Brendan Nyhan

West Virginia results by demographics

As predicted, Obama got drubbed in West Virginia, so it's time to update my series on the predictors of his state-level support. If we put the exit poll data in context, we can see that he did much worse among whites in West Virginia than we would expect based in states with similar black populations:

However, he did about as poorly as we would expect among whites given the proportion of state residents with college degrees, though West Virginia has fewer college graduates than any previous primary state in the sample:

[Both graphs include linear fits with 95% confidence intervals that are predicted based on previous primary results.]

NPR story on transgender children

Don't miss Alix Spiegel's NPR series (part one, part two) on the struggles of families with transgender children, though it will break your heart. Our society has such a long way to go in how we deal with these issues. As Spiegel notes, the parallels to the "treatment" of homosexuality in past decades are all too obvious.

The Obama plague!

Did The Onion ghostwrite this Robert Novak column on conservatives "[promoting] the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency"? Can this possibly be real?

Some U.S. Christians are not reconciled to McCain's candidacy but instead regard the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as "God's candidate" for president in 2012. Whether they can be written off as merely a troublesome fringe group depends on Huckabee's course.

Huckabee's announced support of McCain is unequivocal, and he is regarded in the McCain camp as a friend and ally. But credible activists are spreading the word that Huckabee secretly allies himself with the bitter-end opposition. That hardly seems possible considering his public backing, but critics of Huckabee's 10 years as governor of Arkansas say he is all too capable of playing a double game...

[T]he word is that some evangelicals dispute Huckabee's support. One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me that Huckabee, in personal conversation with him, had embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals: that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible's prophecy.

According to this activist, at the heart of the let-Obama-win movement is longtime Virginia conservative leader Michael Farris -- the nation's leading home-school advocate, who is now chancellor of Patrick Henry College (in Purcellville, Va.) for home-schooled students. Best known politically as the losing Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1993, Farris is regarded as one of the hardest-edged Christian politicians. He is reported in evangelical circles to promote the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency.

In conversations with me, Huckabee and Farris both denied saying that an Obama presidency should be inflicted on the country.

Warnings of the anti-Christ are soon to follow. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)

Great moments in Supreme Court citations

Some Antonin Scalia news you can use from Slate's Dahlia Lithwick:

[Antonin] Scalia's writing style is a disarming mix of the lowbrow and the lofty. He recently served up the Supreme Court's first citation to Oscar the Grouch (PDF).

2008 vs. previous races by education

A reader shared the link to an excellent table that was posted on the website FiveThirtyEight.com back in April:

Hillary performs fully 11 points better against McCain than Obama does among voters with a high school education or less. But Obama performs 6 points better than Hillary among adults with some college, 10 points better among college graduates, and 13 points better among those with postgraduate educations.

Rather than analyzing these numbers by themselves, let's compare them to previous election cycles, and see how other Democratic nominees performed in these categories. I was able to track down exit poll data for 1992-2004, as well as 1976 and 1980.

Though it's way too early for the 2008 numbers to be strictly comparable to the exit polls from previous elections, the table illustrates the differences in the support Obama and Clinton get against McCain and changes in the Democratic coalition over time. In particular, note how Obama does about the same as Kerry among high school-educated voters and those with a postgraduate education, but makes significant gains among those with some college or a college degree. By contrast, while Clinton gets more support than Obama from high school-educated voters, she doesn't improve on Kerry's showing with voters who have some college or college degrees and does 14 points worse among voters with postgraduate education.

Update 5/13 9:55 AM: A reminder -- as BG points out in comments, these numbers collapse across other demographic categories such as age, race, and gender.

Profiled in Duke Magazine

For those who are interested (hi Mom!), there is a brief profile of me in the current issue of Duke Magazine. It includes some of my thoughts on the relationship between Spinsanity and my academic research.

ABC: 82% say wrong track

The latest ABC News poll/Washington Post poll shows how negatively the public has come to view the direction of the country under President Bush (PDF):

82% of the public thinks the country is on the wrong track, which is just one percentage point lower than the 1973 record. (John McCain, once again, is in big trouble.)

The poll also includes yet another illustration of how Bush's approval numbers have been in terminal decline since 9/11 except for a blip upward around the invasion of Iraq:

Back in early 2002, I wondered whether President Bush would become a transformational president who would define a political era like Ronald Reagan. Instead, Bush squandered his post-9/11 popularity so completely that he has provided Barack Obama with the opportunity to be a transformational president. (The situation is actually relatively parallel to the way that Jimmy Carter's presidency created the conditions under which Reagan could emerge.)

Update 5/12 9:29 PM: A closely related graph from Gallup:

The randomization reform agenda

Thought of the day: Couldn't reform-minded liberals and pork-busting conservatives agree that we should have randomized evaluations of almost everything the government does in social welfare, health care, etc.? When will Washington join the experimental revolution and find out which programs actually work?

Update 5/12 10:19 PM: In comments, Dave White points to a CRS study titled "Congress and Program Evaluation: An Overview of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) and Related Issues" (PDF) that provides considerable detail on the key issues in this debate.

Obama smear watch

Media Matters notes that the Washington Times quoted a man in Indiana saying "I can't stand [Barack Obama]... He's a Muslim. He's not even pro-American as far as I'm concerned" without pointing out that Obama is a Christian. Similar reports appeared in the LA Times, the websites of the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, and Maureen Dowd's column.

Meanwhile, Media Matters also points out that Dick Morris said on Fox News that "the determinant in the election will be whether we believe that Barack Obama is what he appears to be, or is he somebody who's sort of a sleeper agent who really doesn't believe in our system and is more in line with Wright's views?"

Hillary's latest extrapolation fallacy

Hillary Clinton has sent a memo to House Democrats touting her victories in swing districts. The problem is that the memo, like so much of Hillary's electability arguments, depends on the fallacy that primaries are an accurate guide to general election outcomes. You just can't assume that to be true. What we need instead is polling in those districts among registered voters.

Debates with my colleagues

Discussions that have I've been having with my colleagues at PIPC this week:

(1) What happens to Joe Lieberman if the Democrats take the White House and expand their Senate majority to 56 or 57 seats? Despite his support for McCain, I think Democrats will want his vote on non-war-related issues, so they'll hold their nose and let him keep his seniority in the caucus. Others say he'll be stripped of his seniority, lose his chairmanship of the government affairs committee, and then leave the party to become a Republican.

(2) What happens in the fall campaign if John McCain is outspent 3:1 or 4:1 by Barack Obama? Obama has raised more than $250 million in the primary and seems likely to raise at least that much for the general. McCain will most likely only have $85 million in public financing. If money ever matters in politics, this is the time.

PS In his column today, Paul Krugman makes a similar point to the one I've been making here -- namely, that the political fundamentals are heavily tilted against John McCain. The combination of those fundamentals and Obama's vast fundraising advantage may be enough to offset his likely underperformance among downscale white voters.

Update 5/11 9:13 PM: In response, Matthew Yglesias argues that "there's very little logic to keeping [Lieberman] in the party," but TNR's Josh Patashnik raises the key caveat:

My sympathies are with those who'd like to give Senator Lieberman the boot... The question that needs to be asked, though, is this: Is Joe Lieberman the type of vindictive, thin-skinned individual who would be likely to cast aside his longstanding moderate-to-liberal record on most domestic issues in order to join Republican filibusters and make life miserable for Democrats in retaliation for their snubbing him? I think the answer is quite possibly yes, and that's a very good reason for biting the bullet and putting up with his shenanigans until 2012.

Josh is right. The Lieberman-defenstrators out there don't appreciate the fact that the Connecticut senator's overall voting record in the current Congress is actually pretty close to the middle of the party. If he switches parties, that's unlikely to continue -- previous party switchers have drastically changed their voting patterns. The resulting shift would make it that much harder for a President Obama to end Republican filibusters and get his agenda passed. My guess is Democrats will realize this and let Lieberman stay in the caucus. (However, if McCain defies the odds and wins, it's possible that Democrats will take Lieberman down in their post-election wrath, particularly because they'll want the Government Affairs committee in reliably partisan hands.)

Update 5/12 9:49 AM: Via email, Yglesias makes a point I may have neglected -- the danger of Lieberman retaining his chairmanship for Democrats is that he might aggressively investigate an Obama administration. Once he launched those investigations, removing him from the chairmanship could provoke a major controversy, hence the possible need to remove him before that point.

Ensign: Liberals want to weaken defense

In a fundraising email to supporters yesterday, NRSC chairman John Ensign suggested that one of the top legislative priorities of "Big Labor, MoveOn.org and extremist environmental groups" is "weakening our national defense":

Dear Republican Supporter,

Big Labor, MoveOn.org and extremist environmental groups have promised to spend millions to elect angry liberals like Al Franken to the U.S. Senate in November.

What's more outrageous is that these groups expect the Democrats to payback their efforts by implementing their top legislative priorities like eliminating the secret ballot and weakening our national defense.

I've added this to my timeline of Republican attacks on dissent since 9/11.

PS What does Ensign mean when he says another top liberal priority is "eliminating the secret ballot"?

Update 5/8 8:49 PM: Commenters and correspondents report that Ensign is referring to the Employee Free Choice Act, which "would for the first time in 60 years allow workers to organize without putting the issue to a secret-ballot vote" -- a process that labor unions believe benefits employers. The problem is that Ensign never makes clear that he's talking about union votes. His jargon is so obscure that readers might end up thinking that Democrats want to weaken the secret ballot in federal elections.

[Disclosure: I worked for the Ed Bernstein for Senate campaign in Nevada in 2000 against John Ensign.]

The Post fact-checks Bill Clinton's face!

Self-parody alert -- Michael Dobbs, the Washington Post's "Fact Checker," is fact-checking Bill Clinton's facial expressions:

"Tonight we've come from behind, we've broken the tie, and thanks to you it's full speed on to the White House."
--Hillary Clinton, May 6, 2008.

Brave, defiant words from Hillary Clinton. But observe the facial expressions. For many people watching television on Tuesday night, the most striking impression from the Clinton victory rally in Indiana was not the words that came out of Hillary's mouth, but the look on Bill's face. It was the look of a man who knows that a dream is slipping away.

The Facts

Try this experiment. Take a look at this extract from Clinton's speech in Indianapolis with the volume turned down. Watch the expressions on the faces of Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea, and let me know what you think.

Here is what I saw. A candidate with a mask of upbeat determination on her face, who knows deep down that the game is lost but is still on auto-pilot, unwilling to accept defeat. A proud and loving daughter who will support her mother to the very end. An exhausted spouse who is sick at heart because he knows, from his vast political experience, that the fight is over. He dutifully applauds at the right moments, and occasionally punches his fist in the air, but his face reveals his true feelings.

Even as the hope of a miraculous upset faded away, Hillary still came across as the energizer bunny, running on batteries that never seem to wind down. After giving it his all, in dozens of small town meetings across North Carolina and Indiana, Bill looked as if all the energy had suddenly been drained out of him.

The Pinocchio Test

The Fact Checker will no doubt be ridiculed by many readers for checking facial expressions, rather than verifiable facts. But sometimes body language can be more eloquent than the most stirring rhetoric. The look on Bill Clinton's face said it all, qualifying for a Geppetto for agonized, heart-felt honesty.

I would like to become a charter member of the group objecting to "The Fact Checker ... checking facial expressions." The fact that Dobbs thinks he can read Clinton's mind tells you all you need to know about (a) why we started Spinsanity and (b) the deep epistemological problems of political journalism.

PS The swami is working hard tonight.

Chris Matthews and Harold Ford enlighten us

In the annals of great Chris Matthews moments, this interview with former Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr. is one of my favorites -- it's swami time!

MATTHEWS: Do you think Hillary Rodham Clinton has the soul of a vice president? Do you think she would really feel right about that job? She was first lady, a supporting person to the president for eight years through all the turmoil of that. Do you think she really wants to be on the ticket that wins, wants to serve as VP for four or eight years under a young president?

FORD: I take Senator Clinton at her word. She is deeply committed to this country, believing that the last seven, eight years of leadership in the White House has been difficult, at best, if not disastrous on certain fronts for the country, and is committed to being a part of a team to straighten that out and to fix that. I can’t answer that for her.

As we jump a step or two ahead here, I think this is a scenario that we in the party, and Barack and Hillary and their campaigns and their teams, ought to begin contemplating. I wouldn’t be surprised, if I were advising the Obama campaign tonight—I’ll say it again, tomorrow morning they ought to find as many super delegates outside of the Pelosi and Reid and Gore, but in the category right beneath him, who are willing to endorse him and to call for this campaign to play itself out in orderly way, but to be clear that the one with the most pledged delegates and the popular votes—it looks as if that will be Barack on both fronts—is going to be the nominee.

I think we have to begin to think seriously about a healing process in this party. Frankly, an Obama/Clinton ticket might address huge concerns that both sides have about personal differences and animosity, and frankly, some of the concerns that some in the party have about Barack’s ability to attract white working class voters, particularly white men going into the fall election.

What does it mean to have the "soul" of a vice president? And what does Harold Ford know about Hillary Clinton's soul?

Ford's response is almost as bad. As Matthew Yglesias points out, it's bizarre to suggest that adding Hillary Clinton to the ticket will help Obama with working class whites in the general election.

Obama support in NC and IN by race

Time to update my previous work on state-level predictors of Obama support. It turns out that Indiana and North Carolina were strikingly consistent with the trends in racial voting we've seen thus far. Here is a graph of total white and black support for Obama by the state's black population (click for an enlarged version):

The lines are fractional polynomials fit to the data before yesterday's primaries and the shading represents 95% confidence intervals. As you can see, the black vote in Indiana slightly overperformed for Obama but the other results fit almost perfectly with the predicted values.

Update 5/7 3:11 PM: To answer Rob's question in comments, the y-axes represent the share of the total white+black Democratic vote received by Obama from whites and blacks, respectively. For instance, the total white vote (the left y-axis) is calculated as Obama's percentage of the white vote multiplied by the proportion of the white+black electorate that was made up by whites. The total black vote is defined analogously.

The simpler graph below tells a similar story:

Update 5/7 10:38 PM -- Here's an equivalent graph to the top one using just Obama's margin over Hillary in the white vote (corrected after Josh pointed out an error in comments):