UGA Campaign Discussion Group – November 5, 2012

A day before the election! We looked at Josh’s Electoral Spectrum with Ohio still as the pivot state. Paul gave his assessment of the election, predicting an Obama victory with 290-300 electoral votes. The numbers we have been following since mid-August suggest that Romney peaked before Sandy, contrary the media’s narrative that Sandy stopped his momentum.

An OpEd appeared in the NY Times advocating the abandonment of the Electoral College and moving it by Congressional District. We agreed that this move would currently disadvantage Democrats and would lead to more polarization rather than less in the general population. Rather than focus on swing states, there would be a focus on swing districts. There is a general agreement that a popular vote decision would be more fair than the electoral college, but the counterargument is that the battle would shift to the largest media markets to run up the vote totals in highly populous areas. A popular vote would probably tilt the election toward the Democrats.

Next, we turned to the polls. Obama looks to be the favorite unless there is a systematic bias in the state-by-state polls. Possible explanations for such a bias include the Bradlee Effect, but we generally discounted it as a factor. The commentator, Alex Castellanos, suggested that a vote for Obama is a cool vote, but not necessarily the real vote. We also noted that there could be last-minute movement toward or away from one of the candidates that the polls have not detected. We talked about the closeness of the polls and being within the margin of error. When looking at a single poll the margin of error is relevant. When looking at multiple polls, however, margin of error is not as consequential as the consistency of different polls and trend lines over time. Frontloading HQ had an excellent article on the differences between national and state polls indicating that which set is right or wrong is the wrong emphasis. Rather, a post-election analysis will help develop better projections in the future. See 

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-electoral-college-map-11312.html

We went back to the potential effect of Sandy on the election. We generally agreed that the electoral vote will probably not be affected, but the popular vote in NJ & NYC could be suppressed by the disruption by the storm.

Obama has the reputation for a get-out-the-vote effort, but Ralph Reed is apparently rallying the evangelicals, particularly in Ohio. The advertising strategy seems to be very different by the two campaigns. Romney’s strategy has been more aimed at the mass media in a swing state with Obama involved in more micro-targeting of his ads. Apparently, Romney has outspent Obama in ads, but Obama has run about twice as many ads by buying up time early and in smaller markets. Josh indicated that Eisenberg has stated that the Obama campaign is light years ahead of Romney in micro-targeting. This situation seems strange when Karl Rove was so successful in the 2004 Bush campaign in micro-targeting. Apparently, Karl Rove took his secrets with him when he left, and Romney was not interested or able in tapping into his expertise.

Last week there were two commentaries directly opposed to each other on projecting the election. Jay Cost predicts a Romney victory because he is leading among Independents and the issue of jobs and the economy is the most important one on voter’s minds.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/search/?cx=%3C%3F%3D%24cx_value%3B%3F%3E&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=jay+cost+november+2012&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&siteurl=www.realclearpolitics.com%2Fsearch%2F&ref=www.realclearpolitics.com%2F&ss=9406j14017830j16

Charlie Cook predicts an Obama victory due to his election ads in July and August. He indicates that we are dealing with two elections – that in the swing states where Romney was savaged by the Obama ads and the other states that have been spared these ads. He contends that Romney has not been able to overcome those swing-state ads.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/search/?cx=%3C%3F%3D%24cx_value%3B%3F%3E&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=charlie+cook+november+2012&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&siteurl=www.realclearpolitics.com%2Fsearch%2F&ref=www.realclearpolitics.com%2F&ss=2845j1423675j12

We talked about the media and their penchant for being wrong in predictions. In a sense the media sets itself up to be surprised as that becomes news. The media also wants to keep the story going. It served as a megaphone for the Romney momentum after the first debate. The Democrats and the Obama campaign added to that momentum by misplaying the results of the first debate.

Will the minor party candidates affect the outcome? We generally agreed that it was unlikely that Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, would affect the outcome in any state. We disagreed as to whether Virgil Goode could affect the vote in Virginia. Third party votes can affect elections as what happened in FL in 2000 where Ralph Nader collected 100,000 votes with a 537-vote margin between the two primary candidates. VA is a key state, possibly critical for Romney to get to 270, but there are other possible paths to the Presidency. If Obama wins, there may be some electors who cast their vote for Ron Paul rather than for Romney.

In closing we addressed two questions. How will the election turn out? We all picked Obama to win with anywhere from 286 to 332 electoral votes. Also, will we know who won by the time we meet at 11:00 on Wednesday morning? We had a 60-40 split with the majority saying yes and the minority not sure. An uncertain outcome by the next meeting time would indicate that Romney would be doing better than expected. We also noted that a 269-269 tie would result in a President Romney possibly governing the country with a Vice-President Biden.

 

 

UGA Campaign Discussion Group – October 31, 2012

Halloween! One week to go. We had a hookup of our group with Paul and Josh in Davidson.

Our first topic of discussion regarded the potential effects of the hurricane Sandy on the election. The only two battleground states affected are VA and PA. We talked briefly on NY if the city did not get to vote, but we concluded that NY would still not be in play. In general, Obama appears to getting the current advantage. He looks very Presidential during the crisis and is getting good press. The good feelings may be over soon as there was a report this morning of the Atlantic City mayor criticizing Chris Christie for not getting the evacuation accomplished. Both Obama and Romney must play this carefully Obama is getting good publicity and kudos from Chris Christie, but an error could hurt him without a chance to recover. We all agreed that he was taking a big risk by resuming his campaigning tomorrow. Our suggestion to him is to do evening sessions say in Ohio after the evening news. Romney must be careful not to get bogged down criticizing the relief effort. Also past statements on FEMA and big government might hurt him.

Paul moved us to the polls. There appears to be movement towards Obama with a current margin for Obama by a hair. In the numbers we have followed from the middle of August, it appears that Romney peaked last week. The most interesting change is a gain by Obama in InTrade up from 55.5% last week back to 64.3 this week, similar to what it was 2 weeks ago. The national polls are leaning towards Romney with the state-by-state polls and electoral-college picture towards Obama. There was an interesting take on the state vs. national polls by Sean Trende this morning

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/10/31/whats_behind_the_state-national_poll_divergence_115979.html

His conclusion is that the numbers do not add up. If Romney is truly ahead of Obama by a percentage point, Obama would not have the electoral advantage he currently enjoys. Paul indicated that national polls tend to be less reliable than the state polls and tend to be off by 2-5%. Exceptions to this trend are 1972, 1980 and 1992. Late breaking news that could affect next week’s election include the response to Sandy and the Friday jobs report. Events in previous elections include the bin Laden tape and the Bush DUI revelation although one of us think the significance of the DUI report. It is hard to see trends in the last week. Campbell’s research suggests that September polls are more reliable than October polls, which would favor Obama.

We touched on several additional topics including the Romney China-Jeep ad and the expanding battleground map rather than an expected narrowing. Nate Silver is suggesting that Obama write off FL, but Paul indicated this is where Obama should devote more attention to it as a victory here would mean a sure electoral victory. He is working on a decision tree that starts with FL and proceeds to OH. Steve polled the College Republicans and College Democrats. The Republicans are projecting a tie and Democrats a victory. Usually a predicted tie indicates pessimism.

Answer to the trivia question to the last post – Gore was willing to have Quayle bring a copy of Earth in the Balance as a prop in the1992 VP debate as long as he could bring a potato(e). Quayle withdrew his request.

Our next meeting will be Monday at 11:00. Come with your stat-by-state projections.

UGA Campaign Discussion Group – October 17, 2012

We started out discussing the debate last night. It was generally agreed that Obama won the debate, but that the edge from the two debates goes to Mitt Romney. Obama reached out to women and Hispanics in the debate, an Romney may have hurt himself in both demographics. Obama came out much more aggressive while Romney was more muted than in their performance in their first debate. Romney’s worst moment should have been his best in which he tried to score a knockout on the Libya question and came up short. He had a substantive point to make, but he got hung up on the “act of terror” wording rather than the awkward handling of the embassy attack by the Obama administration. Romney also muffed the gun question, declaring that assault weapons are illegal even though they are not, but he seems to be getting a pass on this statement. We expect the third debate to be a wash between the two candidates.

Talk then shifted to the VP debate. Some of us called it a draw while others thought that Biden had a poor performance. It would appear that both candidates heartened the base, and that Biden may have stopped the Democratic-ticket slide. Ryan was credible as a debater. His best statement may have been when he said that he and Romney would take responsibility for their actions and not try to blame their mistakes on anyone else. The statement is a little ironic as Romney surrogates have blamed Martha Raddatz and Candy Crowley for being unfair at the two most recent debates.

It appears that the campaign is shifting primarily to the battleground states in the Midwest – particularly OH and IA, as evidenced by where the candidates and the money are going. This movement suggests a stronger Romney campaign than if they were fighting in NC and VA. In looking at the numbers we have been following since the Ryan selection, 50 Electoral College votes (WI-10, PA-20, NH-4 & MI-16) have moved from Leans Obama to Toss Up as designated by RealClearPolitics. They have also moved MO-10 from Toss Up to Leans Romney. Romney also picked up 2.9% (now BHO 50.8 & WMR 49.7) in favorability rating to Obama and 3.5% (now BHO 45.8 & WMR 44.3)less unfavorable. Intrade has a 64.1 to 36.4 edge for Obama up from 62.5 to 37.5 last week. The job approval number for Obama has stayed remarkably constant since the Charlotte convention, ranging from 49.2 to 49.9 over the six weeks.

The answer to last week’s trivia question was Rob Portman. He served as a stand-in for Al Gore to help prepare Bush in 2000 as well as for Lieberman in 2000 and Edwards in 2004 to prep Cheney. He also served as the stand-in for Barack Obama for McCain in 2008 and 2012. This week’s debate trivia question goes back to 1992 and the VP debate negotiations. Dan Quayle wanted to bring in a copy of Al Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance, as a prop. The Gore team consented as long as they could bring in their prop. After hearing what the Gore prop was, the Quayle team withdrew their request. What was the Gore prop?