Why the Democratic Change Commission's March 1 Mandate Will Be a Tough Sell Without a Bipartisan Primary Reform Plan

One thing that was made clear at this past weekend's Democratic Change Commission meeting was that the group's final recommendation to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee would heed the call of the convention provision that created the group in the first place. Namely, in regards to the timing of presidential primaries in 2012, the DCC is committed to closing the window on February delegate selection events (with the exception of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina).

But the March 1 mandate is problematic for the very same reasons that make reforming the presidential process difficult: that the lack of a bipartisan approach hampers the entire effort at reform. And without bipartisan action to confront the reform process, there could potentially be several classes of states.

• The first distinction to be made is between states that have to move the date on which their delegate selection events are held and those that don't have to do anything to reach compliance. Well, there were a lot of February states in 2008.
• Secondly, there is a line that separates caucus states and primary states on this as well. The dates on which caucuses are held are determined by the state parties more often than not, while state governments (state legislatures and governors) set primary dates. State party compliance is easier to come by than state legislative compliance (see here for more on this point.).
• On a level that is more troublesome, however, is where the March 1 mandate intersects with state governmental action. In states where the Democratic Party is in control of the state government, there may be some difficulty getting legislation altering the date on which any state's primary is held, but it would likely be minor compared to the potential resistance faced in states where the Republican Party controls both the executive and legislative branches.
  

Again, all this assumes that the GOP does nothing to significantly alter the rules governing their delegate selection process. Yes, the party took the unprecedented step of creating a group (the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee) to look at those rules outside of the convention for the first time. Now, the party could opt to stick with the frontloaded system as a means of settling the 2012 nomination quickly in order to prepare for a long general election campaign against Obama. They could also radically alter the primary process in a way that exceeds what the Democratic Change Commission is charged with examining. In either scenario, a go-it-alone strategy by either party likely nets them both a situation where there is a partisan discrepancy in some states. In other words, some states may have no incentive to go along with one of the parties' rules.

That's how we get back to the battle lines outlined above. Let's key in on that last one for the moment because that is where this gets Florida/Michigan messy. For the moment, let's assume that there are only minor changes to the Republican rules, that the Democrats go forward with this March 1 mandate for all non-exempt states, and that the GOP continues to allow February primaries and caucuses (Keep in mind Hawaii Republicans have already staked a claim to February 21, 2012 as the date for their caucus.). How many states have or will potentially have unified Republican control of the state government and could completely ignore Democratic rules (in the way that the Florida state government did a year ago)?

There are elections to be held that could change this before the 2012 delegate selection rules are adopted by both parties sometime next year. However, there are only three states that would not be in compliance with Democratic Party rules (a March 1 mandate assumed) given the current shape of the 2012 presidential primary calendar: Arizona, Florida and Georgia. Well, that's not that many. No, it isn't and that doesn't even include the caveat that Arizona's governor can use the power of proclamation to move the primary date to a more competitive date. [Traditionally, that has meant that the late February primary date that is on the books has been moved to early February. There is no language that I know of in the gubernatorial proclamation law that could allow the governor to move the primary back. That would be a test of the law. That point may be moot if Jan Brewer or another Republican is elected in Arizona next year. They wouldn't be motivated to move the date back to comply with the Democratic Party's rules for delegate selection anyway.]

Three isn't that many. Again, it isn't, but what's missing is states where there is a unified Republican legislature and a Democratic governor. The governor in those states can't make the state legislature pass a law just to comply with another party's rules. That adds three more states: Missouri, Tennessee and Oklahoma. Of course, those latter two may very well have Republican governors after the 2010 elections. Democrats in Tennessee and Oklahoma have very little depth on the bench behind either Bredesen in Tennessee or Henry in Oklahoma.

Now, we've already potentially tripled the Florida and Michigan problem from 2008. But what about early states with legislatures that have two chambers split between the two parties. One chamber (the Democratic one) may want to push a bill through that would bring the state's primary within the Democratic delegate selection rules, but the other chamber may find some better use of their legislative time. Well, that nets us two more states, Michigan and Virginia.

That would present the Democratic Party with a real dilemma. Eight states would potentially be in violation of the party's 2012 rules (specifically the March 1 mandate) through no fault of their own. Either legislative gridlock or unified Republican control of the state government could prevent compliance. How do you penalize states in that scenario? Would the state parties be forced to foot the bill for a party-run primary or caucus?

It is just this sort of exercise that the Democratic Change Commission should be considering. There have been a number of questions in both meetings thus far along the lines of "is coordination with the RNC possible?" that give a sense of detachment. Both parties are set to nail down the 2012 rules next year and yet there is no apparent effort at coordination taking place (at least not at the level of the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee or the Change Commission) despite the very real possibility that problems like those described above could take place.

Food for thought.


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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/26/09)

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A nine point Corzine lead? According to a new Suffolk survey of the Garden state, that is the case. However...

• It was Suffolk's first poll in the state for this race.
  
• The sample size is on the small end; only 400 people.
• There were a lot of undecideds (14%). The last time there was anything in the double digits for undecideds was the September 9 Rasmussen release (10%). Let me add some context: that was "You Lie!" week.
  
• Being that it was Suffolk's first poll in the race, they may have committed a grave error; weighting party identification to party registration. That's a no-no in New Jersey with unaffiliated registration.
  

Is the poll something to be dismissed? No, but it should certainly be treated as an outlier. At one end of the spectrum (an extreme application of the margin of error), if Corzine cedes five points to Christie, the Republican has a one point edge. If you were to do Monte Carlo simulations given the data in this poll, that particular outcome wouldn't come up very many times though.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Suffolk [pdf]	Oct. 22-25, 2009	+/- 5%	400 likely voters	42	33	7	14

In FHQ's opinion, though, there is one saving grace to this survey: the Daggett result. Sure, perhaps that number should be written off as an outlier given the independent's polling numbers of late. But I think there's something to this and we all should have been tipped off to the possibility a few weeks ago when Fairleigh Dickinson released a poll with a split sample where Daggett's name was used against Corzine and Christie with one subsample and Gary Steele, another candidate for governor, was used in the other subsample. I was too busy that day bemoaning the fact that we couldn't really trust the results of such a small subsample. All the while, though, there was an interesting trend underlying that poll and now this Suffolk one: Daggett has been afforded a privileged position in most of the polls in which he has been included. The independent has been the only non-Corzine/Christie candidate to appear in many of these polls and as such has been adopted by disaffected survey respondents as the anti-Corzine/Christie; a refuge for all wanting to avoid casting a ballot for either of the two major party candidates.

When other third party names are included Daggett's support slips. Sure, he bested Gary Steele when the two subsamples of that Fairleigh Dickinson poll were compared, but the fact that Steele got over 10% was indicative of the fact that there was a fairly sizable portion of the likely electorate that did not particularly care for either Corzine or Christie.

In today's Suffolk poll, all 12 gubernatorial candidates that will appear on the ballot next Tuesday were named. Again, Daggett lost his position as the only Corzine/Christie alternative and was knocked down to earth to some extent because of it. FHQ has already discussed Daggett's ballot problem and this poll may have picked up on what Daggett faces in the ballot box next week: that instead of one alternative to Corzine and Christie, there are several. Daggett's problem now appears to be that survey respondents recognized in him an alternative to Corzine and Christie and didn't necessarily recognize him.

We won't know one way or the other until next week or until we get some more data along these lines (with hopefully a bigger sample).

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But what about the top two contenders vying for a chance to call Drumthwacket their home for the next four years? I don't think that it comes as a surprise to anyone that posting a 33 in this poll negatively affected Chris Christie's average. It did. In fact, it brought the former US attorney's average closer to the 43% mark; again uncharted territory. Meanwhile, Corzine inched ever so slightly further up, but the incumbent Democrat still pretty much sits on the 39% line. So, while Christie maintains a four point lead here, that is shrinking quickly. That's because he is doing far more falling than Corzine is jumping, though.


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State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/26/09)

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Today continued a string of poor days for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds. It was a day that not only saw his opponent's campaign, Republican Bob McDonnell, hand over $25,000 to the Republican running for attorney general in the state, but also saw a continuation of the back and forth between national Democrats and the Deeds campaign over President Obama's involvement in the race. And if that wasn't enough, the Washington Post late in the day released another poll in the race showing basically no change in a 53-44 lead McDonnell held over the Democrat two and a half weeks ago. And it doesn't look like tomorrow's news is going to be any brighter for Deeds.

2009 Virginia Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Deeds	McDonnell	Undecided
Washington Post	Oct. 22-25, 2009	+/- 3%	1206 likely voters	44	55	1

What the news, well the numbers behind the news at least, mean is that McDonnell is looking like a pretty good bet in next Tuesday's vote. And that's a good pick up for the Republicans given how Virginia has trended at the national level in the last two cycles (two Democratic senators in 2006 and 2008 and 13 electoral votes for Obama last year). Given that it looks like Democratic turnout is going to be low, it seems a near certainty that Republicans will make gains in the other down-ballot races as well. That's especially significant in the year ahead of the Census and a potential redraw of the districts in the Commonwealth. The Democrats narrow lead in the Virginia Senate seems vulnerable and that would mean complete Republican control of the redistricting apparatus in the Old Dominion.

That won't have direct implications for next year (Democratic turnout could be down again, though.), but in 2012? Well, that's a different story.

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Meanwhile, in FHQ's averages in this race, Bob McDonnell is approaching a double digit lead, and it doesn't appear as if he's going to look back.


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Wrong! Wrong! A Thousand Times Wrong! One Bit of Misinformation from the Democratic Change Commission's Meeting This Past Weekend

The one big criticism I have of what I've read about the Democratic Change Commission meeting this weekend is that there still is no viable incentive structure in place to get states who have or will in the future want to frontload their presidential primaries and caucuses to move back or stay put. That's a thorny issue, though, at the intersection of state parties, national parties and state legislative jurisdiction, so I don't blame the 37 member group for not having gotten to that point yet. [Their recommendations won't come until after the group's December 5 meeting in Washington.]

However, what I can't forgive is one bit of misinformation that made its way out of the proceedings that is bad, bad, bad. Here's the Q&A exchange with North Carolina State Senator Dan Blue fielding the questions (from DCC member, Suzi LeVine's notes):

Q: what is the situation about states having separate state & presidential primaries? Ie – California did it.

A: expensive – but sense that California being so late is problematic. Last time California went early and they still didn’t get the attention. Very unsatisfactory then. State legislature seems to like moving it up. However, remember that incumbents benefit with an early primary ‘cause challengers haven’t been able to raise money and awareness and these positions are often chosen in the primaries.

Q: How would budget deficit in California affect 2012?

A: Bifurcating the 2 primaries is expensive. Usually have to stay unhitched to address local laws. Brought up the Affect of redistricting (will happen ‘cause of census)

Q: states with federal and state primaries on the same day?

A: most are together – but will find out exact number.

WRUH-ONG! [It is difficult to make something monosyllabic, have two syllables.]

In fact, this is very wrong. By my count, the 2008 primary calendar saw just 13 states with presidential primaries and primaries for state and local offices held concurrently. The remaining states and territories had their presidential nomination contests separate from their statewide and local primaries. And I say nomination contests there because 24 of the remaining 37 states held two separate primaries while the remaining 13 held caucuses for presidential delegate selection and later primaries for the other offices.

Together at Last, or Are They? Presidential Primaries and State and Local Primaries (2008)
Concurrent Primaries	Split Primaries	Caucuses
Illinois Maryland Ohio Texas* Mississippi Pennsylvania Indiana North Carolina West Virginia Kentucky Oregon Montana South Dakota	New Hampshire Michigan South Carolina Florida Arizona Alabama Georgia Arkansas* California Connecticut Delaware Massachusetts Missouri New Jersey New Mexico New York Oklahoma Tennessee Utah Louisiana Virginia Wisconsin Rhode Island Vermont	Maine Minnesota Iowa North Dakota Nebraska Kansas Wyoming Colorado Nevada Idaho Washington Alaska Hawaii

Here's the thing: This idea -- split primaries, as I've called them -- is the number one reason why some states have moved in the time since the McGovern-Fraser reforms that were instituted in 1972 and others have not. In the 1976-1996 period, presidential primary states that already had separate primaries were over five times more likely to move their contests to an earlier date than were those with concurrent presidential and state/local primaries. Once you add the cycles of the hyper-frontloaded era (2000-2008) -- when the incentive, like in 2008, was to move or get left out -- that effect dropped to only twice as likely. And no, that doesn't even take into account the caucus states. With those split caucus states included the effect is even greater.

Why?

Well, those states that have already severed the tie between the two primary types, and have institutionalized the resulting structure over successive presidential election cycles, don't face the same problem states with concurrent primaries have. Concurrent primary states face the start-up costs associated with funding an all new presidential primary election (see constant reference to California's expensive transition in 2008 in the quoted text above). The split primary states have already dealt with and absorbed that cost. Those states, then, are much freer to move their delegate selection events where they please. And since about 1980, the motivation has been to frontload.

So, do more states hold all their primaries together? No, they do not. Two-thirds of the country, in fact, hold separate contests.

*The data for the years prior to 2000 were gather from various sources by the author, but from 2000 onward were thankfully publicly available on The Green Papers.
**Texas could also fall into the caucus category simply because of its hybrid prima-caucus system.
***Arkansas was split for 2008, but has already passed legislation that will eliminate the separate primary in 2012.


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New 2012 Presidential General Election Trendlines. Now Time Adjusted!

I think we've gotten to a point where we have had enough 2012 trial heat polls out thus far this year to warrant adjusting them for time. To this point FHQ has displayed the polls as if they were equidistant apart, but with Palin v. Obama topping double figures from a number of polls standpoint, the time has come for the figures to take on a more natural look. Below you'll find the trends for...

Newt Gingrich...

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Mike Huckabee...

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Sarah Palin...

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and Mitt Romney.

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Commission member, Suzi LeVine, once again has provided us all with what she called in an email to me her "copious notes" on the events that transpired at the two part meeting a day ago.

Copious indeed. Still the best firsthand account of what is going on in these meetings. Check it out and I'll be back later with some broader comments on what transpired.


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Democratic Change Commission Meeting #2: Timing

Frank Leone over at DemRulz is on the scene in Washington and has a rundown of the morning half of the Change Commission's meeting. The group picked up with what they were to have addressed during their August meeting (postponed due to Ted Kennedy's funeral): public comments on the issues the group is charged with examining.

Let's look at what was discussed on the issue of timing (Would you expect anything less from Frontloading HQ?). From DemRulz:

"Curtis Gans, Director of the Study of the American Electorate at American University made a presentation. He criticized the 1988 Super Tuesday Southern primary for starting the race to early primaries; this resulted in a process based on “state selfishness.” It is more important to select the best person to be president than for a state to get more attention. He recommended a bipartisan, durable system with less frontloading and less moving around. He recommended starting with smaller, diverse, individual primaries, and a spread-out process – not regional primaries. Regional primaries may result in different candidates representing different regions and split the party. He opposes a rotation where it all changes every four years. He favors a long process which worked this year, allowing candidates flexibility to skip certain states, 20-day filing deadlines to allow new candidates to file. Spread out individual primaries will encourage grassroots and discourage negative campaigning – if you have 20 primaries on one day, you need to rely on negative TV. He would prefer to start the whole process in March, but is okay with IA, NH, SC, and NV going early — it worked well in 2008. In response to a question from Jeff Berman, he stated that there is an opportunity for cooperation with RNC in setting calendar and the GOP is likely to agree on starting date."

...and also...

"Hon. Dan Blue (Comm. Member, NC State Senator) – late primaries can be good. In 2008, NC linked the presidential primary with state office primaries, the late primary got a lot of attention, and Obama and Democratic candidates won in November. Grouping of 29 states on the same day is crazy – you need to break it up, spread out process."

Gans is right to blame 1988, but the idea of a Southern primary movement had its origins in the mid-1970s and was actually begun when Georgia and Alabama moved to coincide with Florida in 1980 (at the Carter administration’s behest). At the time, New Hampshire and Massachusetts were early and gave Kennedy a potential leg up in the race. So, it didn’t actually start off as state selfishness so much as the administration’s need to regain the 1980 nomination. By 1988, when the other Southern states moved, that had morphed into state (or regional really) selfishness.

The proposals are nice to see and it is great to idealize what happened a year ago, but I still don’t see any incentive structure to get any of the bloc of early states to move back in the process. The bonus delegate regime has not been effective and the winner-take-all proposal for later states is flawed. Bipartisanship would help, but both parties have to stand unified behind any plan they construct together.

Leone then adds his thoughts:

"My thoughts: The most important point re timing is that the DNC (even with the RNC) does not have the power to set a single primary date and is not writing on a blank slate. State legislatures set primary schedules and proposed changes need to account for political realities – like IA and NH are going to go first. Thus I believe that a rotating process, consisting of changing dates in every state every four years is a non-starter. Super regional primaries, that don’t change, do run the risk of favoring candidates from certain regions (although famously this was not the case in the 1988 Super Tuesday Southern primary). Mini-regional primaries, like last year’s Potomac Primary (VA, DC, MD), allow campaigns to focus their resources and states should consider such groupings. As to the basic schedule – a long term process, starting in March for most states (with the now traditional early states of IA, NH, SC, and NV going after Feb. 1) makes sense. Spreading out primaries, using bonus delegates, as was the case with NC and other states this year also allows for a full vetting of candidates and should result in a better choice."

Exactly right. Regional primaries are simply just a no-go from a state legislative standpoint. It is inherently unfair because both parties don't always have contested nomination races every year. As a result, some segment of the primary electorate on one or both sides of the partisan aisle may miss out on having an impact on their party's nomination when their state gets to go early. That alone will pit Democratic-controlled state legislatures against Republican-controlled ones.

Again though, to think of and idealize the North Carolinas and Pennsylvanias and Indianas just because they lucked out and happened to have a protracted battle fall into their laps, doesn't mean that it is possible to make states go later (or at the very best to incentivize them doing so). That assumes that the Clinton-Obama nomination race is the new normal. It could be, but I doubt it.

There's a lot of talk about the bonus delegate system and how North Carolina benefited from it in 2008. Yes, they gained, but only because they had a higher barrier to frontloading than other states had. If the Tarheel state did not hold its primaries for state and local offices on the same date as their presidential primary, they likely would have moved as well. But moving from the North Carolina General Assembly meant more than just moving to an earlier date; it meant funding an all new election (for the presidential primary) or moving everything else up. The latter is seen as a negative because that would affect turnout in down-ballot primaries in which the legislators themselves are involved (see Atkeson and Maestas).

On further on that point, Leone adds:

"Note – It was claimed that most states have presidential and state primaries on the same day, but it’s not clear that this is true and certainly hasn’t been true in Virginia."

Most states DO NOT have their state and local primaries in conjunction with their presidential primaries. That is the main reason that most of the states that have moved over the years have been able to do so.

I have shown that in my own research (Shameless, FHQ, shameless.). Prior to 1996, states with split primaries (presidential and state/local) were about 7 times more likely to make a move forward. After 1996, that dropped to only 2 times more likely. But still states with concurrent primary structures (still the minority) are less likely to move forward. That claim, then, is false. Where it is partially true is when you look at ONLY primary states. Once caucus states are considered (and most of them are held apart from the nominating contests for other offices), it is not the case. That is why caucus states have a much easier time of moving. [Dare I cite myself again? Oh, what the heck.]

I catch a lot of flack for being a negative nellie and shooting down all these ideas. That really isn't the case. I've made a career of looking at the unintended consequences of rules changes to the presidential primary process. My main argument has always been that if you are going to make reforms you absolutely have to take into consideration all of the potential unintended consequences. Otherwise, there is a risk that the reform measures just make things worse. Besides, from a Democratic perspective, the system did just work rather effectively. Obama is in the White House. [Well, some may have preferred having a Clinton in the White House.] Granted, it has worked well from a GOP perspective in the past as well.

I think the proposals to spread the calendar out are the right way to go, but there just has not been an effective incentive structure proposed that would offset the state-level desire to move forward on the calendar. The first step in getting to that point, in my opinion, is have both parties work together to create a unified reform. Without that, states will continue to have the ability to pit the two parties' rule structures against each other as a means of maintaining the status quo.


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Gender Gap or Gender Deficit in 2012?

For the last few months FHQ has been pointing to an interesting trend in the (admittedly very) early presidential general election trial heats for 2012.* Sarah Palin is faring worse or worst among women against Obama than are her male counterparts (among the small list of prospective Republicans who have been polled against Obama with 2012 in mind). This is curious. There have been pronounced gender differences in vote choice that has varied since around the 1980 election.

More often than not this appears in the form of women supporting Democratic candidates while male votes opt for the Republican alternatives. That partisan angle has certainly been debated within the political science literature, though. Chaney, Alvarez and Nagler (1998--gated), for instance, found evidence that this was not solely a partisan divide but an incumbent/anti-incumbent divide with women being more likely to vote against an incumbent. But we certainly hear more about the fluctuations from presidential election to presidential election in partisan terms: how the gap was lower in 2004 because of so-called "security moms"** and greater again in 2008.

Regardless, the gap puts the Republican Party at something of a disadvantage in some elections more than others. One way the party could hypothetically combat the issue is to run female candidates. Now, we've certainly seen more of this in down-ballot races as opposed to presidential contests. After all, Sarah Palin was just the second woman on a presidential ticket in 2008 and the first Republican. But there's a problem there and McCain campaign manager, Rick Davis, picked up on this. He bemoaned the lack of women running within the party in his comments here at Wake Forest a couple of weeks ago.

Still, the expectation is that if Republicans are able to run women, they'll be able to reduce the, what I'm calling here, total gender deficit*** to some extent (depending upon the gender of their opponent and other state level or national factors). But that hasn't been the case in the 2012 presidential general election polling to date. Sarah Palin has, again, done worse with women against Obama than have her male counterparts.

Let's look at the numbers from the most recent Public Policy Polling survey on the matter (I will at some point in the future aggregate the gender numbers across all the polls where the data is publicly available.). There's clearly a divide between...

Palin...

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...and nationally unknown Pawlenty on the one hand...

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and Huckabee...

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...and Romney on the the other.

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We can set Tim Pawlenty to the side for the moment. He just isn't a known quantity at this point in the game and that really affects his numbers among both women and men. 20% of each responded "not sure" when he was polled against Obama. [But who am I to deprive you of a glance at the figure?] So, let's consider Palin against Huckabee and Romney. The real discrepancy between them isn't the support among women, but that Romney and Huckabee are tied or slightly ahead among men, while Palin lags. Palin is in the same ballpark as Romney and Huckabee against Obama among women (They are all within 5 points of each other.), but again, the surprising thing is that she isn't doing MUCH better with that demographic. And while still in the same vicinity of Romney and Huckabee, she is still bringing up the rear with women voters.

Of course, when we consider the gender gap as it is traditionally measured -- the distance between the winning candidate's share of the vote among men and women -- Palin doesn't do all that poorly. In fact, she ties with Mitt Romney for having the lowest gender gap, while Mike Huckabee maintains the largest gap. The former Arkansas governor's gap is largely attributable to the fact that he loses to Obama with women but beats the president with men.

In the end, the difference between Sarah Palin (new vice presidential nominee) 2008 and Sarah Palin (ex-Alaska governor) 2009 among women is the difference between night and day. She has gone from making a huge difference for the McCain campaign with women (again, see Rick Davis' comments) to trailing among the demographic in hypothetical 2012 match ups with her at the top of the ticket.

UPDATE: Jack raises a great point in the comments. These numbers are a bit quirky because the expectation is that the GOP advantage among men would offset the advantage Democrats have with women. Here, though, only Huckabee is ahead among men. What that means is that there is something of a line to be drawn between the traditional gender gap and what I'm calling the total gender gap here. In this case, it should probably be called the total gender deficit. Here's a more traditional gender gap picture from Gallup in February 2008: a classic McCain vs. Clinton/Obama example. Obama and Clinton were relatively similar among women relative to McCain but the difference was in men. The way I'm calculating this deficit would have had Obama at -1 relative to McCain and Clinton at -9. To some extent this assumes that there is near equal parity between male and female voters in the electorate. I'll have to check on that.

*Again, these are (way too) early polls, and we here at FHQ would normally hold off on putting too much stock in them. However, the consistency of this result in poll after poll leads us to believe there is something to it.

**Of course, the security mom explanation was just one of convenience. There was little to no proof that members of that particular group weren't Bush supporters already. That the gender gap was smaller in 2000 and 2004 may indicate that women comprise many of the undecided swing voters that break evenly among the two major party candidates in a close election.

***The total gender deficit is calculated by adding the difference between President Obama and his prospective Republican opponents among men and women. While the traditional gender gap is relatively similar across the field of Republicans (within a range of 4 to 8 points), that doesn't give us an indication of the discrepancy between how much one gender group is offsetting the other between the parties. Looking at the exit polls from the 2008 election Obama won 56% of women to McCain's 43%. Meanwhile the president edged the Arizona senator by one point (49-48) among men. Obama, then, enjoyed a 7 point gender gap and a 14 point total gender deficit.


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You absolutely can't beat a week when Dick Cheney is called a vampire and Democrats are pushing child labor to pay for health care reform.

Hat tip to Seth Masket at Enik Rising for the Cheney link and Dan Perrin at Red State of the Family Research Council ad.


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The Democratic Change Commission, which is reviewing the Democratic Party presidential nomination process will meet on Saturday, October 24, 2009, at 9:30 (tentative) at the Capital Hilton, 1001 16th Street, NW, Washington DC. The Commission will continue to focus on state nomination process calender, superdelegates, and caucuses.

FHQ will be scouring the web for updates and news and posting them here. Here are a few links I'll be keeping an eye on:

DCC Member Twitter feeds:
Claire McCaskill
Suzi LeVine (Oh, and here is her blog where she posted some great material following the first meeting. She's already alerted folks following her Twitter feed that she'll be posting updates on her site. Now, whether that happens tomorrow or later is yet to be determined, but this remains a great place for firsthand accounts from inside the process.)
Rebecca Prozan
Joan Garry

DemRulz (Frank Leone had a great live blog from the first meeting in Washington. He has already said he will reprise that role tomorrow. Here, too, is his Twitter feed.)

DemConWatch (I don't know what Matt's plans are, but we had a nice discussion going between our respective blogs during the weekend of the first meeting back in late June.)


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