WA-11 (168)	IA-7 (269/274)	SD-3 (144)	KY-8 (54)
RI-4 (14)	MI-17 (185)	CO-9*** (278/269)	ND-3 (141)	LA-9 (46)
MA-12 (26)	OR-7 (192)	VA-13 (291/260)	AZ-10 (138)	AR-6 (37)
NY-31 (57)	NJ-15 (207)	OH-20 (311/247)	SC-8 (128)	AL-9 (31)
DE-3 (60)	NM-5 (212)	FL-27 (338/227)	TX-34 (120)	AK-3 (22)
IL-21 (81)	WI-10 (222)	IN-11 (349/200)	WV-5 (86)	ID-4 (19)
MD-10 (91)	NV-5 (227)	NC-15+1**** (365/189)	MS-6 (81)	UT-5 (15)
CA-55 (146)	PA-21 (248)	MO-11 (173)	TN-11 (75)	OK-7 (10)
CT-7 (153)	MN-10 (258)	MT-3 (162)	KS-6 (64)	WY-3 (3)
*Follow the link for a detailed explanation on how to read the Electoral College Spectrum. **The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, McCain won all the states up to and including Colorado (all Obama's toss up states plus Colorado), he would have 269 electoral votes. McCain's numbers are only totaled through the states he would have needed in order to get to 270. In those cases, Obama's number is on the left and McCain's is on the right in italics. ***Colorado is the state where Obama crossed the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line. ****Nebraska allocates electoral votes based on statewide results and the results within each of its congressional districts. Nebraska's 2nd district voted for Barack Obama on November 4.

We knew, for instance, that when and if New Hampshire and Pennsylvania went for Obama on election day, that all it was going to take, given where Obama was likely to do well the rest of the evening, to push Obama over the top was the victory line state (Colorado) or some state below it. So when Ohio fell into Obama's column the race was over. And that can be seen on the Electoral College Spectrum for the final results above.

Great, FHQ's weighted averages granted us the ability to see that Obama would win and what states to watch on election night. Lots of people saw that coming. But where did FHQ fail to capture in its average what actually happened on election day?

[Click Map to Enlarge]

There were a handful of states that FHQ missed (...as did several other outlets). Most notably, North Carolina and Indiana turned blue for the first time in decades. We had discussed North Carolina at length during the last month of the campaign and the Tar Heel state's average had crept closer and closer to a complete tie in that time. But it never moved into the blue for Obama. Between the average and the actual outcome, North Carolina moved about a point on election day. So, while North Carolina wasn't correctly predicted, the result wasn't out of left field either. The state was already close and on the Watch List for a potential switch toward Obama.

Indiana, on the other hand, was a bit of a surprise given where the graduated weighted average has the Hoosier state ranked on the Spectrum. Consistently on the McCain side of both Missouri and North Carolina, Indiana jumped over two points on election day (from where FHQ's average placed the state and where it ended up after the votes were counted). Heading into the day, Missouri looked much more likely to end up on Obama's side of the ledger than Indiana. What's strange is how both those states split their votes between the presidential and gubernatorial level. Missouri gave McCain its 11 electoral votes while electing a Democratic governor and Indiana provided Obama with a narrow margin and at the same time reelected a Republican governor. Yes, local factors played a role in each case, but that's still an interesting occurrence.

[The final electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd congressional district was one that was never accounted for in our averages. Now that the first split allocation of electoral votes has occurred, that may be something that FHQ will have to attempt to factor in in subsequent cycles. But we'll talk about possible improvements momentarily.]

The Electoral College Spectrum*
HI-4 (7)**	ME-4 (157)	NM-5 (264)	ND-3 (381/160)	AK-3 (61)
VT-3 (10)	OR-7 (164)	CO-9*** (273/274)	GA-15 (157)	KY-8 (58)
DE-3 (13)	WA-11 (175)	VA-13 (286/265)	WV-5 (142)	TN-11 (50)
NY-31 (44)	NJ-15 (190)	NV-5 (291/252)	AZ-10 (137)	KS-6 (39)
IL-21 (65)	IA-7 (197)	OH-20 (311/247)	SD-3 (127)	NE-5 (33)
MD-10 (75)	WI-10 (207)	FL-27 (338/227)	LA-9 (124)	AL-9 (28)
RI-4 (79)	MN-10 (217)	NC-15 (353/200)	AR-6 (115)	WY-3 (19)
MA-12 (91)	PA-21 (238)	MO-11 (364/185)	TX-34 (109)	ID-4 (16)
CA-55 (146)	MI-17 (255)	IN-11 (375/174)	MS-6 (75)	UT-5 (12)
CT-7 (153)	NH-4 (259)	MT-3 (378/163)	SC-8 (69)	OK-7 (7)
*Follow the link for a detailed explanation on how to read the Electoral College Spectrum. **The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, McCain won all the states up to and including Colorado (all Obama's toss up states plus Colorado), he would have 274 electoral votes. Both candidates numbers are only totaled through their rival's toss up states. In those cases, Obama's number is on the left and McCain's is on the right in italics. ***Colorado is the state where Obama crosses (or McCain would cross) the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line. It is currently favoring Obama, thus the blue text in that cell.

Also, when we compare the predicted map and Spectrum to the actual results above we find that while several states were correctly predicted, they were either more or less competitive than our averages would have let on. On the McCain end, Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and West Virginia ended up being less competitive than expected while South Dakota and Indiana and North Carolina, obviously, were closer to Obama on Tuesday than had been predicted.

On the Obama side, there were several states that were "off" in terms of how their averages and results matched up, but the rank ordering fell pretty much in line with what had been expected. Nevada ended up being much less competitive then the polling in the Silver state otherwise would have indicated. As UNLV political scientist, Dave Damore, told FHQ back in September, pollsters tend to oversample the the rural and more Republican areas of Nevada which in 2004 meant support Bush was overestimated in the polls conducted in the state. But even adding that 4-5 points to FHQ's average falls short of where the Silver state fell on November 4. What was the deal then? Well, it could be that we didn't have enough information on Nevada -- it certainly had fewer polls conducted within the state lines than many of the other toss up states -- or it could be that rural/Republican oversampling really overestimated McCain's support in the state.

[Click Figure to Enlarge]

But how well did FHQ's averages match up with where the individual states actually fell on election day? A simple bivariate regression with our averages as the explanatory variable and the actual results as the dependent variable show that the averages explained over 95% of the variation in the vote margins witnessed on election day. All 50 states are clustered pretty tightly around that regression line above. But how closely? And which states were problematic?

[Click Figure to Enlarge]

We can eyeball it or we can add a 95% confidence interval to the plot above. Sure, you can see that Alaska and Hawaii are outliers in that original scatterplot, but are there states that fall outside of that confidence interval? There are and we come full circle with the earlier discussion of Nevada. One of the potential problems with the Silver state that I mentioned was that there were fewer polls there than in other toss up states. If you look at the states that fall outside of the gray area in the second plot, you see that most of them are less competitive and thus less frequently polled states. That indicates that some sort of repeated simulation -- akin to what FiveThirtyEight, the Princeton Election Consortium or Hominid Views use -- could be useful in providing more information on those states and a greater level of confidence in their averages. Ah, something to work on for 2012. Isn't that just copying them? Yeah, but FHQ would remain different in that it would include all the older polls in a given cycle while the others phase them out gradually or focus on only the more recent ones.

On the whole, though, this first run in 2008 was a relatively successful one for FHQ in terms of the electoral college. 48 of the 50 states were correctly predicted with a simple weighted average and one of those two, North Carolina, was certainly within range of a switch heading into election day.


Recent Posts:
How Stuff Works: An Alaska Vacancy in the US Senate

More on the Georgia Senate Runoff

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