Author: dreaminonempty

Today, a continuation of a short series looking into the factors affecting the current political climate.  It’s no secret that the country isn’t too happy about the economy, the war in Iraq, and the direction the country is headed in.  But for me at least, I like to see the data.  First, the right track/wrong track question:

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The trend is clear, the numbers are huge: almost three quarters say we’re off on the wrong track.  Much more below.

It is also interesting to see that there was a clear uptick in those that say the country is on the right track just before the 2004 and 2006 elections, but not in Fall 2005 or 2007.  It looks like we’re on track for another one now in 2008 as well.  Campaign dollars at work?  Optimism that one’s preferred party will win?

A longer look back shows the wrong track numbers were also about this high for the 1976, 1980, 1992, and 1994 elections:

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Iraq

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The public continues to believe that the war in Iraq is not worth it.  There’s not much news here over the past year; the economy has taken precedence in the minds of many voters more recently.

The Economy

There have been dramatic changes in the perception of the economy in the past year (I’m not going to go into much of the actual economic data; after all, in politics, perception is reality).  The numbers simply dove off a cliff.  About 80% think the economy is not doing that great (left) and hardly anybody thinks it’s getting better (right):

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These numbers are just as bad as they were in 1980 and 1990:

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Rising prices surely are contributing to opinions of the economy; here’s the price for milk and gas over the past few years:

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Trust and the Issues

So which party do voters trust on the issues they see as important?  Rasmussen has been asking that question every month for more than a year now, so we can see how things have developed:

There’s nothing major, although it looks like some trends away from Democrats on Iraq and national security, while there’s been some improvement on the economy.  At the same time, Rasmussen (and others) also show that the importance of Iraq in voter’s minds has been decreasing while the economy takes precedence.

In other words, from the perspective of issues the voters care about, the political environment is becoming only more favorable to Democrats.

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Polling numbers can be found at pollingreport.com unless otherwiese noted. This is the second in a series looking at the evolution of the political scene since the 2004 and 2006 elections.  The first discussed Bush’s approval ratings.  Tomorrow, information on party approval, identification and some House numbers; after that, a look at fundraising.  Cross posted at Open Left and Daily Kos.

It’s been quite a while since I crunched some political numbers, so I thought I’d check back in with a series of diaries.  Today, the latest edition of the Bush approval map.

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My, that’s pretty!

Memo to Democrats:  this is an anvil for the falling Republicans.  Please use it.

For perspective, at the time of the 2006 Democratic electoral wave, this is what the map looked like:

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So why am I posting this on Swing State Project?  As I wrote many times before the 2006 election, low approval ratings represent an opportunity for Democrats, not a guarantee.  As it turned out, those who did not approve of Bush in 2006 voted for their Democratic House incumbent.  And those who did approve of Bush voted for their Republican House incumbent.  If a similar dynamic plays out this year, it means almost all Democratic House incumbents are safe, while almost any Republican could be unseated by the right candidate running a good, well-funded campaign.

So Bush approval represented, in 2006 at least, a minimum performance level for incumbent Republicans.  We can see a similar sort of effect in this year’s presidential race.  McCain does not poll worse than Bush’s approval in any state, but he comes close in a few places (Hawaii and Wyoming).  Here’s a map that shows the difference between McCain’s numbers (from Nate Silver’s trend-adjusted polling averages, captured last week) to Bush’s approval ratings:

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Note that this map does not show which states are most competitive.  Instead, it shows where McCain is more popular than Bush.  People who say they will vote for McCain but do not approve of Bush could do so for a number of reasons, and the numbers don’t tell us why or whether they’re different in different regions of the country.  It’s probably safe to say that there’s a home state effect in Hawaii, though.  McCain does best in comparison to Bush’s approval in Appalachia and the Northeast, and worst in the West and the Deep South.  It is suspiciously familiar to the Democratic primary maps.

Tomorrow, the series continues with a look at the biggest issues: the economy and Iraq.  After that, party approval, identification, and some House numbers.  And finally, if the FEC gets its numbers out, some fundraising numbers.

Cross posted at DailyKos and Open Left.

(Fascinating stuff; be sure to check below the fold for the full analysis.  What’s your take? – promoted by James L.)

Based on recent generic ballot polls and the current distribution of Republican incumbent and open seats, Democrats would pick up about 25 more House seats in the 2008 election if it were held today.  Republicans might pick up a couple to offset that.

And that’s before we account for future Republican retirements and the massive fundraising advantage Dems have this year.

Of course, the generic ballot numbers will probably change over the next year, one way or the other.  Here’s how the number of House seats Democrats would win varies as the Democrats’ generic ballot advantage changes so you can keep track at home (based on retirements known as of November).  

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The colored bands show the maximum and minimum calculations, but the actual numbers are most likely to be close to the solid lines.  Currently the average Democratic generic ballot advantage is about 12; the max I’ve seen this year is 18, the min is 7.

Below, the explanation and the fine print.

Cross posted at DailyKos and Open Left.

Bonus Fun Calculation

If  Democrats in 2006 had had the same wealth of seats available to them to contest as Republicans did in 1994, they would have picked up an estimated 59 seats!  This means the election of 2006 was just as big a win for Democrats in terms of performance as the election of 1994 was for Republicans.

The Fine Print

1.  These calculations are based on the average generic ballot advantage in the final week of the campaign, which we don’t know yet.  All we know are what the current polls say.  So if Democrats maintain their current generic ballot advantage through the end of the campaign season, then we would expect 25 more Democratic seats.

2.  The calculations are based on the current known Republican retirements in the House.  The more Republican retirements, the better for Democrats.  I will post an update later in 2008 once retirements have settled out.

3.  I assume that the campaigns and party strategies in 2008 will be similar enough to those in 1994-2006.  This assumption could be wrong, if, for example, Democrats work just as hard at challenging incumbents as they do at going for open seats.  In that case, the current estimates would be a few seats too optimistic (but the generic ballot advantage would likely increase by a large amount and more than offset that).

4.  Strictly speaking, we wouldn’t want to make any predictions for a generic ballot advantage greater than what we saw in 2006, because it is beyond the range of previous experience.  I wouldn’t worry too much about going a little beyond the generic ballot advantage of 2006, but once we get up into the 18 point generic ballot advantage range, things get uncertain.  And at that point, who cares about predictions?  It would be celebration time….

Predicting the House

The relationship between generic ballot numbers and the numbers of seats won by Democrats is not that great.

Why not?  After all, the generic ballot number takes into account every major and minor factor in individual races, including the national mood.  

The problem is that the number and distribution of seats held by each party varies over time.  For example, in 1994, Republicans had a rich field of conservative and moderate districts held by Democrats to try to take.  Today, there are far fewer.  (Another problem may be changing political habits over long periods of time.)  Previous calculations that took the distribution of seats into account for the 2006 election were almost exactly right.

In this diary, I use the eight most recent elections to create a way to calculate the number of incumbent or open seats won by either party.  The only numbers needed for this calculation are the Democrats’ generic ballot advantage (from polls), the percent support for Bush in 2000 in each district, and the status of each race (incumbent Democrat, open seat held by Democrat, incumbent Republican, or open seat held by Republican).  Note that the best way make these calculations is to run thousands of simulations and count up the outcomes, something I did not do.

The Details

So, how does partisan makeup of a district relate to the chance of a seat switching parties, on average?  In 2006 we had a lot of seats switch from Republican to Democrat – so we can try to answer this question for the R to D switch at least.

Here’s a graph showing the percent chance that a seat switched when the incumbent was a Republican.  The data are divided into categories with a range of 3 points in Bush’s 2000 vote.  Please note:  this graph, or any of the following, is not useful for predicting the chance of a specific seat changing parties in the 2008 elections.

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There’s a regular and not unsurprising pattern here.  Democrats were more likely to win in the more moderate districts.  Looking at the data another way (not shown) leads me to believe this is pretty close to the shape of a common type of curve, so we can model it:

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The ‘center’ of the curve shows us where Democrats were able to win 50% of the Republican seats: in districts where Bush received 44% of the vote.  Now let’s add in open seats held by Republicans:

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With far fewer open seats, the data points look far less organized.  Note that the curve for open seats shifts 8 points to the right.  This shows us the total advantage of being a Republican incumbent.  Of this advantage, 2 points can be accounted for by the inherent incumbency advantage identified after taking fundraising into account (name recognition and so forth); the rest is probably attributable to stronger opponents with more money running for open seats.

These curves have two numbers that are used to describe them: one tells us where the center is – what the level of Bush support was in 2000 in districts where Democrats won 50% of the time – and the other tells us how steep the curve is.  The steepness is about the same for incumbents and open seats.  

At this point we could quit and go home and use these curves alone, because as it turns out, the generic ballot for 2008 is sitting right about where the generic ballot for 2006 was.  But we’d like to get some idea of the possible range we might see for a given generic ballot number, and what happens if the generic ballot numbers change.  

The only other recent year with a fair number of Democrats winning Republican seats is 1996, but it’s still not enough to get a very accurate curve.  Even so, when you look at the numbers, the steepness is not significantly different from the 2006 curves.  The center is shifted 7 points to the left.

But what about the other years?  It turns out we have another way to estimate the center.  We can plot the percent that voted for the Republican in each district versus the percent Bush had in 2000, and with a regression curve, estimate where half the Republicans lose (fall below 50%), which is our number for the center of the curve.  Several different types of regressions lead to similar numbers.

If we assume the curves all had the same steepness in every year, we can check our estimates by seeing if we can predict how many Republican seats Democrats won in each year by multiplying the number of districts with a given support of Bush in 2000 by the chance that districts with that level of support were won by Democrats.  This is repeated for incumbent seats and open seats.  The center is shifted 8 points to the right for open seats.  As it turns out, these estimates work great.  

Repeating the process for Democratic-held seats, using the 1994 election as a basis, is a little trickier because Democrats seem to be a lot better at holding on to seats in conservative districts.  The upshot is the estimates of Republican wins of Democratic seats have a lot more error associated with them.  Fortunately, right now the generic ballot is in the range where even a large relative error in the number of seats picked up by Republicans doesn’t make much difference – 1 plus or minus 300% is still only a few seats.  But, what we can do now is generate some rough curves for Democratic seats in 2006, even though no Democrats lost their seats.  And for fun, let’s look at 1994 too.

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One thing that jumps out is that Democrats seem to have a much bigger total incumbency advantage than Republicans.  This, again, may be related to the tendency of Democrats who represent conservative districts to retain their seats.  Or, the Republicans maybe have a bigger actual total incumbency advantage than the 8 points found above.

Now, the key question: can we predict where the center of these curves will be from polling data?  Here’s a graph of the estimated or modeled center versus the final week’s generic ballot advantage for Democrats running against Republican incumbents:

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Looks good.  Two points are hollow – 1994 and 1996 – because I am not sure I have all the polling in the average (the other years came from pollingreport.com).  The line is about the same with or without those two points though.  The dashed lines show the range we expect the center to be in 95% of the time, given a known generic ballot advantage.  So now we have a way to relate the generic ballot to the center of our curves up above, and we can use the curves to estimate the number of Republican seats won by Democrats:

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Not too shabby.  If you split it up between open and incumbent seats, the calculations for incumbents are usually a little too optimistic, and the calculations for open seats are a little too pessimistic.  This might mean the actual total incumbency advantage for Republicans is more like 10-12 points than the 8 points calculated above for 2006.    

Repeating the exercise with Democratic-held seats results in a much greater error, as there was more error in generating the curves for each year, but again, this doesn’t matter much at the current generic ballot range.

Thus Ends the Adventure

This is the last in a short series related to House elections.  Other diaries discuss the current political climate nationally and factors such as retirements, recruitment, and fundraising in the House races; the the changing landscape in the House since 1994 as far as the seats controlled by each party; the change in voting behavior at the presidential level from 1988 to 2004 (with an eye towards the next redistricting session); and finally, two more diaries showing how much various factors (money, incumbency, party, scandal) hurt or help candidates for the House on average.

We know money and several other factors have major effects on House races.  But after we account for these major factors, how much advantage does incumbency give a candidate?  A gerrymandered district?  Getting caught in a scandal?

Yesterday I showed some regressions for Republican performance in House races for the years 2002, 2004, and 2006 that take account of incumbent party, fundraising ratio, and district partisan makeup.

Using these, we can tell how well we expect a Republican to do given certain conditions.  However, the regressions are not perfect – the data don’t fall along the lines plotted.  There’s plenty of room for other factors to be involved.  We can use the differences between what we expect and what actually happened – the residuals – to tease out the effects of additional conditions.  Below, a pack of factors, from the most important – money, party, district – to the less important ones – incumbency, gerrymandering, longevity – to the more interesting ones – scandal and failure.

Cross posted at Open Left and Daily Kos

How do various factors affect a House candidate’s percentage of vote in the election?  All the following numbers relate to average effects.  Individual results may vary.

The first four are the variables used to predict the expected performance:

1.   High D/R Fundraising Ratio:  +15 points (about 5 points for every factor of 3 increase)

On average, challengers running for a seat currently held by the opposite party will gain 15 points if they outraise their opponent by a factor of three compared to if they raise only one tenth of their opponent’s money, if all other factors are equal.  Note that the D/R Fundraising Ratio is fairly closely correlated to absolute amount of money raised by the challenger, so we can also say that challengers will greatly improve their performance if they raise a great deal of money, regardless of the incumbent’s fundraising.

2.  Running as incumbent party:  +10 points

Candidates running for a seat currently held by their own party (incumbents or open seat candidates) will gain, on average, 10 points compared to if they were running for a seat currently held by the opposite party, if all other factors (including D/R Fundraising Ratio) are the same.

3.  Running in a more favorable district:  +10 points (1 point for every 3 point change in Bush’s vote in the district)

Democrats running in the most liberal Republican-held districts (Bush vote 40-45%) will gain 10 points compared to Democrats running in the most conservative Republican-held districts (Bush vote 65-75%), if all other factors (including D/R Fundraising Ratio) are the same.  Democrats running in the moderately liberal Democratic-held districts (Bush vote 30-35%) will gain about 10 points compared to those running in the most conservative Democratic-held districts (Bush vote 60-65%).  

4.  Political climate:  +6 points

On average, Democratic challengers did 6 points better against Republican incumbents in 2006 compared to 2002 (4 points better than 2004) when accounting for D/R Fundraising Ratio and district partisan makeup.  Republican challengers did 4 points worse in 2006 compared to 2002.  In other words, Republican money was worth less in 2006 than in 2004 or 2002.  They had to raise more relative to their Democratic opponent to get the same result.

The following comparisons are made by comparing actual performance to calculated performance, accounting for the four factors above: D/R Fundraising Ratio, district composition, incumbent party, and political climate.  The numbers given are average residuals of the regressions.  

5.  Raising more than $2 million as a challenger: +3 points

Remember, this is after accounting for D/R Fundraising Ratio.  If both candidates raise the same amount of money, dollar-for-dollar, then the more money a challenger raises, the better the challenger does.  A challenger who raises more than $2 million (and whose opponent also raises more than $2 million) increases performance by about 3 points compared to one who only raises $100,000 (and whose opponent also raises only $100,000).  In other words, high-spending races with fundraising parity are generally to the advantage of the challenger.  (This leads to the strange corollary that the more an incumbent raises given fundraising parity, the worse the incumbent does!) Let me note again, when we do not control for D/R Fundraising Ratio, a challenger who raises a large amount of money will do far, far better than one who raises little money.

6.  Running as an incumbent:  + 2 points

The inherent incumbent advantage after accounting for money, party, district, and climate is not large.  This doesn’t mean running against an incumbent is just as easy as running for an open seat.   However, the incumbency advantage may reside mainly in the ability to scare off opponents and scare off opponents’ donors and supporters.  If a challenger can manage to raise as much money as an incumbent, then the challenger has almost as good a shot as if the challenger were running for an open seat.  However, 2 points is still an important amount.

7.  Running against a first-termer: +1 point

First term incumbents are not much more inherently vulnerable than other incumbents, if at all.  Even those who are in a seat that switched parties.  This doesn’t mean first-termers are safe, because they are more likely to attract high quality opponents with strong fundraising.  When they do, however, they perform only slightly worse than a long-time incumbent under the same circumstances, on average.

8.  Running against a self-funded candidate:  +1 point

On average, running against a self-funded candidate might give a slight advantage.  However, out of the 18 cases I found over the past three cycles, four showed the self-funded candidate underperforming by a massive 8-10 points.  There may be a risk of completely blowing it by self-funding.

9.  Running against a Republican incumbent in a Republican-gerrymandered district: +0 points

Looking at some states that were recently redistricted by Republicans in a partisan manner – FL, PA, MI, OH, VA, TX – there has been no benefit in performance for the Republicans.  There may have been a slight benefit the first cycle after redistricting, followed by a slight underperformance later.  The gerrymandering may have scared off opponents and their donors, however, which would certainly have been an overall benefit for the Republicans.

The following comparisons are specific to a just a few races, so we run into the problem of the statistics of small numbers, and can’t really say what the average effect is.  Also, in many of these races, the incumbent was tangled in more than one variety of misdeed.

10.  Third party candidates:  0 to -15 points

In 2006 there were 16 House races where third party candidates garnered more than 4.5 percent of the vote.  In 11 of these races the Republican underperformed by 4 or more points; in 6 races (2 in MN) the Democratic candidate underperformed by 4 or more points.

11.  The Abramoff scandals:  -1 to -12 points  

Republicans in districts with links to the Abramoff scandal all underperformed: TX-22 (-1),  FL-24 (-3), CA-4 (-4), AK-AL (-6), CA-11 (-7), and OH-18 (-12).

12.  Alleged domestic abuse:  -5 to -6 points

PA-10 (-6), NY-20 (-5):  Not the good kind of press.  

13.  Threatenting your opponent:  -5 points

WY-AL (-5), where Barbara Cubin told an opponent she’d slap him in the face if he weren’t in a wheelchair.  Cubin wasn’t well liked anyway though.

14.  The Delay scandal:  +5 to -6 points

TX-22 (-1), AZ-1 (-2), NC-8 (-6), PA-6 (+5).  Districts related to the Delay scandal don’t seem to have been affected too much, although the Delay scandal certainly affected the national climate.

15.  The Foley scandal:  +1 to -3 points

IL-14 (-2), IL-19 (+1), FL-16 (0), NY-26 (-3).  Again, no obvious severe penalty for those most closely related to the scandal or Foley’s replacement on the ballot, but the scandal contributed to the national political climate.

Overall, these numbers seem to validate the strategy of supporting strong candidates in every district, against every incumbent.  While it is certainly much more difficult for Democratic challengers to win against an incumbent in a conservative district, it is not impossible.  It appears that with enough money, such races will often be competitive or near competitive in the current political climate.  Another way to put it is that the competitive races in conservative districts in 2006 -WY-AL for example- were not simply flukes or outliers, but rather part of a larger pattern that is likely to be repeated in 2008.  

Thanks to Open Secrets, fundraising data is readily available for all House candidates.  This diary sorts through all the House races from the last three cycles to show the effects of money, incumbency, political climate, and party on the elections.  

While money was clearly the most important factor, the big surprise was that once money was accounted for, running against an incumbent was only a little more difficult that running for an open seat, on average.

The effect of relative fundraising strength (the D/R Fundraising Ratio, Democratic $$ raised divided by Republican $$ raised) for all 2006 races is below:

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On the far left, when the Democrat raises very little money compared to the Republican (D/R Fundraising Ratio < 0.1), the Republican always wins.  On the far right (D/R Fundraising Ratio > 10), the opposite case.  Much much more below…  

Cross posted at Daily Kos and Open Left.

Sorting Through the Data

First, notice the scale on the bottom of the graph above (and all of the ones to follow) is not linear (1, 2, 3,….) but rather logarithmic (1, 10, 100…).  This is a way of showing a very large range of values on one plot.  The line on the plot above is a smooth curve through the data.  Notice that the curve flattens out at either end – these are the areas where one opponent basically has diddle squat.  It doesn’t make much difference whether you have diddle squat or diddle squat times ten, you still can’t run a very effective campaign (although intriguingly there appears to be some effect).

But wait – is the shape of this curve influenced by the distribution of the partisan makeup of districts?  There is an imbalance in district distributions – far more are very liberal than are very conservative.  So, let’s look at only districts where 50-55% of voters chose Bush in 2000, a particularly large group.  

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It’s still a pretty nice curve.  A little lopsided though – so should it really be just one curve?  Let’s plot the data by party of the incumbent:

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Party makes a pretty big difference.  

Finally, that flat part – out where somebody is raising diddle squat – just isn’t very interesting if we want to know about the effect of money in competitive or near-competitive races.  Let’s narrow things down to a range that appears to be relatively linear on these plots:

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Now we can put up some regressions, instead of just smooth curves.  And, if we add open seats formerly held by Republicans, we see something interesting:  open seats look pretty similar to seats with incumbents in their behavior.  More on this in a minute.

So we see this:  the more money a challenger raises compared to the incumbent, the better the challenger does.  Not shocking, but we have a chicken-and-egg problem:  Do challengers raise more money against some incumbents simply because the incumbents are more unpopular?  In which case, would it be because the incumbents are more unpopular that they are doing worse, not because the challengers are raising more money?

Are Popular Incumbents Vulnerable to Well-Funded Opponents?

To check this, I tried to find Republican incumbents with decent challenges in 2006, who were nonetheless considered to be popular or relatively safe in their districts, and who did not have a strong challenger in either 2002 or 2004.  I used some advice from a couple House experts, polls, and local news sources to choose the following districts:  DE-AL, IA-2, MN-1, MI-8, OH-1, PA-4, VA-10, MT-AL, CO-6, CA-2, KY-2, IN-3.  I could have chosen poorly on some of them but hopefully not all of them.  Here’s a plot of the Republican performance in all these districts over three cycles, adjusted for the national mood (more on that later):

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If all the popular incumbents were truly Teflon-coated, then we would expect all the points for all years to fall on a flat line.  Instead, they Republican performance decreases with increasing D/R Fundraising Ratio, just like all the other seats.  Plotted individually, this is also the case for 10 out of the 12 districts (3, randomly chosen, shown here).  In other words, a popular incumbent can be defeated with enough money, just like anybody else.  It is getting the money and the candidate that is the hard part.  

The 2006 Election

So then, let’s look at the 2006 data for Republicans in the competitive range I defined above, divided into categories based on Bush’s support in the district in 2000:

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As you can see, in each case there is a decent trend, but it’s not very tight.  In other words, after accounting for the D/R Fundraising Ratio and the partisan makeup of the district, there’s still plenty of room for other factors, including, quite simply, the quality of the candidates.  

It’s also pretty clear that the open seats (which were not included in the regressions) aren’t too different from the seats with incumbents after accounting for the effect of money.  We also see, of course, that the open seat contests are far more likely to have fundraising parity (D/R Fundraising Ratio = 1) or better, which explains (mostly) why they are far more likely to change parties.  In other words, incumbency matters for getting money and chasing off opponents and opponents’ supporters, but if a well-funded opponent shows up anyway, that opponent has nearly as a good a chance (on average) as if they were running for an open seat.

Another interesting thing is that the plots don’t look too different from each other.  

The Last Three Cycles

Let’s look at all the regressions for Republican incumbents, and add in the Democrats, for 2002, 2004, and 2006:

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It’s hard to tell the lines apart in the graphs, but that is my point.  There is surprisingly little difference between the regressions!  Some of the lines are a little funny looking, but they are the ones based on only a small number of points (especially the ones for the most liberal districts).  Republicans in very conservative districts perform better than those in moderate districts, given the same D/R Fundraising Ratio, but not 30 points better.

We can also see a difference between the years.  The regressions generally shifted down in 2006 compared to 2002 or 2004.  This means that the Democrats’ money was more effective in 2006, and the Republicans’ money was less effective.  This is why predicting electoral success based on fundraising alone, extrapolated from 2002 and 2004 results, failed.

And, of course, the party of the current occupant makes a difference.  If both candidates in a race raise the same amount of money, a Republican incumbent, or a Republican contestant in a Republican-held open seat, will (on average) score a good deal higher than a Republican challenger in a district with a similar partisan makeup.

Conclusions

Tomorrow, I will continue looking at the House races by exploring 15 factors and how they affected candidate performance between 2002 and 2006.  In the meantime, we can say the following:



1.  Money matters a great deal.  

2.  Safe incumbents are not really safe if a well-funded challenger runs against them.

3.  Voters have a habit of voting for the party of the current representative, whether the incumbent is running or not.

4.  The partisan make-up of the district matters, but not as much as one might have expected.

5.  The national political mood matters, and right now, it is still surging against Republicans.

The changes in voting behavior in recent years have a distinct geographic flavor.  In 1988, George H. W. Bush won with 53% of the vote; 16 years later, his son got 51% nationwide, pretty close to the same.  We should be able to figure out something from the comparison, as both Democrats in the race were ‘Massachusetts liberals’ and both Republicans were Bushes, although the son has a very different persona than the father.  If George H. W. Bush had run against Dukakis again in 2004, that would give us the most information about changes in voting behavior, but let’s take a look at what we do have:  

Click to enlarge.  Below, more on trends in voting and population growth in recent years.

Cross-posted at Open Left and DailyKos.

Despite similar nationwide vote percentages in 1988 and 2004, the maps above show striking and not-too-surprising changes.  Just like in the distribution of the House seats, there is a widening gulf of increasing polarization, although this is likely in part an artifact of the definitions we are using (percent vote for President).  In general, the Northeast and Midatlantic, Southwest, and the industrial Midwest trended towards Democrats.  The Plains states and the Mountain West trended towards Republicans.  Intriguingly, the South generally stayed about the same. 

Let's look at change by county (voting data available here):  the maps below show the intensity of a shift towards Republicans or Democrats (from 0 to 30 points between 1988 and 2004).  This doesn't mean Kerry won the blue counties, it means he did better than Dukakis; the darker the blue, the greater the shift.  The lightest color for each represents an increase of 0-5%. 

Click to enlarge.

Kerry increased in performance over Dukakis solidly in the Northeast and down the East Coast to Virginia.  Ohio, Michigan, Florida and South Carolina also show some consolidated increases.  There's a checkerboard through the South and Southwest.  The Plains show almost uniform increases for Bush II with a very solid pattern in the Mountain West and much of the Midwest and Ohio River valley.  Texas, which had a horse of a different party in each race (Lloyd Bentsen in 1988), has the most dramatic changes, although note it is not uniformly red. 

What portion of the changes we see can be attributed to the persona of Bush the Texas Rancher versus Republicans in general can't be sorted out.  For now, it appears that Bush's fake cowboy swagger has infected the entire Republican brand, so the information may be relevant for the short term at least.

But this is not much of a story: if we are interested in voting behavior changes, we have to know how many votes we're talking about.  So let's look at cartograms of the counties, using the method of Gastner and Newman, where the size of the counties are proportional to their populations instead of their areas (thanks to BentLiberal for the suggestion).  The US map ends up looking strangely like Asia:

Click to enlarge.

Again, these maps show change in support, not who won.  The pattern familiar from conventional wisdom now becomes clear: urban versus rural.  Not only are urban areas generally Democratic strongholds, they have become even more so in recent years.  There are some exceptions: rural New England, and some urban areas in the Plains and Appalachia, for example.

This still isn't the whole picture: we're looking at change, so we want to know how fast these counties are growing. 

Click to enlarge.

If growth patterns were exactly the same between 2004-2014 as between 1990-2000 (an assumption which probably isn't reasonable), and voting patterns remained the same in every county as in 2004, the political split would still be about the same – the Republican vote would increase by 0.6 points for a hypothetical 2014 election in this hypothetically growing country.  We do know, however, that since 2004 the number of people that identify as Republicans has decreased, indicating they're probably less likely to vote for a Republican for president; that alone throws off the entire hypothetical scenario.  We might be able to think of it as a worst-case scenario, however. 

So what can we take away from these maps?  Well, one thing is to look at extremes in growth.  First, those counties that lost population; the map on the left shows Bush's performance in 2004; the map on the right shows the change from 1988-2004, where blue indicates an increase in Democratic performance, and red an increase in Republican performance.

Click to enlarge.

The vast center swath of the country that looks so large on an area-based map has aligned with Republicans on the presidential level even more closely since 1988.  But it doesn't have many people and is in the process of losing them.  There's also a fair number of strongly Democratic and Democratic-trending urban centers that have lost population.  Another interesting note, the Appalachian region increased its Republican support to a draw, more or less, as it lost population. 

Next, only those counties that grew by 25% or more between 1990 and 2000. 

Click to enlarge.

The high growth counties show us a bunch of circles in the South, Midwest, and West.  These are the exurbs: they vary mostly from strong to very strong Republican support, but they are not all places of unbridled Republican growth.  In a fair number of exurban counties – outside Chicago and Northern Virginia, for instance – Republican support actually decreased from 1988 to 2004.

Where do we go from here?

At this point let me reiterate the cautions necessary in interpreting these changes:  they are based on presidential vote, which can be quite different from local politics, and may have much to do with the individual candidates involved.  And past behavior is no guarantee of future behavior.

Because populations don't just grow, they also change.  We all die, and young people start voting, and people who move somewhere don't necessarily act like those who are already there, and communities change.  And, both individuals and populations change their attitudes.  All these factors favor Democrats on the national level over the long term; in the short term, the Republican brand is in the doghouse. 

First, according to Pew's surveys, not only is the country as a whole – even Republicans – becoming less socially conservative, but each successive generation is less socially conservative than the last, and each generation itself is becoming less socially conservative over time.  Pew measured this as the average number of socially conservative responses on six questions.  Pew also found a recent increase in support for various government programs.

Communities change as well.  Over the long term, exurbs and suburbs are becoming more like urban central cities in their problems and concerns, and, one might think, more like urban centers in politics as well.  The housing crisis may very well accelerate this transformation.

Young people are far more progressive than the older voters they are replacing at the polls, as mentioned above.  Republicans cannot use fear of non-Christian gay brown people to get them to vote Republican, because they and their peers are increasingly non-Christian, non-white, and openly gay themselves.

Finally, the population increase in this country is 5-15 times higher for Democratic-trending minorities than non-Hispanic whites, translating to a stunning 4 out of every 5 new residents.  By focusing on appealing mainly to rural and exurban white Christian voters, Republicans may well write themselves into irrelevance over the long term.

(From the diaries – promoted by James L.)

I’ll start by showing the Permanent Republican Majority in its current form in the House – the distribution of seats according to the percent of the vote Bush had in 2000 in each district.  I’ve added a smooth curve through the data:

Click to enlarge.

Here’s the distribution of Democratic House seats:

Click to enlarge.

The Blue Wave of the Democrats is clearly eroding that red cliff.  And there’s a good 60 or so Republicans – some in oh-so-carefully gerrymandered districts – teetering right on the edge.  it looks like a couple dozen have fallen in. 

Below, the evolution of the House from 1993 to today, and a bit about redistricting. 

Cross posted at Open Left and Daily Kos.

Here’s both parties together, represented just by the curves:

Click to enlarge.

Here’s a little animation showing the distribution of House seats from 1993 to now:

Click to animate.

Here’s each year separately: 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005.

There is a problem with these charts, and that is the ideological composition of the districts is not static.  Populations change.  From 1990-2000, though, only 10% of counties had a change in population of more than 30%, so we’re probably pretty safe extending the use of 2000 data seven years forward and back.  As far as where people fall on the political spectrum, let’s assume for now that nobody changes their minds about their values.  Furthermore, we’ll use the 2000 vote as a proxy for the conservative/liberal spectrum; in this case, we have good numbers from the 2000 exit polls showing 80% of liberals voted for Gore and 81% of conservatives voted for Bush.

The most striking thing is to watch the evolution of the Republican party as it narrows to a right-wing faction.  In 1993, the country had a center/right party (Republicans) and a center/left/urban party (Democrats).  Democrats and Republicans were both ‘big tent’ parties, for better or for worse (Democrats had a few bugs in the tent lining).  In 1994, the Republicans made gains deep into moderate territory.  From 1996 to 2004, the parties generally poached seats held by the other party in their own turf, followed by Democrats consolidating seats below 50% and pushing into Republican territory in 2006.  Now, Democrats have a slightly smaller tent with some dogs tied to the outside, but Republicans only have a lean-to, albeit a tall lean-to.  Democrats still manage to elect Representatives from nearly the entire spectrum of districts in the country, which certainly helps explain why it is so difficult for Democrats to govern.  Moderate Republicans, on the other hand, are nearly extinct.  The overlap between the two parties has grown smaller as well over the years, which is probably linked to the increase in partisanship.

There is quite a change in 2002 as a result of redistricting.  Let’s look at the total distribution of seats, Republican and Democrat, before and after redistricting:

Click to enlarge.

Wow!  What an ? interesting change.  Prior to the 2000 census redistricting, we see a distribution that is common for all sorts of measurements – similar to the well-known bell curve, but skewed to one side – plus a little bump at the left for urban districts.  There are no districts that come anywhere near to being as far to the right as the urban core districts are to the left.  Even if you squeeze all the most conservative counties in the country into a few districts, you could only create two or three districts with an 80-90% level of support for Bush in 2000.  If we judge by the range of districts, then, the nation’s middle is at 45% – squarely captured by Democrats.  We represent moderation. 

Then came the redistricting.  The strategy of Republicans is clear:  push as many seats as possible just over the 50% line.  Now we have a strange distribution that looks like a camel that was swallowed by a snake.  This should have worked perfectly to ensure a Permanent Republican Majority.  Right?

Clearly not.  From the animation above, we see the Blue Wave washing right over the 50% line and sweeping seats into the sea.  The question is, was this a one-time event, or a first step?  Current conditions indicate the wave is still there today.  Next year – who knows?

Once Republicans were safely ensconced in their supposedly safe districts, did the party calculate that it could shift even further to the right without penalty?  Did it figure it could ditch the party moderates and pick up the remaining districts that voted for Bush?  Based on the hubris of Karl “The Math” Rove, it very may well have.  And that may have been part of its undoing. 

(From the diaries. What’s your take? – promoted by James L.)

As we all watched in amazement last year, the Blue Wave in 2006 was so strong Republicans almost lost House districts in Wyoming and Idaho – two of the most conservative districts in the country (only 10-20 districts gave Bush a higher percentage of the vote in 2000 or 2004).  Not one Democratic seat was lost.

It couldn’t get better than that, could it?

Could it?

As the latest Democracy Corps memo puts it, “If Americans have ever been angrier with the state of the country, we have not witnessed it…”  And that anger is directed mostly at Republicans. 

Now, the numbers – first up, the Master Indicator – the Generic Ballot question.  The graph show the net Democratic advantage:

Click to enlarge.

Join me on the flip for a fourteen ways to look at the 2008 House races – and, in some cases, the mood of the country in general. 

Cross-posted at Open Left and Daily Kos.

Note: If I haven’t linked to polling data directly, you can find it at pollingreport.com. Unless I forgot to put in the link. 

The Vote

1.  Generic Ballot (+)  (The plus sign means an improvement from 2006 for Democrats)
The generic ballot question really has done a great job predicting the actual nationwide vote in congressional elections recently, when the results of all polls are averaged together.  The actual Democratic advantage has ended up about 3-4 points less than what the polls say in the final week for the past four elections in the Bush era.  So far, despite increasing unhappiness with Congress, Democrats continue to have a stunning advantage on the generic ballot. 

2. Battleground Districts (+)
Democracy Corps has once again been busy polling the House races in key areas of the country.  The Mountain West favors Democrats slightly more than they did in 2006, but the amazing numbers are in the 35 most vulnerable Republican districts.  Their poll numbers are lousy.  No wonder so many have decided to retire (more on that later).  The 35 most vulnerable House Democrats, on the other hand, are not so vulnerable at all, polling well ahead of generic Republicans (55 to 37). 

Party preference in key districts. Click to enlarge.

The Parties and Approval

3.  Bush Approval (+)
Bush’s approval continues on a downward trajectory, overall, and he is making sure Republicans go down with him.  In 2006 Bush’s approval was related to Republicans’ performance in House elections; there’s no guarantee for 2008, but lower approval ratings for Bush are worse for Republicans than higher approval ratings.  Note the map below for districts is from July 2007, when Bush’s approval was a few points lower than today.  (An archive of old approval ratings maps is now available on dKosopedia.)

Bush’s approval by state (10/07) and district (7/07).  Click to enlarge.

4.  Party Approval (-)
The Republican brand is trashed.  Democrats have a net approval that is less than November 2006, but still positive, and not unusually low.  Republicans remain way, way in the negative.

Net favorability of Democrats and Republicans.  Click to enlarge.

5.  Congressional Approval (=)
Nobody likes Congress, we’ve heard, but people like Congressional Republicans a fair amount less than they like Congressional Democrats.  According to ABC/Washington Post polls, people are most likely to blame Bush and the Republicans for blocking Democrats from doing what the people elected them to do.  The difference between the parties’ approval is still about the same as last year.

Approval of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and who is to blame for Congress not getting things done.  Click to enlarge.

6.  Party ID (+)
Republicans and Democrats are at about the same levels as 2006 according to Rasmussen, but when you include Independents who lean towards Democrats, Pew shows the leftward shift continuing into this year.

Two measures of partisan identification.  Click to enlarge.

The Issues

7.  Party Trust (+)
The public continues to swing to the Democratic side of issues, part of a longer-term trend.  Republicans used to be the party of Fiscal Discipline, but last July, an NBC/WSJ poll showed Democrats have advantages on Reducing the Deficit (+25), Controlling Government Spending (+16), and Taxes (+9).  Well, so they’re left with God, Guns, and Gays, right?  No…. Rasmussen asked about Abortion (+7 average this year), and Newsweek about Guns (+2) and Same-Sex Marriage (+8).  And White Evangelical Christians are abandoning the party in droves – some to become Democrats, but mainly to become Independents or apolitical.  Then what about Terra, Terra, Terra, 9/11?  Still no…at best, Republicans come out even on questions about National Security and the so-called War on Terror.  On the issues voters claim are most important to them, Democrats have increased their advantage since 2006, and two issues that are among the most favorable for Democrats (health care and the economy) have gained prominence.  There is one sour note in this symphony: a decrease in the Democratic advantage when it comes to corruption and ethics in government.

Democratic advantage on key issues and importance of key issues in recent elections.  Click to enlarge.

8.  Iraq (+)
The public continues to think the war in Iraq simply isn’t worth it, to a greater extent than a year ago, although opinion was more pessimistic mid-year.  More and more people also think the number of troops should be decreased.

Opinion on whether Iraq is worth it and troop withdrawal.  Click to enlarge.

9.  The Economy (+)
As we saw above, the public trusts Democrats much more on the economy, and the economy is coming to the fore in terms of important issues this election season.  People think things aren’t very good and they’re getting worse, despite all the rosy numbers the Bush administration keeps putting out.  And when the Republicans try to talk up the economy, it really pisses people off (see Page 7.)  One reason, of course, is because Real People actually buy things like milk and gas, and the prices keep going up while wages are not.  Over Bush’s presidency, gas has been increasing at 13% per year (log plot here), while wages have been increasing at about 3% per year.  Up until about 2004, the public perception of the economy’s future seemed to be tied strongly to the stock market; after that, it appears gas prices are key.  For more and a much better analysis, see How to hide a recession.

Public perception on the current state of the economy, direction of the economy, milk and gas prices, and how gas and the Dow influence public opinion.  Click to enlarge.

10.  Health Care (+)
Health care availability and cost are both increasing problems, and surely related to perceptions of the economy.  The percentage of Americans without insurance has been rising steadily through the Bush presidency, and the number now stands at 47 million. Those who have health care plans through work have seen premiums almost double, while benefits dwindle and copays multiply.

Percent of Americans who are uninsured and premium prices.  Click to enlarge.

The Campaigning

11.  Fundraising (+)
Any way you slice it, Congressional Democrats and Democratic challengers are beating the pants of the Republicans in the money race.  The bad news is where a lot of this money is coming from.  The new members of Congress are raising a ton of cash, and Republican challengers are not.  Data for the first six months of 2007 and previous years are available from the FEC.

Total and median funds for incumbents, median funds for challengers, and number of challengers.  Click to enlarge.

12.  Recruitment (+)
As BENAWU has tirelessly documented, there are more districts with Democrats running now than at this time in 2005.  Part of this, of course, is that we started out with a few extra seats in the House filled with incumbents!  Nonetheless, Democrats are having a great recruitment season.

Number of districts with Democrats running, and district status as of mid-October.  Click to enlarge.

13.  Retirement (+)
Democrats are keeping their behinds tightly plastered to their seats and Republicans are fleeing for the exits, as covered by many of Steve Singiser’s diaries.  The Cook Political Report has tracked retirements over the past few cycles, and based on the numbers, it looks like we can expect another wave of Republican retirements in the new year, possible making it up to 30.  Democrats, on the other hand, have far fewer retirements or even potential retirements compared to the 2004 or 2006 cycles. 

Republican and Democratic retirements, and Republican and Democratic potential retirements.  Click to enlarge.

14.  Coattails (-)
In 2006, we had no national Democrat for Republicans to run against in House races.  In 2008, we will, and whoever it is will have high negatives after the right-wing slime machine is done with them. 

The good news is, right now, 74% believe that Clinton will be the nominee, and her most recent NBC/WSJ ‘very negative’ ratings were 26%.  No, really – this is good news, because it means the current excellent Generic Ballot numbers (which recently have had a good relationship with the actual vote) must therefore already have substantial negative coattails built in.  We still should assume the effect will increase.  Below are Kerry’s numbers from 2004 and the generic ballot numbers (note that approval of Democrats in general was also falling at the end of the campaign).

Kerry’s disapproval and the generic ballot, 2004.  Click to enlarge.

Summary:

Out of 14 factors, there are only two that are worse now compared to the 2006 cycle.  The generic ballot favors Democrats to an amazing extent.  This will be affected by local campaigns, of course, and here the Democrats are also excelling, with outstanding fundraising, recruiting, and retention.  Broader factors such as the economy and presidential approval ratings are also trending towards Democrats.  The public trusts Democrats more, and approves of Democrats more, even as they are unsatisfied with what Congress is doing.  As of now, Democrats are in an excellent position for the 2008 elections, despite the shortcomings of Democratic leaders over the past year.