Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, John Sides, attempts to rebut Dan Balz’s fine analysis yesterday that the Republican Party has an uphill battle to win the presidency in 2016. I find his argument unconvincing.
He begins by providing his credentials.
In April 2012, two other political scientists — Seth Hill and Lynn Vavreck — and I did a presidential election forecasting model for The Washington Post. The model had only three factors: The change in gross domestic product in the first two quarters of the election year, the president’s approval rating as of June of that year and whether the incumbent was running. That model forecast that Obama would win in 2012, and — although there is nothing magic about this model — it was ultimately accurate within a percentage point.
He then notes that his model would predict a Republican victory if the election were held today. He follows this with a suspect assertion:
What I’d tell strategists looking at state demographics and Electoral College math is this: In 2016, states will swing — almost in uniform fashion — depending on the underlying political and economic fundamentals. Battleground state demographic trends don’t insulate the Democratic Party from (potentially) a relatively unpopular president and (potentially) an economy that is growing but not very fast. Even analysts who believe these demographic trends portend a long-lasting Democratic majority would agree with that, I think.
It’s true that states behave less idiosyncratically than they used to, but that doesn’t solve the Republicans’ Electoral College math problem. As I highlighted yesterday, no amount of swing over the last six elections has prevented the Democrats from winning at least 251 electoral votes, which is just 19 votes shy of victory. Things may swing one way or another, but when you start out one large state short of victory, you have a large structural advantage. Remember, the argument isn’t that the Republican Party cannot conceivably pull off the narrowest of victories, but that that is the very best they can hope for, and that it would be exceedingly difficult. This is before we even talk about factors unique to the cycle, like the candidates (including their races, genders, and regional bases), state of election law, relative revenues, campaign team quality, the economy, the incumbent president’s popularity, or the relative popularity of the two parties in Congress.
And, since were prognosticating here, there are at least three differences between Barack Obama and the presumptive Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, which have the power to change the shape of the electorate that are probably more important than the metrics (the gross domestic product in the first two quarters of the election year, the president’s approval rating as of June of that year and whether the incumbent was running) used by Prof. Sides.
Obama and Clinton are different races, different genders, and appeal to a different regional/socioeconomic profile. We saw how they divided up support in the 2008 Democratic primaries, and that same split should allow Clinton to retain nearly all of Obama’s base (if not their enthusiasm) while adding race-skeptical whites and (relatedly) more votes from places where Bill Clinton did well (Arkansas, Missouri, Georgia) and Barack Obama did not.
Additionally, Prof. Sides does not dispute that demographic change is making each election cycle incrementally harder for the Republicans than the last. If he sees any sign that the Republicans are addressing their poor showing with the growing Asian and Latino populations, he doesn’t discuss it. Nor does he make an effort to explain which states the Republicans might flip. Instead, he makes one last argument:
Since the passage of the 22nd amendment limiting the president to two terms, only one time (1980-88) has the incumbent party held the White House for more than two consecutive terms. The regularity with which control of the White House changes hands also suggests that the playing field may tip in the GOP’s favor in 2016.
Obviously, here we are dealing with a small sample size. But the Korean War killed Truman and Stevenson’s chances. Without a war hero and in a bad economy, the GOP couldn’t shake the New Deal ascendancy of the country in 1960. The Vietnam War killed LBJ and Humphrey’s chances. Gore technically won, but was hobbled by the Lewinsky scandal. And Bush was a complete disaster. None of those circumstances are likely to be replicated in 2016, so these previous examples of party fatigue are not very helpful.
The fact remains, no rational player would take the GOP’s hand over the Democrats’.
Being accurate within a percentage point is a lot less impressive when the feasible range of results is about 10 percentage points, and realistically only about 5 percentage points (let’s say Obama getting 48-52% of the popular vote).
To be within one percentage point in your final estimate, you could guess within a range of two percentage points (50.1% to 52.1%) making your odds 40%. Harder than even, but nothing special.
I’m more impressed by Sam Wang’s early confidence in results based on straightforward polling averages.
Agreed; Sides doesn’t get it done. He doesn’t account at all for today’s extreme GOP, which repels multiple growing voting constituencies. Perhaps this is difficult to model, particularly since the 2010 election creates statistical counterevidence, but we can all see what’s going on here. “Are we kids, or what?”
“Without a war hero and in a bad economy, the GOP couldn’t shake the New Deal ascendancy of the country in 1960.”
And the GOP war hero’s campaign made it clear that he would support the continuations of the New Deal programs.
“The fact remains, no rational player would take the GOP’s hand over the Democrats’.”
Particularly since the GOP is doubling down hard on the policy positions and actions which have them at the extreme Electoral College structural disadvantage you document here.
The chief factors which would allow the Republicans to overcome these disadvantages would be large voter suppression programs and massive campaign finance advantages. What an awful, immoral platform the conservative movement uses to move their agenda.
The hilarious thing about Sides’ faith in his half-assed model is that you only have to go back to 1992 to find an election it failed to get right, in fairly spectacular fashion.
The fact that he offers excuses for that failure (Perot! Buchanan!), rather than going back to the drawing board and refining his model, tells you everything you need to know.
The fact remains, no rational player would take the GOP’s hand over the Democrats’. I see what you did there.
The Dems may bite your hand to please their Wall Street contributors, but the Republicans will chew it off right up to the elbow.
Let’s look at that model and what it tells us.
In 2016, the incumbent will not be running. But how exactly to evaluate the President’s approval rating in June of election year?
So the model comes down to GDP change Jan-Jun of election year.
I smell spurious correlation all over this model. It is quick, dirty, and essentially meaningless.
Economy comes as close to destiny as one can get in politics, but this model tells us nothing and the first string of years in which correlation does not occur invalidates it. But by then the good professor will have become a fixture in the media and no one will notice this failed simple-minded model, which is closer to a rule of thumb propagated in a quick-and-dirty spreadsheet.
It will take a major change in attitude of the Republican Party between now and 2016 for demographics not to matter. Because the economic argument that is the remaining argument fails because of the GOP’s deliberate strategy of suppressing the economy in order for this President to fail. There are demographics that have noticed that fact and won’t be easily diverted.
I keep on saying this…
Willard played the Southern Strategy to perfection – after all, he received 60% of the White Vote.
The difference is..
IT DIDN’T FUCKING MATTER.
Willard won 60% of the White Vote and Barack Obama beat his ass like he stole something – Electorally and Popular Vote-Wise.
They shook.
They totally shook.
‘THOSE PEOPLE’ told them to go somewhere, sit down, STFU because we want Barack Obama as our President.
They don’t know how to deal.
Nails, head, on, hitting and other such foo-foo and fairy dust abreviations for RIGHT-ON!!! rikyrah.
For absolutely the FIRST time in their lives, the (ex-) ruling white privileged classes did not have bear the white man’s burden.
Have you ever seen two teams playing tug ‘o war and have one team release the rope all at once? They (white, non-privileged underclass) had this happen to them.
Go back and read about the “liberal bias” of the polls. Review the “unbiased” polls of Razzz that consistently promised 3-5% of overperformance by the 2nd great con man reading gold plates with scryer crystal stones.
The worshipful, fretting of punditocracy (present company excepted) trolling on about “fundamentals”.
These guys were straight up lied to, for, and about. It is beyond comprehension to them that ALL of their little tin gods could be wrong at the same time. This time BOTH the privileged using and the non-privileged used got screwed. They STILL don’t get it.
It’ll keep happening until the RW gets its collective head out of its ass and decides to re-visit the real world. You know, the one where facts DON’T have a liberal bias, evolution actually CAN describe speciation, and a book written by bronze age sheepherders is NOT the ultimate guide to appropriate relationships.
Just sayin’.
Actually, as far as Sides’s analysis goes, he just won, disproving Sides’s argument altogether.