Obama v. Palin (2012 Trial Heats, July '10)

[Click to Enlarge]

As FHQ has not updated its 2012 presidential trial heat poll graphics since December, there is a lot of catching up to do. And what better place to start than with the most talked about candidate, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Let me make a few notes before diving in to all of this. First of all, I will spare you the mess of all the candidate data being dumped into one post by splitting this up into one post per candidate. We'll start with Palin and move on to the other candidates who have been surveyed multiple times in a hypothetical match ups against the president. I don't know whether I'll continue this practice in the future, but it makes sense in trying to synthesize all of the data from the first half of 2010. One addition I have made here is to add a table with all the past numbers included (dates, sample sizes, margin of error, etc.). [You'll find that at the conclusion of the post.] Such an inclusion likely works against the traditional -- all candidates in one -- presentation of the data if kept permanently (and I think it should be. There is too much data now not to.). The best course of action in future is likely to have timely breaking news-type updates when new polls are released followed by updated graphics for each candidate and finally a post discussing the trends across all candidates. That is how we will procede in the short term anyway.

There are a few other things to mention as well. Obviously, things are getting bunched up with so many polls having been conducted in the cases of some candidates. This is most problematic in terms of reporting the polling firms on the figure itself. It is really pronounced in the case of Obama v. Palin. I doubt this practice will be able to survive for much longer. FHQ is currently looking into some Flash- and Java-based alternatives that will allow users to simply hover over a data point on the graph and receive the attendant information. I'll keep you posted on that progress and in the meantime, if anyone has suggestions on how to do that relatively quickly and easily, please just drop a note in the comments section or shoot me an email.

And what of Obama and Palin?

For the sake of brevity, FHQ will confine this catch-up analysis to the overall trend throughout 2010. A poll-by-poll analysis eight months into the year seems like overkill. Public Policy Polling has surveyed this match up every month since March 2009 and as such is by far the most consistent player on the 2012 polling front. Palin has fairly regularly brought up the rear compared to the other three regulars (Gingrich, Huckabee and Romney) against Obama and yet, she, like the others has seen her share of respondents increase in 2010 as Obama's approval has declined. The one noticeable trend is that Palin does better in the PPP (and Rasmussen) surveys than she does in polls conducted by other firms. That is likely to elicit the classic robo-call versus live (phone) interview debate among some, but with so few polls from other outlets, FHQ will simply rate it as something to keep tabs on in the future. Palin's PPP presence has shifted from consistently in the 30s in 2009 to consistently in the 40s in 2010. Other firms are more likely to find her in the 30s in 2010.

The bottom line in this hypothetical match up is that Obama stays closer to 50% against Palin than he does against any of the other regular GOP names in the presidential race. I'll dispense with the straight averages comparison -- it is included in the table below -- but will mention the regression time series. Taking that trend into consideration, Obama leads Palin 49-41. That is all well and good, but none of this particularly matters until and unless the Republican nomination race in 2012 boils down to a two person race where general election electability becomes the argument a la Obama v. Clinton in 2008.

2012 Presidential Trial Heat Polling (Obama v. Palin)
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Obama	Palin	Undecided
Politico [Internet]	July 9-14, 2010	+/- 3.1%	1011 likely voters	48	36	16
Time	July 12-13, 2010	+/- --%	1003 adults/873 r.v.	55	34	4
Public Policy Polling	July 9-12, 2010	+/- 3.8%	667 likely voters	46	46	9
Public Policy Polling	June 4-7, 2010	+/- 3.8%	650 likely voters	50	41	9
Public Policy Polling	May 7-9, 2010	+/- %	707 likely voters	50	43	6
Public Policy Polling	April 9-11, 2010	+/- 3.9%	622 likely voters	47	45	7
CNN	April 9-11, 2010	+/- 3.5%	907 reg. voters	55	42	--
Clarus Research	March 17-20, 2010	+/- 3%	1050 reg. voters	52	34	14
Public Policy Polling	March 12-14, 2010	+/- 2.6%	1403 likely voters	49	41	10
Harris [Internet]	March 10-12, 2010	+/- --%	2344 adults	52	35	13
Public Policy Polling	Feb. 13-15, 2010	+/- 3.5%	743 likely voters	50	43	7
Public Policy Polling	Jan. 18-19, 2010	+/- 2.8%	1151 likely voters	49	41	9
Public Policy Polling	Dec. 4-7, 2009	+/- 2.8%	1253 likely voters	50	44	6
Rasmussen	Nov. 24, 2009	+/- 3.5%	800 likely voters	46	43	3
Public Policy Polling	Nov. 13-15, 2009	+/- 3%	1066 likely voters	51	43	5
Public Policy Polling	Oct. 16-19, 2009	+/- 3.5%	766 likely voters	52	40	8
Public Policy Polling	Sept. 18-21, 2009	+/- 3.9%	621 likely voters	53	38	9
Clarus Research	Aug. 14-18, 2009	+/- 3.1%	1003 voters	53	34	13
Public Policy Polling	Aug. 14-17, 2009	+/- 3.3%	909 likely voters	52	38	10
Marist	Aug. 3-6, 2009	+/- 5%	854 reg. voters	56	33	11
Rasmussen	July 16-17, 2009	+/- 3%	1000 likely voters	48	42	3
Public Policy Polling	July 15-16, 2009	+/- 4.1%	577 likely voters	51	43	6
Public Policy Polling	June 12-16, 2009	+/- 3.9%	638 likely voters	52	40	8
Public Policy Polling	May 14-18, 2009	+/- 3.1%	1000 likely voters	56	37	7
Public Policy Polling	April 17-19, 2009	+/- 3.7%	686 likely voters	53	41	6
Public Policy Polling	March 13-15, 2009	+/- 3.7%	691 likely voters	55	35	10
Average				51.2	39.54	--
Regression Average				49.11	40.51	--

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A New Part of the Invisible Primary

CBSNews picks up where FHQ left off late last year: with a look at the Twitter followings of the potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates.

This is yet more evidence of the alteration to the invisible primary since the advent of the internet. Websites have given way to blogs have given way to social networking sites. Throughout this evolution candidates have become better able to circumvent the media and talk directly to supporters or interested passersby. Sarah Palin has used both Facebook and Twitter to great effect

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Is it 21 or tied? Obama v. Palin (2012) --Time poll

The talk of the evening and this morning -- at least on the 2012 presidential front -- is the discrepancy between the Public Policy Polling survey on 2012 general election scenarios (FHQ mentioned the numbers from it yesterday.) and a new national poll from Time Magazine. The point of overlap -- again with 2012 in mind -- is the Barack Obama versus Sarah Palin question.

Here's PPP:

Obama: 46

Palin: 46

Not sure: 9

And here's Time:

11. If the presidential election were held today and the candidates were Barack Obama, the Democrat, and Sarah Palin, the Republican, and you had to choose, for whom would you vote? (Only registered voters responding)

Barack Obama, the Democrat 55%
Sarah Palin, the Republican 34%
Other / Neither 7%
Would not vote in election 1%
Undecided / Don't know / No answer 4%

21-0. That's a large gap. FHQ natural inclination in a situation like this is to split the difference and move on. None of this is without caveat. PPP has conducted a national 2012 trial heat poll between Obama and Palin every month since March 2009. The Raleigh-based polling outfit, then, has established something of a baseline in this hypothetical race. But there has been some variability in those polls as well. Things were similarly tight between the two candidates back in April before jumping back into the high single digits in May and to ten points a month ago.

So, before saying the true, yes hypothetical, lead is 10 points and moving on, allow FHQ one last comment. Tom Jensen said it best in the wrap up to his post on the poll's highlights a day ago. I'm paraphrasing here: Perhaps we'll look back on this time and see this as an aberration for Obama or the point at which the wheels really began falling off. That's true. One thing is for certain though and this hasn't really been talked about enough. No other Republican candidate can solidify the Democratic base better than Palin. To be sure, she can perhaps do a good job of unifying the Republican Party as well. Her presence on the ballot would do wonders for the oft-cited enthusiasm gap that the GOP holds in terms of voter turnout during 2010 (and maybe 2012 as well). It would neutralize it. What Palin has to do if she is serious about a run at the White House is figure out the formula for adding independents. Until the former Alaska governor can do that consistently, the true gap between her and Obama will likely stay in that high single digit to 10 point range. If Obama keeps trending downward, that won't hurt Palin's cause.

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PPP: 2012 Trial Heats (July '10): GOP Candidates Sweep Past Obama

Public Policy Polling [pdf] today released the numbers on their monthly national survey on the 2012 presidential election. From all indications, President Obama is losing independents; something that has been seen in recent approval numbers as well. Obama trails (Gingrich, Huckabee, Romney) or ties (Palin) all four of the major Republican candidates.

Here's the breakdown:

Obama: 45

Gingrich: 46

Not sure: 9

Obama: 45

Huckabee: 47

Not sure: 8

Obama: 46

Palin: 46

Not sure: 9

Obama: 43

Romney: 46

Not sure: 11

Tom Jensen puts the numbers in perspective well at the conclusion of his post on the poll:

Obviously 2012 is a long ways off and the immediate relevance of these numbers is limited. It's possible we'll look back on polls like this 28 months from now after Obama's been reelected and laugh. But it's also possible that we'll look back on the summer of 2010 after he's been defeated and see it as the time when his prospects for reelection really took a turn for the worse. For now there's really no way to tell.

No way to tell indeed, but those traditional indicators of presidential electoral success -- presidential approval and the economy -- certainly aren't hurting the GOP's prospects at the moment.

[Note: I hope to have an update of the monthly graphs up sometime this evening, but if not, they'll be up in the morning. As I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, FHQ is woefully behind on those figures. Rest assured, it is on our To-Do list.]

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Overdue Housekeeping (New Look, Facebook & More)

Loyal FHQ readers (and perhaps some passersby) have certainly noticed that output on the blog has been way down this year. In addition to completing my dissertation on, you guessed it, frontloading during the spring semester, I've had some other things going on and I'm currently in yet another summer of transition after my temporary tenure at Wake Forest ended in June. That said, there has been no shortage of things to talk about and I want to apologize for not being around to provide commentary and fill the void. [Well, there has not been any void in chatter concerning politics, but FHQ has been relatively quiet.]

If you have continued stopping by you have noticed several changes. First of all, when Blogger rolled out its custom design feature in June, I jumped at the chance to update the simple and, I think stagnant, FHQ look. That was the biggest visual change since we added the left-hand sidebar during 2008. The new look is obviously still simple, but it is a little sleeker and adds the background image behind the large white slate that dominates the page.

In the last month, FHQ has also become a presence on Facebook. Personally, I don't have that large a presence on the social networking site, but far be it from me to deprive FHQ readers who do use Facebook frequently from using that tool as a means of getting their FHQ fix.

There is a button (see above) underneath the Twitter section on the right side that you can click on to access the FHQ Facebook page. Once there, click "Like" next to Frontloading HQ at the top to add the page to your News Feed. All blog posts are automatically added to the site and most tweets -- those not retweeted from my phone -- appear there as well. It ends up being a nice storehouse of FHQ material and is quiet handy if you are already on Facebook (and a lot of people are...a lot).

Finally, I've also made it easier to share FHQ content on other sites. At the conclusion of every post you will see a host of tiny buttons you can click on to share content at other sites (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Google Buzz, etc.). All you have to do is click on one of those to do so. And hey, there's even a Facebook Like button down there as well.

I'll probably bug people about Facebook (and Twitter for that matter) by reminding you of the addition at the conclusion of each post for the next couple of weeks. You've been warned. [Oh, it will stop soon enough.] Yeah, I think I've sold out a bit to be quite honest with you.

Back to politics...

Dates for 2012 Contests in Exempt States (via Democrats)

Last Friday FHQ openly doubted that the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee would set dates for the four exempt states in the presidential primary process. As I said then, I thought it would be more likely that the committee would set the parameters around which those states could place themselves. Alas, the committee chose specific dates. In my haste to get the notice of the impending meeting out to FHQ readers, I failed to adequately consider even recent historical precedent.

Just four years earlier, the Rules and Bylaws Committee acting on the recommendations of the Levin Commission opted to do the same thing. But back then, January primary dates were still allowed. Here's the timing breakdown from the highlights of the 2008 rules:

The new schedule is as follows:

• Iowa holds the first-in-the-nation caucus on January 14.
• New Hampshire holds the first-in-the-nation primary on January 22.
• Nevada conducts a caucus between Iowa and New Hampshire on Saturday, January 19.
• South Carolina holds a primary 1 week after the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, January 29

The regular window will open for all other states on the first Tuesday in February -- February 5, 2008.

Now, of course, Florida and Michigan came along and threw a monkeywrench into even the best laid plans. Obviously, New Hampshire balked at Nevada's caucuses being ahead of the primary in the Granite state, but it wasn't until after Florida's move -- or the early progress of the bill to move the Sunshine state's primary in the legislature -- that that January 22 date was truly threatened. [Granted New Hampshire Secretary of State, Bill Gardner, did issue an early 2007 statement that New Hampshire would stick with its date if Iowa stuck with theirs.] What kept the ball rolling on the pre-window movement was the South Carolina Republican Party's response to Florida's potential move. To be sure, SCGOP chair Katon Dawson's threat of an October 2007 GOP primary in the Palmetto state was pure bombast, but it was enough to stir an already unsettled primary calendar hornets nest.

Florida solidified its position on January 29 in late May and South Carolina Republicans jumped the Palmetto state's Democrats (and Florida) to share the January 19 date with both parties' Nevada caucuses in August. And August was busy because that was when the Rules and Bylaws Committee decided to penalize Florida all of its delegates if it followed through with plans to hold the contest outside of the window period. It was also the month in which Michigan began to seriously push its own move into January 2008.

That Wolverine state shift became official in September before South Carolina Democrats requested a waiver from the DNC to move from January 29 to January 26 in October. And that was on the cusp on the Iowa Republican Party's decision to settle on January 3 for the caucuses there. [Iowa Democrats followed suit nearly two weeks later.] All that was left then was for New Hampshire to choose a date. After toying with a December 2007 primary, the Granite state selected January 8 as the date on which its primary would be held just prior to Thanksgiving.

It isn't any earth-shattering news that there was movement -- a lot of movement -- on the 2008 calendar, but some of this pre-window jockeying often gets lost in the shuffle. It all becomes very SamandEric (the twins) from Lord of the Flies. In this case, though, it's FloridandMichigan. The bottom line is that the parties can make all the rules they want, but the states will decide whether they want to go along with them or not.

For the record, here are the dates where the Democrats have proposed the four exempt states (Trust them at your own peril.):

• Iowa: February 6
• New Hampshire: February 14
• Nevada: February 18
• South Carolina: February 28

• Everyone else: March 6 or after

FHQ was 50/50 in guessing the possible dates. In an earlier post, I guessed Iowa and New Hampshire correctly, but missed on Nevada and South Carolina. Of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess that Iowa and New Hampshire would be placed on the earliest allowed dates that keep both in February and with an eight day cushion between them.

And now we wait.

...for national party approval.

...and the states' reactions throughout next year.

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: It was funny to look back at some of those 2007 posts in putting this one together. That was during the very early days of FHQ and I daresay few people outside of me and perhaps a few others have ever seen them. No one is ever that bored.]

Thoughts following the 2nd Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting

Over the weekend the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee reconvened in Washington (yes, sans FHQ) to further cement the rules governing the 2012 Democratic presidential nomination. The set of rules coming out of this meeting will go before the full DNC in St. Louis next month for approval. In its initial meeting in May, the committee made quick work of the most of the rules -- only tweaking some of the particulars from the 2008 rules -- but following discussion, tabled most of the more contentious issues that concerned some of the recommendations made by the Democratic Change Commission. Namely, what to do with the superdelegates' influence, how to make more uniform the caucus process across states, and how to curb frontloading. For our part, FHQ will focus on the last of those in this initial post, but will return to the other issues later. [Side note: And yes, I do need to put this all together with the changes the Republicans have proposed as well. FHQ has neglected the much more interesting and consequential Republican rules-making process. Amends will be made, I assure you, dear readers.]

Now, some have called the rules recommendations that came out of the this meeting and the earlier Republican meeting, the "most significant alteration to the primary calendars since '68..." The McGovern-Fraser reforms fundamentally reshaped the way in which presidential nominees were chosen from that point forward. They turned presidential primaries and caucuses from non-binding contests meant to influence party leaders at the national convention into binding contests that determined to some degree the level of support candidates would receive at the convention. The primary calendars after that point evolved, and though the negative effects of frontloading were being discussed as early as the Hunt Commission (the pre-1984 cycle's equivalent of the Democratic Change Commission), it took until 1988 and into the '90s for the full effects of McGovern-Fraser to be felt in terms of the calendar. And, of course, these were unintended consequences of those reforms.

Perhaps you can tell, I don't particularly like the comparison to the 1968 Chicago convention's reform measures. FHQ also has another problem with this comparison.* As I alluded to above, it overstates matters. Both parties have recognized frontloading as a "problem" for several cycles now. And it is no small feat that both the DNC and RNC determined that the best way to combat the problem was to work together, representing a unified front against would-be rule breakers (Florida and Michigan, I'm looking in your direction.). That fact alone is significant in and of itself, but this process is only in its first phase: rules formation. The national parties will have to ratify those changes in order to end this part of the cycle.

The next phase will play out through much of next year. It is one thing to institute new rules, but it is another to have the states go along with those changes. A good first step is to have both parties on the same page, but Florida and Michigan (and all the pre-February 5, 2008 states but Nevada and Iowa on the Republican side) may have set a precedent in 2008. And with so many states having to move the dates on which their primaries are held to comply with the new rules, there is more incentive than ever to shirk.

That was the real message that came out of all of these meetings on both sides. Both parties are together in terms of their calendar set ups, but the sanctions did not change in the least from 2008. Yes, the Democrats bumped up their incentives for states electing to hold later contests, but that has proven ineffective in the past. The true effect of one of those 2008 sanctions likely won't be felt until 2012 anyway. That the Democrats stripped candidates of half their delegates if they campaigned in a state in violation of the timing rules was very crafty. It kept Obama and Edwards among others out of Florida and (they took themselves off the ballot in) Michigan. That has the effect of making a state meaningless or at least far less influential than otherwise. And that penalty is back for the 2012 cycle. States might have thought twice about flaunting the rules if that sanction was in place on the Republican side. Of course, it is a Democratic sanction and I doubt it will matter much if the Democratic Party strips Obama of half his delegates in a state in violation (they won't). With all the action on the Republican side, a promising sanction won't mean a whole lot.

As I said over the weekend on Twitter, it only takes one state to unravel the best of intentions and trigger a calendar somewhere between what the parties want and where things were in 2008. So, while tweaking the timing of contests is unique in the post-reform era, it isn't that fundamental a change in the grand scheme of things and certainly won't be if states don't comply.

*Another issue is that the parties did voluntarily change their rules to allow January and February contests over the last decade and a half. That was at least an equivalent change to what has been proposed for 2012 (proportionality rules excluded).

Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting in DC Today and Tomorrow

From First Read:

Setting the 2012 calendar: There’s another meeting to watch today -- this one in D.C. At 1:00 pm ET, DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meets, and it’s expected that they’ll vote on dates for the pre-window states (IA, NH, SC, NV) and reducing the influence of superdelegates.

FHQ doubts very seriously that the R&B selects the dates for the four exempt states. They might set the parameters from which those states will make their choices, but they won't set the dates. Each will wait as late as possible in the process (next year) to finalize those dates -- to ensure that they are as safe as possible at the beginning of the process.

We haven't touched base with Frank Leone at DemRulz, but he is expected to be on-site today and tomorrow. Check in there for updates and here for some ex post facto thoughts on the full meeting on Monday.

The 2012 Presidential Primary Calendar (6/30/10)

For the most up-to-date version of this calendar see the left sidebar under the 2012 electoral college projection or click here.

There has been enough chatter on the primary/caucus scheduling front in the last few days to warrant a long overdue update of the 2012 presidential calendar from FHQ. Here again are the guidelines for reading the calendar from the last update in May 2009:

1. Caucus states are italicized while primary states are not. Several caucus states are missing from the list because they have not formalized the date on which their contests will be held in 2012. Colorado appears because the caucuses dates there are set by the state, whereas a state like Alaska has caucuses run by the state parties and as such do not have their dates codified in state law.
2. States that have changed dates appear twice (or more) on the calendar; once by the old date and once by the new date. The old date will be struck through while the new date will be color-coded with the amount of movement (in days) in parentheses. States in green are states that have moved to earlier dates on the calendar and states in red are those that have moved to later dates. Arkansas, for example, has moved its 2012 primary and moved it back 104 days from its 2008 position.

2012 Presidential Primary Calendar

Monday, January 16, 2012: Iowa caucuses*

Tuesday, January 24: New Hampshire*

Saturday, January 28: Nevada caucuses*, South Carolina*

A note on the placement of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Tuesday, January 31: Florida

Tuesday, February 7 (Super Tuesday): Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Montana Republican caucuses, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah

Saturday, February 11: Louisiana

Tuesday, February 14: Maryland, Virginia

Tuesday, February 21: Hawaii Republican caucuses (+87), Wisconsin

Tuesday, February 28: Arizona**, Michigan***

Tuesday, March 6: Massachusetts***, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont

Tuesday, March 13: Mississippi

Tuesday, March 20: Colorado caucuses****, Illinois (-42)

Tuesday, April 24: Pennsylvania

Tuesday, May 8: Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia

Tuesday, May 15: Nebraska, Oregon

Tuesday, May 22: Arkansas (-104), Idaho, Kentucky

Tuesday, June 5: Montana (GOP -119), New Mexico***** and South Dakota

*New Hampshire law calls for the Granite state to hold a primary on the second Tuesday of March or seven days prior to any other similar election, whichever is earlier. Florida is first now, so New Hampshire would be a week earlier at the latest. Traditionally, Iowa has gone on the Monday a week prior to New Hampshire. For the time being we'll wedge Nevada and South Carolina in on the Saturday between New Hampshire and Florida, but these are just guesses at the moment. Any rogue states could cause a shift.

**In Arizona the governor can use his or her proclamation powers to move the state's primary to a date on which the event would have an impact on the nomination. In 2004 and 2008 the primary was moved to the first Tuesday in February.

***Massachusetts and Michigan are the only states that passed a frontloading bill prior to 2008 that was not permanent. The Bay state reverts to its first Tuesday in March date in 2012 while Michigan will fall back to the fourth Tuesday in February.

****The Colorado Democratic and Republican parties have the option to move their caucuses from the third Tuesday in March to the first Tuesday in February.

*****The law in New Mexico allows the parties to decide when to hold their nominating contests. The Democrats have gone in early February in the last two cycles, but the GOP has held steady in June. They have the option of moving however.

A note on the Minnesota caucuses.

Notes:

1. There have been several states (state legislatures) and parties that have made changes with 2012 in mind:

• The Illinois legislature moved the date of the state's presidential primary (and that of state and local primaries as well since all are held concurrently) from the first Tuesday in February to the third Tuesday in March when the elections had been held prior to 2008. The main motivation behind the legislation (SB 355) was to move the other primaries back to their original date so as not to lengthen the general election campaigns for other offices. Apparently the financial hit that would have been caused by separating the presidential primary was too steep. Illinois is also one of the states that has always insisted on having both sets of contests held together. That also makes Illinois one of the rare states to have both held their all their primary elections at once and moved to an earlier date on the presidential primary calendar. Rare may be a bit strong, but those states with separate presidential primaries -- separate from those for state and local offices -- are much more likely to move and have moved their contests in the post-reform era.
• Montana Republicans just recently opted to forgo their scheduled February 2012 caucus and take advantage of the state-funded primary. The influence they sought by moving to February in 2008 was lacking with over half of the country either voting on or before that February 5 date on which the GOP caucus was held in Montana. Not unlike Arkansas, Montana Republicans didn't find the greener (more influential) pastures in 2008 they thought they would when the moves were made.
• The New Hampshire General Court did not settle on a date for 2012 -- that's up to Secretary of State William Gardner anyway -- but they did act to protect the state's first-in-the-nation status by tweaking the Granite State's election law. HB 341 carried over from last year and was passed, though in a modified form. The version from 2009 contained more specific language implying that only Iowa could precede New Hampshire on the calendar. That segment was missing in the 2010 version, replaced with the line, "The purpose of this section is to protect the tradition of the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation presidential primary." The bottom line is that New Hampshire will be among, if not the, last state to decide the date on which its 2012 primary will be held (...or if it will be held in 2012 at all. No, FHQ doesn't think that's a possibility, but time will tell.).

2. Of most interest to those following this calendar shaping process is what the parties decide on in terms of rules later this summer. If both parties, as expected, call for a return to pre-2004 timing rules (read: no February contests for non-exempt states), the focus will shift to those states that will have to move their contests in order to comply with the new rules. That count now sits at 18 primary states and one caucus state, not to mention the four exempt states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina).

3. I've gotten several comments on a "recent" post I wrote about the 2012 rules and calendar. Let me make clear that that post was an exercise that assumed the exempted states opted to move first in the process by voluntarily accepting the proposed scheduling rules. Under that scenario, Florida would be in the catbird seat: first but in need of a change to comply with the new rules. This will not happen. Florida may opt to stick with that last Tuesday in January date, but Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina will make their scheduling decisions after Florida has acted, or not acted, on their date. More than anything that post was to serve as a visual for why Florida should flaunt the rules again in 2012.

South Carolina's Alphabetical Disorder

This is out of FHQ's wheelhouse, but we have, like many others, been intrigued by the events surrounding the Democratic nomination race for Senate in South Carolina this week. To a fault -- or perhaps not -- I have been trained to both resist simple answers and play devil's advocate. At the same time, I'm also hesitant to latch onto conspiracy theories. In other words, FHQ has not subscribed to either the alphabetical order argument nor does it necessarily accept the "Republican plant" argument that Jim Clyburn has been pushing the last couple of days. To me, something else is up with this race and it rests somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

John Sides over at The Monkey Cage has looked into the alphabetical explanation:

"And I’m not sure that the potential ballot order effect is implausibly large. Assume for the moment that voters were essentially choosing at random between the candidates. That would imply a 50-50 outcome. The actual outcome was 58-41, which only implies that 8-9% of voters were influenced by ballot margin."

The only thing that bothers me about that line of reasoning -- and I find it sound -- is that the 2008 Senate nomination race, as folks within the South Carolina Democratic Party have pointed out, was between two equally unknown candidates statewide and the result was a near draw. However, if one is looking for ballot order effects between two unknown candidates, the 2008 race may have been mitigated by the fact that both candidates had very similar last names. Michael Cone and Bob Conley. Conley won 50.36-49.64 and went on to lose to Lindsey Graham in November.

So what else could explain the out-of-nowhere performance Alvin Greene turned in on Tuesday? Some have speculated that race was also a factor; that somehow Greene's name may have tipped off voters in a primary electorate that is overwhelmingly African American. Again, this one is tough to isolate. Sides also examined the relationship between the share of the vote that Greene got across each of South Carolina's 46 counties and the percentage of each county that was African American in the 2000 Census. There was a slight relationship there, but as Sides points out, it wasn't statistically significant.

But let's try and find some middle ground between the simple explanations and the conspiracy theories. This one is just too fishy to me, and here's why. If one wants to find some irregularities, one has to go looking for them. My thought was to look at the turnout numbers from Tuesday. First of all, Greene lost four of 46 counties statewide and cleared 60% in 29 of those 42. That seems more systematic than random. But let's assume that it was random for a moment and keep poking around. The other oddity is that turnout among Democrats was actually up compared to the Democratic primaries of 2006 and 2008. Those two elections were -- at least nationally -- cycles that favored Democrats while 2010 does not. The numbers in 2010 were actually comparable to the Senate race in 2004 which saw Inez Tenenbaum, the state's Education Superintendant, emerge with the nomination. But she was a known quantity while neither Vic Rawl nor Alvin Greene were in 2010.

Total Turnout (Democratic primaries):
2004--167790
2006--138343*
2008--147287
2010--170215

Fine. Turnout was up in an otherwise down year for Democrats (nationally). So what? That doesn't mean anything is going on in South Carolina. No, it doesn't, but let's have a look at the county by county numbers (click on View All Data) in 2010 versus 2008 and see if there is any pattern to the vote increases. The problem here is that the raw vote totals in each county cannot be used. What I did then was look at each county's share of the statewide Democratic vote total in the Senate primaries in each election cycle. This percentage is a means of pseudo-standardizing the measure. The 2008 percentage was then subtracted from the 2010 percentage. In turn, that gives us an idea of which counties increased their total vote shares the most. My thought when I started this exercise was that if any ballot boxes were going to be stuffed (or machines tampered with), the best place to hide it would be in high vote areas. I quickly glanced through the data for all 46 counties and saw that a disproportionate number of the gainers -- those states that gained the greatest share of the vote from 2008 to 2010 -- were the most populous states. In fact, of the top ten gainers, seven were among the top ten most populous counties. Additionally, the gains across all of the top 10 most populous counties (distinct from the top ten gainers) accounted for over 24,000 votes or about 80% of the more than 30,000 margin by which Greene won.

While this seems to indicate that something might be amiss in the most population dense areas of the state, there are two big problems with this experiment.

1) Now it is true that there seems to be a pattern here; that more populous counties were more likely to see above average gains in their share of the statewide total. But that just accounts for the difference between 2008 and 2010. What if that is a typical trend from cycle to cycle? As a simple check I did the same exercise but compared the difference between the Democratic Senate primaries of 2004 and 2008 (see footnote below for explanation on 2006). The population-based pattern exhibited in the changes from 2008 to 2010 was non-existent in the change over from 2004 to 2008. The latter had no real detectable pattern and indeed looked quite randomly distributed. In the 2004-2008 example, only three of the top ten most populous were among the states that gained in terms of their share of the statewide vote from one Senate cycle to the next. There may be something here.

2) There may be something here, but we've left out one important part. It's fine for those counties to have gained a larger share of the total statewide vote from 2008 to 2010, but how did Greene actually perform in those counties? This is where the wheels come off this explanation somewhat. Greene actually underperformed his statewide average of 59% in the ten most populous counties. The mystery candidate garnered only 57.5% in those ten counties. The raw votes increased, in other words, but that didn't translate into Greene or someone acting behind the scenes stuffing the ballot box on his behalf.

Is this the end of the road for this idea? No, I think there still may be something here, but that there needs to be a greater focus on some sort of an interaction between the percentage urban and percentage black for each county. If there is a large degree of overlap between the two, that likely punches some holes in the racialized argument. But South Carolina is still part of the South and urban doesn't necessarily mean black in the way it does in other states with major metropolitan areas.

If there is some conspiracy here, whoever is behind it left some clues behind but didn't make anything easy on the slew of political scientists who are acting like CSI forensics experts with this thing. In the meantime, FHQ will keep digging and let you know if we turn up anything more.

*There was no Senate race in South Carolina in 2006. These numbers are from the top of the ticket race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Update: Tom Schaller over at FiveThirtyEight has much more.