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I Read Through 160,000,000 Bytes of Hacked Files And All I Got Was This Lousy E-Mail

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:45:00 +0000

It's the global warming scandal of the century, says Michelle Malkin!

The exposure of the warmist conspiracy, says Andrew Bolt!

The final nail in the coffin of anthropogenic global warming, bleats James Delingpole!

A stunning tour de force -- four stars, says Leonard Maltin!

OK, so that last quote is made up. But the others aren't. What is it these conservatives are so excited about?

Apparently, the networks of University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit were hacked into last night, apparently by a team of Russians who deemed their data too important to be kept private. Approximately 160 megabytes of files, containing hundreds or thousands of e-mails and documents were leaked as a result of the security breach, reports The Guardian.

The conservatives are mainly zeroing in on one particular e-mail from the center's director, Phil Jones, dated from November 16th, 1999, which reads as follows:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@[snipped], mhughes@
[snipped]
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@[snipped],t.osborn@[snipped]
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later
today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature
trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20
years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith’s to
hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine
values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N.
The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for
1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers, Phil

There you have it! The smoking gun! Irrefutable proof of the Anthropogenic Warming Global Super-Duper Major-Mega International Socialist Conspiracy!

If you see Al Gore parking his Ford Fusion hybrid near any major bridges, make sure to call the police!

Actually, what you have is a scientist, Dr. Jones, talking candidly about sexing up a graph to make his conclusions more persuasive. This is not a good thing thing to do -- I'd go so far as to call it unethical -- and Jones deserves some of the loss of face that he will suffer. Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that happens all the time in both academia and the private sector -- have you ever looked at the graphs in the annual report of a company which had a bad year? And it seems to happen all too often on both sides of the global warming debate (I'd include some of the graphics from An Inconvenient Truth in this category, FWIW.)

But let's be clear: Jones is talking to his colleagues about making a prettier picture out of his data, and not about manipulating the data itself. Again, I'm not trying to excuse what he did -- we make a lot of charts here and 538 and make every effort to ensure that they fairly and accurately reflect the underlying data (in addition to being aesthetically appealing.) I wish everybody would abide by that standard.

Still: I don't know how you get from some scientist having sexed up a graph in East Anglia ten years ago to The Final Nail In The Coffin of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Anyone who comes to that connection has more screws loose than the Space Shuttle Challenger. And yet that's literally what some of these bloggers are saying!

Incidentally, 2009 is shaping up to be the 5th warmist year on record, according to the conspiracists at NASA.

It's [Still] The Economy, Dumbass

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:45:00 +0000

All right -- this is my favorite graph in quite some time. Let's show the picture first and ask questions later.

What we have is a comparison of Barack Obama's approval ratings on the economy to his approval ratings overall. It includes all polls in the Pollster.com database that asked about both approval of Obama on the economy and his overall job performance -- a total of 109 polls dating back to the start of his term. I've then drawn in some LOESS curves to illustrate the trend.

The two lines track each other uncannily well. From the very start of Obama's term, there's been about a 5-6 point gap between approval of his performance on the economy and his performance overall, with the latter figure consistently being somewhat higher. Although Obama's approval has declined in both departments (particularly during period between about April 1 and August 1; it may not be declining any further now), the magnitude of the gap has been exceptionally steady over time.

The economy, I suppose, is sort of boring to talk about: it's a slow-moving sort of thing, and one over which the President has only a certain modicum of control. And so you'll have pundits attributing Obama's slide to all various and sundry sorts of things -- Health Care! Henry Louis Gates! Torture Trials! -- when really it's just been very much about the number of people who have come to blame Obama about the economy has tended to accelerate faster than perceptions of the economy itself.

Let's now add a third variable, which is Obama's approval on health care. We'll look only at those polls that asked about health care in addition to the economy and job performance, in order to create a truly apples-to-apples comparison:

For the most part, the health care numbers are following the same trend, although you can perceive a bit of a secular drop during August, the Month of a Million Town Halls (followed by partial recovery in September, after Obama's address to a joint session of Congress). Although this is not easily provable -- and certainly not proven by this data -- I suspect that much of the anxiety over health care reform also stems from anxiety about the economy, in ways that are both general and specific.

Indeed, the most troubling problem for the Democrats may be that government interventions into the economy -- meaning the bailout and the stimulus -- are increasingly perceived as having failed, which in turn increases skepticism about government intervention overall, in health care and other areas. I'm just not sure where this is headed: perhaps when the jobs picture recovers, so too will perception of these other programs, which will rob Republicans of much of their ammunition (although since employment is unlikely to recover significantly before 2010, they'll have plenty of fun in the shooting gallery in the meantime). But perhaps instead, the damage will be medium or even long-term: if the economy takes too long to recover, it may be perceived as being in spite of, not because of, programs like the stimulus. If that's the case, the 2010s could be a lost decade for liberalism.

To channel my Inner Krugman: it's a political imperative for the Democrats of the highest order to get some sort of jobs bill to Obama's desk -- the sooner and the bigger the better. Suppose you could create jobs at a price of about $40,000 per, which is higher than the figure suggested by empirical research on highly targeted jobs programs. A $200 billion bill would then create 5 million new jobs, which would reduce unemployment by about 3.3 percent (e.g. from 10.2 percent to 6.9 percent).

It's not that easy, I'm sure. But the Republicans -- who have been clamoring for such a bill for months -- are liable to find themselves on the wrong side of the politics of the issue. And even if the jobs bill isn't especially efficient at reducing unemployment on its own, it would have a bit of a wind at its back between the existing stimulus efforts and the organic recovery in the economy.

Might it even be worth tabling health care to get the jobs bill passed? Probably not when health care is so close to the finish line, and when the House can start working on a jobs program while the Senate deliberates health care. But if it looks like health care doesn't have the votes, this would be the exit strategy for the Dems -- for Obama to intervene and say: "we need a jobs bill first." Either way, a couple million more jobs would make everything much smoother for the Democrats; the economy remains the primary way that the public evaluates their success.

Dems Lucky There Aren't More Lincolns

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:37:00 +0000

How can Democrats expect to get 60 votes for their health care bill in the Senate when it barely garnered a majority in the House? It's a good question that has a number of good answers. For instance: the Senate's bill is more moderate than the House's. And the 60-vote threshold applies only to procedural matters and not to final passage, meaning that Democrats could hedge their bets by voting for cloture but against the bill itself.

But perhaps the most fundamental difference is this one: only a third of the Senate is up for re-election each cycle. Not only that, but the Democratic senators who are up for re-election happen to come from mostly liberal states. Take a look at the following chart:

These are the 13 Democratic senators who represent states that John McCain won last November. Of the 13, only two -- Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota -- are up for re-election in 2010.

Dorgan remains quite popular and does not yet have a credible Republican opponent. Governor John Hoeven has threatened to enter, but with Dorgan already having accumulated almost $4 million in cash and time running short, Hoeven's curiosity is looking mostly like a bluff. Even if he did face a re-election threat, moreover, my guess is that Dorgan would not cause a serious problem for the Democrats on health care, as he's something of a policy wonk, and chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, a possible stepping-stone to a majority leader or majority whip position.

Lincoln, on the other hand, appears to be in real trouble, and the health care bill, which is opposed 2-1 in her state according to Public Policy Polling, undoubtedly isn't helping matters much. Now, you can certainly construct a case that it's in Lincoln's best interest to vote for the health care bill anyway: the feeding frenzy that will ensure if Democrats fail to enact health care reform will have consequences for incumbents everywhere, and a procedural vote against health care would rob Lincoln of much of her fundraising and institutional support. But clearly, it's not an easy decision for her.

There are other Democrats, like Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who are also tenuous votes on health care, but none of them face the same near-term electoral pressures. Health care reform, it's clear, has become relatively unpopular in the near term, but it would be speculative at best to guess at what impact it might have in 2012 or 2014, by which point the economy will probably have recovered, the provisions of the bill itself would be coming online, the tea party zeitgeist may have faded, and their could be a different President in the White House. Nelson and Landrieu, therefore, aren't taking the same tangible risks to behave as team players.

As for Lincoln, she's arguably the vote that Democrats have the most to worry about (perhaps along with Joe Lieberman, whose motivations for opposing the health care bill are irrational). But since Lincoln and only Lincoln is under substantial electoral pressure for 2010, the Democrats still ought to have pretty good odds of wrangling her in. Imagine, on the other hand, if in addition to Lincoln, two or three other red-state Democrats (say Nelson, Lincoln, and Mark Begich of Alaska) were also up for re-election. Under those circumstances, opposition to the health care bill would probably have calcified into a critical mass, and the measure would either be dead on arrival or headed back to the drawing board.

Senate Handicapping One Year Out

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Schaller) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:59:00 +0000

The 2010 Senate contests, I submit, will tell us more than either the House or gubernatorial results next year about the relative status of the two parties and their competitiveness. Why?

For one, historically the president's party loses an average of about 16 House seats in his first midterm cycle, but there's really not much of a Senate correction. (The average is less than one seat.) Obviously, the Democrats could still over- or underperform the 16-seat benchmark. But the House results, if the GOP overperforms, are not likely to dethrone Nancy Pelosi. Second, gubernatorial results are likely to be more of a reflection on tough state-level circumstances and the quality of the respective candidates and their campaigns, as we saw in both New Jersey and Virginia. If so, the Republicans may have another Christie/McDonnell-like night to celebrate, even if those victories are not indicative of a national partisan backlash against the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress. Third, Senate races are statewide federal contests with more heterogeneous, non-gerrymandered electorates that are less directly affected by localized issues. Finally, as The Cook Political Report's Jennifer Duffy noted in her analysis two weeks ago, there are lots of open-seat Senate races next year. Although candidate effects do matter in Senate races, in open seats the candidate effects are reduced because there are no direct incumbency effects (positive or negative), and so they more closely approximate, though of course are not identical to, partisan referenda.

That said, the Senate results will provide a much clearer barometer of voter support for, or antipathy toward, the Obama Administration and unified Democratic control of Washington. Remember the 2004 results? Bush inched up his popular vote margin, gained a mere one net state in the Electoral College (losing NH, picking up IA and NM), the House Republicans' gain of three seats was entirely accounted for by the Texas re-redistricting, and the GOP lost ground in the state legislatures. What made it overall a good night for the GOP was the net pickup of four Senate seats. Granted, those four net pickups were more than accounted for by five southern Democrats retiring and the GOP picking up all five of their seats, but still. (The net non-southern Democratic gain of one senator resulted from Tom Daschle's loss and wins by CO's attorney general Ken Salazar and a certain state senator from Chicago.)

The good news for Democrats is that there are a lot of Republican-held, open-seat races. Looking at the table above, of the six GOP-held seats Duffy lists as either toss-up (5) or leaning Republican (1: Vitter), five of the six are open seats (LA's Vitter, who has other, post-scandal worries is the exception). Of course, this is why races in states like Kentucky and Texas are considered competitive in the first place. As for seven seats Duffy rates either toss-up (5) or leaning Democratic (2: Lincoln, Boxer), there are just two open-seat contests: the Delaware and Illinois seats vacated by vice president and president and presently occupied by weak Democratic placeholders. The fact that the Democrats have more states in play despite fewer incumbents testifies to their general vulneraability this cycle, as well as specific problems, notably Chris Dodd's post-economic crisis popularity decline in Connecticut and the inherent skepticism toward Arlen Specter after his party-switch earlier this year.

What you also see is that Democrats are defending competitive seats in more solidly blue states and Republicans in what are generally more toss-up states, at least if you look at presidential results. This pattern has a potentially good news/bad news storyline for each party as well. If team Obama can figure out a way to utilize the president, their databases and appeal to mobilize enough of those so-called "Obama surge" voters from 2008, the Democratic registration and performance margins should pull these incumbents across the finish line. On the other hand, the fact that the GOP seats in play are in more competitive states in the first place would suggest that the GOP is going to be on offense more than defense.

I suspect the net gain for either party will not exceed two seats. There are some primaries yet to determine nominees, so it's too early to say either way which party should come out ahead. And, as I suggested before, these races will be an important test of the White House political operation.

American Politics and International Soccer: Who's the Ref?

noreply@blogger.com (Renard Sexton) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:00:00 +0000

The rhetorical link between sports and politics in the U.S. has been widely documented, with sports providing a treasure trove of analogies, quotes and other trinkets for politicians. At the same time, pundits have long enjoyed the usage of sport as a foil for political commentary. In many ways, it makes intuitive sense, with both fields defined by highly adversarial relationships, impassioned periods of training and execution, large quantities of public exposure and critique, and intense love-hate relations with the media.

Therefore, that we could draw political parallels from last evening's blatant cheating by iconic French national soccer squad striker Thierry Henry with the role of the media in American politics is not surprising. "La main de Diable," as put by writers at the French newspaper Le Figaro, led France to a squeaking overtime victory in over underdog Ireland by way of a flagrant hand-ball that was simply missed or ignored by no less than four officials, including the referee. And, as compared to its namesake from the 1986 World Cup, Henry's foul was substantially more obvious to the observer than Maradona's, though the original arguably had more pressing implications (both resulted in the elimination of the loser, though the former was in a World Cup quarter-final).

While Henry has received major criticism for his actions -- which he maintains were accidental and were admitted to the opposing squad as well as the officials -- the most withering accusations have been launched at the referee, Martin Hansson of Sweden, and his assistants. Because the officials failed to call the foul, France advances to next year's World Cup Final in South Africa, with the Irish now relegated to waiting for the 2014 Cup. At the same time, FIFA, who "watch the watchmen" so to speak; have been lambasted for not incorporating instant replay into international ball, and for alleged systemic bias toward traditional western European soccer powers like France, Germany, Italy, etc.

In American politics, it is the mainstream media that are often credited with the 'refereeing' and 'vetting' role during political competition. Indeed, it is a role that the big producers have strongly embraced, with various brands of neutrality being marketed. Ranging from Fox's "No-spin zone," to "fact-checks" by ABC and others, and perhaps the most symbolic role of media achors as the moderators for electoral debates, the media can "call foul" on false claims, scrutinize policy decisions and give positive coverage to good ideas.

But like the Henry case of last night, what happens when the refs fail to call a foul when it is matters most? (Or alternatively call one where it isn't).

The most common answer is that political journalism and analysis are self-critical and self-governing fields, with rigorous peer review. A recent case in point is the harsh critique that has been leveled by many in the field regarding the U.S. MSM's conduct in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. At the same time, a healthy oversight community of NGOs, think tanks, academic institutions and so forth spend many hours dissecting the way the media operate. But is this really enough?

In cases of flagrant, high-profile and costly mistakes, it seems that the system works reasonably well. In 2004, the sacking of Dan Rather by CBS over his highly flawed reporting on President Bush's National Guard career illustrated a commitment by the network to dispose of discredited reporting. In a similar fashion, many are calling for the head of referee Hansson, suggesting a suspension or ban.

But the fundamental problem remains in both circumstances is that high-profile scapegoating in cases of obvious poor practice does not address the underlying issues that challenge those in the umpire's seat. In the case of international soccer, the impression of big-country euro-centrism remains, and the lack of instant replay nor box review both undermine the credibility and accuracy of officials and administrators. In US politics, the fact that incentive structures for media folks are focused toward advertising revenue and subscriber bases, with few coercive structures beyond self-policing and public scrutiny, has turned political refereeing from analytic scrutiny to basic entertainment.

While the metaphor breaks down when moving much farther, the consequences are clear. Last night's failure of judgment was a well-documented warning to those for whom good, reasoned judgment is important.

What is the difference between a minor human mistake and a human-made catastrophe? A catastrophe is a mistake made where there was no room for error.
---
Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com.

Senators and Health Care

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Gelman) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Nate, Daniel, and I write:

Lawmakers' support for or opposition to reform generally has less to do with the views of their constituents and more to do with the issue of presidential popularity. . . .

For instance, Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat who has been a less-than-strong supporter of the present health care bill, recently told The Times, "I am responsible to the people of Arkansas, and that is where I will take my direction." But where does she look for her cue? Hers is a poor state whose voters support health care subsidies six percentage points more than the national average. On the other hand, Mr. Obama got just 40 percent of the vote there. . . ..

Public opinion is certainly relevant to the health care debate, but not in the direct senator-follows-the-state way that it is sometimes imagined.

Further discussion (including pretty maps) here.

The Palin Calculus: A Rejoinder

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Schaller) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:25:00 +0000

I had hoped to respond to Nate's initial post explaining our Sarah Palin bet before he wrote a second one. But I guess I'll just have to write a rejoinder to both.

Let me preface the following by conceding that many of Nate's arguments are quite persuasive. Most compelling is his observation about the media's love affair with Palin. For all her complaints about the supposedly liberal national media, the media want to sell ads and Palin attracts eyeballs, holds listeners, and generates clicks. The media is the best thing she's got going for her. Nate's also right about the 2012 GOP field potentially being small and/or weak; if either Mike Huckabee or Newt Gingrich opt out--and certainly if both do--Palin's path to the nomination is made easier.

That said, herewith 10 additional reasons why Palin either won't run or, if she does, will have a hard time winning the GOP nomination:

1. She's unqualified to be president. That's a normative statement, but it's also one that most Americans happen to agree with. Now, it may be no surprise that 90 percent of Democrats feel that way. But a CNN poll out this week shows that, amazingly, about four in nine Republicans concur and, most damning, about seven of 10 Independents do, too. Sarah's got legitimacy issues.

2. Nobody's ambivalent about her. People know who Palin is, and almost all have developed opinions about her. If those opinions were overwhelmingly positive, that would be one thing. But they aren't. (See #1, above.) And once a politician loses core support, they have to do something extraordinary to reverse the public's view of them. (An exception who defied this rule with exceptional behavior is Al Gore, who tripled his public approval numbers between 2002 and 2007.) In short, there's just too much Palin needs to do to reverse the opinions of voters, including Republican voters.

3. There should be at least one certifiable social conservative in the GOP field, maybe more, and she'll be eating from the same bowl as this person(s). Palin isn't the only person going rogue--the whole damn party is. Nate's right that there aren't many moderates left in the party, but there aren't many moderate elites left, either. Although Gingrich did some damage to his conservative cred by failing to rally to Doug Hoffman's defense in the NY23 special election, he's still the guy from the southern suburbs who led the GOP to its 1994 majorities and he's not some recent convert to social conservatism like Mitt Romney. And then there's Huckabee, who is already ideally positioned for the nomination after his underfunded but impressive late-stage showing in 2008. Throw in Haley Barbour and there's even less room for Palin to dominate among conservative GOPers.

4. She is politically homeless. Though few true-red conservatives bought into Mitt Romney's 2008 conversion from his socially-liberal days as the Massachusetts governor who pushed through statewide health care reform, the Mormon Romney would again fare well in Palin's natural geographic base: The West. Remember the map of victories in the 2008 GOP primary contest? If Romney eats into her support there and either Huckabee or Gingrich do the same in the South, where is she going to find the votes? The Midwest, maybe, but not in the Northeast. She's a candidate without a natural, geographic base of support.

5. The fam. I'm sorry, but if John Kerry had Sarah Palin's family we would still be enduring non-stop lectures about the depravity of liberal values. The Palin family situation is messy, and smart Republican primary voters (more on that in point #10) must recognize that there are too many potential landmines here. I mean, the father of Palin's illegitimate grandson is about to appear semi-nude--sorry gals, no full frontal--in Playgirl magazine. 'Nuff said.

6. There's a good chance Palin loses her cool. Nate says my fatal error is assuming Palin is thinking through this big decision rationally. OK, he's got me there. But if her irrationality is reason to suspect she may run despite her negatives, it's also reason to suspect that, if she does run, she's going to make at least one if not more fatal errors. Palin was in the national spotlight during the 2008 campaign, but only for a little more than two months. A presidential run for her would generate far greater pressure--and continuously so for a period eight times longer as a presidential contender than she had to endure as second banana in 2008.

7. She has serious policy weaknesses. I'm not talking here about her policy positions, I'm talking about her grasp of the issues. Just read the stuttering, vapid answer she gave to Barbara Walters when asked about Israeli settlements. This is not a politician ready to run the White House. I realize she has a lot of time to bone up on the issues in the next 18 months. But, c'mon: If people thought George W. Bush was a dolt who could only repeat stock, memorized phrases, compared to Palin Bush is a Rhodes scholar.

8. Her media career. I may be proved wrong, but I see a media career in Palin's future: TV, radio, maybe both. She could wait until after 2012 to pursue that course. But, like a collegiate sophomore who's also a top-5 draft prospect, she runs the risk of injury if she doesn't go pro when the money is there. If not already in the works, once the book promotional tour settles down she's gonna have some big offers. On the Right, where Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter are the best conservative media has to offer in terms of female stars, Palin could burn brightly. And once she goes that route, her presidential ambitions will dim quickly.

9. Todd Palin is not First Gentleman material. Fairly or not, candidates' spouses matter--in the White House and on the campaign trail. Fairly or not, they quite possibly matter more for female presidential contenders. What does Todd Palin bring to the equation? Not much, so far as I can tell. He would be dwarfed by Michelle Obama in more ways than one.

10. GOP primary voters are interested in electability, not message-sending. Nate is right that for Republicans in 2012, against incumbent Barack Obama, it might be tempting to send a 1964-like message. But if that were the case, given the bottom the party reached in 2008, they should have nominated somebody like Huckabee instead of John McCain. They didn't. Bob Dole in 1996 and McCain last year weren't great candidates, but they were the best option available, which is exactly the candidate sober Republican primary voters choose every four years. It's not clear to me who the best general election candidate in the field of potential 2012 contenders is--my hunch runs toward Gingrich, maybe Romney if he can get evangelicals on board--but Palin ain't it.

10 Reasons That Sarah Palin Could Win the Republican Nomination

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:51:00 +0000

1. Enthusiasm. People tend to see electorate through a one-dimensional lens, in which a fixed number of voters are trying to decide between two or more candidates. But that's not really how politics works, especially in primaries. Rather, the playing field is (at least) two-dimensional: people are not merely trying to decide whom to vote for, but also whether to vote at all. Because of the reach of her brand, Palin has the ability to engage the sorts of voters who might ordinarily stay at home. In the general election, that will include some voters who turn out to vote against her -- but that's less of a concern in the primaries.

2. 2010. Next November will probably be a happy night for Republicans and my guess the emergent c.w. will be that it occurred because of, rather than in spite of, the Republicans eschewing moderation in favor of (re)building their base. In reality, that case is likely to be highly circumstantial at best -- it might be that Republicans gain, I don't know, 26 House seats, but would have gained 33 if they'd run more to the center. But that won't prevent people from leaping to conclusions, and I expect those conclusions to tend to play favorably for Palin.

3. The other candidates are flawed. Mitt Romney has limited appeal to the evangelical base and is an unapologetically establishment candidate in a primary where anti-establishment sentiments are liable to prevail. Newt Gingirch has never been especially popular, has never won an election for any office higher than the U.S. House, and lost some street cred among conservative activists with his failure to endorse Doug Hoffman. Tim Pawlenty is unpopular in his home state, barely registering as a national candidate, and appears to suffer from Romney's flaw of running away from his record. Mike Huckabee, I think, is underrated, but the Club for Growth crowd will never like him, and his hokeyness could grow a little tiresome in the face of a year-long primary campaign.

4. The other candidates might not run. Although I doubt that Palin can clear the conservative half of the GOP field, someone like a Huckabee could very well decide to go ahead and let Palin run her course, re-entering the field in a 2016 climate that is liable to be more favorable to Republicans.

5. The media will be rooting for her. She's good for the bottom line; off the top of my head, I'd guess that an Obama versus Palin election would generate at least 20-30 percent higher ratings than Obama against Mystery Republican X. Also, some players in the liberal media may be rooting for her because they'll assume that a Palin win in the primary could give Obama an easier path toward re-election.

6. She's tough to campaign against. Why? Because any perceived or real slight against Palin is taken by her supporters as an example of sexism, elitism, or media bias; just wait until Huckabee or Romney makes their first impolitic comment about Palin in a debate or an interview and watch the sparks fly.

7. There are virtually no moderates left in the Republican base. Although, there may be a significant number of independents voting in some of the primary states, which makes things marginally harder for Palin than in election where many independents were sucked into the Democratic primaries.

8. Attempts by the Republican Establishment to neuter her may backfire. This is a corollary of #6 above. If the Establishment, owing to electability concerns or whatever else, tries to put hurdles in her way by re-structuring the primary or delegate allocation process, it may only play into the victimization complex of Palin and her supporters.

9. Parties tend to nominate more extreme candidates in elections against incumbents. This tendency is not all that robust, but you can find plenty of examples of parties nominating extremely liberal/conservative candidates in elections against incumbents, such as George McGovern, Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, and Barry Goldwater. There are some counter-examples too -- Bill Clinton, arguably, and someone like Thomas Dewey if you want to go back that far -- but on balance, parties seem to nominate more extremist candidates in elections against incumbents than in open seat contests.

10. She gets new media; new media gets her. Conservative blogs love Palin, as do most of the shock jocks; they matter a great deal and may help Palin to overcome what I expect will prove to be a relatively shoddy traditional infrastructure.

* - *

Now then, do I think Palin is the favorite to win the Republican primary? Not necessarily. She's certainly not the majority favorite and perhaps not the plurality favorite, depending on who runs. And you could fairly easily come up with a set of ten bullet points to argue against Palin's chances. But I think she'll run, and I think it would be a mistake to discount her chances too significantly given the makeup and mood of the Republican primary electorate.

Handicapping Governors Races One Year Out

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Schaller) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:49:00 +0000

Continuing a series of posts handicapping the 2010 elections one year out—made some general observations here, did some House handicapping here—I’ll turn next to governors races, the vast majority of which are held in midterm cycles. The added significance of the 2010 midterm is that the winners in most states will have a role in the drawing of state legislative and/or US House districts for the coming decade. For all of the focus on Congress, there’s a lot on the line in the battle for statehouses.

Again, I'll start with the Cook Political Report's Jennifer Duffy, who covers gubernatorial races and US Senate races and was on hand to talk about both during CPR's recent political briefing. "I think being governor right now is the worst job in American politics,” said Duffy, for openers, citing budget deficits, layoffs, and furloughs governors and state legislatures are having to make in the face of declining revenues. Duffy said the environment in state capitals is so bad it is probably no coincidence that retreads are surfacing, including four former governors--Jerry Brown in California, Roy Barnes in Georgia, Terry Branstad in Iowa, John Kitzhaber in Oregon, and possibly a fifth, Maryland's Bob Ehrlich--running for their old seats. (I discussed the possibility of an Ehrlich candidacy in my Baltimore Sun column last week.)

Duffy pointed out that 20 of the 37 races slated for next year are open-seat contests--10 for each party--and Duffy thinks there could be more. Her final, general observation was that, looking at the current partisan control of statehouses, "you realize how many seats each party had that didn’t really belong to them" from the standpoint of partisan expecations and presidential behavior of those states. "There’s going to be a lot of [party] trading" in 2010, she predicts. Overall, in terms of net gains, she hinted that Republicans could have the edge, saying that about four out of every five times she has made a rating adjustment it has been to move a seat from a more probable Democratic position to a less probable one (e.g., from leaning Democratic to toss-up, or from toss-up Republican to Republican leaning).

Looking at the table I created above of Duffy's toss-up races--they are her rankings as of 12 days ago; the only part I added was last column, showing the 2006 gubernatorial results--what can we say about these races?

Well, to begin, it would appear that the Democrats have fewer seats in toss-up races. But what this chart does not show are the four state races Duffy rates as either "Republican leaning" (OK, TN, WY) or "Republican likely" (KS) which Democrats currently occupy; she has no such solid/likely/leaning Democratic forecasts of Republican-occupied seats. And it remains to be seen whether having two incumbents running in those four Democratic-held toss-ups is an advantage or disadvantage. A poll out this week has bad news for Iowa's Chet Culver, trailing Branstad by a whopping 24 points. Ritter's approval-disapproval ratings are about even, and an August poll showed him either tied or trailing possible GOP nominees Josh Penry and Scott McInnis.

Meanwhile, the downside for Republicans is that they have a lot of currently-held open seats for which they strong candidates and some of these are in Democratic-leaning states like California, Hawai'i, Rhode Island and Vermont. The most compelling race may be in Minnesota, however, where Tim Pawlenty won narrowly four years ago and might be distracted by presidential politics. Losing re-election would scotch any White House ambitions he has, making him a ripe target for the Democratic Governors Association. And that made me think that maybe--just maybe--Sarah Palin knew what she was doing by getting herself safely out of the way of anti-incumbent fury that may dominate the 2010 cycle.

*AZ Republican Jan Brewer is seeking re-election, though she was of course appointed to fill the seat won in 2006 by Democrat Janet Napolitano, which is why the margin in negative (for Republicans, that is).
^Douglas' margin in Vermont, which has two-year terms, is from 2008. Because an Independent and Democrat split the non-Douglas vote, to provide a more useful result I summed their vote shares and subtracted it from Douglas' 53 percent winning total.

Why Palin Will Run for President in 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:37:00 +0000

As you may know, 538 co-captain Tom Schaller and I have made a couple of bets regarding whether Sarah Palin will run for and win the 2012 Republican nomination for the Presidency. I’ve got the Palin side of both wagers: even money that she’ll run for the Presidency, and the 3-1 odds that Tom has given me on her actually emerging with the nomination. The second wager is not conditional upon the first; I’m responsible for paying Tom provided that Palin does not become the GOP nominee, whether or not she runs for it.

Tom provides two pieces of evidence against Palin running for the nomination. The first is that 2012 is a year when an incumbent, Barack Obama, will almost certainly be running for re-election, and incumbents seats are much tougher to pick up than open ones. The second is that Palin's polling has gone somewhat sour against her potential GOP rivals, which might deter her from entering.

For starters, I'd somewhat dispute Tom's unspoken assumption that Palin is liable to be looking at this decision through such a narrowly rational prism. Was quitting the Alaska governorship -- particularly in the sudden and disorganized way that Palin did it -- a decision characteristic of someone who carefully ponders all the facts and circumstances before jumping to a conclusion? Not hardly. Palin is impulsive, impatient, ambitious, thrill-seeking: not the type of politician to prudently wait for a better moment.

But assuming that Palin is rational, and that her goal is to maximize her chance of someday becoming President (or at least winning the nomination), it's not clear that 2012 is a worse bet for her than 2016. Yes, the GOP, as a whole, is likely to have a better shot at winning the Presidency in 2016 than in 2012. But Palin may also face stiffer competition within her own party in 2016. In part that's precisely because non-incumbent races end to attract stronger candidates – witness, for instance, the poor quality of the Republican field in 1996 – and in part it's because the present field of GOP rivals (Romney, et. al.) seems almost preternaturally weak. By 2016, there is more chance of a fresh face emerging, be it someone relatively new to the national scene like Bob McDonnell of Virginia, someone like Bobby Jindal who stumbled out of the gate but has a good chance to work out some of his kinks, or someone that none of us have even heard of yet.

Another motivator for Palin to run is that her opportunity cost is not very high. Having quit her governorship and apparently declining to challenge Lisa Murkowski for her Senate seat, Palin's next opportunity to run for some sort of high-stature elected office wouldn't come until 2014, when Mark Begich's seat is up in the Senate. Is Palin, who already has a reputation as a quitter, likely to run for that seat, only to have to quit again if she wants to run for the Presidency in 2016? Not hardly.

Until she runs for office again, rather, Palin's role is basically that of a celebrity on her own behalf, and a rabble-rouser on behalf of the GOP. Although each of those things can occupy a goodly amount of one’s time, the media is likely to tire of Palin if she’s not actually making news, and Palin herself may grow tired of not being the center of attention. Moreover, there’s not any evidence that laying low seems to help Palin’s standing with the public; on the contrary, her numbers seemed to have have declined a lot during the past several months, a period during which (until recently) she was not making much news.

The reason I suspect this may be the case is because Palin’s popularity seems to stem not from any particular attributes that she possesses as a candidate, but rather from the reactions that she seems to induce from other people. Only by being in the spotlight can Palin induce liberal pundits to say rude things about her, fellow candidates to behave awkwardly around her, etc. Only in this way can she be the martyr and the underdog, qualities that conceal some of her potential inadequacies. Oddly, the more attention Palin gets, the more of a Rorschach blot she becomes -- which is good for a candidate who most people don't think is qualified to be President on her own merits.

As for the polling, that's something will look at in more depth tomorrow, when I consider Palin's odds of actually winning the nomination. But even if one takes seriously polling conducted 2-3 years in advance of an election, Palin is running at the very worst in a solid second or third place, against candidates who themselves may or may not run for the White House. That's hardly an impossible position. What were Chris Dodd's odds of emerging with the Democratic nomination last year, in a field that was likely to include some combination of Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Barack Obama? What are Tim Pawlenty's in 2012? (Hint: not very high.) The vast majority of candidates running for a Presidential nomination have done so facing substantially longer odds than Palin. And arguably, being incumbent senators or governors (insert crack about "actual responsibilities"), they've given up a lot more in order to do so. Palin has the means, motive, and opportunity to run for the Presidency in 2012, and I'd be surprised if she fails to do so.

Monday Miscellany

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:14:00 +0000

-- Recruitment efforts are becoming seriously problematic for the Democrats. Take North Carolina, for instance, where former State Senator Cal Cunningham now says he won't run to challenge Richard Burr, the latest in a long line of Democrats to do so. Democrats still have a reasonably decent candidate in Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, but this a big step down from Roy Cooper or possibly Heath Shuler, neither of whom were tempted to enter the running. Even if there's some late swing of "momentum" back toward the Democrats next summer as a result of an improving economy or whatever else, they will probably have squandered a couple of opportunities based on fears about the 2010 environment that emerged earlier in the process.

-- Another disappointment for the Democrats: Kay Bailey Hutchison is not going to resign her seat to run for governor, at least until/unless she wins the primary. This is a defensive, and probably smart move for KBH, who appears unlikely to defeat incumbent Rick Perry -- but for all intents and purposes it takes another second-tier pickup opportunity off the board for the Dems.

-- Bill Belichick is not dumb, provided that his goal is to help the New England Patriots win football games. Instead, much of the NFL's conventional wisdom on when to go for it on fourth down is horribly, horribly wrong -- teams are way too conservative and punt way too often. This is the one case where 9-year olds playing Madden -- it's no fun to punt in a video game -- quite literally make better decisions than most NFL head coaches. With that said, since the same flawed conventional wisdom can govern hiring and firing decisions, there may be a price to be paid for unconventional (if statistically correct) playcalling; see also Marty Mornhinweg.

-- Never, ever, for as long as you live, rent a car from Thirfy, who are every bit as cheap as their name implies. Our rental car here in San Francisco got broken into over the weekend and -- while fortunately all of our luggage was out of the vehicle -- the GPS unit that we'd rented with the car was taken. Even though we were paying something like $200 in insurance coverage, the GPS unit was apparently not covered. Not only that, but the replacement cost they want to charge us for the unit ($500) represents something like a 100% markup off what it would cost to buy an equivalent device at Best Buy, which they say we can't do since it won't contain their "custom" software. So these guys are turning burglary into a profit center. Skip over the Thrifty counter the next time you're at the airport rental counter. And by the way, think twice before you buy insurance for your rental car -- the coverage will often be duplicative of what you're already getting through your credit card company or through your existing auto insurance.

-- More on Sarah Palin later today, as I'm preparing my rebuttal to Tom's piece.

Why Compact, Contiguous Districts are Bad for the Democrats

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Gelman) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:19:00 +0000

Jonathan Rodden and Jowei Chen argue that Democrats are underrepresented in Congress and state legislatures because they tend to live in high-density areas. Geographically-compact districting plans will tend to pack Democratic voters into districts where they have 80% of the vote or whatever, thus wasting their votes. They do a voter- and precinct-level analysis of recent elections and find:

In contemporary Florida, partisans are arranged in geographic space in such a way that virtually any districting scheme favoring contiguity and compactness will generate substantial electoral bias in favor of the Republican Party. This result is driven largely by the partisan asymmetry in voters' residential patterns: Since the realignment of the party system, Democrats have tended to live in dense, homogeneous neighborhoods that aggregate into landslide Democratic districts, while Republicans live in more sparsely populated neighborhoods that aggregate into geographically larger and more politically heterogeneous districts. This phenomenon appears to substantially explain the pro-Republican bias observed in Florida's recent legislative elections.

I have just a few things to add to their analysis:

1. More fundamentally, I guess this might be considered a pro-rural or pro-suburban bias, or an anti-urban bias which would fundamentally alter the representation of different parts of the state, no matter which parties happen to represent them.

2. If more Democrats tend to win in super-safe districts where they get 70% or 80% of the vote, does this imply that they will be more free in their voting patterns to indulge their personal preferences, compared to Republicans who (on average) might be under more electoral pressure and have to worry more about reelection?

3. Maybe multimember districts would be a way to balance the playing field. Is this a proposal that Democrats in Florida (or elsewhere) should be making?

Further discussion here.

Politicians Have a Lot of Leeway in How They Vote

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Gelman) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:09:00 +0000

Matthew Yglesias remarks that, when staking out positions, congressmembers are not very strongly constrained by the ideologies of their constituents.

Wow, that was a lot of big words. What I meant to say was: Congressmembers and Senators can pretty much vote how they want on most issues, whatever their constituents happen to believe. Not always, of course, but a representative can take a much more liberal or conservative line than the voters in his or her district or state, and still do fine when election time comes.

Yglesias gives some examples from the U.S. Senate, and I just wanted to back him up by citing some research from the House of Representatives.

First, here's a graph (from chapter 9 of Red State, Blue State; the numbers are based on research with Jonathan Katz) showing that, when running for reelection, it helps for a congressmember to be a moderate--but not by much:

Being a moderate is worth about 2% of the vote in a congressional election: it ain't nuthin, but it certainly is not a paramount concern for most representatives.

To look at this another way, here's a graph showing the members of the House of Representatives in 1993-1994:

Representatives from more politically extreme districts tended themselves to be further to the right (if Republicans) or to the left (if Democrats), but only slightly so, with a lot of exceptions. There's a lot of leeway on where politicians stand.

(And, yes, many of these Democrats did lose in 1994--but, pretty much, the ones that lost were those in marginal districts, not particularly those with extremely liberal ideologies. By this I'm not trying to say the extreme liberals benefited from their ideology--as noted above, I estimate that it hurt them by, on average, a couple percentage points of the vote--but that these couple percentage points didn't really matter much; the partisanship of their districts was much more of the key factor in determining whether they were reelected.)

More discussion here, in the context of the notorious "median voter theorem." As I wrote earlier, I am sympathetic to the related point that it can be a mistake to assume that politicians of your political party agree with you, deep down, on the issues, and that they're only voting differently because of expedience, craven political calculation, or whatever. It's worth considering the hypothesis that lots of Democratic politicians do not share the values and policy preferences of lots of Democratic voters, and similarly for the Republicans. Given the diversity of public opinion, this really has to be true on some issues, and it very well might be true all over the place.

Another way of saying all this is: Incumbent congressmembers almost always win reelection. And, when they don't, they're often losing as part of a national swing (as in the 1994 Republican sweep or the 2006/2008 Democratic shift). And when an incumbent does lose unexpectedly, it can be for something unrelated to their votes (remember the "check kiting scandal" of 1992?).

How the Swine Flu Has Spread

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:12:00 +0000

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak with a couple of engineers from Google who are working on a product known as Google Flu Trends". This is a very simple, yet elegant and important application of what might be termed predictive analytics; if there were awards given out for such things (the Jameys?), it would be a good candidate to win one.

The product, which launched last year, works by analyzing searches that have correlated strongly in the past with flu statistics as put out by the CDC and other governmental agencies; a fuller write-up of the technology can be found in this article in Nature. The advantage of this is that whereas the CDC typically works on a 10 to 14 day lag before new flu statistics are published, the Flu Trends numbers can be turned around literally overnight. Flu Trends does not predict the future per se, so much as it "predicts the present", as the engineers describe it.

The other nice thing about the Flu Trends data is that it is all publicly available. Here, for instance, is when the Flu Trends index hit 5,000 in each U.S. State, a level that would correspond to the peak of a fairly bad annual flu outbreak in the January or February.

This map is fascinating on a number of levels. Although the initial outbreak of H1N1 back in April was centered on Texas, California, New York, Illinois and South Carolina, the place where the flu first hit critical mass several months later was in Louisiana. It then slowly radiated its way outward to most of the neighboring states -- Maine finally hit the 5,000-point threshold just last week. There also appear to be other points from which the flu spread -- a less prominent 'epicenter', for instance, centered in Minnesota and the Dakotas. And somehow, there came to be quite a lot of flu at various points in both Alaska and Hawaii -- Hawaii's peak actually came way back in June and July, well before the one in the Deep South.

The flu has not been especially widespread in Florida, perhaps because Florida has a lot of old people and -- unlike the seasonal flu -- H1N1 has mostly attacked younger individuals. The other state which has yet to hit the 5,000-point barrier is Utah, which is somewhat culturally isolated from the rest of the country.

The good news is that, according to Flu Trends, the flu is pretty much on the decline in all states except Northern New England. The bad news is that we're starting to approach the point where the seasonal flu usually starts to grow in advance of its typical January or February peak; how these two trends will intersect, I don't purport to know.

Time for Dems to Panic?

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:16:00 +0000

A Gallup poll released yesterday showed the Republicans with a 4-point lead on the House generic ballot -- a reversal from October, when the Democrats had maintained a 2-point lead. Making matters worse for Democrats, this was a poll of registered voters -- not the likely voter samples that have generally contained worse news for them because of the apparent Republican edge in enthusiasm.

So -- is it time for Democrats to push the panic button? Or is this poll some kind of outlier?

Probably a little of both. There's no obvious flaw in the Gallup poll -- the question wording is as standard as it gets, the sample size is decent (894 people), and Gallup is a classy and reliable pollster. Scenarios in which Democrats lose a large number of seats in the House are fairly likely, and scenarios in which they lose their majority are quite possible.

Still, I find it unlikely that there's been quite as substantial a shift as Gallup suggests. Rasmussen also shows significant problems for the Democrats, giving the Republicans a 6-point lead in their generic ballot using their likely voter model. That's somewhat worse than the Republican leads of 1 to 5 points that they had shown since Labor Day, although Rasmussen has generally painted a pessimistic case for the Democrats, with Team Red polling as high as +7 on two occasions in August.

Pew, on the other hand, shows the Democrats at a +5 -- actually a little better than the +1 they polled in their last generic ballot test in late August. And YouGov has the Dems at a +9 -- showing essentially no trend for the past several months -- although as an Internet-based poll and one that samples all adults rather than registered or likely voters, I'm not sure how seriously that data point should be taken.

Meanwhile, there's been no obvious trend in Presidential approval -- Barack Obama's numbers have been essentially unchanged for three months now. On the other hand, some of the latest Senate numbers have not been kind to the Democrats, with Quinnipiac bringing a double-dose of bad news in Ohio and Connecticut today.

Gallup's poll was also conducted entirely after the elections of last Tuesday, which none of the other polls were. But that can cut both ways. On the one hand, the poll is the most recent; on the other, the elections were generally regarded as a 'win' for the Republicans, giving them a couple of days of favorable news coverage, and it's not atypical to see a (temporary, usually) bounce in a party or candidate's numbers if polling is conducted during such a period.

My 30,000-foot view is that between the pressures of the jobs situation and the health care debate, the Democrats are in fairly bad shape. But, there's a long way to go before next year, and their situation does not seem to be quite as bad as it was in August.

Certainly, if I were the Democrats, I'd be adopting a fairly defensive posture, putting money into defending seats -- especially those held by non-Blue Dog incumbents -- rather than getting cute and trying to pick off more than a handful of potentially vulnerable Republican seats. I'd also be thinking about policies -- like a jobs package and financial regulation -- that tap a little bit into the populist spirit and might result in somewhat awkward Republican positioning.

So, should the Democrats be panicking? Yeah, maybe a little. But the fundamentals -- particularly the poor labor situation and the Republican enthusiasm advantage -- should be the reasons for their concern, rather than the results of any one particular poll.

For the Soccer Fans Among You

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:13:00 +0000

Much of my summer was spent on a consulting project that I did in conjunction with ESPN, in which I helped them a design a soccer ratings system known as the Soccer Power Index (SPI). SPI launched today and we're pretty proud of the results, which feature a combination of intuitive (Brazil and Spain are #1 and 2, natch) and somewhat bolder rankings (SPI is fond of 'second-tier' South American teams like Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay, as well as African up-and-comers Ivory Coast). The United States is ranked 14th.

Unlike other soccer ratings systems, SPI is explicitly designed to be predictive -- so a team like Argentina, which in fact struggled to qualify for the World Cup, won't be penalized that much provided the system is convinced that the talent is still there. The two main innovations in the SPI are to incorporate results from club play -- if Cameroonian striker Samuel Eto'o scores a goal for Inter Milan, it will (marginally) help Cameroon's rating -- as well as to incorporate a "competitiveness coefficient" based on the actual lineups that each team used in each match. The latter is important because international soccer clubs play a lot of matches -- friendlies, some second-tier international tournaments -- in which they're essentially sending their taxi squads in, which tell us very little about the teams that will actually be on the field in South Africa next year.

Anyway, this is a politics blog -- not a sports one -- so I'll direct you over to the very, very, long article on methodology I did at ESPN.com if you're curious about the details -- or check out the Wall Street Journal's Carl Bialak for a good capsule summary.

House Handicapping One Year Out

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Schaller) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:57:00 +0000

One year out, how many losses might we project for Nancy Pelosi’s House majority? Which Democrats are most vulnerable? Piggybacking on the post I wrote last week after attending the latest Cook Political Report political briefing at their Watergate offices, I'll take a look the analysis by CPR’s David Wasserman, and perhaps tweak it a bit.

Wasserman identified five factors--in chart above, the five columns starting with "CT" for "cap-n-trade"--that might be indicators of vulnerability for House Democratic incumbents next year:

1. Did they vote “yes” on the so-called cap-and-trade bill?
2. Is their district’s Partisan Voting Index—a measure produced for CPR by Polidata which reflects the partisan performance of the major parties’ presidential candidates during the 2004 and 2008 cycles—scored at D+5 or less?
3. Is their district’s PVI R+5 or more?
4. Was their 2008 popular vote 55 percent or less?
5. Does their opponent have at least $100,000 cash on hand as of 9/30/09?

Based on those criteria, there are 28 Democrats who match on at least four factors, including one--Maryland 1st District rookie Congressman Frank Kratovil--who matches on all five. Though these are not necessarily the 28 Democrats Wasserman rates as most endangered--there is some but not perfect overlap between these 28 and the 12 Democratic-held districts he rates as "toss-up" races and another 21 he rates as "leaning Democratic"--many could be in serious trouble next November. (Kratovil, I should note, has at least one compensatory advantage over the others: The Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (MD-8), has a vested interest in defending a seat in his home state.)

Wasserman included the cap-and-trade vote, he says, because voting for it may be particularly dangerous for Democrats from districts containing significant chunks of those white working-class areas depicted in that now-famous map of the 22 percent of counties nationally where John Kerry in 2004 outperformed Barack Obama in 2008. "In the rural areas of the South—the parts of the South were Barack Obama did worse than John Kerry in 2004—there is an open revolt against Democrats and particularly Barack Obama," said Wasserman. He cited as specific evidence of this revolt from last week the coal-heavy and thus highly cap-and-trade resistant 3rd Delegate District in the southwest corner Virginia, the Appalachian county that uniquely borders both Kentucky and West Virginia. Mark Warner got 61% of the vote in 2001 in District 3, Tim Kaine dropped to 49% in 2005, Obama slipped further to 40% last year, and Creigh Deeds plummeted to just 32% last week. "In places like this all across the South," Wasserman quipped, "as Toby Keith would say, ‘the fit’s gonna hit the shan.’ ”

For kicks, I decided to add two factors/columns to Wasserman's analysis. The first is for the recent vote on the House health care bill ("HC"), on which 39 Democrats voted nay. (A good list and analysis of the 39 can be found in the New York Times.) Those Democrats are explaining their votes in a variety of ways, and of course a "nay" vote may be the potentially more electorally damaging for many Democrats. But, for the sake of argument, let's presume that voting for the House bill is an added risk factor for 16 of the 28 who voted "aye."

I also added a column showing the comparative cash-on-hand advantage (or in some cases disadvantage) for each of these 28 incumbent Democrats ("Ratio"). I calculated this as cash-on-hand minus outstanding debts as of September 30, 2009 (data courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics here), and then created an incumbent-to-challenger COH ratio by dividing the incumbent's COH by the challenger's. This relative money advantage is useful because (a) it contextualizes the financial competitiveness of challengers who have cleared the $100K bar relative to the incumbent they aim to unseat, as least as of 9/30/09; and, relatedly, (b) because the party committees (DCCC, NRCC) look at fundraising competitiveness as one indicator of challenger strength, the smaller this ratio is for the incumbent the smaller still it could become, as the RNCC and strategic givers gravitate to races they believe will yield better returns on their investments. For lack of a better cut point, I counted as another risk point any Democrat who does not presently enjoy a 3:1 or better COH ratio. (I rounded up OH's Boccieri ratio to 3; all others below that gained a point.)

I'm not quibbling with Wasserman's analyses. Maybe the health care vote will not be very predictive next November, and surely there will be some well-funded incumbents who lose and others who win despite well-funded challengers. I'm just updating the analysis to include one new policy factor and one updated political factor. One could also set different (wider?) thresholds for the PVI ratings, and so on.

In any case, the way I've done it stratifies these 28 into three groups, including those who may be most at risk among the at-risk: the ones score a "6." (Kratovil was the only one with a chance for a "7," but he voted "nay" on the health care bill.) There are not a lot of members from those Appalachian-area districts who voted for the health care bill--which is ironic, given that some of them represent districts with high uninsured rates, but let's not even go there right now. NH's Carol Shea-Porter and northern Virginia's Gerry Connolly are good examples members who may be helped by voting "aye." On the other hand, those who are from such areas and voted "nay" may still face money problems, like AL's Bobby Bright and MS's Travis Childers.

We'll just have to wait a year to see how much these key votes and the candidates' finances matter come 2010 midterm Election Day.

Is the Prognosis For Health Care Getting Better or Worse? The Market Weighs In.

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:36:00 +0000

It's a bit hard to assess where we are in the health care debate. On the one hand, the Democrats pushed through and passed a bill in the late hours of Saturday evening, clearing a hurdle that meaningful health care reform has never before cleared. On the other hand, the vote in the House perilously close, there were new complications introduced by the Stupak amendment, and the bad jobs numbers and arguably the outcomes of the elections last Tuesday Virginia and New Jersey last will give nervous lawmakers plenty to worry about.

One leading indicator of the prospects for health care reform so far has been the performance of the half-dozen or so publicly-traded health insurance company stocks. Favorable developments for health care reform have been met with decreases in the prices of these stocks, and unfavorable developments with improved valuations. So what's happened to these stocks since market close on Friday -- before the House passed its health care bill?

Well, not much. Actually, that's not true: they've gained an average of 1.8 percent so far, weighted for market capitalization. But the S&P 500 has gained 2.1 percent over the same day-and-a-half of trading, meaning that the performance of the health insurance stocks is right on par with the market. The news has not been good or bad so much as indifferent -- which feels, intuitively to me, like about the right assessment.

Interestingly, the markets had a much less ambiguous assessment of the elections, with health insurance stocks gaining an average of 3.7 percent over the course of the day on Wednesday while the S&P -- after a volatile session -- was basically unchanged:

I don't necessarily think that the stock market is particularly adept at forecasting political risk, but to the extent that you're looking for an objective assessment of the consequences of lats week's results for the Democratic agenda, this is a pretty decent one.

Many Previously Pro-Choice Dems Voted for Stupak Amendment

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:52:00 +0000

When I first learned that the Stupak Amendment, which would prevent abortion from being covered under health care plans included in the health care insurance exchanges, had passed by a 240-194 margin in the House, I assumed that something like the following happened: anybody who was either pro-life or who disapproved of the health care bill in general had voted for it.

Certainly, that description is apt for the half-dozen or so generally pro-choice Republicans, all of whom voted both for the Stupak Amendement and against the health care bill. But it doesn't really hold for the Democrats.

Rather, I was surprised at the number of Democrats who have solid pro-choice voting records but who nevertheless voted for Stupak Amendment. And the vast majority of these Democrats voted for, not against, passage of the underlying health care bill.

The below chart lists the 'yea' votes on Stupak among those representatives who had a rating of 67 in 2007-08 according to Planned Parenthood, and a rating of 33 or lower according to the National Right to Life Committee. (Note: no freshmen representatives are listed on this chart as they have not been rated yet.)

As you can see, 17 of the 20 Democrats who fell into this category voted for final passage of the health care bill. So what gives?

I'm sure there are idiosyncratic explanations in a number of cases, but I take this as a sign that they're worried about the re-election environment they'll face in 2010. 11 of the 20 pro-choice Democrats who voted for Stupak reside in districts that are rated as vulnerable according to Cook Political (note: candidates who are leaving the House to run for Senate or governor are rated based on those races instead). And, interestingly, they seem to think that a pro-choice vote would render them more vulnerable than a pro-health care vote, even though the pro-choice position is generally more popular than the health care bill on the table at the moment (although some recent polls have shown the pro-choice position losing ground).

Certainly, on health care, some of this may be a consequence of the logic that James Carville and others have espoused: Democrats know -- or believe -- that they'll be damned if don't pass a health care bill, so why not take the chance that things will turn out OK if they do? But there may also be something more here. Whereas the pro-life (anti-choice) movement is very well organized and has a long history of delivering votes, the anti-health care movement is somewhat disjointed, seemed to be limited in its electoral reach in NY-23, and carries a lot of baggage -- Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, town hall screamers, and the like. And it may also be revealing of how they perceive their own base: whereas health care is a sine qua non for most Democratic base voters, they seem to be betting that the pro-choice position might no longer be.

Republicans Far Behind on Women Legislators

noreply@blogger.com (Renard Sexton) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:30:00 +0000

On the front page of Politico this morning, a message of warning to congressional Republicans:

The gist of the article was as follows -- as the Republican party has pushed out moderates, it has tended to appear more hostile to women candidates and congresswomen. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) was quoted as saying that the GOP "is a party that doesn’t respect women, a party that doesn’t believe women are equal to men," while former Republican conference chair Deborah Pryce bemoaned the loss of moderates in general -- many, she maintained, being women.

The article cites the major difference in proportion between Republican and Democratic women, with women making up nearly 23 percent of the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives, while less than ten percent of Republican congresspeople are women. In the U.S. Senate, the proportions are just about the same.

However, truth be told, the problem identified in the Politico article is quite a bit broader than simply the GOP's turn to the right in recent years.

The US trails behind OECD allies other than Japan and Turkey, often by a significant margin.

However, when we compare the Republican Party with other conservative parties and coalitions in the OECD DAC (wealthiest democracies in Europe, North America and Japan) -- the case studies are bolded above -- there is a fascinating result.

Let's start with Sweden, the highest OECD country on the list.

Both the governing centre-right coalition in Sweden, led by the Moderate party, and the left side of Sweden's political spectrum have extremely high representation by women in the Parliament. The range is fairly high, with the farthest left party ("the Left") having more women than men, while the conservative Centre party has just 38 percent women.

In Germany's Bundestag (using 2005 data, since current data on gender and party was hard to come by), again the break between left and right is quite significant, with a 17 point gap separating the two coalitions, though at this time the government was run by a grand coalition between the SPD and CDU/CSU.

Japan's Diet reflects the recent strength of the Democratic Party of Japan, which just months ago thrashed the traditionally powerful Liberal Democratic Party. The rather low percentages of women in both camps reflect Japan's low position on the global chart -- 97th overall.

In order to compare apples to apples in this analysis, the real question is how a party fares within its own political system, as compared to other parties within their systems. So, for example, comparing U.S. Republicans to the Swedish Liberal Party or the Moderates would tell us more about the difference between Sweden and the U.S. rather than how close each party is to the center of their electorate.

Comparing U.S. Republicans to U.S. Democrats, it turns out that Republicans (the right of the U.S. in this model) are by far the lowest in terms of proportional representation of women legislators within their political system, as compared to other conservative parties and coalitions

In other words, as a proportion of the Democrat's percentage, the Republican Party has the lowest percentage of women legislators, as compared to the shares of the conservatives in the other three countries. In fact, as the percentage of women parliamentarians in Germany rose in the 2009 election (from 31.8 percent to 32.8 percent, with 9 new women) in an election with a victory from the center-right, the gap is likely even larger than this chart suggests.

The U.S. political right, namely Republicans, has a long way to go to modernize and moderate towards the center of the American political spectrum on gender issues, something we have know for quite some time. A turn towards a hard conservative line since 2006 has only amplified the gap. Perhaps the rising influence of moderate Republican women like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, signals the importance of this change for the future of the party, but no such high profile individuals have yet been spotted on the House side. Indeed, the flogging of Dede Scozzafova in NY-23 indicates that those who might want to step into this role could be quickly pushed out by conservative activists.
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* A star signifies that a party is in the majority or in the governing coalition

Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com

Real Oklahoma Students Ace Citizenship Exam; Strategic Vision Survey Was Likely Fabricated

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:30:00 +0000

In detailing some of the evidence against Strategic Vision LLC, a pollster I am now almost certain is disreputable and fraudulent, I pointed in particular to a poll that they conducted on behalf of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, an conservative-leaning educational thinktank. The poll purported to show that Oklahoma's high school citizens were deficient in some of the most basic aspects of citizenship. Only 23 percent of them knew that George Washington was the first president, the poll claimed! Just 43 percent knew that the Democrats and Republicans are the two major political parties!

These conclusions seemed dubious to me on their face. Several years ago, at my old consulting job, I participated in a project for the State of Ohio's public schools which involved sitting down in a third or fifth grade classroom for the better part of a day and seeing how the students were learning. Most of these observations took place in poor, post-industrial towns, which were still suffering the effects of the steel mill or the axle plant that had long ago left town. What struck me, most of all, was how smart the kids were, relative to my expectations. These kids might not have been the highest achievers -- but I'm pretty sure that more than 90 percent of them would have known who George Washington was. And these were third and fifth graders.

There were other hints too, that Strategic Vision's poll may have been fake. The scores that Strategic Vision claimed the kids had gotten, for instance, were strangely underdispersed. And they seemed to contradict results from Oklahoma's own standardized testing, which asked much more difficult citizenship questions and found most of the students doing just fine.

It turns out that I was not the only person who had doubts about the survey. So did Ed Cannaday, the State Representative from Oklahoma's 15 House District.

In a telephone interview yesterday, Cannaday told me he was shocked when he heard of the results, which had received widespread media attention. "When I saw the statistics, I was just flabbergasted and said it cannot be true," he told me.

There were two items in particular that sent up warning flags for him: the one claiming that only 23 percent of the students knew the identity of George Washington, and another that claimed that about one in every ten students had listed the two major political parties as "Republican and Communist".

"Given the dialog of today, if they had said Republican and socialist, then maybe," Cannaday told me. "But communist -- that's just not something that you throw out there any more. I don't think Sarah Palin even used that term."

Cannaday, age 69, would be in a position to know. Before entering the State Legislature three years ago, he had spent decades in education, first as a teacher in a large public school in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and then in Oklahoma where he set up an alternative school. After a stint in private business, Cannaday returned to classroom, first as a teacher and then as a principal, and then -- finding he missed the one-on-one interaction with his students -- as a teaching principal at a small school in House District 15. He now serves on the House's education committee in Oklahoma City, and continues to pay regular visits to the schools in his district. "Most schools like to have me once a month," he says, to talk about legislation pending before the state.

Cannaday therefore had little difficulty setting up an experiment: he arranged to have all the seniors in the 10 secondary schools in his district take the Strategic Vision/OCPA survey. Cannaday tried to replicate the Strategic Vision survey to the greatest extent possible. The same exact questions were used, and as in the case of the original survey, the answers were open-ended rather than multiple choice. The survey was administered to a total of 325 seniors, including special education students.

Cannaday's survey however, found his students doing just fine: They answered an average of 7.8 out of the 10 questions correctly. By comparison, the high school students that were purportedly surveyed by Strategic Vision had gotten just 2.8 out of the items correct. 98 percent of the students on Cannaday's survey -- not 23 percent -- knew that George Washington was the first President. 81 percent -- not 14 percent -- knew that Thomas Jefferson had written the Declaration of Independence. 95 percent -- not 43 percent -- knew that the Democrats and Republicans are the major political parties. There was just no comparison between the two.

Cannaday distributed his results via e-mail to the constituents on his mailing list, including Karina Henderson, who published his findings in a dairy at Daily Kos. He also sent hard copies to each of the schools in his district, as well as all of Oklahoma's state legislators. The reaction so far has been entirely positive -- "even from the Republicans," said Cannaday, a Democrat.

Cannaday also sent his results to OCPA, the thinktank that had commissioned the survey, but has yet to receive a response. In October, before the results of Cannaday's survey had surfaced, OCPA had told the Oklahoma Gazzette that they were taking "a closer look at the raw data and the methodology,” behind the Strategic Vision survey but were not yet ready to "toss out" the results.

House District 15 is generally quite representative of Oklahoma, especially its Eastern portion, but is somewhat poorer than the state as a whole. "Rural" was the first adjective that came to mind when I asked Cannaday to describe his district -- no town has more than 3,000 people. Most of the residents make their living in the natural gas industry, commute to service-sector jobs in the comparatively large towns of Muskogee, Oklahoma or Fort Smith, Arkansas, or are engaged in what Cannaday calls "cow/calf operations". The five counties that make up the district range from middle-class to impoverished. Haskell County, for instance, where the town of Stigler is located, has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state and one of the largest proportions of its students on free and reduced lunch programs, the preferred benchmark of socioeconomic status in public education. House District 15 has no private schools.

Cannaday is proud of the achievements of his students -- particularly their low drop-out rate, which is about five percent, and their success in the state's mock trial tournaments, where they've frequently finished in the top 5 in the state competing against much larger schools. He has seen his students become doctors, attorneys, optometrists and accountants, he told me. "Any time you can have one of your former students in your district who's on speed dial in Oklahoma City as a physician, that's not too bad," he said.

But the schools in House District 15, which sends 40-50 percent of its students to college and sees 20-25 percent compete it -- are not exceptional in any obvious way. The students at Haskell High School, for instance, received below-average scores in 5 of the 7 categories tested by Oklahoma's standard exam, including in U.S. History.

There is no reason to think, in other words, that the students in House District 15 should have gotten such profoundly superior results to the "students" in Strategic Vision's survey. Nor could Strategic Vision's results have been the result of any sort of mathematical or methodological oddity. Consider their claim that literally none of the 1,000 students they surveyed were able to answer more than 7 of the 10 questions correctly -- lower than the average score achieved in Cannaday's test.

There are, rather, only two possibilities. Either the Strategic Vision survey was entirely fabricated -- or Cannaday's was.

I would put every dollar to my name on Cannaday, who has kept the surveys and is happy to show them to them to anyone who comes asking.

Next week is Celebrate Freedom Week in Oklahoma, with public schools students to be taught from a special curriculum highlighting the Declaration of Independence. "If were going to be pass education reform then we need to be out in the classroom demonstrating it," Cannaday said of his fellow legislators. "I will be in a classroom Friday," he told me. "I enjoy it."

I e-mailed to David E. Johnson, the CEO of Strategic Vision, a draft of this article and asked for any comments. The entirety of his comments were as follows:

"Thank you for the opportunity to respond. Our company did survey the Oklahoma students grades 9-12 for the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. Our client has all of the raw data, cross tabs, methodology from the survey."

Johnson did not reply to a second e-mail asking for his interpretation of the substantial difference between his results and those found by Cannaday.

House Likely to Pass Health Care Bill Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:31:00 +0000

I don't like to make non-substantive posts such as this one. But the comments in the previous article are getting a bit unwieldy, so I'll leave this up as a placeholder for anyone spending their Saturday night watching C-SPAN. The U.S. House is debating health care tonight and is expected to pass it. A previous 538 analysis had forecast that a bill much like the one under debate tonight would get about 222 votes. It looks like Pelosi may do a bit better than that, thanks to a sort of Faustian bargain on abortion. On the other hand, if she has votes to spare, she may will release some of her more vulnerable members, so anything from the bare minimum of 218 up to the mid 230s seems possible.

UPDATE: (12:54 AM) The bill passes, 220-215; roll call can be found here. Our original projection wound up being really good -- we'd projected 220 Democratic and 2 Republican yeas; in fact there was 219 Democratic and 1 Republican yea. Although, for a variety of reasons, this was a relatively easy projection to make.

Unemployment Hits 10.2 Percent

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:11:00 +0000

Oops. Back in August, I said that I thought there was only about a 1 in 3 chance that unemployment would break the 10 percent barrier. I think it was a well-reasoned analysis, but sure did turn out wrong.

The data from the establishment survey -- which is completely separate from the household survey by which the unemployment rate is calculated -- wasn't quite as bad. This is the figure that the markets tend to trust more, which is one reason the Dow is slightly up today (although I do think it's somewhat overvalued and has been for a month or so). Still, even the "good" report had the economy shedding another 190,000 jobs.

Not that it necessarily means anything, but there's an odd symmetry to that graph: a period from January through August last year where the payroll deltas were bad, but fairly steady from month to month, and then an inverted peak where things were really awful, and now what looks to be another sort of plateau. January 2008 was the month when the payrolls figure turned negative, and they were at their worst in January 2009 -- if things indeed turn out to be symmetric, that would mean that January 2010 is the last month when the economy is still shedding jobs, and February when it starts creating them.

This stuff ought to be much more of a reason for Democrats to worry than whatever happened on Tuesday. Even if the jobs come back a little faster than expected once the employment picture in fact turns the corner, which I think is possible, voters are liable to be looking at an unemployment rate on the order of 9.5 percent as they go to the polls for the midterms.

Skipping Elections, Strategic Vision Has Not Polled Since Controversy Arose

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:55:00 +0000

Several weeks ago, I ignited a controversy by pointing toward statistical evidence that Strategic Vision, LLC, a Blairsville, Georgia based public relations firm that until recently had issued political polls, may have been faking its results. Strategic Vision vehemently denied my interpretation of the evidence and made public threats to sue me. But no lawyer has contacted me, and in fact, Strategic Vision has not conducted any further public polling since that time.

The firm's last poll was issued on September 24th -- one day before the controversy arose. It was a poll of the governor's race and other contests in New Jersey, a state which Strategic Vision has polled frequently for many years, including on 4/22, 6/24, 7/22 and 9/24 of this year. And yet, even as the race drew closer and began to receive widespread national attention, Strategic Vision did not issue any fresh polling. This contrasts with previous patterns in which they had accelerated their polling schedule prior to elections, including the previous gubernatorial election in New Jersey in 2005 when Strategic Vision issued its final poll of the contest on November 2nd of that year.

Strategic Vision's CEO, David E. Johnson, was interviewed by the Washington Times about the Virginia gubernatorial race in late October. And Strategic Vision has issued a couple of press releases on matters unrelated to politics; on October 16th, for instance, they issued a press release to announce that they would be "offering people within the toy industry free thirty-minute consultations to jumpstart their marketing and publicity efforts for the holidays and Toy Fair 2010." But in general, they've had very little public presence over the past several weeks.

One of the facts that may be significant here is that it appears that polling has never been Strategic Vision's main source of income. A search of Congressional Quarterly's Moneyline database sent to me by DavidNYC of Swing State Project turned up just $5,795 in disbursements to Strategic Vision from committees and candidates for federal office since 2004. All came in 2004 from Mike Crotts, a former candidate in Georgia's 8th Congressional District, and none were for polling -- instead, the expenditures were marked as being for website design and advertising. By contrast, the prolific and well-regarded Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies had more than $20 million in disbursements over the same period, covering more than 220 clients.

Now, Strategic Vision has clearly gotten some business from polling clients -- the aforementioned series of surveys they did for the Friedman Foundation, for instance. And the CQ Moneyline database will not cover gubernatorial candidates or candidates for other state and local offices. Strategic Vision claims on its website to have conducted polling on behalf of candidates for the U.S. Senate in Kansas and Florida, and candidates for the U.S. House in FL-13 and GA-8, but the identities of the candidates are not specified. An e-mail sent to David E. Johnson inquiring whether the CQ Moneyline database accurately reflected the limited scope of their polling for federal candidates was not returned. In any event, their client list appears to be rather limited, especially when compared with the volume of public polling that Strategic Vision has released, which by its own estimation would have cost it a couple million dollars had it actually been conducted.

The reason this might be relevant is that it may give Strategic Vision more incentive to essentially adopt a "duck-and-cover" strategy and make a quiet exit from the polling business. If Strategic Vision were more dependent on polling clients for its revenues, then it would probably have wanted to make a more vigorous effort to defend its reputation. But in light of their unwillingness or inability to do so, it appears they may have concluded that releasing additional public polling would only invite renewed scrutiny and further damage their reputation. In other words, they may have decided to cut their losses and focus on their original line of business in public relations, presumably hoping that prospective clients in the toy manufacturing or literary services businesses are far enough removed from the political world that they won't care about the possibility that Strategic Vision has faked some or all of their polls.

The Big 2010 Question

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Schaller) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:05:00 +0000

Just attended a morning-long presentation by the team over at the Cook Political Report--namesake Charlie Cook, affiliated pollster Tom Riehle, gubernatorial/Senate specialist Jennifer Duffy, and House specialist David Wasserman. I have lots of details, plenty of stats and trends and other goodies to share and unpack for you, and will do so in a series of posts in the coming days.

But as I walked back from the Watergate to my Logan Circle neighborhood, I became increasingly convinced that the big question for both parties--and particularly the Democrats--is one I raised this morning on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan show: How replicable is Barack Obama's precedent-setting presidential coalition in an off-year election?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It's easy to just say, well, it's not replicable. Of course it isn't exactly replicable. The so-called "Obama surge" voters clearly will not turn out at the same rates, and thus not constitute the same proportion of the electorate a year from now that they did a year ago. So the question really is, To what degree, along some continuum between the 2008 presidential electorate and the ones from the 2009 elections this week, will 2010 look like one or other other? And looking backward may provide poor guidance: Because there's never been an electorate assembled like the one Obama did in 2008, we've also never had a post-Obama midterm cycle.

Yes, issues and the economic-political environment and the resources that candidates and parties--money, quality of candidates, messaging, field and contacting operations--will all be contributing factors next November. I will come back in a future posts to talk about which of these factors might buffer the expected Democratic losses, and which might exacerbate them.

But all of these factors are ultimately mediated to some, significant degree by the electorate and its composition. That said, I want to start this series of posts with a very simple question that is, more or less, directed at the Obama White House political operation, and can be rather simply stated: One year out, what are you planning to do in order to safeguard your newly-acquired congressional, gubernatorial and even state legislative majorities?

This question in turn begets a variety of sub- and even sub-sub-questions, for which the following is hardly an exhaustive list:

On agenda-setting, do you need to constrict the national policy conversation to fewer agenda items, presumably those more finely attuned to the national economic situation, and how can you do that? Even David Frum admits that rising health care costs the past decade consumed potential income gains...but how many Americans truly understand this and, even for those who do, how long are they willing to wait for their incomes to rise again as a result of savings on premiums? Relatedly, for those without an earned income right now, what messages and themes are you planning to deploy if unemployment a year from now is not significantly below 10 percent?
On candidates--and this question also lands squarely in the laps of DSCC chair Bob Menendez, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen and DGA chair Brian Schweitzer--are you thinking about where the president will be a co-campaigning, coattail asset and where he will be a drag? Which races will you attempt to localize and which will you attempt to nationalize? Given rising frustration with incumbents, do you need a different strategy for incumbent, challenger and open-seat Democrats? Speaking of potentially open seats, how do you make sure that worried Democratic incumbents do not retire this cycle?
On contacting and turnout, for downballot Democrats, how much are you going to make available the types of voter and fundraising lists, as well as volunteer tools and tactics generated between late 2007 and Election Day 2008 to elect Obama? Indeed, which sorts of resources are even transferable, which not, and how do you utilize the ones that are? Are you at all worried that the technology chasm you created between the parties in 2008 will narrow or even disappear by 2010, and if so, how worried and what will you do about that?
On messaging, what will it take to mobilize the "Obama surge" voters? Do they need to have the 2010 midterms contextualized as a safeguard of their votes cast for the president in 2008? How much of their turnout and support is a function of Obama-mania, or whatever you want to call the specific attachment to the president as a political identity/commodity, and how much of it represents a medium- to longer-term established political identity and partisan attachment? Are you surveying these people about their post-election attitudes and concerns? In order not to trigger an older and/or white voter backlash, might you need to use dog-whistle signaling to the younger and more multi-racial "surge" voters to get them to turn out in 2010, and if so, how will you do that?

I realize it's far easier to pose questions than to answer them. But these questions need to be asked, and the Obama political team--which I suspect is thinking about them this week if they weren't already--had better start generating some answers.