More naïve primary->general extrapolation

The annoying pattern of silly extrapolation from the primaries to the general election continues.

Rush Limbaugh is saying that John McCain needs Mike Huckabee as his VP to win the South:

Some people think that McCain is going to have to choose Huckabee, because if you look at what McCain won last night... What Huckabee did last night in the South has stunned everybody, because he spent about four bucks, and he just swept through the South.

The real story last night, though, is not that Huckabee won in the South. The story is that McCain didn't win the South... McCain, for all intents and purposes, is the nominee... The fact that he did not win the South is important, the reason is simple. He's not strong in the South, and Republicans cannot win the White House, cannot win a presidential race without winning in the South, and McCain demonstrated he can't do that last night unless he puts the Huckster on the ticket as the veep.

So John McCain is going to lose Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee (the Southern states Huckabee won) in November without him? Please.

Even the New York Times, which rarely fact-checks absurd claims, throws water on this one in an article on Huckabee's supposed resurgence:

Yet even if [Huckabee] were to do well in Texas, the experts ask, so what? He cannot overtake Mr. McCain in delegates, and he does not necessarily add to his desirability as a vice-presidential candidate, since Texas is likely to vote Republican in the general election, with or without Mr. Huckabee on the ticket. Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia, also still in play, fall under similar analysis, to varying degrees.

In the Times, Nicholas Kristof makes the same error:

So that raises the obvious question: Who would be the stronger Democratic candidate?

The answer isn’t certain, partly because Barack Obama’s shine could quickly tarnish...

But one clue emerged in Tuesday’s balloting in 14 “red states” that were won by President George W. Bush in 2004. Mr. Obama won nine while Hillary Rodham Clinton won four and is ahead in the fifth.

The Democratic primary electorate in "red states" is not representative of those states. More importantly, look at the "red" states Obama won. Most of them (ie Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, North Dakota, and Utah) are not going to go Democratic no matter who the nominee is.

Comments

[JimPanzee]

Matt Yglesias commented on this too but I think this criticism is bordering on nitpicking choices of words rather than its predictive merits. The strongest, supposedly wrong argument runs something like this:

1) Obama did really well in the South because he can rally the African-American vote.
2) McCain lost the South to Huckabee
======
3) If Obama can pull the South and McCain can't, the GOP will lose this historic stronghold and therefore the election.

It is true, as Yglesias said, that a Democrat always wins the Democratic Primary and vice versa. But it is also true that Obama polled better in the South than Clinton and Huckabee better than McCain.

It's not that all those people who didn't vote for McCain will turn around and vote for Clinton or Obama, which is what that argument seems to be saying.

I know I'm being overgenerous, but I think we can interpret the extrapolations as predicting the two candidates' ability to draw voters.

The people who voted in the primary are very likely to vote in November and they will vote for their party. But what about all the people that would have voted in November if the right candidate had been there but won't budge for the wrong one? McCain's loss to Huckabee seems to reasonably indicate that he can't draw southerners to him. Independent voters, evangelical voters who'd rather not vote than vote for McCain, etc. Meanwhile, Obama does seem like the right person to inspire southern African-Americans to come out and vote.

It is wrong to say that McCain will lose the South because he lost it to Huckabee in terms of direct causality. I don't think it's wrong to analyze McCain's losses there as evidence of a larger trend.

Does that mean that McCain needs Huckabee? Nope, but I do think he needs VP that will cement his administration as a traditional conservative, and ideally, has an appeal in the South. Huckabee fits the bill.

Would you incredibly smart political wonks stop making me agree with people like Limbaugh? McCain's losses in the South are important. It's easy to exaggerate the importance, but it's not like Huckabee, "kindof" won in the South, or they traded states. As a bloc, McCain lost the South and that says something about his how people view him.

[ikl]

I guess that it is conceivable that Obama could beat McCain in a few Southern states, but other than maybe VA, this would only be part of a national landslide, not margin that puts him over the top. So it is not really a factor in that match up.

in other news, I think that a mea culpa from Brendan (normally a spot on analyst) is in order for his hand-wringing around the time of the SC primary about whether Obama can be competitive with whites on Super Tuesday. The extrapolation from SC that his argument was based on was only slightly less silly than the arguments debunked in this post.