tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75051924872425805512024-02-18T20:57:57.709-06:00Politics by the NumbersI started posting bits of data analysis related to contemporary politics at my old <a href="http://election08data.blogspot.com/">blog</a> early in the 2008 primary season but have been relatively inactive since the 2008 election. This space is intended to pick up where the old blog left off, though hopefully on a less sporadic basis.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-53020963614447402292022-06-22T11:35:00.001-05:002022-06-22T11:35:43.277-05:00Online Data Analysis Textbook<p> Here's a<a href="https://bookdown.org/tomholbrook12/bookdown-demo/" target="_blank"> link to an online political data analysis textbook </a>I put together last spring: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFL6fBLyCuBWfHTahP5JWE_cs5KC1dZLjuiV4SXAz3c33SaQgEl_4ueR-uaRrGp1rqDSHoU5ROG-A3Spnrg0i7AAkKdKu3L10N-2B6uajrkDFnN8aNJZgHidjjhk0-HXCWK2Tneng1s84xyFVzXuWNekD_A0TkyM3Mp27lavl7FUK3o0J6xOeoFCANKA/s792/bookcover.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="612" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFL6fBLyCuBWfHTahP5JWE_cs5KC1dZLjuiV4SXAz3c33SaQgEl_4ueR-uaRrGp1rqDSHoU5ROG-A3Spnrg0i7AAkKdKu3L10N-2B6uajrkDFnN8aNJZgHidjjhk0-HXCWK2Tneng1s84xyFVzXuWNekD_A0TkyM3Mp27lavl7FUK3o0J6xOeoFCANKA/s320/bookcover.png" width="247" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Feel free to use it if it works for you.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-51781352539617985842020-11-02T12:38:00.000-06:002020-11-02T12:38:24.346-06:00DeSart/Holbrook Model<p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); color: #14171a; display: inline; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 23px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3125; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">In case you missed it before, I'm posting a link to the <a href="http://www.thepoliticaldatanerd.com" target="_blank">DeSart/Holbrook forecasting model </a></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); color: #14171a; display: inline; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 23px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3125; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Props to <a href="https://twitter.com/JADPhD" target="_blank">Jay DeSart</a></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); color: #14171a; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 23px; white-space: pre-wrap;">, who has kept this updated over the years. </span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); color: #14171a; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 23px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here's the bottom line, if you don't want to read the deets (but you should read the deets):</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3fomZ349cTj8dHfi4obctrQVTtRXK-Vd1KXrV-C48FcgPPM8u8UP96as-5mvzQUQzrp-iAPzRhFaFh14_AkAxeYoIrrO6R3Xlt2xkilZSYWqFn1M92kpcMxV-19if6qMWH4zAR2L5eql/s517/2020Map.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="517" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3fomZ349cTj8dHfi4obctrQVTtRXK-Vd1KXrV-C48FcgPPM8u8UP96as-5mvzQUQzrp-iAPzRhFaFh14_AkAxeYoIrrO6R3Xlt2xkilZSYWqFn1M92kpcMxV-19if6qMWH4zAR2L5eql/w400-h350/2020Map.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); color: #14171a; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 23px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); color: #14171a; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 23px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-50748747122361984902020-08-10T12:24:00.002-05:002020-08-10T12:25:36.984-05:00Convention Bumps Revisited<div style="text-align: justify;">It's hard to say what we should expect in terms of polling gains from the COVID-era, remote nominating conventions over the next few weeks. On one hand, the well-choreographed convention floor "show" will be missing, potentially robbing the both Biden and Trump of whatever benefits there are from the spectacle nature of these sorts of events. At the same time, the candidates are still the beneficiaries of four straight days during which they probably will dominate media coverage, including two-hours of prime-time television coverage each night of the convention. So it may well be that the impact of the conventions in 2020 are not terribly different than in other years. We'll know more about this in a few weeks.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the meantime, I thought it would be useful to review the extent to which the convening party candidate receives a bump in the polls following their convention. I've covered much of this in previous <a href="http://politics-by-the-numbers.blogspot.com/2012/08/bump-time.html" target="_blank">posts</a> so I'll just briefly review a few key points here.</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The figure below summarizes the size of convention bumps from 1964 to 2016 (Red=Republican, Blue=Democrat). The convention bump is measured <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">as the percentage point change in the convening party's share of the two-party vote, comparing polls taken between six days and two-weeks prior to the convention with polls taken during the seven days following the convention. Note that this is a short-term measure of the convention bump and does not say anything about the rate of decay in the weeks following the convention, and different calculation methods (dates covered, polls used) could produce different results. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOv2RxpexGgHiaIUsjVCoiNOTNktnLCbOvnBB9lcYMHBbyDp7Gx46HaWChln_lVtHj9f_H1BkW9jUTq41s96EZiden2cwyKM4_GafnTBG-HeYJmO2Uq_2NMboLnWCqewJU6UjaDwICQWPJ/s2048/bumps62_16.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1489" data-original-width="2048" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOv2RxpexGgHiaIUsjVCoiNOTNktnLCbOvnBB9lcYMHBbyDp7Gx46HaWChln_lVtHj9f_H1BkW9jUTq41s96EZiden2cwyKM4_GafnTBG-HeYJmO2Uq_2NMboLnWCqewJU6UjaDwICQWPJ/w512-h372/bumps62_16.png" width="512" /></a></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
There is a lot going on here but there are a few takeaway points. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
1. <b> Candidates generally get a bump of some sort</b>. The size of the bump is highly variable but virtually all candidates leave their convention doing better in the polls than when they went into the convention.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
2. <b> The size of the convention bump does not predict the overall winner very well.</b> Just ask Presidents Goldwater, Mondale, Dole, or Gore, all of whom had bigger bumps than their competitors. One of the reasons for this is that candidates running way behind in the polls have an easier time gaining ground during their conventions. For instance, in 1964 Barry Goldwater was so far behind in the pre-convention polls (averaging 21% of the vote) that it was easy for him to improve his standing by thirteen points during the convention, though he still never come close to being competitive. At the same time, Lyndon Johnson went into his convention with 69% of the vote in pre-election polls and left the convention with no bump but still with a substantial lead. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
3. <b>Convention bumps aren't what they used to be (see figure below)</b>. Prior to the 2000 election, convention bumps averaged more than six points, but that has fallen to just over two points from 2000 to 2016. One potential explanation for this change lies in the scheduling of conventions. The 2008 and 2012 conventions were held in late August and early September, and from 2008 to 2016 the conventions were held on back-to-back weeks. The norm in other years had been to hold the conventions in late July or early August and to separate them by two to three weeks. What is probably most important here is holding the conventions on consecutive weeks, which means that the convention messages end up overlapping and may cancel out each other. Another potential explanation lies in the increased polarization of the electorate. It is possible that partisans are so much more committed to their candidates now than they were before, and there is a much smaller persuadable electorate that can be influenced by events like the nominating conventions.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKiyUr2Fp82fSFTrjaJSbOM2HMQIlrGbyvMiT3ZGwRlSSSqOYyV78F0XGUG831pF4mYpswRWKUsZtyoBghTCdQplQnqlF4U1nPqphGSL3iNvnZMZOwtL56At6jdOtaoWVca4M-lOVigqF5/s2048/bump_averages.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1490" data-original-width="2048" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKiyUr2Fp82fSFTrjaJSbOM2HMQIlrGbyvMiT3ZGwRlSSSqOYyV78F0XGUG831pF4mYpswRWKUsZtyoBghTCdQplQnqlF4U1nPqphGSL3iNvnZMZOwtL56At6jdOtaoWVca4M-lOVigqF5/w512-h373/bump_averages.png" width="512" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<b>So what does all of this mean for the 2020 convention bumps? </b> One of the the key features of the 2020 conventions (besides the obvious, COVID-inspired changes) is that they follow the recent scheduling trend of back-to-back convention weeks, so this might limit the size of the bumps. In addition, since both conventions are being held in late August, the pool of persuadable voter who have not already made up their minds could be fairly small. Finally, one thing that might limit Biden's bump potential (and hint at a larger bump for President Trump), is that he already has a substantial lead in the polls and there might not be much room for his lead to grow. If Biden does manage to get a substantial bump, it may mean that his vote potential is higher than his current polling level. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-73509359737114583012016-11-09T19:01:00.003-06:002016-11-09T19:01:38.791-06:00Heightened Demographic DividesLast week I <a href="http://politics-by-the-numbers.blogspot.com/">posted</a> about some of the findings from <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/altered-states-9780190269135?cc=us&lang=en&#">Alerted States</a>, focusing on the growing educational divide among the states. In that post, I speculated that the nature of the the 2016 presidential election was likely to contribute to even sharper demographic patterns to political support in the states. <br />
<br />
I'll have more to say about this later, but here are a few preliminary findings that confirm that state demographic characteristics were more closely tied to state-level outcomes in 2016 that at anytime in the past several decades:<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Education</b><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg37TIOTMnvtdBLf9hdfqQyf6jUgSCZkpbfTgaVHkBnEvfSxyhMRP_NU7GI59hCG2NfBnwWZQPpqqY7Cud8j37qNrH-vJvLHuKwKEDJI00sxD-t0aRGcRthOOiuBfPaL25DR1J3cuykKx2F/s1600/gtba_2016.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg37TIOTMnvtdBLf9hdfqQyf6jUgSCZkpbfTgaVHkBnEvfSxyhMRP_NU7GI59hCG2NfBnwWZQPpqqY7Cud8j37qNrH-vJvLHuKwKEDJI00sxD-t0aRGcRthOOiuBfPaL25DR1J3cuykKx2F/s400/gtba_2016.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Correlation=.77 (previous high (2008) =.70)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Immigrant Population</b><br /><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizNN0S6UiiJpKcC6q975wrAhG20xqa1ad8_ff8_vREgn6ePYYExGRl0hQV1e-mK6I3w_t_NNVFSrB-MyhzedneMPuh1vNl6XBCOuSbjVSmclWIS4R4FD54URTjb6xg5HGtCsyCQ_hZSzXW/s1600/fb_2016.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizNN0S6UiiJpKcC6q975wrAhG20xqa1ad8_ff8_vREgn6ePYYExGRl0hQV1e-mK6I3w_t_NNVFSrB-MyhzedneMPuh1vNl6XBCOuSbjVSmclWIS4R4FD54URTjb6xg5HGtCsyCQ_hZSzXW/s400/fb_2016.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Correlation=.69 (previous high (2012)=.60)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b> Religion</b><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisw_jaRApunHG_XYyeR_kGyeN8Z5FkP2sBpmpQaODdJk5AN4zdhMSqw7o6-qVw9uoXMs0zXJBxM_iqkCZadNOepBSHwF5m1EXwPFWPVX7ukVOJXrWAiKXkxkJ-VQna6-UwH67eyNhcoGWV/s1600/relig_2016.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisw_jaRApunHG_XYyeR_kGyeN8Z5FkP2sBpmpQaODdJk5AN4zdhMSqw7o6-qVw9uoXMs0zXJBxM_iqkCZadNOepBSHwF5m1EXwPFWPVX7ukVOJXrWAiKXkxkJ-VQna6-UwH67eyNhcoGWV/s400/relig_2016.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Correlation -.79 (previous high (2012)=-.73)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Across the board, these and other demographic and cultural indicators are more closely tied to state outcomes now than at anytime in the past several decades. More importantly, these relationships continue a pattern of increasingly strong connection between state characteristics and state outcomes since the 1992 election. Again, I'll have more to say about this later.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-18920525324275526152016-11-03T00:27:00.001-05:002016-11-03T00:27:35.858-05:00The Education Gap<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The education gap in candidate support has been getting a lot of attention during this election cycle, including in a Toni Monkovic had the other day at <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/upshot/why-does-education-translate-to-less-support-for-donald-trump.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fupshot&action=click&contentCollection=upshot&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront">The Upshot</a>. I take up this issue in my new book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-M.-Holbrook/e/B001KHSHFM">Altered States</a>, where I examine the impact of state-to-state differences in education and other demographic characteristics on presidential outcomes in the states. The educational divide in politics is not new, but it has been growing over time, in part in response to increased ideological divergence among party elites, and it currently stands as one of the most important explanations of party success in state-level presidential outcomes.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The figure below illustrates the changing nature of the relationship between education and presidential outcomes in the states. The dependent variable (vertical axis) is the Democratic share of the statewide two-party vote and the independent variable (horizontal axis) is the percent of the citizen voting age population (CVAP) with advanced degrees. This scatterplot matrix clearly shows the increased salience of education to presidential outcomes in the states over time. Although there is a modest relationship in 1972 (not coincidentally, a year with ideologically distinct candidates), there is essentially no connection between education and presidential outcomes from 1976 through 1988; then, beginning in 1992, the relationship grew stronger with each successive election until it peaked in 2008, and then receded very slightly in 2012. </div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEpNItoDHYJpWu3orzqhFW3uH6T3VdYuxNMK2T2KeyZ7N613ujsXgNifOr6OBTIKT6PVJTx51hkuwqqy0m_RrNuJ8_52u_4kQgeo0hA47ZCViGFSIRRAf2U83uRjKA0Si0NJwRtxPnrNxO/s1600/gtba_over_time.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEpNItoDHYJpWu3orzqhFW3uH6T3VdYuxNMK2T2KeyZ7N613ujsXgNifOr6OBTIKT6PVJTx51hkuwqqy0m_RrNuJ8_52u_4kQgeo0hA47ZCViGFSIRRAf2U83uRjKA0Si0NJwRtxPnrNxO/s400/gtba_over_time.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The evolution of this pattern of relationships is summarized more clearly in the figure below, which plots the partial correlations<sup>1</sup> for the relationship between education level and Democratic support in the states over time. Again, there is a striking pattern of increased importance over time. </div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Relationship between Level of Education and State-level </span></b></div>
<b><div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="font-size: small;">Presidential Outcomes, 1972-2012</span></b></div>
</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgDGdqGDZRUbg43LWTJ5kXI8ph90ZifQPvdX5TQ25aRxEw4RF4DzUgyE5vsY1r50We_FKm8pYvsDmJzDDaXcbw6ueZ0hnxkTTvXvtCKYfLFvOYmq_rZl0SxUJjLYC_hRXW046nxOLmEPu/s1600/gtba_pcorr_lowess.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgDGdqGDZRUbg43LWTJ5kXI8ph90ZifQPvdX5TQ25aRxEw4RF4DzUgyE5vsY1r50We_FKm8pYvsDmJzDDaXcbw6ueZ0hnxkTTvXvtCKYfLFvOYmq_rZl0SxUJjLYC_hRXW046nxOLmEPu/s400/gtba_pcorr_lowess.png" title="Relationship between Level of Education and State-level Presidential Outcomes, 1972-2012" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The evolving relationship between education and state-level outcomes in presidential elections reflects a tendency found across multiple measures of state-level demographic and political characteristics, including occupational status, religiosity, partisanship, ideology, and others. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Finally, <i>changes</i> in education levels are connected to <i>changes</i> in support for Democratic presidential candidates. The figure below examines changes in the average levels of both variables from 1972-1980 to 2004-2012, showing a clear positive relationship between increases in education levels and increases in Democratic support. Democrats made their greatest gains among those state with the greatest educational grains and suffered their greatest losses among those states with the smallest gains in level of education:</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Change in Centered Democratic Vote Share and Change </b></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>in </b><b>% </b><b>of </b><b>CVAP </b><b>with Advanced Degrees</b></div>
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcfzJfn7WyNCGNjDYz6WPGA7FpV5ilTOlK7S3tJksPP5HBoP5_xeh15ta-gELXhZnUfd9-D1HYtyqX0dhP8M23ABArbmXYWJIGBjzxAtyV02pCpgRxrBfa9qZ25jlFcT9sg795vrTerYMy/s1600/chgtba.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcfzJfn7WyNCGNjDYz6WPGA7FpV5ilTOlK7S3tJksPP5HBoP5_xeh15ta-gELXhZnUfd9-D1HYtyqX0dhP8M23ABArbmXYWJIGBjzxAtyV02pCpgRxrBfa9qZ25jlFcT9sg795vrTerYMy/s400/chgtba.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Note: Changes in both variables are measured from 1972-1980 (averaged) to 2004-2012 (averaged). </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Adapted from <i>Altered States.</i></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /><br />
<sup>1</sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">The partial correlations control for southern regional effects during the Carter (1976, 1980) and Clinton (1992, 1996) candidacies, as well as presidential and vic-presidential home state advantages.</span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-60161369507501927482016-08-10T23:12:00.000-05:002016-08-11T10:17:36.537-05:00State Polls Then and Now<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is some talk these days about the shifting Electoral College map in 2016, based mostly on Clinton's poll numbers in states such as Arizona and Georgia. One way to get a sense of how things are changing is to compare the most recent polling averages to the polling averages for the same states at this point in the campaign four years ago. The figure below compares the current (August 9, 2016) <a href="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster">Pollster</a> estimates of Clinton's share of the two-party polling preference to Pollster's estimates of Obama's share of the two-party polling preference for the same states at this point in the campaign four years ago. This figure shows important signs of both continuity and change.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Continuity</b>. First, in terms of relative support, the picture is one of continuity: generally, the same states that gave Obama the greatest support in 2012 are still Clinton's biggest supporters, and those states that gave Obama the least support are also giving Clinton her lowest levels of support (the correlation between the two years is .87). The bluest states from 2012 will still be really blue in 2016 and the reddest states will remain pretty red, with the exception, perhaps, of Utah, which may take on a pinkish hue.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzMxQZ0lapcjb89fse57urNenG07vblug8r615lEOIuK8jpodznkQMSw4ibCECIZbW2IYHrCxl-5ACN1yFuuPPCQjP2O1GVmwTcmYKmuy1ujFfCNse6aj_l77DPdVnIn06EpySN-IH8KR8/s1600/polls_aug92012_2016.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzMxQZ0lapcjb89fse57urNenG07vblug8r615lEOIuK8jpodznkQMSw4ibCECIZbW2IYHrCxl-5ACN1yFuuPPCQjP2O1GVmwTcmYKmuy1ujFfCNse6aj_l77DPdVnIn06EpySN-IH8KR8/s600/polls_aug92012_2016.png" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">Note: this figure only includes states for which there were <a href="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster">Pollster</a> estimates estimate for this point in time in both 2012 and 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Change.</b> While the relative positioning of the stat<span style="font-family: inherit;">es <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">vis-à-vis</span> each </span>other has not changed much, there has been a fairly uniform shift among the states in Clinton's favor, reflecting her standing in national polls: across the nineteen states in the figure above the average level of support for Clinton in 2016 is roughly 2.4 points higher than the level of support for Obama at this point in the campaign, and Clinton is doing better than Obama did in almost all states (states above the line of equality are states where Clinton is outperforming Obama at this point in the campaign). Clinton is lagging behind Obama's pace in just three states--Nevada, New York, and Ohio--but still leads in these states, with only Nevada and Ohio close at this point. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Clinton's gains in Arizona (+4.4), Georgia (+3.7), North Carolina (+1.7), and Virginia (+2.6) are particularly notable as Virginia was narrow won by Obama in 2008 and 2012, North Carolina went for Obama in 2008 but not in 2012, and Georgia and Arizona have been somewhat out of reach for Democrats. If Virginia becomes safe for Clinton and the battle for the Electoral College ends up being fought in places like North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona, it's will be virtually impossible for Trump to carry the day. Utah also stands out as a big gain for Clinton (+17), no doubt in part due to Mitt Romney's vocal opposition to Donald Trump, but I doubt that it will actually be in play on election day.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course it is important to note that this analysis is limited to those states for which I could get polling averages from early August in both 2012 and 2016. However, most of the remaining states are usually less competitive than those discussed above and there is less mystery about where they will end up on election day.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-42973527839150395432016-07-15T12:57:00.000-05:002016-07-15T12:57:00.085-05:00Convention Bumps<div style="text-align: justify;">
As we head into the convention phase of the campaign, I thought it would be useful to review the extent to which the convening party candidate receives a bump in the polls during their convention. I've covered much of this in previous <a href="http://politics-by-the-numbers.blogspot.com/2012/08/bump-time.html" target="_blank">posts</a> so I'll just briefly review a few key points here.</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The figure below summarizes the size of convention bumps from 1964 to 2012. The convention bump is measured <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">as the percentage point change in the convening party's share of the two-party vote, comparing polls taken between six days and two-weeks prior to the convention with polls taken during the seven days following the convention. Note that this is a short-term measure of the convention bump and does not say anything about the rate of decay in the weeks following the convention. </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsciQzGUcOC6Won4gXio7JEH0RouX7VAyyRDI3gxvT3ncUAg2fbIAakzvYVx_zaVIMDskw3SjN7Oiq5xJ8vJozbzghEUt9kyMV-tmVhLM3WlXAKAVzk96O_xRE7pvBZyH3aBYUwLUPEKvk/s1600/conventions64_2012.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsciQzGUcOC6Won4gXio7JEH0RouX7VAyyRDI3gxvT3ncUAg2fbIAakzvYVx_zaVIMDskw3SjN7Oiq5xJ8vJozbzghEUt9kyMV-tmVhLM3WlXAKAVzk96O_xRE7pvBZyH3aBYUwLUPEKvk/s400/conventions64_2012.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
There is a lot going on here but there are a few takeaway points. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
1. <b> Candidates generally get a bump of some sort</b>. The size of the bump is highly variable but virtually all candidates leave their convention doing better in the polls than when they went into the convention.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
2. <b> The size of the convention bump does not predict the overall winner very well.</b> Just ask Presidents Goldwater, Mondale, Dole, or Gore, all of whom had bigger bumps than their competitors. One of the reasons for this is that candidates running way behind in the polls have an easier time gaining ground during their conventions. For instance, in 1964 Barry Goldwater was so far behind in the pre-convention polls (averaging 21% of the vote) that it was easy for him to improve his standing by thirteen points during the convention, though he still never come close to being competitive. At the same time, Lyndon Johnson went into his convention with 69% of the vote in pre-election polls and left the convention with no bump but still with a substantial lead.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
3. <b>Convention bumps aren't what they used to be (see figure below)</b>. Prior to the 2000 election, convention bumps averaged more than six points, but that has fallen to just over two points from 2000 to 2012. One potential explanation for this change lies in the scheduling of conventions. The 2008 and 2012 conventions were held in late August and early September and were also held on back-to-back weeks. The norm in other years had been to hold the conventions in late July or early August and to separate them by two to three weeks. What is probably most important here is holding the conventions on consecutive weeks, which means that the convention messages end up overlapping and may cancel out each other. Another potential explanation lies in the increased polarization of the electorate. It is possible that partisans are so much more committed to their candidates now than they were before and there is a much smaller persuadable electorate that can be influenced by events like the nominating conventions.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSmYdCVFCcjY-fVDfIy2MFfpsbrM7GfXUv0TZ9Qws83AplHhxT7T50N4eiYYoVWeH0K_EGqzaRP5cNnL_AXcFP-myXF3M-6ehCqAn7pKDxsXU7zGcKth8KvgzCtUA5J4G7Jkp-L1WykUnq/s1600/bump_sizes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSmYdCVFCcjY-fVDfIy2MFfpsbrM7GfXUv0TZ9Qws83AplHhxT7T50N4eiYYoVWeH0K_EGqzaRP5cNnL_AXcFP-myXF3M-6ehCqAn7pKDxsXU7zGcKth8KvgzCtUA5J4G7Jkp-L1WykUnq/s400/bump_sizes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>So what does all of this mean for the 2016 convention bumps? </b> One of the the key features of the 2016 conventions is that they follow the recent scheduling trend of back-to-back convention weeks, so this might limit the size of the bumps. On the other hand, since the conventions are being held in late July rather than late August, there might be more persuadable voters than in 2000, 2008, or 2012. One other factor that could lead to more substantial convention bumps is that both candidates have problems within their own party and the conventions present them with an opportunity to rally the base in a way that no other campaign event can. The key for both candidates is to have a smoothly run convention that heals rather than exacerbates existing party wounds and projects a positive message to the rest of the country. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-6861006335112886792016-06-08T10:02:00.002-05:002016-06-16T20:30:23.158-05:00The Immigrant Vote and the 2016 Election<div style="text-align: justify;">
Donald Trump's<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-keeps-up-attacks-on-judge-gonzalo-curiel-1464911442" target="_blank"> recent attack</a> on Judge Gonzalo Curiel's impartiality because of Curiel's Mexican ancestry brings to the fore the potential role immigrant populations might play in the upcoming presidential election. Potentially compounding Republican problems on this front, a recent Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/27/citizenship-applications-soar-in-trumps-wake/" target="_blank">article</a> describes a substantial uptick in citizenship applications in the first quarter of 2016, pointing to the anti-immigration tone of the Trump campaign as a likely source of the increase. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Several related issues are addressed in a number of places in my new book, <i><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/altered-states-9780190269135" target="_blank">Altered States</a></i>. Some of the relevant findings are summarized below.</div>
<br />
<b>The Changing Immigrant Population</b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Chapter 3 addresses a number of different aspects of population migration (both immigration and internal migration) and presidential election outcomes. One important finding on this front is that, as a group, naturalized citizens have changed in many politically relevant ways over the past forty years. Whereas naturalized citizens used to "look" a lot like the native-born population in terms of race, ethnicity, party, and ideology, they are are now overwhelmingly non-white and have grown substantially more Democratic and liberal than the native-born population. These changes make the distinction between immigrant and non-immigrant voters increasingly politically important.</div>
<br />
<b>Size of Immigrant Population and Changes in Party Support</b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The figure below is adapted from Chapter 3 and illustrates the relationship between the size of the naturalized population and <i>changes</i> in party support in the states in presidential elections over the past forty years. The dependent variable is the change from 1972-1980 to 2004-2012 in the expected Democratic share of the statewide two-party presidential vote (purged of home-state and southern regional effects) centered on the Democratic share of the national two-party vote, and the independent variable is the percent of the state's citizen voting-age population (CVAP) in 2008 who were foreign born.</div>
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibGMVnTWNySu8bH_kjkZ6sQiVuFNB7GDVDK83S3SnONiDKkGu4COiNwwlMca6GP8LcEvwY6hG1e3HJJomvqk8Et8pP9kmsv5eqlUkjCE2wTXm7YXjcTJBKHmg8tsQN7G0wzZSpmCUYT0Q4/s1600/lfit_fb_noline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibGMVnTWNySu8bH_kjkZ6sQiVuFNB7GDVDK83S3SnONiDKkGu4COiNwwlMca6GP8LcEvwY6hG1e3HJJomvqk8Et8pP9kmsv5eqlUkjCE2wTXm7YXjcTJBKHmg8tsQN7G0wzZSpmCUYT0Q4/s400/lfit_fb_noline.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption">Adapted from figure 3.2 of <i><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/altered-states-9780190269135?cc=us&lang=en&" target="_blank">Altered States</a></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is a clear positive relationship between percent foreign born and change in Democratic vote share, albeit with a bit of a curvilinear pattern. At low levels of foreign born population there is a mix of political outcomes, with Democrats making gains in some states and Republicans making gains in others. However, Democrats gained ground in virtually all states with an above average level of foreign born population. The only exceptions to this are Alaska and Texas (so much for Texas <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/democrats-launch-plan-to-turn-texas-blue-086651" target="_blank">turning blue</a>). Otherwise, the entire lower right corner of the graph--high foreign-born population, coupled with Democratic losses--is empty. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
All of the states with the highest levels of foreign born population (California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York) are also among the states where Democrats made their greatest gains. It is worth noting that many of these states (California, Illinois, New Jersey) used to be fairly competitive but are now clearly in the Democratic camp, while others (Florida and Nevada) have moved from leaning Republican to being fairly competitive now.</div>
<br />
<b>The Increasing Importance of the Immigrant Population</b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Another of the interesting findings from <i><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/altered-states-9780190269135?cc=us&lang=en&" target="_blank">Altered States</a></i> (Chapter 5) is that, over time, all manner of state-level demographic characteristics have become increasingly closely connected to presidential election outcomes in the states. As the figure below illustrates, this is certainly the case with the relationship between percent foreign born and party support in the states:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjejOu0wQ1IBfU2Z2PTPB771JWZKIGquDiJqj8TsmYgBllxH8cEnSHk8H-bzM3d9IRj5cOls8E4J-Gr4qjvwqxyemKRtLwHd3P6osAChu0WAiME2AxBX9ANgjKxl8XDdXeQXCFm8pgf9lhf/s1600/fb_scatter_by_year.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjejOu0wQ1IBfU2Z2PTPB771JWZKIGquDiJqj8TsmYgBllxH8cEnSHk8H-bzM3d9IRj5cOls8E4J-Gr4qjvwqxyemKRtLwHd3P6osAChu0WAiME2AxBX9ANgjKxl8XDdXeQXCFm8pgf9lhf/s400/fb_scatter_by_year.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With the exception of the 1972 election, there was little-to-no relationship between the relative size of foreign born population and presidential outcomes in the states in the 1970s and 1980s, but the relationship has grown in strength steadily over time. The average election-year correlation was .18 from 1972 to 1980, .29 from 1984 to 1992, .50 from 1996 to 2000, and .56 from 2004 to 2012. Overall, the strongest correlation was .60, in 2012.</div>
<br />
<b>Swing States</b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The electoral impact of a growing and increasingly Democratic foreign-born electorate likely depends on its geographic distribution, playing a more pivotal role in swing states than in solidly Democratic or Republican states. Among a group of seven swing states (neither party has more than a two-point advantage) identified in Chapter 6 of <i>Altered States</i>, only one--New Mexico--is among the states with the slowest growth in foreign-born CVAP from 2000-2012, but three swing states--Florida, Nevada, and Virginia--are among the group of states with the fastest growing foreign-born CVAP in the same period. In a close national contest, these patterns of immigrant population growth could play a key role in determining the Electoral College outcome.</div>
<br />
<b>It's Not Just Latinos</b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Finally, it should be pointed out that while many of Donald Trump's more notorious statements about immigration have focused on Mexican and Latin-American immigrants, the naturalized citizen population (immigrants who can vote) is<a href="http://bipartisanpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/files/BPC%20Immigration%20Task%20Force%20Naturalized%20Population%20-%20Characteristics%20and%20Trends%20Issue%20Brief%20May%202014(1).pdf" target="_blank"> comprised of</a> just about as many immigrants from Asia (37%) as from Latin America (39%). This doesn't let Donald Trump or the Republican Party off the hook, politically, however, since Asian-Americans hold overwhelmingly <a href="http://www.apiavote.org/sites/apiavote/files/Inclusion-2016-AAVS-final.pdf" target="_blank">negative views </a>toward Donald Trump and the Republican Party and <a href="http://aapidata.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/aapidata-demvote-trend1.png" target="_blank">supported</a> President Obama at slightly higher rates than Latinos did in 2012.<br />
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-88616365365642230162016-05-16T11:04:00.000-05:002016-05-16T11:04:04.396-05:00Altered StatesI'm please to announce that my new book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/altered-states-9780190269135?cc=us&lang=en&#">Altered States: Changing Populations, Changing Parties and the Transformation of the American Political Landscape</a>, is coming out soon (shipping date set for May 30) with Oxford University Press. (You can get an early look inside on the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Altered-States-Populations-Transformation-Political/dp/0190269138/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1463164756&sr=8-8&keywords=thomas+Holbrook">Amazon</a> page.)<br />
<br />
The book focuses primarily on explaining changes in party support in state-level presidential elections outcomes over time (1970s to 2010s), using two different but related explanatory frameworks: a <i>compositional mode</i>l that sees changing demographic characteristics in the states as the source of political change; and a <i>contextual model</i> that focuses on changes in the relationships between state characteristics and election outcomes--in response to elite polarization-- as the source of change. The analysis supports both models, though the compositional model does a better job of accounting for political change over time. <br />
<br />
The book addresses a number of important topics including partisan advantages in the Electoral College, the efficiency of vote distributions across the states, geographic and demographic sorting, population migration, elite polarization, and many other related issues. I will be posting a few things in the next couple of weeks to highlight some of the findings.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-51905211930846235822014-09-16T22:41:00.001-05:002014-09-16T22:41:57.988-05:00Another Look at Electoral Change<div style="text-align: justify;">
Last fall, I <a href="http://politics-by-the-numbers.blogspot.com/2013/09/states-of-change.html" style="text-align: justify;">posted some data</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> on the changes in Democratic and Republican support in the states in presidential elections, in part in response to observations made by a number of pundits and politicians that there is an increasing Democratic "lock" on the Electoral College. As I stated then, this sort of chatter even included speculation that Texas could "</span><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/democrats-launch-plan-to-turn-texas-blue-86651.html?hp=t1" style="text-align: justify;">turn blue</a><span style="text-align: justify;">" in the not-so-distant future. Indeed, this idea was recently repeated by </span><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2014/0209/Rand-Paul-warns-Texas-Republicans-Your-state-could-turn-blue" style="text-align: justify;">Rand Paul</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, who cautioned Texas Republicans that they need to soften their approach on issues such immigration, or Texas "will be a Democratic state within 10 years."</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I return to the issue of electoral change in this post to provide a somewhat clearer visualization of the trends, as well as a more precise account of their electoral impact. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: left;">The strategy used in the previous post focused on plotting the trends in party support from 1972-2012, separately, for each state (see Democratic gains <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/hj9wp16kdekry9s/nc_update.pdf?dl=0">here</a> and Republican gains <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/qibbny62021lhmo/New%20decline.pdf?dl=0">here</a>).<sup>1</sup> <span style="font-size: small;">I use the same data here but approach the analysis somewhat differently, focusing on the overall change in the centered Democratic share of the two-party voter from the 1972-1980 elections to the 2004-2012 election. Specifically, I look at the average expected Democratic vote share (based on the trend over time) for each state in each time period and then compare the two periods to ascertain where the parties gained and lost the most support. Centering the vote around the mean state outcome permits a comparison across states without having to also consider factors (national tides) that affect the level of party support from one year to the next.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The figure below captures both the direction and magnitude of changes in party fortunes in the state-level presidential election outcomes. In this figure, the ubiquitous chromatic devices of red and blue are used to identify states where the trend over time has favored Republicans (red) or Democrats (blue). </span> The blunt end of the arrow represents the state average during the 1972-1980 elections, and the point at the head of the arrow designates where the states end up, on average, for presidential elections from 2004 to 2012. It is important to recall that party support is expressed relative to other states, in each year. For instance, in a Republican blowout year, such as 1972, a state like Minnesota, where George McGovern ran about 10 points better than he did across all states, could still be lost by the Democrats. Despite McGovern's loss there, Minnesota in 1972 is still a strong Democratic state, <i>relative to all other states</i>. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">Changes in Party Fortunes in State-level Presidential Election Outcomes</span></span>
</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiD3OpS-yfD3tsTDCuikSVfc2ledK1HQXONRR4P81YKUVLhIqE83Rj9frojf9uY2YQJ4KKFPdbFDe-zXCQ-_JIkChqBONrB0SMlNpwROJr6DjZozpPfQcW-AEZZTmXncZIo4qQpTO5LZJq/s1600/arrows.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Changes in Party Fortunes in State-level Presidential Election Outcomes" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiD3OpS-yfD3tsTDCuikSVfc2ledK1HQXONRR4P81YKUVLhIqE83Rj9frojf9uY2YQJ4KKFPdbFDe-zXCQ-_JIkChqBONrB0SMlNpwROJr6DjZozpPfQcW-AEZZTmXncZIo4qQpTO5LZJq/s1600/arrows.png" height="363" title="Changes in Party Fortunes in State-level Presidential Election Outcomes" width="500" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So what does this figure reveal in terms of a growing Democratic advantage in the Electoral College? In very gross terms, there is a an important trend in favor of Democratic presidential candidates. Looking just at the direction of movement (ignoring magnitude), there are 29 states that have seen Democratic gains, and 21 states where Republicans have gained strength. In terms of electoral votes, the states where Democrats have made inroads control 366 electoral votes, while the states with Republican gains control just 169 electoral votes. This is a substantively large and meaningful difference. However, it may overstate the case somewhat, since some states in which the parties gained strength were already in the Democratic or Republican column and only became more strongly partisan; and in a few states where a party gained strength (e.g., Mississippi and Georgia for the Democrats, and Minnesota and Wisconsin for the Republicans), their position is improved but they are still at a distinct disadvantage. And there are a handful of states where movement was very slight, though on balance in one party's favor. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's also worth noting that there is no support for the Texas-turning-blue argument, as Texas has gone from leaning Republican to solidly Republican over the past forty years.<br />
<br />
Another way of assessing the importance of partisan change is to focus on cases of conversion (switching from one party to another) or changes in swing status (moving from competitive to non-competitive or from non-competitive to competitive. The figure posted below highlights states that fall into either of these categories. The vertical dashed lines are are -2 and +2 percentage points, representing a fairly tight band of competitive outcomes. There is only one state (West Virginia) that can be described as clearly switching from from one party (Democratic) to the other (Republican), while the remaining twenty states moved into or out of the competitive zone. Across all twenty-one states whose competitive status changed, six states representing 40 electoral votes moved in the Republican direction, while fifteen states representing 188 electoral votes moved in the Democratic direction.<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
<span style="text-align: justify;">
</span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: justify;"><b>Changes in Party Support, Highlighting "Swing States" </b></span></div>
<span style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXZD1cGAJUf3aw1EN1aHnNe2tBQTpy1fb93J5luczPOwMNSE63zM75GXGsELnlVDAlsTg9_D17R1NsJlpNJiuLBjzBL9lfBhbcQfePRYOcxp2gjZZIwmrFRLDgEjiQ9IdBquQhRLf59qet/s1600/arrows_w_grayscale_dashed.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXZD1cGAJUf3aw1EN1aHnNe2tBQTpy1fb93J5luczPOwMNSE63zM75GXGsELnlVDAlsTg9_D17R1NsJlpNJiuLBjzBL9lfBhbcQfePRYOcxp2gjZZIwmrFRLDgEjiQ9IdBquQhRLf59qet/s1600/arrows_w_grayscale_dashed.png" height="363" width="500" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
From this perspective, there has been clear and important movement in the direction of the Democratic party. The number of states that have moved through this zone in the Democratic direction (and the number of electoral votes associated with them) improves the Democratic position substantially over the past forty years. A couple of caveats. First, this is only one way to cut the data and the designation of the competitive zone is admittedly arbitrary (as most such designations would be). Second, this discussion places a premium on a certain type of change and ignores cases in which parties increased their grip on already friendly states. To be sure, there are a number of Republican and Democratic states where this has happened, and the Republican party has a slight edge in this category. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
The table below uses data on party support and electoral votes to illustrate more precisely the magnitude of the increased Democratic advantage. The cell entries in the right two columns are the predicted number of Electoral Votes going to the Democratic candidate based on three different national vote models (mean Democratic votes of 48%, 50%, and 52% across the states), along with the expected levels of support (taken from beginning and end points of the arrows in the figures above) in the states and their associated Electoral votes in the 1970s and the 2010s.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Dq99tScu59ge0tQRPH-fkIFHIN7rOzExIgI5klF-yXe3OxkyoXEjKYs5bifJchJ4zNWkpTuEEGuSNghf7RLR0pWNrNPyTvs7G0aVbY-IBtoUcahNXHJjSiu32vriUdXxsAe4-gNRVsAO/s1600/EC_scenarios.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Dq99tScu59ge0tQRPH-fkIFHIN7rOzExIgI5klF-yXe3OxkyoXEjKYs5bifJchJ4zNWkpTuEEGuSNghf7RLR0pWNrNPyTvs7G0aVbY-IBtoUcahNXHJjSiu32vriUdXxsAe4-gNRVsAO/s1600/EC_scenarios.tiff" height="217" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
In the current period, Democratic candidates have a distinct advantage in close national contests. If the average state-level vote is 50%, the expected Democratic Electoral Vote count is 319. If the average Democratic state vote drops to 48%, Republicans would be expected to pick up Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and Ohio, but Democrats would still have a fighting chance, with an expected Electoral Vote count of 257. And, of course, if Democrats carry 52% on average across the states, they win a comfortable Electoral Vote margin. What is most impressive here is not just the Democratic advantage, but how that advantage has shifted since the 1970s, where the Democratic Electoral Vote was much more proportional to the national popular vote. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
It is important to remember that the change in the Democratic advantage is not affected just by changes in patterns of party support across the states but also by changes in the Electoral Votes awarded to the states. In fact, changes in the distributions of electoral votes have muted the shift in Democratic advantage slightly. For instance, at a 50% average state vote the expected Electoral Vote of Democrats in the 2010s would be 333 if there had been no change in the Electoral College since the 1970s.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
There is still no evidence of a Democratic "lock" on the Electoral College, but the data presented here do make a clearer case that Republican presidential candidates face an uphill battle, and that their position has deteriorated over time. The political landscape has changed appreciably in the last forty years and that change is politically consequential. Of course, all of this raises interesting questions about the causes of the changes in party support, questions I will take up in my next post (soon, I hope).</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<sup>1</sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">See the original <a href="http://politics-by-the-numbers.blogspot.com/2013/09/states-of-change.html">post</a> for a more detailed explanation of have the expected state vote is calculated. Note that these figures reflect a correction for the trend in North Carolina.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-66328804022272305812013-10-10T05:30:00.000-05:002013-10-10T09:27:11.414-05:00Trend in Party Favorability<div style="text-align: justify;">
In light of the new <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/165317/republican-party-favorability-sinks-record-low.aspx">Gallup Poll</a> showing Republican favorability at a historic low point, it seems like a good idea to update a <a href="http://politics-by-the-numbers.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-partisan-advantage-for-obama.html">post</a> I did on favorability just before the 2012 election. At that point I concluded that the Democrats held a clear advantage going into the election, although the public was not wild about either party. I revisit this issue here, almost one year after the original post</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The figure posted below summarizes the "favorability" of both parties, using results from publicly available polls that asked respondents to rate their feelings toward the parties as either favorable or unfavorable. There are several notable patterns here. First, throughout this time period (February 2012 to October 2013), Democrats have held a distinct favorability advantage: the mean net rating for the Republican Party is -16.4, while the mean net rating for the Democrats is 1.2. In fact, there is not a single poll in this series of 44 polls in which the Republican party registered a net positive rating, and not a single case in which the net Republican rating was higher than the net Democrat rating. </div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: justify;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-HG3g5qS1w62_3k-XGfcnc6SU-xfL4RDl-WzQEzt0cYxQ1jsMXDheBKjyLE0QnSmKc_mgbW4Afgz7Jio5Fp9rAtzV9FpLUKM6ZqPh6kj5SDzooIEM_NZSmCHdHTz81FjVxy9c2r-idxWd/s1600/partyfav.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-HG3g5qS1w62_3k-XGfcnc6SU-xfL4RDl-WzQEzt0cYxQ1jsMXDheBKjyLE0QnSmKc_mgbW4Afgz7Jio5Fp9rAtzV9FpLUKM6ZqPh6kj5SDzooIEM_NZSmCHdHTz81FjVxy9c2r-idxWd/s400/partyfav.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">Data are taken from </span><a href="http://pollingreport.com/" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">pollingreport.com</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;"> and </span><a href="http://pollster.com/" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">pollster.com</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">. The dots represent individual polls, </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">and the lines are the smoothed lowess trends in the series.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Even worse for the Republicans is that their favorability rating continues to degrade. Their average net rating was -13 prior to the 2012 election and has averaged -22 since then. Meanwhile, the net rating for Democrats has shifted from and average of +.6 prior to the election to an average of +2.3 since the election. Theses swings in party fortunes are summarized below, where I plot the overall Democratic advantage in favorability.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj099HmtwDWusWneDNrkWh3_QKtyhaltfOuEIBCxiY8oZ7Fcf1Ds1lHd36OJnxEmM18Y2KVUgOM-KNm5KoffswaJvMEDst6ZoxM0K4aIDF0iedxud7V1YXl-tWPv7GDt-34vJFzXEQY99cr/s1600/damfavadv.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj099HmtwDWusWneDNrkWh3_QKtyhaltfOuEIBCxiY8oZ7Fcf1Ds1lHd36OJnxEmM18Y2KVUgOM-KNm5KoffswaJvMEDst6ZoxM0K4aIDF0iedxud7V1YXl-tWPv7GDt-34vJFzXEQY99cr/s400/damfavadv.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here we see that the somewhat pronounced negative turn for Republican party favorability following the election, coupled with the corresponding smaller positive turn for the Democrats, has led to an impressive shift in the Democratic in advantage in favorability.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, this is not say that people are in love with the Democratic Party. At best, these data say that people are, on balance, fairly evenly split in their view of the Democrats, with some polls reflecting a negative view of them and others reflecting a more positive view. In political terms, though, these data show that the Democrats fare very well, at least in comparison to the only other game in town, the Republican Party.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What do these data say about the impact of the government shutdown? Unfortunately, polls that include party favorability questions are too few-and-far-between to be able to pin much on specific events, and the figures presented here include only one poll taken since the shutdown began, the aforementioned Gallup Poll. In all likelihood, that poll does reflect the impact the shutdown, but it is only a single observation and it doesn't really have much effect on the overall trend in the data.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Instead, I think it is best to focus on the the general pattern in the data, and I think the trend since the 2012 presidential election probably says a lot about the way politics have been conducted and the way people evaluate the parties in light of that conduct. It could well be that the Republican congressional strategy in the last year will pay off in other ways, but it is pretty clear that it isn't buying them any favor among the general public.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-85190970537287795622013-09-26T15:16:00.000-05:002014-11-13T11:51:24.185-06:00States of Change<div style="text-align: justify;">
Not long after the 2012 election some <a href="http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/04/07/democrats_hold_near_lock_on_electoral_college.html">observers</a> noted an increasing Democratic "lock" on the Electoral College. Although Republican nominee Mitt Romney's campaign took a lot of heat for losing election, there has developed a general sense that <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/as-nation-and-parties-change-republicans-are-at-an-electoral-college-disadvantage/">changing demographics</a> in key states are setting the stage for continued Republican difficulties in years to come. By this account, increasing numbers of Latino and Black voters--both heavily Democratic groups--in some areas have moved enough states to the Democratic column that Republican presidential candidates face an uphill battle in anything other than a bad Democratic year. And there is every reason to expect this demographic trend to <a href="http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/%E2%80%9Cmissing-voters%E2%80%9D-in-the-2012-election/">continue</a>. This idea has gained enough currency that <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/democrats-launch-plan-to-turn-texas-blue-86651.html?hp=t1">some Democrats</a> even see Texas, with its increasing Latino population, turning blue at some point in the future.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
My interest here is in documenting the changes party fortunes in the states and trying to get a sense of which changes are of greatest consequence to the race to 270. Of course, I am not only interested in where Democrats have strengthened their position but also where they have lost ground to Republicans; for there are clearly parts of the country where Democratic prospects have dimmed appreciably over time. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I use state-level presidential election returns from 1972 to 2012 to document the trends in party support. The starting date for this type of analysis is somewhat arbitrary, but using 1972 puts us on this side of the beginning of partisan changes in response to party strategies related to <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1960544?uid=3739256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102540234173">civil rights</a>. I focus on the trend over time in the centered (around the fifty-state mean) Democratic share of the two-party vote, separately for each state. Centering the vote allows me to focus on each state relative to all other states without worrying about overall swings in party fortunes from one election to the next. So the focus is not on which party wins or loses a state, but on support for the Democratic party over time in a given state, relative to all other states. To gauge the trend over time I regress vote share on year, separately for each state, and also included dummy variables for presidential and vice-presidential home state advantage, as well as one for southern states in 1976 and 2000. The southern dummy variable is necessary to capture the unnaturally high level of support for the Democratic ticket in the south in response to the candidacy of former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. I then used the results from the state-by-state regression models to estimate the trend in Democratic support over time. In doing this I set the values for the dummy variables to zero so the "predictions" reflect the trend over time exclusive of these transitory perturbations.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The figures below document the changes in Democratic fortunes. In each figure, the solid straight line represents the estimated trend in Democratic support over time, and the points represent the actual election outcomes. It is important to recall that in some cases the trend line does not appear to fit the scatter plot as well as it "should" because it excludes the effects of home state advantages and the southern advantages in 1976 and 1980 (see MS and GA as exemplars of this phenomenon). It is also worth pointing out that the observations above the zero point (dashed line) are not necessarily cases in which the Democratic candidate won the state; instead, these are cases in which the Democratic candidate fared better than he did, on average, across the fifty states.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The panel of graphs below displays the pattern of partisan change among those twenty-five states in which the Democrats have seen their greatest gains, ordered by magnitude of gains from upper left (across rows) to lower right. These states generally fall into four different categories. First there are those states that moved from somewhat competitive to favoring the Democratic candidate: California, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico (very slightly), New York, Vermont, and Washington. Some of these states leaned slightly Democratic in the early 1970s while others were truly toss-up states; but almost all of them have moved comfortably into the Democratic column. These changes represent an important net gain for the Democratic party. As a group, these states comprise 166 electoral votes that the Democrats can count on now much more confidently than they could forty years ago.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Twenty-Five States with the Greatest Democratic Gains </b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>in Presidential Elections from 1972 to 2012</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8GFnw6dRHHs5YLP12T4FQc3TyCJVNi8aCZqO6MNoWdgEJrCQOiutLpV_PXrbkWkLNY5QIo_kDEIfGYc9kodktnIzhtoUXHxOGo7hhj9s70yQXEEhS1yNYQHW8hL5dJMmCqjZg_S6fURa7/s1600/gains25a.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8GFnw6dRHHs5YLP12T4FQc3TyCJVNi8aCZqO6MNoWdgEJrCQOiutLpV_PXrbkWkLNY5QIo_kDEIfGYc9kodktnIzhtoUXHxOGo7hhj9s70yQXEEhS1yNYQHW8hL5dJMmCqjZg_S6fURa7/s400/gains25a.png" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Another important group consists of those states that moved from tilting Republican to being truly competitive: Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Virginia. To be sure, these are not states that the Democratic candidate can count on--they are, after all, competitive--but they are states that used to be much farther out of reach for the Democrats and now are up for grabs. Together these states comprise 61 additional electoral votes in states that have moved toward the Democratic party.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Finally, we have states that were strongly Democratic and became even more so (Massachusetts and Rhode Island), and several states where the change was either very slight and didn't alter the general outlook for either party (Arizona, Georgia, and Mississippi), or that can best be described as flat-liners, impervious to whatever process has driven the changes in other states (Michigan, Oregon, and South Carolina). Technically, there has been some change in this latter group of states but it is so slight that it is barely discernible in these plots.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, not all states have trended so favorably toward the Democrats. The panel of graphs below illustrates the pattern of party change in the remaining states, where Democrats either lost ground to Republicans or just managed to hold their own. One state that stands out here is West Virginia, which has shifted from a place where the Democratic candidate typically ran ahead of his performance across the other forty-nine states to a place that now appears to be a long shot for Democratic candidates. Minnesota is another interesting state. Although the Democratic candidate continues to fare slightly better in Minnesota than in the rest of the country, there has been a very gradual decline in that advantage. Democrats continue to win there, but Minnesota is somewhat more competitive now than it was thirty or forty years ago. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Probably the most consequential set of states in this figure are those that have moved from being somewhat competitive to being out of reach for the Democratic candidate: Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas (so much for Texas turning Blue--see above). In strong Democratic years, they were once possible pickups for the Democrats, but they now appear to be out of reach. As a group these states, along with West Virginia and Minnesota, constitute 92 Electoral Votes. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Twenty-Five States the Greatest Democratic Losses (or smallest gains)</b><br />
<b>in Presidential Elections from 1972 to 2012</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8IH3SWn94Bh9d506GkwRXTZlNK5mGIo2-YE3hoFqcLj8xg3_8EMmL5HR4ss3Nlz_Xn05vtF1K_ZhSEGoqeWvuDBrBscgtIPQNZJnie_SoYtl7DupVxG-I0u-sFLqwZ30sBKC1MVOAGyO9/s1600/losses25a.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8IH3SWn94Bh9d506GkwRXTZlNK5mGIo2-YE3hoFqcLj8xg3_8EMmL5HR4ss3Nlz_Xn05vtF1K_ZhSEGoqeWvuDBrBscgtIPQNZJnie_SoYtl7DupVxG-I0u-sFLqwZ30sBKC1MVOAGyO9/s400/losses25a.png" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
Of course, there are a number of states that were fairly Republican in the early 1970s and have become more so over time: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. And there is also another group of flat-liners, which includes states with very, very slight Democratic decline (Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Wisconsin), and a group with almost imperceptible Democratic gains (Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania). These states (flat-liners and Republican states that became more Republican) don't really have much of an impact on the on the partisan advantage in the Electoral College.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
While the figures above provide a lot of state-by-state detail, the same information can also be summarized using a heat map and the by-now-familiar Red/Blue schema. The interactive map pasted below shows how states have changed over the the last forty years. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Changes in the Centered Democratic Share of the Two-Party Vote in U.S. </b><br />
<b>Presidential Elections, 1972-2012</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>(Blue=DemocraticAdvantage, Red=Republican Advantage)</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<iframe height="375" src="http://www.openheatmap.com/embed.html?map=TrammelersMazmanSubcircularly" width="500"></iframe>
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In keeping with data already presented, the dominant patterns over time are purplish states turning blue, followed by fewer purple states turning red, some reddish states turning even redder, and a number of reddish states turning purple.<sup>1</sup></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The movements over time have clearly favored the Democratic Party. Those states that have moved from somewhat competitive to Democratic, or from leaning Republican to fairly competitive, combine for a total of 227 electoral votes. Among those states that have made similar shifts toward the Republican Party (other than those that were in the Republican column to begin with), the electoral vote count is only 92. Perhaps the worst news for the Republican party is that there is only a single large state that has moved in their direction: Texas, which has gone from leaning slightly Republican to being a strong Republican state. Contrast that with the Democrats, who have seen California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York move from somewhat competitive to strongly Democratic, and Florida has moved from leaning Republican to very competitive.<br />
<br />
Still, there is nothing resembling a "lock" on the Electoral College. A clear trend toward the Democratic Party, yes, but hardly a lock on anything.<br />
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<b>Erratum</b> (September 2014): There was an error in estimating the slope for North Carolina (control for Carter's southern advantage in 1976 and 1980 was not included). When that error is corrected, North Carolina emerges as another state in which the Democrats have made smallish gains. See the updated figure <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/hj9wp16kdekry9s/nc_update.pdf?dl=0">here</a>.<br />
----------------------------</div>
<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">1</span></sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">I think. I'm color blind, so this may look a bit different for you.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-75307325128834667372012-11-06T16:07:00.000-06:002012-11-06T16:07:09.236-06:00What to Watch for TonightCourtesy of <a href="http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/forecasting/paths.html">Jay DeSart</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-15958508231000545052012-11-06T10:59:00.001-06:002012-11-06T11:01:14.871-06:00Final Forecast<a href="http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/">Jay</a> has finished gathering the last of the state and national polling data and we now have a final forecast:<br />
<br />
<u>Electoral <span style="color: #5a0000;">College:</span></u><span style="color: #5a0000;"> Obama 303, Romney 235</span><br />
<br />
<u><span style="color: #5a0000;">National Popular Vote (two-party):</span></u><span style="color: #5a0000;"> Obama 51.4%, Romney 48.6% </span><br />
<span style="color: #5a0000;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/forecasting/Nov2012map.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="229" src="http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/forecasting/Nov2012map.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #5a0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #5a0000;"><br /></span>
Based state and national polls, as well as historical patterns of party support in the states, Mitt Romney has a tough road to 270. It's certainly not impossible for him to get there, but he has many more obstacles to overcome than Obama does. Romney's best prospect for stealing states from the Obama column are Virginia and Colorado, both of which turned blue in our model in just the last couple of days. Even if he picks up these states, Romney would still need to win Ohio, or some combination of other states to get to 270. If he does pick up Ohio, this could go well into the night. Obama's best chance for a pick up is Florida, which has been consistently but just barely in the Romney column in our model throughout the the last month of polling. If Obama picks up Florida, it will likely be an early evening.<br />
<br />
Of course, it goes without saying that if something completely unexpected happens (Romney picks up Pennsylvania? Obama picks up North Carolina) it is going to be an interesting evening.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-20019808592786669312012-11-05T23:16:00.001-06:002012-11-05T23:16:37.537-06:00Almost There<a href="http://www.uvu.edu/profpages/profiles/show/user_id/1181">Jay</a> and I hope to have the final forecast by late tomorrow morning. We're waiting to incorporate polls from late today and anything that comes in tomorrow morning. Right now, we're at 290 Electoral Votes for Obama to 248 for Romney, and Obama taking 51.4% of the national two-party popular vote.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-78808368244754648232012-10-31T15:59:00.000-05:002012-10-31T15:59:29.157-05:00A Partisan Advantage for Obama?As I pointed out at the end of <a href="http://politics-by-the-numbers.blogspot.com/2012/08/forecast.html">August</a>, I see political and economic context of the election as favoring Mitt Romney, though not overwhelmingly so. In fact, I think that Romney's gains after the first debate partly reflected a dissatisfied electorate responding to a campaign event that pushed them in the "right" direction. But one thing I find interesting is that despite a reversal of fortunes in the last few weeks, there seems to be a clear floor below which Obama's support will not fall, and Mitt Romney has not been able to do any better than draw even or periodically take a very narrow lead.<br />
<br />
One thing that may be benefiting Obama could have little to do with the standard indicators of national conditions and may have even less to do with either of the candidates or their campaigns. Simply put, I think a case can be made that the Republican brand name is acting as a drag on Mitt Romney's candidacy. This idea has gotten a little bit of attention from <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2012/president/candidates/romney/2012/10/09/diminished-gop-brand-heightens-romney-challenge/FYO90CTQ7swsk2fVT2yuWO/story.html">some</a> <a href="http://www.chicagonow.com/publius-forum/2012/06/fox-news-brit-hume-republican-brand-in-terrible-shape/">journalists</a>, and the data I present below largely provide additional support.<br />
<br />
One way of assessing the relative value of party for each of the candidates is by looking at rates of party affiliation in the electorate. The figure posted below was generated using the <a href="http://pollster.com/">pollster.com</a> dashboard and includes the results of hundreds of polls. These data show that the Democrats have held an affiliation advantage throughout the 2012 campaign, one that has ebbed and flowed a little bit and now stands at approximately six percentage points. Of course it is possible that slight differences in loyalty (Republicans have been more loyal than Democrats in SOME elections) and turnout might mitigate the the Democratic advantage in affiliation. Still, I can't imagine this difference has no effect on the current contest.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe frameborder="0" height="400" scrolling="no" src="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/embed/party-identification#!mindate=2012-01-01&smoothing=less&showpoints=yes&&maxdate=2012-10-28" width="440"></iframe><br /></div>
<br />
<br />
But party identification isn't the whole story. Instead, there appears to be a broader problem having to do with the general image of the Republican Party, especially when compared to the image of the Democratic Party. <br />
<br />
The figure posted below summarizes the "favorability" of both parties, using results from several polls that have asked respondents to rate their feelings toward the parties as either favorable or unfavorable. I don't have nearly the same number of data points here as for the figure on party identification, but the pattern is very clear: throughout this campaign period the Democratic Party has been viewed more positively than the Republican Party. In fact, there is not a single poll in this series in which the Republican party registered a net positive rating, and not a single case in which the net Republican rating was higher than the net Democrat rating. The average net rating for the Republican Party in this series is -13, whereas the average for the Democratic Party is +.3. To be sure, the net rating for the Democratic Party is sometimes in the negative, and the gap toward the end of the series is not as great as it was in the wake of the Democratic convention, but it is clear that the Democrats hold an advantage on this front.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRt4532s_XoNtZZ9TKep8PgDq-xZHPOQnBunYTDWlG0EH1RzKrkHiGlevwHAxg3-jyglogAK1_ohyphenhyphencqw87VBgd7RTpc1VL0JYgx5b4VUNz0nfk7bXPaPvcSrZJ7P4Ya2okePiGXmXglR2f/s1600/favorability.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRt4532s_XoNtZZ9TKep8PgDq-xZHPOQnBunYTDWlG0EH1RzKrkHiGlevwHAxg3-jyglogAK1_ohyphenhyphencqw87VBgd7RTpc1VL0JYgx5b4VUNz0nfk7bXPaPvcSrZJ7P4Ya2okePiGXmXglR2f/s400/favorability.png" title="" width="475" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">Data taken from <a href="http://pollingreport.com/">pollingreport.com</a> and <a href="http://pollster.com/">pollster.com</a>. The dots represent individual polls, and the lines are the smoothed lowess trends in the series.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Of course, there is little doubt that these two things--Democratic advantages in party ID and party image--are connected to each other. Still the relative stability of the difference, and the approximately 10 point Democratic advantage in the most recent polls, must be working in Obama's favor. Is this what's keeping a president with tepid approval numbers and a still-sluggish economy afloat? If so, would there be any payoff for Obama to run not just against Mitt Romney but also against the Republican Party in the closing days of the campaign? </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that the public is wild about the Democratic party; just that the Democratic Party is viewed much more positively (or less negatively, if you will) than the Republican Party. </div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-71640010005786356252012-10-29T11:12:00.000-05:002012-10-29T11:45:10.637-05:00Cool ToolI just saw a link to this <a href="https://sites.stanford.edu/sssl/2008-obamamccain-vote-precinct">really neat tool</a> on <a href="http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/10/29/cool-visualization-of-precinct-level-votes/">The Monkey Cage</a>. Here's what the Milwaukee area looked like in 2008:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDGA2dkUE4aal-7avXXLH_h_eXYX1TKZmdqY6zWFdf1qyLzG4XDR2OoGcmY6e8oDftiuz_sP1IDBmykFIWdOJ8D3i4LaMB01yyORHMppy8jQpk7_f0bVFZ-XZTJ68HXKD9Ln2q5nOxmiaV/s1600/milwaukeeprecincts.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="626" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDGA2dkUE4aal-7avXXLH_h_eXYX1TKZmdqY6zWFdf1qyLzG4XDR2OoGcmY6e8oDftiuz_sP1IDBmykFIWdOJ8D3i4LaMB01yyORHMppy8jQpk7_f0bVFZ-XZTJ68HXKD9Ln2q5nOxmiaV/s640/milwaukeeprecincts.tiff" width="545" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Not a really surprising picture, but it does show the stark contrast between the city and most of the suburbs. </div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-26327435566433293962012-10-27T23:28:00.000-05:002012-10-28T10:26:43.588-05:00Updated Electoral College Forecast<br />
As promised in my last post on the <a href="http://politics-by-the-numbers.blogspot.com/2012/10/september-polls-and-november-outcomes.html">September Model</a> I'm be posting a rolling Electoral College forecast (in the panel to the right), based on past election results and October national and state-level trial-heat polls. As with the September model, these state-level forecasts were developed with <a href="http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/forecasting/october.html">Jay DeSart</a>. Clicking on map to the right will take you to Jay's web page, where more details are available. As new polls come in the forecast will change, so please check in on a regular basis.<br />
<br />
The results for today are:<br />
<br />
Electoral vote: Obama 281, <strike>McCain</strike> Romney 257<br />
National popular vote: Obama 51.5%, Romney 48.5%<br />
<br />
Both the Electoral College and popular vote projections are down a bit from those generated by the September Model, reflecting a trend found in most other poll-based models. The biggest state changes are Colorado, Florida, and Virginia moving from Obama to Romney. These are currently the most likely pick-ups for Obama, with all three showing Romney with less than a 56% chance of winning them. Romney is going to have a harder time picking up any states currently in the Obama column, with Ohio the most likely but currently showing Obama with a 68% chance of winning.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-24043560415473472432012-10-04T23:01:00.001-05:002012-10-05T13:10:02.302-05:00September Polls and November Outcomes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/">Jay DeSart</a> and<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18.899999618530273px;"> </span></span>I have done some work over the years on using September state-wide trial-heat polls to predict presidential election outcomes in the states. We pool state-level data from 1992-2008 and use the Democratic candidate's share of the two-party vote in state-level September polls (averaged across publicly available polls), a lagged (four elections) vote variable, and the Democratic candidate's share of the vote in national trial-heat polls in the last half of September to predict the election outcomes. While the other variables are important to our model, the September polling average is the strongest predictor. Jay has been good enough to update our model and provide forecasts for the 2012 election. Here's what it looks like:</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/forecasting/2012map.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/forecasting/2012map.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>National Two-Party Vote : Obama 53.1%<br /> Electoral College: Obama 332, Romney 206</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Jay has a bunch more details on his <a href="http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/forecasting/index.html">forecasting page</a>.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Even if you don't use a complicated statistical model, September polls are a useful guide to who will win in the states. A couple of interesting tidbits:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>In our data set, from 1992-2008, there were 164 states in which one of the candidates had a lead outside the margin of error (based on the average statewide sample size) in the state polling average. The leader went on to win in 160 of those cases (98%).</li>
<li>If you throw caution to the wind (ignore the margin of error) and make predictions just based on which candidate is ahead in the September poll average, the polls predict correctly in 220 of the 250 cases (87.5%).</li>
</ul>
We also have a rolling state-level forecasting model based on October polls. I'll post that once we get enough state-level poll results.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-72055116031724517062012-10-04T14:23:00.001-05:002012-10-04T14:23:27.913-05:00Really?<a href="http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/10/04/exit_polls_canceled_in_19_states.html">This </a>really stinks.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-71255985940249380842012-10-01T13:24:00.000-05:002012-10-01T13:24:28.795-05:00Debate ExpectationsWith the first debate scheduled for just a few days from now, media attention has begun to focus on what to expect, or not expect, from this year's head-to-head match ups. Fortunately, it seems that most commentators are on the same page: don't expect much to change because of the debates. In the spirit of piling on the "debates don't matter much" argument, I'm reposting and updating some of the analysis I presented four years ago on this blog's <a href="http://election08data.blogspot.com/2008/09/debate-effects.html">predecessor</a>.<br />
<br />
So the basic idea is that if debates "matter," levels of candidate support should be appreciably different following the debate than they were prior to the debate, presumably shifting in favor of the candidate seen as having "won" the encounter. This is fairly easy to measure, and I present data in the table below that
gives us a sense the magnitude of debate bumps from the last several elections. Here, I
compare the polling average from six days prior to the debate to the
day of the debate with the average from the seven days following the
debate, for all debates from 1988-2008.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpwmNasGEjL54vkMdMKIpMFEfazt3bKfLW9CgBpQ4RcJFtWNyop0eZaGUFjJPkWtcnqepwi4C93L5yYpaYkQkQJpzKUgI_TvGA0fzQezcxx-y8iKkloAnoqDA8lCDswRBXL7yUwk8BlTot/s1600/debatepic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpwmNasGEjL54vkMdMKIpMFEfazt3bKfLW9CgBpQ4RcJFtWNyop0eZaGUFjJPkWtcnqepwi4C93L5yYpaYkQkQJpzKUgI_TvGA0fzQezcxx-y8iKkloAnoqDA8lCDswRBXL7yUwk8BlTot/s1600/debatepic.png" /></a></div>
These data suggest that the norm is for very little swing in candidate support following debates. Across all 16 presidential debates the average absolute change in candidate support was just less than 1 percentage point. There are a few notable exceptions, of course. Two that stand out are the second debate in 1992, following which George H.W. Bush lost 2 points, and first debate of 2004, after which George W. bush lost 2.26 points. Other debates with above average (but still small) vote shifts are the first debate in 1996, the second debates in 1988 and 2000, and the first debate of 2008. Each of these debates has its own story, and I'm sure we can all think of anecdotes to explain the bumps and wiggles. Although the analysis is terribly outdated by now, my debate model from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Campaigns-Matter-Contemporary-American-Politics/dp/0803973454">Do Campaigns Matter?</a> came to the profound conclusion that the candidate viewed as having won the debate generally gets a small bump. I told you it was profound.<br />
<br />
Focusing on single debate bumps may be obscuring a more general, cumulative effect of debates. The last column in the table shows the change in candidate support from one week prior to the first debate to one week after the final debate. Here we see that the debate period generated a 2.42 point bump for George H. W. Bush in 1988; cost Al Gore 3.52 points in 2000; cost George W. Bush almost 2 points in 2000; and John McCain lost almost two points in 2008. Of these debate period swings, the 2000 debates stand out as the most important, especially in the context of the closeness of the election. Part of the explanation for Gore's swoon during the debate period is perhaps related to his performance but another important factor was the media meme that emerged as a result of the debates, including open discussions of whether or not Al Gore was a "serial exaggerator" (see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Press-Effect-Politicians-Journalists-Political/dp/0195173295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222103041&sr=8-1">Jamieson and Waldman</a>). This brings up an important point: it is probably not a good idea to attribute all of the change in candidate support during the debate period to the debates, since there are many other important events, or perhaps even natural drifts in candidate support occurring during these several week periods.<br />
<br />
So what does this mean for the three presidential debates this year? I suspect more of the same, which means that neither candidate will probably benefit much from them. The key factor will be whether one of the candidates can make small gains from each debate that, together, add up to something like a two or three point gain during the debate period. I'm doubtful, but it could happen.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-19835850706485544742012-09-21T17:43:00.000-05:002012-09-21T18:05:58.210-05:00Don't Count Your Chickens . . .The most recent (September 19) polling aggregation from <a href="http://pollster.com/">Pollster.com</a> shows President Obama with about a three-point lead over Governor Romney. This, coupled with another bad couple of weeks of media coverage for the Romney campaign, has buoyed the confidence of Obama supporters and has begun to generate a sense of a hapless Romney campaign and an inevitable Obama victory. Before Obama supporters get too carried away with their euforia, or Romney supporters with their despair, I'd like to remind them both of a guy named Al Gore, who held a fairly commanding lead over George Bush for most the better part of September in the 2000 presidential race:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij4J1VflmS38pXAtzu85pHvRVZJBmQJ6f2U-SzQSfbrVmg4n_uBZh7d_a96hi2iwU_qJKGpdUsP5dufBoDqeBYRSrZX6YdIBFo4_ojXVozuHynZi8mK6BgTW6zeRkjEFHyFFkpGbK6MPiL/s1600/gallup2000.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij4J1VflmS38pXAtzu85pHvRVZJBmQJ6f2U-SzQSfbrVmg4n_uBZh7d_a96hi2iwU_qJKGpdUsP5dufBoDqeBYRSrZX6YdIBFo4_ojXVozuHynZi8mK6BgTW6zeRkjEFHyFFkpGbK6MPiL/s400/gallup2000.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Note that Gore's lead through about the third week in September was much more substantial than President Obama's current lead in the polls. Of course, Gore went on to narrowly win the popular vote while narrowly losing the Electoral College vote. This is not too say I expect a sudden reversal of fortunes in the next couple of weeks. Just that the current margin really is quite narrow and conditions are still such that a reversal is a real possibility. Both sides should be anxious; this thing is far from over.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-32852109161841627862012-09-04T12:12:00.000-05:002012-09-04T12:12:24.637-05:00Poll of Forecasters<a href="http://www.polsci.buffalo.edu/faculty_staff/campbell/">Jim Campbell </a>has assembled a list of several forecasts that will appear in the October issue of <a href="http://www.apsanet.org/PS/">PS</a>. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9bq7tvocumdmlf/ForecastSummaryTable2012X%20%281%29.pdf">Here it is</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-70958584119237870652012-08-31T17:37:00.001-05:002012-08-31T17:37:46.183-05:00ForecastNow that I have final summer data from the <a href="http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/">Survey and Consumers</a> I can generate a forecast from my National Conditions and Incumbency model. The gist of my model is that the incumbent presidential party is held accountable for prevailing national conditions but that the level of accountability depends upon whether the incumbent president is running for reelection. Granted, the idea that the president's party is punished or rewarded based on prevailing conditions is hardly revolutionary. Where my model departs from most others, though, is that it incorporates incumbency as a conditioning variable, with the expectation that national conditions are stronger predictors of election outcomes when an incumbent president is running. Note that I'm not saying conditions don't matter in open seat contests; just that they matter more in incumbent contests. National conditions are measured here with an index that takes into account the level of presidential approval (<a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/gallup-daily-obama-job-approval.aspx">Gallup</a>) and aggregate levels of satisfaction with personal finances (Survey of Consumers), both averaged over the summer months of the election year. You can access a copy of my paper <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/t7urrhno4mkdspg/final2012.pdf">here</a>. <br />
<br />
The key Figure is posted below:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJgadPB_7iTz5Kxe0fAN_U9Nyz2ns1pSm0xw79yY2uqUMF_Am6xTyGHHLnCAon-p9ahttztHkKZxnxQY-Ah8LbVgRxmzEbvztQ9_ABOCzrAIJ4L5ZLfJ7L5fb4z81dKedYJGwVc34xSuGz/s1600/forecasting+figure.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJgadPB_7iTz5Kxe0fAN_U9Nyz2ns1pSm0xw79yY2uqUMF_Am6xTyGHHLnCAon-p9ahttztHkKZxnxQY-Ah8LbVgRxmzEbvztQ9_ABOCzrAIJ4L5ZLfJ7L5fb4z81dKedYJGwVc34xSuGz/s400/forecasting+figure.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1. National Conditions and US Presidential Elections, 1952-2008</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As this figure illustrates, national conditions track much better with election outcomes in years when the incumbent president is running than in open-seat contests. <br />
<br />
So what does all of this mean for the 2012 election? Right now the national conditions index (explained in greater detail in the paper) stands at 63.3. This is the fifth lowest reading from the fifteen elections presented above, and the third lowest of the nine elections involving an incumbent. Based on this value for national conditions, the forecast for the 2012 election is 47.9% for President Obama and 52.1% for Governor Romney. <br />
<br />
I'd like to be clear that the national conditions index for 2012 points a less-than-ideal situation for a sitting incumbent, but it does not suggest that conditions are so bad that the challenging party can coast to victory. Consider the years in the sample for which the national conditions index had a lower value than the current year: 1952, 1980, 1992, and 2008. These were all really tough years for the incumbent party, and it is easy to see why when considering the prevailing conditions in those years. I see 2012 as somewhat different. As I say in the paper, given the small sample of elections, and the size of the out-of sample prediction error, this points to a tight race but one where Governor Romney is the favorite.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7505192487242580551.post-54758048807640200112012-08-23T19:26:00.000-05:002012-08-23T21:15:50.415-05:00Bump TimeWith the major party conventions kicking off next week it's time to return to one of my favorite topics, conventions bumps. Four years ago, I <a href="http://election08data.blogspot.com/2008/08/convention-bumps.html">posted</a> a summary of convention bumps and I'm updating that information here so we can get a sense of what to expect this year.<br />
<br />
I measure convention bumps as the percentage point change in the convening party's share of the two-party vote, comparing polls taken between six days and two-weeks prior to the convention with polls taken during the seven days following the convention. Note that this is a short-term measure of the convention bump and does not say anything about the rate of decay in the weeks following the convention. The figure posted below summarizes the convention bumps for both the <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: red;">Republican</span> </span>and <span style="color: blue;">Democrati</span><span style="color: blue;">c</span> nominees from 1964 to 2008.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjGffPgORnhxqIg_DkCT6qWbuGzuiB2tDn6exahmLPLIshg-YKj_Xvc7gPR-Yw4xVo5FFQbdwIj0WXZPMJXrY26ZvqSqn1Rd3sn1BY2MtPO-nhcVORVOxsnxa7phjv0sKjUElLk-u_BHNK/s1600/bumps6412.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjGffPgORnhxqIg_DkCT6qWbuGzuiB2tDn6exahmLPLIshg-YKj_Xvc7gPR-Yw4xVo5FFQbdwIj0WXZPMJXrY26ZvqSqn1Rd3sn1BY2MtPO-nhcVORVOxsnxa7phjv0sKjUElLk-u_BHNK/s400/bumps6412.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The first thing to note is that there is a lot of variation in convention bumps. Fortunately, as I showed in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Campaigns-Matter-Contemporary-American-Politics/dp/0803973454"><span style="font-style: italic;">Do Campaigns Matter?</span></a>,
there is a systematic component to that variation. Two things in
particular seem to drive the size of the bumps. First, candidates who
are running ahead of where they "should" be (based on the expected
election outcome) tend to get smaller bumps, and those running behind
their expected level of support get larger bumps. In this way, the
conventions help bring the public closer to the expected outcome and
help to make elections more predictable. A perfect example of this
phenomenon is the 1964 conventions. Goldwater got a huge bump, in part
because he was running 16 points behind his expected vote share, and
Johnson got no bump, in part because he was running 6 points above his
expected vote share prior to the Democratic convention. For the years presented above, the correlation between how far ahead of the expected outcome (based on an election forecast) a candidate is running in pre-convention polls and the size of the convention bump is -.42. While all candidates may want to get a big bump from their convention, big bumps are not always a good thing; they could signal that the campaign is not doing as well as expected.<br />
<br />
Timing also plays a role in explaining convention bumps. When I first started looking into this (1996) there was a tendency for the party holding the earliest convention to get a larger bump. This made sense for a couple of reasons. First, it is the out-party holding the earliest convention and people usually know less about the out-party nominee, since the incumbent party almost always runs an incumbent president or vice-president (John McCain being the most recent exception). In addition, historically the first convention had been held sometime in late July or early August, a time period when there might be more undecided voters. Importantly, the tradition at the time was that the in-party convention would usually be held three to four weeks later, which gave time for the message from the first convention to resonate. However, in 1996 and 2000 the conventions were held fairly late and only two weeks apart. And, more recently, the 2008 conventions were held in back-to-back weeks in late August and early September, creating a situation in which the messages of both campaigns no doubt interfered with each other. This, of course, is also the timing of the 2012 conventions. When taking these changes in timing into account, it turns out that the number of days a convention is held before or after<sup>1</sup> the other party's convention is a stronger predictor of convention bump (r=.37) than simply going first (r=.22). Of course, the "days between conventions" measure captures both how early the first party convenes and how close together the conventions are.<br />
<br />
Finally, it also appears that there is a general trend toward smaller bumps in the last few elections cycles, though this could simply reflect the changes in timing of the conventions. Truly large bumps were somewhat common prior to 1996 but have not made an appearance since then.<br />
<br />
Taking all of these factors into account, and adding a dummy variable to control for the disastrous Democratic conventions of 1968 and 1972, we can see that there is a predictable element to convention bumps:<br />
<br />
<img alt="" height="191" src="data:image/png;base64,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" width="400" /> <br />
<br />
This is not to say that there aren't interesting and unique aspects of every convention that might explain why the convening party over- or under-performs the expected outcome--just that, by and large, the pattern of convention bumps is explained by a few simple variables. The correspondence between predicted (by the model shown above) and actual convention bumps illustrates this point quite well:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZY1E5MHFrXmpk_4FH1eJ8V9Nj7QwfJCWgyROPD6ksIyJNcHj_3GEyrBpdSa6bVCQ_Ps3pr-nogC5hBV-eHvs0RfLOlWaDe_x3QKfdpHXLax4kXl0YPVz1cIIqX-NCtey5-ik3lmTwy4j1/s1600/bumppredict6408.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZY1E5MHFrXmpk_4FH1eJ8V9Nj7QwfJCWgyROPD6ksIyJNcHj_3GEyrBpdSa6bVCQ_Ps3pr-nogC5hBV-eHvs0RfLOlWaDe_x3QKfdpHXLax4kXl0YPVz1cIIqX-NCtey5-ik3lmTwy4j1/s400/bumppredict6408.png" width="400" /></a>
<br />
<br />
Generally, conventions expected to produce large bumps tend to do so, and those predicted to produce small bumps also fit the pattern. What's important to note, though, is the the pattern is far from perfect and some of the larger deviations from the from the predicted outcome make sense, given what we know about those specific conventions. For instance, the Democratic convention of 1984--a convention plagued by in-party fighting--underperformed by a little over five percentage points, while the Democratic convention of 1992--one that benefit from Ross Perot dropping out of the race and near-endorsing the party's nominee, Bill Clinton--exceeded expectations by almost six percentage points.<br />
<br />
<b>2012 Bumps</b><br />
<br />
So what does this all mean for the conventions coming up in the next two weeks? I won't have complete data for the Obama bump prediction until the opening days of the Republican convention, and my general election forecast (used in the model) is preliminary at this point (I will post that model when all the data are in; preliminary data point to narrow Romney win). But I don't expect any of the data to change dramatically in the next few days, so I will go ahead and make a prediction for the 2012 convention bumps:<br />
<br />
Predicted Romney Bump: 3.6 percentage points<br />
Predicted Obama Bump: 1.1 percentage points <br />
<br />
Right now, the two candidates are in a tight race, with Obama holding a slight advantage in the polls. Based on my bump predictions, I expect that the race will continue to be tight after the conventions but that Romney will hold a slight lead.<br />
<br />
<u>Huge caveat</u>: Hurricane Isaac. I have no earthly idea how a hurricane-shortened convention will afect things, though I suspect it would not be good for the Romney campaign <br />
<br />
<sup>1</sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">So, the first convention gets a score equal to the number of days it begins before the first day of the second convention, and the second convention gets a score equal to the number of -1 times the number of days it begins after the last day of the first convention. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com