I would really like to see some cross-tabs on the ratings of last night's debate. I wonder, who exactly is watching them? The ratings are always so low [the debates have ranged from just under 1 million viewers to just under 3 million viewers, or about 4% of the first Bush-Kerry debate in 2004] that my intuition is that it is just a niche audience. And my theory about the niche is that it is mostly political junkies whose enthusiasm for politics belies their relatively small sway at the ballot box.

The reason I think this is because the debate seemed structured to further the storyline that the media has developed in the last few weeks, a storyline that only political junkies know much about or have any interest in: A Hillary has been spotted off the port bow. Attack!

Let me quantify my impressions. In the first two segments, I counted thirty-three questions. Twenty-two of them were designed to facilitate either another candidate attacking Hillary Clinton, or Clinton responding to attacks (either from another candidate or from Russert). Indeed, all of the major subjects were structured around attacks on Clinton.

Segment 1: How do Clinton, Edwards, and Obama Differ?
Segment 2: What Shall We Do About Iran? This segment could have been geared toward a more substantive policy discussion to tease out differences between the seven candidates. However, Russert and Williams framed the questions around Kyl-Lieberman, thus encouraging the six Democrats who opposed the resolution to go after Clinton, who supported it.
Segment 3: What Is Clinton's Real Position on Iraq?
Segment 4: What are Clinton's Qualifications?
Segment 5: Is Clinton Credible on Social Security?

I'd add that the non-attack questions did not seem to be crafted with much care. Russert asked whether candidates would "pledge" that Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon. How the hell do you pledge a result, Tim? What kind of dumb question is that? And, of course, when it came time to talk about something that regular folks are interested, like education, Bill Richardson had to be shushed because of the time "rule." He should have figured out how to blast Hillary Clinton in his answer - they would have given him more time.

Afterwards, I could only stomach so much post-debate "analysis." Before I had to walk away from the TV to find the Tums, I watched in amazement as Chris Matthews interviewed Joe Biden and Chris Dodd - and talked about nothing more than Hillary Clinton (well - I suppose there were a few UFO-related questions in there).

There was clearly some intentionality here on the part of the debate producers. I think the intention was to get the candidates fighting one another. This is the kind of spectacle that political junkies like, but that those with a good-old-fashioned American disregard for politics find annoying and alienating. My intuition is that they would only design the debate this way if they believed a broader audience would probably not be watching. I don't know much about television program planners beyond what I learned watching Monty Python's Flying Circus ("I wanted to be in television programming, but unfortunately I have a degree.") - but I am sure a rule of thumb is not to alienate your audience.

This is why it is strange for me to watch insiders estimate how the preferences of the broader public will be swayed. This is what under girds all "winners and losers" talk - the goal of candidates is electoral victory. So, the winners must have taken a step forward, and the losers a step back. Unless we are talking about whether potential donors or elite supporters, i.e. the agenda setters, changed their minds because of the debate (which we never are - we are always talking about the mass public when we talk about winners and losers) - this seems to me to rest on a false premise regarding the breadth of the audience. My guess is that it is quite narrow, that it is not a representative cross-section of American life, that it is comprised of the people in this country who are differentiated from the rest by dint of their unusually strong interest in politics.

The only way there could be a breakthrough with the larger public is if there is a sound bite from the debate that sinks into the popular consciousness due to repetition - but I did not really see one in that debate. And anyway we always have to wait to see if something sinks in before we start judging who is better or worse off from the sinking in!

Update, 4 PM EST. Maybe a broader base of Iowa and New Hampshire was watching. Steven Stark makes that point over at his Tote Board Blog. A regular reader of mine, Willis, made the same point. He writes:

Certainly the debate plays mainly to a niche audience, but I wonder if some of that niche extends to viewers in Iowa and New Hampshire. They may not be political junkies, but they seem to take their responsibility to scrutinize the candidates seriously.

I don't pretend to know the answer, but if Iowa and New Hampshire were disproportionately represented among the viewers, the fall debates could have a larger effect than we think.

This might very well be the case. Of course, from those voters' perspective, it is a shame because surely the balance of the audience is the junkie class that wants to see some bloodletting. They were the ones who the producers seemed to me to be out to satisfy last night - so I doubt that the undecideds would have learned much of probative value.

And, another thought: if you are an undecided voter who is, as most undecided voters are, sick of the way Washington works (and all that), would you have been able to sit through even the first segment, let alone the whole thing? I barely could - and it's my job to analyze events like this! [Watching some of these debates makes me understand what Roger Ebert must feel like having to watch the Deuce Bigelow movies.]

Unfortunately for the undecided voters who thought last night might help them decide, there is a minority in this country that enjoys the sport that is "politics as usual" - and they assuredly made up most of the audience.

Posted by Jay Cost at 09:53 AM | Permalink

Perhaps I am running the risk of sounding like a broken record on this blog - but I think that there are some points that can still be teased out from continuing on the same subject. I have been talking for a few days now about the difference between the perpetual campaign and the real campaign.

One of my difficulties with popular media analysis of the presidential campaign is that it fails to distinguish between the two. This, I think, is a major obstacle in coming to an understanding of our electoral process. Namely, journalists and pundits fail to appreciate fully that, while candidates were busy doing stuff in the summer, there is a difference between the summer stuff and the fall stuff. In the fall, you begin to make your broad-based appeals to the voters.

The reason is quite simple: voters aren't paying attention in the summer, and so your (very expensive) advertisements will fall upon deaf ears. Oh sure - they might respond to your message in the short term. But, suppose you spend all of your advertising money in the summer, and your opponent spends all of his advertising money in the fall. Who are the voters going to vote for? Your opponent. So, you wait until the fall.

This has generally been the rule - with the exception of Mitt Romney. He spent in the summer - I believe - not because he thought he could win voters over for good. He spent because he knew media outlets would be conducting polls in the summer. If they saw him in first place in those states, they would put him in the top tier of candidates, which would guarantee him a viable spot in the fall.

Other candidates have not done this because they either did not have the money (Huckabee, for instance) - or they did not have to get their names out there (Giuliani and Clinton, for instance). These two candidates could, and should, wait until the fall.

The same goes with campaign visits. You do more visits in the fall than in the summer because - all together now! - that is when voters are paying attention.

This is precisely what Giuliani has done. And yet, we saw this article in the Politico yesterday:

Rudy Giuliani, whose presidential campaign strategy originally downplayed New Hampshire, is now making a major bid to win the Granite State primary.

The new push includes spending four days in the state this week, the culmination of an effort which had him more in New Hampshire in October than in any other traditional early state. [Snip]

Now, though, Giuliani is seeing some encouraging signs in New Hampshire and is responding with new commitments of time and money.

The fact that Giuliani is now advertising in New Hampshire, whereas in the summer he was not, is taken not as a sign that his campaign team recognizes that October is the time to advertise. It is, instead, taken as a sign that his team switched its strategy. Ditto the increased number of visits. This speaks to the point I am trying to make. You only draw this conclusion about Giuliani if you fail to see a difference between advertising in July and advertising in October, between visiting when the Yankees are still playing baseball and visiting after they have been eliminated.*

There are multiple problems with the Politico's thesis, beside the fact that it does not comport with Campaigns and Elections 101.

First, let us not forget this Giuliani radio ad, which debuted in September in New Hampshire:

MoveOn.org is the most powerful left-wing group in the country. They spent millions electing anti-war liberals. And publicly brag how the Democratic Party is theirs -- bought and paid for.

Why is MoveOn attacking Rudy Giuliani? Because he's their worst nightmare. They know Rudy is a Republican who can beat the Democrats. And they know, no matter what they say -- Rudy will never, ever back down.

This ad started airing while that CNN/WMUR poll - which showed Rudy down just 1 point - was being taken. Why is that important? This is the poll the Politico references as an explanation for Giuliani's shifting strategy! So, the advertisements caused the good poll numbers, which caused the advertisements.

Furthermore, from June 1 through August 31, Giuliani made eighteen campaign appearances in New Hampshire, twenty-six in Iowa, and six in South Carolina. By comparison, he made ten appearances in Florida, nine appearances in California, two in New York and one in New Jersey. His summer strategy emphasized the small, early states over the big, later ones by about 2:1. So, I guess the Politico's thesis is that Rudy had three campaign strategies in a single month. Around Labor Day, he still planned to play in small places like Iowa and New Hampshire. Then in early September, he shifted to the big state strategy - only to shift back in mid-September with his ad on the New Hampshire and Iowa radio waves.

Finally, just so we're clear about this up-tick in Rudy's numbers, the RCP average on June 11 had him at 17.7% in New Hampshire. Today he is at 21%. So, the Politico wants to argue that a 3.3% shift in his numbers induced a shift in the Giuliani campaign's whole primary strategy.

Oh, and it has one other problem - an explicit denial from Team Rudy:

While Giuliani aides say the moves do not reveal a major shift, his staff and supporters plainly have a new optimism about their prospects in the Granite State.

"I think you're on to something," quipped Mike DuHaime, Giuliani's campaign manager, acknowledging a "more aggressive" effort in the state since the end of the summer. [Snip]

"Everybody has mistakenly called our strategy a 'Feb. 5 strategy,' DuHaime said.

"We do have a long-term approach, but that doesn't mean it's all about Feb. 5."

He called the Giuliani plan a "mixture of both" the traditional early states and those on Feb. 5.

OK - so we have the logic of the political campaign dictating that a candidate like Giuliani amp up his pitch in the fall. We have an alternative explanation - the changed strategy theory - that makes no internal sense, that does not fit the facts, and paints the picture of a campaign team that is inconsistent (this is the same campaign team that has been run professionally and well for eight or so months). AND we have Giuliani's people telling us that the strategy has been that they were always going to amp up in the fall.

And yet the thesis of the story is: Giuliani changes strategy.

* - My wife was at NYU when Rudy was mayor, and so she knows a good deal about the way Hizzoner works. She has wondered whether Rudy can continue to campaign next fall if the Yankees make the World Series. I think she might be on to something there. What happens if Rudy skips out on campaign visits to swing states for the sake of Game Seven? What happens if the Yankees play an NL team from a swing state - like the Cardinals or the Pirates (hey...it could happen...the law of large numbers demands that the Bucs are gonna turn it around eventually)? A snarky baseball comment from Rudy could turn the whole election. Perhaps Republicans should get Rudy to sign a "No Yankees Pledge" instead of a "No Taxes Pledge."

Posted by Jay Cost at 07:20 AM | Permalink

On Friday, I offered the first of a two-part column on Fred Thompson. In it, I was quite positive about Thompson's campaign. I think he is taking some calculated risks by refusing to campaign as the press presumes he "must." My point was that the "must" might not be a real must, that the rules of the perpetual campaign are fake, and that Thompson could get ahead by violating those fake rules.

As strange as it is to use a metaphor in politics that is neither war- nor sports-related (nor a mix thereof), I nevertheless forged ahead, outflanking my way around this rhetorical blockade and into the red zone of analytical insight. [The Democratic Strategist could not resist that temptation, and noted that I was "launching a stout campaign for the Most Unlikely Metaphor of the Year."] I argued on Friday that Thompson's candidacy reminds me a bit of Bob Dylan's first electric tour. Both assessed that there are fake rules in the world. That is, there are regulations that everybody thinks they have to follow - but that, in fact, can be violated without punishment.

However, I also see something that does not line up so well - and the difference does not favor Thompson. When Dylan went on tour, he found for himself the best, as-yet-undiscovered band in North America, Levon and the Hawks (soon to be known as the Band). Full of world-class musicians, they were perfect for Dylan's project. They ensured that, whatever music was played, it would be played well. There is a lesson in this, one that I do not think Thompson has learned. One of the reasons Dylan's tour was successful, at least in retrospect, was because he had the Band with him. If he had gone out on the road with a lesser band that did not play as superbly - the critics could have claimed that the lousy sound just proved the point that these rules cannot be broken.

So, if you are going to break the fake rules in music (or in politics), whatever you do instead of following them had better be damned near flawless. Otherwise, people will conflate your rule breaking with your mistakes, condemn the whole project, and conclude that those rules cannot be broken.

It comes down to execution. If you break the rules, break them well. Thompson is not breaking them very well. A case in point came last Saturday - when his speech before the Florida Republican Party was about a third of the time that the other candidates' speeches were. This was a mistake - pure and simple. If Thompson deemed the event important enough to participate, he should have participated as fully as the other candidates. He looked really bad because of that five minute speech (some reports actually offered the length down to the second...yikes). Now - personally, I think the fact that he is doing fewer events is just fine. I think he is on to something. The public is sick of this endless campaign. A candidate who rejects it could find some sympathy and support from the voters. So, it is all right for Thompson to do fewer events. However, if he does fewer, he has to make sure that the ones he does are done with vigor and verve. That Florida speech lacked both - and it was not the first time that a Thompson speech has fallen flat. We have been hearing that for much of the year - since he gave what Robert Novak called his "ordinary" debut in May.

There have been other problems with execution. For instance, his early staff changes - the ones back in the summer - are forgivable. But staff changes have continued. The most recent one was Dan Hughes, a Thompson advisor in New Hampshire who switched to McCain last week. You should not be losing supporters to McCain this late in the campaign season. Hughes told Fox News that he did not think Thompson is building a "real" campaign in New Hampshire. If Hughes is correct, this is another problem. It is one matter not to participate in an innumerable quantity of New Hampshire campaign events because you want to campaign in your own way. But if your way includes building a behind-the-scenes campaign organization, then you need to make sure it is well built.

This poor execution spoils the effect of his rule breaking. Far from courting sympathy and support from voters - you can kind of sense that he might be courting a little enmity. The critics are taking the rule breaking, combining it with the mistakes, and drawing a conclusion that is quickly becoming ubiquitous:

Thompson is lazy.

Let's just be clear. This is a patently ridiculous thing to say about any human being you do not know well. It is the kind of over-simple conclusion that is only permissible in politics or junior high gossip. But it is especially dumb to argue about Thompson, given his biography. He might not be a workaholic, "A Type" personality like some other candidates, but that is still a far cry from lazy. Nevertheless, this is how the Washington chattering classes work. They put together disparate pieces of data into an over-simple narrative (the only kind that works in sound bite format) - and they repeat it, and they repeat it, and they repeat it. Eventually, it takes upon a life of its own, as the conclusion of the chatterers becomes a fact that all and sundry have "observed." They are doing exactly this to Thompson. They have fit his rule breaking with his mistakes, combined it with a few odd comments from the mid-90s about his "lazy" Senate days, and (of all the things!) the quote in his high school yearbook.

So, this is how I see things. The intention of Thompson's campaign strategy was as I described it on Friday. The idea is for Fred to shun the modus operandi of this inane campaign process, and inject some clarity into the Republican race. However, because he has made mistakes like that Florida speech, the impression that he gives is that of a lazy man hoping to win the nomination on the cheap.

Good strategy. Bad execution. Intended effect spoiled.

But not necessarily for good. It is still early enough. And, as I observed on Friday, he is getting some traction out there. What Fred needs to do is start showing some vigor. This does not mean that he needs to make fifty billion campaign appearances in Iowa next week. I like Thompson's overarching strategy of refusing to participate in things he finds unworthy of his time. But what he needs to do is inject some vim into the things that he does deem to be worthwhile. So, for instance, the next time he chooses to speak to the Florida Republican Party - he needs to make them feel that, though he does not think every possible campaign stop is valuable, he did deem this one to be so, and his speech showed it.

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Residents of the Windy City, and football enthusiasts generally, are probably quite familiar with the phrase "Good Rex, Bad Rex." The phrase really captured the essence of the 2006 Chicago Bears. Their quarterback, Rex Grossman, would occassionally show signs of absolute football brilliance. Other times? Eh...not so much. The consensus in Chicago this year is that Good Rex is gone. Bad Rex has been replaced with Brian Griese. But the "Good Rex, Bad Rex" phrase has been on my mind lately. I usually think of it whenever I think about Fred Thompson.

For the longest time, I have been of two minds when it comes to Fred Thompson's campaign. Collectively, I think the political world is, too. Compare John Dickerson's analysis of Thompson with Michael Crowley's. Both are looking at the same characteristics - and yet they come out with different conclusions.

I think that the confusion over the Thompson campaign is that what works about it is very similar to what does not work. So, at first inspection, the lines are blurry - and you can't quite tell if this campaign is genius or disastrous. Upon closer inspection, I think that there are some lines to distinguish - and we can make some sense about this very peculiar presidential campaign.

So, today's column will review what I think works about the Thompson campaign. Monday's will review what is not working. Today's column is entitled "Thompson Goes Electric..." Monday's is entitled "...Without The Band."

***

Fred Thompson's candidacy has been widely panned by the press, but recent reports indicate that the candidate has acquired a little traction.

The first item comes from the Politico, which reported last Saturday:

Fred Thompson may have failed to impress Beltway insiders when he finally launched his run for the White House last month, but he is winning over a critical segment of the Republican coalition, new polling suggests.

Conservative Christians favor Thompson by a 10-point margin over his closest rival, Rudy Giuliani.

It's a sharp reversal for Giuliani. The putative GOP front-runner had been winning social conservative backing despite his history of support for abortion rights and gay rights.

Thompson has changed that.

Giuliani leads Thompson 29 percent to 21 percent among Republicans generally, the new national CBS News poll suggests.

But weekly Republican churchgoers back Thompson by a margin of 29 percent to 19 percent for Giuliani -- roughly tying John McCain.

Next, Bloomberg reported last Friday:

Fred Thompson hasn't dazzled many political professionals with his early stump appearances, yet when it comes to building a base of small campaign donors he's showing the potential to keep pace with better-funded rivals.

Thompson, 65, a former Tennessee senator who's running for the Republican nomination as a Ronald Reagan-style populist, tapped 74,217 individuals for an average gift of $125 between July 1 and Sept. 30, the first fundraising quarter of his presidential bid.

That's more than double the contributors Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani signed up during their first reporting periods. If Thompson keeps adding donors at this clip, he may be competitive in early primaries even though he trails Giuliani and Romney in cash raised.

Both of these stories beg the question: how is Fred Thompson doing well, given that he has not impressed "political professionals" and "Beltway insiders?"

I think that the answer has to do with a subject I have been discussing for the last few weeks. I have argued that there are two campaigns. On the one hand, there is the perpetual campaign - which is reducible to each party's attempts to win the daily news cycle. On the other hand, there is what I have been calling the real campaign. This is the quest for votes during the few weeks before Election Day.

The value of the perpetual campagin is that it sets the agenda for the real campaign. It is a show put on by candidates for the benefit of leaders of political constituencies, donors, and media personalities. Doing well in the perpetual campaign gets you noticed, and therefore gets you a spot in the real thing. The trouble with the press is that it treats the perpetual campaign as an end. It is not. Instead, it is a means to an end - namely, a shot to win the voters over. Candidates who excel in the perpetual campaign get the money and the attention that is necessary to make appeals to the voters during the real campaign.

The media is the arbiter of the perpetual campaign. This is for good reason. Candidates like to keep the cost of the perpetual campaign low. The media offers advertisement to them - through news coverage, talk shows, debates, and so forth - that costs candidates no money. But, as nothing in life is free, the candidates pay a price. Everything they say and do is analyzed and categorized by the talking heads. So, the heads set the rules of the perpetual campaign. They tell us who does well and who does poorly, and why.

According to the heads, Thompson has done poorly because he is not doing what he is supposed to be doing. He is breaking too many of the rules. A case in point is Dick Morris's rant from last month about all of the problems with Fred Thompson.

•He skipped and is skipping the first two debates of his presidential candidacy and said he was looking forward to attending the Oct. 14 New Hampshire debate -- the one that was cancelled weeks ago;

•He is taking this week off from presidential campaigning;

•He does not know enough about the details of the Terry Schiavo case to comment.;

•He is also unfamiliar with the proposal to lower soaring insurance premiums Floridians must pay for home storm coverage since the hurricanes

These are the sorts of sins that leave the media arbiters cold. These are their rules. And he is breaking them. In the perpetual campaign - you are supposed to campaign non-stop. You are supposed to remember all of the minutiae of your campaign schedule. You are supposed to know the details of symbolic events that happened over a year ago. You are supposed to know the specifics of local political issues so you can pander to the residents. Those are the rules. Thompson isn't following them.

And yet, he seems to have some real signs of viability. How is that possible?

Let's approach this indirectly. Consider the Thompson organization. It has some top notch people either directly or indirectly affiliated with it. Meanwhile, Thompson himself is a good actor. He does not have much range - but, so long as the character is within his range, he plays it convincingly. And a presidential candidate is definitely within his range.

So, he has the talent. And he has the brain trust. But he is still not dazzling the arbiters. In light of this, I would suggest that Thompson's missteps might be intentional. His rule breaking has been purposive because he thinks it can get him the traction he seems to be getting.

But that does not make any sense. There are rules. The rules need to be followed. If they are not followed - punishments will be doled out and you will be sorry. You'll end up like John McCain - whose ticket to the real campaign was invalidated back in July due to his anemic fundraising and poor money management.

Well - maybe. But maybe not.

There are two types of rules in the world. On the one hand, there are real rules. These are the rules that you need to follow, or you will be in big trouble. Stay in school is one of them. You can't do much without a high school diploma - so that is a real rule. On the other hand, there are fake rules. These are rules that most people follow because they think there are negative consequences for disobedience, but actually there are not. In fact, the ones who break the fake rules are often celebrated as trail blazers.

Bob Dylan comes to my mind when I think of those who break the fake rules. In the mid-60s, there was this rule that songs could only be three minutes long, and they had to have three verses and a chorus. But Dylan did these six minute songs that had five plus verses and no chorus. And whose ears don't perk up today when they hear the first bars of "Subterranean Homesick Blues?" Another rule said that folkies could not play rock. That just did not happen. But Dylan hired Levon and the Hawks, and went electric. At first, he was booed everywhere he went (except in the South). Eight years later he went on tour with the exact same group - now called the Band - and received 6 million ticket requests for 600,000 seats.

If you have the intelligence to see which rules are real and which are fake, the respectfulness to follow the real rules, and the guts to break the fake rules - you can get ahead in this world. In fact, people will love you for breaking the fake rules.

I think Thompson might be breaking what really are fake rules. As I mentioned above - the perpetual campaign is only a means to the real campaign. You play the game by the rules of the media to earn your way into the real contest. But there may be other ways to get to the real campaign. If there are, the media's rules are indeed fake. There are no consequences to breaking them. If you find another way into the real campaign, you can break them all you like.

This is what Thompson seems to be doing. In fact, I think Thompson and his campaign have assessed that breaking these media rules will actually help him get to the real campaign. They might be right. Two benefits seem to be accruing to Thompson.

First, breaking the rules has earned him notice. This is ironic, as most candidates follow the rules of the perpetual campaign for precisely this reason. They do a lot of stump speeches to get on the evening news. They do the Sunday morning show circuit. They take any opportunity to appear on Hardball that they can get. And so on. But not Thompson. So, is the media ignoring him? Hardly! Instead, his rule breaking has earned him more attention. My favorite example of this so far was Thompson's declaration of his candidacy. The fact that he announced his candidacy on Jay Leno was taken as rule breaking. But consider the net result. Thompson announced on Leno - and got the Leno audience. And then the next day, all the talking heads did was talk about Thompson! Far from being punished, Thompson was rewarded for his defiance.

But much more importantl, I think Thompson has assessed that breaking these rules could win him support. People outside the Beltway, whose daily lives are not regimented by the news cycle, appreciate that the perpetual campaign has reached a point of asininity. Accordingly, a candidate could win supporters over in the real campaign by claiming that he ignored all of these rules, which essentially mandate twenty-two months of nonstop campaigning. This is a twist on running against Washington. It is running against the Washington press corps. A Republican candidate can do this all the more. After all, the perpetual campaign is mediated by the press, which conservatives loathe. Instead of saying that he broke the media's rules, a candidate instead can say that he broke the Drive By Media's rules. That is a great way to win conservatives over: run against the Drive By's.

I think that Thompson is taking a calculated risk here. As somebody who thinks that the rules of the media's prepetual campaign are inefficient and irresponsible (how much time are we going to spend talking about a damned haircut?), it is one that I admire. He is betting that all of the rules of the perpetual campaign, and the praise one earns from the talking heads for following those rules, is just one way to get to the real campaign. He is betting that there is another way - instead of following all of those rules, he can thumb his nose at them.

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 AM | Permalink

I received an interesting email yesterday from a reader named George, who wrote in response to my column on Gallup's analysis of the Democratic primary race. George had obviously read my column with great care and attention - and so I was struck when he wrote the following: "In my opinion there are some strong arguments for the notion that you appear to be underestimating Clinton's current advantage, that indeed Gallup is closer to the true picture on this."

I have been dissatisfied for a while about the end result of my writings on Clinton v. Obama. I have been concerned that I might be giving a wrong impression. It seems that I am. Smart readers like George seem to be inferring something about my position that I do intend.

I think that one of my problems has been that I have not approached the issue with the correct vocabulary. For instance, yesterday I led off my column with the following statement: "Regular readers of mine know that I am not at all inclined to write off Barack Obama. This is not to say that I think he is the likely nominee of the Democratic Party. My point has simply been that people are underestimating his chances." This is a true statement. However, it is not worded nearly as precisely as it should be. In particular, I meant the word "estimate" in a way that differed from the way I think that George meant it. This is, of course, my fault - and I intend to clarify my position today.

Here is how I would characterize my feeling about the Democratic primary. I am not in disagreement with pundits or analysts who argue that Clinton is expected to be the nominee. I would estimate that as well. But estimates such as these have two relevant features. There is the expected value. Namely, exactly what do you think will happen? That is your expected value. But there is also the variance - which is not really discussed much by pundits. The variance is a measure of your confidence that the real value will match your expected value.

The higher the variance, the less confident that you are the real value will match your expected value. Take a simple example. A person who says that the Bengals will score just six points against the Steelers next Sunday is expecting, obviously, just six points to be scored. But he also sees no potential for variation around this prediction. In other words, he sees no variance. On the other hand, a person who predicts that the Bengals will score between three and nine points against the Steelers is also predicting that six points will be scored. However, he sees some potential variation around this estimate. The expected values are the same. The difference is in the variances.

So - my point is that I agree with pundits on the expected value of the Democratic primary. I expect Clinton to win the nomination. The point where I disagree has to do with the variance. My argument is that it should be higher than pundits have been making it out to be. That was my intended point in yesterday's column. Gallup's arbitrary cutoff point obscured a problematic data point, 2003/04. It therefore made the variance seem lower than it actually is. Gallup was therefore committing Type I error. That is, they were identifying something as being true that might not be true.

Hopefully, you'll appreciate the conundrum that I have been facing in working through this issue in my own head. I have not seen anybody explicitly discuss the variance of their estimate. This is not something that pundits do. But the variance does get mentioned - but it is usually in a sideways fashion. You'll see it come through in the word choices that pundits use - specifically in the adverbs or adjectives. Is Barack Obama "trailing" or is he "trailing badly?" The latter is a statement that inclines one to lower the variance - i.e. not only is Obama trailing now, but this trailing makes it extremely unlikely that he will be able to catch up. Is Hillary Clinton "leading" or is she "unstoppable?" Again, the choice of word implies a different variance - the former allows for some variance, the latter obviously does not. This is what has sparked a kind of visceral reaction from me over the last weeks and months. I have been searching for the right way to articulate it - and until today, I have been left unsatisfied with my various attempts.

Let me just briefly review why I am inclined to a higher variance, even though I expect the same result:

(1) Public opinion is often susceptible to instability. On the national level, voter preferences for candidates have not really been formed by any kind of electoral campaign. Instead, they have been formed by the media dialogue on the campaign - of which average voters are only marginally aware. That is, most voters don't watch Meet the Press, the debates, read the Horse Race Blog ;-), etc. They only pick up the dialogue in dribs-and-drabs. They are capable of "regurgitating" this dialogue back to the press - thus giving the latter the impression that these positions are more well-formed and stable than they actually are. So, as events change, we might expect public opinion to change as well. Generally, we need to be wary of putting too much stock in the stability and foundation of public opinion. You can call this my "John Zaller Hang Up."

(2) We saw something like this happen in 2004. A candidate who was at about 10% for many months suddenly and dramatically jumped to 50%. He went from fourth to first overnight. This is a sign that public opinion before the first primaries can indeed be susceptible to change.

(3) Even if public opinion is less susceptible to modification this time around - it seems sufficiently susceptible to alter the dynamics of the race. This is what yesterday's thought experiment was intended to demonstrate. That is, a win in Iowa and/or New Hampshire would probably not give Obama a 40% boost. However, it could give him a 20% boost, some of which would come at Clinton's expense.

(4) Obama is a good candidate and could very well win Iowa. He has lots of money, a strong organization, and a message that I think could sell. It will be interesting to me whether his media blitzes in New Hamphsire have any effect - because I think he could play there, too.

(5) We have very few previous observations to draw inferences about this year. It is a mathematical fact that as the number of observations decreases, the variance increases. The fact that we only have seven data points - all of which have great differences from one another - makes it more difficult for us to infer what will happen in January based upon what the October polls are saying.

So, the bottom line: there is a difference between what we believe will happen (expected value) and how confident we are that we will find what we believe will happen (variance). My disagreement is over the variance, not the expected value. Put another way, I do not disagree with the conclusion of pundits and analysts. My disagreement is more with the confidence with which they offer these conclusions.

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 PM | Permalink

Regular readers of mine know that I am not at all inclined to write off Barack Obama. This is not to say that I think he is the likely nominee of the Democratic Party. My point has simply been that people are underestimating his chances.

The reason I think this is three-fold:

(a) The guy has a real message that he has honed over the last few months. It could resonate with Democrats, who presumably are the most desirous of a national course correction. As evidence of this, we cannot overlook the fact that he has had donations from more than 300,000 individuals.
(b) He has raised $80 million to date. He will be able to compete as well as any presidential candidate ever has.
(c) He is fully staffed in Iowa and New Hampshire. He'll be blitzing both states with advertisements. He could win one or both states and turn those national numbers upside down.

Most pundits who are favoring Hillary Clinton so heavily (and remember - I am not saying that she is not favored; my objection is that people are favoring her too heavily) are using the polls - most often the national polls - to support their point. I have argued that this line of analysis is problematic because the national polls are too volatile.

The Gallup organization offered a rejoinder to this argument this week. Their basic assertion is that Democratic candidates with leads greater than 20% at this point (or later) in the election cycle have never lost the nomination. This gives them a modicum of stability in the national numbers, which therefore enables them to conclude:

By now, it is obvious that Clinton is extremely well-positioned to win the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Her status as the front-runner seems to be strengthening at an opportune time with the Iowa Caucuses less than three months away. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that she could stumble and not win the nomination as did Kennedy and Hart, but those cases occurred under rather extreme circumstances. Also, those candidates held their large leads long before any votes were cast.

I have a lot of respect for Gallup as a polling organization. Furthermore, I have a lot of respect for the analysts they have over there - Frank Newport and Lydia Saad in particular. However, I have to say that this line of analysis is misleading (though I am sure unintentionally so). This is one of those instances where the strength of the conclusion is driven by the cutoff point, which is largely arbitrary.

What do I mean by that? I mean that Gallup has based its analysis on a cutoff point of 20% or more. In other words, they look at candidates who had leads of 20 points or greater at this stage in the campaign. And from this they can argue (correctly) that no candidate has lost if they had that size of a lead at this point in the cycle.

Methodologically, though, this is not as straightforward as it seems. We are in what a salty statistical guy such as myself would call "small n territory." In other words, we do not have very many observations of Democratic primaries - especially open ones. By my count, this is just the eighth open primary since 1972 (when the primary system was implemented more widely). When we have just seven observations to draw inferences about this eighth - we have to be very conscious of observations that do not fit our hypothesis. They factor in a lot. Accordingly, we cannot impose a priori cutoffs that obscure problematic data points.

So - I'll just ask the question: what happens if we switch the margin in the polls to, say, 16%? In that case - we find that Howard Dean did have such a lead in mid-December, 2003 - over Joe Lieberman , the second place candidate at the time! His lead over Kerry was 19%. Kerry, at that point, was in fourth place - behind (in order) Dean, Lieberman, and Wesley Clark. John Edwards, who ultimately finished second, was actually in sixth place - behind every major national candidate. He was just a point above Al Sharpton.

This indicates that anybody who wishes to use the national polls to infer what will happen must advertise loudly and clearly just how wrong they turned out to be in 2003/04. Between mid-October and the end of January, we actually saw three distinct trends in the Democratic contest. At this point in 2003, Clark and Dean were essentially tied for first place. Dean overtook Clark in early December - and surged ahead through Christmas. His lead began to taper off after New Year's. And Kerry surged after the Iowa Caucus.

The problem with Gallup's analysis is that it misses all of this because of the standard that it sets. The problematic nature of 2003/2004 is never brought to bear on its analysis of 2007/08.

So, does this mean that Clinton's lead is as tenuous as Dean's? No. In fact - and here is one reason why I regard Gallup as generally great not only at polling but also at polling analysis - they rightly note that Democratic primary voters this year claim to be much more stable in their candidate preferences than they were in 2003 and early 2004. In the latest Gallup poll, 57% of Democratic primary voters with a preference say they are "certain" to vote for their candidate. This number is at 67% among Clinton supporters. By contrast, only 35% of respondents said they were certain back in early January, 2004.

This favors Clinton. There is no doubt about it. It is one of the reasons I do not think this race is a toss-up. I think that she has an edge in this contest. But I do not yet see this edge as being decisive - or as being great enough to enable us to call the race right now. Return again to that swing to Kerry. At the beginning of January, he was at about 10% in the polls. At the end of January, he was at about 50%. Edwards, for his part, doubled his support from about 7% to about 13%. Where did this support come from?

First, let's make some simplifying assumptions, none of which contradict common sense. Assume that (a) Kerry or Edwards supporters at the beginning of the month were Kerry or Edwards supporters at the end of the month; (b) Voters who initially supported candidates who dropped out, or undecided voters who decided, went to Kerry or Edwards; (c) A candidate's "uncertain" voters will stop supporting a candidate before his "certain" voters; (d) The "certain" supporters of Clark and Dean followed the national trend, i.e. 35% of their respective supporters claimed certitude.

From these assumptions, we can claim the following. First, Kerry or Edwards picked up the support of the Gephardt, Lieberman, and Braun supporters. Second, about two-thirds of the undecided voters decided for Kerry or Edwards. Third, they picked up about 70% of Dean and Clark's "uncertain" supporters. Again, these are all based upon my assumptions. I cannot be certain because the data I have is aggregate, and therefore I run afoul of the ecological fallacy if I claim certitude. But some process akin to the one outlined here most certainly happened. After all, at least 50% of the Democratic electorate switched their preference from the beginning of January to the end. The specifics might have been a little different (my intuition is that Dean and Clark kept more of their "uncertain" voters but lost some of their "certain" voters) - but it would basically have been a process like this.

Now - let's flash-forward to 2008 and run a scenario similar to the one that occurred in 2004. Let's assume that Obama scores a huge win in Iowa that begins a shift akin to the one in 2004. It knocks out all of the candidates except Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich, and Gravel. Let's again assume that Edwards does well enough to benefit, too. But again, like 2004, he is not the prime beneficiary. Further, let's assume that Clinton's "certain" voters are indeed certain - but that she loses 70% of her "uncertain" voters. This gives Obama and Edwards a chance to split amongst themselves 24% of the Democratic electorate - 11.5% of which had previously supported Clinton in an "uncertain" fashion.

In 2004, the split among the new supporters between Kerry and Edwards was such that Kerry accrued 85% of the benefit. Let's assume that this happens again. Obama gets about 85% of this new vote up for grabs, Edwards gets about 15%. This means Obama increases his share of the vote by about 20% to go to 41%. Edwards increases his share by about 5% to go to 17%. Clinton loses her 70% of her "uncertain" supporters - 11.5% of her total support - and thus falls from 50% to 38.5%.

So, we have at the end of January 2008: Obama 41%, Clinton 38.5%, Edwards 17%, Undecided/Other 3.5%. This would be an electoral pivot that is, by my estimate, about as dramatic as the one that occurred in 2004. The difference - an important one - is that Clinton would obviously not be knocked out. Instead, the contest would continue on to Super Tuesday, with Obama being the leader in the national polls.

Do I think that this is what will happen? No. Not really. The point is simply the following. Something like this did happen once, out of just seven trials. This makes it highly problematic to draw inferences about what will happen in January based upon October polling. That "falsifying" observation diminishes our level of certitude to a great degree. This would not be the case if we had, say, 40 or so primary cycles to review. But we don't. We have seven. And one of them was just plain nutty. This limits our ability to infer what will happen.

And remember the initial cause of Kerry's 2004 turnaround. It was essentially because Kerry won the Iowa caucus by 6%. Think about that. That is amazing in retrospect. The actions of 6% of caucus-going Iowa Democrats induced about 50% of the entire nation's Democrats to begin to support John Kerry or John Edwards. That is incredible.

I'll put it another way: the reason that all of these states are jockeying for an early position is exactly the reason why none of us should be putting anything but the most rudimentary of odds on either party's nominating contests. These states are tripping over each other to break party rules because they think these early contests could be pivot points. The reason that we are all following these state actions is because we agree with them. We know that these early contests can be pivot points. So why are we implicitly claiming that the Democratic contest will necessarily not have one?

Like I said - rudimentary analysis is really all that is valid right now. So, here is mine. Clinton and Obama both have a ton of cash. They both have good messages that could appeal to the Democratic primary electorate. Both of them stand a chance at victory. I would estimate that Clinton has an advantage over Obama that is probably due to her greater name recognition as well the fact that she is a known quantity from a family of proven electoral winners.

If you want to argue that Clinton has an advantage because of the size of her national lead - you are simply on unsolid ground. Recent history has demonstrated quite clearly that these national poll numbers are far from stable. They are subject to sudden, dramatic, and decisive changes because of tiny shifts in the early contests.

Posted by Jay Cost at 09:00 AM | Permalink

There was a very strange article that appeared in the Washington Times on Saturday. It had to do with Giuliani's primary strategy. Joseph Curl wrote:

Republican presidential contender Rudolph W. Giuliani is counting on surviving the four early primary states and then implementing a national primary strategy that starts in Florida and explodes across the country, from New York to California, campaign analysts and consultants say.

While Iowa and New Hampshire are almost always the bellwether contests, and often the kingmakers, the former New York City mayor is "turning upside down the laws of political gravity," one strategist said.

"It looks like they're going to try to survive early, and he's got 16 million bucks in the bank, more than anybody else but [Mitt] Romney, and they'll try to roll through this thing, get to the big states on January 29 and Super Tuesday," said Scott Reed, a former Bob Dole campaign strategist who is not working for any presidential campaign this year.

Well - this starts off sensibly enough. We all know by now that Giuliani is planning to take the nomination by doing well on February 5. Unfortunately, the author takes things a bit too far - and uses comments from strategists in place of some simple fact checking.

"His strategy is centered around Florida plus February 5th and having enough money to do advertising campaigns in those big states," said Charlie Black, a Republican strategist close to the Bush administration who this campaign is working for Sen. John McCain. [Snip]

Mr. Reed said that tracking the movements and media-time purchases of Mr. Giuliani gives a window into his strategy.

"Look at where he's spending his time; look at where he's spending his money -- they're not camping in Iowa and New Hampshire; they're not spending a lot on advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire."

He, too, expressed doubt about the strategy.

"I just think it's difficult for Giuliani to lose the first four main events and think everybody in Florida is still going to be hanging on. ... I wouldn't say it's a losing strategy, but it's never been done," Mr. Reed said.

I, too, would express doubt about this strategy. The trick is - it does not seem to be what the Giuliani campaign is doing. The Washington Post has a handy-dandy website that keeps track of candidate visits - we can use it to verify the claims made in this article. Since the beginning of the year, Giuliani has visited New Hampshire more than any other state. Iowa comes second. Florida, California, and South Carolina round out the top five.

Now - maybe Giuliani has altered his campaign strategy. Indeed, we might expect any candidate to do this as his position in various states shifts, and he must deal with the problem of resource constraints. To check this, I examined his campaign trips since October 1, 2007 through yesterday. I excluded the debates. The results I found were inconsistent with the claims of the article. Giuliani has made eight campaign appearances in New Hampshire, four in Florida, four in South Carolina, three in Iowa. He has made six appearances in states that will come on Super Tuesday.

Not only has Giuliani spent the most time in New Hampshire - he camped out there for two complete working days. October 3rd and October 14th were dedicated exclusively to New Hampshire.

I think it is certainly true that Giuliaini is banking on doing well on the fifth of February. I also think that he may not be trying to win any of the early states. Instead, he may be trying to retain his viability until Florida. But it is just wrong to claim that Giuliani is not spending his time in the early states.

Relatedly, we can debate whether he is thinking about writing off Iowa. He may be. After all, his trip last week was his first in about two months - and his position in the Iowa polls has been weakening. But it is just ridiculous to argue that he is writing off all the early states. He clearly is not. He has been spending a good bit of time in both New Hampshire and South Carolina - and he has visited both states at least one time every month since July. What's more, his poll positions in New Hampshire and South Carolina are both fairly strong. Our average shows him in second place in New Hampshire, and tied for first place in South Carolina. Giuliani's frequent trips to both states reflect those positions.

Posted by Jay Cost at 08:22 AM | Permalink

As we all know by now, Sam Brownback exited the presidential contest late last week. And I guess I am behind the news cycle here, but I thought I'd offer some thoughts on his departure.

There is not much to say about Brownback's candidacy. Like a lot of presidential contenders - he thought he had an angle at the nomination. This is what induces the serious ones to get into the race. They see a way they can potentially win the nomination. But it is always an open question as to whether the angle ever materializes. Oftentimes it does not.

Brownback's angle was fairly obvious. He'd emphasize his cultural conservatism and his Midwestern roots, emphasize the family, do well in Iowa - and springboard from there. Unfortunately for him, it did not work out that way. Mike Huckabee's candidacy seemed to have robbed him of that angle. Huckabee always bested Brownback at the debates. And, of course, he came out ahead of Brownback at Ames, even though Brownback outspent him.

As of last week - Brownback was averaging about 4% in the polls in Iowa. And he is a non-entity in the New Hampshire polls. His angle was never going to materialize. He was right to leave.

So, here's the question I guess we're all asking: who benefits? David Yepsen had this to say:

A 27 percent front-runner [Mitt Romney] isn't much of a heavyweight. And last week's departure of Sam Brownback from the GOP race helps Mike Huckabee consolidate the votes of the GOP's social conservatives.

So do a little math. Add the 4 points Brownback had in that poll to the 12 percent Huckabee got, and the Arkansan is suddenly a 16-point contender in second place, ahead of Giuliani at 13 and only 9 points behind the stalled-out Romney.

I tend not to agree with this. Here's the problem. Right now, there are three viable contenders for the mantle of the social conservative: Romney, Thompson, and Huckabee. These four points are going to be spread among these three candidates - and of course some of these voters will find their way over to Giuliani and McCain. This means that, in all likelihood, nobody benefits to any appreciable degree. And that makes sense. After all, if the Brownback vote was of any significant size - he would not be bowing out of the race!

The same goes for Brownback's fundraising totals. They were equally anemic. Now that he is out of the race - those donors are probably going to be divided up among the three social conservative candidates - though a lot of those donors might be Brownback-specific. More than 20% of his donations came from Kansas, and might therefore be part of Brownback's political network rather than from at-large Republican activists who are now going to contribute to another candidate.

I will say that it was time for Brownback to leave the race. I do not begrudge him for taking his shot. But it has been clear for a while that the angle he thought he would have was never going to emerge. Thus, the only thing he was doing was interrupting the flow of the debates (Note to Hunter and Tancredo: You are, too. Please leave!). As it stands right now, the race largely appears to be Giuliani versus three alternatives, each of whom wants to argue that he is the best bet for social conservatives: Thompson, Romney, and Huckabee. Meanwhile, McCain is hanging around in New Hampshire. He might be able to play spoiler, or take the whole thing for himself with a surprise win.

So where does that leave the state of the race? Who has the best shot? I have no stinkin' idea! The impression that the polls give me is the same impression I received from last night's debate: this thing is wide open. I think most people who watched the debate would conclude that the five major candidates - Giuliani, Thompson, McCain, Romney, and Huckabee - all performed reasonably well. What is more, they all conveyed different personas. Each of them thinks that what they are conveying might be what the public is looking for - and each of them might very well be right. In other words - like Brownback, each of these five candidates enters with an angle on the race. Unlike Brownback, their angles still may materialize.

Look at the current Real Clear Politics average. It tells the same story as last night's debate.

Giuliani: 27.6%
Thompson: 18.7%
Romney: 12.7%
McCain: 13.4%
Huckabee: 5.4%

Both Iowa and New Hampshire have numbers that are roughly similar - the only difference is in the order of the candidates. The bottom line: five candidates have non-negligible amounts of support, and no candidate has a commanding lead over any other candidate. Two other factors are of relevance. First, most voters still maintain that their minds may change. Second, the real campaign is just now beginning - as the campaigns are unloading the war chests they have been building.

This leads me to conclude that these numbers are unsustainable. What we are going to see - and we are going to see it relatively soon - is this field breaking in one or more directions. The question that we can't answer: to whom is it going to break?

This is why I think horse race analysis at this point is an exercise in futility. It is like trying to predict what a specific molecule in a volatile system will do at an given moment. There are simply too many factors to account for. I could see any one of these five candidates being the one at the top when the race is over. So, I would be wary of people who are willing to tell me what to expect. The fact of the matter is that the GOP primary battle has a lot in common with any highly complicated, multi-variable system. It is impossible to anticipate what will happen.

What that means is that we should stop trying to extrapolate from every little micro-event that only a handful of political junkies ever take notice of. Those tiny day-to-day happenings probably are not going to matter much because this thing is going to shift at some point - and the day after it shifts simply will not resemble the day before it shifts.

Right now, I see Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney as quite viable. I also see Huckabee able to shake things up with a big surprise in Iowa, or McCain able to do the same in New Hampshire. It is, I think, completely futile to try to assign probabilities to any specific outcome.

So, I think we should all sit tight - and see how this thing breaks.

We shouldn't have much longer to wait.

Posted by Jay Cost at 12:00 AM | Permalink

A reader of mine named Sean, who runs the very excellent MyElectionAnalysis.com, sent along the following email in regards to today's column.

I generally agree with everything that Sean says below, and I post it without comment because it stands on its own. I'll just say that any metric of an election that is 13 months away is going to have efficiency problems, which is what we are really discussing. The difference between "politics nerds" like myself and Sean (i.e. people who spent way too much time studying politics at the university-level) and others, I think, is that we like to list all of our caveats right up front. The two metrics that other analysts have been making use of - the money race and retirements - probably have as many caveats as recruitment.

That said, I'll leave it to Sean to fill out my list of caveats.

Jay,

I hope all is well. Allow me to suggest two further caveats to your "candidate quality" metric.

First, I believe it excludes a number of quality candidates who might not have run for Congress before. Two immediate examples spring to mind: Admiral Joe Sestak in PA-07 and the Republican Four-Star General who is challenging Jim Marshall in GA-08 this time around. I understand that the beauty of the "previous elective office" rule is that it is a very bright line, and that candidates who have never won elected office before tend to be of the Carol Shea Porter variety, so I don't consider this an important one (BTW, do you happen to know off the top of your head the name of the guy who developed the measurement system from 1-4 of measuring candidate quality? Can't remember it, but it was a good one).

[Jay: David Cannon is, I believe, the creator of that scale. I think the work is Actors, Athletes, and Astronauts: Political Amateurs in the United States Congress (1990). I believe that the four-point scale gives different scores to previous office holders, candidates with a prior political job like an appointment, ambitious amateurs who have run before, and then all other candidates. The binary variable I used in today's column is one used by Gary Jacobson and Alan Abramowitz, though of course they use actual general election challengers. It is therefore much more precise.]

Carol Shea-Porter, though, leads me to a second, more important caveat, which questions the efficacy of the measurment. By my count, fifteen of the twenty-three Democrats who defeated GOP incumbents in 2006 held no prior elected office (McNerney, Donnelly, Loebsack, Boyda, Yarmuth, Walz, Shea-Porter, Hall, Gillibrand, Shuler, Altmire, Sestak, Murphy, Carney, and Kagen) (I'm not sure if Brad Ellsworth was an elected sheriff). That's about 65%!!!

There are three possible conclusions to draw from this to build an additional caveat. The first is that prior elected experience isn't such a great metric. I don't think this is correct, if only because the parties would have noticed this and spent a lot less time recruiting state reps and a lot more time recruiting one-hit-wonder 70s pop starts who posed shirtless on their album covers.

The second two possibilities concede that prior elected office is a good metric, but only in "normal" years. Possibility number two would be that in "wave" years, incumbents who see they have a "weak" challenger let their guard down and get swept out. This strikes me as very likely. As I recall, similar dynamics manifested in 1994 (think Hostettler, Souder, Tiahrt, etc) and in 1974 (Thomas Downey) (okay, I don't recall 1974, but I've read lots about it).

The third possibility is slightly broader, which is that in years where voters are mad at Washington (whether at a particular party or in general), they are more favorably inclined toward candidates who have not held prior elective office. This would explain Ogonowski's recent showing in an environment that is fairly toxic to Republicans (Tsongas had never held elective office either, but she was definitely associated with it).

My guess is that there should be a caveat of some sort that includes some variant of the second and third possibilities. And to the extent that it favors the third possibility, in the current environment, it could be advantageous to Republicans.

Best Regards,

Sean

Posted by Jay Cost at 02:52 PM | Permalink

Lots of pundits and bloggers have been trying to get an early read on the 2008 House elections. I think that much of this analysis has been good because it has been relying on two solid metrics - retirements and party money.

Analysts have been looking at congressional retirements, which gives us a sense not only of how many districts will be open (obviously), but also the expectations that both sides have for the next election. The party with more retirements is more likely to be the party that expects a tough year. Its incumbents retire rather than face a hard challenge. Another valuable metric is Hill committee fundraising receipts. This probably speaks to the enthusiasm of both party's donor bases - which gives us another bit of insight on how the parties think they are doing.

I'd like to introduce another metric for analyzing the 2008 election. Again, it is early. But if we are careful in our use of measuring sticks, we can still get some purchase on what to expect next year.

Scholars have found that a good measure for congressional elections is the state of party recruitment. Namely, have the parties been able to attract "qualified" candidates to challenge the opposing side? This is a good metric for two reasons. First, if a party has had success with getting qualified candidates - it is a sign that the party is bullish about its prospects. Qualified candidates are usually serious candidates. Serious candidates run to win, and so they will only throw their hats into the ring if they think they can succeed. Second, qualified candidates tend to be better campaigners, which is very important. Congressional elections are not simply a consequence of the president's job approval, or the general feeling in the country. These play an important part - however, very often it is the case that the party favored by the public mood has to translate these feelings into political action. They must signal to the public that a vote for them is an expression of their current sentiment - and either an endorsement of the status quo or a vote for change.

Next question - how do we measure qualification? There is no way to measure it perfectly. Any measure we use will almost undoubtedly identify some unqualified candidates as qualified, and some qualified candidates as unqualified. That is not to say that some measurements are not better than others. Whatever measurement we choose, we have to make sure that we apply it evenly and objectively. Furthermore, we would need it to have good predictive power. Because we expect qualified candidates to do better than unqualified candidates, we should find that the candidates our yardstick identifies as qualified win more often than the candidates our yardstick identifies as unqualified.

One common metric that you'll see in academic literature is whether the candidate has won a previous elective office. If he has, he is labeled qualified. This metric satisfies both of the standards I listed in the previous paragraph. We can apply it fairly across the parties, and we also know that previous officeholders win more often than those who have not previously held office. Like any estimate of real qualification, it probably includes some truly unqualified candidates and exclusdes some truly qualified candidates. But it is still a reasonably good measuring stick.

At this point, every state except Illinois is far from its candidate filing deadline. So, to get an estimate of candidate qualifications, we would have to discover how many qualified candidates have either declared or have expressed an interest in declaring. This is not quite as precise as we might like because lots of those potential candidates will turn out not to run. We'll have a much better read on candidate qualifications next June when most filing deadlines have past and we know who is running and who is not. But this just means our metric becomes less precise - it does not become useless. We'll just have to factor in our imprecision when we analyze the data that we find.

The trick is how to collect this data. This would be incredibly labor intensive - but not for us, thanks to Ron Gunzberger and the indispensible Politics1.com. I absolutely love this site. If I could only visit three websites every day - it would probably be Politics1.com, TheGreenPapers.com, and (of course!) RealClearPolitics.com.

Just why is Politics1 so great? There are many reasons - but today's reason is that Mr. Gunzberger is actually keeping track of who is thinking about running and what those potential candidates did for a living before they decided they might want to be called "The Honorable." I don't know how he gets that data together. Quite frankly, I don't want to know. But Gunzberger has an impressive dataset that covers all 435 House contests - so we can indeed get a sense of how many qualified candidates are either running or thinking about running for Congress.

We can use this data to answer the following question: how many Democratic seats have or might have qualified Republican challengers, and how many Republican seats have or might have qualified Democratic challengers?

I came out with 33 Democratic seats and 54 Republican seats. So, the Democrats seem to be more ambitious in their attempts to challenge Republicans. Democrats are either challenging or might be challenging about 26% of Republican-held seats. Republicans are either challenging or might be challenging about 14% of Democratic-held seats.

Now remember that this is just one metric. It is important not to overinterpret the data - so before I do interpret things, I am going to list all of my caveats. First, many important metrics have not yet become available to us - so our ability to draw inferences about the 2008 House contest remains limited. Second, we canl get a better picture of things when we start to use multiple metrics at once - which I have not done. For instance - how many qualified Democratic challengers are there in Republican-held districts that lean to the left? This can make a difference. There are three qualified Democratic challengers in Nebraska - but the single qualified challenger in Delaware is probably worth more to the DCCC. Relatedly, while the GOP has fewer qualified challengers - 75% of their qualified challengers are trying to win back seats the Democrats won in 2006. This means that they are running against freshman, who tend to be more vulnerable than more senior members of the House.

Third, remember that this metric itself has limitations. Above all, it is probably an overestimate of the final number of competitive seats - as some of these candidates who might run end up not running, we should see these numbers fall. Fourth, in many instances - qualified challengers are facing unqualified challengers in party primaries. Just as happened in NH 01 last year, the candidate with prior electoral experience can lose to the candidate without such experience. As that happens, these numbers would change, too.

With my caveats - or as my dad would say, my "CYA" clauses - now in place, here is how I would interpret these numbers. Like contributions to the Hill committees and retirements, I think this metric has real analytical value even though it is still early. Above all, it is an indication that Democratic "elites" - those who actually run for Congress - are feeling more bullish about 2008 than their Republican counterparts. And this bullishness - if it holds - might translate into a real horse race advantage for the Democrats, as they are able to offer real challenges to more seats next year. A party is better able to take advantage of the public mood if it has candidates who know how to win elections. Right now, the Democrats are on track to have more such candidates.

Update: At 4:30 PM EST today, I added an addendum to this column - thanks to a very intelligent email I received from a reader named Sean, who runs myelectionanalysis.com. Read it here.

Posted by Jay Cost at 11:51 AM | Permalink

Steven Stark had an interesting column today on third party candidacies. As per usual with him, it was quite good - and it gives me an opportunity to offer some additional thoughts I have had on the prospects of such a candidacy.

Stark writes:

Every 12 years or so, a new independent or third-party candidate gains momentum during an election cycle. Almost always, when these candidacies arise, it's the incumbent party that loses the election. In 2000 with Ralph Nader, in 1992 with H. Ross Perot, in 1980 with John Anderson, in 1968 with George Wallace, and on back through modern-American political history, the lesson of third parties is twofold: they never win and, because their ire is often directed at the status quo -- thus the party holding power -- they damage the candidate of the incumbent party.

First off, I have a mild methodological quibble. I object to the implication of a third party cycle. Third party candidacies are not like Haley's Comet. Generally, I do not think cycles should be referenced when discussing politics. The reason is that there are two potential explanations for a cycle. It is either caused by some set of factors, or it is the product of random variation. Take this proposed third party cycle. There is either a reason why third parties emerge every "12 years or so," or there is not. If there is no reason, then we should not expect a third party candidate next year based solely upon the date. If there is a reason, what really matters is the reason itself. That is what we should discuss - because it may or may not be in play this cycle. After all, politics is not Newtonian physics. The political environment is stohcastic. Causal processes can be and often are interrupted by random variation - and so, even if there is a third party cycle that is caused by something, the cause may very well be "off" this year.

That aside, I think the column is quite good - and it brings to my mind a few additional historical lessons that can further shape our expectations for this cycle.

First, third party challengers have historically tended to be one of two types. On the one hand, they have been representatives of people with sectional grievances that the two major parties have failed to satisfy. Think of the Populist Party of the 1890s, the Dixiecrats in 1948, and the American Independents in 1968. These are concentrated groups of people who feel that neither party has something to offer them, and therefore are susceptible to a third party challenge. On the other hand, if they have not been sectional in nature, they usually tend to spring up momentarily around a relatively famous personality. Ross Perot comes instantly to mind. John Anderson does, too. Head back a few decades and you'll see that the best third party challengers who were non-sectional were TR in 1912 and "Fighting Bob" LaFollette in 1924.

This pattern makes intuitive sense. A third party can sustain itself if it has a geographical base to work with because our elections are geographically based. So, it can win some states and develop some viability in that way. Barring that, it needs some kind of big personality to drive the campaign, to use media attention to reach its group of potential supporters, who are dispersed across the country. Without such a personality, the party lacks the resources to communicate its message - and it goes nowhere.

Second, Stark notes correctly that third parties have always lost. I think this has some wide-ranging implications for the possibility of such a challenge. If we assume that voters are generally rational, and therefore prefer not to waste their votes, how do we explain support for third party candidates? I think that you tend to see such support when a significant bloc of voters sees no difference between the two major parties - at least as far as their interests are concerned. A vote for a third party is therefore like a vote of no confidence in the two party system. Some voters who vote for third party candidates are probably irrational - they would be better off supporting a candidate in one of the major parties. But the rest of them are indicating that, as far as their interests are concerned, the two major parties offer no differences. I do not see any other way to explain the Nader vote in 2000. Nader voters of course knew that he stood no chance. So, why did they support him? It was because they saw Bush and Gore - to quote Nader himself - as "Tweedledee and Tweedledum." Their votes were statements about the two party system.

Occassionally, third party candidates can become electorally viable. It is true that they have always lost, but it is not true that in every year everybody expected them to lose. Think of Perot in 1992. One could have possibly made an argument that he would win on election day. Ditto TR in 1912. These years the logic of supporting a third party candidate changes. One might be pulling the lever expecting that the guy might go to the White House.

Having teased out these additional observations, let's continue with Stark's column.

It certainly won't help matters for the GOP that this year's splinter candidates will probably come from nominally Republican ranks. The media has focused on New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, but he's actually the unlikeliest of the three to make a third-party bid. The likeliest is current GOP candidate Ron Paul, who already has one independent general-election run under his belt as a Libertarian (in 1988, when he garnered just 0.5 percent of the vote) and would have no trouble making another. As this year's version of Perot, Paul's already shown unexpected grassroots appeal and fundraising ability. And he's so far refused to say he would support the party's nominee, which is always a telling sign.

Then there's the Religious Right, some of whose adherents have put the GOP on notice that, if Giuliani -- the party's strongest general-election candidate -- receives the nomination, they, too, would consider going the independent route. (Some later backed off the threat, but it's still there.)

Given what we observed above, I think we can say that it is more likely that Ron Paul would be a significant third party threat than a Christian right candidate. Paul and his supporters fit both of the observations that we made. He is certainly a media personality at this point - and he has garnered a very loyal and devoted following. This can serve as a substitute for the fact that he does not represent a sectional interest. What is more, even though he is campaigning as a Republican right now - his arguments could translate to a third party candidacy. What is the difference between the GOP and the Democrats, from the perspective of a Paulite? Very little.

Compare this to the situation on the Christian right. At present, there is no personality who has expressed interest in a political campaign. And, as the Christian right is a diffused interest group, a no-name cannot rely upon a strong geographical basis for support. The story would be different if James Dobson himself were thinking of running - rather than thinking of backing a third party candidate. But, at present, there is nobody of his notoriety pondering a run to the GOP's right. Furthermore, while Christian conservatives might be unsatisfied with Rudy Giuliani as their presidential candidate, they nevertheless would perceive a difference between him and the eventual Democratic nominee. This perception of difference would increase should the Democratic nominee turn out to be Hillary Clinton. This makes a vote for a third party candidate much more difficult. It is one thing to argue that there is not a dime's worth of difference between the major party candidates. It is quite another thing to argue that we should effectively support the opposition to punish our side for not listening to us.

That leads me to think that Paul is more likely to be viable. But there are complications with such a candidacy. While it is certainly possible that Paul could command a non-negligible share of the general election vote - that remains to be seen. It all depends on how great his "not a dime's worth of difference" pitch would be. And bear in mind that primary voters for Paul would not necessarily translate to general election voters. A lot of those people might very well support Paul today, but in the general election could see a difference between Giuliani and Clinton. Relatedly, Paul is running for reelection as a Republican in TX-14. This might make it difficult for him to develop a broader base of support - as it begs the question, "If the parties are so similar, why are you a Republican?"

Now - don't get me wrong. I am not predicting that there will be no significant third party candidate emerging. My argument is simply that, at this point, several useful metrics are not indicating that such a candidate will come forth. I say that while at the same time ceding that there is potential for a third party candidate. A lot of people, especially on the right, are disgruntled by both major parties. The catch with this disgruntlement is that it has to be translated into political action. That requires the work of political leaders. And, at this point, nobody seems to be positioning themselves to translate this aggravation into support.

I would certainly agree, though, that an eye should be kept on Ron Paul. There would be difficulties for him to establish himself as a third party contender - but the problems I see with the challenge might be surmountable. He may be able to translate his primary support into general election support, and the fact that he is running for reelection as a Republican might not bother the kinds of voters who would support him.

Posted by Jay Cost at 10:14 AM | Permalink

On Monday I sounded off about the relationship between Ron Paul and the Republican Party. My argument was that the fact that such a "bad" Republican like Ron Paul could maintain his position in the party is a sign that the party itself lacks mechanisms to manage its brand identity.

I received a lot of email from Paul supporters. Most of them argued some variant of the proposition that Paul is the only true Republican - and George Bush and the "neocons" are the cheaters. This is all well and good - but this is not what I was on about. I was not speaking in normative terms - hence the consistent use of scare quotes. You can argue that the Republican Party has become corrupted, and Paul is the only pure one left - but all you are doing is changing the adjectives around. What matters is that Paul diverges greatly from the caucus average, and that the caucus lacks the power to keep Paul in line - thus, it has trouble establishing a brand. So, I was not assigning moral blame.

Furthermore, I was not arguing that Paul is the major contributor to the problem of establishing a GOP brand. I used him only as an example because he is in the news a lot. Personally, I think that more damage has been done to the Republican Party brand by George W. Bush.

This brings me to my final point of clarification. Paul's supporters also argued that George W. Bush and the Republican caucus are the ones who have strayed from what they promised they would do, and that they are the ones to blame. I agree - so much so that on Monday I made this exact argument! The caucus lacks the power to induce members to enact what the party promised during the last campaign. Hence, it has trouble maintaining a brand.

With that digression now ended, I want to continue working through the ideas I began on Monday. I'd like to offer some tentative thoughts on how we can induce more responsibility from our governing party. How can we get the party to make coherent campaign promises on the vital issues of the day, and then actually deliver on those promises if electoral victory is obtained.

Ultimately, the Constitution itself prevents the full realization of responsible party government. One of the most obvious impediments is staggered elections. This has created a problem for Democrats - in the person of George W. Bush. He was elected in 2004 when the public had a very different view of matters - and that old view has thwarted the Democrats' attempts to translate the new view into policy. Old electoral returns are "sticky" in our system. A single election will not necessarily undue an old governing majority. That is what happens when a House seat is up every two years, a Senate seat is up every six years, and the presidency is up every four years.

Another impediment to responsibility is the geographical basis of representation. A Democratic legislator from Georgia may be acting according to the state party's wishes and against the national party's wishes at the same time - in which case, it becomes difficult to identify whether he is being responsible or not. So, when we talk about responsibility, we are talking about increasing party responsibility given the nature of o