Swing State Project
Monday, October 27, 2003
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Wednesday, October 22, 2003
New Host: http://swingstateproject.typepad.com
I've moved over to TypePad, which is Movable Type's new (and vastly superior) for-pay blog service. So for now, the new URL for this blog is http://swingstateproject.typepad.com. I've copied all my posts, but I am not able (at least as far as I can tell) to move the comments over as well.
Also, I am in the process of trying to get my proper domain name (swingstateproject.com) to point to the new blog, but I'm running into some trouble. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
A Note on Methodology
As I explained in my first post, the states on my list are those which had a margin of +/- 6 points in 2000. I used the (Gore + Nader) - (Bush + Buchanan) formula. I've included one outlier, Louisiana, which had an 8-point margin. Some folks have suggested I ought to include Washington as well, which had a 9-point overall margin, but which Gore won by only five points. Perhaps I will. On the flipside, some have also questioned the inclusion of states like Virginia and Tennessee, which appear to be strongly Republican.
My reason for starting with a broad list is because I want to avoid making conclusions until we've had a chance to analyze the evidence. Obviously, the Dems are a lot more likely to snag some states rather than others. We may need to pare down the list of swing states eventually. But for now, I see no harm in casting a wide net.
A "Thank You" to Kos
I want to give a very big thank you to Markos at DailyKos - not just for his recent plug of this site, but, more importantly, for the inspiration he's given me. It's safe to say that without DKos, I never would have embarked on this project. And the fantastic new "diary" feature on the new Scoop-powered site gave me the final push I needed.
I've been reading Kos for almost exactly a year now, so I'm not quite as quick a learner as he is. But Kos has been a fantastic teacher and I am very proud to be one of his blogchildren.
New Hampshire: Additional Thoughts
A few posters over at DailyKos contributed some more thoughts to the New Hampshire race. DemFromCT glumly points out a recent Granite State Poll which gives Bush a 56% approval rating in NH (with 40% disapproving and 4% undecided). However, this is down considerably from Bush’s post-war high of 71% in April, when his disapproval was a mere 23%. We'll have to keep an eye out to see if Bush continues to slide any further.
Carl Nyberg (who thinks Dean can win New Hampshire) also brings up a much more optimistic – and potentially important – demographic point. New arrivals from Boston and NYC constitute a fast-growing part of the NH population, and these folks are less likely to be Bush supporters. This presentation by UNH’s Survey Center appears to bear out Carl’s assertion. Forty-two percent of native-born New Hampshirites consider themselves Republicans, but much smaller proportions of those born in other states do. And indeed, New Hampshire has seen a fairly sizable positive net migration since 1992.
In fact, GOP voter registration has declined just a bit since a peak in the mid-90s, while the number of independents has shot up dramatically, making them the single-largest group of voters, as noted in a previous post. Interestingly, only 24% of native New Hampshirites self-identify as independents. So the conventional wisdom that New Hampshire is a state of prickly independents seems (at least these days) to rest in large part on the political proclivities of these new immigrants. The CW isn’t wrong, per se – but it’s obviously malleable. And since you may have been wondering, independents preferred Gore over Bush 47% to 43% – though that last pair of figures comes from the much-maligned Voter News Service, so the usual caveats apply.
It is clear that the political landscape in New Hampshire is shifting, and Bill Clinton’s two victories there may not have been so much as an aberration but rather the start of a new trend. I’ll count the 2000 results as part of this continued trend, since the Gore + Nader vote was greater than Bush’s. The comparison I’d like to make here (and I know New Hampshirites will bristle at it, but indulge me) is to Vermont. Today, we think of Vermont as being an extremely liberal state. But until Bill Clinton came along, Vermont had gone Democrat exactly once during the entire 20th century (for Johnson in `64). Yep, VT managed to vote against FDR all four times. I don’t think NH will become another Ben & Jerry’s and Birkenstock paradise any time soon, but I also don’t believe that the past is necessarily prologue here, either. The times (and the voters), they are a-changin’.
Monday, October 20, 2003
New Hampshire
I'm going to start my look at each swing state in the top right corner of the map and work my way around. So we'll begin with the Granite State.
Electoral Votes: 4
2000 Results:
Bush: 48%New Hampshire stands out among the states Bush won in 2000 for two reasons. First, if you look at the electoral map, you'll notice its sliver of red amidst a sea of northeastern blue. Indeed, New Hampshire is the odd man out in New England, with a very different politics and electoral makeup than most of its neighbors. We'll look at this a bit later.
Gore: 47%
Nader: 4%
Buchanan: 0%
Second, and more importantly, NH stands out because it was one of two states where the combined Gore/Nader vote was greater than the Bush/Buchanan vote. (Florida, of course, was the other.) In fact, the left-wing vote in NH was three points greater than the right-wing vote.
On the face of it, then, it would seem that NH is ripe for the Dems to take back - if you believe that Green party voters will now (for whatever reasons) vote Democrat. Obviously, the likelihood of this is hard to assess because it depends on so many factors. Will Nader run again? If he does, will he engender the same level of support? If he doesn't run, will Green voters stay home? And if the Greens do vote in the absence of a Nader run, will they pull the lever for the Dem nominee, or will they still go Green, regardless of who their candidate is?
Right now, it's especially difficult to answer any of these questions, though some will become clearer in the coming year. But even if the Greens come back to the Dem fold en masse, we need to look at whether NH might shift from its ultra-close 48-47 split in 2000. And that brings us back to the first issue: NH's quirky politics.
The conventional wisdom is that New Hampshirites favor outsider-types. The results in primary elections indeed bear this out: "Maverick" John McCain beat Bush handily in 2000, for one, and the odious Pat Buchanan managed to stun establishmentarian Bob Dole in `96. Buchanan even snagged 39% of the vote in `92 when he ran against incumbent Bush, Sr.
Part of this has to do with NH's liberal open primary system, whereby independents can choose which party's primary they'd like to vote in on election day. (In New York, by contrast, you can only vote in your own party's primary, and if you want to switch parties, you have to do it months in advance. And independents can't vote in any primaries at all.) In NH, independents in fact make up the plurality of NH voters.
But will this independent streak carry over to the general election? It's hard to say - and, I'll admit, I'm not an expert on NH politics. I can tell you that New Hampshire's entire Congressional delegation (two senators and two congressmen) is Republican, as is the governor. And though I'll take any poll of Bush vs. "Unnamed Democrat" with a major grain of salt, the ARG poll cited below does show a pretty big spread between Rs and Ds. So clearly a lot of independents must be voting Republican.
On the flipside, the last two races where we had a one-term incumbent and a weak economy (`80 and `92), New Hampshire went for the outsiders (Reagan and Clinton) both times. Furthermore, the strong interest in the Democratic primary (combined with the absence of a Republican contest) may have residual effects. Democrats who mobilize in large numbers in January may feel more compelled (and better equipped) to do so again in November. By contrast, their Republican brethren will, for the most part, have to sit idly by until autumn. And lastly, if Dean gets the nomination, it's possible that his outsider credentials will give him a boost here. (I don't think any of the other candidates can successfully claim this sort of mantle.)
Ultimately, I can't provide a good answer my own question - that is, will the GOP/Dem split in NH stay the same in 2004. Evidence points both ways. Of course, there are the Two Huge Unknowns - the economy and the war in Iraq - which will affect every state in one way or another. (And right now, these Bush negatives redound in the Democrats' favor.) But absent any compelling evidence suggesting a GOP or Dem surge in NH, I'm going to say that the outcome in this state rests primarily on what happens with the Green voters.
Polls:
"If next year's Presidential election were being held today, who would you be more likely to vote for Republican George W. Bush or the nominee of the Democratic Party?" (ARG, 9/16/03)
Bush: 50%
Democrat: 36%
Undecided: 14%
"Which candidate has the best chance of defeating Bush?" (Zogby, 9/26/03)
Dean: 26%
Kerry: 24%
Clark: 19%
Sunday, October 19, 2003
Swing State Map
An electoral map highlighting the swing states in the 2004 election. (Produced with Jim Howard's very handy Electoral College Calculator.)
An Introduction to the Swing State Project
My goal with this website is to analyze in detail the political conditions in the toss-up (or "swing") states that will ultimately decide the 2004 presidential election. While I'll make some observations of my own, my hope is that other knowledgeable folks (particularly the posters at my original blog home, the unparalleled DailyKos) will also contribute their ideas.
For the purposes of this project, I consider the following states to be swing states (states that went for Gore in 2000 are in blue; those that went for Bush are in red):
Arizona
Arkansas
Colorado
Florida
Iowa
Louisiana
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Mexico
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin
You can read my more on my methodology for picking these states in this post.
If you have any thoughts as to why, in 2004, the Democrats will win any of the states we narrowly lost in 2000 - or, alternately, why we might lose any of the states we narrowly won - please share them in the comments below. I'll post occasional updates drawing everyone's collected wisdom together, in blurbs such as this:
Why we'll win FL this time: Nader voters will come back to the Dem fold; anger over 2000 will increase Dem turnout, especially among minorities; no butterfly ballot this time around.Eventually, I hope to have a comprehensive list or chart detailing information like this for all of the swing states. I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say.
Why we'll lose FL again: Lots of pork provided by Dubya to FL; Governor Jeb.