How is the 2008 election different from 2004, beyond the (currently predicted) national swing of about 4 percentage points (enough to move from Kerry’s 49% of the vote to 53% for Obama)?
When I spoke yesterday, someone asked about the changes in the electoral map since 2004 and what did it all mean, are the red states being painted blue etc? My quick answer is that the relative positions of the 50 states aren’t changing much, it’s the whole country that’s shifting. This was my impression based on looking at the map and also based on generally seeing uniform partisan swing in votes and attitudes.
But what do the data say? Here’s a graph of Obama’s predicted share of the two-party vote in each state (based on Nate Silver’s recent poll aggregation) compared to Kerry’s in 2004:
I then fit a simple linear regression; here’s a map of the residuals, showing where Obama is doing particularly well or poorly, compared to last time:
I used regression residuals rather than simply plotting or map the differences because of “regression to the mean”: the predictable pattern that the Democratic vote will go down (relatively speaking) in places where they did particularly well last year, and go up where they did particularly poorly. Instead, the regression residuals show changes that are unexpected (relative to the linear model, that is; of course it’s not unexpected that McCain is doing relatively well in Arizona, but the simple linear regression of 2008 on 2004 doesn’t know about home states).
2000/2004
How big are these changes? One way to calibrate is to look at changes from 2000 to 2004. These will be close to the smallest changes we’ll ever see, since 2004 was really a replay of the 2000 election. Here’s the scatterplot:
And here’s the map of residuals:
So, the relative changes of states in 2008 seem greater than the changes in 2004. On the other hand, the 2008 estimates are based on fallible poll data; maybe the election outcomes will be less variable.
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October 28th, 2008,
by Andrew
7287pwkr
Nate Silver, Aaron Edlin, and I estimated the probability that a single vote in any state will be decisive in the presidential election. It was Aaron’s idea, Nate supplied the simulations, and I calculated the probabilities and made the graphs.
Here’s our article describing what we did, here’s the abstract:
One of the motivations for voting is that one vote can make a difference. In a presidential election, the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win, times the probability the vote in your state is tied in that event. We compute these probabilities for each state in the 2008 presidential election, using state-by-state election forecasts based on the latest polls. The states where a single vote is most likely to matter are New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Colorado, where your vote has an approximate 1 in 10 million chance of determining the national election outcome. On average, a voter in America has a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the presidential election.
and here are some graphs:
There are more graphs if you follow the link to the article.
As Aaron, Noah, and I have discussed, it can be rational to vote even when the probability of decisive vote is 1 in 10 million.
P.S. Typo in Figure 1 caption above fixed.
P.P.S. See here for more discussion of why we can compute the probability of a decisive vote, even though the election might be decided by a recount
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October 27th, 2008,
by Andrew
7287pwkr
Sometimes you hear discussion of how the red states get more from the government than they pay in taxes while the blue states get less and pay more. This is slightly misleading because the blue states are richer and rich people pay a higher rate of income tax, but it does raise the interesting question of the national effects of the graduated income tax.
For some perspective on where this is coming from, here’s a fun bit from chapter 9 of our book:
In our office is a map from 1924 titled “Good Roads Everywhere” that shows a proposed system of highways spanning the country, “to be built and forever maintained by the United States Government.” The map, made by the National Highways Association, also includes the following explanation for the proposed funding system: “Such a system of National Highways will be paid for out of general taxation. The 9 rich densely populated northeastern States will pay over 50 per cent of the cost. They can afford to, as they will gain the most. Over 40 per cent will be paid for by the great wealthy cities of the Nation. . . . The farming regions of the West, Mississippi Valley, Southwest and South will pay less than 10 per cent of the cost and get 90 per cent of the mileage.” Beyond its quaint slogans (“A paved United States in our day”) and ideas that time has passed by (“Highway airports”), the map gives a sense of the potential for federal taxing and spending to transfer money between states and regions.
I’ll see if I can get someone to take a picture of this amazing map so I can post it on the blog.
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October 25th, 2008,
by Andrew
7287pwkr
The election is coming up so this is our last DC event . . . I’ll be
speaking on Red State, Blue State this Mon, 27 Oct, at the New America
Foundation. The event will be from 12.15-1.45, and there will be a
discussion by David Frum. Frank Micciche of the New America
Foundation will moderate. Info is here. I’m looking forward to the discussion.
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October 23rd, 2008,
by Andrew
7287pwkr
Turns out that as far Comedy Central goes, Democrats prefer the Colbert Report, while Republicans turn to South Park. Though they both agree that “The Next Food Network Star” is their favorite Food Network show. Not Iron Chef? Pah.
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October 22nd, 2008,
by Boris
7287pwkr
As David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers, mentioned to me, Ronald Reagan’s famous question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” echoes an earlier line from Franklin Roosevelt, from a 1934 radio address:
“But the simplest way for each of you to judge recovery lies in the plain facts of your own individual situation. Are you better off than you were last year?”
This reminds me of a point Aaron Edlin, Noah Kaplan, and I have made, which is that the evidence is (both from survey data and from theoretical considerations) that people vote based on what they think is good for the country, rather than what they think is their personal benefit. (This relates to the idea that it’s not rational to vote, with a probability of decisive vote being about 1 in 10 million, if your goal is to get a $300 tax cut or whatever, but it is rational to vote, with these same odds, if your goal is to make the country and world a much better place.)
Anyway, the Reagan quote is often taken as a symbol of selfishness, of people voting based on what makes themselves better off. But I’ve always taken Reagan’s statement as implicitly statistical or inferential: if your goal is to evaluate how the country is going, look to yourself and your neighbors and see how they are doing. “Are you better off than you were four years ago” is an estimate of “Is the country better off…”
This idea of personal-retrospection-as-inference is clearer in the original Roosevelt quote: “But the simplest way for each of you to judge recovery lies in the plain facts of your own individual situation…” As with Reagan, not an appeal to selfishness but rather an appeal to inference.
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October 21st, 2008,
by Andrew
7287pwkr
Two interesting articles in Newsweek: Jon Meacham writes that “America remains a center-right nation,” and Jonathan Alter replies that “we’re heading left once again.” Here’s Meacham:
So are we a centrist country, or a right-of-center one? I think the latter, because the mean to which most Americans revert tends to be more conservative than liberal. . . . nearly twice as many people call themselves conservatives as liberals (40 percent to 20 percent), and Republicans have dominated presidential politics—in many ways the most personal, visceral vote we cast—for 40 years. Since 1968, Democrats have won only three of 10 general elections (1976, 1992 and 1996). . . . In California, at least one poll suggests that social conservatives may pass an anti-gay-marriage ballot proposition next month . . .
And here’s Alter:
Jon Meacham is right that by the standards of a European-style welfare state, we will always be a relatively conservative country. But closer to home, the norm has not been consistently conservative over the course of the 20th century. If anything, the nation was more often center-left. Democrats controlled the House of Representatives—the “People’s House”—for six straight decades between 1930 and 1994 (with only a short exception). While many were Southern conservatives on race, the huge chunks of progressive legislation they swallowed over many years could choke an elephant. . . .
A methodological comment
And now here’s me. Before getting to the data on voters’ ideologies, let me make a brief methodological comment. Meacham’s point that Republicans have been winning presidential elections is relevant; in fact, before 1994 there was an ongoing discussion within political science as to how the Republicans were consistently winning the presidency while being in the minority in party identification and congressional voting. (From 1994-2004, the two parties split the congressional vote roughly evenly. From 1950-1992 and again in 2006 (and probably in 2008 as well), it’s been a pretty consistent 55% for Dems and 45% for Reps. See the lower graph at this link.) So, yes. But Meacham’s comparison is misleading in that he’s treating the election outcomes as yes/no measures of public opinion. But surely if the essentially-tied 1968, 1976, and 2000 elections tell us anything about public opinion, it is that it was evenly divided in these years, not that America was left or right. Counting the winner is a common mistake people make in studying elections. Yes, for policy concerns it is the winner that matters more than the vote margin, but for studying public opinion it is a different story.
A more important point, though, which both Meacham and Alter raise in different ways, is that ideology is relative to current standards; given that the parties can shift positions (if only gradually at times), it is no surprise that they find themselves not too far from current voters. For example, is it really a sign of conservatism that 50% of Californians think gay marriage is OK? Similarly, if Obama raises the tax rate on the top bracket to 40%, would this really represent a triumph of liberalism? The center has moved a lot, in different ways, over the past few decades.
And now for some data
From Michael Herron and Joe Bafumi (and in chapter 8 of our book), here are estimates of the distributions of voters, House members, and senators on a common scale:
House members and senators’ positions are estimated based on their votes in Congress. Voters’ positions are estimated based on some survey questions where people were asked their views on a number of issues that had also been voted on in Congress. As you can see, elected representatives are generally more extreme than voters. (See here for versions of the above graph broken down by red, purple, and blue states.)
In light of recent American politics, this pattern makes sense: congressmembers generally vote with their parties, very few conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans remain in the House or the Senate, and, as Delia and I have shown, voters’ positions on issues are much more of a mixed bag. Voters may be to the left of the Democratic party or to the right of the Republican party on specific issues, but, on the whole, most voters don’t have that sort of ideological consistency.
More data on voters’ ideologies, this time in comparison to how they perceive Bush and Kerry, is in chapter 9 of our book, originally from my paper with Jeff Cai. Here’s the graph showing how a random sample of a thousand or so Americans in October, 2004, perceived Bush, Kerry, and themselves on a set of economic and social issues (i.e., respondents were asked about particular issues, not about general “liberal” or “conservative” labels):
There was a lot of spread; on average, though, voters saw themselves as between the two candidates. (See the graph on the right, in which K and B represent respondents’ average assessments of where Bush and Kerry stood on these issues.)
At the beginning of the year I had an exchange with an economist who interpreted the polls to say that American opinion is to the left of the middle of the Democratic party. His point was that, although Americans are much more likely to label themselves as conservative than liberal, but they are more liberal when you look at particular issues such as health insurance and whether the rich pay too little in taxes. When you look at a large basket of issues, however, you find the voters to be between the two parties, as is indicated in our graphs above.
Voters and nonvoters
Finally, we should distinguish between political positions of voters and of Americans in general. As Nagler and Leighley have discussed, nonvoters differ systematically from voters:
The ideological distribution of voters and non-voters in 2004 is fairly similar to that in 1972: moderates are most under-represented, while conservatives are over-represented. Importantly, the magnitude of these differences increases between 1972 and 2004. . . . these differences on class-based issues are enduring and increasing.
For the question, What should President Obama (or McCain) do?, the opinions of nonvoters aren’t so relevant. But for statements about America, compared to other countries with higher voter turnout, it’s worth keeping these differences in mind.
In conclusion
Both Meacham and Alter have useful perspectives on recent American political history, and the data we’ve looked at don’t directly address the “center-right” vs. “center-left” controversy: these terms only make sense when compared to some contemporary standard. But the evidence, both from elections and from polls, supports the commonsensical idea that the two major parties are far enough apart that, at least in the short term, voters can move policy as far as they want to the left or to the right by consistently voting for Democrats or Republicans. Either party, when elected, has to balance its policy goals with its desire not to move too far away from the center.
That said, the success of an administrative policy depends on more than where it stands on a left-right scale. For example, when it came to implementing conservative policies, Reagan had more success with tax cuts than with budget cuts.
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October 19th, 2008,
by Andrew
7287pwkr
Book TV on C-Span 2. Sat 18 Oct 7pm and Mon 20 Oct 6am. It’s the video of our event at the Cato Institute last month: Boris and me, introduced by Will Wilkinson and discussed by Michael McDonald and Brink Lindsey. Here’s the link.
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October 16th, 2008,
by Andrew
7287pwkr
The New York Times ran a fascinating piece on ideology and theater. Turns out that, unlike literature where a couple of big names are right-leaning, (secular) theater is almost exclusively blue. David Mamet is one of the few exceptions. The article points to Saul Bellow, Mark Helprin, and V.S. Naipul as the literary rightists. I’ve only read the latter’s A House for Mr. Biswas, and it wasn’t particularly conservative.
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October 16th, 2008,
by Boris
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