Election Analysis
The Latest on GOP Electoral Vote Shenanigans
Various news sources over the past few days provide indications that Republican schemes to rig the electoral vote in future elections may have hit some roadblocks in two key states.
In Florida, reports indicate that GOP House Speaker Will Weatherford opposes the change from a winner-take-all system to a system that would award electors based on congressional districts. Although Republicans dominate the Florida legislature (76-44 in the House and 26-14 in the Senate), chances are zero that any bill will move forward in the House without the Speaker’s blessing.
In Virginia, numerous reports indicate that at least two Republican state senators and GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell oppose such a change. With the State Senate evenly divided, 20-20, any Republican defections would likely kill the proposed legislation.
Now, consider this for a minute. Why do you think it is, in states like Florida and Virginia, that the Republicans appear to be backing down on a scheme that would guarantee Republicans a majority of their states’ electoral votes, regardless of whether Republican presidential candidates actually win the states? Well, it’s pretty simple: at least some Republicans still believe that a Republican presidential candidate can win those states in future elections. To split the states’ electors, in Florida and Virginia, could eventually come back to work against the GOP. (Had such a system been in place in those states in 2000, Al Gore would have become president.)
Although Virginia appears to be trending Democratic at the presidential level, it is still close enough that a very strong Republican candidate could win it (or a weak Democrat could lose it). And we all know that Florida persists in being an up-for-grabs state that either side can win. In fact, President Obama barely won it in 2012 (and it was so close that it was the only state I predicted incorrectly). So for Republicans to split those states’ electors may one day deprive a Republican of victory in a close election. It would be a stupid move, and I expect that Republican legislators in Ohio will come to the same conclusion and keep the current winner-take-all format in place. (President Obama only won Ohio by about two percentage points in 2012, which means that Ohio remains a couple points more Republican than the nation as a whole, as it has been consistently for most of the last century; in a 50-50 presidential election, such as 2000, Ohio is a near-certainty to go Republican.)
While it is undoubtedly a relief to hear that Florida and Virginia may not move forward with this plan, we should still be concerned about a move to fix the elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the other three states that went Democratic in 2012 but remained under the control of Republican governors and legislatures. President Obama easily won each of those three states in 2012, and none of them have gone to a Republican presidential candidate in a generation. (Pennsylvania and Michigan barely went for George H.W. Bush in 1988, and Wisconsin last supported a Republican for president in 1984. That would be Ronald Reagan, who captured 49 states that year and barely lost the 50th, Minnesota, which voted for native son Walter Mondale by about 4,000 votes.)
In short, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have consistently been more Democratic in presidential elections than the nation as a whole for a long, long time. For example, the last time Michigan’s vote went more Republican than the national vote happened in 1976, when the state voted for Michigan native Gerald Ford. In a 50-50 presidential election, these states are all but certain to vote Democratic.
The reason it is still a very real possibility that Republicans may change the electoral allocation in one or more of those three states is because they see no realistic chance that their presidential candidate will win any of them at any time in the foreseeable future. As a result, unlike the situation in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, Republicans have nothing to lose by fiddling with the electors in Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin.
The GOP proposals in these states are heinous—an absolute insult both to the concept of equal voting rights for all citizens, and to the very idea of democracy itself. Because the GOP has drawn those states’ congressional districts in such a way that Republicans are disproportionately represented in each state, their proposed reforms would virtually guarantee that any Republican presidential candidate would win a majority of the states’ electors, despite losing those states by significant margins.
Michigan would be the most egregious case. President Obama won the state by nearly 10 percent, but under the current Republican proposal, Mitt Romney would have taken nine of the state’s 16 electoral votes, and Obama would have won seven. In Pennsylvania, where the president won statewide by about five percent, Romney would have gotten at least 12 electoral votes, possibly 13, and Obama would have received no more than eight, possibly just seven. And in Wisconsin, where the president won the state by more than five percent, the electors likely would have split 5-5.
Now, let’s take a look at what might have happened in the 2012 election if this scheme had been in place in just Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. As it happened, President Obama defeated Governor Romney by nearly five million votes nationally, and the president won 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206. Under the GOP election-rigging proposal, the electoral vote spread would have shrunk to Obama 306, Romney 232.
Now, let’s say the president’s reelection had been slightly closer—say, perhaps, that he had won by four million votes nationally, rather than nearly five million. That certainly would have flipped Florida, with its 29 electors, to Romney, and quite probably Ohio, with 18 electors, as well.
So, let’s reset here: if the president had won the election by four million votes, rather than nearly five million, and the Republican electoral-vote scheme had been in place in just Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, our electoral college result would have been: Romney 279, Obama 259. In short, Mitt Romney would be president today, despite losing the national election by four million votes.
Now, yes, it has happened that the winner of the popular vote has lost the electoral vote before. It happened in 2000, when George W. Bush became president despite losing the national vote to the aforementioned Al Gore. But that was a rare exception, as were the prior instances of this odd occurrence, which happened in 1888, 1876 and 1824. In all of those cases, except the strange, multi-candidate election of 1824, the national popular vote was so close that one could consider them a statistical tie. For example, Gore’s popular vote victory over Bush in 2000 was about half a million votes, roughly one-half of a percentage point. (The margin for Gore would have grown only slightly even if many Democratic votes in Florida hadn’t been discounted in the final tally.)
But the proposal the Republicans are attempting to advance today would render the popular will of the nation’s voters almost entirely irrelevant. Barring a landslide victory by the Democrats—something on the scale of the 2008 election, which President Obama won by nearly 10 million votes—the Republicans would win every presidential election, even while receiving significantly fewer votes than the Democrats. Landslide election victories don’t happen very often in America—which is why they are remarkable when they happen.
With Republicans having already fixed the U.S. House of Representatives—where they retained control in 2012 despite losing the total accumulated House vote by more than a million votes nationally—and probably being positioned to reclaim the Senate in 2014, the only missing puzzle piece would be the presidency. If they push through their democracy circumvention plans in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, they might nail that last puzzle piece down as well. If this happens, we could see Republicans win the presidency, the House and the Senate in 2016, even if more voters vote for the Democrats in all three cases.
At that point, America ceases to be a democracy and, furthermore, loses all moral authority as the leader of the free world. How can we claim to be a beacon of democracy when our system sets it up for one political party to hold power regardless of how the people actually vote? As Russian president Vladimir Putin noted—in a joint press conference with President George W. Bush, no less—in Russia, the president is the person who wins the most votes. Period. But this would no longer be the case in America.
As noted previously on this blog, there is nothing to stop the Republicans from enacting this legislation. They have the Constitutional right to do it (although my wife, a lawyer who knows the Constitution inside and out, suspects the voters of those states may be able to sue on grounds of disenfranchisement, but I think we know how the current U.S. Supreme Court would probably rule on that). That’s why the 2014 elections in these states are of crucial importance. If Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin go through with this scheme, the voters of those states will have only one chance, in 2014, to put Democrats in charge of the legislatures and governorships so they can overturn these laws before the 2016 election.
The national Democratic Party needs to begin investing heavily now in these states and make a serious push to win them in 2014.
Stacking The Electoral College: Republicans, Unable To Win, Prepare To Cheat
In recent weeks, I have been tracking an alarming story that now appears to be moving from the realm of conjecture to reality. Today, National Journal ran an article on how Republicans are orchestrating a scheme to steal the next presidential election if they can’t win it legitimately. Their plan: to split the electoral votes in three states they have been unable to win in the last quarter-century, in order to help elect their presidential candidate in 2016 regardless of whether he actually wins the most votes.
First, a little background is necessary. As most people who closely follow politics understand, the president of the United States is not elected by the direct votes of the voters. Instead, every state is allocated a certain number of “electors,” roughly in proportion to their share of the nation’s population, chosen by the popular vote of each state. In 48 of the 50 states, the candidate who wins the largest number of votes wins all the electoral votes in that state. For example, Barack Obama won approximately 63 percent of the vote in New York, and will therefore receive 29 electoral votes from that state, while Mitt Romney will receive none; conversely, in Texas, where Romney won about 58 percent of the vote, Romney will get 38 electoral votes, and Obama will receive zero. In the remaining two states, Maine and Nebraska, the electors are allocated so that the statewide winner gets two electoral votes, and the winner in each Congressional district gets one. The result, in all but four of the 48 elections that have been held since the popular vote has been officially tracked and recorded, is that the candidate with the most votes has won the presidency.
The Constitution of the United States provides that each state may choose its electors in any manner it sees fit, which is why Maine and Nebraska can allocate their electoral votes as they do, while the other states allocate them so that the winner of the state gets all the electoral votes.
Now, according to National Journal, Republican legislators who currently control the legislatures and governorships in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, are preparing to introduce legislation in 2013 that would award Republicans most of their states’ electoral votes, even while the Republican candidate is losing each state badly. No Republican presidential candidate has won Michigan or Pennsylvania since 1988, or Wisconsin since 1984, but had this proposal been in place this year, Romney would have captured a substantial majority of the electoral votes in each state despite losing them all by at least 5 percent of the total votes cast (and by just under 10 percent in Michigan). There is also discussion of doing enacting the same scheme in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, all of which Obama won in each of the last two elections. However, the possibility that the GOP may actually win any or all of these states may make this less likely than it is in Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, where Republicans haven’t won the presidential vote in a generation.
The reason Republicans are singling out these six states is very simple: aside from West Virginia, which has a Democratic governor and legislature but voted for Romney, these are the only six states in America that voted for a presidential candidate of one party, but in which the governorships and legislatures are controlled by the other party. They understand that if they go forward with their plans, the net result will be a large pickup of electoral votes by Republicans. The Democrats cannot respond by changing the rules in states that typically vote Republican, because all the states that typically go Republican in presidential elections (except West Virginia) are also controlled by Republicans at the state capital. So while the six aforementioned states would give a majority of their electors to Republicans, even as Republicans are losing those states, the so-called “red states” would continue to give ALL of their electors to Republicans.
Let’s take a look at what would have happened in 2012 if the Republican plan had been in place in all six states. It’s actually pretty simple: Barack Obama, despite outpolling Mitt Romney by nearly 5 million votes nationally (approximately 66 million to 61 million), probably would have lost the White House. In the six states where Republicans are considering changing the rules, Obama won 106 electoral votes to Romney’s zero. Under the newly proposed rules, despite winning the most votes in all six of those states, Obama would have lost the majority of the all-important electoral votes in each one of those states. Under the proposed GOP scheme, Romney would have won potentially as many as 70 of the 106 electoral votes in those states; he came up 64 electoral votes short of winning the White House. The math—and the Republican intention—is simple: to gain (and keep) power regardless of whether they actually win elections or not.
It should now be abundantly clear to anyone who can count that the Republicans do not care what the voters want. They have lost the popular presidential vote in five of the last six elections, and in four of those five elections, they have lost by large margins: four million votes or more. Rather than changing their policies and attempting to appeal to more voters, the Republicans instead are attempting to rig the system so that they can win regardless of who actually gets more votes.
The worst part of all of this is that there is nothing to stop them. The Constitution is very clear: states can allocate their electors as they wish. The GOP controls the legislatures and governorships in each of these states. If the Republicans introduce this legislation in any or all of these states, it will become law, and they will almost certainly win the presidency in 2016, regardless of how badly they might actually lose the election.
There is only one way to prevent this obscene, absurd tragedy from occurring, and it is admittedly a long shot: Democrats have to win the governorship and both chambers of the legislature in each one of these states in 2014. Only then can they overturn any of these laws that may be enacted over the next year or two. But the Republicans who control these states have drawn the district lines in such a way that it is almost impossible for Democrats to win the legislatures in these states. It is a heavy lift, because what is happening here is a complicated scheme that most voters will not understand. But Democrats are going to have to try, because if this is the way it’s going to be, it will be nearly impossible for them to win the White House ever again, even if they consistently win the most votes.
The most important political objective for the Democratic party in the next two years is to take control of the governorships and legislatures in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Virginia and Wisconsin. Every other political objective pales in comparison. Every dollar, every staffer, every volunteer that the Democratic Party can spare must be devoted to this purpose. Failure in this effort will allow the Republicans to stack the deck so that they will control the presidency no matter how the voters actually vote.
This isn’t about what is right or wrong. It’s about power. The Republicans want power and will do whatever they must do to get it and keep it, even if that means stacking the deck and rendering the actual votes of the people completely meaningless. Democrats only have one chance to stop them: everything depends on 2014, and that includes democracy itself.
Looking Ahead: The 2014 Elections Probably Mean Losses For Democrats
Let me begin this preview with a note of humility: when the 2012 election season began, it was widely reported that President Obama was going to have serious trouble getting reelected, and that the Republicans were odds-on favorites to recapture the U.S. Senate. As we know, President Obama won reelection by margins that, when all the votes are counted, will not be that far off his sweeping 2008 victory, and Republicans not only failed to take the Senate but actually lost a net of two seats.
The preceding disclaimer should demonstrate that likelihoods are not guarantees, and that any preview of an upcoming election two years out is a risky proposition. Who could have foreseen, in 2010, that Republicans would lose not one but two Senate races because their nominees in those races would make idiotic comments about rape?
That said, all indications right now point to 2014 being a tough year for Democrats and a good one for Republicans.
First, although Democrats did spectacularly well in 2012, there were still some indicators that should cause concern. President Obama became the first president in U.S. history to win reelection with a smaller percentage of the popular vote than he won in his first election, and only the third reelected president to receive fewer electoral votes in his reelection campaign. The first was James Madison in 1812, in the midst of an unpopular war with Britain. The second was Woodrow Wilson in 1916, but that comes with a big caveat: his sweeping 1912 victory was due entirely to President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt splitting the GOP vote and, thereby, helping deliver 40 states to Wilson. And although Democrats did pick up a net of eight seats in the U.S. House, they left another dozen on the table that they could have won if they had performed just a percentage point or two better. So, yes, the Democrats did well in 2012, but their performance was not nearly as strong as their results in 2006 and 2008, when there were true Democratic waves.
Secondly, just as in 2010, Democrats are far more exposed in U.S. Senate races than Republicans are. The Democratic class of 2008, which netted their party an eight-seat pickup in the Senate, faces its first reelection test. Democrats are defending 20 of the 33 seats up for election, and of the 13 Republicans who are up, it is hard to find even one who looks vulnerable now. Perhaps Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) may face a tough race; he struggled in each of his last two elections and may be ripe for an upset, but even that is a longshot for Democrats; it is a certainty that McConnell will raise stunning amounts of money. But no fewer than eight Democratic Senators will face difficult challenges in 2014, and perhaps as many as 10. If Republicans net six seats, they will reclaim the chamber. It is true that Democrats faced longer odds in 2012 but still prevailed—and in fact increased their majority in the Senate. How likely is it that they can defy the odds two cycles in a row?
Third, Democrats will have a hard time hanging on to a number of the U.S. House seats they captured in 2012. Of 33 House races decided by less than six percentage points this year, Democrats won 20 and Republicans only 13. Additionally, Democrats won two seats—in Florida’s 26th District and Illinois’ 8th District—by double digits, but this was largely due to the implosion of Republican incumbents David Rivera and Joe Walsh, respectively.
We have seen, as we saw in 2010, that Democratic turnout in midterms can lag significantly as compared to presidential election years. If Democrats fail to turn out their voters in the 2014 midterms, it is not hard to see Democratic losses of 10-20 House seats and 4-8 Senate seats.
Couple the potential for a falloff in Democratic turnout with the likelihood that Republicans will continue to obstruct the process—thereby denying President Obama and the Democrats significant victories—and the prospects for a Republican turnaround in 2014 look strong.
Then there’s history. Since the founding of both of the current major political parties, there have been 11 midterm elections under presidents serving their second terms. In 10 of those 11 elections, the president’s party has lost seats in both the House and the Senate—on average, 34 House seats and six Senate seats. The only exception was the 1998 midterm election, in which Republican investigations of President Bill Clinton backfired and cost the GOP a modest net loss of four House seats. Let’s have a look:
1874
President Ulysses S. Grant (R)
Republicans lost 93 House seats
Senators were not elected by popular vote at this time.
1906
President Theodore Roosevelt (R)
Republicans lost 28 House seats
Senators were not elected by popular vote at this time.
1918
President Woodrow Wilson (D)
Democrats lost 19 House seats and 6 Senate seats
1926
President Calvin Coolidge (R)
Republicans lost 10 House seats and 6 Senate seats
1938
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
Democrats lost 71 House seats and 6 Senate seats
1950
President Harry S. Truman (D)
Democrats lost 29 House seats and 6 Senate seats
1958
President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
Republicans lost 48 House seats and 13 Senate seats
1966
President Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
Democrats lost 47 House seats and 4 Senate seats
1986
President Ronald Reagan (R)
Republicans lost 5 House seats and 8 Senate seats
1998
President Bill Clinton (D)
Democrats picked up 4 House seats and broke even in the Senate
2006
President George W. Bush (R)
Republicans lost 30 House seats and 6 Senate seats
In short, every indicator demonstrates that Democrats should lose big in the upcoming midterm elections. As we saw this year, and in 1998, what is expected to happen doesn’t always necessarily occur. But Democrats must be prepared to work very hard if they want to avoid the usual midterm losses that almost always happen to the party of a president at his second midterm.
For Republicans, Democrats, The Wrong Lessons Are Too Easily Learned
Today I read a story about a dispute between different exit pollsters over whether or not the Republicans lost the Cuban vote in Florida.
The fact that Republicans are arguing over whether they won or lost the Cuban vote in south Florida, a week after an election in which they got their heads handed to them, tells us all we need to know. The Republicans have far bigger problems than whether they won or lost the Cuban-American vote in Florida. Rather than trying to determine how the Titanic failed to avoid the iceberg, the GOP is arguing over where the deck chairs were placed. Brilliant.
The Titanic metaphor is apt, because the Republican Party, as currently constituted, is a complete shipwreck. It hit the iceberg with the botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and has been sinking, in terms of the public’s confidence, ever since. The party suffered a triple whammy in 2005, with Katrina, the Terri Schiavo controversy and the ill-fated attempt to privatize Social Security; the 2006 midterm election wave that delivered Congress to the Democrats for the first time in 12 years resulted directly from what occurred in 2005.
Then, after the economic meltdown at the end of the Bush administration, the Republicans got whipped again in the 2008 elections. Their brief revival in 2010, from today’s vantage point, appears to have been more of a last gasp than a recovery. Two years after that fleeting triumph, they lost to a president suffering the highest unemployment rate of any reelected president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, and still, their loss to the Democrats wasn’t even especially close. Additionally, they lost a net of two Senate seats in a year in which they were defending only 10 seats to their opponents’ 23; and if it hadn’t been for the massive gerrymandering in key states in 2011, they may well have lost the House, too. Democratic House candidates, cumulatively, received more votes than Republican House candidates nationwide.
The Republicans are clearly in free fall at this point, and they seem to have no understanding of why this is the case or how to fix it. The party’s establishment wing and its populist wing are at loggerheads, especially now that it has dawned on the rank-and-file that the Wall Street crowd has been using them as pawns for years. But the GOP populists have the wrong formula for reviving the party’s fortunes. The Tea Party element is preaching that the Republicans lost either because they weren’t conservative enough, while many Republicans of all stripes, both populist and establishment, believe they were not clear enough in their messaging. Neither hypothesis is correct. The Republicans have never been more right-wing, not even when they nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964, and they conveyed their rabid conservatism loudly and clearly at every turn. Voters in 2012 did not simply reject the Republican sales pitch; they rejected the Republican product.
The Republican asylum burned to the ground on November 6th, and now the inmates and the guards, rather than figuring out how to rebuild the building, are getting ready to fight to the death to determine who will preside over the ashes. Democrats are gleefully heating up the popcorn and getting ready to enjoy the spectacle.
But Democrats had better not get too comfortable. While the Republicans clearly appear to be learning the wrong lessons from this election, there is always the danger that Democrats will do the same. Democrats must understand that victory does not mean, necessarily, that the country has embraced their entire agenda. The fact is that the Republicans lost this election much more than the Democrats won it. The voters compared their two options, found the former unacceptable, and grudgingly took a gamble on the latter. And while it is true that astute Democratic carpet-bombing of Mitt Romney and the GOP team helped the voters make that choice, the Democrats couldn’t have pulled off that political Dresden if the Republicans hadn’t handed them all the ammunition they needed.
If Democrats don’t justify the voters’ choice, and don’t avoid the massive turnout dropoff of two years ago, the nation’s electoral fortunes will swing back to the Republicans in 2014, just as they did in 2010. The Democrats need to put down the popcorn and go back for a second helping of elbow grease.
Election 2012: Eight Lessons
I am still working on tying everything together from the 2012 election into a singular theme, but for now, I just want to make some brief observations:
1) That demographic revolution Democrats have been talking about? It’s here. Non-white voters made up approximately 28 percent of the electorate. The Romney team and right-leaning pollsters like Rasmussen and Gallup were modeling for 25-26 percent, and that’s why they were stunned when Obama won. Increasing percentages of non-white voters is the new normal. The Republican Party must adapt, or die.
2) The state-by-state polls showing Obama ahead in virtually every battleground state? Yeah, they were pretty much right on target. (Except, of course, for Rasmussen. Rasmussen still skews to the right and will continue to have credibility issues as long as it’s wrong, which is quite often. But most credible polling turned out to be right on the money or pretty close to it.) So all of you poll deniers out there: Are you convinced yet? Or are you going to continue denying things like, oh, math and science?
3) Gallup is no longer the gold standard in polling. Honestly, it hasn’t been for quite some time, but this election should prove the deathblow to its credibility. In perhaps the most embarrassingly bad performance since, well, Gallup in the 1948 Truman-Dewey miscall, the supposed leading pollster in America went into the final week showing a significant Romney lead, and still had him winning at the end despite a sudden, dramatic tightening after suspending polling due to Hurricane Sandy. Even Rasmussen, always notoriously right-leaning, never showed a seven-point national lead for Romney as Gallup did. Gallup’s numbers on the race were reflective of nothing resembling reality, and this organization either needs to right the ship or—pardon the pun—Gallup off to the glue factory.
4) The pundits, particularly on the right? Completely disgraced. George Will and Peggy Noonan, formerly voices of reason, blew every shred of credibility they had in predicting a near-landslide for Romney. And then there was Dick Morris, but the good news for him was that he didn’t have any credibility to lose. But even some pundits who are usually relatively even-handed were sucked in to the fallacy that this was a dead-even race, and that’s in part due to all the smoke the Obama team blew for months and months, lulling Team Romney and the press into a completely false narrative.
5) Women actually do make up their own minds about what’s important to them. We saw a lot of female Republican politicians and Ann Romney go on television to say that reproductive choice issues really weren’t all that important to women. Well, it turns out that a lot of women actually do care when politicians attempt to tell them what kind of reproductive decisions they can and can’t make. And guess what, folks—quite a few women who would never choose to have an abortion themselves still don’t like the idea that politicians might want to make that decision on their behalf. Oh, and contraception? Stay away from that one, OK? This is 2012. That issue was settled for most people a long time ago. Even among Catholics, an estimated 90-plus percent use contraception at some point in their lives, and if you don’t believe that, ask yourself a question: When was the last time you saw a family with eight kids at Mass?
6) Stay away from rape. The next politician who mentions rape in any context (other than it is a horrible crime and must be severely punished) is not just a bad choice on women’s issues, but also too stupid to hold office. Just about any candidate who brought up this topic got beat. If the lesson here isn’t obvious, I don’t know what is.
7) Irrational hatred is not a viable electoral strategy. Much of the wacky wing of the GOP has spent most of the last four-plus years demonizing President Obama. What did it get them? Well, it got them somewhere in the ball park of 48 percent of the vote. Many on the right were so convinced that the country was dead-set on firing Obama that they neglected the need for a strong candidate or any raison d’etre beyond firing Obama. They just figured any Republican would beat him. Well, a lot of people hated George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Franklin Roosevelt. What did they all have in common? They all got reelected, three of them in landslides. Learn this lesson and learn it well: A president vilified by his opponents almost always gets reelected. It’s the presidents who people feel sorry for who get beat.
8) Failure to acknowledge reality does not change reality. Many Republicans were stunned when Romney lost (including, by various accounts, Romney himself and his entire team). But all the scientific polling pointed to an Obama victory all along. The signs were clear for anybody who was willing to see them. There was never a single day, during the entire election cycle, when the state-level polling showed Romney anywhere near the lead in the electoral-vote count. Many leading Republican politicians pooh-poohed the notion of a “gender gap,” but it was there all along, and it was there on election day; 55 percent of women voted for Obama. Many on the right (including the Romney team and, by its own admission, Rasmussen) believed young voters and non-white voters would not show up in anywhere near the numbers they showed up in 2008, but they formed a larger share of the electorate in 2012 than they did in any previous election. As Robert J. Ringer noted in his landmark book Winning Through Intimidation, failure to acknowledge reality and use it to your advantage ensures that reality will work against you. That is exactly what happened to the Republicans in 2012.
Not Perfect, But Close: My 2012 Predictions and Results
Not to throw my arm out of whack patting myself on the back, but I had a pretty good Election Night 2012.
As of today, I have correctly called all 49 of the states that have determined a winner in the presidential race. It looks like I am probably going to miss Florida, which I predicted Mitt Romney would win, but where President Barack Obama leads by about 40,000 votes with about 3 percent of the votes still to be counted, per CNN. Still, even 49 out of 50, if that’s where it ends up, puts me in very good company. Larry Sabato and his team at the University of Virginia Center for Politics—unquestionably among the best in the business—got 48 states right this year and, like me, picked Romney in Florida.
I’m not on the level of Nate Silver just yet—if Florida does go for Obama, as seems likely, he’ll be 50-for-50, and I tip my hat to him. He’s got an excellent system, far more scientific than mine, and he’s either 98 or 99 for 100 the past two presidential elections, depending on the final results in Florida. You can’t argue with those kinds of results (though many tried this year, and ended up with a plateful of crow).
I didn’t get every Senate race right—I missed Montana and North Dakota, as well as my prediction that Democrats would win either Nevada or Arizona, and my perception that Bob Kerrey had the momentum in Nebraska turned out to be badly off the mark. But in terms of the final spread, I came as close as a guy can get without actually being perfect: I said the Democrats would end up with a 54-46 majority in the Senate (counting independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats, and Angus King of Maine, who is presumed likely to caucus with Democrats). Because Heidi Heitkamp eked out a victory by less than 3,000 votes in North Dakota, I missed the final total of 55-45 by a single seat—as I did in 2006 and 2008.
In the House, CNN reports that there are still eight seats that are too close to call. Currently the Republicans lead 233-194. If the Democrats hang on to win the six seats in which they lead, and the Republicans hold the two seats in which they lead, that will put it at 235-200—exactly the number I predicted last week, as recorded twice on this website in advance of the election.
I admit that I approach political prognostication as more of an art than a science. For much of my adult life, I have extensively studied statistical, anecdotal and historical data about the politics of the various states and their Congressional districts, and I follow polling obsessively. I try to put my political knowledge and my powers of observation together and arrive at the right result, and despite my own political leanings, I strive to be scrupulously objective in making election predictions.
Since 2006, I’ve come extremely close in three elections out of four. I blew it in 2010 (missing the House by 10 seats and the Senate by three), but I wasn’t alone. It was an odd year. In three elections out of four, my average House prediction has missed by two seats (2, 4 and 0, if the 2012 totals hold up), and my Senate prediction by exactly one seat each cycle. (Interestingly enough, in all four elections since 2006, I overcalled the Democratic House total two times, but I undercalled the Democratic Senate total in each case.)
I take this political prediction business seriously and do my best to be a credible source. One thing is for sure: there weren’t many this year who had a better night.
Election Night Preview Updated
Taking a last look at my Election Night Preview, I noticed a few small errors. My corrected, updated document is available here.
Time To Call The Presidential Race: It's Obama
I had planned to wait until Monday night to make my presidential prediction, but the way the polls have broken over the last week, President Barack Obama is a clear favorite to win reelection on Tuesday. Only a massive, last-minute reversal on Monday, or the unlikely and unprecedented occurrence of virtually all reputable polling being dead wrong, can alter this result.
For most of this year, I have expected the president to win reelection with 303 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 235, with Romney reclaiming Indiana, North Carolina and Florida for the Republicans, and Obama holding all the other states he won in 2008. As his fortunes have improved or declined, the number has gone up a bit or down a bit, but I seem to always come back to that total. With some hesitance about one state—Colorado—I am going to go with the number I’ve been predicting all along: Obama 303, Romney 235.
I arrive at this number by examining 12 states that Obama carried in 2008, 11 of which appear to be close in 2012.
Let’s start with the one state, among this dandy dozen, that will not be close: Indiana will not go into the Obama column again. This has been clear for months, if not a couple of years, and the Obama campaign wrote the Hoosier State off a long time ago. Its unexpected flip into the Democratic column in 2008 was a fluke, the by-product of a meaningful Democratic primary there, a bad year for Republicans and off-the-charts Democratic performance among young people and minorities.
Less certain are Romney’s bids to reclaim North Carolina and Florida. While it is likely he will slip by in North Carolina, Florida now appears to be up for grabs. It’s a tough call, but I think the dynamics favor Romney in Florida by a very slim margin.
Among the other swing states that I have largely expected Obama to hang onto, almost nobody is giving Romney a chance to win Nevada, and I concur. Obama has consistently led by small but clear margins, and his expected landslide among Hispanic voters seems to cement Nevada in his camp.
Although Romney’s team has made a desperate effort at the end to flip Pennsylvania and Michigan, there is no credible polling evidence that he will win either state. In my opinion, a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review poll today showing a 47-47 tie in Pennsylvania is not credible. The newspaper is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, a conservative activist, and the poll is at odds with all other reputable polling.
In five of the remaining six states, the last week has seen clear movement in Obama’s direction, and the polling shifts in Ohio and Virginia appear decisive. Less certain, but unquestionably also shifting in Obama’s direction, are Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire. If the preponderance of the polls and the polling trends are right, and I believe they are, Obama wins them all.
Tonight, the only state I don’t have a clear feel for is Colorado. By the looks of things, the president should hang onto it. The state has many Hispanic voters and many young, educated urban voters, and that’s in his favor. But he seems to have a problem in the suburbs, and the polling data from Colorado have been inconclusive. While the other swing states have all seen clear, even dramatic movement toward Obama in the last few days, Colorado is still close and doesn’t appear to be budging. I really feel that Colorado—along with perhaps Florida—is a coin flip, and candor compels me to admit that I can’t really call it.
If Romney wins Colorado, and everything else goes as expected, Obama would win 294-244 in the electoral college. If Obama wins Colorado and all the other states I project he will win, it’s 303-235. Because Colorado does appear to be a coin flip, I’m going to say that the Obama organization and the Hispanic vote will ultimately save the state for the president, but not by much.
The popular vote is a tougher call. Romney is going to absolutely slaughter Obama in most of the South, but then, Obama is going to rack up big margins over Romney in some of the nation’s largest states, such as California, New York and Illinois. I expect we will see third-party candidates such as Gary Johnson, Virgil Goode and others combine for about 2 percent of the total votes, perhaps slightly more, which is roughly in keeping with what normally happens. Based on the trajectory of the final national polls, all of which show Obama tied or slightly ahead by 1-3 points—and all of which have moved in Obama’s direction in the last week—I figure on Obama ending up somewhere between 49.5 and 50 percent, and Romney somewhere between 48 and 48.5 percent. Let’s call it at Obama 49.7, Romney 48.3.
So, to sum up:
Obama to win the electoral vote, 303-235, and the popular vote, 49.7-48.3
Democrats to retain control of the Senate, 54-46 (Democrats +1)
Republicans to retain control of the House, 235-200 (Democrats +7)
Election 2012 Predictions: Congress
In six years of electoral prognostications, I’ve done pretty well when it comes to calling the final tally in Congress. Over three election cycles, I have called the final composition of the U.S. House of Representatives within 5.3 seats, and the U.S. Senate within 1.7 seats.
I didn’t do as well as I’d have liked last time out. While I correctly foresaw the Republican wave of 2010, I still undercalled the 63-seat GOP pickup by 10 seats, as compared to my average of a 3-seat miss in 2006 and 2008. And I failed to foresee that what the Tea Party did for the GOP in the House would not carry over to the Senate; I overcalled the 6-seat GOP pickup by three seats, compared to my 1-seat misses in 2006 and 2008. It isn’t quite as hard for a radical/fringe candidate to get elected to the House as it is for the same type of candidate to get elected to the Senate, and that is as true for Democrats as it is for Republicans, who left three Senate seats on the table in 2010.
This year, most pundits thought the Republicans would likely capture the Senate, considering they needed only four seats, and the Democrats were defending 23 seats compared to only 10 for the GOP. But again, the Republicans have quite possibly punted away one or two seats by nominating candidates in Indiana (Richard Mourdock) and Missouri (Todd Akin) who have seriously harmed their own chances by espousing unpopular views on abortion in the context of rape-induced pregnancies. At this point, it looks like both are likely to lose, although they are fortunate to be in the states where they are. Both races will probably be close, but the advantage is with the Democrats.
It also turns out that Democrats have nominated a strong crop of Senate candidates, creating competitive races in three states the Republicans were thought certain to win: Arizona, Nebraska and North Dakota. Republicans may still win any or all of those three seats, but they all look to be heading down to the wire.
Finally, expected strong challenges to Democratic Senators in Ohio and Florida have not materialized; Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Florida’s Bill Nelson, judging by polling trends, should both win reelection comfortably. Two other seats Republicans hoped to take, Virginia and Montana, both look like dogfights. Former Gov. Tim Kaine (D) appears to have a slight lead over former governor and Senator George Allen (R) in Virginia, although weather and electrical conditions could affect early voting, if not election day voting, and potentially alter the result there. In Montana, Sen. Jon Tester (D) is fighting Republican headwinds in his state and will struggle mightily to hold his seat against Congressman Denny Rehberg (R).
To predict the Senate, let’s take a look at the lay of the land. Taking into account the 33 seats that are up for election this year, the Republicans start with a 37-30 edge among the remaining 67 Senators who are not on the ballot until 2014 or 2016.
Among the 33 seats that are on the ballot next week, 13 are considered safe for the Democrats (including the Vermont seat held by independent Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” who caucuses with the Democrats). Six are considered safe for the Republicans, and in Maine, former Gov. Angus King, an independent, holds a strong lead over his Democratic and GOP challengers. That puts the spread at 43 Democrats, 42 Republicans and 1 independent, with 14 seats up for grabs.
Based on polling trends, it is clear that Democrats have opened clear leads in four of those 13 seats: Florida and Ohio and, belatedly, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Even though those last two are competitive, they seem to be headed into the Democratic column.
While Indiana and Missouri are close, they also appear to be tipping Democratic at this point, which leaves us at 49-43-1 for the Democrats, with seven true toss-ups: Virginia, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Arizona and Nevada.
Ultimately, it’s guesswork on these seven seats, but now that Wisconsin appears to be tipping back to Barack Obama, I’m going to figure on Wisconsin’s Senate seat going to Democrat Tammy Baldwin. I’m also going to give a slight edge to Kaine in Virginia, and a narrow edge to Rehberg in Montana, though those are both tough calls. In the end, I figure on the Democrats and GOP each taking one of those last two seats.
Democrat Heidi Heitkamp has run a great race in North Dakota, but in the end, I expect she comes up a bit short against Republican Rick Berg, so now I’m at 51-45-1.
In Arizona, Democrat Richard Carmona has consistently held a slight lead over Republican Jeff Flake, and in neighboring Nevada, Democrat Shelley Berkley has consistently trailed GOP Senator Dean Heller by a small margin. I figure on the Republicans and Democrats splitting those two seats as well, though the script could flip. A strong showing by Obama in Nevada could lift Berkley, and negative advertising against Carmona might ultimately sink him. And in Nebraska, former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey, who was thought to have no chance just a few weeks ago, has been rapidly closing in on Republican Deb Fischer. Kerrey clearly has the momentum and I’m going to call for him to pull out the upset, for a final prediction of: 53 Democrats, 46 Republicans, 1 Independent.
In the House, I have carefully examined the map, and I’ve come to the conclusion there are really only about two dozen seats that are seriously in play. I won’t get into the rundown here, as this post is already long enough, but my call here is a small pickup for Democrats, but not nearly enough to reclaim the Speaker’s gavel. The race starts with a 242-193 advantage for the GOP. I’ve been going back and forth between a final figure of 236-199 and 235-200, but there are a couple unexpected Republican seats that seem like they might go. I’m going to split the difference and call it at 235 Republicans, 200 Democrats.
And that means at least two more years of divided government for whomever is president in 2013. Speaking of which, I’ll have a detailed prediction on the presidential race on Monday.
Two Weeks Out: Six States
With two weeks to go, it looks like the presidential race is effectively down to six states. While we will continue to hear about Florida, North Carolina and Nevada, my analysis is that President Barack Obama would need everything to go perfectly to win Florida or North Carolina, and Mitt Romney would need everything to go perfectly to win Nevada. Of the three, the state that is in the most doubt is Florida, but make no mistake, Florida will be a heavy lift for the president, and I expect he will only win it if there is a decisive break in his direction between now and November 6th.
If we look at the states that are clearly decided, it is almost an absolute certainty that Obama comes away with at least 200 electoral votes, and that Romney wins at least 180. Barring a decisive turn in Romney’s direction, there is almost no plausible scenario under which Romney wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, or Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, which puts the president at 243. Barring an absolute collapse by Romney, it is extremely unlikely he wins fewer than 235 electoral votes.
So let’s look at what’s left, in order of likeliest wins for Obama to likeliest wins for Romney:
Ohio (18 electoral votes)
Wisconsin (10)
New Hampshire (4)
Iowa (6)
Colorado (9)
Virginia (13)
For President Obama, two states stand out in importance over all others: Ohio and Wisconsin. By all accounts, he continues to maintain small leads in both states. If he wins both of these states, and holds what he is expected to hold, he will take at least 271 electoral votes and win reelection.
It also appears clear that Ohio and Wisconsin are the two likeliest states of these six to stick with the president. In short, if Romney wins either Ohio or Wisconsin, he is likely taking Virginia, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire as well. Iowa and New Hampshire are probably complete toss-ups at this point, with the trends indicating Colorado and Virginia may be headed toward Romney.
The bottom line: if Romney wins either Ohio or Wisconsin, he will be the next president of the United States. Conversely, if Obama hangs on to either Virginia or Colorado, he will win reelection. Iowa and New Hampshire, right in the middle, will probably end up with the winner, but neither state is likely to be decisive.