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
Gender Gap or Gender Deficit in 2012?
FHQ Friday Fun: One from the Left/One from the Right
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
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:
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:
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.
Recent Posts:
Gender Gap or Gender Deficit in 2012?
FHQ Friday Fun: One from the Left/One from the Right
Reminder: Democratic Change Commission Meets Tomorrow in Washington
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 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.
Recent Posts:
Gender Gap or Gender Deficit in 2012?
FHQ Friday Fun: One from the Left/One from the Right
Reminder: Democratic Change Commission Meets Tomorrow in Washington
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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[Click to Enlarge]
...and nationally unknown Pawlenty on the one hand...
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[Click to Enlarge]
and Huckabee...
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[Click to Enlarge]
...and Romney on the the other.
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[Click to Enlarge]
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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PPP's 2012 Presidential General Election Trial Heats In-Depth
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...
.png)
[Click to Enlarge]...and nationally unknown Pawlenty on the one hand...
.png)
[Click to Enlarge]and Huckabee...
.png)
[Click to Enlarge]...and Romney on the the other.
.png)
[Click to Enlarge]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.
Recent Posts:
FHQ Friday Fun: One from the Left/One from the Right
Reminder: Democratic Change Commission Meets Tomorrow in Washington
PPP's 2012 Presidential General Election Trial Heats In-Depth
Friday, October 23, 2009
FHQ Friday Fun: One from the Left/One from the Right
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.
Recent Posts:
Reminder: Democratic Change Commission Meets Tomorrow in Washington
PPP's 2012 Presidential General Election Trial Heats In-Depth
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/22/09)
Hat tip to Seth Masket at Enik Rising for the Cheney link and Dan Perrin at Red State of the Family Research Council ad.
Recent Posts:
Reminder: Democratic Change Commission Meets Tomorrow in Washington
PPP's 2012 Presidential General Election Trial Heats In-Depth
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/22/09)
Reminder: Democratic Change Commission Meets Tomorrow in Washington
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.)
Recent Posts:
PPP's 2012 Presidential General Election Trial Heats In-Depth
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/22/09)
PPP 2012 Presidential Trial Heats: Huckabee's Still Tops
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.)
Recent Posts:
PPP's 2012 Presidential General Election Trial Heats In-Depth
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/22/09)
PPP 2012 Presidential Trial Heats: Huckabee's Still Tops
Thursday, October 22, 2009
PPP's 2012 Presidential General Election Trial Heats In-Depth
Well, it appears as if the Bush bias from last month's Public Policy Polling survey of the 2012 presidential election has vanished with the former Florida governor excluded from the list of candidates hypothetically pitted against President Obama. Recall that Jeb Bush was the first candidate asked about in that poll and that may have primed respondents to conjure up memories of the not too distant Bush administration (How long will that last?). With Bush out and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty in, the numbers for the stable list of candidates (Huckabee, Palin and Romney) returned to form -- or at least to levels that existed in the firm's August glimpse at the 2012 field. And you can see that depicted below. Just compare the August numbers the results released a day ago:
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[Click to Enlarge]
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[Click to Enlarge]
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[Click to Enlarge]
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[Click to Enlarge]
What else is there in this poll, though? There have been some quirks in these PPP polls throughout 2009. In July, it was Obama sweeping the South and in August it was the underlying education demographics of the sample. But nothing really jumps out at my after a rather cursory glance at the cross-tabs for October. However, there are some interesting trends in there.
First, the gender gap trend is still present. Palin continues to lag behind her male Republican counterparts relative to Obama among women. But for once someone did worse than the former Alaska governor on that front. Tim Pawlenty came in a whopping -37 on the gender gap measure (-24 with women and -13 with men against Obama) whereas Palin registered a -25 point disadvantage. When you compare that to Huckabee (-8) and Romney (-14), there really appears to be a line of demarcation between this group of candidates. In Pawlenty's defense, the Minnesota governor is dealing with being far more unknown to people than the other candidates and that definitely had an impact on his numbers.
There were also some interesting trends across the various age groups. Obama beat every Republican across every age group, but the patterns were noteworthy. The expectation is that the older the respondent, the more likely they would be to support a Republican candidate. That trend holds for Huckabee and Pawlenty, though the gaps are far greater for Pawlenty. That trend doesn't hold for Romney or Palin, though. In both cases, the former governors trail Obama but do better among the youngest group of voters (18-29) and the oldest group of voters (65+) than they do with the middle two age groups (30-45, 46-65) -- the gaps are smaller anyway.
All in all, an interesting poll. We'll have to see what November brings.
Recent Posts:
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/22/09)
PPP 2012 Presidential Trial Heats: Huckabee's Still Tops
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/21/09)
Obama: 47
Huckabee: 43
Undecided: 10
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[Click to Enlarge]Obama: 52
Palin: 40
Undecided: 8
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[Click to Enlarge]Obama: 50
Pawlenty: 30
Undecided: 20
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[Click to Enlarge]Obama: 48
Romney: 40
Undecided: 12
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[Click to Enlarge]Polling Firm: Public Policy PollingAcross the board, then, the three regulars improved this month on their performances against Obama in September. Now, whether that has anything to do with Bush being or not being in the survey questionnaire is certainly up for debate. On the surface, though, it looks as if that may have played a role. Obama's standing has changed little in the last month. The president's approval numbers are in basically the same position with the disapproval level has inched up a notch or so. However, that movement hardly seems to account for the closing of the gap between the president and the three prospective Republican nominees.
Margin or Error: +/- 3.5%
Sample: 766 likely voters (nationally)
Conducted: October 16-19, 2009
What else is there in this poll, though? There have been some quirks in these PPP polls throughout 2009. In July, it was Obama sweeping the South and in August it was the underlying education demographics of the sample. But nothing really jumps out at my after a rather cursory glance at the cross-tabs for October. However, there are some interesting trends in there.
First, the gender gap trend is still present. Palin continues to lag behind her male Republican counterparts relative to Obama among women. But for once someone did worse than the former Alaska governor on that front. Tim Pawlenty came in a whopping -37 on the gender gap measure (-24 with women and -13 with men against Obama) whereas Palin registered a -25 point disadvantage. When you compare that to Huckabee (-8) and Romney (-14), there really appears to be a line of demarcation between this group of candidates. In Pawlenty's defense, the Minnesota governor is dealing with being far more unknown to people than the other candidates and that definitely had an impact on his numbers.
There were also some interesting trends across the various age groups. Obama beat every Republican across every age group, but the patterns were noteworthy. The expectation is that the older the respondent, the more likely they would be to support a Republican candidate. That trend holds for Huckabee and Pawlenty, though the gaps are far greater for Pawlenty. That trend doesn't hold for Romney or Palin, though. In both cases, the former governors trail Obama but do better among the youngest group of voters (18-29) and the oldest group of voters (65+) than they do with the middle two age groups (30-45, 46-65) -- the gaps are smaller anyway.
All in all, an interesting poll. We'll have to see what November brings.
Recent Posts:
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/22/09)
PPP 2012 Presidential Trial Heats: Huckabee's Still Tops
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/21/09)
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/22/09)
[Click to Enlarge]Thursday was a busy day in the New Jersey governors race. Not only was it the day of the last debate between the three main contenders, but we were also treated to three new polls in the race*. The take-home message from those surveys? Corzine and Christie have deadlocked just below the 40% mark, and at least today, independent Chris Daggett has consolidated much of the rest. Across the three polls the independent averaged just over 17% support and passed 20% in the Rutgers/Eagleton poll.
I scoffed at the notion a week or so ago that Daggett could reprise Jesse Ventura's run to the Minnesota governor's mansion in 1998, but today's polling looks an awful lot like the home stretch survey work in that Minnesota race a decade ago. No, there isn't same day registration/voting in New Jersey as there was in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but there is a new (absentee) vote by mail process in the Garden state that could potentially help Daggett in that respect. But the independent hasn't been as vocal as Jon Corzine has been on that front. Sure, the Daggett folks have been nice enough to retweet several FHQ microblog postings on Twitter, but Corzine has been using the service to urge folks to utilize the vote by mail process while Daggett has not. [In between mentions of Obama's visit a day ago, Corzine has been informing folks about how many days are left in the vote by mail sequence. 5 more days apparently.]
FHQ mocks the Corzine camp, but Survey USA was nice enough to ask a "have you voted" question in the survey released today. And though only 8% of the respondents had, Corzine had banked slightly more votes than Christie (44-39) with Daggett trailing at 16%. Christie led Corzine by a similar margin among the 92% of the respondents who had not voted (by mail).
| 2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling | |||||||
| Poll | Date | Margin of Error | Sample | Corzine | Christie | Daggett | Undecided |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democracy Corps [pdf] | Oct. 20-21, 2009 | +/- 4% | 604 likely voters | 42 | 39 | 13 | 6 |
| Rutgers/Eagleton [pdf] | Oct. 15-20, 2009 | +/- 4.1% | 583 likely voters | 39 | 36 | 20 | 5 |
| Survey USA | Oct. 19-21, 2009 | +/- 3.9% | 674 likely voters | 39 | 41 | 19 | 1 |
And what is the state of this race? Though the incumbent has held a fairly stable line over the course of 2009, he has finally met the 39% plateau in FHQ's averages. Meanwhile, Chris Christie's support continues to wane (below 44% for the first time in our measures) while Chris Daggett is very much waxing (over 10% and growing). All the momentum is with the independent. FHQ didn't get to catch the final debate tonight, but did follow along on Twitter. Daggett remained quiet the entire duration almost while Corzine and Christie (or their staffs at least) had an elevated tweet sniping match (compared to the other debate time tweeting). If that is any indication of how the final 12 days of this campaign are going to be waged (and it will get nasty), then Chris Daggett may well pull off his own Jesse Ventura-type win.
That's still a long shot at this point, but not as long as it was a week ago or a week prior to that. There has been a lot of talk about how these races (New Jersey and Virginia) would be spun by the national parties recently and much of that has shifted to talk of a split (Corzine winning in New Jersey and McDonnell in Virginia), but I wonder how the Democratic Party would spin it if they lost to the Republicans in Virginia and an independent in New Jersey. I suspect it would be rather dire after looking like Christie was handing it to them. Again, will that happen? FHQ doesn't dare speculate in such a tight race, but it is an interesting hypothetical to consider with under two weeks to go.
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[Click to Enlarge]NOTE: I feel compelled to remind readers that on multiple poll days like today, the "actual" polling levels are averaged across how many ever polls were released. That's why, for instance, you don't see Daggett on the 20% line as the Rutgers poll had him.
*It should also be noted that today was also the day that Corzine passed Christie in the Real Clear Politics and Pollster poll aggregations.
Recent Posts:
PPP 2012 Presidential Trial Heats: Huckabee's Still Tops
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/21/09)
Got 2010 Redistricting on the Brain?
PPP 2012 Presidential Trial Heats: Huckabee's Still Tops
Here's the latest from Public Policy Polling on the 2012 presidential general election trial heats. FHQ will add these as we've got time today. I'm in and out of meetings all day, so the graphs will be up incrementally and the full analysis will follow later.
Obama: 47
Huckabee: 43
Undecided: 10
Obama: 52
Palin: 40
Undecided: 8
Obama: 50
Pawlenty: 30
Undecided: 20
Obama: 48
Romney: 40
Undecided: 12
Polling Firm: Public Policy Polling
Margin or Error: +/- 3.5%
Sample: 766 likely voters
Conducted: October 16-19, 2009
Recent Posts:
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/21/09)
Got 2010 Redistricting on the Brain?
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/20/09)
Obama: 47
Huckabee: 43
Undecided: 10
Obama: 52
Palin: 40
Undecided: 8
Obama: 50
Pawlenty: 30
Undecided: 20
Obama: 48
Romney: 40
Undecided: 12
Polling Firm: Public Policy Polling
Margin or Error: +/- 3.5%
Sample: 766 likely voters
Conducted: October 16-19, 2009
Recent Posts:
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/21/09)
Got 2010 Redistricting on the Brain?
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/20/09)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/21/09)
[Click to Enlarge]Well, this felt like a slow day on the polling front in Virginia and New Jersey. After a bevy of polls a day ago, there was but one poll released today. [I'm still trying to figure out how I processed all those polls a year ago in the presidential race. Five polls was nothing; especially this late in the race.] And Public Policy Polling's peek into the state of the race in Virginia wasn't like any of the polls a day ago. It seemed to settle in between the optimistic Survey USA poll (Well, optimistic if you're Bob McDonnell.) and the, in FHQ's estimation, more accurate Clarus Research Group survey. At 52-40, favoring McDonnell, though, it looked just as bad to the Deeds campaign. At this point, anything over double digits is a big hit to the Democratic state senator. And when the likely electorate is only 33% Democratic and 16% African American, it just isn't going to turn out well for the Democrat. It is no wonder, then, that when Obama visits, he's hitting the Hampton Roads area instead of Northern Virginia; the black vote is the target.
| 2009 Virginia Gubernatorial Race Polling | ||||||
| Poll | Date | Margin of Error | Sample | Deeds | McDonnell | Undecided |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public Policy Polling [pdf] | Oct. 17-19, 2009 | +/- 3.8% | 666 likely voters | 40 | 52 | 7 |
In any event, McDonnell is ahead and lengthening his lead over Creigh Deeds on top of that. The lone card left for Deeds to play is the Obama card because enthusiasm among commonwealth Democrats is what is killing Deeds. As Tom Jensen said today, the electorate has gone from +6 Obama a year ago to +6 McCain today. That's a significant shift in a year and one that even an Obama visit to the Old Dominion can't reverse.
Currently, FHQ has the race at just under ten points, but it is only a matter of time before that tops that threshold.
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[Click to Enlarge]And one more thing, while we're on the subject of Virginia: The Virginia Voter Information Project has revamped its web site with the help of Pew, Google and the New Organizing Institute and added some nice features. Below is a Google Gadget to locate where it is that you can vote.
...if you're Virginian.
Hat tip to Paul Gronke at Election Updates for the link.
Recent Posts:
Got 2010 Redistricting on the Brain?
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/20/09)
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/20/09)
Got 2010 Redistricting on the Brain?
Well, you might now after looking at this. FHQ has found just the site to help you while away the time until the census is complete next year: RedistricingTheNation.com.
It is one thing to say you are from the 5th district of North Carolina, but quite another to see your district on the map and how it stacks up on the various measures of compactness compared to other districts. (Remember the rules of redistricting: compactness, contiguity, etc.) For instance, NC-5 borders the infamous NC-12 that, before the courts got a hold of it, stretched all the way from Gaston County (FHQ's home turf), just west of Charlotte, to Durham. And for those who haven't memorized a North Carolina map, that's from the western end of the state all the way to the eastern end. At one point (Again, before the state was forced to redraw the lines.), the district traveled up I-85 and was only as wide as the interstate itself (mind you, where there weren't any houses) in several spots. Even the redrawn district that survives to this day is among the top ten in terms of least compact districts (by all four different measures).
How does your district stack up? NC-5 is a middle of the road district for compactness.
Oh, and if that isn't enough, you can look at state legislative districts and local ones as well. And you can even see who is tasked with drawing the new lines. My classes on redistricting won't be the same.
Hat tip to Joshua Tucker at The Monkey Cage for the link.
A link to this site will be added to the right sidebar section called Data and Other Resources.
Recent Posts:
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/20/09)
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/20/09)
New (Well, Old) Rasmussen 2012 GOP Primary Poll: Huckabee's Tops
It is one thing to say you are from the 5th district of North Carolina, but quite another to see your district on the map and how it stacks up on the various measures of compactness compared to other districts. (Remember the rules of redistricting: compactness, contiguity, etc.) For instance, NC-5 borders the infamous NC-12 that, before the courts got a hold of it, stretched all the way from Gaston County (FHQ's home turf), just west of Charlotte, to Durham. And for those who haven't memorized a North Carolina map, that's from the western end of the state all the way to the eastern end. At one point (Again, before the state was forced to redraw the lines.), the district traveled up I-85 and was only as wide as the interstate itself (mind you, where there weren't any houses) in several spots. Even the redrawn district that survives to this day is among the top ten in terms of least compact districts (by all four different measures).
How does your district stack up? NC-5 is a middle of the road district for compactness.
Oh, and if that isn't enough, you can look at state legislative districts and local ones as well. And you can even see who is tasked with drawing the new lines. My classes on redistricting won't be the same.
Hat tip to Joshua Tucker at The Monkey Cage for the link.
A link to this site will be added to the right sidebar section called Data and Other Resources.
Recent Posts:
State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/20/09)
State of the Race: Virginia Governor (10/20/09)
New (Well, Old) Rasmussen 2012 GOP Primary Poll: Huckabee's Tops
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