UGA Campaign Discussion Group – September 26, 2012

Today’s first question was – Is the election over? Our general conclusion was that it is not over, but with differing degrees severity, we concluded that the Mitt Romney campaign is in trouble. Since last week, RCP has put Wisconsin and Ohio in the Obama electoral vote bringing him to within five votes of 270 to win. Obama opened his head-to-head lead by 1.0% back to the 3.7 % lead in the national polls he had just before Ryan was announced as Romney’s VP pick. The biggest movement again this week was Intrade which swung to Obama by another 12.7 points (74.1 to 26.0). Possible game-changers include a blowup in Libya (it is now becoming more apparent that it was a planned terrorist attack and not a spontaneous demonstration  to a movie insulting Islam), an economic collapse in Europe, a decisive Romney victory in the debates or unspeakable abuse of the Ohio State mascot by Obama. Nate Silver (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/the-statistical-state-of-the-presidential-race/) has noted that only Thomas Dewey led the polls at the end of September and still lost the popular vote. Only Dewey and Al Gore led the polls at the end of September and lost the Electoral College. Naysayers point out that the only polling group to take the pulse in all those elections was Gallup which currently has Obama up by 6% in the tracking poll but had it even five days ago. Romney is now behind in all of the swing states including NC (MO is listed as Romney’s) by RCP. If Romney starts getting in trouble in AZ (RCP currently has it 8.5% for Romney with the latest poll only 3% but there have been only three polls in the state since the end of July), it will show he is in real trouble. The most likely reasons for the Obama lead at this point is that Romney is not a very good candidate and that the public likes Obama more than it likes Romney. The other point here is just how many undecided voters are really out there. If the polls are to be believed, Romney needs a large pool of undecided voters to turn it around.

Some other interesting stories of the week included Romney leading the Romney/ Ryan cheer which must have gone over better in person than on TV; the excellent speech Romney gave at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting; and the Ryan reception at AARP.  We had a discussion on the current Romney strategy to win the news cycle each day, but we did not agree on the wisdom of it. One view holds that he must win each day until the first debate to stop the bleeding.  The alternate view holds that any day the prominent Republican sound bite(s) are not about jobs and the economy is a day that favors the Democrats.  The first debate will be in one week. Romney needs to more than meet expectations next week to move the needle. Obama will have a higher level of expectations, but he only needs to meet them. Romney will be trying to annoy Obama while Obama will try to get Romney off script.

The book of the week is Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 which shows us moving to a split society with intellectual elites doing well and the working class sinking. We also had a discussion of the differences in corporate taxes in the USA and the rest of the world. Bill Clinton was quoted that when he raised the corporate rate it was pegged at the midpoint of industrialized nations. Since many countries have lowered their corporate rates, Clinton thinks we should lower those rates.    

UGA Campaign Discussion Group – September 19, 2012

Mitt Romney’s 47% comment was the first topic of discussion. We wondered why the Democrats waited so long to release the video tape. It was in the possession of Jimmy Carter’s grandson who might have run out of patience with Romney’s bashing of his grandfather or it might have been part of the Obama game plan of endless distractions. Much of Romney’s wounds appear to be self-inflicted. Romney apparently approved of the Clint Eastwood stunt. He had poor timing on criticizing the Administration’s response to the Egypt and Libya situation then doubled-down on his follow-up the following day. The 47% remark was back in May, but his hurried response late in the evening seemed poorly worded that did not help his cause. We suspect that it will hurt Romney as it feeds into the narrative of the out-of-touch rich guy. We agreed that the Democrats are still not doing well at messaging. They talk about the poor and not the working poor.  David Brooks had a highly critical commentary of Romney this week. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/opinion/brooks-thurston-howell-romney.html?_r=0). The comment was reminiscent of the Obama “cling to their guns and religion” remark. The major difference was that Obama clarified his statement when heard in context while the Romney one seemed to reinforce his misstatement. We noted that Randy Newman has a new song out “I’m dreaming of a white President.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvLeQbwuKys

The quote of the day came from David Brooks as well in The Social Animal was “In fact, you’re more likely to find that people become Democrats first, then place increasing value on equal opportunity, or they become Republicans first, then place increasing value on limited government. Party affiliation often shapes values, not the other way around.” It certainly challenges our assumptions. Rachel indicated that her dissertation will argue that several factors including microtargetting will discredit the view of David Brooks.      

We visited the forecast models that appeared in Larry Sabato’s newsletter last week http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/forecasting-the-presidential-election-other-crystal-balls/.  Of the thirteen models eight favor Obama and five favor Romney, but the average of the two-party vote gives Obama only 50.3%. Models favoring Romney give him a higher percentage of the vote than those that favor Obama. We noted the Holbrook model that heavily emphasizes the economy only gives Obama 47.9% of the two-party vote which suggests that the campaign matters. We also noted that Campbell’s model favors Obama. His model favored McCain in 2008.

In looking at the changes in the RCP polls in the last week, most likely to reflect the situation in the Middle East, Michigan has gone back to the Democrats. Romney closed the head-to-head race by 0.5% (now 48.1 to 45.4) and has decreased the differences in favorable ratings by 0.6% (48.1 t0 45.4). Obama opened up the difference in unfavorable ratings by 0.7% (43.7 for Obama to 44.2).  The biggest movement was Intrade which swung to Obama by 12.5 points (67.9 to 32.5). While the national polls show a close race, the battleground polls are tilting those states more to Obama. Obama is even edging close to Romney as to who is best to handle the economy. We think that barring a major change in events the absolute critical state for Romney is Florida.

We are unable to understand why Romney is spending more of his time in safe states raising money than in swing states campaigning. We are also awaiting his campaign advertising blitz. Obama has a very strong ground game built in the 2008 primary season. The question is whether he can re-instill the level of enthusiasm his supporters exhibited in 2008. We also debated as to whether either candidate would get more positive votes than negative ones against his opponent. It looks like it will be more of a base election.

The debates are gaining more and more importance, particularly for Romney. Obama’s biggest liabilities are arrogance, condescension and disdain. Romney is vulnerable when he goes unscripted. Obama will try to get under Romney’s skin. As Paul has indicated in the past, visual overrules verbal.

Once again Israel became a topic. Netanyahu walked back his apparent endorsement of the Romney campaign saying some nice things on Meet the Press about Obama. He would obviously prefer a Romney Presidency. One of wondered why Obama is not stonger on messaging about what we are doing in Iran, but the rest of us think the less he says about Iran and ObamaCare the better. Neither is a winning issue for the Democrats.      

 

UGA Campaign Discussion Group – September 12, 2012

We began our discussion on the convention bounces. With respect to head-to-head Real Clear Politics averages, the Republicans received a 0.9% bounce from their convention and the Democrats a 3.1% bounce. Rachel was too modest to claim credit for her very accurate prediction of the bounce last week. The best speech at the DNC was probably the one by Bill Clinton, 40% of which was not in his prepared remarks. Obama was probably a victim of high expectations.  

Romney’s appearance on Meet the Press was not auspicious. When he is vague on specifics he gets hammered. When he is specific, like being for all the positive aspects of ObamaCare but wants to repeal the bad parts, he gets hammered worse and has to issue clarifications. Despite the criticisms that he is not specific enough, his best strategy may be best to stick with broad generalities. While Mitt was getting softball questions from David Gregory, his running mate was being aggressively questioned by Nora O’Donnell. Paul Ryan’s lack of specificity is even more apparent than Romney’s, which is strange for someone who has a reputation for openness and candor. Some of us thought Ryan is just not as smart as his reputation, while others think he is being muzzled by the Romney team. It was noted that Paul Ryan has never even run a statewide campaign and may be somewhat out of his element. Apparently he is putting money into his Congressional campaign as his district might not be as safe as previously assumed. We wondered why Romney’s campaign do not seem to be heeding public advice from Rupert Murdoch and Karl Rove.

Unrest in Libya and Egypt was the next main topic with particular emphasis on Romney’s criticism of Obama’s handling of the situation. Generally it is not a good idea to criticize a President during a foreign crisis. Instead of backing off in the morning press conference, Romney double-downed on his criticism. One viewpoint is that his no-apology approach is the only way he has to burst the Obama foreign-policy bubble. Others felt that this position was a major gaffe for the Romney campaign. We all agreed that he was a victim of poor timing and that he is not facile with policy statements. We also think that his foreign policy is held captive by the neocons.

The situation is also colored by the situation in Israel. Danny Danon, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, indicated on Morning Joe this morning that they were ready to bomb Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is upset with Obama’s apparent snub of him during the UN addresses. Netanyahu is getting dangerously close to inserting himself into the Presidential campaign because of his former association with Romney. We mentioned the role that the Hasidic Jews play in the politics and military aspects of Israeli life.

Discussion shifted to the broader picture in the Middle East and raised many questions. Is this merely a single incident that will be gone in a week or two or is it the beginning of something that outlasts the American election? What effect will the Middle East have on the Presidential election? Are we dealing with radical Islamists in these countries or are they more moderate? Was the movie the real reason for the uprising or was it just an excuse?  In this discussion it was noted that one word was not mentioned – Russia.

We have three weeks until the first debate.

UGA Campaign Discussion Group – September 5, 2012

We analyzed the first night of the Democratic Convention. Someone mentioned the headline from FOX News – CASTRO ADDRESSES THE DNC! The most effective parts of the night before the excellent speech by Michelle Obama were the speeches by Deval Patrick, Lilly Ledbetter, and Julian Castro and the tribute to Teddy Kennedy. By following the twitter feed at the convention, you get a very different perspective than just watching it on TV. It was particularly noticeable after the Clint Eastwood performance last week. The contrasts to this point of the two conventions are that the Republicans were speaking to the small business owner and the Democrats to the workers. Both conventions are aiming at their base and not independents. The Democrats seemed to be more upbeat and enthusiastic on their first night than the Republicans. Their talks were better coordinated on the first day in Charlotte than on the first day in Tampa, but part of that was the result of scheduling problems brought on by Isaac. There also seem to be more emphasis on accomplishments and abortion than expected in Charlotte and less on attacking the Republican ticket than we had anticipated last week. The Republican enthusiasm seemed to build from Day One to Day Three. The Democrats must avoid having enthusiasm wane during their three days.    

The question “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” is hanging over the Democrats. They muffed the question on the Sunday morning shows, but Biden’s bumper-sticker statement that “Bin-Laden is dead. General Motors is Alive” seems to be shoring up their answer. In the twitter world the hash tag “rubetteroff” seems to be backfiring on the Republicans as more Democrats seem to be paying attention this week than Republicans. The jobs report on Friday will be critical. We disagreed on whether maintaining the current unemployment rate is good enough for Obama or if he needs a drop in at least 0.1%.

The big talk is about convention bounces. It is difficult to calculate a bounce with the conventions back-to-back. If we look at the RCP numbers since August 15 (the Wednesday after the Paul Ryan announcement in Norfolk) and today Romney-Ryan has put MI and WI in play for a 16 electoral-vote bounce, the head-to-head RCP average has shrunk from an Obama lead of 3.7 to 0.1 for a 3.6% bounce, a drop of 0.5% favorability rating for Obama and a jump of 1.5% favorability for Romney for a 2.0% bounce, a 0.1% increase in Obama’s unfavorability rating of 0.1% and decrease in Romney’s unfavorability rating of 1.4% for a Romney bounce of 1.5%, and finally an increase of 1.6%  in Intrade Real Time Quotes for Obama and a decrease of 0.1% for Romney leading to a dip of 1.7%. Thus, Romney has seen a bounce in four of these five measures. Possible reasons for the Intrade results may be that it is a more sensitive measure than the others and the Tampa convention did not live up to expectations of the traders. A comparable period will be between now and September 26 to see if Obama can bounce back. If he doesn’t get at least some of the electoral votes and head-to-head advantage back by then, he is in trouble. If he gets all of it back, Romney is in trouble. One of us predicted that the Democrats would get a significant bounce out of Charlotte. The rest of us were more guarded.

The topic of Super PACs came up. Most of us thought that the Republicans will have a significant advantage in money to spend, but one of us stated that the difference would be much smaller than currently believed. Wall Street seems to have deserted Obama due to his anti-business rhetoric and his policies. If Romney has the monetary advantage with the high unemployment rate as it is, we will have to re-evaluate many of our previous assumptions about Presidential elections if Obama wins. A recent article claims that Obama hasn’t had a tough GOP opponent to this point. Will Romney be that tough GOP opponent? The results will probably settle that issue. If Obama wins, Romney will become a weak opponent. If Romney wins, then he will be the only tough opponent Obama faced.

We are looking forward to Bill Clinton’s (the comeback vegan) talk this evening. Some questions raised include – Will he redefine the election as a choice instead of a referendum on Obama? Can he bring the party back to the center? Will his emaciated appearance detract from the substance of his talk for those who have not kept up with his weight loss?

Parting shots included Paul Ryan’s statements on his marathon times in and of itself is not a problem, but it feeds into a narrative (sorry, Justin) that he exaggerates or shades the truth coming from his statements on the GM plant in Janesville and Medicare savings in his Tampa talk. It turns out that John Edwards and Sarah Palin have better marathon times than Paul Ryan, but he did beat Al Gore’s time. See
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/09/paul_ryan_marathon_which_politician_had_the_fastest_marathon_time_a_slate_interactive_.html
The press will look at his statements more carefully now to see if it fits the narrative. A similar narrative hurt Al Gore. The next two weeks will be critical for the Obama campaign. Dell pointed out that Carter and Mondale have lived longer after leaving office than any other President-VP combination. In second place are Adams and Jefferson. Also, the last time we had three Presidents complete two terms consecutively was from 1801-1825 with Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.