Monday, November 01, 2004
Report from Obama Rally in Springfield, IL
Posted by DavidNYCIllinois was always going to be one of the bluest Dem states this year, but Barack Obama's ascendence has been nothing short of extraordinary. My very good friend Yvonne reports in from an Obama rally on election eve in Springfield, IL - the heartland of what remains of the state Republican party. It may not quite be swing state material, but Obama is the favorite almost-Senator of the entire left-blogosphere - and I'm certainly not immune. From Yvonne:
Tonight I went to a rally in downtown Springfield for Barack Obama and regional/ county candidates trying to break the stranglehold of Republican dominated politics in central Illinois. It was great! Barack was his usual eloquent self, and he certainly raises the profile of the candidates at the bottom of the ticket. All of the candidates looked fatigued, including Obama, but still, he cranked it out!Barack told of meeting a woman two days ago in Chicago who was born in 1899. He talked of how she cast her early vote, but still wanted to meet him and have a few pictures taken with him. This woman, he said, was born in the shadow of slavery, during a time when she was unable to vote as a black person and a woman. She lived through every political and social turn of the 20th century.
He said if this woman wasn't tired after all of that living and all of that fighting, he didn't have the right to be tired right now either. None of us do. The message was, keep working until the polls close, to the last hour. We can do it.
Yvonne also sent along a few picture of her son James (17+ years old and just narrowly missing out on the vote this year!) with the luminaries in attendence. Here's Jimmy with Barack, of course:
And here's one with the great Senior Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin:
I think we all know Obama has a great career ahead of him. Not bad for the self-proclaimed "skinny kid with a funny name." I can't wait for him to get started.
Posted at 10:41 PM in Safe States | Technorati
Why Non-Swing-Staters MUST Vote, Too
Posted by DavidNYCThis post is going to be short, simple and to the point. Even if you don't live in a swing state, it is absolutely imperative that you vote on Tuesday. For one, there are probably worthy Democrats running in contested races for other offices. But even if you're in a situation like mine, where every Dem you plan on voting for in every race is guaranteed to win by a landslide, you still need to vote.
Why? Because we need to ensure that John Kerry and John Edwards' margin of victory in the national popular vote is as big as possible. Yes, of course - the national vote doesn't literally "matter" in terms of selecting the victor. But it does matter in terms of conferring legitimacy on the winner. The last thing we want is a reverse of 2000, where Kerry wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote. I don't think this is likely, but analyst Tom Schaller thinks it's possible - so we should do everything we can to avoid that possibility.
If you're in New York or Texas, California or Indiana - any state not "lucky" enough to be a battleground this year - you still have a duty. Go cast your vote for Kerry-Edwards, and make sure your like-minded friends and family do the same.
UPDATE: Markos reiterates the importance of this point.
Posted at 02:20 AM in Safe States | Comments (8) | Technorati
Sunday, October 03, 2004
New Jersey, Revisited
Posted by DavidNYCResearch 2000 offers the first state poll conducted entirely after the first debate. Kerry maintains a wide lead in New Jersey (likely voters, mid-August in parens):
Kerry: 50 (52)
Bush: 42 (41)
Other/Undecided: 8 (7)
(MoE: ��4%)
The undecided figure includes two points for Nader. To be sure, R2K has always shown Kerry with wide leads in NJ, and I don't know a thing about their likely voter models. But let's not kid ourselves: As the Prospect article I linked just below makes clear, Bush would have to be polling above 50% in NJ in order to seriously threaten us here, and that's just not the case, no matter which poll you look at. The highest he's ever gotten was a lone SUSA poll that had him at 49%.
I think I'm not going to write anything further about New Jersey this election cycle, unless something totally wild happens, like the Democratic governor resigns in disgrace over a salacious extra-marital affair. Oh, wait. That did happen, and the Republicans still can't make serious headway here. Yeah, New Jersey's a safe bet.
Posted at 05:32 PM in Safe States | Comments (9) | Technorati
Thursday, September 30, 2004
What's up With Jersey?
Posted by DavidNYCI saw that an old New Jersey post was re-kindled with some new comments, and as it happens, I had actually wanted to discuss the subject. NJ has polled a lot closer than many of us might have expected, particularly for a state which favored Al Gore by 16 points. Here, courtesy of Race2004.net, is all the polling since the Republican convention:
|
Pollster |
Polling
Date |
Bush |
Kerry |
Nader |
MoE |
|
28-Sep |
41.00% |
43.00% |
1.00% |
4.50% |
|
|
26-Sep |
44.00% |
44.00% |
3.00% |
3.00% |
|
|
26-Sep |
44.00% |
45.00% |
--- |
3.00% |
|
|
25-Sep |
46.00% |
49.00% |
--- |
5.00% |
|
|
19-Sep |
48.00% |
48.00% |
2.00% |
3.80% |
|
|
19-Sep |
44.00% |
49.00% |
--- |
?? |
|
|
19-Sep |
48.00% |
49.00% |
--- |
3.80% |
|
|
16-Sep |
42.00% |
50.00% |
1.00% |
4.00% |
|
|
14-Sep |
49.00% |
45.00% |
--- |
3.70% |
|
|
12-Sep |
43.00% |
46.00% |
2.00% |
3.00% |
|
|
12-Sep |
43.00% |
47.00% |
--- |
3.00% |
|
|
12-Sep |
47.00% |
49.00% |
--- |
?? |
|
|
7-Sep |
41.00% |
43.00% |
5.00% |
4.30% |
So what to make of this? Kerry has held the lead in every poll but one (that SUSA outlier), but things certainly are very tight. One thing you've got to remember, though, is that New Jersey is emphatically not New York. It's more conservative, and was GOP-dominated on the local level until fairly recently.
Ever since Gov. Jim Florio raised taxes (I have no idea on what, but New Jerseyans are allergic to tax hikes) in the early 90s, the Dems in NJ went into a serious tailspin, which opened the door for Christie Whitman's ascendence. In 1993, the GOP took over both houses of the NJ legislature and swept into the Governor's mansion. The following year, with the Gin-Grinch "revolution," things looked very dim indeed for the prospects of NJ Dems.
But what was bad for the goose was also bad for the gander, and Whitman's failure to placate Jersey voters over taxes led to her one-point re-election victory in 1997 (over James McGreevey, as a matter of fact). This win was almost as bad as a loss, because it utterly wiped out Whitman's phenom star power status. A woman who was talked about as a possible VP or even Presidential candidate on the GOP ticket wound up retiring early from her second term to take the shittiest job in the Bush administration: Director of the EPA.
Nonetheless, even though Democrats now control the legislature and the Governorship in NJ today, I think that the state never became nearly as liberal as New York. For instance, in 2000, when both NY and NJ had races to fill open Senate seats (Lautenberg & Moynihan both retired), two very well-funded, similarly liberal (at least, in perception) candidates won in both states. But Hillary Clinton won by 11 points, while Jon Corzine won by just 4. Yes, certainly, there were plenty of difference between the two candidates (not least of which was Hillary's celebrity), and I think Franks probably ran a better campaign than Lazio, but I still think the margin is illustrative of the differences between the two states.
And if you want a more directly comparable race, well, NY went for Gore by 25 points, whereas NJ, as I mentioned above, had "just" a 16% margin.
The bottom line is, despite the closeness of the horserace numbers, this state will stay home with us. Look at the internals of that FDU poll: Right track-wrong track is 35-52. Bush job approval is 45-54; economic approval is 36-64; and even national security is only 42-56. (FYI, this poll is of likely voters, so the usual caveats apply.)
This last issue is Bush's only hope. In a separate question, forty-two percent of voters say that national security is the most important issue this year, and Bush (in a tiny subset) crushes Kerry in terms of "Who would do a better job," 66-21. But Kerry crushes Bush by similar margins on the economy, environment, healthcare and education, issues which collectively merit "most important" status from 40% of voters.
And while I think rawness over 9/11 may actually be greater in NJ than in NY, I don't see how Bush can play his "strong leader" card all that successfully there when 51% of people say invading Iraq was a "mistake" while only 42% say it was the "right thing." Similarly, only 40% say our military effort is going well, while 57% don't think it is. I can't wait for Dick Cheney to accuse these New Jerseyans of giving aid & comfort to the enemy. (Note: I am purposely conflating 9/11 and Iraq here because that's how the Bushies win on this issue - they convince people Iraq was the right thing by exploiting fear over 9/11.)
There were 10% undecided in this FDU poll and 5% leaners (3 to Bush, 2 to Kerry). With numbers like these, I can't see Bush taking these undecideds home on election day, especially since he certainly can't afford to advertise here. (NYC's media market is, of course, the most expensive in the nation.) And though FDU didn't poll this question, other polls, unsurprisingly, have shown Bush with negative favorability ratings.
Again I say, this state is ours. I am certain that the margin will be closer - perhaps even quite a bit closer - than the last time out, but NJ is going to stay blue.
P.S. The NYT has a story on this topic, too, which I just came across, but I think it's the usual boring NYT fluff. And memo to John Adler: Don't cop to any weakness when you're talking to the New York Times. (Just be lucky they ran your quote in the last paragraph.)
Posted at 01:22 PM in Safe States | Comments (14) | Technorati
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Kerry Lead Widens in Latest Joisy Q-Poll
Posted by DavidNYCQuinnipiac sent some of us into conniptions with their prior New Jersey poll, which showed a narrow race. Things are looking better now (May in parens):
Kerry: 49 (47)
Bush: 41 (44)
Undecided: 6 (6)Kerry: 46 (46)
Bush: 40 (43)
Nader: 7 (5)
Undecided: 7 (6)
(MoE: ��2.9%)
Kerry's lead looks pretty strong here, considering the very low MoE. (The sample size was an impressive 1,167.) Furthermore, Bush's job approval rating stands at an abysmal 42-54. Without fail, every single poll since March 2003 (ie, the start of the Iraq war), the approval number has gone down and the disapproval has gone up. I just don't see how you can win a state when people hate you this much. Indeed, Quinnipiac says that this is an "all-time low" for Bush here.
Also, the general approval numbers for Bush don't look very good either: They stand at 35-40, with 23% saying they have a "mixed" view. Bush's favorables have dropped 2 points since May. Kerry, meanwhile, has improved to 30-28-28, from 27-28-33. Bush simply doesn't have enough money to drive Kerry's negatives up in New Jersey - in fact, he's failed at that task miserably.
NJ might wind up being a bit like the New York Mets. On the rare occasions that the Mets put together a good team, they nonetheless always make you sweat. New Jersey will be closer than neighboring New York this year, just as it was in 2000. But, as I've continually said in the past, it's still ours.
UPDATE: Billmon spends a good deal of time ripping apart a maddeningly biased AP piece on this particular poll - a bias which he says is par for the course for much of the reporting on this race. I agree.
Posted at 05:54 AM in Safe States | Comments (10) | Technorati
Sunday, June 20, 2004
The Last Frontier
Posted by DavidNYCAlaska, aka "The Last Frontier," is about as far from a swing state as you can get, but I've always found it intriguing. It's only ever gone Dem once (in `64, for LBJ), but looks poised to elect a Democrat, Tony Knowles, to the Senate this year. This last fact has put Alaska on everyone's radar this year, so I'd like to take this opportunity to mention a new blog by an Alaskan and friend of mine, Jarfingle. Jonathan plans to write about travel rather than politics (though he is an experienced political hand), but I think his blog will nonetheless be a great introduction to a state that most of us could probably stand to learn a bit more about. So check it out & enjoy!
Posted at 02:24 AM in Safe States | Technorati
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Crunching the Numbers on Jersey
Posted by DavidNYCRecently, there's been some hand-wringing about the closeness of some trial-heat polls in NJ. I maintained that Jersey is not a swing state, and I still do. Chris, writing over at MyDD, actually crunches the numbers and comes to the same conclusion.
Looking at the neglected step-child of polling stats - approval/disapproval ratings - Chris observes that Bush is strongly disliked. His only shot in NJ is to pump up Kerry's disapproval rating, but given the Bush campaign's current financial straits, it seems unlikely that they can afford to stay on the air in NJ. And hence, NJ is going to stay in our hands.
Posted at 08:00 PM in Safe States | Comments (1) | Technorati
Friday, May 07, 2004
Gallup: Kerry Leads in "Purple" States + Is Illinois in Play?
Posted by DavidNYCOn my map, states which went narrowly for Bush are yellow; narrowly for Gore gets ya green. There was nothing intuitive about this color choice - they were just handy. Some cleverer folks, however, have taken to calling the battleground states "purple" - I guess this is where Grimace and Barney live - and Gallup adopts this terminology in some pleasing recent poll results.
Kerry leads 48-44 in the purple states, which Gallups defines as having a margin of less than or equal to 5%. That's just 12 states: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania,Tennessee & Wisconsin. But these are pretty much the most important ones. Ruy digs into the details and says it looks even better.
On a related note, Mark Gersh (writing in the DLC's Blueprint magazine) takes a look at subtle demographic trends and decides that there are only 13 true toss-up battleground states, plus 7 leaners. (Luke discussed various lists of swing states here a little while back.) Gersh's toss-ups are the same as the above list, minus TN but plus AZ and WV, so no surprises there.
One of his leaners is a bit of a shocker, though: Illinois. (The others are Washington & Michigan, which favor Kerry, and Colorado, Tennessee, Louisiana & Arkansas, which favor Bush.) Gersh doesn't exactly explain why. He does argue that, even in the space of four short years, demographic trends can have an effect. So presumably, the trends which favor Republicans (the growth in exurban areas) are present in IL. But the fact still remains that IL had a bigger Bush-Gore margin than non-swing states Vermont, California & Georgia. He also leaves out Virgina as a leaner, even though it had a tighter margin than Colorado.
In any event, I seriously pray Gersh is wrong about Illinois. This sort of thing gives me the night sweats. I'd like to see a fuller explanation as to why he thinks IL is winnable for Republicans. I consider Illinois a "Jack Daniel's state" (even though technically, that oughta be TN): If you see IL turning red on election night, break out the Jack. Cuz he's gonna be the only friend you'll want to talk to.
(Thanks to Luke for the Gersh link. More comments on the subject are here.)
(Grammar correction on the Whiskey courtesy of Naomi in the comments!)
Posted at 06:39 PM in General, Safe States | Comments (5) | Technorati
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
NJ: Now That's More Like It
Posted by DavidNYCLast week, some folks were a bit concerned about an FDU poll which showed NJ to be absurdly close. Today, Rasmussen releases a poll of its own which looks a little bit more like what we'd expect:
Kerry: 51
Bush: 39
Not Sure: 6
Other: 3
(MOE: ��4.5)
Hopefully, a few more polls like this will put to rest any delusions that New Jersey is "in play." However, I don't like the fact that Kerry's favorability rating is just 52% - Dubya's is 48%. This may partly have to do with name recognition, but Rasmussen doesn't give details on those figures. This concerns me, though, because Bushco hasn't been advertising in NJ, so it seems a bit mysterious that Kerry's favorability should be so low. (I wonder how the two candidates' unfavorability ratings compare, though: I'm gonna guess that Bush's is higher than Kerry's.)
A lot of people have a rather jaundiced view of Rasmussen, decrying him as a Republican hack in non-partisan clothing. My understanding is that the esteemed folks at Polling Report don't even include Rasmussen in their polling round-up, and I've read (though haven't seen it confirmed) that this is because of concerns about Rasmussen's quality. And language like this does irk me:
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of New Jersey voters see the President as politically conservative. Twenty-six percent (26%) say moderate.Forty-seven percent (47%) say Kerry is politically liberal while just 41% label the Massachusetts Senator as moderate. (Emphasis added.)
So, 26% say that George Bush is moderate, but "just 41%" say that Kerry is moderate? Sorry, folks, it doesn't work that way: You have to put the "just" in front of Bush's number, if you're going to use it at all. (As an aside, I do love the fact that, presumably, some 15% of Americans think Bush is a liberal.)
All this means is treat Rasmussen with a grain of salt. They provide good crack (in the form of frequent polls), but it's not high-quality crack. Once I see a result like this from, say, Quinnipiac, then we can permanently put the nail in Bush's Garden State coffin.
(Thanks to Friar.)
Posted at 03:53 PM in Safe States | Technorati
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
New Jersey is NOT a Swing State
Posted by DavidNYCKos has a post up with some new polls for OR, WA and NJ. The first two, being legit swing states, are quite close - but surprisingly, Jersey is close as well. Put simply: This really doesn't make much sense. There's a big discussion going on in the comments about this, where DHinMI says that the sample may skew Republican (can't statisticians correct for that?) and DL reminds us that Gore carried the state by a whopping 16 percentage points (56-40). Several posters also bring up the fact that NJ voters have kicked Republicans out of every statewide office as well.
All of these things add up to the point that NJ is simply not in play. I promise. If Dubya carries the Garden State, I, DavidNYC, the ultimate New York snob, pledge to move to Jersey and do voter registration every day for a year. I've gotta put my money where my blog is, so how's that for a guarantee?
P.S. Great resource: David Wissing (at his blog The Hedgehog Report) tracks head-to-head polls for every state in the nation. BTW, I wonder if there's a way to turn that page of polls into some kind of RSS feed?
Posted at 03:44 PM in Safe States | Comments (38) | Technorati
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Turnout Explodes in South Carolina
Posted by DavidNYCYeah, so South Carolina isn't a swing state. But it's the handiest state we can use to make comparisons with prior years: It's the only state which had a similarly timed primary in 1992. Back then, 114,000 voters turned out. (Bill Clinton won with 63% of the vote, in case you're curious.) This time around, more people than that voted for John Edwards alone. In fact, turnout was more than double, with over 280,000 ballots cast.
Two-hundred and eighty thousand.
That's pretty damn awesome if you ask me. I also thought it was great to see that the SC Democratic Party, which had to pay for this primary on its own, was able to do a an excellent job fundraising, with more than half the contributions coming in small-dollar sums. All in all, this is nothing but good news.
We probably won't have too many other primary states we can directly compare to old elections. Invariably, states switch from primary to caucus systems (or vice versa), or they change dates, or interest in a race simply wanes once there is a presumptive nominee, driving down turnout. If you have any ideas for any good comparisons, though, let me know.
Also, in case you missed it, no fewer than three major polling outfits have shown Bush with approval ratings under the Mendoza line this past week. Speaking of which, did you know that Dubya played baseball on Yale's freshman team? I didn't, but I'd sure love to know what his batting average was - and if it was higher than his GPA.
Posted at 02:39 AM in Safe States | Comments (4) | Technorati
Thursday, November 20, 2003
North Carolina: We Can Always Dream
Posted by DavidNYCFor some reason, some Dems want to believe that North Carolina is competitive on the presidential level. My only guess is that folks who are familiar with the relatively liberal "Triangle" area (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) over-generalize about the political nature of the state as a whole. In any event, though I think NC is firmly out of reach for us (margin: 13%), it's always nice to read things like this:
When the Bush administration moved on Tuesday to impose import quotas on certain Chinese textiles and clothing, it was responding to a furious outcry from North Carolina businesses, workers and elected officials....
But even as textile executives and unions attribute their woes to China, there are questions whether quotas like those proposed by the White House - temporary limits on the growth of imports of Chinese knitted fabrics, robes and bras - would do much to solve their problems.
Like most manufacturers, textile makers have been eliminating jobs for years, in large part to become more competitive in price. But they still face enormous pressure from low-wage countries, to the point where some economists question the practicality of trying to hang on to such work for Americans.
...
But people here have little patience for arguments about trade theory and global competition, and they are putting considerable pressure on President Bush.
Textile companies and their employees are organizing get-out-the-vote drives and warning that even ordinarily reliable Republican voters will turn against Mr. Bush and his allies in Congress if they fail to address their demands.
"The Solid South is no longer the Solid South for George W. Bush," said Jason C. Copland, executive vice president of Copland Fabrics and James's son. When Mr. Bush visited Winston-Salem earlier this month and talked about the need to retrain workers displaced by shifting trade patterns, people here were not soothed. "It was kind of like a slap in the face," the younger Mr. Copland said. "Why are we sending jobs over to Communist China? It was just like he didn't get it." [Emphasis added.]
From a purely political perspective (economic policy aside), tariffs in general just seem like a terrible path to choose these days. As soon as you favor one industry with tariffs, another comes clamoring for aid. Textile manufacturers are, unsurprisingly, pushing for a much broader array of tariffs than the Bush administration has implemented - in fact, they want to see all $10 billion of China's exports covered by trade "safeguards".
This time, though, the industry likely to be adversely affected by tariffs - clothing retailers - is very likely to put up a fight. That's because Wal-Mart knows how acutely higher clothing costs would hurt their always-narrow profit margins, especially at a time when its customers are shopping as frugally as possible.
Even if the textile industry winds up with just scraps, and even if the frustration in those quarters continues to boil over, I still think, as I noted above, that things won't be close in North Carolina. But anything that causes Karl Rove to spit out his morning coffee in anger should make Dems happy. (We know it's gotta be Rove and not Dubya because our President doesn't read the papers.) And if it forces the GOP to spend a few extra bucks in an otherwise safe state, that's good news for us.
Anyhow, the more important question is how Democrats ought to handle this situation. Old-school guys like Sen. Ernest Hollings (who's retiring soon, anyway) have long supported tariffs. But will free traders be tempted to back protectionist policies to score points against Bush, and if they do, will that in turn hurt them with other industries? Is there a middle path we can walk? I'm really not sure, but I hope that every politician to the right of Hollings on the issue of trade is thinking about this one.
(Wal-Mart link via CalPundit.)
Posted at 12:25 AM in Safe States | Comments (3) | Technorati