No, not that George Bush. His father. The point is this PublicPolicyPolling survey, which shows Christie creaming anyone the Democrats could run against him, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker. Booker trails by 14 points, while Richard Codey, Steve Sweeney, and Barbara Buono, of whom I've never heard, trail by 22, 27, and 40 points. Bruce Springsteen even trails by 36 points, despite himself being quite popular. The reason is that Christie himself is very popular, with a 67%/25% approval rating, including a 56%/32% approval rating among, uh, Democrats. So it looks like I'm stuck with my odious Governor for another four years, right? (Yeah, I'm in the 25% of disapprovers.)
That's probably correct. However, there's a real chance, I think, that Christie's current popularity is basically a bump from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and that it could fade substantially over the next year. New Jersey is, after all, a blue state, and during a campaign it should be pretty hard for Christie to retain his popularity with Democrats. If, that is, a strong candidate could be found to run against him. That's why I invoke George H.W. Bush as a model: during 1991, his approval ratings were so strong that no prominent Democrat wanted to challenge him, but when diamond-in-the-rough Bill Clinton actually ran the campaign, he found Bush's strength dissipating and the incumbent highly vulnerable. I sort of think the 1992 campaign should stand as a cautionary tale to ambitious politicians, telling them not to let outlandish popularity numbers for the incumbent in the wake of some Event from which they've received substantial good press scare them away.
But, in this case, I imagine the relevant parties won't listen. With the presumptively-going-to-open-up Senate seat in 2014, it just doesn't make sense as the place to direct your efforts, if you're a Democratic prospect looking for higher office. Which means that we'll probably end up having to nominate some sacrificial lamb-type candidate, who'll run a bit of a mediocre campaign and get slaughtered. Oh well.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Friday, November 16, 2012
How Not To Analyze Miguel Cabrera's MVP Win
As indeed I might have predicted in advance, I'm not entirely sure what to think about the American League Most Valuable Player race. I think I would have voted for Miguel Cabrera, who won, so I should be happy, but on the other hand, since I recognize that Mike Trout deserved the award at least as much as Cabrera, I'd've liked to see it a wee bit closer. But I do know some things that I definitely do not think about the race, and many of them are exemplified by this article on Slate, whose thesis is that, like Mitt Romney, Miguel Cabrera was the candidate of old white men, but unlike Romney, his electorate consisted mostly of that group, so he won while Romney lost.
Problems abound. First of all, Miguel Cabrera is himself Hispanic, while Mike Trout is rather distinctly white. Furthermore, as admitted in the article itself, all three of the not-white-men who got to vote for AL MVP voted for, uh, Cabrera. So it looks like race isn't the main factor here, although there is a more plausible statistical link with age. But my more fundamental problem is the way the article frames the arguments behind supporting Cabrera: as unthinking, reactionary gibberish combined with a healthy dose of you-kids-get-off-my-lawn-ism. The evidence for this point seems to be one guy who wrote a column that has exactly these traits, and from this single datum it is inferred that this is the only argument which can be made for Trout. My argument, on the other hand, is simple and, I think, reasonable: yes, Trout was clearly the better player this past season, but Miguel Cabrera won the frickin' Triple Crown, and that's just a trump card. I admit openly that this is what one might call an irrational argument, or at least a non-rational argument. But because I admit it, because I say openly that I think the award ought to go to player X despite the fact that player Y had a better season of baseball, I'm not being ignorant or reactionary or acting in knee-jerk opposition to modern statistical analysis.
This sentence in particular bothers me:
Now, I do agree with the article's actual proposal, though it's a proposal that's never really made explicitly. The BBWAA's voting system does empower people with relatively traditionalist and non-statistical approaches to these issues, and thereby loses out on what the sabermetric types have to offer. It would be nice if this were different, not particularly because the statheads are right (although they are pretty clearly right on the facts and, I think, more often than not right in their interpretations of those facts) but because everyone should benefit from broadening the set of voices which are amplified and empowered. But this problem doesn't mean that the Cabrera for MVP cause was absurd, or that supporting it makes you a reactionary and a fool, or that it makes you equivalent to the old white men who supported Mitt Romney.
Problems abound. First of all, Miguel Cabrera is himself Hispanic, while Mike Trout is rather distinctly white. Furthermore, as admitted in the article itself, all three of the not-white-men who got to vote for AL MVP voted for, uh, Cabrera. So it looks like race isn't the main factor here, although there is a more plausible statistical link with age. But my more fundamental problem is the way the article frames the arguments behind supporting Cabrera: as unthinking, reactionary gibberish combined with a healthy dose of you-kids-get-off-my-lawn-ism. The evidence for this point seems to be one guy who wrote a column that has exactly these traits, and from this single datum it is inferred that this is the only argument which can be made for Trout. My argument, on the other hand, is simple and, I think, reasonable: yes, Trout was clearly the better player this past season, but Miguel Cabrera won the frickin' Triple Crown, and that's just a trump card. I admit openly that this is what one might call an irrational argument, or at least a non-rational argument. But because I admit it, because I say openly that I think the award ought to go to player X despite the fact that player Y had a better season of baseball, I'm not being ignorant or reactionary or acting in knee-jerk opposition to modern statistical analysis.
This sentence in particular bothers me:
Miguel Cabrera’s voters are ink-stained traditionalists who long for a time before nerds ruined baseball by explaining how it worked.Now, this might be descriptively true, although to be sure you'd need to look at the roughly two-dozen individuals who did vote for Cabrera and ask them why they voted the way they did. But it doesn't have to be true. It's perfectly possible, for example, to be perfectly aware of "how baseball works," as this author rather condescendingly puts it, and therefore to know that, in very meaningful senses, Cabrera just didn't come close to having as good a season as Trout, and yet to think that this does not settle the MVP case. Wins Above Replacement can claim, or at least come close to claiming, a rather natural monopoly on being the appropriate subject of analysis from the General Manager's vantage-point, i.e. in asking, which player will increase my team's win total by the most next year? But there's no particular reason to think that the GM mindset is the implicit criterion for the Most Valuable Player Award. And while I don't think it makes sense, for instance, to deny a pitcher the Cy Young Award because, while you cannot deny that their results were the best in the league, you dislike aesthetically their style of pitching, I do think it reasonable to say that the Triple Crown has a certain magic to it, that it constitutes a valid "intangible" which justifies, under the standard of reasonableness, a vote for Cabrera over Trout.
Now, I do agree with the article's actual proposal, though it's a proposal that's never really made explicitly. The BBWAA's voting system does empower people with relatively traditionalist and non-statistical approaches to these issues, and thereby loses out on what the sabermetric types have to offer. It would be nice if this were different, not particularly because the statheads are right (although they are pretty clearly right on the facts and, I think, more often than not right in their interpretations of those facts) but because everyone should benefit from broadening the set of voices which are amplified and empowered. But this problem doesn't mean that the Cabrera for MVP cause was absurd, or that supporting it makes you a reactionary and a fool, or that it makes you equivalent to the old white men who supported Mitt Romney.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Gerrymandering: Constitutional, but Needs to Stop
(Apologies for the lack of a comprehensive election-reaction post, as yet anyway. Long story short, woohoo, let's reform the filibuster and ram a bunch of judges through the Senate, and I really hope something happens on climate-y issues in the next four years, but I'm not optimistic. And now for more miscellaneous posting, though most of it will probably still be election-focused for quite some time.)
It has long been my position that, while I heartily endorse Baker v. Carr and the series of cases that came out of it establishing the nationally-enforced principle of "one person, one vote" in legislative districting, and while I do believe racial gerrymanders, or theoretically gerrymanders on the basis of innate demographic factors other than race although it's tougher to see how that happens, can be unconstitutional in certain circumstances, I do not think that pure political gerrymandering can be struck down by the courts. Some of my reasons for this opinion include the idea that there's no constitutional right to live in a swing district, that no one individual's vote is likely to determine the outcome of an election even in a very competitive district so there's no categorical individual difference between swing and safe districts in that regard, and that, since partisanship and voting habits are not innate traits, unlike race, the notion that such-and-such a district will vote in such-and-such a way is a bit speculative. Voters, if they are severely displeased by having been gerrymander'd up, have the power to just vote for someone else. It's just not a denial of the equal protection of the laws, or of a republican form of government.
But that's just my constitutional opinion. On the policy merits, my god gerrymandering has got to go. I've just been reading a thing about how Jon Husted, Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, wants his state to award its electoral votes by Congressional district instead of winner-take-all. A similar scheme was floated in Pennsylvania last year, and failed miserably. Maine and Nebraska already do this, though it rarely comes into play. (Obama's 2008 win of Omaha's single electoral vote, from the Second District of Nebraska, is the only time I can think of that it's mattered.) The problem here isn't just that implementing this system piecemeal in a handful of large states that tend to vote Democratic in Presidential elections would simply amount to a removal of some Democratic electors, though that's also true and very problematic. In Ohio, Obama (who won the state, no matter what Karl Rove might say) only won 4 or 5 of the state's 16 districts. Yeah. That's pretty bad. Republicans carried the remainder, of course, and so would have walked away with a solid majority of Ohio's electoral votes, despite losing the state. How is this possible, you ask? Well, because the Ohio state government, entirely under Republican control at the time of redistricting, passed a really aggressive gerrymander, packing every Democrat it could find into as few districts as possible and then trying to make the remaining Republican districts as evenly uncompetitive as possible. And it worked, and stuff like this is most of why John Boehner is still Speaker of the House. Democratic Congressional candidates got more votes than Republican ones this cycle, after all, but barely gained back any seats, because of really aggressive incumbent-protection redistricting by the largely-Republican state legislatures elected in 2010.
In our current system of gerrymanders, in other words, if a party happens to do anomalously well in the decade elections at the local level, it gets to bake in a Congressional advantage for the next ten years. Sure, Democrats do it too, and they're perfectly justified in doing it so long as Republicans are doing it in the states they control. Actually, there's nothing except an informal norm stopping a party that takes over a state government mid-decade from redistricting again in a way that's more friendly to their party's interests. But it's pretty damn apparent that there's nothing legitimate or desirable about this way of doing things. What we should do is have every state in the nation pass a state constitutional amendment setting up an independent redistricting committee. It happened in California, and it greatly increased the number of competitive seats. Or just tell a computer to come up with a map; I can't see any reason why that wouldn't be possible. Part of the problem, I guess, is that you will inevitably get a pattern of unilateral disarmament, so perhaps it should be structured as an interstate compact that will take effect when every other state has signed on as well. One way or another, this needs to be made to stop.
Oh, and yes, I consider this part of my tally of issues on which I don't think my policy position is required by the Constitution.
It has long been my position that, while I heartily endorse Baker v. Carr and the series of cases that came out of it establishing the nationally-enforced principle of "one person, one vote" in legislative districting, and while I do believe racial gerrymanders, or theoretically gerrymanders on the basis of innate demographic factors other than race although it's tougher to see how that happens, can be unconstitutional in certain circumstances, I do not think that pure political gerrymandering can be struck down by the courts. Some of my reasons for this opinion include the idea that there's no constitutional right to live in a swing district, that no one individual's vote is likely to determine the outcome of an election even in a very competitive district so there's no categorical individual difference between swing and safe districts in that regard, and that, since partisanship and voting habits are not innate traits, unlike race, the notion that such-and-such a district will vote in such-and-such a way is a bit speculative. Voters, if they are severely displeased by having been gerrymander'd up, have the power to just vote for someone else. It's just not a denial of the equal protection of the laws, or of a republican form of government.
But that's just my constitutional opinion. On the policy merits, my god gerrymandering has got to go. I've just been reading a thing about how Jon Husted, Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, wants his state to award its electoral votes by Congressional district instead of winner-take-all. A similar scheme was floated in Pennsylvania last year, and failed miserably. Maine and Nebraska already do this, though it rarely comes into play. (Obama's 2008 win of Omaha's single electoral vote, from the Second District of Nebraska, is the only time I can think of that it's mattered.) The problem here isn't just that implementing this system piecemeal in a handful of large states that tend to vote Democratic in Presidential elections would simply amount to a removal of some Democratic electors, though that's also true and very problematic. In Ohio, Obama (who won the state, no matter what Karl Rove might say) only won 4 or 5 of the state's 16 districts. Yeah. That's pretty bad. Republicans carried the remainder, of course, and so would have walked away with a solid majority of Ohio's electoral votes, despite losing the state. How is this possible, you ask? Well, because the Ohio state government, entirely under Republican control at the time of redistricting, passed a really aggressive gerrymander, packing every Democrat it could find into as few districts as possible and then trying to make the remaining Republican districts as evenly uncompetitive as possible. And it worked, and stuff like this is most of why John Boehner is still Speaker of the House. Democratic Congressional candidates got more votes than Republican ones this cycle, after all, but barely gained back any seats, because of really aggressive incumbent-protection redistricting by the largely-Republican state legislatures elected in 2010.
In our current system of gerrymanders, in other words, if a party happens to do anomalously well in the decade elections at the local level, it gets to bake in a Congressional advantage for the next ten years. Sure, Democrats do it too, and they're perfectly justified in doing it so long as Republicans are doing it in the states they control. Actually, there's nothing except an informal norm stopping a party that takes over a state government mid-decade from redistricting again in a way that's more friendly to their party's interests. But it's pretty damn apparent that there's nothing legitimate or desirable about this way of doing things. What we should do is have every state in the nation pass a state constitutional amendment setting up an independent redistricting committee. It happened in California, and it greatly increased the number of competitive seats. Or just tell a computer to come up with a map; I can't see any reason why that wouldn't be possible. Part of the problem, I guess, is that you will inevitably get a pattern of unilateral disarmament, so perhaps it should be structured as an interstate compact that will take effect when every other state has signed on as well. One way or another, this needs to be made to stop.
Oh, and yes, I consider this part of my tally of issues on which I don't think my policy position is required by the Constitution.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
My Election Predictions: They Were Pretty Awesome
I made a prediction in all 51 Presidential state-level contests and all 33 Senate contests that were held last night. Of those 84 races, I was correct in 82 of them, including going 51-for-51 at the Presidential level. I correctly called 332 Obama, 206 Romney as the final electoral tally, with Obama winning all his 2008 states except Indiana, North Carolina, and Omaha's single elector, but winning everything else, including Florida. I also correctly predicted 55 Democratic Senators, assuming Angus King does the obvious thing regarding caucus choice. My only errors were in North Dakota, where I was honestly a bit surprised that Heidi Heitkamp managed to pull it out, and Nevada, where I thought the legendary Democratic turnout machine would deliver a victory for Shelley Berkley. I was wrong as to both of those, but they canceled out in terms of overall partisan balance.
My predictions compare very well to Nate Silver's. Like me, he nailed the Presidential race, even having Florida as pretty much a tie with Obama the narrow victor. Like me, he got two Senate races wrong, both in the west. Unlike me, however, he did not call the final Senate balance of power correctly, because his errors did not cancel out; he had Heitkamp losing in ND, but also had Jon Tester losing re-election in Montana. I had observed a while back that ND and MT were two very sparsely-polled Senate contests, and the FiveThirtyEight model was giving an awful lot of weight to the "state fundamentals" in them. In other words, Nate's model was assuming that the state partisan gravity would assert itself rather strongly against polling that suggested really close races. I was always a bit skeptical that it would, and indeed it didn't. In fact, the reason for thinking Berkley would win in NV was that the state's partisan gravity would outweigh the rather substantial volume of polling in that state. I'm a bit embarrassed, in retrospect, to have bought into that, although the fact that it has happened before in that state makes it a bit more understandable. Overall, however, Nate and I and really anyone who was willing to take the polls at face value did really well in forecasting the state-level contests.
One thing to mention, by way of tooting my own horn, is that I've been saying for at least ten or eleven months now that I thought the Senate races would go very well. Specifically, since Olympia Snowe's retirement I've been pretty damn confident we'd hold the Senate, and even before than I thought it was pretty likely. So I've been correctly predicting what happened last night since a time when pretty much everyone thought we were going to lose control of the chamber. I don't remember if I wrote a blog post to that effect, but I definitely have been saying it in person to my friends and family. Part of why is that the Republican tendency to throw away multiple winnable races per cycle has just become, in my opinion, predictable at this point, so I was always sort of assuming from the start that stuff like that which occurred in Indiana and Missouri would happen somewhere. And I enter the 2014 prediction season, which I admit is looking to be a bloodbath at the Senate level, with that same assumption in mind. I don't know where the Republicans will cough up winnable seats, but I'm pretty sure that they will do it somewhere.
Another thing I'd say is that my method seems to have been pretty well vindicated. That method, specifically, is to get all my polling data from looking at what PublicPolicyPolling says, and what FiveThirtyEight says. Both sources aced the election; many other sources bungled it rather badly. PPP are just clearly the best in the polling game right now, and Nate does the best job I know of at taking the vast bulk of less-awesome polling data and turning it into a useful commodity. I plan on continuing this method going forward, and I expect to continue being vindicated in it.
As for the House...? Well, I'm a bit surprised that Democratic gains were that meager, or maybe disappointed is a better word than surprised, because this was always what people were saying. It looks right now like we might get circa 200 seats when all's said and done, leaving us with a further 18 to take back the House in future elections.
But on the whole, given that my predictions were pretty good ones, it's good to be right.
Forthcoming later today will be a piece of general reactions to the election, and then a piece previewing the next couple of years, both of which could be very long. It's snowing right now, just the perfect little icing (literally!) on the cake of the past 24 hours, so I might not get to them for a while; staring out the window at the snow takes precedence. But they will get written.
My predictions compare very well to Nate Silver's. Like me, he nailed the Presidential race, even having Florida as pretty much a tie with Obama the narrow victor. Like me, he got two Senate races wrong, both in the west. Unlike me, however, he did not call the final Senate balance of power correctly, because his errors did not cancel out; he had Heitkamp losing in ND, but also had Jon Tester losing re-election in Montana. I had observed a while back that ND and MT were two very sparsely-polled Senate contests, and the FiveThirtyEight model was giving an awful lot of weight to the "state fundamentals" in them. In other words, Nate's model was assuming that the state partisan gravity would assert itself rather strongly against polling that suggested really close races. I was always a bit skeptical that it would, and indeed it didn't. In fact, the reason for thinking Berkley would win in NV was that the state's partisan gravity would outweigh the rather substantial volume of polling in that state. I'm a bit embarrassed, in retrospect, to have bought into that, although the fact that it has happened before in that state makes it a bit more understandable. Overall, however, Nate and I and really anyone who was willing to take the polls at face value did really well in forecasting the state-level contests.
One thing to mention, by way of tooting my own horn, is that I've been saying for at least ten or eleven months now that I thought the Senate races would go very well. Specifically, since Olympia Snowe's retirement I've been pretty damn confident we'd hold the Senate, and even before than I thought it was pretty likely. So I've been correctly predicting what happened last night since a time when pretty much everyone thought we were going to lose control of the chamber. I don't remember if I wrote a blog post to that effect, but I definitely have been saying it in person to my friends and family. Part of why is that the Republican tendency to throw away multiple winnable races per cycle has just become, in my opinion, predictable at this point, so I was always sort of assuming from the start that stuff like that which occurred in Indiana and Missouri would happen somewhere. And I enter the 2014 prediction season, which I admit is looking to be a bloodbath at the Senate level, with that same assumption in mind. I don't know where the Republicans will cough up winnable seats, but I'm pretty sure that they will do it somewhere.
Another thing I'd say is that my method seems to have been pretty well vindicated. That method, specifically, is to get all my polling data from looking at what PublicPolicyPolling says, and what FiveThirtyEight says. Both sources aced the election; many other sources bungled it rather badly. PPP are just clearly the best in the polling game right now, and Nate does the best job I know of at taking the vast bulk of less-awesome polling data and turning it into a useful commodity. I plan on continuing this method going forward, and I expect to continue being vindicated in it.
As for the House...? Well, I'm a bit surprised that Democratic gains were that meager, or maybe disappointed is a better word than surprised, because this was always what people were saying. It looks right now like we might get circa 200 seats when all's said and done, leaving us with a further 18 to take back the House in future elections.
But on the whole, given that my predictions were pretty good ones, it's good to be right.
Forthcoming later today will be a piece of general reactions to the election, and then a piece previewing the next couple of years, both of which could be very long. It's snowing right now, just the perfect little icing (literally!) on the cake of the past 24 hours, so I might not get to them for a while; staring out the window at the snow takes precedence. But they will get written.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Jim Cramer's Crazy Election Prediction
So, it has achieved a fair bit of notoriety that Jim Cramer predicted that Obama would win 440 electoral votes. This is pretty patently ridiculous. How ridiculous, you ask? Well, I've taken the 538 state popular vote estimates from a few days ago (when they provided a convenient chart of that figure for all 50 states in one place), and given Obama states in descending order of his margin in them until he hit 440. Here's what the map looks like:
That's, um, ridiculous. It's also 451 electoral votes, which is not 440. In fact, I can't see any good way to hit 440 on the dot. You could subtract an 11, like Arizona or Indiana, but c'mon, we're giving Obama Texas, there's no way AZ/IN are marginal states here. Or you could take away South Carolina and one of the 3's, probably one of the Dakotas, but that's -12, not -11, giving 439. I suppose you could add the next state on the list, West Virginia, which gives an extra 5, and then try to subtract 16, probably just by taking away Georgia. That's 440, but the world in which Obama wins WV but not GA is a really weird one.
Although I suppose that's not such a disqualifier, since we're talking about a world in which he wins Texas, so "weird" is kind of a given. The point here is really that it's clear beyond a reasonable doubt that Jim Cramer did not have a map of states won and states lost in mind when he made his prediction. He couldn't have. Not only does the magnitude of his ridiculousness become apparent when you have to draw up a map, actually getting to that specific number is really, really hard. This is not so much a prediction, in other words, as a blancmange--no, wait, that's something different. Not so much a prediction as an expression of the sense that Obama is going to win, probably by a decent margin, but with no idea what that actually means.
I should add that there were times during this campaign when I thought a map like that one might be possible. If, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain had been the nominee. Maybe if Newt had won the primary, though I'm a bit skeptical that such an enormous landslide would've materialized. In any event, we've had six close elections in a row now, with neither candidate getting 400 electoral votes unless Mr. Cramer knows something the rest of us really don't. That's weird. As best I can tell it's only happened once before that six consecutive elections have been highly competitive, in roughly the 1876 through 1896 period. I have a feeling it has to end eventually, though I'm not sure what will make that happen. But I think the above map is an interesting one to look at as a possible configuration of a latent Democratic landslide. It would be a really fun map.
Although I suppose that's not such a disqualifier, since we're talking about a world in which he wins Texas, so "weird" is kind of a given. The point here is really that it's clear beyond a reasonable doubt that Jim Cramer did not have a map of states won and states lost in mind when he made his prediction. He couldn't have. Not only does the magnitude of his ridiculousness become apparent when you have to draw up a map, actually getting to that specific number is really, really hard. This is not so much a prediction, in other words, as a blancmange--no, wait, that's something different. Not so much a prediction as an expression of the sense that Obama is going to win, probably by a decent margin, but with no idea what that actually means.
I should add that there were times during this campaign when I thought a map like that one might be possible. If, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain had been the nominee. Maybe if Newt had won the primary, though I'm a bit skeptical that such an enormous landslide would've materialized. In any event, we've had six close elections in a row now, with neither candidate getting 400 electoral votes unless Mr. Cramer knows something the rest of us really don't. That's weird. As best I can tell it's only happened once before that six consecutive elections have been highly competitive, in roughly the 1876 through 1896 period. I have a feeling it has to end eventually, though I'm not sure what will make that happen. But I think the above map is an interesting one to look at as a possible configuration of a latent Democratic landslide. It would be a really fun map.
Monday, November 5, 2012
My Election Prediction
As far as the Senate, I predict the following winners: Angus King (I-ME), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Bob Casey (D-PA), Tom Carper (D-DE), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Bob Corker (R-TN), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Rick Berg (R-ND), Jon Tester (D-MT), John Barrasso (R-WY), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI). Democrats would lose seats in Nebraska and North Dakota, but would pick up seats in Maine (assuming, as I am, that King caucuses with the Democrats), Massachusetts, Indiana, and Nevada, for a net gain of two seats and 55 total seats after the election. Of these predictions, I'm on a bit of a limb in Nevada on the grounds that Harry Reid's people know what they're doing, I've declined to go out on a limb in North Dakota, and in Montana I'm being slightly optimistic but eminently reasonable, I'd say. Overall I'd be modestly surprised if the Democrats actually manage to lose net seats, and even holding our position will be an improvement since the caucus will get much more progressive.
As for the House, who the hell knows? My feeling is that the margin of error on any possible forecast at this point must be enormous, because there's just been so little public polling of House races all cycle. I will not be surprised if Democrats take back the House, but I also won't be surprised if they don't. I hear the median House district is R+3 by Cook Partisan Voting Index, but it's not impossible for Democrats to have a +3 kind of election. At the same time, if gains get blunted by Republican incumbent-protection redistricting, it will be depressing but not shocking. (On that subject, actually, I'm wondering why parties don't do new redistricting whenever they take over a state government mid-decade. There's nothing stopping them.)
So, we'll see if I'm right. If I am, I'll be very happy. And if not, well... I may decide to start liking alcohol.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
The Smallest Winning Map Ever
A few days ago, Matt Yglesias put up a blog post in which he came up with the smallest possible winning electoral college map under the current vote distribution. He calculated this by sorting the 51 voting areas (i.e., states plus D.C.) in descending order by population density, and tacking states onto the map in that order until he had 270 electoral votes. D.C. was first, obviously, followed by New Jersey and then various other states. In the end he got a map with 627,421 square miles making up exactly 270 electoral votes and beating out the 268 electoral votes of the other 3,166,662 square miles of the country, just 16.5% of the country's land mass constituting a winning coalition. Actually, Alaska all by itself is bigger than these states which constitute an electoral majority. It's a majority of the people, though, with 166,439,539 living in the Yglesias victor states against just 142,306,179 in the losing states. That's a population density of 265.3 people per square mile in the winning states, and 44.9 people per square mile in the losing states.
Okay, cool. But the American population is a good deal less clustered in the Northeast than it used to be, so I got to wondering whether the smallest winning map might have been even smaller in the past. Using the 1960 census apportionment figures, i.e. the first batch after the addition of Alaska and Hawaii, I was able to craft an even smaller winning map:
Those blue states take up just 559,605 square miles, with 3,234,478 square miles of red territory, and an exact 270-268 electoral margin. My calculation method was a bit different from Yglesias'; instead of calculating 1960 census population density, I simply calculated electoral vote population density, and added until I hit 270. California was the tipping-point state, and since it got me to 284 EV's, South Carolina and West Virginia, only slightly more vote-dense than California, were superfluous. Incidentally, using this same method for the 2010 figures got me to the same map as Yglesias, though through a slightly different method. Whereas he added on the densest states until he hit Michigan, and then had 282 EV's, took Michigan back out to get down to 266, and added on New Hampshire to hit 270, I added on the most vote-dense states until I hit North Carolina, which got me to 282 EVs, and then subtracted off South Carolina (9) and Vermont (3). Somewhat confusingly, it doesn't look to me like Michigan is even in consideration; unless I'm really missing something, it is not, as he says, the 18th most densely populated state.
That's as far back as you can go, obviously, with Alaska and Hawaii still included, and since one of those two states in particular changes the geographic footprint of this country quite substantially the direct comparisons sort of end there. But just for fun, let's also look at the figures using the 1920 census apportionment, the first after all 48 continental states were added to the rolls. Here, we can get 268 electoral votes (enough to win, since there were only 531) with just 481,569 square miles, with 2,638,247 square miles taking the other 263 votes (the total is smaller, because we're missing Alaska):
Frustratingly, if you swapped out South Carolina and Virginia for Missouri, which would remove a bit more than 5000 square miles, you'd end up with 265 electoral votes in the blue states, and 266 in the red states. So I think this is probably the smallest possible winning electoral map since the continental United States got itself filled out. For whatever that's worth.
Okay, cool. But the American population is a good deal less clustered in the Northeast than it used to be, so I got to wondering whether the smallest winning map might have been even smaller in the past. Using the 1960 census apportionment figures, i.e. the first batch after the addition of Alaska and Hawaii, I was able to craft an even smaller winning map:
That's as far back as you can go, obviously, with Alaska and Hawaii still included, and since one of those two states in particular changes the geographic footprint of this country quite substantially the direct comparisons sort of end there. But just for fun, let's also look at the figures using the 1920 census apportionment, the first after all 48 continental states were added to the rolls. Here, we can get 268 electoral votes (enough to win, since there were only 531) with just 481,569 square miles, with 2,638,247 square miles taking the other 263 votes (the total is smaller, because we're missing Alaska):
On Hurricanes and Nationhood
Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, had a comment a day or two ago about the question of federal storm relief for areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The gist of it was basically, sure I care about people who are suffering, but I want to make sure those naughty easterners won't just take the money and spend it frivolously before we agree to give it to them. This feels to me like it gets very deeply at the question that's kind of awkwardly at the center of American political history, "are we a nation?" For a lot of time, we kind of weren't really a nation. Nowadays, people tend to think that we are one. But consider, for example, Europe's current troubles. Europe, as it happens, is not a nation, but it has substantial governmental ties throughout the continent. And these days you've heard a lot from the wealthier German nations that they don't want to be on the hook for bailing out the naughty, irresponsible periphery countries that have gotten their economies in deep trouble after the creation of the Euro. Never mind that it really is more the fault of the Euro, the creation of European financial elites, than the periphery countries themselves. The point is, there's a feeling in Germany and Sweden and other such places that it's unfair for them to be forced to sacrifice to ease the suffering of less fortunate European nations.
Now, that's very similar to what Steve King said about disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Iowa is virtuous, the East Coast is irresponsible and frivolous with their Gucci bags etc., why should we have to pay to help them? But note that, in this country, we have a massive system of permanent fiscal transfers from states to states, effected through the federal welfare system. That system is designed to send money from rich people to poor people, but it therefore also sends money from rich states to poor states. That tends to mean sending money from blue states, like Maryland or Connecticut or California, to red states like Kentucky or Mississippi or Arkansas. But we never discuss it in those terms. There are people who don't want the federal welfare system to continue as strong as it currently is, there are people who want it stronger than it currently is, but it's not a geographic issue. It doesn't play out as Maryland vs. Kentucky, it plays out as, well, liberal people, many of whom are in Maryland, against conservative people, many of whom are in Kentucky. Because we're a nation, so we don't tend to view the transfer of money from a rich person in Maryland to a poor person in Kentucky as anything other than the transfer of money from a rich American to a poor American. Whereas in Europe, transferring money from a rich German to a poor Greek is not seen as a transfer from a rich European to a poor European; the nationalities are very much the thing, even more than the different socioeconomic statuses of the individual people.
But Steve King's comment does not reflect this nationhood. People from the great eastern Megalopolis are not just treated as Americans, and suffering Americans at that, for whose welfare we are all obviously responsible and to whose aid, in a time of crisis such as this one, we should all gladly come. They're not from where Steve King is from, and he mistrusts their culture, so he wants no part of their troubles. He does not want, in other words, to be part of a nation that includes New York City and its environs. This side has a very long history in American politics, with its most notable manifestation coming during the Civil War but with genuine influence at most other times. It's the wrong side of the question, and it needs to lose. The whole Tea Party phenomenon has kind of felt like it at least flirts with the idea that we should stop being a nation, and Steve King's comments definitely reflect a sense that we are not, quite, entirely a nation. I suppose it's probably too much to ask that King himself actually lose his seat next Tuesday, although the race is only "Leans Republican," but it's pretty important to see that the side he represents loses as badly as possible.
Now, that's very similar to what Steve King said about disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Iowa is virtuous, the East Coast is irresponsible and frivolous with their Gucci bags etc., why should we have to pay to help them? But note that, in this country, we have a massive system of permanent fiscal transfers from states to states, effected through the federal welfare system. That system is designed to send money from rich people to poor people, but it therefore also sends money from rich states to poor states. That tends to mean sending money from blue states, like Maryland or Connecticut or California, to red states like Kentucky or Mississippi or Arkansas. But we never discuss it in those terms. There are people who don't want the federal welfare system to continue as strong as it currently is, there are people who want it stronger than it currently is, but it's not a geographic issue. It doesn't play out as Maryland vs. Kentucky, it plays out as, well, liberal people, many of whom are in Maryland, against conservative people, many of whom are in Kentucky. Because we're a nation, so we don't tend to view the transfer of money from a rich person in Maryland to a poor person in Kentucky as anything other than the transfer of money from a rich American to a poor American. Whereas in Europe, transferring money from a rich German to a poor Greek is not seen as a transfer from a rich European to a poor European; the nationalities are very much the thing, even more than the different socioeconomic statuses of the individual people.
But Steve King's comment does not reflect this nationhood. People from the great eastern Megalopolis are not just treated as Americans, and suffering Americans at that, for whose welfare we are all obviously responsible and to whose aid, in a time of crisis such as this one, we should all gladly come. They're not from where Steve King is from, and he mistrusts their culture, so he wants no part of their troubles. He does not want, in other words, to be part of a nation that includes New York City and its environs. This side has a very long history in American politics, with its most notable manifestation coming during the Civil War but with genuine influence at most other times. It's the wrong side of the question, and it needs to lose. The whole Tea Party phenomenon has kind of felt like it at least flirts with the idea that we should stop being a nation, and Steve King's comments definitely reflect a sense that we are not, quite, entirely a nation. I suppose it's probably too much to ask that King himself actually lose his seat next Tuesday, although the race is only "Leans Republican," but it's pretty important to see that the side he represents loses as badly as possible.
Republican Identity Politics, Internet Edition
I find this post from Ezra Klein about the Republicans' failed effort to improve their image among young voters through aggressive internet and social media outreach very interesting in that it ties into a long-standing theory of mine. The basic idea is that Republicans, faced with their massive deficits with all non-white voters, and the fact that non-white voters are rapidly becoming a larger and larger part of the electorate, and therefore faced with the consequence of those two facts, that unless they stop losing non-whites so badly they will shortly stop being able to win, respond by looking around for candidates to run who belong to the demographic group in question. They don't look at their policies and ask why no minority voters seem to like them, and then consider changing those policies. They go for the token candidate. So, they run Alan Keyes against Obama in Illinois in 2004, and there's a whole crop of new Hispanic Republican candidates. Except the thing is, it doesn't work. A Romney/Rubio ticket would not have done materially better among Hispanics than Romney/Ryan, as best we can tell from the polling. Mutatis mutandis for women, or any other major Democratic-leaning demographic group.
My understanding of what causes Republicans to adopt this flawed strategy is that they honestly can't figure out why Democrats win these groups so consistently. Identity politics, they're convinced, is entirely a matter of identity. Democrats make black people or Hispanic people or women or whatever convinced that their identity makes them special, and so they vote for Democrats. Democrats are people like them, in other words, and Republicans are people not like them. This is somewhat similar to nineteenth-century ethnic politics, which does appear to have had a large element of real identity politics to it: the Democrats were the party of ethnic groups X, Y, and Z, while the Republicans were the party of ethnic groups A, B, and C. Except this isn't what explains modern Democratic dominance with various traditionally downtrodden groups; rather, Democrats owe that advantage to their support of policies that would improve the lives of the traditionally-downtrodden as a class, and would make them less downtrodden going forward. Republicans oppose such policies. It's very simple: a substantial chunk of the American electorate has traditionally been hit with factional policies against their interests, and so they vote factionally for the party that takes their side in the factional war over policy.* Republicans misunderstand this, at their peril, and so they try to counter it through identity politics rather than by moderating their factional policies.
Thus with the internet-based struggle for young voters. Republicans see Democrats leading among the young, they see the young being very heavily involved with this "internet" thing, so they naturally assume that Democrats must be winning youngsters because they're more tech-savvy. The solution, apparently, is Chuck Grassley's Twitter feed. (No, wait, actually that's the best thing ever and should never, ever go away.) But they're wrong; the key to winning young voters is to adopt policies young voters like better. This isn't exactly the same as the racial or gender case, because factional policies, i.e. those that attempt to take resources from one group and reapportion them to the group making the laws, aren't as big a component of the generation gap. There's some stuff, to be sure; I think you could call the Republican approach to entitlements one of these, although of course they always try to frame their deficit hysteria as a pro-young-people policy, and there's education stuff etc. But mostly it's just that we youngsters don't share previous generations' prejudices very much, and Republicans being the party of those prejudices, we tend to dislike them. And no amount of tech savvy or social media outreach will ever change that.
So, Republicans set out to convert the young through the internet, but ended up turning the internet into just another medium through which to reach their original constituency of middle-aged and old people. Surprise, surprise. If they ever want different results, rather than doing the same thing over and over again and expecting it to work on this group, finally, they should consider adopting some less hateful policies. The results might surprise them.
*Okay, so, there was a fair amount of factional policy-making going on even among various white ethnic groups, with all sorts of anti-immigration laws and such, in the nineteenth century. But it's my impression that pure identity politics, where a certain group voted for one party or the other simply because that's how that group voted, was a pretty real thing back there, and I really don't think that has much relevance for Democratic dominance of all the not-white-straight-Christians groups today.
My understanding of what causes Republicans to adopt this flawed strategy is that they honestly can't figure out why Democrats win these groups so consistently. Identity politics, they're convinced, is entirely a matter of identity. Democrats make black people or Hispanic people or women or whatever convinced that their identity makes them special, and so they vote for Democrats. Democrats are people like them, in other words, and Republicans are people not like them. This is somewhat similar to nineteenth-century ethnic politics, which does appear to have had a large element of real identity politics to it: the Democrats were the party of ethnic groups X, Y, and Z, while the Republicans were the party of ethnic groups A, B, and C. Except this isn't what explains modern Democratic dominance with various traditionally downtrodden groups; rather, Democrats owe that advantage to their support of policies that would improve the lives of the traditionally-downtrodden as a class, and would make them less downtrodden going forward. Republicans oppose such policies. It's very simple: a substantial chunk of the American electorate has traditionally been hit with factional policies against their interests, and so they vote factionally for the party that takes their side in the factional war over policy.* Republicans misunderstand this, at their peril, and so they try to counter it through identity politics rather than by moderating their factional policies.
Thus with the internet-based struggle for young voters. Republicans see Democrats leading among the young, they see the young being very heavily involved with this "internet" thing, so they naturally assume that Democrats must be winning youngsters because they're more tech-savvy. The solution, apparently, is Chuck Grassley's Twitter feed. (No, wait, actually that's the best thing ever and should never, ever go away.) But they're wrong; the key to winning young voters is to adopt policies young voters like better. This isn't exactly the same as the racial or gender case, because factional policies, i.e. those that attempt to take resources from one group and reapportion them to the group making the laws, aren't as big a component of the generation gap. There's some stuff, to be sure; I think you could call the Republican approach to entitlements one of these, although of course they always try to frame their deficit hysteria as a pro-young-people policy, and there's education stuff etc. But mostly it's just that we youngsters don't share previous generations' prejudices very much, and Republicans being the party of those prejudices, we tend to dislike them. And no amount of tech savvy or social media outreach will ever change that.
So, Republicans set out to convert the young through the internet, but ended up turning the internet into just another medium through which to reach their original constituency of middle-aged and old people. Surprise, surprise. If they ever want different results, rather than doing the same thing over and over again and expecting it to work on this group, finally, they should consider adopting some less hateful policies. The results might surprise them.
*Okay, so, there was a fair amount of factional policy-making going on even among various white ethnic groups, with all sorts of anti-immigration laws and such, in the nineteenth century. But it's my impression that pure identity politics, where a certain group voted for one party or the other simply because that's how that group voted, was a pretty real thing back there, and I really don't think that has much relevance for Democratic dominance of all the not-white-straight-Christians groups today.
Lingering Effects of First Debate Almost Gone
According to tonight's FiveThirtyEight forecast, or the most recent version of it in any case, Barack Obama has an 83.7% chance of winning Tuesday's Presidential election. The last day on which he had a higher chance of victory was October 5th, at 84.9%, a very similar state of affairs. The day before that, October 4th, was Obama's highest odds of victory ever, at 87.1%. The day before that, October 3rd, was the date of the first Presidential debate in Denver, Colorado, which essentially everyone thought Obama lost. Obviously, the October 4th forecast didn't yet reflect Obama's decline, as the polls released that day didn't include any post-Denver interviews. But starting on the Fifth, Obama plummeted, dropping all the way down to a measly 61.1% chance of winning on October 12th. But the Vice Presidential Debate, on October 11th, was seen as a win for Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, and Obama won the second and third Presidential debates rather handily, and ever since the 12th of October he's been inching his way back up in the forecast. For a while this had looked like basically a point a day, though it's accelerated of late. Long story short, Obama has clawed his way back to roughly the same odds of victory that he had after Romney's debate victory had only been processed by the polls for a single day. One more good day of polling tomorrow could easily get him back to his highest victory odds yet.
Of course, that's just the "percent chance to win" forecast. Since we've gotten a lot closer to Election Day, the implicit margin of error in the forecast has gone way down, so the actual margin that's giving Obama these same odds of winning as on October 5th is much smaller than the margin he held on that date. Specifically, right now he's projected to win 305.3 electoral votes, and to win the popular vote by 2.2%, numbers which shift just slightly to 306.3 and 2.3% if you switch from the forecast to the now-cast. On October 5th, Obama was forecast with 317.7 electoral votes and a 3.9% popular-vote margin, and had a 4.7% lead that equated to an average of 327.7 electoral votes in the October 5th now-cast. So Obama's margin has been declining in more or less lock-step with what I like to think of as the cone of declining uncertainty. (Visualize the lines from any point on the electoral-vote or popular-vote forecast graphs at date X to the point that would, if it were the November 6th forecast, give the same odds of victory. If you do this for the leading and the trailing candidate from the same date, it's a cone.)
Still, the fact remains that Mitt Romney is very close to having failed to increase his odds of winning this election over the last month, including what was by far the best night of his political life.
Of course, that's just the "percent chance to win" forecast. Since we've gotten a lot closer to Election Day, the implicit margin of error in the forecast has gone way down, so the actual margin that's giving Obama these same odds of winning as on October 5th is much smaller than the margin he held on that date. Specifically, right now he's projected to win 305.3 electoral votes, and to win the popular vote by 2.2%, numbers which shift just slightly to 306.3 and 2.3% if you switch from the forecast to the now-cast. On October 5th, Obama was forecast with 317.7 electoral votes and a 3.9% popular-vote margin, and had a 4.7% lead that equated to an average of 327.7 electoral votes in the October 5th now-cast. So Obama's margin has been declining in more or less lock-step with what I like to think of as the cone of declining uncertainty. (Visualize the lines from any point on the electoral-vote or popular-vote forecast graphs at date X to the point that would, if it were the November 6th forecast, give the same odds of victory. If you do this for the leading and the trailing candidate from the same date, it's a cone.)
Still, the fact remains that Mitt Romney is very close to having failed to increase his odds of winning this election over the last month, including what was by far the best night of his political life.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
On "Elementary"
As a fan of the BBC series Sherlock, which features Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. John Watson and is set in modern-day Britain, I've always had a bit of what one might call a prejudice against the new CBS series Elementary, which is also supposed to be a modernized Sherlock Holmes, but set in New York. With Jonny Lee Miller playing Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu playing Joan Watson. Yes, Joan Watson. I say prejudice because I've never particularly seen it, and have been basically assuming it isn't any good, so it's a literal pre-judging, though also arguably a prejudice based on my liking of Sherlock, which it is widely seen as being derivative of. It's not entirely pre-judging, though, because I know what the concept is, and I have one particular problem with that concept: they didn't make Holmes female. This isn't a fatal flaw, because if you're going to make one of the characters female there's a 50% chance you'd hit Watson, but it feels a bit curious that they did make the sidekick the female one, not the hero.
Well, just now I got an actual little taste of Elementary, because when I turned my TV on looking for the golf (it's in Asia, and is therefore on in the middle of the night, which is brilliant) it started out on CBS, where Elementary was playing. And my reaction was as follows. Jonny Lee Miller, thankfully, is English, and has an English accent. Moreover, he seems perfectly competent at portraying the intelligent side of his character and the rude side of his character, though I didn't particularly see the eccentric side of the character in the few minutes I saw. The overall aesthetic, however, felt like a New York crime drama, not particularly Holmesian at all. And, as best I can tell, unlike Sherlock they're not drawing on the original Holmes stories for material.
On top of that, though, the more I think about the way they're portraying Watson the less I like it. Because it's not just that they're taking the Holmes-Watson "bromance," to use the modern, really, really unfortunate term, and making one of the parties to it female, and sort of daring the world to find it inappropriate. They haven't just taken John Watson, the war veteran who happens to find himself rooming with the insane genius, and changed his name to Joan and given him a sex change. They've invented a whole separate pretext! Joan Watson is apparently supposed to be Holmes' "sober companion," (a term which I cannot help but hear in terms of the "companions" from Doctor Who) who accompanies him after his rehab and makes sure he doesn't relapse. Because, you see, evidently they couldn't just make a female Watson, have her have the same non-romantic close friendship with the male Holmes, and make a point about how gender roles are rightfully more fluid now. In order to set up a woman becoming a close, non-sexual friend of Holmes', they need a pretext.
So in the end, the details of how they structure their Watson character ends up robbing it of most of its potentially feminist/gender-egalitarian power while simultaneously making the whole thing feel less like it's actually an interpretation of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. So one is somewhat inevitably left with the feeling that they've made Watson female, and indeed are calling the characters Holmes and Watson in the first place, just for attention. Whereas Sherlock is very plainly the same characters in a different setting, as becomes readily apparent by watching the first episode. There's just no comparison between the two.
(Which isn't surprising, really, given which of them is run by Steven Moffat.)
Well, just now I got an actual little taste of Elementary, because when I turned my TV on looking for the golf (it's in Asia, and is therefore on in the middle of the night, which is brilliant) it started out on CBS, where Elementary was playing. And my reaction was as follows. Jonny Lee Miller, thankfully, is English, and has an English accent. Moreover, he seems perfectly competent at portraying the intelligent side of his character and the rude side of his character, though I didn't particularly see the eccentric side of the character in the few minutes I saw. The overall aesthetic, however, felt like a New York crime drama, not particularly Holmesian at all. And, as best I can tell, unlike Sherlock they're not drawing on the original Holmes stories for material.
On top of that, though, the more I think about the way they're portraying Watson the less I like it. Because it's not just that they're taking the Holmes-Watson "bromance," to use the modern, really, really unfortunate term, and making one of the parties to it female, and sort of daring the world to find it inappropriate. They haven't just taken John Watson, the war veteran who happens to find himself rooming with the insane genius, and changed his name to Joan and given him a sex change. They've invented a whole separate pretext! Joan Watson is apparently supposed to be Holmes' "sober companion," (a term which I cannot help but hear in terms of the "companions" from Doctor Who) who accompanies him after his rehab and makes sure he doesn't relapse. Because, you see, evidently they couldn't just make a female Watson, have her have the same non-romantic close friendship with the male Holmes, and make a point about how gender roles are rightfully more fluid now. In order to set up a woman becoming a close, non-sexual friend of Holmes', they need a pretext.
So in the end, the details of how they structure their Watson character ends up robbing it of most of its potentially feminist/gender-egalitarian power while simultaneously making the whole thing feel less like it's actually an interpretation of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. So one is somewhat inevitably left with the feeling that they've made Watson female, and indeed are calling the characters Holmes and Watson in the first place, just for attention. Whereas Sherlock is very plainly the same characters in a different setting, as becomes readily apparent by watching the first episode. There's just no comparison between the two.
(Which isn't surprising, really, given which of them is run by Steven Moffat.)
Booker vs. Christie: Battle of the Disaster-Relief Kings
There has long been a sense that Cory Booker, Democratic Mayor of Newark and generally awesome dude, would be the best candidate to challenge Republican Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie. Among Booker's many awesome traits is the way he basically seems to turn into a superhero whenever there's a storm in town. He'll go around rescuing people from burning buildings or shoveling people's sidewalks after a snowstorm or, most recently, inviting people who had lost power as a result of Hurricane Sandy over to his house, which still had power.
Of course, another politician who has performed brilliantly during this storm has been Chris Christie, who has among other things very enjoyably spurned Mitt Romney's efforts to come into New Jersey for some nice disaster-porn photo-ops while fulsomely praising the incumbent, um, Democratic President. So if we do get Christie vs. Booker in 2013, it'll be one disaster-relieving candidate against another.
Now, I have to admit that Christie appears to have done a good job with this storm, and deserves credit for that. In fact I think there's a substantial amount of evidence that, unlike many of his fellow Republicans, he actually is interested in governing, not just in ruling. The fact remains, however, that he has some really awful ideas about how to govern. In fact, though it's not exactly on-topic for a 2013 gubernatorial re-election campaign, it'd be nice if someone would ask him whether he agrees with Romney about cutting FEMA or devolving it to the states. He certainly loves him some budget-cutting in general.
So, as someone devoted to the cause of a Christie defeat in 2013, let me just say this: yes, Christie handled this storm well, but remember who his opponent will (hopefully) be. It's not like Cory Booker wouldn't know how to kick some hurricane ass himself. And unlike Christie, he's not wicked or corrupt in general. Booker '13!
Of course, another politician who has performed brilliantly during this storm has been Chris Christie, who has among other things very enjoyably spurned Mitt Romney's efforts to come into New Jersey for some nice disaster-porn photo-ops while fulsomely praising the incumbent, um, Democratic President. So if we do get Christie vs. Booker in 2013, it'll be one disaster-relieving candidate against another.
Now, I have to admit that Christie appears to have done a good job with this storm, and deserves credit for that. In fact I think there's a substantial amount of evidence that, unlike many of his fellow Republicans, he actually is interested in governing, not just in ruling. The fact remains, however, that he has some really awful ideas about how to govern. In fact, though it's not exactly on-topic for a 2013 gubernatorial re-election campaign, it'd be nice if someone would ask him whether he agrees with Romney about cutting FEMA or devolving it to the states. He certainly loves him some budget-cutting in general.
So, as someone devoted to the cause of a Christie defeat in 2013, let me just say this: yes, Christie handled this storm well, but remember who his opponent will (hopefully) be. It's not like Cory Booker wouldn't know how to kick some hurricane ass himself. And unlike Christie, he's not wicked or corrupt in general. Booker '13!
Winning the Small States Would Give Obama Options
One interesting feature of the FiveThirtyEight model is that it doesn't just calculate a point estimate for the popular-vote margin in each state, it also calculates a margin of error for that estimate. And this isn't simply some assumption based on how far in the distance the election is; rather, it's derived from the data available in that state, with I think the most important component being the amount of polling available in each state. The intuition is fairly simple: if a state has been polled to death, we have a better sense of the state of play there, and ought be more confident in our predictions regarding that state, than if there have only been a handful of polls. Part of what that means for 2012 is that Ohio, which has been polled to death, has a rather small error bar around its forecast, as can be observed from the "Competitive State Summary" in this article.
The fact that, in particular, Ohio has a much more confident forecast than Iowa or New Hampshire means that the order of the states by Obama's likelihood of winning them is not the same as Obama's order of states by Obama's expected margin in them. So if you draw up a path-of-least-resistance map based on the 538 odds, you add in all the 90%+ states, and then Wisconsin, and then Nevada, and you're at 253 electoral votes, and then Ohio and you're at 271 and Obama wins. But if you construct a path of least resistance map based on the 538 margins instead, after Nevada's 253 you next toss in Iowa and New Hampshire, getting to 263. Now, since the next state on your list is Ohio, which would've been the tipping-point state anyway by the other method, Iowa and New Hampshire are redundant, and so the path of least resistance is probably basically the same by this method: you add on Ohio, get up to 281, and then ditch Iowa and New Hampshire as superfluous.
But that doesn't mean the fact that Obama's margins in Iowa and New Hampshire are larger than that in Ohio couldn't be relevant. Consider this map:
The dark blue states are those Obama leads by at least 3 points on the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, which total 253 electoral votes. The light blue states are, well, Iowa and New Hampshire, the two other states Obama leads by more than he leads Ohio. The red states are those Romney leads in, and the purple states are those Obama leads in but not by more than in Ohio. If you only give Obama the dark blue states, then he must add Ohio or Colorado and Virginia in order to be victorious. But if you tack on Iowa and New Hampshire, giving him a base of 263, then Ohio or Colorado or Virginia would do it. Ohio would get him to the highly-superfluous 281, Virginia would get him to 276, in which case he could jettison one of IA and NH, and Colorado would put him at 272.
Winning these small states, which for whatever it's worth happen to be the two most important primary states, in other words, gives Obama an extra degree of flexibility. They would allow him to win with his Midwest firewall, his Southern firewall, or his Western firewall, any one of the three. So while Iowa and New Hampshire are superfluous for purely path-of-least-resistance purposes, they matter a great deal in terms of the number of relatively easy paths to victory available to Obama.
The fact that, in particular, Ohio has a much more confident forecast than Iowa or New Hampshire means that the order of the states by Obama's likelihood of winning them is not the same as Obama's order of states by Obama's expected margin in them. So if you draw up a path-of-least-resistance map based on the 538 odds, you add in all the 90%+ states, and then Wisconsin, and then Nevada, and you're at 253 electoral votes, and then Ohio and you're at 271 and Obama wins. But if you construct a path of least resistance map based on the 538 margins instead, after Nevada's 253 you next toss in Iowa and New Hampshire, getting to 263. Now, since the next state on your list is Ohio, which would've been the tipping-point state anyway by the other method, Iowa and New Hampshire are redundant, and so the path of least resistance is probably basically the same by this method: you add on Ohio, get up to 281, and then ditch Iowa and New Hampshire as superfluous.
But that doesn't mean the fact that Obama's margins in Iowa and New Hampshire are larger than that in Ohio couldn't be relevant. Consider this map:
Winning these small states, which for whatever it's worth happen to be the two most important primary states, in other words, gives Obama an extra degree of flexibility. They would allow him to win with his Midwest firewall, his Southern firewall, or his Western firewall, any one of the three. So while Iowa and New Hampshire are superfluous for purely path-of-least-resistance purposes, they matter a great deal in terms of the number of relatively easy paths to victory available to Obama.
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