You are What Your Demos Say You Are

For a former political science major like myself this article is manna. Kurt Andersen breaks down and analyzes the demographic trends in the Democratic primaries. He reveals the myths, the inconsistencies and the variables that have occurred thus far. I loved this part, discussing our habit of voting in demographic blocks:

Thus does poli sci begin to resemble a harder science—quantum physics: Each of us voters is like a subatomic particle, our individual behavior at any moment “indeterminate,” never absolutely predictable, but as a practical matter, in the aggregate over millions of repetitions—electrons spinning, voters voting—we behave in a supremely predictable fashion. Matter does not spontaneously dissolve because the atoms all happen to move apart at a given moment, and 65 percent of southern college graduates (give or take 4 percent) will vote for Obama. It seems we possess only free-ish will. “Yes we can”? Yeah, maybe, but only if it has been decreed in advance, by the demographic gods.

We’re biased and, even if we know it, we’re not free to escape it. While Andersen does go on to show how the conventional wisdom about Clinton’s and Obama’s supporters is mostly wrong, I am fascinated by his assertion that the measurables of who we are (gender, age, education level, region) are more consistent and dependable predictors of voting patterns than the immeasurables (personality, political attitudes, life experience, etc).

Do our demographics drive our personalities and attitudes or are we just innately followers, most comfortable when voting in line with our immediate cohorts? This is the kind of thing us political science junkies can spend hours if not days discussing.

Time for a National Primary

If all these states keep moving up their primaries, we’ll be picking the candidates before this Halloween. It’s gotten ridiculous. But it makes sense.

Although I live in the second most populous state in the nation, I’ve never once had my primary vote matter. By the time Texas holds its primary, the parties have already locked in their candidates. This is true for citizens in all but a handful of states. How is that remotely democratic?

What we need is a national primary just like we have national elections. Yes, yes, yes, I know a national primary would make it extremely difficult for marginal candidates to get their message out to the people. It’s much more affordable for poorly funded candidates to throw all their money into Iowa and New Hampshire and hope to build momentum.

That’s a nice theory but I tend to think marginal candidates have empty coffers because either 1) they are bad candidates or 2) they get no media coverage because most of us watch the primaries from the sideline, unmotivated to choose a candidate because our voices will never be heard anyways. Marginal candidates are kept marginal more by the choice of the media than by the lack of funds.

If all of us knew our primary votes actually mattered, wouldn’t a much larger percentage of us pay closer attention to the candidates? In the national polls, would so many people blithely answer the name with greatest recognition or would more people actually consider their choice? And wouldn’t candidates benefit from their supporters staying in their own home states and building organizations rather than descending upon Iowa?

A national primary, particularly one that includes a runoff, would not dilute the process as many claim. It would energize it. And it would stop this crazy rush to be the first state to cast a vote. The process would still be far from perfect but it would be a heck of a lot better than the antiquated system in place now.

Red vs. Blue Divide Not as Clear as Many Think

One of the reasons Democrats lost power in 1994 was that they lost the South. Now it appears that Republicans have just as completely lost New England. You would think that in a very mobile, highly connected society such as modern America, regional political divides would not be so sharp. And, you know what? They aren’t. It’s a mirage.

If you actually look at the maps and data from this election you’ll see a lot of red and blue mingling. If there’s any clear divide, it’s between urban areas and rural areas. But even that division is misleading. Delve into the specific votes from state-to-state and county-to-county and even the bluest blue states and the redest red states reveal there is much less than 100% unanimity. In fact, in even the least competitive districts, it’s unusual for a candidate to win with more than 70-75% of the vote. That’s a huge advantage to be sure, but 25% dissent is still very meaningful.

Furthermore, if you look at the key competitive races this year, the winners very rarely tallied more than 55%-60% of the vote. Clearly, the sharp divisions we think we see are actually statistical illusions created by our winner-takes-all, two-party system.

The media latches onto the simplistic analysis of blue vs. red because, well, the media trades in the unsophisticated and feeds on conflict. Politicians in turn exploit the blue vs. red because it provides them an easy us vs. them narrative. And we the people buy into it because we’re human and have a natural attraction to easy-to-understand patterns with clear divides.

I know I’m not making a new observation here—but I think it’s one that needs to be reinforced after the recent election. We shifted from a Republican Congress to a Democratic Congress not because of a tidal shift in public opinion but because just about 10-15% of us changed our minds. That’s a small percentage of the populous and Democrats should not mistake their win as anything more than a very cautious, narrow mandate – the identical kind of cautious, narrow mandate President Bush mistook for a sweeping validation of his agenda. And you see where Bush’s misreading of the electorate has gotten him.

Both parties and all us pundits (amateur and overpaid alike) should try harder to recognize the complexity within American political opinion. We need to avoid such simplistic storylines as “Democrats own New England” or “Republicans own the South.” Even if those analyses appear true, they’re actually quite inaccurate. The political divides in this nation are far more complex and individualistic than they once were and it’s unhelpful to pretend otherwise.

How the Democrats Didn't Lose

To be sure, this election represented a complete Republican meltdown. The party which seemed robust and idea-driven just two years ago felt sick and empty this year. But give Democrats credit. Somehow, either by divine accident or brilliant strategy, they successfully minimized their many shortcomings while maximizing the failures of their opponents.

How’d they do it? I have a theory.

1) They used not having a coherent plan or vision to their advantage. They let each individual candidate win on his/her own merits while forcing the Republicans to run on the GOP’s record. So liberal Democrats ran as liberals in left-leaning areas and conservative Democrats ran as conservatives in right-leaning areas and no candidate had to worry about the national party laying out a distracting agenda.

2) They kept their leadership pretty quiet. Other than Kerry’s flub, the Democrats did a good job keeping Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel, Howard Dean and other usually shrill leaders even-keeled and mainly out of the limelight. Some would say this is because the media gave them a pass but, even if that’s true, they were smart enough to know when not to be seen.

3) The out-of-touch but far-too-engaged leftwing netroots expended all their energy early on fighting Lieberman (and other Democrats like Texas Representative Henry Cuellar). Whether the early victory over Lieberman made them complacent or depleted their ability to make noise on a national level, the netroots did not make themselves nearly as big of a factor (or distraction) in this election as they did in 2004. Even publicity hounds Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore were strangely absent from the national spotlight during the last few months of the campaign. Without the leftwing running around and scaring voters away, the Democrats had an easier time of it.

4) They never formulated a real plan on Iraq. I criticized this up and down and back again. I said they are forfeiting their chance at victory because they have no Iraq plan and no greater vision on the War on Terror. But the thing is, plans can be critiqued and compared. A generically unclear but “different” plan actually holds an advantage over the specifically unclear current plan. Are Democrats going to ask for an immediate withdrawal? A phased withdrawal? A partition of Iraq? No one can really say – and that actually helped the Dems. They kept the focus on the need for change rather than on what that change would be.

If you told me two years ago that the Democrats would sweep back into power in 2006, I’d have suggested you seek professional help. Heck, if you’d told me six months ago that the Dems would succeed in retaking the House and Senate (most probably), I’d have rolled my eyes and laughed.

I didn’t think they could do it without a unified vision for America. I didn’t think they could do it so long as the leadership positions were held by devoted liberals. I simply didn’t think they could connect with middle America. Obviously I was wrong. I underestimated how fast and how total the Republican collapse would be. But I also underestimated the Democrats ability to run a deceptively disciplined campaign.

Well done, Democrats. Now don’t screw it up

Democrats Actually Win ... And Win Big

After live blogging at Donklephant the entire night, I’m going to bed. But sense I won’t be able to post much tomorrow (lots of work + little sleep are likely to create problems for me), I wanted to offer just a few thoughts.

Democrats have definitely won the House and it looks likely that they will take the Senate as well (although that could change before I awake as Montana is tightening at this late hour). This election is unmistakably a major rejection of Republican rule. But that doesn’t mean it’s a major vote in favor of Democratic rule. I don’t think Americans will have much patience for any sort of radical agenda.

What happens next will be interesting. Democrats are bringing in a lot of centrist-leaning members. The party will have to incorporate a lot more views than the liberal base would prefer. If the Dems integrate all the centrists successfully and move the party toward the middle, they’ll be in a good position to keep control of Congress in 2008. If they don’t, their rule will be fleeting.

I’m pleased with the results of the night. Yet I worry. If the Democrats cannot get their act together on Iraq and national security in general, the nation is in trouble. I have faith that things will turn out far better than the shrill voices on the right would have us believe. But it’s going to be an interesting two years. The Democratic class of 2006 has a lot more pressing and serious issues before it than did the Republican class of 1994.

Much more when I have time to write more.

Don't Believe the Fear

Acclaimed science fiction writer Orson Scott Card is known for his novels that delve into the complex moral judgments of war. So I was not surprised to find he’d written an essay on our current war. The whole essay is worth the read, but I'm going to focus on how he opens:

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

That is very similar to the opinion I would have written had I not come down on the Democratic side in this election. But I didn’t write that opinion because I think it’s ultimately flawed.

A victory for the Democrats is not a victory for our enemies. While it’s true that many Democrats want us out of Iraq regardless of the consequences, I know of no prominent Democrat who wants us to simply roll over to the terrorists. That is doubly true for the many centrist-leading Democratic candidates who are poised to win their elections.

I understand Mr. Card’s worries. But he is wrong to think there is no chance for victory in this war should the Democrats win. The balance of power will be such that Democrats can’t lead a full-scale withdrawal out of Iraq even if they wanted to. But they can push the President to adopt new tactics and new strategies that a Republican Congress would be reluctant to request. I wouldn’t vote (and didn’t vote) for pure “we gotta get out now” Democrats. But there are enough intelligent Democrats running that I believe we can trust the party just enough to give them power for the next two years.

In my way of thinking, it’s essential to give the Democrats majority status so that we can discover once-and-for-all whether or not they can be trusted on national security matters. If they are as dangerous as Card and others believe, then President Bush provides the perfect stopgap. That gives us the opportunity to safely (or relatively safely) discover who the modern Democrats really are before we elect our next President.

The Republican Congress isn’t getting it done. They’ve botched things too much for anyone to feel comfortable with letting them continue at this time. The Democrats may be worse. But we don’t really know that until we give them a shot. People like Card should stop buying into the fears propagated by the right and begin viewing these next two years as the perfect chance to audition the Democrats.