Month: September 2010
SSP Daily Digest: 9/24 (Afternoon Edition)
• DE-Sen: One more Real World alum in the political news: that’s first-season vet Eric Neis debating Christine O’Donnell in this new 90s video that’s surfaced. Ooops, I’m burying the lede: the point of the video is that O’Donnell answers in the affirmative when asked if she wants to stop the whole country from having sex.
• KY-Sen: Benenson Strategy Group for DSCC (9/14-19, likely voters, early Sept. in parentheses):
Jack Conway (D): 42 (45)
Rand Paul (R): 45 (47)
Undecided: 13 (8)
(MoE: ±3.7%)
The newest Benenson poll from the DSCC shows things pretty stable in the Kentucky race, with Jack Conway hanging back within striking distance of Rand Paul. They also find Conway leading 48-45 among those who actually know both candidates (and find Paul with greater name recognition: 84%, to 72% for Conway).
• MO-Sen: The DSCC is also out with an internal poll in Missouri, one of the other races where they’d like you to know they’re still playing offense, courtesy of Garin Hart Yang (no mention of the dates, MoE, or any of that useful stuff, though… just a leak to the Fix). The poll has Robin Carnahan trailing Roy Blunt 45-41 (and only 41-40 without leaners). Roy Blunt, meanwhile, is engaging in typical frontrunner behavior, trying to limit debates (to avoid any grist for the negative ad mill); there will only be two debates, neither in a network TV setting.
• NC-Sen: National Research for Civitas (9/15-17, likely voters, 7/19-21 in parentheses):
Elaine Marshall (D): 29 (37)
Richard Burr (R-inc): 49 (44)
Mike Beitler (L): 3 (3)
Undecided: 17 (15)
(MoE: ±4%)
Thanks to a big lead with unaffiliateds (48-21), Richard Burr has a big lead in North Carolina. With a big financial disparity, unless there’s some outside assistance, that lead’s probably going to continue (although I’d be surprised if it’s actually a full 20 points). One other interesting note: Civitas hires out third-party pollsters, and this is their first poll since they switched to Republican internal pollster National Research.
• NV-Sen, NV-Gov: The only evidence we have of this poll is a Jon Ralston tweet, but apparently there’s a poll rumbling around behind the scenes from a reputable Republican pollster that gives a 5-point lead to Harry Reid, 42-37 (among RVs). That’s quite plausible; the real shock here, though, is that it also finds Rory Reid trailing only by 6 in the governor’s race.
• WV-Sen: The big news here is probably that the NRSC is plowing $1.2 million into this race, hoping for the upset (as this race seems to be increasingly taking the place of Washington and California) or at least to pull DSCC fire away from elsewhere. That’s just to run one new ad, tying Joe Manchin to Barack Obama; part of the expense is that the ad is running in the DC market, so it can reach the Panhandle. (You can see the IE filing here.)
One more plus, though, for Joe Manchin, is that he’s getting the NRA’s endorsement (one more in a seemingly endless parade of ConservaDems getting backed this week). Also, some details about John Raese are surfacing that may lead to ads that write themselves: photos of his marble-driveway Florida mansion, where it turns out his family lives full-time (presumably because of Florida’s big juicy homestead exemption, but also because of the schools, as he wants a school system he “believes in”)… and Raese’s own description, in a radio interview yesterday, of how hard he worked for his riches:
RAESE: I made my money the old-fashioned way, I inherited it. I think that’s a great thing to do. I hope more people in this country have that opportunity as soon as we abolish inheritance tax in this country, which is a key part of my program.
• AZ-Gov: Here’s a look at the financial situation in Arizona, where both gubernatorial candidates are relying on clean elections public financing in their bids. Dem Terry Goddard has about $1 million left to spend, while Jan Brewer has $860K left. Goddard also spent more in the last reporting period, spending $477K to Brewer’s $291K.
• MA-Gov: If you’re shedding your main campaign strategist with 40 days to go, that’s probably a sign that you’re not going to win. That’s what happened with the Tim Cahill camp, who said goodbye to John Weaver. Having seen Cahill’s share plunge into the single digits, Weaver said (in a parting shot) at this point, Cahill’s candidacy is just hurting Charlie Baker’s chances.
• NY-Gov: Marist (9/14-19, likely voters, no trendlines):
Andrew Cuomo (D): 53 (67)
Carl Paladino (R): 34 (22)
Rick Lazio (C) : 9 (NA)
Undecided: 6 (11)
(MoE: ±4%)
I don’t know if the Marist poll exactly qualifies as a tie-breaker in the New York gubernatorial race, but it’s a likely voter poll (instead of an RV poll, like Siena), and it doesn’t have that outlier-ish whiff that Quinnipiac had. Also adding to its potential credibility: it’s about halfway between the two, if erring somewhat on the side of Andrew Cuomo’s safety. (It looks like they’ll release Senate numbers later, separately.)
• CA-47: This is the first time I’ve ever used the scary all-caps to put words in the mouth of a Democratic candidate, but Loretta Sanchez just sent up the alarm that THE VIETNAMESE ARE COMING FOR HER SEAT!!!1!! Not just Van Tran, but apparently all of them!!! I suppose that’s a dog-whistle of sorts to her Latino base in this seat that has a Latino majority (though not a lot of actual voters among them) and a politically active Asian minority, where her Republican challenger is Vietnamese. Kind of a faceplant moment for Sanchez, who has had good outreach to the Vietnamese community in the past (up until now, I’d imagine) and has relied on their votes to stay in office.
• MI-01: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Gary McDowell (9/21-22, likely voters, no trendlines):
Gary McDowell (D): 38
Dan Benishek (R): 41
Glenn Wilson (I): 12
Undecided: 9
(MoE: ±4.4%)
Here are some not-bad numbers from an internal for Gary McDowell, showing this is one of the few Republican-leaning open seats where we’re still in fighting shape right now. McDowell’s offering some pushback against a Dan Benishek internal that gave Benishek a 39-25 lead in a race that also includes wealthy independent Glenn Wilson.
• MI-07: It’s a little late in the game for ex-Rep. Tim Walberg to be jumping on the birther train (that’s so 2009…) but he just said that he doesn’t know if Obama was born in the U.S. Meanwhile, his incumbent Dem opponent, Mark Schauer, is out with an internal poll in response to the Rossman Group poll that gave a 4-point lead to Walberg. Schauer’s poll, taken 9/21-22 by Myers Research, finds a mirror-image 4-point lead for Schauer, 49-45 (or if you’d prefer inclusion of all third-party candidates, he’s up 45-43).
• NRCC: The NRCC is wading into six more districts that they haven’t been in before, with IE ad buys. Most (except for WA-03) of these districts feel like “Lean Dem” districts right now, but where the GOP thinks it can make some inroads: Ike Skelton’s MO-04, Chris Carney’s PA-10, Steve Kagen’s WI-08, Martin Heinrich’s NM-01, and the open seats in MA-10 and WA-03.
• AFF: The financially-disadvantaged NRCC can’t win this all on its own, so AFF is keeping up its IEs, too. They’re going on the air in four new districts, two of which overlap the above list. They’re hitting SD-AL ($360K), TX-17 ($117K), NM-01 ($290K), and WA-03 ($875K).
• SSP TV:
• CO-Sen: The softer side of Ken Buck? He’s out with a positive ad with testimonials from senior citizens
• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist simultaneously hits both his opponents on corruption issues in one ad, hitting Kendrick Meek’s real estate dealing and Marco Rubio’s enthusiastic use of RPOF credit cards
• NC-Sen: It seemed to work well the first time for Richard Burr, so the rocking chair guys are back for another round
• NV-Sen: The newest ad from Harry Reid hits Sharron Angle for not supporting requiring health insurers to cover mammograms and colonoscopies
• NY-Sen-A: Chuck Schumer’s running his first ad of the cycle, a bio spot, on local cable
• PA-Sen: Pat Toomey’s newest ad is a hard negative one linking Joe Sestak to Barack Obama; interestingly, it’s not running in the Philadelphia market
• WA-Sen: Dem group Commonsense Ten is out with an anti-Dino Rossi ad throwing the kitchen sink at him, including the foreclosure seminars
• CA-Gov: The latest Meg Whitman opus attacks Jerry Brown over Oakland schools during his tenure as mayor
• CA-47: Loretta Sanchez launches a negative ad against Van Tran, featuring him asleep on the job (during an Assembly budget all-nighter)
• LA-03: Bet you’d forgotten there’s still one race where the field isn’t set? (There’s still a GOP runoff here.) Anyway, Hunt Downer is out with an ad full of adorable babies… to make the point that Jeff Landry is insufficiently pro-life
• PA-03: Kathy Dahlkemper engages in some fat-cat bashing, tying Mike Kelly to Wall Street
• Rasmussen:
• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 44%, Rick Scott (R) 50%
• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 21%, Marco Rubio (R) 40%, Charlie Crist (I) 31%
• MN-Gov: Mark Dayton (D) 41%, Tom Emmer (R) 42%, Tom Horner (I) 9%
• OK-Gov: Jari Askins (D) 34%, Mary Fallin (R) 60%
• SC-Gov: Vincent Sheheen (D) 33%, Nikki Haley (R) 50%
• TX-Gov: Bill White (D) 42%, Rick Perry (R-inc) 48%
CA-Sen: Boxer Up By 6 in Field Poll
Field Poll (9/14-21, likely voters, 6/22-7/5 in parentheses):
Barbara Boxer (D-inc): 47 (47)
Carly Fiorina (R): 41 (44)
Undecided: 12 (9)
(MoE: ±4.1%)
The Senate half of the Field Poll is out today, giving Barbara Boxer an increased lead over Carly Fiorina from the previous poll in early July. Oddly, though, the lead doesn’t come from gains for either candidate, but from voters moving from Fiorina to “undecided.” To me, that’s pretty suggestive that Boxer’s ad campaign so far (which includes a spot hitting Fiorina for her tenure at HP) has been effective at driving up Fiorina’s negatives.
Compared with the gubernatorial race, where both candidates are playing to the center and courting swing voters, this is one about base agitation, and there’s just a much larger Dem base in California. On top of that, Boxer leads 48-29 among Latinos (a much bigger spread than in the governor’s race, where Meg Whitman has spent a lot on Latino outreach), and even leads 46-40 among independents. Unless Fiorina can find a way to either take a huge lead among indies or to get a lot of Democrats to stay home, she’s not on track to win this.
NY-Sen-B: Did This Race Just Get a Lot Closer All of a Sudden? (Part 2)
Quinnipiac (9/16-20, likely voters, 8/23-29 in parens):
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-inc): 48 (43)
Joe DioGuardi (R): 42 (28)
Other: 2 (1)
Undecided: 9 (25)
(MoE: ±3.6%)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-inc): 45
Joe DioGuardi (R): 44
Other: 8
Undecided: 4
(MoE: ±4.2%)
Siena (PDF) (9/16-17 & 9/19-21, registered voters, 8/9-12 in parens):
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-inc): 57 (54)
Joe DioGuardi (R): 31 (29)
Undecided: 12 (17)
(MoE: ±3.5%)
You tell me.
SSP Daily Digest: 9/24 (Morning Edition)
SSP TV:
- AR-02: Tim Griffin (R)
- AZ-08: Jesse Kelly (R)
- FL-25: Pro-Joe Garcia (D) airs ads attacking David Rivera (R) (if you find links to the actual ads, let usk know in comments)
- IL-11: Adam Kinzinger (R)
- IL-14: Rep. Bill Foster (D)
- KS-04: Raj Goyle (D)
- MI-09: Rep. Gary Peters (D)
- NV-03: Joe Heck (R)
- OH-01: Rep. Steve Driehaus (D)
- VA-09: Rep. Rick Boucher (D)
Independent Expenditures:
- Women Vote!: Aka EMILY’s List puts in $80K (TV) against Joe Heck (R) in NV-03, $23K (mail) for Julie Lassa (D) in WI-07, and $32K (mail) against Roy Blunt (R) in MO-Sen
- MI-07: The Communications Workers of America put in $100K (TV) against Tim Walberg (R)
- OR-04: Conservative front group Concerned Taxpayers of America puts in $86K (TV) for Art Robinson (R)
The house on my ghetto-ass cocktail napkin, pt. 1
So whenever I see a house poll here I always check it against 538’s house forecasting model, in hopes that Nate is underestimating our chances of keeping the house. Lately, I have been noticing some fairly sharp divergences between the poll numbers and his calls. He’s got KY-6 as a 56% chance of a GOP take-over. The GOP candidate just released an internal showing himself down 7. Nate’s got us with a 47% chance of keeping PA-8. Today’s poll shows us down 14 there. Nate shows a 68% chance of a takeover in MI-7. Rossman group shows the race within the margin of error.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can figure out half a dozen reasons this isn’t a knock on Nate Silver, who, frankly speaking, is the single baddest motherf*cker on the planet. These include: the polls I just named were all disclosed after the model was released; structural factors may have more to do with the outcome than the polls; 538’s model is designed to estimate the probability of a certain number of seats, not the likelihood of each individual outcome.
But it does get me thinking, if all we knew were the poll-numbers, how would things look in the house? So humor my ghetto-ass statistical talents a moment and come scratch around on my cocktail napkin…
In order to determine the predictive power of polling about a month outside of a midterm election, I examined 46 races polled between Tuesday October 3, 2006 and Thursday October 5, 2006, as reported here http://www.realclearpolitics.c…
I excluded Foley/Mahoney (because of name-on-ballot-hijinks, and what I can only imagine would be a fairly massive Foley-related Dinkins effect), and all 3 way races. I didn’t exclude internals and partisans (since that is a lot of the contemporaneous house data), and I simply didn’t have enough data from this period of 2006 to limit the review to house races. Some of the included races were Reuters/Zogby, (though I dont think this was part of Zogby’s experimental non-euclidean polling phase). I also heard a rumor that it isn’t October 3, 2010 yet, but this was as far back as this particular web-site reported historical data, so, you know, welcome to my cocktail napkin. The margins of error in the polls were generally in the neighborhood of 5%.
Anyway, I calculated the difference between the polling numbers from this little window in 2006 and the ultimate outcomes, averaging if a race were polled twice. I probably got some math wrong, but I found the following potentially helpful facts:
the average distance (in either direction) between a candidate’s polling lead in this period and the outcome of the election was 6 points (6.3, actually, but Lord Holy-F*cking Jesus God Almighty, you do not want to know the abominations I have perpetrated against the concept of significant figures in this process).
Candidates with leads between 1% and 6% at this point (and by “lead” I mean “lead in the polls conducted on these three days”), won nine out of sixteen races. Candidates with leads in excess of 6 points won 87.5% of their races (though they were only 6 out of 9 if the lead was between 7 and 12 points).
The races were identically likely to move in the direction of either the candidate winning or the one losing.
72% of the races “moved” less than 6% in either direction.
91% of the races “moved” less than 12% in either direction.
Anyway, so I’m all ears with what to do with all this, but it seems to me that it would be worthwhile to take a look at the 68 races 538 ranks as “lean, even, or possible takeover” and see how many have been polled in spitting distance of the right-ish-now-ish era (a concept operationally defined by the cocktail napkin). Then I’d like to know how many are within 6 and 12 points right now, and would probably call anything within 6 a toss-up, and keep anything within 12 on the board.
And that’s probably part 2. I guess I have till October 3. Unless anyone wants to pitch in…
(Please keep comments in the spirit of the cocktail napkin. My cat took over the keyboard, and he’s not that great with margins or error. Meow.)
Race and Crime In The Big City: The Baltimore States’ Attorney Race (Part 2)
This is Part 2 in a continuing series about the surprising result in the 2010 Democratic primary for States’ Attorney for the City of Baltimore.
For a broad overview of what’s going here, check out Part 1.
Here’s where I lay out how I’m going to try to answer the question of why I was so surprised to see Gregg Bernstein get elected as Baltimore’s next State’s Attorney when everything I’d assumed about Baltimore politics and the politics of race in America told me that result would be nearly impossible.
I don’t have the precinct data for the 2010 Primary yet, so here I’m laying out more of my methodology and what I’ll be looking for in the data when I obtain it.
In preparation for the 2010 number crunching, I classified the city’s precincts (using data from Dave’s Redistricting App) into six categories as follows:
Type I. Predominantly White (non-Hispanic), less than 30% Black, low (<5%)Hispanic and Asian.
Map Color: Red
These 58 precincts are mostly out in the periphery of the city. (Note that while there are predominantly white precincts in central Baltimore, most of them are covered by one of the other categories.) Most but not all are lower-density neighborhoods; some are affluent while others are working class. The precinct with the highest percentage of white residents (96%) is found in the Locust Point neighborhood.
Type II. Significant (>5%) Hispanic population.
Map Color: Green
With two exceptions (one in far NW Baltimore, the other in Brooklyn in the far south), these 17 precincts are clustered in the Fells Point, Canton, and Highlandtown areas. Nearly all of them are majority non-Hispanic white; the highest Hispanic concentration is in a precinct in Upper Fells Point, an area whose streets have acquired a definite Latino flavor at 32%.
Type III. Significant (>5%) Asian population.
Map Color: Yellow
Identified primarily with the education and medical industries, the Asian population of Baltimore is concentrated heavily in a corridor that runs from the Inner Harbor through Midtown up to Charles Village, where Johns Hopkins University is located. A few precincts in the Hampden area (which is also near JHU’s main campus) also narrowly qualify. Most of these 23 precincts have a white majority while a few are majority black; the closest district to having an Asian plurality is, not surpringly, the one containing JHU’s Homewood campus at 24%. As a group they are the most racially integrated category of precincts.
Type IV. Whites largest group, Black >30%, low (<5%) Hispanic and Asian.
Map Color: Gray
These 12 precincts can be found all over the city, but one cluster of them are located in northeast Baltimore along Harford Road area and another cluster of them can be found in northwest Baltimore along Northern Parkway.
Type V. Blacks largest group, White >30%, low (<5%) Hispanic and Asian
Map Color: Aqua/Teal
These 18 precincts are also scattered across the city, but a large number of them are clustered in northeast Baltimore near Morgan State.
Type VI. Predominantly Black, less than 30% White, low Hispanic and Asian (<5%)
Map Color: Blue
Dark blue covers the majority of the map, as you’d expect in a city with overall demographics like Baltimore’s. Not all the areas covered by these 163 precincts are created equal. Some are dense while others resemble suburbs; some are prosperous while others are very poor. Overlooking one precinct in East Baltimore with 5 residents, I found one West Baltimore precinct that contained 1576 residents, 11 of them identifying as something other than Black.
(Note: If it proves useful, I may draw a finer distinction between precincts where there is a non-trivial non-Black minority that’s still less than 30% vs. precincts where essentially no one else lives.)
And these Type VI precincts are going to be the most interesting to study. To what extent did they abandon Patricia Jessamy? Did they do so uniformly or did her re-election campaign have a tighter grip on some areas than others? Did the gentrification of a few of these areas make a noticeable difference?
Unfortunately for me, Baltimore City has done a fair amount of precinct consolidation between the map that appears in the Redistricting App and the 2006 election, making my job a lot harder. In some cases I was forced to conclude in some cases that the demographic data was wrong based on precinct results (I doubt that a precinct that Dave’s App says is 90% black and a precinct where Ben Cardin got triple the votes of Kweisi Mfume are truly one and the same) but the more correction of that nature one does, the greater the danger of assuming one’s conclusions. I used my best judgment but there’s still going to be some noise in those numbers.
So, armed with a precinct address list, I also sliced the city up into 20 unequal zones, clusters of broadly similar neighborhoods that I tried to group together in as logical a fashion as I could. I’ll explain the zones in Part 3.
Zone Legend
1. Brooklyn & Cherry Hill (dark blue)
2. Federal Hill/Locust Pt. (dark green)
3. Southwest Baltimore (purple)
4. Edmondson (red)
5. West Baltimore (mustard yellow)
6. Near West Baltimore (teal)
7. Downtown & Midtown (gray)
8. East Baltimore (blue-gray)
9. Fells Point & Canton (light blue)
10. Highlandtown (magenta)
11. Frankford (bright green)
12. Northeast Baltimore (pale blue)
13. Northwood/Govans (tan)
14. Waverly/Montebello (olive)
15. Roland Park/Homeland (orange)
16. Charles Village (light green)
17. Hampden (dark blue-gray)
18. Mt. Washington/Cross Country (light yellow)
19. Park Heights (yellow-green)
20. Forest Park/Arlington (light pink)
I’ll go into more detail on these in Part 3. But for now…the Federal Hill, Fells Point, Highlandtown, Roland Park/Homeland, Hampden, and Mt. Washington zones are predominantly white. The Brooklyn/Cherry Hill, Southwest Baltimore, Downtown/Midtown, Northeast Baltimore, and Charles Village areas are somewhat racially mixed. The remaining nine zones are predominantly black.
OK, now that that’s out of the way…here are the assumptions about the data I’m going to be getting that I’m looking to test….
1. Primary turnout across the board was lower in 2010 than in 2006.
* Among Baltimore City residents, this election turned out to be the major primary contest this season, catching the lion’s share of the headlines. None of Governor O’Malley, Senator Mikulski, or the three incumbent U.S. House Democrats who represent parts of the city had serious primary challengers. There was one high-profile State Senate race (out of six in the city total) in District 46 where veteran George Della was challenged by plucky newcomer Bill Ferguson; other than that, the legislative races were mostly relatively quiet.
* In 2006 there was a hotly contested primary for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Paul Sarbanes, in which Kweisi Mfume and Ben Cardin attracted most of the attention, and a free-for-all battle for the MD-03 seat left vacant by Cardin. There was also much more activity in the legislative races than this year, particularly in the District 40 where two delegates and a host of others contested a vacant State Senate seat while another crowd of hopefuls did battle for the three House of Delegates seats.
I’ll be looking for turnout drops in different types of precincts and different parts of the city to see if any pattern emerges.
2. There is little demographic spread between the Democratic primary electorate and the general electorate as a whole, both compared to what one might normally assume and the state of the electorate in 2006.
* I’ve explained that Maryland is a closed-primary state, that the Democratic primary is the “real” election in Baltimore City, etc. enough times.
* However, there’s been even less reason to register Republican recently. 1996 was the last year the Republican primary was a bigger event than the Democratic one at the Presidential level. There hasn’t been a truly competitive high-profile GOP primary for any state office since 1994. There has been pretty strong incentives, even for conservatives, to get in on the Democratic action, especially in Baltimore, whether it was Obama vs. Clinton, the ’07 mayoral contest, or the ’06 Mfume vs. Cardin Senate primary. (This state of affairs, BTW, will change considerably in 2012, with a likely contentious GOP nomination.)
* The result I’m positing is a somewhat more conservative Democratic primary electorate, as many of those new votes are the ones who might have registered Republican or remained unenrolled but for the conditions I outline below. (There is a danger in reading too much into anecdotes, but I did see a fair number of Bernstein’s signs on the same yards as Bob Ehrlich signs.)
To test this proposition I’ll be looking for a change in the number of Republican voters as well. While the contest between Bob Ehrlich and Brian Murphy for the GOP gubernatorial nomination was not exactly a thriller, it was at least more interesting than what usually appears on their primary ballots most midterm years.
3. Jessamy received a very low share of the white vote in 2010.
* Anecdotally, I found literally zero support for Jessamy amongst my white friends and neighbors, and that’s probably a more liberal group than is found in the city as a whole. (Anecdotes of course don’t equal data, but it’s part of a greater pattern.)
* My commute and travels have taken me through most neighborhoods in Baltimore at least once during the run-up to this election. While I did see a fair number of signs endorsing Jessamy, I never saw a single sign supporting her candidacy in any neighborhood I knew to be populated mostly by whites. (For what it’s worth I did see a handful of Bernstein signs in mostly black neighborhoods, but they were far outnumbered by signs for Jessamy.)
* Getting into real numbers now….Stephen Fogleman, despite not running much of a campaign, actually carried a majority of the city’s predominantly white precincts when he ran against Jessamy in 2006. They don’t do exit polls for races like this, so some extrapolation and interpolation are necessary, but I would guess Fogleman got about half of the white votes. So that portion of the electorate was clearly primed to vote against her a second time.
* If I do find some significant support for Jessamy in any of the predominantly white areas, I’ll be looking for distinctions between where it is found and where it is not found. Looking at 2006 I found a slightly larger, though still not especially dramatic, gap among white neighborhoods between those I knew to have a reputation for being hotbeds of progressive activity (e.g. Bolton Hill, Roland Park, Mt. Washington) and those that do not have such a reputation (e.g. Federal Hill, Highlandtown.) I’ll be looking for convergence or divergence.
I will look to compare Jessamy’s performance across these precincts with numbers from other races – Obama’s general election 2008 performance, the Mfume vs. Cardin Senate primary, the Clinton vs. Obama 2008 Presidential primary – to see if there’s any correlation; and there could be a glaring pattern since, unlike with mostly black precincts in Baltimore, there’s often a fairly wide range. It’ll also be interesting to see how much those numbers compare and contrast with each other.
* I’m not sure what exactly I mean by “very low.” Probably something like a reversal of what Fogleman got in predominantly black precincts in 2006, somewhere between 15-20%. Or perhaps a little lower.
4. The African-American share of the vote dropped significantly from 2006 to 2010.
* As described in #3 above, the pool of mostly white swing voters eligible to participate in the Democratic primary increased with Democratic registration gains in Maryland. It’s going to be tough for me to separate out the validity of this assumption vs. the increase in marginal Democratic votes given the racial demographics of those marginal voters skew heavily white.
* In the ensuing four years there has been some level of gentrification and migration. A new population of singles, young couples and empty-nesters has moved into Baltimore as family households continued (albeit more slowly than previously) to leave; when the discussion is limited to recent years, the latter group was generally more heavily African-American than the former. To test this proposition, I’m keeping my eye on the Near West Baltimore zone, a cluster of neighborhoods known to be current centers of gentrifying activity; if they moved away from Jessamy at a significantly higher rate than the other mostly-black zones, it would suggest gentrification was a factor behind the changes.
* Though both 2010 and 2006 were federal midterm elections, there was no high-level draw to the polls that could compare to Barack Obama or Kweisi Mfume to drive up turnout in the African-American community. To test this factor, I’m looking to see if there’s a large racial gap in the turnout drop, or, alternately, if turnout rates in zones consisting mostly of low-income areas fell further than those with many middle-class residents.
* As I said above, of all the various legislative races, the one that got the most attention was the 46th District Senate race, the other contests being relatively quiet. Of the six legislative districts in Baltimore, the only one that isn’t majority black is…the 46th, which contains all the waterfront areas of Baltimore and is about 60% white.
* There are no exit polls for races like this, so I’m going to have to compare the percentage of votes that came from Type 6 precincts in the two years and draw my conclusions about the changing demographic makeup primarily from that.
5. The Latino community had relatively little impact on this race.
* On the one hand, I’d expect this community to be wary of a “law-and-order” candidate in the wake of what’s going on in Arizona and elsewhere; on the other hand, neither candidate mentioned immigration law and there is some indication that perhaps the Latino community in this area has been targeted, as Hispanics have been the victims of some recent high-profile homicides and robberies. Since the Latino community in Baltimore is mostly recent arrivals, many of whom will not be eligible or registered to vote, I’d expect their impact on the election to be relatively low.
* I’ll be looking for a spike in Bernstein support here out of proportion to the rest of the city, with the caveat that these were mostly areas where opposition to Jessamy was already fairly high. (Of my 20 zones, Highlandtown gave Jessamy her worst numbers in the city in ’06.) If I see Jessamy losing fewer votes here than elsewhere, perhaps it’s because a growing Latino community is a bit concerned about a States’ Attorney office too closely aligned with law enforcement.
6. For the purposes of elections such as this one, the Asian vote is approximately functionally equivalent to the White vote.
* This assumption will be tough to prove or disprove. Jessamy in 2006 did slightly better in the Type 3 precincts than in the Type 1 or 2 precincts; I would tend to attribute this to those areas mostly being diverse generally than to anything specific about Asian voting patterns. There could a lot of reasons for this that have nothing to do with the Asian vote, but I will be watching for a different rate of movement to Bernstein in these areas than I see from other similar precincts with lower Asian populations.
The biggest X-factor here is to what extent the African-American vote moved towards Bernstein. While Bernstein couldn’t have won without at least some movement, there’s more than one way to win an election, even in Baltimore. If there was a class-based distinction for Jessamy’s default support in the black community it didn’t show up in a major way in the 2006 results. She appears to have won a slightly smaller share of the vote in predominantly middle- or upper-middle class black areas than in predominantly poor areas. Overall, her default level of support in the Type 6 precincts was somewhere in the 80% range. What I’ll be looking for most in these precincts in 2010 is whether that small gap widened, stayed roughly the same, or reversed itself.
The other possible factor, to what extent there’s an anti-incumbency mood afoot in 2010, is going to prove more elusive to quantification in this instance. That this incumbent did markedly worse in 2010 than in 2006 could be a sign that more people wanted incumbents out of office, or it could be an indication that the challenger in the 2010 race ran a much stronger campaign.
This all boils down to two questions:
1. Did people change their mind, and if so, what groups of people changed their mind the most?
2. Was the underlying electorate significantly different, and if so, how and why?
To be continued….
Bellwether Counties: Analysis, Part 2
In my first diary, I examined the states from A-F. Here, I will continue, with G-L
Georgia: Lowndes County
This county is racially representative of Georgia, at 1/3 Black. Politically, it is as well, being Republican but not blowout territory. It is home to Valdosta, one of three population centers in South Georgia. The main city of Valdosta, the only urban or even suburban part of the county, is evenly split racially, with the rural areas much whiter. Politically, it stayed Republican when Bill Clinton won the state in 1992, and last voted blue in 1976, even staying red in 1980. Thus, it really has not been a bellwether until recently, but with Georgia’s shift rightward in the rural areas, and leftward in the metro areas, its the best bellwether county around. It didn’t vote for Zell Miller in 1994 but otherwise has been consistent with the state in every statewide race.
Hawaii is too small for this to be relevant
Idaho: Gooding County
I’m sure you’ve all been eagerly waiting to find out what Idaho’s bellwether is, so here you go. This county of 15,000 people in central Idaho is consistently red, like the state. It is more Hispanic than the state as a whole, but is still politically the same. It has two towns, Gooding and Wendell, each around 3,000 in population. It hasn’t voted blue anytime recently, even voting for Goldwater in a state he actually almost won. It’s voted for the winning gubernatorial and senatorial candidate every election, although these are mostly blowouts.
Illinois: Due to the suburban/rural divide switching parties recently, there, sadly, is no bellwether county in Illinois. Honestly, I wish there was; it would be nice to figure out who’s winning for Senate. Also, Cook County’s dominance makes this difficult. If you would like to nominate a bellwether county and explain your reasoning, comment.
Indiana: Porter County
With population nearing 170,000, this is a large county. It is a combination of suburban and rural, and is situated in the northwest of the state, along Lake Michigan. The main towns are Chesterton (10,000), an upper-middle class suburb
Porter (5,000), another upper-middle class suburb
Valparaiso (30,000), just plain middle-class, and home to a university (Bryce Drew, anyone?)
Portage (35,000), another middle-class suburb, slightly Hispanic (for Indiana), and home to a Latina mayor. It went Dem in 2008 and 1996, although Indiana was red in 1996. It’s voted with the state in all the Senatorial races, but only 1990 was close. It did go blue by quite a large margin in the 2008 and 2004 gubernatorial elections (maybe they really don’t like Mitch Daniels), and Indiana really doesn’t have a swing county like some states. I considered Madison Co. as well for this spot.
Iowa: Fayette County
This county of 20,000+ is the swing county in a key swing state. It’s extremely rural, with only the 6,500 person town of Oelwein and 2,500 person town of West Union being remotely populated. Presidentially, it has mirrored the state: blue every recent year but 2004. It’s also been a bellwether for every gubernatorial election. The only senatorial difference was voting against Harkin in 1990.
Kansas: Lyon County
When Sam Bronwback loses this year, those of us who see him lose Lyon County will realize it before everyone else (yes, i’m joking). This relatively small county contains the college town of Emporia, home to 80% of the county’s population. It is only 2/3 White due to the large Hispanic population of much of the Great Plains. It has Emporia St. University, a large beef plant, and a dog food plant. Presidentially, it’s red, but not extremely so. It voted Sebelius both times for governor, and Finney in 1990, so it’s mirrored the state.
Kentucky’s shift is so rapid that there is no bellwether. Feel free to nominate one, though.
Louisiana: Calcasieu Parish
This county is nearing 200,000 people, although population loss means it might never get there. Home to Lake Charles and its 75,000-ish residents, an even Black-White split. The surrounding area is much more White, making this county pretty racially representative of the state. It has huge oil industry ties, as well as some aerospace. It’s also home to McNeese State University. Surrounding small towns include:
Carlyss, home to lower middle-class whites
Iowa, an oil and cattle town home to poverty
Moss Bluff, at 10,000 people in the middle and upper-middle classes
Prien, another “suburb”, although it has only 7,000 people, and is certainly upper-middle class
Sulphur, a real suburb, at nearly 25,000 people. Very middle class and white.
Westlake, home to 5,000 more suburbanites, generally lower-middle class.
Vinton, with 3,500 more, is lower class.
This county has both the upper and lower middle classes all over the place. Politically, it voted for both Dukakis and Clinton before flipping red. It’s voted for the winner in all the governor and senator elections.
Analyzing Swing States: Colorado, Part 2
This is the second part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Colorado. It will focus on the Republican base in Colorado. The third part can be found here.
History
Once upon a time, Colorado was a loyally Democratic state. Influenced by prairie populism and anger against powerful Republican businessmen in the East Coast, the state usually voted further left than the country at large. The trend continued for seven straight presidential elections.
More below.
This ended at around 1924. Colorado voted twice against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and throughout the remainder of the twentieth century remained a mainstay of Rocky Mountain conservatism. As late as 2005, a Republican politician might have good reason to see this as a permanent condition.
Said politician would have been shocked to see Colorado three years later, after a massive Democratic wave. In 2008, the state voted more Democratic than the national average for the first time in ten presidential elections. And as of September 2010, Attorney General John Suthers is the only statewide Republican officeholder.
Republican Colorado
For a long time, the Republican base in Colorado really was the entire state, minus Denver and a few thinly populated Hispanic counties in the south. Almost all of Colorado voted Republican; there was little that hinted it would ever be more than a solidly Republican state.
That this has changed is fairly obvious; it is why Colorado is now a swing state. The modern Republican base in Colorado consists of two entities. To get a look at the first, let’s take a look at the counties which gave Senator John McCain his strongest support.
The counties highlighted in red are quite representative of the first part of the Republican base: rural Colorado. This description must be qualified a bit further, since some parts of rural Colorado vote fairly Democratic. The first part of Republican Colorado actually constitutes white rural Colorado, minus those parts whose main industry consists of skiing resorts (Hispanic rural Colorado is fairly Democratic, as are the parts of rural Colorado home to massive skiing resorts).
This region has quite a lot in common with other Republican-voting rural counties in the Great Plains and Mountain West. The people are generally white and poorer than the national median. They have been also voting Republican ever since the days of President Woodrow Wilson. Democrats often bemoan the loss of poor whites in places like West Virginia who once voted faithfully Democratic. But in much of rural Colorado, the white working class was never Democratic in the first place.
There is one last distinguishing characteristic of this region: it is extremely thinly populated. Indeed, in 2008 a total of 28,159 votes were cast in the highlighted counties above – about 1.2% of Colorado’s total electorate.
Thus, Republican strength in rural Colorado is a secondary force the Republican coalition:
(Note: Edited NYT Image.)
The second wing of Colorado’s Republican base is different. As the above map indicates, it can be seen in the Republican margins in the counties radiating around Denver, and especially in Colorado Springs.
These suburbs and exurbs constitute the second part of the Republican base in Colorado. Like most suburbs, they are generally wealthy, well-off places. Another distinguishing factor of Republican-leaning suburbs is their ethnicity: the reddest Republican suburbs tend to be the whitest.
Colorado Springs provides of typical example what makes a Republican suburb in Colorado. The largest red circle in the map, the city is famous as being the headquarters of a number of evangelical groups (such as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family). It also contains a substantial military population, which generally votes Republican.
The map above provides an example of Republican Colorado at a strong point. In 2000 neither party competed for Colorado, and the state went predictably and strongly Republican – as it had for decades beforehand. Republican strength in rural and suburban Colorado more than overwhelmed the Democratic-voting areas.
The next post will examine how much of Republican-voting suburban Colorado turned into swing territory.
–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
CA-Gov, CA-Sen: Close Races, But Dem Progress
Field Poll (9/14-21, likely voters, 6/22-7/5 in parentheses):
Jerry Brown (D): 41 (44)
Meg Whitman (R): 41 (43)
Undecided: 18 (13)
(MoE: ±4.1%)
I asked just a few days ago where the heck the Field Poll was, and lo and behold, here they are. Same as most pollsters, they find that nobody’s that into either Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman (44/47 faves for Brown, 40/45 for Whitman). With Meg Whitman’s giant ad blitz canceling out the blue tint of the state, they’re basically fighting to a draw. The one thing keeping Whitman in this is relative strength among Latinos (she trails only 43-40, thanks to a heavy outreach program).
The trendlines actually show Brown losing ground, but these results are actually good, because they seem to punctuate the end of a period where Whitman surged ahead of Brown among all pollsters (that seems to have abruptly come to an end with the most recent PPP, Rasmussen, and SurveyUSA polls) that the Field Poll simply missed thanks to the long lag between polls. Whitman seems to have had two spikes, one in March and one in August; I don’t what to attribute them to, other than perhaps disparities in advertising, but at any rate this is what they look like visually (with smoothing cranked up to “highly sensitive”):
SurveyUSA for KABC-TV (9/19-21, likely voters, 8/31-9/1 in parentheses):
Jerry Brown (D): 46 (40)
Meg Whitman (R): 43 (47)
Other: 8 (9)
Undecided: 3 (4)Barbara Boxer (D-inc): 49 (46)
Carly Fiorina (R): 43 (48)
Other: 6 (5)
Undecided: 2 (1)
(MoE: ±4%)
Here are those SurveyUSA results that I referenced above, a pretty big turnaround from their last set, with both races flipping in favor of the Dems. These contain good news for Barbara Boxer as well as Brown (it looks like the Field Poll Senate results will get released a different date): more support, along with SurveyUSA’s WA-Sen poll this morning, for the premise that a West Coast Firewall(TM) is forming even as new Dem Senate problems keep popping up further east.
SurveyUSA is also tracking two other key races, Lt. Governor and pro-marijuana Prop 19. They find Dem Gavin Newsom leading GOP incumbent Abel Maldonado 44-41 in the LG race, and the pro-pot forces winning, 47-42. These are pretty similar numbers that PPP found in last week’s survey, just released in a couple miscellany posts: they find Newsom leading Maldonado 39-36, and Prop 19 passing 47-38, even suggesting that its presence on the ballot is helping to mellow out the enthusiasm gap that’s a major buzzkill in other states. PPP also finds 46-44 support for gay marriage next time that hits the ballot, and 42-16 support for nonpartisan congressional redistricting in Prop 20.