Following is the second half of my interview with Organizing for America's Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird, and DNC spokeswoman Lynda Tran. The main headline is that, after a sometimes-bumpy road during the first year, OFA seems to have a plan in place to mobilize its volunteer database and figure out ways to connect those volunteers--many of whom were drawn into national politics by Barack Obama's 2008 presidential run--with state and local Democratic candidates for the 2010 midterms.
Fivethirtyeight: Are you guys are getting a sense as you get to know your list better, are you able to—and I don’t know what the word to use is here—profile your members? This is person who will call her member of Congress, and this is a person who won’t do that but will show up for a local organizational meeting, and this is a person who will write a letter to the editor, and this is a person who will do all of those.
Mitch Stewart: That’s exactly right. We do a ton of list segmentation, both online and offline, based off of what a volunteer’s most comfortable action is. So we definitely we have folks who love to host candidates and phone banks and house parties, and we have a strong sense of who those people. We have folks who show up but maybe not host, and we have a strong sense of who they are. We know made phone calls to Congress, we know who wrote letters to the editor, we know who wrote letters to their members.
So the long answer to that question is yes. We try to tailor our communication with these volunteers in a way that will allow them to get involved and engaged in the actions we’re doing.
Lynda Tran: And Tom, that actually gets to the earlier point about what does translate from the legislative organizing to the electoral organizing. We have spent the last 14 months on this, the last year or so, identifying activists and building these team structures and having in place the largest field structure the party has ever had in an off-presidential year. So that definitely is going to translate into the work we are doing this year for the midterm.
538: In terms of the midterms, shifting more into gear on that, to me—and I may be wrong about this—the most important question is the degree to which the so-called “Obama surge” voters—first-time voters as you mentioned, younger voters, non-white voters--these people who turned in waves or for the first time in 2008. We’re not expecting all of these people to turn out, but the question is how many of those people will turn out or how few. So I’m wondering what you guys are doing to identify, target, communicate with and mobilize the so-called surge electorate.
MS: It’s true that we’ll use a lot of the same tactics that we did during in 2008 and, frankly, 2009. We know who these folks are, we know where they live, we have their phone numbers. What we continue to believe that the most powerful way to reach out and talk to these voters is to have a friend or neighbor, someone that they know from their community, reach out and engage them and talk to them about why it’s so important [to turn out in 2010].
The key is that once we explain the stakes and what election day could look like, good or bad, these folks will get motivated. They don’t follow the back-and-forth of what happens here in Washington like some other voters do in this country. So a bit part of what we’re going to have to do is get out there and have conversations. That’s through phone calls, that’s through door knocks, that’s through public events, and using our online tools.
It seems to me that the more that technology advances the more that the bread-and-butter is the backbone of any strong organization. You just can’t replace those personal, face-to-face or over the phone conversation. And that’s something we’re uniquely positioned to do.
538: Are there any new social media or technological developments since 2008 I should know about that you guys are tinkering with?
LT: We definitely have some things in the works, and you’re going to hear more about it in the coming weeks. I think it’s safe to say we’re looking at some of the newer ways that people are getting their info, like iPads.
538: Anything else? Why can’t I know now?
JB: Yeah, I think there will be some interesting things we’ll be doing, and I think we’ll be advancing some of the technology. But I think also now, with some distance from the 2008 campaign, we are having an opportunity to make those things that we already had better—to make the data integration better, to make sure we moving quicker from an online interest to an offline volunteer. I know that’s not very exciting, I know that’s not very sexy for reporting. But we’ve done a lot around those upgrades. And we will have some press-worthy things to talk about.
538: I’m wondering if, either in-house or through Ken Strasma or one of your number wizards or consultants, going back to this surge voter, have you guys been able to model what kinds of people you expect to drop off and not turn out in 2010 versus which kinds of surge or first-time voters you do think will turn out? In other words, can you figure out or are you starting to figure out where your best rate of return is, in terms of contacting certain people who are likely to show up for the midterms and other people who may be less or unlikely to?
MS: Tom, that’s a spot-on question. Ken worked with me in Iowa during the caucuses. I think there are actually three stories from 2008, one that did not get told and two others that did. The two that got told were the unprecedented volunteer effort and voter contact that happened across the country, and I think the second that got told was the online effort that the [Obama] campaign had.
But the third story that really didn’t get told was the data analysis that we did in 2008 and we’re building upon it in 2010. And the regression analysis that we do, not only for candidates but also for likely participation, is something that will be the driving force for our resource allocation both with volunteer time, as far as who we talk at the door and on the phone, but also as you look at paid communications and the best way to allocate those resources.
The second thing, though, that were focused on is not just looking at candidate support and participation and an undecided score—the folks that are most persuadable—but also looking at things like who is most likely to answer the phone and who is most likely to answer their door. We are an organization driven by data. We were in 2008, but in 2010 we will become even more so. And we’ll continue to look at ways to become more efficient and data is basically the driving force in that.
538: We talked about having a vote goal and end date. It was kind of a short time line, but you did have a deadline in January special election [in Massachusetts]. And the Politico and others reported that you were going all-out, or you’re all in or whatever. So what happened there, and what lessons did you learn from that loss in the Teddy Kennedy seat race?
MS: The biggest lesson that we took away from that is that you can’t manufacture an organization in-state behind a specific candidate in three weeks or two weeks—that it takes more time than that. Part of the reason that we started this [2010 midterm] process quite a while ago, and on June 5 will be the official kickoff and will provide us the opportunity to build that volunteer capacity.
But the one caveat I’ll add to that is that we as an organization were able to generate 2.4 million phone calls in the closing days of that [Massachusetts] election. So the work that we did we fell very good about. But each campaign will be unique; each candidate will be unique. And the biggest takeaway for us is that we need to make sure we get in early.
JS: I think the lessons that we learned from NY-23, PA-12, or even places like FL-19, were also lessons about how do we engage our volunteers, how do we connect them better with candidates in a way that they can get excited about it and motivated. You need the time to do the work and get them to do the work and get engaged earlier. Those are the lessons we learned in the last year and half.
538: Tell me, now that David Plouffe coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, came back a week after the Massachusetts special election, can you tell me a sense of what he's doing, what his role is on a day-to-day basis? What’s changed since he came back?
MS: We actually have to get off the phone with you because we have a meeting with him in a couple of minutes. He’s somebody that we constantly talk to. He’s somebody who is still the driving force in this organization. He’s someone that looks over emails. He’s someone that’s still heavily involved in the strategic direction that this organization is heading in, and that will only continue to deepen as we get closer to 2010. And, again, I don’t think this is super interesting for what you’re writing about, but he’s the smartest person I’ve ever dealt with.
6.03.2010
Colombia Redux: Mockus is in Big Trouble
@ 2:00 PM
Last Sunday we previewed the Presidential race in Colombia, an election that was expected to be neck-and-neck until the bitter end. Establishment candidate and former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos was running to inherit the mixed political and security legacy of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe, while upstart former Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus had surged into contention as a centrist alternative.
With polling from Gallup and Ipsos showing Santos pulling 35 to 38 percent and Mockus earning 30 to 35 percent, the results on Sunday evening were expected to show a tight finish. Regardless of who pulled off the win -- though Santos was ahead by a few points throughout -- it looked like both candidates would emerge in a strong position for the likely Presidential run-off.
However, with 99.7 percent of precincts reporting, Sunday night's results presented a commanding victory for Santos, with the "Party of the U" standard-bearer earning 46.6 percent of the national votes. Mockus, running on the ticket of his new "Green Party" earned just 21.5 percent of the vote, less than half of Santos' total.
The Santos victory was even more impressive when viewed geographically. He won every department of Colombia save Putumayo in the south, where Mockus eked out a win with 28.9 percent to Gustavo Petro's 26.7 percent and Santos' 23.4 percent.
Even in Mockus' political homestead of urban, cosmopolitan Bogotá (the 'Athens of the Andes'), Santos won convincingly, with just over 40 percent of the vote to Mockus' 27.5 percent.*
One interesting characteristic of the race, relative to other elections we have covered, was the lack of a serious socio-economic divide in vote shares among the top candidates.
Looking at the vote share per department, the vote shares of each major candidate explained by the percentage of people living in poverty is quite low. Broadly speaking, however, Santos received better results in poorer departments, while Mockus generally better in wealthier ones.
The key question going forward, as we look to the 20 June run-off between Santos and Mockus, is how much we can trust the polling that we have seen thus far, and whether the next batches will be any better.
Before we jump into any condemnations of the pollsters -- though these numbers are really horrible -- we must give them a break on a key issue. The last poll was released on 22 May, by law the last day that election-related publications could be made, in order to comply with the national rules that ban campaign propaganda for the week before the election. The fieldwork was done from 17-19 May, meaning that the data were a full eleven days old by election day -- an eternity in election time.
That said, we have to work with what we've got, and bad numbers are bad numbers.
Of the five pollsters that were published in major Colombian news outlets, the best performers were the local Gallup outfit, Ivamer, and the Centro National de ConsultorÃa (the National Consulting Center). Based in Bogotá and focused on Colombia and a few other Latin American markets, CNC is a market research firm that also does political polling, much like most other polling outfits.
CNC is of interest because of the two best-scoring pollsters, they managed to capture the Santos rally where no other firm did. While Ipsos also captured a drop-off in Mockus' support, they reported a drop for Santos at the same time.
Overall, the hanging question regards the 'surge' of Mockus in April, a polling rally that peaked several weeks before the election, and resulted in a quite disappointing (for supporters) final result -- a situation that was eerily reminiscent of the Liberal Democrats peak and crash in the UK. Even with some additional erosion of Mockus' numbers in the days before the election, dropping from around 35 percent to just 21.5 percent in less than 10 days (with no scandal) is highly unlikely.
Plausible explanations for the overstated Mockus numbers are many, ranging from an overreliance on city-residing respondents (easier to get to) to selection bias towards wealthier respondents, poorer than expected turnout among the young, and the old chestnut of the incumbent party cooking the results in favor of their candidate.
Of course, this suggests that the previous figures showing a 5 to 10 point lead for Mockus in run-off are highly questionable at this point. Ostensibly building from a 47 percent baseline, and likely pulling nearly all of Noemi Sanin's voters and many of German Lleras, it is Santos that now looks to be in the stronger position.
We can use the basic ideology of each candidate to allocate his/her votes to Santos and Mockus for the second round.
This allocation would result in a major second round victory for Santos, by nearly 20 points.
All told, it looks pretty bad for Mockus. His main path to victory at this point is to swing back a big number of Santos voters, while minimizing losses to Santos from the conservative candidates by perhaps their staying home rather than switching to Santos -- a long shot at this point.
---
Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international affairs columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com
* Here is a chart of the Santos-Mockus results in each of the 32 departments of Colombia, ordered by Santos margin of victory (other candidates are removed to make it less confusing). You'll want to click on this chart to see the details.
With polling from Gallup and Ipsos showing Santos pulling 35 to 38 percent and Mockus earning 30 to 35 percent, the results on Sunday evening were expected to show a tight finish. Regardless of who pulled off the win -- though Santos was ahead by a few points throughout -- it looked like both candidates would emerge in a strong position for the likely Presidential run-off.
However, with 99.7 percent of precincts reporting, Sunday night's results presented a commanding victory for Santos, with the "Party of the U" standard-bearer earning 46.6 percent of the national votes. Mockus, running on the ticket of his new "Green Party" earned just 21.5 percent of the vote, less than half of Santos' total.
The Santos victory was even more impressive when viewed geographically. He won every department of Colombia save Putumayo in the south, where Mockus eked out a win with 28.9 percent to Gustavo Petro's 26.7 percent and Santos' 23.4 percent.
Even in Mockus' political homestead of urban, cosmopolitan Bogotá (the 'Athens of the Andes'), Santos won convincingly, with just over 40 percent of the vote to Mockus' 27.5 percent.*
One interesting characteristic of the race, relative to other elections we have covered, was the lack of a serious socio-economic divide in vote shares among the top candidates.Looking at the vote share per department, the vote shares of each major candidate explained by the percentage of people living in poverty is quite low. Broadly speaking, however, Santos received better results in poorer departments, while Mockus generally better in wealthier ones.
The key question going forward, as we look to the 20 June run-off between Santos and Mockus, is how much we can trust the polling that we have seen thus far, and whether the next batches will be any better.
Before we jump into any condemnations of the pollsters -- though these numbers are really horrible -- we must give them a break on a key issue. The last poll was released on 22 May, by law the last day that election-related publications could be made, in order to comply with the national rules that ban campaign propaganda for the week before the election. The fieldwork was done from 17-19 May, meaning that the data were a full eleven days old by election day -- an eternity in election time.That said, we have to work with what we've got, and bad numbers are bad numbers.
Of the five pollsters that were published in major Colombian news outlets, the best performers were the local Gallup outfit, Ivamer, and the Centro National de ConsultorÃa (the National Consulting Center). Based in Bogotá and focused on Colombia and a few other Latin American markets, CNC is a market research firm that also does political polling, much like most other polling outfits.
CNC is of interest because of the two best-scoring pollsters, they managed to capture the Santos rally where no other firm did. While Ipsos also captured a drop-off in Mockus' support, they reported a drop for Santos at the same time.
Overall, the hanging question regards the 'surge' of Mockus in April, a polling rally that peaked several weeks before the election, and resulted in a quite disappointing (for supporters) final result -- a situation that was eerily reminiscent of the Liberal Democrats peak and crash in the UK. Even with some additional erosion of Mockus' numbers in the days before the election, dropping from around 35 percent to just 21.5 percent in less than 10 days (with no scandal) is highly unlikely.
Plausible explanations for the overstated Mockus numbers are many, ranging from an overreliance on city-residing respondents (easier to get to) to selection bias towards wealthier respondents, poorer than expected turnout among the young, and the old chestnut of the incumbent party cooking the results in favor of their candidate.
Of course, this suggests that the previous figures showing a 5 to 10 point lead for Mockus in run-off are highly questionable at this point. Ostensibly building from a 47 percent baseline, and likely pulling nearly all of Noemi Sanin's voters and many of German Lleras, it is Santos that now looks to be in the stronger position.
We can use the basic ideology of each candidate to allocate his/her votes to Santos and Mockus for the second round.
This allocation would result in a major second round victory for Santos, by nearly 20 points.
All told, it looks pretty bad for Mockus. His main path to victory at this point is to swing back a big number of Santos voters, while minimizing losses to Santos from the conservative candidates by perhaps their staying home rather than switching to Santos -- a long shot at this point.
---
Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international affairs columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com
* Here is a chart of the Santos-Mockus results in each of the 32 departments of Colombia, ordered by Santos margin of victory (other candidates are removed to make it less confusing). You'll want to click on this chart to see the details.
FiveThirtyEight to Partner with New York Times
@ 11:00 AM
Some exciting news this morning: We have reached agreement in principle to incorporate FiveThirtyEight's content into NYTimes.com.
In the near future, the blog will "re-launch" under a NYTimes.com domain. It will retain its own identity (akin to other Times blogs like DealBook), but will be organized under the News:Politics section. Once this occurs, content will no longer be posted at FiveThirtyEight.com on an ongoing basis, and the blog will re-direct to the new URL. In addition, I will be contributing content to the print edition of the New York Times, and to the Sunday Magazine. The partnership agreement, which is structured as a license, has a term of three years.
There are two particular reasons why we felt the Times was the best home for FiveThirtyEight. On the one hand, I very much see what we are doing as a type of journalism, in the sense that it consists of doing original research on a timely basis to help inform the public discourse. Thus, the Times' unflinching commitment to quality journalism makes for a natural fit, and I expect that the relationship will evolve in exciting ways as FiveThirtyEight is incorporated into a "traditional" newsroom setting. On the other hand, the terrific work of their graphic and interactive journalists was a major draw. The new blog should look and feel great, and should be substantially more robust and feature-rich than the simple, one-page design that we have now.
I'd like to thank my colleagues at FiveThirtyEight, and my attorney, Steve Sheppard, to say nothing of the countless friends and family members whose patience I tested as the discussions were ongoing. There are also a number of people to thank at the Times, first and foremost Jim Roberts, but also Gerald Marzorati, Bill Keller, Megan Liberman, and Brian Ernst, among others. This all happened somewhat serendipitously, growing out of a conversation that I had with Gerald when I ran into him on a Amtrak platform in Boston ten weeks ago.
Although we have not settled on an exact date, the partnership will most likely launch officially in about 9 or 10 weeks -- that is, in very early August. Until that time, I will be posting on a reduced schedule, as I focus on facilitating the transition and on bringing my book project substantially toward completion. Our other writers will continue to post as normal during this interim period.
In the near future, the blog will "re-launch" under a NYTimes.com domain. It will retain its own identity (akin to other Times blogs like DealBook), but will be organized under the News:Politics section. Once this occurs, content will no longer be posted at FiveThirtyEight.com on an ongoing basis, and the blog will re-direct to the new URL. In addition, I will be contributing content to the print edition of the New York Times, and to the Sunday Magazine. The partnership agreement, which is structured as a license, has a term of three years.
There are two particular reasons why we felt the Times was the best home for FiveThirtyEight. On the one hand, I very much see what we are doing as a type of journalism, in the sense that it consists of doing original research on a timely basis to help inform the public discourse. Thus, the Times' unflinching commitment to quality journalism makes for a natural fit, and I expect that the relationship will evolve in exciting ways as FiveThirtyEight is incorporated into a "traditional" newsroom setting. On the other hand, the terrific work of their graphic and interactive journalists was a major draw. The new blog should look and feel great, and should be substantially more robust and feature-rich than the simple, one-page design that we have now.
I'd like to thank my colleagues at FiveThirtyEight, and my attorney, Steve Sheppard, to say nothing of the countless friends and family members whose patience I tested as the discussions were ongoing. There are also a number of people to thank at the Times, first and foremost Jim Roberts, but also Gerald Marzorati, Bill Keller, Megan Liberman, and Brian Ernst, among others. This all happened somewhat serendipitously, growing out of a conversation that I had with Gerald when I ran into him on a Amtrak platform in Boston ten weeks ago.
Although we have not settled on an exact date, the partnership will most likely launch officially in about 9 or 10 weeks -- that is, in very early August. Until that time, I will be posting on a reduced schedule, as I focus on facilitating the transition and on bringing my book project substantially toward completion. Our other writers will continue to post as normal during this interim period.
6.02.2010
Alabama Turnout Analysis
@ 3:52 PM
The dream of a biracial progressive coalition supporting a southern African-American politician took another hit last night as Rep. Artur Davis was crushed by underdog primary opponent Ron Sparks in the Alabama Democratic gubernatorial primary. And so, for some who don't look too closely at the numbers, Davis joins the list along with Georgia's Andrew Young, North Carolina's Harvey Gantt and Tennessee's Harold Ford, of southern black candidates who couldn't get enough white votes to win.
Without exit polling, it's impossible to accurately break down racial patterns in yesterday's vote. But even a cursory look at the numbers shows that while Sparks did indeed wax Davis among white Democrats, he did exceptionally well among black Democrats as well. Moreover, Davis wasn't hurt by some dropoff in black turnout attributable to his refusal to pursue African-American endorsements or focus on that community and its issue priorities; indeed, in most parts of the state, black turnout seems to have held up relatively well as compared to the last statewide gubernatorial primary in 2006 (overall, Democratic turnout was down 31% from 2006). Sparks trounced Davis by winning votes, not by exploiting some fluke of racial turnout patterns.
That Sparks won something approaching half the African-American vote is evident from a look at Davis' own majority-black congressional district, the 7th. In Greene County, which according to 2008 Census data is 78% African-American, Sparks beat Davis by better than two-to-one, with turnout virtually unchanged from 2006. In Wilcox County, 72% black, Sparks won by better than three-to-one. Again, in sharp contrast to the state as a whole, turnout was essentially unchanged from 2006. Most symbolically, in Dallas County, whose county seat is Selma, and which is 68% black, Sparks won 55-45, and yet again, turnout was not at all down from 2006. And in the state's largest county, Jefferson (Birmingham), which is 41% black, Sparks won 58-42, with turnout down a relatively low 14% from 2006.
Undoubtedly turnout in the 7th was boosted by the highly competitive primary to choose a successor to Davis, but that did not help the incumbent. Davis' best county statewide was Mobile, 34% African-American, which he won 60-40, and even there the drop in turnout from 2006 was significantly lower than the statewide average.
Meanwhile, when you look at the heavily white northern Alabama counties thought of as Sparks Country, he did win big, but turnout was way down. In Marion County in northwest Alabama, 95% white, Sparks won 74%, but turnout was down 53% from 2006. In Cullman County, 97% white (and the home of the Folsom clan), Sparks won 78%, but turnout was down 55% from 2006. In Limestone County, 84% white, Sparks won 70%, but turnout was down 42% from 2006.
The more you look at the numbers, it's clear that Davis lost this primary by failing to have any real electoral base, demographically or geographically. And strange to say, the candidate who actually put together a pretty impressive biracial coalition was Ron Sparks.
UPDATE: In reading a Birmingham News story on the Alabama gubernatorial primary, it finally hit me that some observers think Davis lost not because they believe African-American turnout was down from 2006, but because it was down from the 2008 presidential primary in the state. Maybe I'm slow on the uptake, or maybe it really hadn't occurred to me that anyone would seriously expect African-American voters to turn out for Artur Davis like they did for Barack Obama, or that midterm and presidential primary turnout levels were comparable.
Since the burden of the post above is to suggest that Davis' problem was poor performance among black voters, not their turnout levels, the distinction is largely irrelevant, but the subject did lead me to look back at those 2008 presidential primary numbers, and a surprising discovery: in many of those heavily-black counties in the 7th congressional district of Alabama, turnout was actually higher yesterday than in 2008, in some cases much higher. In Sumter County, for example, turnout was 95% higher in 2010 than in 2008; in Greene County, it rose 44%. Overall turnout statewide was 40% higher in 2008 than yesterday, but a quick glance indicates the boost was mostly in the large urban areas. I'm sure African-American voters were a big, perhaps dominant, part of that story, but the patterns suggest that Obama's organization, not just his race, had a lot to do with that outcome.
Without exit polling, it's impossible to accurately break down racial patterns in yesterday's vote. But even a cursory look at the numbers shows that while Sparks did indeed wax Davis among white Democrats, he did exceptionally well among black Democrats as well. Moreover, Davis wasn't hurt by some dropoff in black turnout attributable to his refusal to pursue African-American endorsements or focus on that community and its issue priorities; indeed, in most parts of the state, black turnout seems to have held up relatively well as compared to the last statewide gubernatorial primary in 2006 (overall, Democratic turnout was down 31% from 2006). Sparks trounced Davis by winning votes, not by exploiting some fluke of racial turnout patterns.
That Sparks won something approaching half the African-American vote is evident from a look at Davis' own majority-black congressional district, the 7th. In Greene County, which according to 2008 Census data is 78% African-American, Sparks beat Davis by better than two-to-one, with turnout virtually unchanged from 2006. In Wilcox County, 72% black, Sparks won by better than three-to-one. Again, in sharp contrast to the state as a whole, turnout was essentially unchanged from 2006. Most symbolically, in Dallas County, whose county seat is Selma, and which is 68% black, Sparks won 55-45, and yet again, turnout was not at all down from 2006. And in the state's largest county, Jefferson (Birmingham), which is 41% black, Sparks won 58-42, with turnout down a relatively low 14% from 2006.
Undoubtedly turnout in the 7th was boosted by the highly competitive primary to choose a successor to Davis, but that did not help the incumbent. Davis' best county statewide was Mobile, 34% African-American, which he won 60-40, and even there the drop in turnout from 2006 was significantly lower than the statewide average.
Meanwhile, when you look at the heavily white northern Alabama counties thought of as Sparks Country, he did win big, but turnout was way down. In Marion County in northwest Alabama, 95% white, Sparks won 74%, but turnout was down 53% from 2006. In Cullman County, 97% white (and the home of the Folsom clan), Sparks won 78%, but turnout was down 55% from 2006. In Limestone County, 84% white, Sparks won 70%, but turnout was down 42% from 2006.
The more you look at the numbers, it's clear that Davis lost this primary by failing to have any real electoral base, demographically or geographically. And strange to say, the candidate who actually put together a pretty impressive biracial coalition was Ron Sparks.
UPDATE: In reading a Birmingham News story on the Alabama gubernatorial primary, it finally hit me that some observers think Davis lost not because they believe African-American turnout was down from 2006, but because it was down from the 2008 presidential primary in the state. Maybe I'm slow on the uptake, or maybe it really hadn't occurred to me that anyone would seriously expect African-American voters to turn out for Artur Davis like they did for Barack Obama, or that midterm and presidential primary turnout levels were comparable.
Since the burden of the post above is to suggest that Davis' problem was poor performance among black voters, not their turnout levels, the distinction is largely irrelevant, but the subject did lead me to look back at those 2008 presidential primary numbers, and a surprising discovery: in many of those heavily-black counties in the 7th congressional district of Alabama, turnout was actually higher yesterday than in 2008, in some cases much higher. In Sumter County, for example, turnout was 95% higher in 2010 than in 2008; in Greene County, it rose 44%. Overall turnout statewide was 40% higher in 2008 than yesterday, but a quick glance indicates the boost was mostly in the large urban areas. I'm sure African-American voters were a big, perhaps dominant, part of that story, but the patterns suggest that Obama's organization, not just his race, had a lot to do with that outcome.
Organizing For America Ramps Up For November
@ 11:15 AM
Last week I interviewed Organizing for America director Mitch Stewart and deputy director Jeremy Bird. (Thanks to Lynda Tran of the Democratic National Committee, who helped set up the phone interview and who participated as well.) We covered a range of subjects, but mostly focused on OFA's efforts to mobilize supporters during the healthcare reform debates and the organization's plans for the upcoming 2010 cycle.
Following is the first half of the interview, which began with Stewart and Bird asking if they could give opening statements about what OFA is doing right now in advance of the midterm elections now just five months away:
MITCH STEWART: Just as a real general overview, both Jeremy and I worked on the campaign for a long time. And during that process we brought in a lot of these new, first-time voters in 2008. And as we have worked in a lot of elections and special elections since then, we are looking at a group of voters that, one, could be pivotal in turning an election, you know the electoral success or failure for the president and his allies in Washington and across the country; but two, also looking to make sure that as Organizing for America, the president’s field team, who are at the universe of voters who are most responsive to our message? Looking at the data, there were 15 million first-time voters in 2008, both who registered after 2006 and voted for the first time in 2008, and the president won them in 2008 with about 70 or 71 percent, 72 percent, depending on how you look at it.
If you look across the country at congressional races and statewide races, these voters are viable. In Ohio, you’re talking about a little over 700,000 [of them]. In a lot of these bellwether congressional races you’re looking at a universe in the tens of thousands of first-time 2008 voters. And we are uniquely positioned to reach out and talk to them—not only because of the messenger, and continuing the conversation between first-time voters and the president—but also because these voters got engaged and involved because they really supported the president’s change agenda. And we’re uniquely positioned to reach out and talk to those folks.
And in general what Jeremy did in South Carolina and I did in Iowa is get these folks to pledge that they’ll vote in 2010—just like I did in the caucuses in Iowa in 2008 and Jeremy did in the South Carolina primary—as a way to keep this new generation of voters engaged in our process. So we’ve been busy planning that, and we’re in the beginning phases of implementing that, which will start on June 5.
JEREMY BIRD: I would just add one thing. I think the last piece of the strategy is that we go to hundreds of strategy meetings in local communities across the country. I’ve been out to many of them--in Indianapolis, South Carolina, a bunch of places in Ohio and a bunch of places in Arizona--and the overwhelming response from our volunteer base, from the people are that most engaged, is that they are really focused heavily on [the 2010 midterms].
538: Before we get to 2010, I just want you to clarify for our readers, and for me as well, as Mybarackobama transitioned to OFA, what is its relationship is functionally or legally to the DNC?
MS: The OFA is a part of the DNC. There’s no legal separation between the two. So if you are looking for an exact legal definition we can certainly pass that down to you, but there’s no separation between the OFA and the DNC.
538: The reason I ask, Mitch, is because the names that you have, candidates can’t really get access to that list but they can maybe mail out to it or solicit fund from people or contact them passively—in other words, does the DNC have propriety control over those names or are they really the property of the president?
MS: The email list is housed at the DNC. So those 13 million names, roughly 13 million names, are housed by the DNC. That’s information that we don’t share with anyone outside the DNC.
Now, there are a couple different layers underneath that. The voter file that we used in 2008 is owned by the state parties. So they have information basically on all of the candidate IDs from 2008. There’s a different, a separate entity of volunteers. And we are in the process of getting our volunteers—one of challenges, not challenges, but one of things we’re going to be focused on—is connecting these volunteers to different candidates around the country so that not only do they feel close to the president, but they have a relationship with their local candidates.
538: So the volunteer base is 13 million and you consider those things identical lists, I mean in terms of the total head count?
MS: The email list?
538: Yea, I want to know how many total names you have and in what form or function they exist.
LYNDRA TRAN: Tom, we’ve never actually publicly said the size of our list. It’s been reported at 13 million and we don’t contradict that.
JB: I think one way to look at it is that we have sort of our big community of people that we communicate with via email. And then we have appropriate information in each state for staffers because we have staffers in every state. Our whole goal as organizers is to take those people—both those people for whom we have email information for, and for those that we don’t, because we do have a lot of volunteers who aren’t online or we connected with during the campaign but they’re not on the internet as much, but they may text message or have some relationship with our staff—and our whole goal in 2010 is to connect as many of those people as we possibly can to get them to communicate with us every day.
And then we want to bring other people in that aren’t on that list. A big part of it is to get information from people that we’re going to find in the community and bring them into that online universe, and get those people in the offline universe to become active volunteers that we can schedule to get involved.
MS: There’s a big overlap from our online volunteers and the email addresses that we have from those volunteers. But we do have some extremely active volunteers that just don’t use the online tools that we have available.
538: I see. And then you have people who are very tech savvy but not participating so much. So it’s like a Venn diagram, with some people who are both very active and online-savvy, but some who are in one category or the other.
MS: Right. That’s exactly right.
538: Can you at least tell me, without giving me a specific number, the total list of names has grown since the inauguration, right?
MS: Yes.
538: Is there any attrition? Are there people who sort of have fallen away, or you lost their contact information? You can’t have every name you had on Election Day 2008, right?
MS: It’s almost like a floating, living organism. You have folks coming in, and folks sort of taking a break. It’s in constant flux. But we feel extremely good about the vitality of it, if that makes sense.
538: One of things I wanted to ask you, Mitch, since you were there from day one [at OFA], and both you guys worked on the campaign, is that mobilizing people in an electoral context is a little different from mobilizing people for a policy campaign. I’m wondering—since there were critics in the first year, including myself to a certain degree—if OFA was going to be able to duplicate when it comes to policy or legislation or action items the kind of verve and intensity of an election cycle. So I’m wondering what lessons you guys learned in the first year or so about getting people who could vote or participate or even write a check to do things in the policy arena?
MS: Well, let me preface the lessons that we learned a couple different ways. The first is we’re extremely proud of the work that our organizers and volunteers did during 2009 and 2010, and specifically with health insurance reform. It was a long, long fight, but if you look at the totality of the work, it’s really impressive: Over three million folks have taken action; millions of folks have sent letters or called Congress or done a host of things to stay active and stay engaged in support of the president’s agenda.
But you’re right to say that it is a different animal. There are a couple different really broad distinctions we saw right away. I don’t know if you were involved right away in the healthcare debate, but there were a number of different deadlines that we were all working backwards from. In legislation the deadlines are extremely fluid, but in elections they are not: You know when the finish line is 99 percent of the time unless there’s a recount or something along those lines. You have November 2 and you basically are able to work backwards. You know how many voters you need to be successful. You know how many volunteers you need to touch those voters so that you get that 51 percent of the vote on November 2, and you can work backwards from that.
From a legislative perspective or from a policy perspective that deadline is much more fluid. The other thing that…
538: So wait, what you’re saying is that in a campaign you have a vote goal, which is something you compute one year out, and you have a strategy to get there. What your saying is that it’s a little different when you’re trying to get a participation goal or mobilization goal, it’s a little more nebulous to do because you don’t know exactly what the date or moment or vote is around which you’re trying to mobilize people?
MS: Not only that, but you know exactly how many votes you need, or have a very, very, very good estimate, of exactly how many votes you need to win on election day. The difference with policy advocacy is you have a lot of different arrows in your quiver—you can have calls to members, you can have letters to the editor, you can have press events, you can do a whole host of different things, letters to your member, calling into radio shows, etc., etc., etc. But with an electoral campaign you know that if you have 10 volunteers, and they’re going to knock on 50 doors apiece, that’s 500 attempts, and if they contact 30 percent of those 500 attempts, that’s 150 conversations. Basically, you have a lot of math to work backwards from, or you have much more certainty that the work you’re doing will provide you with 51 percent on election day.
The difference with policy advocacy is, if we’re making calls to a member’s office, then we are able to work backwards from that. Or if we know there’s 10,000 letters to the editor, or whatever that number is. But there isn’t sort of that finite—as you said, it’s more nebulous. We have a lot of arrows in our quiver, and we’re constantly using all of them to try to get that next vote or support for the president’s agenda, but it’s different. It’s very challenging and I think we did a great job, but it is different than electoral work.
538: Let’s take an example. You recently had a “Wall Street Day of Action” that was obviously organized around the notion of financial and regulatory reform. Give me a sense of what your roll out was for that, what happened, and what metrics or results you can point to.
JB: Tom, if I could say one last thing on that last point.
538: Sure, go ahead.
JB: The other thing that's very different is that when you’re doing a thing like health care it's not always a choice between A and B. It’s not like in an election in 2008, or elections generally, where it becomes very much a choice between two different outcomes. There are lots of people that have different views because of one piece of it they don't like, or one piece of it they do like. So I think it’s a lot more complicated when you get into issues in terms of volunteers and voters and how much you have to do to make connections.
But in terms of your question about Wall Street Reform Day of Action, that’s where it's a different campaign in the sense that our goal in terms of that day of action was making sure that we were continually getting out the message to the American people through earned media events in their communities. So it was less a targeted, neighbor-to-neighbor canvas, and it was much more focused on how do we highlight the issues and make this real for people via our media. Our message on that would be, how many different media markets are we having events in, and how many people are we communicating with? So it's all rolled up in a package of not just those events, but a strategy of new media. Part of the approach is to have a conversation with folks to get out our message via earned media and paid media as well.
Following is the first half of the interview, which began with Stewart and Bird asking if they could give opening statements about what OFA is doing right now in advance of the midterm elections now just five months away:
MITCH STEWART: Just as a real general overview, both Jeremy and I worked on the campaign for a long time. And during that process we brought in a lot of these new, first-time voters in 2008. And as we have worked in a lot of elections and special elections since then, we are looking at a group of voters that, one, could be pivotal in turning an election, you know the electoral success or failure for the president and his allies in Washington and across the country; but two, also looking to make sure that as Organizing for America, the president’s field team, who are at the universe of voters who are most responsive to our message? Looking at the data, there were 15 million first-time voters in 2008, both who registered after 2006 and voted for the first time in 2008, and the president won them in 2008 with about 70 or 71 percent, 72 percent, depending on how you look at it.
If you look across the country at congressional races and statewide races, these voters are viable. In Ohio, you’re talking about a little over 700,000 [of them]. In a lot of these bellwether congressional races you’re looking at a universe in the tens of thousands of first-time 2008 voters. And we are uniquely positioned to reach out and talk to them—not only because of the messenger, and continuing the conversation between first-time voters and the president—but also because these voters got engaged and involved because they really supported the president’s change agenda. And we’re uniquely positioned to reach out and talk to those folks.
And in general what Jeremy did in South Carolina and I did in Iowa is get these folks to pledge that they’ll vote in 2010—just like I did in the caucuses in Iowa in 2008 and Jeremy did in the South Carolina primary—as a way to keep this new generation of voters engaged in our process. So we’ve been busy planning that, and we’re in the beginning phases of implementing that, which will start on June 5.
JEREMY BIRD: I would just add one thing. I think the last piece of the strategy is that we go to hundreds of strategy meetings in local communities across the country. I’ve been out to many of them--in Indianapolis, South Carolina, a bunch of places in Ohio and a bunch of places in Arizona--and the overwhelming response from our volunteer base, from the people are that most engaged, is that they are really focused heavily on [the 2010 midterms].
538: Before we get to 2010, I just want you to clarify for our readers, and for me as well, as Mybarackobama transitioned to OFA, what is its relationship is functionally or legally to the DNC?
MS: The OFA is a part of the DNC. There’s no legal separation between the two. So if you are looking for an exact legal definition we can certainly pass that down to you, but there’s no separation between the OFA and the DNC.
538: The reason I ask, Mitch, is because the names that you have, candidates can’t really get access to that list but they can maybe mail out to it or solicit fund from people or contact them passively—in other words, does the DNC have propriety control over those names or are they really the property of the president?
MS: The email list is housed at the DNC. So those 13 million names, roughly 13 million names, are housed by the DNC. That’s information that we don’t share with anyone outside the DNC.
Now, there are a couple different layers underneath that. The voter file that we used in 2008 is owned by the state parties. So they have information basically on all of the candidate IDs from 2008. There’s a different, a separate entity of volunteers. And we are in the process of getting our volunteers—one of challenges, not challenges, but one of things we’re going to be focused on—is connecting these volunteers to different candidates around the country so that not only do they feel close to the president, but they have a relationship with their local candidates.
538: So the volunteer base is 13 million and you consider those things identical lists, I mean in terms of the total head count?
MS: The email list?
538: Yea, I want to know how many total names you have and in what form or function they exist.
LYNDRA TRAN: Tom, we’ve never actually publicly said the size of our list. It’s been reported at 13 million and we don’t contradict that.
JB: I think one way to look at it is that we have sort of our big community of people that we communicate with via email. And then we have appropriate information in each state for staffers because we have staffers in every state. Our whole goal as organizers is to take those people—both those people for whom we have email information for, and for those that we don’t, because we do have a lot of volunteers who aren’t online or we connected with during the campaign but they’re not on the internet as much, but they may text message or have some relationship with our staff—and our whole goal in 2010 is to connect as many of those people as we possibly can to get them to communicate with us every day.
And then we want to bring other people in that aren’t on that list. A big part of it is to get information from people that we’re going to find in the community and bring them into that online universe, and get those people in the offline universe to become active volunteers that we can schedule to get involved.
MS: There’s a big overlap from our online volunteers and the email addresses that we have from those volunteers. But we do have some extremely active volunteers that just don’t use the online tools that we have available.
538: I see. And then you have people who are very tech savvy but not participating so much. So it’s like a Venn diagram, with some people who are both very active and online-savvy, but some who are in one category or the other.
MS: Right. That’s exactly right.
538: Can you at least tell me, without giving me a specific number, the total list of names has grown since the inauguration, right?
MS: Yes.
538: Is there any attrition? Are there people who sort of have fallen away, or you lost their contact information? You can’t have every name you had on Election Day 2008, right?
MS: It’s almost like a floating, living organism. You have folks coming in, and folks sort of taking a break. It’s in constant flux. But we feel extremely good about the vitality of it, if that makes sense.
538: One of things I wanted to ask you, Mitch, since you were there from day one [at OFA], and both you guys worked on the campaign, is that mobilizing people in an electoral context is a little different from mobilizing people for a policy campaign. I’m wondering—since there were critics in the first year, including myself to a certain degree—if OFA was going to be able to duplicate when it comes to policy or legislation or action items the kind of verve and intensity of an election cycle. So I’m wondering what lessons you guys learned in the first year or so about getting people who could vote or participate or even write a check to do things in the policy arena?
MS: Well, let me preface the lessons that we learned a couple different ways. The first is we’re extremely proud of the work that our organizers and volunteers did during 2009 and 2010, and specifically with health insurance reform. It was a long, long fight, but if you look at the totality of the work, it’s really impressive: Over three million folks have taken action; millions of folks have sent letters or called Congress or done a host of things to stay active and stay engaged in support of the president’s agenda.
But you’re right to say that it is a different animal. There are a couple different really broad distinctions we saw right away. I don’t know if you were involved right away in the healthcare debate, but there were a number of different deadlines that we were all working backwards from. In legislation the deadlines are extremely fluid, but in elections they are not: You know when the finish line is 99 percent of the time unless there’s a recount or something along those lines. You have November 2 and you basically are able to work backwards. You know how many voters you need to be successful. You know how many volunteers you need to touch those voters so that you get that 51 percent of the vote on November 2, and you can work backwards from that.
From a legislative perspective or from a policy perspective that deadline is much more fluid. The other thing that…
538: So wait, what you’re saying is that in a campaign you have a vote goal, which is something you compute one year out, and you have a strategy to get there. What your saying is that it’s a little different when you’re trying to get a participation goal or mobilization goal, it’s a little more nebulous to do because you don’t know exactly what the date or moment or vote is around which you’re trying to mobilize people?
MS: Not only that, but you know exactly how many votes you need, or have a very, very, very good estimate, of exactly how many votes you need to win on election day. The difference with policy advocacy is you have a lot of different arrows in your quiver—you can have calls to members, you can have letters to the editor, you can have press events, you can do a whole host of different things, letters to your member, calling into radio shows, etc., etc., etc. But with an electoral campaign you know that if you have 10 volunteers, and they’re going to knock on 50 doors apiece, that’s 500 attempts, and if they contact 30 percent of those 500 attempts, that’s 150 conversations. Basically, you have a lot of math to work backwards from, or you have much more certainty that the work you’re doing will provide you with 51 percent on election day.
The difference with policy advocacy is, if we’re making calls to a member’s office, then we are able to work backwards from that. Or if we know there’s 10,000 letters to the editor, or whatever that number is. But there isn’t sort of that finite—as you said, it’s more nebulous. We have a lot of arrows in our quiver, and we’re constantly using all of them to try to get that next vote or support for the president’s agenda, but it’s different. It’s very challenging and I think we did a great job, but it is different than electoral work.
538: Let’s take an example. You recently had a “Wall Street Day of Action” that was obviously organized around the notion of financial and regulatory reform. Give me a sense of what your roll out was for that, what happened, and what metrics or results you can point to.
JB: Tom, if I could say one last thing on that last point.
538: Sure, go ahead.
JB: The other thing that's very different is that when you’re doing a thing like health care it's not always a choice between A and B. It’s not like in an election in 2008, or elections generally, where it becomes very much a choice between two different outcomes. There are lots of people that have different views because of one piece of it they don't like, or one piece of it they do like. So I think it’s a lot more complicated when you get into issues in terms of volunteers and voters and how much you have to do to make connections.
But in terms of your question about Wall Street Reform Day of Action, that’s where it's a different campaign in the sense that our goal in terms of that day of action was making sure that we were continually getting out the message to the American people through earned media events in their communities. So it was less a targeted, neighbor-to-neighbor canvas, and it was much more focused on how do we highlight the issues and make this real for people via our media. Our message on that would be, how many different media markets are we having events in, and how many people are we communicating with? So it's all rolled up in a package of not just those events, but a strategy of new media. Part of the approach is to have a conversation with folks to get out our message via earned media and paid media as well.
Is Gulf Disaster Spilling into Obama's Approval Ratings?
@ 7:28 AM
We haven't written very much about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Needless to say, it's a real tragedy for people in the Gulf Coast states, a region which was hit hard both by the hurricanes of 2005 and by the economic hurricane that has hit the country over the past couple of years. I hope that those of you with means will consider spending some time down there. Without meaning to trivialize the situation, it does bear considering whether the incident is having any impact on Barack Obama's political fortunes.
The hard evidence is mixed. This is Pollster.com's chart of Obama's approval ratings since the oil spill occurred. You can arguably see a point or two's worth of deterioration in his numbers:
Most of this is driven by the two pollsters, Gallup and Rasmussen, that track Presidential approval on an ongoing basis; the other national pollsters have been relatively dormant lately. Rasmussen has not really shown any deterioration in the President's numbers -- but then again, Rasmussen had them being relatively poor to begin with. Obama has had a rough spell in Gallup's polling, on the other hand, which also printed a very poor number for Democrats in their generic ballot polling this week.
Although the trend is not very robust -- it may just be statistical noise -- the notion of some modest downward pressure on Obama's numbers rings true to me. On the one hand, this is a real event, a really horrible event, that real people are noticing -- and not the sort of ginned-up faux scandal that can dominate Washington's coverage during slow periods in the political cycle. Although it's dangerous to relate from personal experience, a lot of people in my social circle have certainly been thinking about the disaster in the Gulf, including what they perceive to be a lackluster response from the White House.
On the other hand, it's not exactly clear what the critique is. The most widespread criticism of Obama is simply that he's expanding government too much, too fast (in other words, that he's too liberal). In the case of the oil spill, however, the prevailing sentiment seems to be that Obama was not quick enough to get the government involved, and was too deferential to BP. I don't mean to oversimplify this -- I recognize that there's a perfectly coherent intellectual position which holds, for instance, that deficits are a huge problem, but also that the White House needed to intervene more forcefully in the Gulf. Nevertheless, the criticisms have been somewhat orthogonal to the usual ones that the Administration receives.
There are, of course, other strands of criticism too -- like Maureen Dowd's refrain that Obama is too aloof and dispassionate, and the argument (mostly from liberals) that contrary to perceptions, the White House is in fact too slack with major corporations. Those adhere into a more coherent anti-Obama narrative when it comes to the Gulf disaster. On the other hand, they are probably not things that people on Main Street are talking or thinking much about.
Mostly I simply think that the disaster is reinforcing people's frustration -- an emotion that has become very widespread within the country, and which crosses most demographic and political boundaries. If that remains the prevailing mood of the country in November, the risks to the incumbent President and his incumbent party are mostly to the downside.
The hard evidence is mixed. This is Pollster.com's chart of Obama's approval ratings since the oil spill occurred. You can arguably see a point or two's worth of deterioration in his numbers:
Most of this is driven by the two pollsters, Gallup and Rasmussen, that track Presidential approval on an ongoing basis; the other national pollsters have been relatively dormant lately. Rasmussen has not really shown any deterioration in the President's numbers -- but then again, Rasmussen had them being relatively poor to begin with. Obama has had a rough spell in Gallup's polling, on the other hand, which also printed a very poor number for Democrats in their generic ballot polling this week.
Although the trend is not very robust -- it may just be statistical noise -- the notion of some modest downward pressure on Obama's numbers rings true to me. On the one hand, this is a real event, a really horrible event, that real people are noticing -- and not the sort of ginned-up faux scandal that can dominate Washington's coverage during slow periods in the political cycle. Although it's dangerous to relate from personal experience, a lot of people in my social circle have certainly been thinking about the disaster in the Gulf, including what they perceive to be a lackluster response from the White House.
On the other hand, it's not exactly clear what the critique is. The most widespread criticism of Obama is simply that he's expanding government too much, too fast (in other words, that he's too liberal). In the case of the oil spill, however, the prevailing sentiment seems to be that Obama was not quick enough to get the government involved, and was too deferential to BP. I don't mean to oversimplify this -- I recognize that there's a perfectly coherent intellectual position which holds, for instance, that deficits are a huge problem, but also that the White House needed to intervene more forcefully in the Gulf. Nevertheless, the criticisms have been somewhat orthogonal to the usual ones that the Administration receives.
There are, of course, other strands of criticism too -- like Maureen Dowd's refrain that Obama is too aloof and dispassionate, and the argument (mostly from liberals) that contrary to perceptions, the White House is in fact too slack with major corporations. Those adhere into a more coherent anti-Obama narrative when it comes to the Gulf disaster. On the other hand, they are probably not things that people on Main Street are talking or thinking much about.
Mostly I simply think that the disaster is reinforcing people's frustration -- an emotion that has become very widespread within the country, and which crosses most demographic and political boundaries. If that remains the prevailing mood of the country in November, the risks to the incumbent President and his incumbent party are mostly to the downside.
6.01.2010
Alabama Primary Results
@ 11:59 PM
In a major upset (the proportions as much as the results), Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks has defeated congressman Artur Davis for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Alabama. With 86% of the precincts reporting, Sparks is beating Davis by an amazing 63-37 margin. And while that margin will narrow somewhat as votes from Mobile and a few counties in Davis' CD come in, it's still quite a win for a guy who wasn't considered competitive until late in the race.
The GOP race is a three-way barnburner, with Bradley Byrne, Tim James and Robert Bentley (the real surprise of the night) running virtually even. I'm reasonably sure Byrne will run first on the basis of the votes still out in Mobile, with James likely to finish a whisker ahead of Bentley based on the numbers he's posted in counties with partial returns. Meanwhile, party-switching GOP congressman Parker Griffith appears to have lost his seat without a runoff to Mo Brooks, and sorry, aficionados of the weird, YouTube star Dale Peterson is not going to be Agriculture Commissioner.
Sparks seems to have beaten Davis by pulling a significant (perhaps 40% or more) minority of African-American voters while trouncing him among white voters. Sparks carried Jefferson County (Birmingham) handily, although Davis represents a big chunk of the county, and ran well even in majority-African-American counties in or near Davis' district. The CW tomorrow will probably be that Davis thought far too much about positioning himself for the general election before concentrating on the primary, and that Sparks' uncontested claim on endorsements by African-American political groups was a big deal after all. It didn't hurt that the winner also got considerable help from the Alabama Education Association, the big dog in Alabama Democratic politics, and had a substantive issue--a state lottery--that's always played well with Alabama Democrats, particularly black voters.
The surprise showing by Bentley on the Republican side probably reflects voter disgust with the nastiness of the Byrne-James competition, which will be ironic if the two antagonists wind up in a runoff. Meanwhile, Judge Roy Moore's underfunded campaign left him in a disappointing fourth place (he's currently at 19%, with a few of his base counties still out).
In other congressional races, a Democratic runoff's certain in Davis' 7th District,
with Terri Sewell facing either Sheila Smoot or Earl Hilliard, Jr., who are running neck and neck with quite a few precincts still out. In the 5th, Steve Maby easily dispatched Taze Shephard for the Democratic nomination. And in the 2d district Republican primary, Martha Roby is very close to the 50% she'd need to win without a runoff and take on Democratic incumbent Bobby Bright.
In the much-discussed Republican primary for Attorney General, Gov. Bob Riley's endorsement of Luther Strange over incumbent Troy King seems to have had an impact; Strang, an opponent of public gaming, trounced King 60-40.
UPDATE (12:56 AM): With 97% of precincts reporting, Bradley Byrn has indeed parlayed a strong showing in Montgomery and Mobile Counties into one runoff spot, and Robert Bentley has a 240 vote lead over Tim James for the other. But of the 100 precincts still out, 77 are in Mobile County, where James is running ahead of Bentley by a 25-14 margin, and another 17 are in Cleburne County, a small northeast Alabama county where neither candidate is likely to get a significant plurality over the other. So I continue to think James will squeak past Bentley, though we could be into recount country.
In other late news, in the 7th CD Democratic race, Sheila Smoot has beat out Earl Hilliard, Jr., for a runoff position against Terri Sewell. And in the 2d District Republican primary, Martha Roby fell short of 50%, and will face Rick Barber in a runoff.
And over in Mississippi, Alan Nunnelee won the GOP nomination in the 1st CD without a runoff, and will face Democratic incumbent Travis Childers in November.
UPDATE II (1:43 AM) Lord a' mercy. AP apparently made some earlier mistake in displaying votes from Mobile County, which has now reported its 77 missing precincts without a change in the candidate vote totals. So much for my assumption that Davis would narrow Sparks' lead a bit, or that Tim James would overtake Robert Bentley. In the latter race, Bentley has a 140 vote lead with 21 precincts out, 17 of them in mysteriously silent Cleburne County. No telling where this race will wind up, other than in a recount.
The GOP race is a three-way barnburner, with Bradley Byrne, Tim James and Robert Bentley (the real surprise of the night) running virtually even. I'm reasonably sure Byrne will run first on the basis of the votes still out in Mobile, with James likely to finish a whisker ahead of Bentley based on the numbers he's posted in counties with partial returns. Meanwhile, party-switching GOP congressman Parker Griffith appears to have lost his seat without a runoff to Mo Brooks, and sorry, aficionados of the weird, YouTube star Dale Peterson is not going to be Agriculture Commissioner.
Sparks seems to have beaten Davis by pulling a significant (perhaps 40% or more) minority of African-American voters while trouncing him among white voters. Sparks carried Jefferson County (Birmingham) handily, although Davis represents a big chunk of the county, and ran well even in majority-African-American counties in or near Davis' district. The CW tomorrow will probably be that Davis thought far too much about positioning himself for the general election before concentrating on the primary, and that Sparks' uncontested claim on endorsements by African-American political groups was a big deal after all. It didn't hurt that the winner also got considerable help from the Alabama Education Association, the big dog in Alabama Democratic politics, and had a substantive issue--a state lottery--that's always played well with Alabama Democrats, particularly black voters.
The surprise showing by Bentley on the Republican side probably reflects voter disgust with the nastiness of the Byrne-James competition, which will be ironic if the two antagonists wind up in a runoff. Meanwhile, Judge Roy Moore's underfunded campaign left him in a disappointing fourth place (he's currently at 19%, with a few of his base counties still out).
In other congressional races, a Democratic runoff's certain in Davis' 7th District,
with Terri Sewell facing either Sheila Smoot or Earl Hilliard, Jr., who are running neck and neck with quite a few precincts still out. In the 5th, Steve Maby easily dispatched Taze Shephard for the Democratic nomination. And in the 2d district Republican primary, Martha Roby is very close to the 50% she'd need to win without a runoff and take on Democratic incumbent Bobby Bright.
In the much-discussed Republican primary for Attorney General, Gov. Bob Riley's endorsement of Luther Strange over incumbent Troy King seems to have had an impact; Strang, an opponent of public gaming, trounced King 60-40.
UPDATE (12:56 AM): With 97% of precincts reporting, Bradley Byrn has indeed parlayed a strong showing in Montgomery and Mobile Counties into one runoff spot, and Robert Bentley has a 240 vote lead over Tim James for the other. But of the 100 precincts still out, 77 are in Mobile County, where James is running ahead of Bentley by a 25-14 margin, and another 17 are in Cleburne County, a small northeast Alabama county where neither candidate is likely to get a significant plurality over the other. So I continue to think James will squeak past Bentley, though we could be into recount country.
In other late news, in the 7th CD Democratic race, Sheila Smoot has beat out Earl Hilliard, Jr., for a runoff position against Terri Sewell. And in the 2d District Republican primary, Martha Roby fell short of 50%, and will face Rick Barber in a runoff.
And over in Mississippi, Alan Nunnelee won the GOP nomination in the 1st CD without a runoff, and will face Democratic incumbent Travis Childers in November.
UPDATE II (1:43 AM) Lord a' mercy. AP apparently made some earlier mistake in displaying votes from Mobile County, which has now reported its 77 missing precincts without a change in the candidate vote totals. So much for my assumption that Davis would narrow Sparks' lead a bit, or that Tim James would overtake Robert Bentley. In the latter race, Bentley has a 140 vote lead with 21 precincts out, 17 of them in mysteriously silent Cleburne County. No telling where this race will wind up, other than in a recount.
NM: Anti-Amnesty, Rove-Backed Candidate Loses to Latina In GOP Guv Primary
@ 11:07 PM
UDPATE2: As of 7:50 a.m. EST, and with all but a handful of precincts now in, Martinez has held that 51-28 margin, beating Weh in all but two counties (Cibola, Roosevelt). For what it's worth, six days ago a KOB-TV Channel 4 poll of 1400+ New Mexico likely voters showed Martinez leading Denish by six points in what was then a potential, but is now the set matchup for governor this November.
UPDATE: As for 11:21 EST, and with roughly 60 percent of precincts now in, Martinez lead (51 percent to 28 percent) holding, even increasing a bit...
With about 40 percent of precincts reported, late-surging gubernatorial aspirant Susana Martinez has won convincingly over Allen Weh and the rest of the field in the Republican primary for the right to face Lt. Gov. Diane Denish this November. (Denish, running unopposed in the primary, will be the Democratic nominee.) The AP just called the race for Martinez shortly before 11 p.m. EST.
Martinez presently leads 51 percent to Weh's 29 percent, with the rest of the vote scattered among three others, including Pete Domenici, Jr. If that margin holds once all votes are counted, it will represent quite a dramatic turnaround in just two weeks. Indeed, an Albuquerque Journal poll on May 16 had Weh tied with Martinez; another poll showed her surging out to an 11-point lead just a week or so later. And now it looks like Martinez may have doubled that margin in the past week.
In ads like the one above, Martinez, the district attorney for Dona Ana County endorsed by Sarah Palin, was attacked by conservative Weh, the former state GOP chair for whom Karl Rove recorded a robo-call ad. Presuming Martinez--who was endorsed by Sarah Palin--can hold on, New Mexico will have an all-female general election matchup for governor--only the third time that's happened in American history. NM has never had a female governor, but obviously that will soon change.
In the other other race of national note, former Republican Rep. Steve Pearce easily won the Republican primary in the 2nd Congressional District. After abandoning his seat in 2008 for an unsuccessful Senate bid, he now faces Harry Teague for the chance to recapture his old House seat.
UPDATE: As for 11:21 EST, and with roughly 60 percent of precincts now in, Martinez lead (51 percent to 28 percent) holding, even increasing a bit...
With about 40 percent of precincts reported, late-surging gubernatorial aspirant Susana Martinez has won convincingly over Allen Weh and the rest of the field in the Republican primary for the right to face Lt. Gov. Diane Denish this November. (Denish, running unopposed in the primary, will be the Democratic nominee.) The AP just called the race for Martinez shortly before 11 p.m. EST.
Martinez presently leads 51 percent to Weh's 29 percent, with the rest of the vote scattered among three others, including Pete Domenici, Jr. If that margin holds once all votes are counted, it will represent quite a dramatic turnaround in just two weeks. Indeed, an Albuquerque Journal poll on May 16 had Weh tied with Martinez; another poll showed her surging out to an 11-point lead just a week or so later. And now it looks like Martinez may have doubled that margin in the past week.
In ads like the one above, Martinez, the district attorney for Dona Ana County endorsed by Sarah Palin, was attacked by conservative Weh, the former state GOP chair for whom Karl Rove recorded a robo-call ad. Presuming Martinez--who was endorsed by Sarah Palin--can hold on, New Mexico will have an all-female general election matchup for governor--only the third time that's happened in American history. NM has never had a female governor, but obviously that will soon change.
In the other other race of national note, former Republican Rep. Steve Pearce easily won the Republican primary in the 2nd Congressional District. After abandoning his seat in 2008 for an unsuccessful Senate bid, he now faces Harry Teague for the chance to recapture his old House seat.
Zogby Broke the Internet, But it Can be Fixed
@ 4:36 PM
For a long time, I've had a very low opinion of Internet-based polling. This is mostly driven by my experience with Zogby's interactive polling, which has performed abominably at every juncture.
In compiling the data for my new pollster ratings, however, I have discovered that two other Internet-based pollsters -- Harris Interactive and YouGov (the latter is sometimes branded as Polimetrix or as the Economist) -- are capable of producing decent results.
The chart below documents the performance of the various Internet-based pollsters on occasions when they released a non-trivial amount of polling. It is compared against the average performance of all telephone-based polls during that particular set of elections. In both cases, polls are included in the database if their median field date was within 21 days of the date of the election. Only state-level polls (no national polls) are considered.
Zogby Interactive polls are perhaps two orders of magnitude worse than typical telephone polls. In predicting the final margin between the two candidates, they've been off by an average of 7-8 points, whereas 3-5 point errors have been more typical for telephone pollsters. In a world where the difference between "great" and "OK" pollsters might only amount to perhaps an extra half-point of accuracy on average, that's an enormous discrepancy.
Before Zogby, however, there was Harris Interactive. They first experimented with Internet-based polling in 1998, with decidedly underwhelming results. Their polls showed a significant "house effect" toward Republican candidates, and they were off by an average of 7.1 points in Senate races and 9.7 points in gubernatorial races. With that said, 1998 was a very tough year for most of the traditional pollsters as well, and Harris was hardly alone in having difficulties.
In 2000, Harris came back to conduct surveys in 38 states, capturing the majority of Presidential, Senate and gubernatorial races that were held that year. And in contrast to 1998, they actually did quite well, beating the telephone pollsters by 1.4 points for the Presidential and Senate contests, and 0.6 points in the handful of gubernatorial races. They were in fact among the best-performing pollsters of the cycle.
In spite of this solid performance -- which received some notice in the academic literature -- Harris pulled back from doing state-level polling. They released polls in just three states in 2004 (not shown in the chart above), missing by an average of 5.2 points. Since then, Harris Interactive has continued to release national surveys with some regularity, but no data at the state level.
I spoke (by e-mail) with Jon Siegel and John Bremmer at Harris Interactive today, who had graciously sent their comprehensive polling from 2000, and asked why they had withdrawn after seeming to have had some success. They explained that it was strictly an economic decision -- Harris is a diverse company that had not traditionally focused extensively on U.S.-based electoral polling, and they weren't persuaded that coming up with state-level estimates -- which they say isn't cheap when done properly -- was worth the additional expense.
In the meantime, YouGov -- which enjoys a reasonably good reputation in the UK but maintains a lower profile here -- has come along. In 2006, both their Senate and gubernatorial polls performed up to the standards of telephone-based polls. Their state-level Presidential polling was marginal in 2008 -- they missed by an average of 4.6 points points, versus 3.4 points for a typical telephone poll -- but their Senate polling was just fine.
Overall, I think I've been too harsh about lumping all Internet-based polls together. Zogby's method -- which allows people to sign up for surveys voluntarily -- is on the verge of being unscientific, and is evidently incapable of being worthy of any attention other than as a curiosity. But YouGov and Harris Interactive, which use more careful designs to correct for self-selection bias, are probably not far behind typical telephone-based polls, and may already be ahead of some of the less rigorous ones. And the gap will arguably narrow as Internet penetration becomes more widespread at the same time that telephone polls are having lower and lower response rates and missing increasing swaths of the population.
Frankly, I think the medium-to-long-run future of polling is likely to involve some combination of telephone and Internet polling, perhaps including hybrid polls that incorporate both mediums within the same survey. What the acceptable performances of YouGov and Harris Interactive suggest is that Internet polling is far from hopeless, and over time might come to be quite good. On the other hand, the performance of Zogby suggests that the price may be very great for shoddy or unthoughtful methodology, to the point that such results may be nearly unpublishable.
In compiling the data for my new pollster ratings, however, I have discovered that two other Internet-based pollsters -- Harris Interactive and YouGov (the latter is sometimes branded as Polimetrix or as the Economist) -- are capable of producing decent results.
The chart below documents the performance of the various Internet-based pollsters on occasions when they released a non-trivial amount of polling. It is compared against the average performance of all telephone-based polls during that particular set of elections. In both cases, polls are included in the database if their median field date was within 21 days of the date of the election. Only state-level polls (no national polls) are considered.
Zogby Interactive polls are perhaps two orders of magnitude worse than typical telephone polls. In predicting the final margin between the two candidates, they've been off by an average of 7-8 points, whereas 3-5 point errors have been more typical for telephone pollsters. In a world where the difference between "great" and "OK" pollsters might only amount to perhaps an extra half-point of accuracy on average, that's an enormous discrepancy.
Before Zogby, however, there was Harris Interactive. They first experimented with Internet-based polling in 1998, with decidedly underwhelming results. Their polls showed a significant "house effect" toward Republican candidates, and they were off by an average of 7.1 points in Senate races and 9.7 points in gubernatorial races. With that said, 1998 was a very tough year for most of the traditional pollsters as well, and Harris was hardly alone in having difficulties.
In 2000, Harris came back to conduct surveys in 38 states, capturing the majority of Presidential, Senate and gubernatorial races that were held that year. And in contrast to 1998, they actually did quite well, beating the telephone pollsters by 1.4 points for the Presidential and Senate contests, and 0.6 points in the handful of gubernatorial races. They were in fact among the best-performing pollsters of the cycle.
In spite of this solid performance -- which received some notice in the academic literature -- Harris pulled back from doing state-level polling. They released polls in just three states in 2004 (not shown in the chart above), missing by an average of 5.2 points. Since then, Harris Interactive has continued to release national surveys with some regularity, but no data at the state level.
I spoke (by e-mail) with Jon Siegel and John Bremmer at Harris Interactive today, who had graciously sent their comprehensive polling from 2000, and asked why they had withdrawn after seeming to have had some success. They explained that it was strictly an economic decision -- Harris is a diverse company that had not traditionally focused extensively on U.S.-based electoral polling, and they weren't persuaded that coming up with state-level estimates -- which they say isn't cheap when done properly -- was worth the additional expense.
In the meantime, YouGov -- which enjoys a reasonably good reputation in the UK but maintains a lower profile here -- has come along. In 2006, both their Senate and gubernatorial polls performed up to the standards of telephone-based polls. Their state-level Presidential polling was marginal in 2008 -- they missed by an average of 4.6 points points, versus 3.4 points for a typical telephone poll -- but their Senate polling was just fine.
Overall, I think I've been too harsh about lumping all Internet-based polls together. Zogby's method -- which allows people to sign up for surveys voluntarily -- is on the verge of being unscientific, and is evidently incapable of being worthy of any attention other than as a curiosity. But YouGov and Harris Interactive, which use more careful designs to correct for self-selection bias, are probably not far behind typical telephone-based polls, and may already be ahead of some of the less rigorous ones. And the gap will arguably narrow as Internet penetration becomes more widespread at the same time that telephone polls are having lower and lower response rates and missing increasing swaths of the population.
Frankly, I think the medium-to-long-run future of polling is likely to involve some combination of telephone and Internet polling, perhaps including hybrid polls that incorporate both mediums within the same survey. What the acceptable performances of YouGov and Harris Interactive suggest is that Internet polling is far from hopeless, and over time might come to be quite good. On the other hand, the performance of Zogby suggests that the price may be very great for shoddy or unthoughtful methodology, to the point that such results may be nearly unpublishable.
Who's Afraid of Nancy Pelosi?
@ 10:30 AM
From 538's Thomas Dollar
Apparently, not enough people to sway an election. Last month, Democrat Mark Critz defeated Republican Tim Burns by eight points in a special House election in Pennsylvania. Markos Moulitsas pointed out that Burns is the latest in a slew of Republican candidates who have tried and failed to use the Speaker as a bogeywoman. Burns actively attempted to tie the anti-abortion, anti-health care reform Critz down to "Nancy Pelosi's values." In a socially conservative district like PA-12, this message ought to have had some traction. Pelosi, after all, has consistently poor favorability ratings. According to the latest DailyKos/R2K tracking poll, only 39% of registered voters have a favorable opinion of her, while 51% have an unfavorable one. Furthermore, she represents San Francisco, latter-day American Gomorrah, and home of San Francisco values (if you know what I mean). Even when she became Minority Leader back in 2002, Very Serious Pundits predicted she would be an albatross for the Democrats.
So why isn't she? Well, for one, it's likely that most Americans don't know who she is, and if they do, they don't really care. This is not something unique to Nancy Pelosi, but a characteristic of Speakers in general. The Speaker of the House is, after all, just another Representative. She is primus inter pares and can set a national agenda, but she is still only elected at the district level--and usually a pretty safe district at that. The Speaker's job is to whip votes, shepherd her party's platform through the House, and partake in Conference Committees with the Senate. The office is by its nature partisan and centered on horse-trading, which makes it distasteful to the electorate regardless of who happens to be holding it any given time. (There is no rising above the partisan fray here.) Because of this, Pelosi's (un)favorability has as much to do with discontent with Congress in general than anything about her in particular. In an anti-incumbent year, this could provide an opening for Republicans. However, Congressional Republicans' favorability is even lower than Pelosi's and the Democrats', and the parties remain neck-and-neck in the generic ballot -- hardly prime conditions for a massive anti-Democratic wave.
Pelosi became Speaker after the 2006 anti-Bush, anti-Republican wave. But rather than make herself a firebrand or national media figure, she pushed through traditional Democratic issues: increasing the minimum wage, expanding stem cell research, and passing a student-loan overhaul. And--to the disappointment of some liberal supporters--Pelosi refused to entertain the notion of impeaching Bush, had no control over the Executive Branch bureaucracy (not even in confirmations), and could not conduct her own foreign policy. Nor did she become the public face of the Democratic Party.
The Democrats were beginning their 2008 presidential campaign, in which it was widely assumed that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee. By 2008, the Clinton-Obama contest had so consumed the political energy of the Democratic Party that there was no room for the Speaker to become a media figure even if she wanted to. Pelosi played a crucial role in shaping the last two years of the Bush presidency--most notably in securing the passage of TARP in September 2008--but she was never the front-woman. Since Obama became president, he has been the public face of the Democratic Party--not Pelosi, Harry Reid, or the 533 other members of Congress.
Recent Speakers (and congressional leaders in general) have been equally obscure figures. Anyone wondering what Dennis Hastert and Tom Foley are doing these days? (Yes, they're both still alive.) Dick Gephardt? Dick Armey? Tom DeLay and Jim Wright were better-known leaders, but that's mostly because they got in trouble and had to step down.
The big exception to the obscure Speaker rule is, of course, Newt Gingrich. As Tom Schaller's interview made clear, Gingrich is still on the national media stage twelve years after he was deposed as Speaker. He's promoting a new book and (possibly) planning a run for president. Like Pelosi, Gingrich became Speaker in a wave election. But unlike Pelosi and the Big Tent '06 class, Gingrich and the '94 Republicans were an ideological and confrontational group that sought to upset the Washington culture. Gingrich was also, as Sonny Bono put it, a celebrity. This high public profile did not translate into a successful Speakership. Gingrich's celebrity made him the fall guy after the 1995 Federal government shutdown. After the Republicans lost five House seats in the 1998 midterm elections (amid the Clinton impeachment imbroglio, and expectations of Republican pickups), Gingrich was thrown under the bus. He resigned his seat, and concentrated on writing and commentary.
Nancy Pelosi is not a political celebrity, nor is she as confrontational as Gingrich. She is a polarizing figure, but polarizing for voters who have already been polarized one way or the other. If Tim Burns, Doug Hoffman and Jim Tedisco have taught Republicans anything, it should be that they can't count on a tide of anti-Democrat fervor at the expense of ignoring local issues. Contrast these two ads from last November's NY-23 election: the Conservative Hoffman plays up his anti-Pelosi, anti-Washington credentials, while the Democrat Bill Owens talks about bread and butter issues--literally. (The dairy video was removed for unlicensed use of the Got Milk? trademark.) Hoffman's stances made him the darling of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, but his attacks on big government were tone-deaf in a district whose economy is dependent on an army base, the Border Patrol, and several state prisons and universities.
All politics is still local, and the Democrats have succeeded in the last dozen special House elections (with the exception of the Hawaii anomaly) by running candidates attuned to their districts. Republicans have run a uniform anti-Pelosi/Washington/Democrat/spending/stimulus/health care campaign--and lost. Even in a wave election, the House is not the British House of Commons: Americans vote for their Congressperson, not the party leader. 2010 may yet be a great year for Republicans (and Nate still thinks it will be), but they might want to start worrying less about Nancy Pelosi and more about the price of milk.
---
This article was authored by research assistant Thomas Dollar. Please send comments or suggestions to sexton538@gmail.com
Apparently, not enough people to sway an election. Last month, Democrat Mark Critz defeated Republican Tim Burns by eight points in a special House election in Pennsylvania. Markos Moulitsas pointed out that Burns is the latest in a slew of Republican candidates who have tried and failed to use the Speaker as a bogeywoman. Burns actively attempted to tie the anti-abortion, anti-health care reform Critz down to "Nancy Pelosi's values." In a socially conservative district like PA-12, this message ought to have had some traction. Pelosi, after all, has consistently poor favorability ratings. According to the latest DailyKos/R2K tracking poll, only 39% of registered voters have a favorable opinion of her, while 51% have an unfavorable one. Furthermore, she represents San Francisco, latter-day American Gomorrah, and home of San Francisco values (if you know what I mean). Even when she became Minority Leader back in 2002, Very Serious Pundits predicted she would be an albatross for the Democrats.
So why isn't she? Well, for one, it's likely that most Americans don't know who she is, and if they do, they don't really care. This is not something unique to Nancy Pelosi, but a characteristic of Speakers in general. The Speaker of the House is, after all, just another Representative. She is primus inter pares and can set a national agenda, but she is still only elected at the district level--and usually a pretty safe district at that. The Speaker's job is to whip votes, shepherd her party's platform through the House, and partake in Conference Committees with the Senate. The office is by its nature partisan and centered on horse-trading, which makes it distasteful to the electorate regardless of who happens to be holding it any given time. (There is no rising above the partisan fray here.) Because of this, Pelosi's (un)favorability has as much to do with discontent with Congress in general than anything about her in particular. In an anti-incumbent year, this could provide an opening for Republicans. However, Congressional Republicans' favorability is even lower than Pelosi's and the Democrats', and the parties remain neck-and-neck in the generic ballot -- hardly prime conditions for a massive anti-Democratic wave.
Pelosi became Speaker after the 2006 anti-Bush, anti-Republican wave. But rather than make herself a firebrand or national media figure, she pushed through traditional Democratic issues: increasing the minimum wage, expanding stem cell research, and passing a student-loan overhaul. And--to the disappointment of some liberal supporters--Pelosi refused to entertain the notion of impeaching Bush, had no control over the Executive Branch bureaucracy (not even in confirmations), and could not conduct her own foreign policy. Nor did she become the public face of the Democratic Party.
The Democrats were beginning their 2008 presidential campaign, in which it was widely assumed that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee. By 2008, the Clinton-Obama contest had so consumed the political energy of the Democratic Party that there was no room for the Speaker to become a media figure even if she wanted to. Pelosi played a crucial role in shaping the last two years of the Bush presidency--most notably in securing the passage of TARP in September 2008--but she was never the front-woman. Since Obama became president, he has been the public face of the Democratic Party--not Pelosi, Harry Reid, or the 533 other members of Congress.
Recent Speakers (and congressional leaders in general) have been equally obscure figures. Anyone wondering what Dennis Hastert and Tom Foley are doing these days? (Yes, they're both still alive.) Dick Gephardt? Dick Armey? Tom DeLay and Jim Wright were better-known leaders, but that's mostly because they got in trouble and had to step down.
The big exception to the obscure Speaker rule is, of course, Newt Gingrich. As Tom Schaller's interview made clear, Gingrich is still on the national media stage twelve years after he was deposed as Speaker. He's promoting a new book and (possibly) planning a run for president. Like Pelosi, Gingrich became Speaker in a wave election. But unlike Pelosi and the Big Tent '06 class, Gingrich and the '94 Republicans were an ideological and confrontational group that sought to upset the Washington culture. Gingrich was also, as Sonny Bono put it, a celebrity. This high public profile did not translate into a successful Speakership. Gingrich's celebrity made him the fall guy after the 1995 Federal government shutdown. After the Republicans lost five House seats in the 1998 midterm elections (amid the Clinton impeachment imbroglio, and expectations of Republican pickups), Gingrich was thrown under the bus. He resigned his seat, and concentrated on writing and commentary.
Nancy Pelosi is not a political celebrity, nor is she as confrontational as Gingrich. She is a polarizing figure, but polarizing for voters who have already been polarized one way or the other. If Tim Burns, Doug Hoffman and Jim Tedisco have taught Republicans anything, it should be that they can't count on a tide of anti-Democrat fervor at the expense of ignoring local issues. Contrast these two ads from last November's NY-23 election: the Conservative Hoffman plays up his anti-Pelosi, anti-Washington credentials, while the Democrat Bill Owens talks about bread and butter issues--literally. (The dairy video was removed for unlicensed use of the Got Milk? trademark.) Hoffman's stances made him the darling of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, but his attacks on big government were tone-deaf in a district whose economy is dependent on an army base, the Border Patrol, and several state prisons and universities.
All politics is still local, and the Democrats have succeeded in the last dozen special House elections (with the exception of the Hawaii anomaly) by running candidates attuned to their districts. Republicans have run a uniform anti-Pelosi/Washington/Democrat/spending/stimulus/health care campaign--and lost. Even in a wave election, the House is not the British House of Commons: Americans vote for their Congressperson, not the party leader. 2010 may yet be a great year for Republicans (and Nate still thinks it will be), but they might want to start worrying less about Nancy Pelosi and more about the price of milk.
---
This article was authored by research assistant Thomas Dollar. Please send comments or suggestions to sexton538@gmail.com
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