Take that Silver! I recently looked at 3 assumptions of mine vs. what Silver-and his FiveThirtyEight blog is saying. Again, my presumptions are that:
1. Hilary is going to be the Democratic nominee. Full stop. Make all the caveats you want.
2. Ditto Jeb in the GOP
3.Ditto Hillary in the general.
Silver and FiveThrityEight agree with me on point 1. He suggest that 2 may not be the case as Jeb may be less electable than moderates usually are. On 3 he and I clearly disagree as he argues that the race between her and the GOP nominee is a toss-up.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/nate-silver-on-jeb-bush-hillary-clinton.html
The reason basically is that the President's approval rating is about 48% as is Hillary's now that she's become a partisan figure again-while she was Secretary of State it went up a lot. So based on this, Silver reasons the race will be a tossup. After all 48% approve of Hillary while 46% disapprove so that suggests a tossup(though Jeb currently is well upside down on his approval numbers-31% approve him 45%).
This piece by Jonathon Chait shows the flaw in this thinking.
" President Obama’s approval ratings are hovering a few points below 50 percent, and his party is seeking a third straight term in the White House.Most analysts see this as a toss-up scenario. I see it as a highly favorable situation for the Democrats that would require a major event, like an economic downturn, to change. What accounts for the difference? At the bottom, it is about whether American presidential politics are following the same basic rules they have for decades, or whether the game has changed. I believe the game has changed, and the thing that’s changed is polarization."
See also:
http://theweek.com/articles/550338/bad-media-how-political-reporters-are-missing-most-important-factor-2016-race
This point flies in the face of another idea you've heard a lot about in recent years: that partisanship is declining and that more and more Americans are calling themselves 'independents.'
However, most 'independents' really either lean Republican or lean Democrat.
"Emory political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster have a new paper, not yet available online, exploring the nature of the new polarization. The paper is filled with interesting findings, but the major one is an attempt to resolve a paradox. Measured by self-identification, partisanship is actually declining — growing numbers of Americans describe themselves as “independent” rather than loyal to one of the parties. But measured by actual voting behavior, the opposite is happening: Straight ticket voting continues to grow. This matches what operatives like Dan Pfeiffer have seen, and what Karl Rove saw a decade before — the swing voter had nearly vanished."
P.S. This point about partisanship explains a lot. For instance, the fact that Scott Walker comes from 'purple state' shouldn't fool us into thinking that he's in any way a moderate or even less 'bipartisan.' What he does is mobilize the red part of his state very effectively. In the state you have some very blue Dems and some very red Repubs-added together they may be purple but this misleads into thinking that this state is not as partisan-the opposite is the case.
P.S.S. This struck me as well for a number of reasons:
"It also suggests that the electorate is much less fluid than it used to be, and is more easily understood as hardened blocs defined by shared cultural identity (or shared mutual cultural antipathy). To be sure, as noted before, it is possible for the Democratic bloc to shrink and the Republican bloc to grow. Analysts like John Judis have suggested that this is happening — that white voters are moving toward the GOP. (Andrew Prokop endorses Judis’s argument that Democrats' "support among working- and middle-class white voters may be declining more quickly than its support among racial minorities is growing.")
Chait doesn't himself ultimately think this is what's happening, but, how much do you want to be this is what all the GOP operatives are telling themselves now-that whites will save them as they are abandoning the Dems faster than minorities are joining the Dems?
1. Hilary is going to be the Democratic nominee. Full stop. Make all the caveats you want.
2. Ditto Jeb in the GOP
3.Ditto Hillary in the general.
Silver and FiveThrityEight agree with me on point 1. He suggest that 2 may not be the case as Jeb may be less electable than moderates usually are. On 3 he and I clearly disagree as he argues that the race between her and the GOP nominee is a toss-up.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/nate-silver-on-jeb-bush-hillary-clinton.html
The reason basically is that the President's approval rating is about 48% as is Hillary's now that she's become a partisan figure again-while she was Secretary of State it went up a lot. So based on this, Silver reasons the race will be a tossup. After all 48% approve of Hillary while 46% disapprove so that suggests a tossup(though Jeb currently is well upside down on his approval numbers-31% approve him 45%).
This piece by Jonathon Chait shows the flaw in this thinking.
" President Obama’s approval ratings are hovering a few points below 50 percent, and his party is seeking a third straight term in the White House.Most analysts see this as a toss-up scenario. I see it as a highly favorable situation for the Democrats that would require a major event, like an economic downturn, to change. What accounts for the difference? At the bottom, it is about whether American presidential politics are following the same basic rules they have for decades, or whether the game has changed. I believe the game has changed, and the thing that’s changed is polarization."
"The logic that predicts a toss-up election is rooted in the perfectly sound assumption that the historical models give us the best guide to the future. A third straight term from a party whose president has middling approval ratings sits right on the probability fault line, historically. As Nate Silverwrites, “these cases default to being toss-ups.”
"The trouble is that almost all those cases are drawn from a historic period that is very different from the current one. During the 20th century, the two parties were extremely heterogeneous. The Republican Party had a moderate wing that dominated its presidential elections for most of the postwar years until Ronald Reagan. Democrats had a powerful southern conservative wing. In that environment, the old folk wisdom, “Vote the man, not the party,” made a great deal of sense. In that environment, large chunks of the electorate swung easily from one party to the other depending on transient factors, like the current state of peace and prosperity, rather than deeper values."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/04/negative-partisanship-has-transformed-politics.htmlSee also:
http://theweek.com/articles/550338/bad-media-how-political-reporters-are-missing-most-important-factor-2016-race
This point flies in the face of another idea you've heard a lot about in recent years: that partisanship is declining and that more and more Americans are calling themselves 'independents.'
However, most 'independents' really either lean Republican or lean Democrat.
"Emory political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster have a new paper, not yet available online, exploring the nature of the new polarization. The paper is filled with interesting findings, but the major one is an attempt to resolve a paradox. Measured by self-identification, partisanship is actually declining — growing numbers of Americans describe themselves as “independent” rather than loyal to one of the parties. But measured by actual voting behavior, the opposite is happening: Straight ticket voting continues to grow. This matches what operatives like Dan Pfeiffer have seen, and what Karl Rove saw a decade before — the swing voter had nearly vanished."
"One common explanation is that it has become increasingly vogue, especially among college-educated voters, to describe yourself as independent, which implies that you form educated judgments about politics rather than blindly following the dictates of a party. Abramowitz and Webster add to this by introducing a phenomenon they call negative partisanship. That is to say, voters form strong loyalties based more on loathing for the opposing party than on the old kind of tribal loyalty (“My daddy was a Democrat, his daddy was a Democrat …”) that used to prevail. The party system has split along racial, cultural, and religious lines, creating a kind of tribal system where each party’s supports regard the other side with incomprehension and loathing."
Incidentally, I would also point out that this idea that those who 'form educated judgments' are 'independent' is also a misguided proposition. Garry Wills showed this to be folly 36 years ago in a great if underappreciated books Confessions of a Conservatives. He argues that the most informed voters are usually the frankest partisans and I think he was dead right.
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Conservative-Garry-Wills/dp/0385089775/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429708640&sr=1-1&keywords=confessions+of+a+conservative
If you are going to read only one book about political philosophy I'd strongly recommend this one. Years ago, Wills figured out that it makes more sense to vote 'The party not the man'-whether you're a conservative or a liberal.
Saturday Night Live in the run-up to the 2012 election had a great skit in about October of that year-the last month before the election-that showed that another sacred cow of the media-'the undecided voter'-basically is a flake who has no idea what's going on-SNL lampoons them as 'low information voters.' They are still undecided because they never have time to catch up with the election-they're too busy sniffing glue. Again, this was how SNL depicted them and I think this was right on the money.
https://screen.yahoo.com/undecided-voters-000000231.html
This was my concern about Waldman's piece: my worry is that someone would see his claim that Jeb and Rubio 'don't really mean' all those harsh things they have to say about immigration and so maybe even if you are fore immigration reform you would be safe voting for one of them, when nothing is further from the case. Because what matters is the party not the individual.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/paul-waldman-is-unhelpful-piece-about.html
Today, 'it's the party not the man' that matters. Basically in the supercharged partisan atmosphere of today, a 50% approval rating is the new 68% approval rating-ie, Hillary looks pretty strong at this point. P.S. This point about partisanship explains a lot. For instance, the fact that Scott Walker comes from 'purple state' shouldn't fool us into thinking that he's in any way a moderate or even less 'bipartisan.' What he does is mobilize the red part of his state very effectively. In the state you have some very blue Dems and some very red Repubs-added together they may be purple but this misleads into thinking that this state is not as partisan-the opposite is the case.
P.S.S. This struck me as well for a number of reasons:
"It also suggests that the electorate is much less fluid than it used to be, and is more easily understood as hardened blocs defined by shared cultural identity (or shared mutual cultural antipathy). To be sure, as noted before, it is possible for the Democratic bloc to shrink and the Republican bloc to grow. Analysts like John Judis have suggested that this is happening — that white voters are moving toward the GOP. (Andrew Prokop endorses Judis’s argument that Democrats' "support among working- and middle-class white voters may be declining more quickly than its support among racial minorities is growing.")
Chait doesn't himself ultimately think this is what's happening, but, how much do you want to be this is what all the GOP operatives are telling themselves now-that whites will save them as they are abandoning the Dems faster than minorities are joining the Dems?
Karl Rove himself was saying in early 2013 that the idea that the GOP doesn't need minority votes or to worry about Latinos because white votes will save them-is a pipe dream which will only hurt the party.
However, my guess is that the work of these 'analysts' has become the Bible for GOP strategists. Which again underscores my point about Greg Sargent's post. Whatever Jeb might feel about immigration in his heart of heart-even if he did say that illegal immigrants were inspired by 'acts of love'-electing him would be a nightmare for illegal immigrants and their families.
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