I’ve been thinking a lot about Kratovil’s chances lately, since I have been represented by Andy Harris in the State Senate for the past 8 years and really cringe at the idea of him becoming a congressman and embarrassing the hell out of my home state, so I decided to do a little bit of analysis concerning Kratovil’s 2008 win to see if the conventional wisdom held true.
The conventional wisdom of the race is that Harris lost because, while running up big margins in his home in the Baltimore suburbs on the Western Shore, he could not overcome Kratovil’s margins on the Eastern Shore. Indeed, Kratovil did run a region-specific campaign against Harris, and did win all of the Eastern Shore counties while losing all of the Western Shore counties, but I’ve found that this obscures a few key facts.
First of all, Kratovil improved on Obama’s margins in EVERY part of the district; some more than others, yes, but overall Harris was such a bad candidate that he even underperformed McCain in the parts of Baltimore and Harford counties that he has represented for the past 8 years.
Second of all, the shifts on the shore were not all even. Kratovil overperformed Obama more in some counties than others. I decided to do a regression in Excel to see to what extent the variance of Kratovil’s numbers coincided with the variance in Obama’s numbers.
Here is a graph that plots the percentages with a regression line and equation:
Here is the data chart, with Kratovil’s percentage as predicted by the model from the regression line, and the difference between the predicted and actual results (highlighted in yellow are the counties where Kratovil overperformed his across-the-board shift):
As you can see from the r-squared value, the line fits the data about 75% of the time (which I’ve been told by professors is considered high for political research). Additionally, I found the correlation to be 85%, meaning that 85% of the time, the relative variance of Kratovil’s numbers can be explained by the relative variance of Obama’s numbers. This is very high, and although the same might be true of almost any politician (including people like Chet Edwards), the fact that it is so high shows that what we saw was more of an across-the-board rejection of Harris and less of a region-specific phenomenon (which would show less correlation due to a lot of overperformance in one area and underperformance in another). In fact, if you look closely at the toplines, you can see that many of the counties that Kratovil did win actually had less distance to go in voting Democratic than did the counties that he lost. Overall, the Western Shore counties are just a great deal more Republican than the Eastern Shore counties.
In most counties, Kratovil actually underperformed his across-the-board 10% shift, but the one region where he really overperformed his shift was in the upper Eastern Shore (Queen Anne’s County, Kent County, and Caroline County). This make sense, as Kratovil is from this region.
Additionally, he underperformed his across-the-board 10% shift somewhat on the Western Shore (as to be expected), but not nearly as much as one would expect. (I am including Cecil County as Western Shore just to clarify)
On the lower eastern shore, Kratovil performed at about his overall shift for the whole district. So to recap, Kratovil improved over Obama everywhere, improving the most in the Upper Shore, the least on the Western Shore, and at about his average improvement in the Lower Shore.
All of this underscores how delicate Kratovil’s position really is. If the number of voters willing to vote for Obama drops below 39%, then Kratovil is toast unless he overperforms by more than he did last time. He additionally cannot get too comfortable with the idea that he won based on an Eastern Shore-based coalition, since he actually picked up a lot of votes on the Western Shore as well.
To win, Kratovil needs to:
-Not allow Harris to gain any ground on the Western Shore over what he got last time. Basically, he needs to hold the same margins, since he is unlikely to go up any further here (although winning Anne Arundel is a possibility)
-Keep his unusually high margins on the Upper Shore that are unlikely to go up much more.
-Overperform his last election numbers on the Lower Eastern Shore for some insurance. I feel that he could do this if he gets voters in this area to really think of him as their own even more than they already have (more like the voters in the Upper Shore have).
As a bonus, I’ve included a map showing the percentage of voters who live in each part of the district.
Let me know what you think.
Maybe the oil spill will make people whose livelihoods depend on the Chesapeake Bay think twice about voting Republican.
Beyond that he’ll have to rely on the advantage of incumbency. Really there is no such thing as an anti-incumbent year, just some years are more pro-incumbent than others.
Also, O’Malley isn’t allowed to suck. Erlich will certainly win this district, so there will be ticket splitters, but as long as O’Malley has decent favorability he won’t drag Kratovil down with him.
The bad news here is that I’d probably favor Harris in the rematch. Kratovil really needed a perfect storm to win it last time.
While the 2008 Obama turnout effect in most of the district is relatively low (this is a white district by the standards of the USA as a whole, let alone Maryland) compared to many other endangered districts, it still wasn’t zero.
I did not know that Harris underperformed McCain even in his own backyard (his State Senate district includes parts of Baltimore and Harford Counties,) but the bad news is he has a good deal of improvement room; all he needs to do is match McCain’s numbers in Baltimore/Harford to come out on top this time. He has essentially no cross-party appeal… but that may not matter in an R+13 district, especially if independents are inclined to go against Democrats this time.
There are some openings though. As the other commenter noted, the Chesapeake Bay and its health is important to this district. There aren’t a ton of people left whose livelihood depends on its health anymore, but it’s got powerful symbolic cachet to people who live on and near it, or who use it for recreation. Harris is about the least environmentally-friendly Republican in Annapolis, and represents a change from most Republicans who had served in the delegation in previous years.
Not to mention that the Shore doesn’t vote Republican because it’s ultra-conservative so much as it does because it tends to gets left behind in state politics. It’s been noted more than once on here that the non-Shore parts of this district are collectively more conservative and more Republican than anything you’d find on the Shore.
Kratovil’s job here is to tell Shore voters about the need for independent voices looking out for what’s best for the district and not someone who’s going to be a robotic follower of his party’s leadership. Who knows – it might work.
will be out for blood IMO. They’ll also be voting for Bob Ehrlich (he could get 70% of the vote there). It’s a real stroke of luck that Harris is the Republican, and not someone even slightly saner.
I’d like to add something — I think there’s also a (perhaps subtle) difference in the way the two western shore parts of this district vote:
the northern area (Harford & Balto. Co. parts & Harris’ home area) are GOP to the core — fiscally and socially conservative. I may be wrong, but I don’t think a single precinct there voted for Kratovil the last time (?) nor for Obama … also, not really a lot of improvement in Dem. numbers when comparing 2004 and 2008 (Kerry v. Obama) …
meanwhile…
the southern area (Anne Arundel Co.) – historically just as Republican, BUT in many parts big Dem. shift in terms of Obama improving on Kerry numbers – esp. Broadneck Peninsula (Arnold and outer Annapolis/Cape St. Claire) and Severna Park which are fiscally conservative but not as conservative on social issues (but not Pasadena which behaved almost like the northern area described above) … in terms of Kratovil v. Harris, Harris had 60%+ in Pasadena & Millersville areas, but LOST the Broadneck Penin.; Severna Park (historically, the most GOP area in the county) was basically 50/50 … Kratovil won 17 (?) precincts in this area overall … both Obama and Kratovil actually won some of the wealthiest precincts on the Broadneck Peninsula/Severna Park, and I would think that the environmental angle would be a big plus here for Kratovil (emphasize fiscal conservatism, but more liberal on environment and some social issues — Wayne Gilchrest was a perfect fit here) …
2 points
1) It would be pretty difficult for anyone to overperform Obama among African Americans. If anything, Kratovil probably would have been just as likely to underperform with African Americans. Most of the African Americans in MD-01 are on the Eastern Shore, making his overperformance there among white voters all the more impressive. In contrast, his limited overperformance in Anne Arundel/Baltimore then becomes less impressive. It seems like there might be a relation between county African American % among the Eastern Shore counties and Kratovil overperformance. On the County level it looks pretty weak. You would have to look at individual precincts to really see how much difference it makes. Kratovil also definitely did much better in Queen Anne’s where he is from.
2) It is harder to easier to overperform another candidate by 1% if that other candidate starts from a lower percentage base. To overperform from 34% to 35%, you only have to persuade 1 of every 66 voters to split their ticket. To overperform from 67-68%, you have to persuade 1 of every 33 voters to split their tickets – in terms of actual votes, as opposed to percentages, that’s twice as hard. If you took that into account rather than using simple uniform swing, I think that would explain some of the variance between Eastern Shore counties, as well as further distinguish the Eastern Shore from Baltimore/Annne Arundel.