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Thursday, October 31, 2013

Election night 2013 is shaping up to be a historically boring affair | Harry J Enten

Election night 2013 is shaping up to be a historically boring affair | Harry J Enten
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All three major races in New Jersey, New York, and Virginia are set to be blowouts. It’s something we haven’t seen in 40 years

In case you couldn’t tell, I love elections. But unlike many folks, my favorite year in the four-year cycle of United States elections is not the presidential one. I enjoy getting to know the candidates in state and local contests in a way that only midterm and off-year elections allow. The problem is that there isn’t a “major” competitive race in 2013. This year, we may have a new election night record for earliest announcement of the winners in an off-year following a presidential election.

What do I mean by all of this?

The year after the presidential election features three marquee races: New Jersey governor, New York City mayor, and Virginia governor. New Jersey usually includes outsized personalities in two major media markets (Philadelphia and New York). New York City mayor is basically the same thing, but in the country’s largest city. Virginia is a swing state that is often predictive of the next year’s midterm elections and is next to the nation’s capital.

None of that has necessarily changed this year. New Jersey’s Chris Christie continues to amaze with his uncommonly wide coalition for a Republican. Bill de Blasio’s going to return Democrats to Gracie Mansion in New York City for the first time in 20 years. And you’ll rarely see two major state-wide candidates as disliked as Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia.

The difficulty for the electorally excited is that all the probable winners are going to do so rather easily. Christie is up by nearly 30pt, De Blasio is ahead by over 40pt, and McAuliffe is leading by about 10pt. Drama is sorely lacking in the final week before election day.

It’s not unusual for one or even two of these races to be yawners. There were two fantastic 1989 races in New York and Virginia where African Americans were elected in tight races to their respective positions for the first time, while New Jersey was a blowout victory for Jim Florio. In 1973, there were two 35pt lifeless races in New York and New Jersey, but was saved by a 1pt affair in the Old Dominion.

The difference this year is that all three big races should be called soon after the polls close. I went back over the past 40 years of election results to get an idea of how rare the snoozefest of 2013 is for the after-presidential-off-year election troika. It may end up being historic.

The table here is sorted by the closest contest, and I put in the current Real Clear Politics averages for the 2013 races.

What you see is that only 1985 had a wider margin at 10.41pt for the closest contest than 2013 currently. It’s entirely conceivable that 2013 could beat 1985, especially since the latest Washington Post poll has McAuliffe up by 12pt in Virginia. Therefore, 2013 could actually end up being the most boring general election year for the New Jersey, New York City, Virginia triumvirate since 1973.

A closer look reveals that 1985 and 2013 are really in a completely different world than the larger dataset. More than half the years since 1973 had at least one race where the margin was less than 3pt. Eight out of 11 had at least one race where the margin was mid-single digits or lower. Only 1977, 1985, and 2013 were near or above double digits in their closest race.

What separates 1985 and 2013 from 1977 is the fact that two of the races were or are going to be landslides. Even though none of the 1977 races were nail biters, they were all modestly competitive. None had margins of greater than 14pt. 1985 had – and 2013 looks to ultimately have – two races in which the winning candidate won by more than 25pt.

If 2013 contained two non-blowouts, then there would at least be a decent chance that one might get close in the final week. Maybe there’d be a scandal, or maybe the electoral gods would find some new and interesting way to insert some doubt in the final outcome of one of the races.

As it is, there are no signs that anything is in doubt in 2013. Christie’s lead is expanding, De Blasio’s is steady, and McAuliffe has been widening the gap over the past two months. It’s almost certainly over, unless there is some tremendous surprise.

I guess the good news for the candidates is that they don’t have to worry about the final outcome. For the electoral junkies, it’s a sad, sad state of affairs.

Harry J Enten

Comment is free | theguardian.com

Read more about Election night 2013 is shaping up to be a historically boring affair | Harry J Enten and other interesting subjects concerning Internet Spying and Secrecy at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Has gerrymandering made politics more partisan? Ted Cruz argues not | Harry J Enten

Redistricting is blamed for polarising Congress. But Ted Cruz shows the cause is red-state voters’ choice of strict conservatives

I have written about gerrymandering before, but the issue is back to the fore because numerous commentators have posited a link between gerrymandering and the shutdown. Gerrymandering is now commonly given as the reason why congressional districts appear to be producing more conservative and/or Tea Party-allied Republican representatives.

I still believe the supposed effects of gerrymandering on political polarization in the House of Representatives are being overstated. And fine work from Nate Cohn and Sean Trende explains the point very well. I just have one more thing to add to the argument: what about Ted Cruz?

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is seen as a figurehead for Tea Party conservatives. It’s even been reported that House Republicans have been taking directions from him in refusing to pass a clean continuing resolution without defunding or delaying Obamacare. So did gerrymandering create Ted Cruz, too?

The answer, of course, is no. Ted Cruz was elected to the United States Senate; he has never served in the House. Senators are voted for in state-wide elections, which means that redistricting and gerrymandering logically can’t apply. Yet, Cruz is as conservative as, if not more conservative than, the House GOP members who, many believe, are keeping the government shut down and flirting with debt default.

Admittedly, Ted Cruz is just one elected official, but he’s played a larger-than-life role in the current crisis. And, more importantly perhaps, he is part of a larger trend in the United States Senate, in three ways.

First, Cruz is from the state of Texas. And Texas is a deep red state, which makes it characteristic of a pattern of states becoming more polarized. As I’ve noted before, there used to be a great many states that were very competitive in national elections. In 1976, almost half the states in the union came within 3pt of the nationwide vote in the presidential election. A more impressive 30-plus states were within 5pt. Today, the numbers aren’t even close to that.

There were only eight states that came within 3pt of the national vote in the 2012 presidential race. That number only rises to ten when we include states where the margin was within 5pt of the nationwide margin – only a third of the number there were in 1976. Even if you expanded the list to include those within 10pt, you’d still only get to 14 states.

It’s fairly clear, then, that people are “self-sorting” on the state level. As Sean Trende shows, this filters down to the congressional district level rather well. The number of districts that most would call “competitive” under even the Democratic-written district lines of the 1990s would have been about the same.

Second, Cruz’s election was one of many where voters decided that they wanted their senatorial vote to reflect their presidential vote. Just 20 years ago, a similar party allocation in the Senate featured many more blue state Republicans and red state Democrats. In 1993, 49% of the Democrats’ Senate caucus came from states that had voted more Republican than the nation as a whole in the prior presidential election. That percentage has been cut in half, to only 25% in 2013.

It’s the same story with the Republican Senate caucus. Republicans from blue states were 28% of the Senate Republicans in 1993. Today, the percentage is only 16%.

So, what we have is increased polarization in the voting patterns of states on the presidential level, which has translated down to the senatorial level. Note, as Nate Silver has shown, this is the same phenomenon that is occurring on the congressional district level – even when controlling for changing districting lines.

The third factor is that the increased polarization of the states seems to be reflected in the senators’ voting records. The Senate (as well as the House) is now more polarized than it’s been in the past 135 years. How do we know?

The people over at Voteview score each roll-call vote: -1 is most liberal, while +1 is most conservative, per Voteview’s “DW nominate” score. They then were kind enough to map the average difference between the Senate’s Democratic and Republican caucus. This shows that there have been increasing differences in the average voting scores of the Republican and Democratic Senate caucuses, respectively, since the 1976 election. The polarization accelerated after the 1992 election.

It’s simply not possible that gerrymandering was the sole cause of this trend. It’s not as though anyone can, all of a sudden, start moving around state lines.

Now, none of this is to say that gerrymandering isn’t responsible for some part of the polarization in Washington. The median Democratic and Republican House district is more polarized than the median Democratic and Republican Senate seat. The House caucuses have more extreme voting records than the Senate’s. Some of that is, again, due to self-sorting on the state level more locally, but not all of it can be accounted for that way.

The Senate shows, however, that the sharp upswing in polarization we see today is largely the product of natural voting patterns. And these manifest themselves on the state level without any gerrymandering. Texas put Ted Cruz in the Senate not because someone redrew Texas’ state lines, but because Texas voters became, on average, more conservative.

Harry J Enten

Comment is free | theguardian.com

Has gerrymandering made politics more partisan? Ted Cruz argues not | Harry J Enten

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Wendy Davis and Texas are a problem for Democrats | Harry J Enten

The Lone Star state isn’t blue yet. A big push for Wendy Davis’ guv race takes resources from more winnable red-leaning states

Those who have followed my writing know that I don’t think Wendy Davis has a very good chance of being elected governor of Texas. She trails in early polling, there hasn’t been a major Texas Democratic statewide officer holder in 20 years, and the state’s demographic changes indicate a landscape that is much further away from being competitive than many Democrats argue. But there’s more to it than that: Davis’ campaign could have bad ramifications for Democrats outside of Texas.

Many Democrats want to argue that even if Davis doesn’t win, it’s worth competing in the state. I don’t disagree. You never know what’s going to happen in any election, and any organizing efforts are likely to hasten (even if not greatly) the chance of a Democrat winning down the road.

The issue is that resources are always limited. Sure, there are mega donors who will donate to every candidate they can. There are also volunteers who will hit the ground in Texas. There are, however, plenty of donors who will pick and choose their campaigns. There are folks who might go down to Texas to help Davis, when they could be somewhere else.

The dollars and volunteers spent for Davis lessens the opportunity that they be spent in other places. That’s a problem for Democrats given that they have a real opportunity to make major gubernatorial gains in 2014.

Democrats are far better positioned to regain control of the governor’s mansions in Florida, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. All these states have had at least one poll come out over the past year indicating that a Democrat led in the race for governor, which cannot be said about Texas.

Florida and Pennsylvania are major swing states in presidential elections. Democrats in Florida could use the governor’s powers to block some very conservative legislation passed by the state’s legislation, while Democrats in Pennsylvania won’t have to listen to their governor’s homophobic remarks. Democrats hold large early leads in both states with very unpopular governors.

Maine’s Governor Paul LePage has made comments that you’d expect from a deeply red state, not one from the blue state of Maine. He only won last time because of a three-way contest, which will again be the case this year. The Democrats are favored, yet will need to ensure the independent candidate Eliot Cutler doesn’t give LePage a second term.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is well below 50% against an unknown opponent in this bluish state. His approval rating is well below 50%. I know Democrats would love to take out the governor who signed right to work into law in the ultimate labor state of Michigan.

South Carolina is most intriguing because there it’s the ultimate southern state. There aren’t any major demographic changes happening in South Carolina, though Republican Governor Nikki Haley has struggled to keep approval rating above water. She only won by 5pt in 2010, even as Republicans won big time nationally.

Democrats also want to hold seats in Arkansas, Connecticut, and Illinois. Polls indicate that those races won’t be easy to won, but they are all more competitive than Texas is.

Republicans would absolutely love the effort and money that would have gone to any one of the eight states above go to Texas. They know that Texas won’t be competitive for at least 10-20 years, if demographic voting patterns hold. No amount of money will change that significantly, while money could alter one of the states mentioned here.

Indeed, Democrats seem to have sort of fantasy on Texas that I can only describe as a naive childhood crush on a pinup when the nice girl next door yearns for attention. Democrats continuously pledge to make Texas blue, though the math just isn’t there. They do when there are other states that are far more for the taking.

The gap between how Georgia and the country votes is shrinking by the day, as the percentage white people make up in Georgia is dropping fast. It’s the reason why Michelle Nunn is competitive in a Senate race in the Peach State. President Obama lost the state by only single digits, unlike Texas.

Arizona is a state where the growing Latino population has at least made it possible for Democrats to win statewide. There has actually been a Democratic governor in the past ten years. Richard Carmona only lost a Senate race there by 3pt in 2012, and Democrats actually control a majority of the state’s House’s seats. None of this can be said for Texas.

Overall, Texas and Wendy Davis’ efforts in the state are not just the fun type of tease for Democrats, but one that are probably taking resources out from other states. Making an effort in every state is important, though when Twitter hashtags like “Stand with Wendy” are dominating it may be too much of a good thing.

Democrats have a real chance to win back the majority of governorships in 2014, and they have the ability to take advantage of the changing demographic tides in Arizona and Georgia. The question is whether or not Wendy Davis and Democrats in Texas will get in the way.

Harry J Enten

Comment is free | theguardian.com

Wendy Davis and Texas are a problem for Democrats | Harry J Enten