Swing State Project

Friday, October 31, 2003

A Permanent Home for the SSP

Posted by DavidNYC

I'm pleased to announce that the Swing State Project finally has a permanent home: http://www.swingstateproject.com. If you have any links or bookmarks to this site, you can update them to the new, simpler URL. It's not strictly necessary, though, as the old TypePad URL should still work, and the even older BlogSpot site should auto-forward here. Permalinks to specific posts should be unaffected as well, but if you notice any problems, please let me know so that I can resolve them. Thanks.

Posted at 02:08 AM in Site News | Comments (4) | Technorati

Up Next: Michigan

Posted by DavidNYC

I'm going to forge my way through the upper Midwest here, so Michigan is next on our swing state tour. After this region, I'll do the Mississippi River Valley states, then the South, and then the West. I may not stick to this plan precisely, though - but I promise to hit all the swing states (sooner or later). In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on Michigan, please share `em. I'm inclined to think of MI as the safest of all the Dem swing states: It had the lowest percentage of Nader voters (2%) of the group, and the second-widest Gore minus Bush margin (5.14%, after WA). Of course, this doesn't mean MI is safe, so, as always, I'll reserve final judgment until I do a full-bore analysis.

Posted at 02:00 AM in Michigan | Comments (4) | Technorati

Thursday, October 30, 2003

Pennsylvania: Unemployment Figures

Posted by DavidNYC

As I mentioned in the post below about Ohio, I made a mistake when I looked at Pennsylvania's unemployment statistics. I thought I was looking at the seasonally adjusted numbers, and in fact I was - but only for the overall statewide unemployment figures. However, the county-by-county numbers (and the maps that depict them) were not seasonally adjusted. So while I thought that the employment situation had improved in many PA counties (which mostly happened to be Republican ones), I was mistaken.

So I went back and did another comparison. I looked at Jan. `01 vs. Jan. `03 and Aug. `01 vs. Aug. `03. In the latter case, unemployment had worsened in 39 of 67 counties. In the former, unemployment worsened in a whopping 62 counties, and GOP strongholds were among the hardest hit. So no matter how you slice it, the employment situation is tough across all of PA.

Posted at 05:56 PM in Pennsylvania | Comments (1) | Technorati

Ohio

Posted by DavidNYC

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we bring you the Buckeye State.

Electoral Votes: 20 (21 in 2000)

2000 Results:

Bush: 49.97%
Gore: 46.46%
Nader: 2.50%
Buchanan: 0.57%

Like several large states in the north-eastern quadrant of the country - such as Illinois & New York - Ohio's relative decrease in population over the last decade led to the loss of a congressional seat, and with it, an electoral vote. Nonetheless, it remains an important state. It is one of only seven states with 20 or more EVs, and after Pennsylvania and Florida, it's the third-largest swing state. And Ohio is not merely a swing state - many consider it a bellwether state. Ohio has correctly picked the winner of every presidential election from 1964 on: In other words, as goes Ohio, so goes the nation (or vice-versa). Of course, Ohio did fail to pick the winner of the popular vote last time out... but that's a whole `nother kettle of fish.

In a way, I think Ohio could be the Republicans' Pennsylvania in reverse. If they can't win Ohio, it puts them in the hole for 20 EVs, which is a huge amount for a race that everyone expects to be very close. What's more, if Ohio (a state which many say has been trending Republican) tilts to the Dems on election night, it probably signals broader electoral weakness for the GOP. I'm not saying that if the GOP loses Ohio, it'll mean there was a rout, but I will say that if they don't take it, they probably can't win the whole shebang.

So what's going on on the ground in Ohio? First and foremost, there's the employment situation. (Is there any state where this is not a major issue?) When Bush came into office, Ohio's unemployment rate was 3.9%. It's now soared to 5.8%. (Side-note: These numbers are on a seasonally-adjusted basis. This is important because it makes it possible to compare different times of the year - in many places, there are temporary bumps in summer employment, for example. Unfortunately, the county-by-country maps I pulled up for Pennsylvania were not seasonally adjusted, so I won't be using those anymore.) In a state with a population of some 11.4 million, that's a lot of out-of-work - and unhappy - people.

More specifically, we once again find ourselves looking at the steel tariffs. The analysis isn't terribly straightforward, unfortunately. While steel makers favor the tariffs, steel users naturally oppose them. Ohio, as it turns out, is home to both manufacturers and consumers of steel, and the two sides are fighting it out. (The sad fact is, though, that despite the tariffs, Ohio's steel-making industry is still suffering and will never return to its glory days.) Bush seems to be pretty screwed here: If he rescinds the tariffs, he destroys whatever goodwill he might have won among the steel-makers, and if he keeps them in place, then he'll continue to anger the steel-users. If Bush thinks he can maintain a cavalier attitude toward the steel users ("Who else are they gonna vote for? A Democrat?"), then he may indeed be in for a rude shock when these otherwise reliable Republicans defect.

Now, getting back to the political situation: Ohio indeed is pretty heavily Republican. Apparently, it's quite common to register to vote in Ohio without selecting a party affiliation. In 2000, only 32% of all registered voters actually belonged to a particular party. But of those 7.5m registered voters, 1.4m were Republicans, whereas just 1.0m were Dems. What's more, both of Ohio's Senators, 12 of 18 Congressmen and the Governor are all Republicans. And Bill Clinton never cracked 50% here - Ross Perot pulled down sizable chunks of the vote both times, letting Clinton carry the state. The anecdotal evidence also looks bad: Commenters all note that the state Democratic Party is in disarray. Considering that Jerry Springer was even remotely considered a viable Senate candidate, this claim seems bleakly accurate.

But is the situation truly that bad for Democrats? It seems that everywhere you go, Bush's approval ratings have dropped dramatically in the last half year, and Ohio is no exception. According to the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll (PDF), Bush's approve/disapprove numbers were a lofty 76/20 back in April. As of September, those numbers had plummeted to 55/43 - you can almost hear that kerplunk. Indeed, this is the lowest approval rating Bush has gotten from Ohioans during his presidency, and a majority now disapprove of his handling of the economy. Furthermore, Republican Gov. Bob Taft (PDF) has a lousy approval rating of 44%. Of course, Governors everywhere have been taking hits lately, but Taft's approval was regularly in the 60s last year, so this decline seems particularly bad. I can't interpret these trends as representing anything other than anger at incumbents. Out in California, the target of this wrath may have been a Democrat, but if my take is correct, these sentiments are going to hurt the party in power all around - and nationally speaking, that party is the GOP.

(And in case you were curious, Sen. George Voinovich is up for re-election next year. Polls show him with a sizable lead (PDF) so far, but his likely opponent, State Sen. Eric Fingerhut, only has about 50% name recognition.)

The sentiment in the comments is that the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort will be critical here for Democrats, as it often is. (Typically, for the GOP, suppressing voter turnout is advantageous.) My hope is that the amazing grassroots work currently going on in Howard Dean's name will continue through the general election season, whether or not he is the nominee. If we can sustain this kind of involvement, then we stand a fighting chance in Ohio. But I still think it remains a major uphill battle. The Democratic infrastructure is weak, and the Republicans remain the majority party by a substantial margin. Fortunately, we don't need Ohio in order to win, but I think we should definitely fight for it because we can't afford to be complacent about a single electoral vote.

Posted at 12:46 AM in Ohio | Comments (14) | Technorati

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Looking for Links

Posted by DavidNYC

I want to flesh out the blogroll here on SSP to make it (and the whole site) a more useful resource. In particular, I'm looking for two type of sites:

1) Groups involved in swing state activism - basically fundraising, canvassing & other campaign activities in swing states on behalf of Democrats. I've already added a few such groups in a sub-list to the right. (Thanks to LFinMN for the first batch of links.)

2) Political blogs whose authors are from swing states & who focus heavily on their home-state politics. A good example would be Colorado Luis. Another example would be the Burnt Orange Report, but alas, Texas is not a swing state. For this group, I'm interested in right-wing as well as left-wing blogs.

If you have any suggestions for either of these categories, I'd be very grateful. And if there are any good general political reference sites out there that you like (like Dave Liep's Atlas), let me know about those, too.

Posted at 05:09 PM in Site News | Comments (5) | Technorati

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Bush in Trouble with Independent Voters

Posted by DavidNYC

Ruy Teixeira, co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority and operator of the Donkey Rising blog, looks at the latest CBS/NYT poll and observes that Bush is in trouble with independent voters. Now, we know that politicians obsess about swing states, and we know that they love swing voters. But swing voters in swing states? I think that's what Dick Morris fantasizes about when he's playing his special brand of footsie. In other words, these uber-centrists are the holy grail of electoral politics. If Bush is doing poorly with independents nationally, then there's no reason to believe he's doing any better with those hard-to-please moderates in the crucial battleground states. Needless to say, this is good news for us.

Teixeira also wonders why Bush's bad image among this much-wooed group isn't getting more attention. I say it doesn't matter. As long as we know that independents are ripe for the picking (and they are), we don't need this story to be on the cover of Newsweek.

Posted at 02:11 AM in General | Comments (3) | Technorati

Monday, October 27, 2003

Up Next: Ohio

Posted by DavidNYC

Buckeyes, whaddya know about that swingiest of swing states, Ohio? The last time Ohio didn't vote for a winner was in the ultra-close 1960 election. (Kennedy allegedly said that the state "broke his heart".) What's going to happen this time?

Posted at 06:15 PM in Ohio | Comments (6) | Technorati

New Map with Electoral Vote Counts

Posted by DavidNYC

I've added electoral vote counts to the swing state map. If you prefer the old map, you can find it here. And as always, I highly recommend Jim Howard's excellent Electoral College Calculator if you want to play around with the numbers.

Posted at 01:03 PM in General | Comments (2) | Technorati

New Hampshire: The Libertarians are Coming, the Libertarians are Coming!

Posted by DavidNYC

Couldn't resist linking to this amusing NYT article about the planned mass migration of libertarians to New Hampshire, which we were discussing in the comments a while back. Of course, by "mass", I mean 20,000, which won't make a dent in a state which has a population of 1.3 million. And libertarians will be lucky if the even get that many folks to move - apparently, a lot of prospective migrants were complaining about how damn cold New Hampshire is. I guess they like that "rugged indvidualism", just minus the "rugged".

Posted at 12:48 AM in New Hampshire | Comments (1) | Technorati

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Pennsylvania: Additional Thoughts

Posted by DavidNYC

Based on the comments people made in regard to my last post on Pennsylvania, I'd like to toss in a few more thoughts.

The Rendell factor: Gov. Rendell has been pushing a tax plan which raises income & sales taxes but lowers property taxes. As I understand things, the income tax hike is designed to pay for educational spending, while the property tax cuts will allegedly be made up with revenues from slot machines (which Rendell is pushing to have legalized). In the comments, Jeff in PA says that suburban Republicans who supported Rendell in 2002 (when he won 53-45) are likely to pay the most and benefit the least from these proposals. If these "Rendellicans" turn on the Governor, they may take out their dissatisfaction on the Democratic presidential candidate next year.

Voter turnout: Jgkojak says there is a fear that Dem turnout, which was high in 2000, has "nowhere to go but down". I may be comparing apples to oranges here, but I'm not sure the numbers bear this out. Overall turnout among registered voters in the counties that went for Gore in 2000 was 62%. Overall statewide turnout was... 63%. Perhaps Democrats did turn out in greater numbers than usual - I'm not really sure what the right way to determine this is. (That joint degree at the Public Policy School is starting to look very useful right about now.) If anyone can offer greater clarity on the turnout number-crunching, I'd be grateful.

Steel tariffs: I totally neglected this topic my first time out. CW is that Bush Administration enacted these tariffs to win support among steel workers in states like PA and WV. Well, file this one with the "Hoist by Their Own Petard" Dept. Not only did the tariffs fail to win over unionized steelworkers - the United Steelworkers of America endorsed Gephardt in August - but, unsurprisingly, they've hurt manufacturers who use steel, especially in the swing states of Michigan and Tennessee. Now, almost everyone on the right is admitting that the tariffs were a big mistake. If the Bush Admin. rescinds these them (and it appears they might), this will only further damage the Republicans in WV and PA. At the same time, it may be too late to see the steel-using manufacturers make big recoveries if the tariffs are lifted. (Thanks to praktite for some color on the steel labor scene.)

Unemployment: Seems that the Bureau of Labor Statistics info is, in a way, only so much BS. As you may know, "unemployment" figures only count people who are looking for work. This makes sense in some cases - for example, you wouldn't want to count a stay-at-home mom as "unemployed". But when you figure things this way, you also don't count people who have simply given up looking for a job. In January, 2001, for example, rural Forest County had the worst rate of unemployment in PA - an abysmal 16.9%. In August, the official unemployment rate had sunk to 9.3% - a seemingly stunning improvement.

But if you actually look at the facts on the ground, these numbers seem to lie. Rural Pennsylvania, like the rest of rural America, is hemorrhaging jobs and brainpower. And if you check out the Erie Times-News article, you'll note that even Rep. John Peterson - who's about as conservative as they come - acknowledges that his district is in "serious trouble". The last three elected incumbents who lost (Bush I, Carter and Hoover) all did so in the midst of economic downturns. If otherwise loyal Republican voters are feeling this kind of pain, I can't imagine how Bush will be able to deal with it. And this doesn't even account for the anger of Democrats who have lost their jobs. (Peterson story thanks to seamus.)

Senate race: There's some speculation that Rove is behind Rep. Pat Toomey's right-wing attack on Specter. Whatever the case may be, it looks like things are gearing up for a delightful fratricidal GOP primary battle. I find it amusing that Toomey is using slogans like "too liberal for too long" to describe Arlen Specter - I think George Pataki used to say the same thing about Mario Cuomo, so at least Specter's in good company. Anyhow, if the conservative establishment pushes Toomey to victory, I think the Democrats could definitely pick up this seat if they can find a strong candidate. And even if Toomey doesn't win, Specter's unfavorables will get driven up amidst the negative campaigning (as he tries to cover his right flank), and the True Believers may just stay home on election day if their man Toomey isn't on the ballot.

All this is making me feel a bit more optimistic about PA. I'd say our biggest obstacles are a Rendell tax-hike-related backlash against Dems, plus Bush's natural incumbency advantages. But I think they are outweighed by voter unhappiness with Bush (approve/disapprove: 51/44), coupled with unemployment issues. These should combine to keep PA in Democratic hands in 2004.

Posted at 08:38 PM in Pennsylvania | Technorati

Saturday, October 25, 2003

Electoral College Reform

Posted by DavidNYC

It's a tiny irony: I think we should abolish the electoral college, but without it, this site wouldn't exist. Not to worry - I'm sure I'd find something else to write about. In any case, we've been discussing the unusual electoral arrangements in Maine and Nebraska recently, and they've prompted me to think a little bit about electoral college reform, rather than abolition.

Here's how it works in ME and NE: If you win the popular vote in a given Congressional district, you get one EV (which in theory represents each CD's congressman). If you win the overall statewide vote, you get two EVs (which in theory represent the state's senators). So in Maine, which has four total EVs, you could wind up with them getting split 4-0 or 3-1 (but never 2-2). In fact, in 2000, Bush nearly won Maine's 2nd CD. Had Bush won it, Gore still would have netted 3 EVs because Gore's statewide totals would almost certainly have exceeded Bush's. (Nebraska could go 5-0 or 4-1, but 3-2 would be pretty unlikely.)

To get rid of the electoral college, you'd need a Constitutional amendment, which would likely never pass because it would diminish the power of small states. But states could adopt the ME/NE system very easily - I imagine all it takes is some legislation, or perhaps a state constitutional amendment. (Not that I think this wholesale change is likely to happen, though.) On the face of it, the CD-splitting system seems to be more representational than the electoral college. At the very least, it's one step closer to counting the popular vote, I think. I'm not sure if it would truly be an improvement over what we have now, but it might be.

So I have some questions about this potential arrangement:

1) Had this system existed in every state in 2000, what would the EV count have been? (My instincts tell me it would have hurt the Dems, quite possibly very badly. But since this is just a theoretical exercise, this is beside the point, for now.) I can't seem to find any listing which shows every American CD in one place, but if anyone wants to look into this, I'd be very interested to see the results.

2) How would candidates campaign if this system existed nationwide? Obviously, candidates would ignore CDs that lean heavily one way or the other. But they would start visiting states that they otherwise skip entirely now because they'd want to hit populous "swing CDs" in otherwise solid states like California or Texas. This still means they'd skip most major cities (apart from fundraising jaunts) because they lean heavily Dem, and they'd obviously avoid rural areas just because those are both hard to campaign in (physically) and are usually reliably Republican.

The conclusion then, I think, is that candidates would campaign heavily in suburban swing districts. I'm not sure how much this differs from present practices - witness the devotion to "soccer moms" and "office park dads", both of whom are decidedly suburban figures. But at least candidates would hit up the `burbs in NY and GA, rather than just PA and OH.

On balance, I'd say this would be a qualified improvement. As an urba-phile (that's not really a word, is it?), I'm naturally reluctant to hand over any more clout to suburbia, but it's probably already too late to worry about that. And I do think this would get us closer to a true popular vote count. So maybe one of these days I'll be producing the "Swing CD Project". Nah - that sounds a little too Big Bad Voodoo Daddy to me.

P.S. A thought just occurred to me, which I think should have been obvious at the start: Could a state pass a law appointing electors simply in proportion to the total popular vote won? I don't see why note. Article II § 1 of the US Constitution says: "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." Seems like the states have free reign here.

Posted at 12:42 AM in General | Comments (34) | Technorati

Friday, October 24, 2003

New Map & List

Posted by DavidNYC

Heeding the suggestions of several people, I've gone back and updated a few things.

First, I've updated the list of swing states. I've included Washington, and I've also split Maine into its two Congressional districts. (The overall winner in Maine gets two EVs, and then the winner of each CD gets one EV. It's a small distinction, but the election may very well be super-close once again.) The revised list is below.

Second, I've simplified the methodology - or at least, just removed any caveats. I am now including any state where (Gore + Nader) - (Bush + Buchanan) is plus or minus 10 points.

Third, I've switched to what I feel are a more accurate set of numbers, from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. (Dave's site is totally awesome, by the way.) Previously, I had been using CNN's numbers, but I don't think they did as thorough a job as Dave did updating the numbers after election night. There were no dramatic changes using the new numbers, but MI looks about a point better for us than previously thought, while TN and VA are both about a point worse.

And lastly, I've produced a new (and I think better) map.

Revised list of swing states (blue went for Gore, red went for Bush):

Arizona
Arkansas
Colorado
Florida
Iowa
Louisiana
Maine (2nd CD)
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Nevada
New Mexico
New��Hampshire
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Posted at 04:11 PM in General | Comments (15) | Technorati

Thursday, October 23, 2003

Pennsylvania

Posted by DavidNYC

On to the Keystone State.

Electoral Votes: 21 (23 in 2000)

2000 Results:

Gore: 50.60%
Bush: 46.43%
Nader: 2.10%
Buchanan: 0.33%

Pennsylvania, with its 23 electoral votes, was the third-largest state to go blue in 2000 - only California (54) and New York (33) gave us more. Thanks to post-census redistricting, PA had a couple of Congressional seats shaved from its delegation, but its importance to the Democratic nominee is still immense. Nearly everyone agrees that if the Dem candidate cannot win PA, then the odds of him winning the Presidency are virtually nil. It's not just because those 21 EVs would be almost impossible to make up elsewhere, but rather because it would signal that we're out of the running in multiple swing-states. My understanding is that this scenario would come about only if there were a broad surge of pro-Bush sentiment, tipping a wide swath of yellow and green states into red. I don't really plan to explore this potential disaster situation because a) it doesn't pertain to any specific swing state and b) it would rely on utterly unpredictable, large-scale events, such as a turn-around in the economy or rapid progress in Iraq.

So what factors should we look at?

A lot of people have commented about the presence of Ed Rendell, PA's new Democratic governor and former DNC chairman. The conventional wisdom about governors says something like, "A governor can add 1-2% to his party's vote total." I'm a little skeptical of this because I'm not sure what this really means - or rather, how to analyze the validity of this proposition. Since every state has a governor (of course), how can you know what the real baseline is and how much on top of that the governor has added? Comparing polls to actual election-day results seems unsatisfactory to me because not only are polls often incorrect, but there's no reason to believe polls can filter out this alleged "governor effect", either. (You can't exactly ask, "Would you vote Democrat even if Ed Rendell wasn't governor?") This problem aside, Rendell's good connections and long experience may indeed help on the ground here. How much is, of course, impossible to say.

Then there's the Senate race: "Moderate" Republican Arlen Specter, who is running for re-election, is also facing a primary challenge from the right. People often suggest that a contested Senate (or gubernatorial) race can drive more people to the polls. Again I think it's hard to filter out the effects of state-wide races because so many other factors can affect voter turnout. Furthermore, a bitterly contested race may bring out partisans on both sides.

I will say this: If Specter starts faring poorly in the polls, then that is doubtless a good sign, sort of a reverse canary-in-the-coalmine. This may seem ultra-obvious, but I mention it because I think Specter's already showing some weakness. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, Specter is leading "someone else" (the pollster's phrase, not mine) by a mere 5% - 46% to 41%. That's pretty bleak, considering that 74% of respondents say they don't know enough to for an opinion of Specter's likely opponent, Rep. Joseph Hoeffel. And Specter's primary battle is only likely to drive up his negatives. (I don't think anyone ever emerges from a primary fight looking cleaner than when they went in.)

A quick note here on Bush's popularity: Like almost everywhere else, it's been plummeting - and plummeting sharply of late. Bush's immediate post-war approve/disapprove numbers (again from Quinnipiac) were 67/28 back in April. By August, they stood at 60/35, but in the last two months alone, Bush's approval sunk by a whopping 9 points to 51%, while his negatives rose by the same amount. In baseball, they talk of the "Mendoza line" when a player's batting average sinks below the pitiful figure of .200. If 50% approval ratings are the Mendoza line of the political world, then Bush is hovering awfully close to extreme mediocrity in PA.

Finally - and I think most importantly - I'd like to take a look at employment figures, which I did not examine with regard to New Hampshire. I confess this is where my analysis is weakest because my background in quantitative social science is, to be charitable, limited. But I'll forge ahead with a few thoughts in the hope that wiser souls can offer some more guidance in the comments section. (Also, a tip o' the tam o' shanter to MBW at Wampum who first inspired me to look at this topic.)

The seasonally-adjusted employment rate in PA stood at 4.2% in January, 2001 when Bush took office. In August of this year (the last month for which figures are available), the unemployment rate was a full point higher - 5.2%. If we believe the seemingly sensible proposition that this can only be bad news for the incumbent, then naturally this is "good news" for us (though obviously terrible news for PA residents and the country as a whole). I don't think this tells the whole story, though. Take a look at the maps below:

The top two maps are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is linked to above. They show unemployment by county in Jan. '01 & Aug. '03. As you can see, unemployment has actually decreased in most PA counties since the start of the Bush administration. (It is possible that the unemployment rate has been "artificially" lowered by people who have ceased looking for work, but I am unable to assess that.)

But take a look at the third map (which is courtesy of Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, a fantastic resource). If you do a quick visual comparison, you can see that the Gore counties are the ones which have been hardest-hit. (Just be aware that Dave uses red for the Dems and blue for the GOP.) I've done a more precise number-crunching, and I can tell you that 10 of 18 Gore counties have suffered an increase in unemployment, while only 12 of 49 Bush counties have. Furthermore, nearly all the sharpest declines (those over 1%) have been in the Gore counties, particularly in the Philadelphia region in southeastern PA.

While I can't imagine that voters in the Republican counties are crediting Bush with a booming economy, it does seem safe to say that anti-incumbent hostility can only have increased in the Democratic counties due to the economic situation. Turnout in these areas (primarily Philadelphia and Pittsburgh) will be crucial, and I think that the sour economy will propel more disaffected voters to the polls on election day. Obviously, a quick turnaround in the economy can negate this analysis, but time is running out for Bush on this count. As you may recall, the economy had already started to recover from the '90-'91 recession when Bush, Sr. was running for re-election in 1992, but the effects of the recovery failed to reach many voters by November of that year.

Ok, so there is one last thing: Fred in the comments section observes that PA has the second-highest proportion of elderly citizens of any state (only Florida has more). (Census Bureau PDF, page 17.) If you saw the recent NYT article, you know that Bush's popularity is declining among older voters. And if you've ever observed politics, you probably also know that the senior citizen demographic tends to vote in very high proportions.

So, all in all, I think we have a pretty decent shot at keeping PA. It's been said that the Pennsylvania is "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between," and I think the election will come down to voter turnout in those two urban poles at either end of the state. As I noted, I think some factors (like Specter's race & Rendell) are just too fuzzy to gauge, but the anger generated by joblessness is very real - and present. And I think this has the potential to be a major motivating force in the Democratic strongholds of PA and across the country.

But the bottom line is, this is a must-win for us. If you hear Jeff Greenfield calling Pennsylvania for Bush on election night, grab the Jack Daniels, because it's going to be a long four years.

(Also, I'd like to thank everyone who has been contributing in the comments section. Your insights have proven very helpful, even if I haven't been able to cite everyone by name.)

Posted at 11:29 PM in Pennsylvania | Comments (15) | Technorati

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Up Next: Pennsylvania

Posted by DavidNYC

Since I'm making a geographical loop of sorts, the next swing state that is physically nearest to New Hampshire is Pennsylvania. If you have any thoughts or helpful links, I would, as always, be appreciative. I'll put together a more authoritative post in a day or two, hopefully.

Posted at 08:28 PM in Pennsylvania | Comments (10) | Technorati

A "Thank You" to Kos

Posted by DavidNYC

I want to give a very big thank you to Markos at DailyKos - not just for his recent plug of this site, but, more importantly, for the inspiration he's given me. It's safe to say that without DKos, I never would have embarked on this project. And the fantastic new "diary" feature on the new Scoop-powered site gave me the final push I needed.

I've been reading Kos for almost exactly a year now, so I'm not quite as quick a learner as he is. But Kos has been a fantastic teacher and I am very proud to be one of his blogchildren.

Posted at 07:46 PM in General | Comments (4) | Technorati

A Note on Methodology

Posted by DavidNYC

As I explained at the outset, the states on my list are those which had a margin of +/- 6 points in 2000. I used the (Gore + Nader) - (Bush + Buchanan) formula. I've included one outlier, Louisiana, which had an 8-point margin. Some folks have suggested I ought to include Washington as well, which had a 9-point overall margin, but which Gore won by only five points. Perhaps I will. On the flipside, some have also questioned the inclusion of states like Virginia and Tennessee, which appear to be strongly Republican.

My reason for starting with a broad list is because I want to avoid making conclusions until we've had a chance to analyze the evidence. Obviously, the Dems are a lot more likely to snag some states rather than others. We may need to pare down the list of swing states eventually. But for now, I see no harm in casting a wide net.

Posted at 06:12 PM in General | Comments (3) | Technorati

New Hampshire: Additional Thoughts

Posted by DavidNYC

A few posters over at DailyKos contributed some more thoughts to the New Hampshire race. DemFromCT glumly points out a recent Granite State Poll which gives Bush a 56% approval rating in NH (with 40% disapproving and 4% undecided). However, this is down considerably from Bush's post-war high of 71% in April, when his disapproval was a mere 23%. We'll have to keep an eye out to see if Bush continues to slide any further.

Carl Nyberg (who thinks Dean can win New Hampshire) also brings up a much more optimistic - and potentially important - demographic point. New arrivals from Boston and NYC constitute a fast-growing part of the NH population, and these folks are less likely to be Bush supporters. This presentation by UNH's Survey Center appears to bear out Carl's assertion. Forty-two percent of native-born New Hampshirites consider themselves Republicans, but much smaller proportions of those born in other states do. And indeed, New Hampshire has seen a fairly sizable positive net migration since 1992.

In fact, GOP voter registration has declined just a bit since a peak in the mid-90s, while the number of independents has shot up dramatically, making them the single-largest group of voters, as noted in a previous post. Interestingly, only 24% of native New Hampshirites self-identify as independents. So the conventional wisdom that New Hampshire is a state of prickly independents seems (at least these days) to rest in large part on the political proclivities of these new immigrants. The CW isn't wrong, per se - but it's obviously malleable. And since you may have been wondering, independents preferred Gore over Bush 47% to 43% - though that last pair of figures comes from the much-maligned Voter News Service, so the usual caveats apply.

It is clear that the political landscape in New Hampshire is shifting, and Bill Clinton's two victories there may not have been so much as an aberration but rather the start of a new trend. I'll count the 2000 results as part of this continued trend, since the Gore + Nader vote was greater than Bush's. The comparison I'd like to make here (and I know New Hampshirites will bristle at it, but indulge me) is to Vermont. Today, we think of Vermont as being an extremely liberal state. But until Bill Clinton came along, Vermont had gone Democrat exactly once during the entire 20th century (for Johnson in `64). Yep, VT managed to vote against FDR all four times. I don't think NH will become another Ben & Jerry's and Birkenstock paradise any time soon, but I also don't believe that the past is necessarily prologue here, either. The times (and the voters), they are a-changin'.

Update: In the comments section at the old BlogSpot site, Steady Eddie offers a worthy critique of my VT analogy.

Posted at 02:54 AM in New Hampshire | Technorati

Monday, October 20, 2003

New Hampshire

Posted by DavidNYC

I'm going to start my look at each swing state in the top right corner of the map and work my way around. So we'll begin with the Granite State.

Electoral Votes: 4 (4 in 2000)

2000 Results:

Bush: 48.07%
Gore: 46.80%
Nader: 3.90%
Buchanan: 0.46%

New Hampshire stands out among the states Bush won in 2000 for two reasons. First, if you look at the electoral map, you'll notice its sliver of red amidst a sea of northeastern blue. Indeed, New Hampshire is the odd man out in New England, with a very different politics and electoral makeup than most of its neighbors. We'll look at this a bit later.

Second, and more importantly, NH stands out because it was one of two states where the combined Gore/Nader vote was greater than the Bush/Buchanan vote. (Florida, of course, was the other.) In fact, the left-wing vote in NH was three points greater than the right-wing vote.

On the face of it, then, it would seem that NH is ripe for the Dems to take back - if you believe that Green party voters will now (for whatever reasons) vote Democrat. Obviously, the likelihood of this is hard to assess because it depends on so many factors. Will Nader run again? If he does, will he engender the same level of support? If he doesn't run, will Green voters stay home? And if the Greens do vote in the absence of a Nader run, will they pull the lever for the Dem nominee, or will they still go Green, regardless of who their candidate is?

Right now, it's especially difficult to answer any of these questions, though some will become clearer in the coming year. But even if the Greens come back to the Dem fold en masse, we need to look at whether NH might shift from its ultra-close 48-47 split in 2000. And that brings us back to the first issue: NH's quirky politics.

The conventional wisdom is that New Hampshirites favor outsider-types. The results in primary elections indeed bear this out: "Maverick" John McCain beat Bush handily in 2000, for one, and the odious Pat Buchanan managed to stun establishmentarian Bob Dole in `96. Buchanan even snagged 39% of the vote in `92 when he ran against incumbent Bush, Sr.

Part of this has to do with NH's liberal open primary system, whereby independents can choose which party's primary they'd like to vote in on election day. (In New York, by contrast, you can only vote in your own party's primary, and if you want to switch parties, you have to do it months in advance. And independents can't vote in any primaries at all.) In NH, independents in fact make up the plurality of NH voters.

But will this independent streak carry over to the general election? It's hard to say - and, I'll admit, I'm not an expert on NH politics. I can tell you that New Hampshire's entire Congressional delegation (two senators and two congressmen) is Republican, as is the governor. And though I'll take any poll of Bush vs. "Unnamed Democrat" with a major grain of salt, the ARG poll cited below does show a pretty big spread between Rs and Ds. So clearly a lot of independents must be voting Republican.

On the flipside, the last two races where we had a one-term incumbent and a weak economy (`80 and `92), New Hampshire went for the outsiders (Reagan and Clinton) both times. Furthermore, the strong interest in the Democratic primary (combined with the absence of a Republican contest) may have residual effects. Democrats who mobilize in large numbers in January may feel more compelled (and better equipped) to do so again in November. By contrast, their Republican brethren will, for the most part, have to sit idly by until autumn. And lastly, if Dean gets the nomination, it's possible that his outsider credentials will give him a boost here. (I don't think any of the other candidates can successfully claim this sort of mantle.)

Ultimately, I can't provide a good answer my own question - that is, will the GOP/Dem split in NH stay the same in 2004. Evidence points both ways. Of course, there are the Two Huge Unknowns - the economy and the war in Iraq - which will affect every state in one way or another. (And right now, these Bush negatives redound in the Democrats' favor.) But absent any compelling evidence suggesting a GOP or Dem surge in NH, I'm going to say that the outcome in this state rests primarily on what happens with the Green voters.

Polls:

"If next year's Presidential election were being held today, who would you be more likely to vote for Republican George W. Bush or the nominee of the Democratic Party?" (ARG, 9/16/03)

Bush: 50%
Democrat: 36%
Undecided: 14%

"Which candidate has the best chance of defeating Bush?" (Zogby, 9/26/03)

Dean: 26%
Kerry: 24%
Clark: 19%

Posted at 05:38 PM in New Hampshire | Technorati

Sunday, October 19, 2003

Swing State Map

Posted by DavidNYC

An electoral map highlighting the swing states in the 2004 election. (Produced with Jim Howard's very handy Electoral College Calculator.)

Posted at 11:00 PM in General | Comments (6) | Technorati

Methodology & List of Swing States

Posted by DavidNYC

This site is devoted to analyzing the battleground states which will ultimately decide the 2004 US Presidential election.

Methodology: Any state where the margin between (Gore + Nader) - (Bush + Buchanan) was ±10% in 2000 is considered a swing state for the purposes of this project.

The one exception is North Carolina, which has moved into the swing state category by virute of John Edwards' presence on the Democratic ticket. Historically, the home state of a party's vice-presidential candidate is one of the few (if only) factors that can materially affect the vote in that state.

List (with margin in parentheses):

Arizona (-4.12%)
Arkansas (-4.79%)
Colorado (-3.71%)
Florida (1.33%)
Iowa (2.11%)
Louisiana (-7.32%)
Maine, 2nd CD (5.74%)
Michigan (7.08%)
Minnesota (6.70%)
Missouri (-2.13%)
Nevada (-1.86%)
New Mexico (3.38%)
New Hampshire (2.17%)
North Carolina (-13.13%)
Ohio (-1.58%)
Oregon (5.02%)
Pennsylvania (5.94%)
Tennessee (-3.12%)
Virginia (-6.06%)
Washington (9.43%)
West Virginia (-5.17%)
Wisconsin (3.40%)

Posted at 10:50 PM in Site News | Technorati

An Introduction to the Swing State Project

Posted by DavidNYC

My goal with this website is to analyze in detail the political conditions in the toss-up (or "swing") states that will ultimately decide the 2004 presidential election. While I'll make some observations of my own, my hope is that other knowledgeable folks (particularly the posters at my original blog home, the unparalleled DailyKos) will also contribute their ideas.

For the purposes of this project, I consider the following states to be swing states (states that went for Gore in 2000 are in blue; those that went for Bush are in red):

Arizona
Arkansas
Colorado
Florida
Iowa
Louisiana
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Mexico
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin

You can read my more on my methodology for picking these states in this post.

If you have any thoughts as to why, in 2004, the Democrats will win any of the states we narrowly lost in 2000 - or, alternately, why we might lose any of the states we narrowly won - please share them in the comments below. I'll post occasional updates drawing everyone's collected wisdom together, in blurbs such as this:

Why we'll win FL this time: Nader voters will come back to the Dem fold; anger over 2000 will increase Dem turnout, especially among minorities; no butterfly ballot this time around.

Why we'll lose FL again: Lots of pork provided by Dubya to FL; Governor Jeb.

Eventually, I hope to have a comprehensive list or chart detailing information like this for all of the swing states. I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say.

Posted at 10:45 PM in General | Comments (4) | Technorati