AI
Friday, June 22, 2012 4:32:13 AM
Democrats See a Shot at Retaking the House
January 31, 2012, 12:34 pm
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Facing two large hills to climb in November — maintaining control of the Senate and winning back the House – some Democrats are saying that there’s new evidence that the second is in the realm of possibility.
Mark Gersh, a political statistician with a long history of crunching numbers for Democrats, argues in a memo to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that the party’s support among voters in recent polls puts Democrats in a better position than Republicans enjoyed at this time in 2010, when they captured 63 seats and swept into control. In polls from January of that year, Republicans had a 4 point lead over the Democrats.
Mr. Gersh cites a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, .. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/26/10243659-nbcwsj-poll-majority-would-vote-out-every-member-of-congress .. in which, when asked which party they prefer to control Congress, voters cited Democrats, 47 to 41 percent, as well as a recent National Journal poll that found that found 48 percent of voters prefer Democrats to take control of the House while 37 percent want Republicans to stay in control. In October, the same poll showed a statistical tie.
These polls come on the heels of other such surveys, as well as events on the Hill in recent months in which Democrats have seemed to emerge from legislative battles .. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/us/politics/democrats-see-signs-of-hope-in-election-battle-for-congress.html .. with a slight upper hand.
“There is no precedent for a party maintaining control of the majority of the House of Representatives if they lose the popular vote by 6 percent or more on Election Day,” Mr. Gersh wrote. Democrats need to recapture 25 seats to take the majority.
The dynamics of the 2012 Congressional races are complex. Voters appear to blame Republicans more for the various debacles on the Hill over the last year, and have pretty consistently favored Congressional Democrats over all in recent polls, even though approval ratings for Congress as a whole are historically low.
However, on a race-by-race basis, Republicans appear to enjoy some advantages, including that far more Democratic incumbents in both the House and the Senate are retiring this year, .. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/redistricting-and-partisanship-fuel-house-departures .. making those seats harder to maintain.
Further, while redistricting battles .. http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/reapportionment/index.html .. have yet to be ironed out in a few big states like Texas and Florida, Republican-led legislators in other states have shored up many incumbents in Congressional Districts where they enjoyed marginal or even significant disadvantages in 2010.
Lastly, an anti-incumbent mood among voters can hurt both parties.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/democrats-see-a-shot-at-retaking-the-house/
========
Can the Democrats retake control of the House? .. Election 2012
Congressman Steve Israel says a net gain of 25 seats – what Democrats need to win back
control of the House in Election 2012 – is 'in range.' The key, he says, is independents.
By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer / February 28, 2012
Washington
Steve Israel isn’t ready to predict that the Democrats will retake control of the House in 2012. But the New York .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/New+York congressman in charge of his party’s House reelection effort promises it’s going to be “razor-close.”
Related stories
Shaking up 2012: US senators who aren't running for reelection
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2011/0210/Shaking-up-2012-US-senators-who-aren-t-running-for-reelection/Olympia-Snowe-R-of-Maine
How payroll tax gridlock in Congress finally came unstuck
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0216/How-payroll-tax-gridlock-in-Congress-finally-came-unstuck
In payroll tax battle, GOP shows cracks under Democratic pressure
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/1221/In-payroll-tax-battle-GOP-shows-cracks-under-Democratic-pressure
Why is Rep. Barney Frank retiring? (VIDEO)
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2011/1128/Why-is-Rep.-Barney-Frank-retiring-VIDEO
Start with the proposition that it’s been only 16 months since the Democrats suffered the shellacking of 2010, when the Republicans .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Republican+Party .. netted 63 seats, and that Congress’s popularity is at record low levels. To win back control, the Democrats need a net gain of 25 seats. After three straight “wave” elections – in which one party suffers a net loss of at least 20 seats – a fourth would be highly unusual. It hasn’t happened in 60 years.
But in Congressman Israel’s view, that goal is “in range.” Speaking at a press breakfast sponsored by the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way, Israel laid out his rationale: Some polls show Democrats leading Republicans in the “generic” ballot for Congress. Redistricting has given the Democrats opportunities to pick up seats. The party is recruiting some strong candidates. And the House Democrats beat the House Republicans in election committee fundraising last year.
The key, says Israel, is independent voters.
“You want to know why we lost the House in 2010? We lost 9 million independent voters,” says Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Democratic+Congressional+Campaign+Committee .. “They were with us in 2006. They were with us in 2008. They were frothing-at-the-mouth angry in 2010.”
Focus groups show that in 2010, Americans were voting against the Democrats, not for the Republicans, Israel says. The Democrats’ job now is to fill in the blanks in defining these newly elected Republicans, many of whom embraced the tea party.
Nonpartisan analysts maintain that the Democrats still face a steep climb in their effort to retake the House after just one term out of power. True, the DCCC outraised its Republican counterpart, the National Republican Campaign Committee, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/National+Republican+Congressional+Committee .. by $7 million in 2011. But outside spending by Republican super PACs is expected to wipe out that advantage.
On the congressional redistricting front, Israel sees pickups in several states, including two to four seats in California, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/California .. three or four seats in Illinois, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Illinois .. and seats in Texas, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Texas .. regardless of how the final map looks there.
Still, redistricting will cost the Democrats elsewhere, as Republican-controlled state legislatures redraw maps to favor GOP House .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+House+of+Representatives .. members. In addition, the Democrats are losing some of their more conservative members to retirement. According to the Cook Political Report, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/The+Cook+Political+Report .. five seats being vacated by Democrats are favored to go Republican. None of the open Republican seats are expected to go to Democrats.
On his claim of strong recruiting, Israel mentions two names, Jose Hernandez .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Jose+Hernandez .. of California and Val Demings of Florida. .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Florida .. Mr. Hernandez, who is taking on freshman Rep. Jeff Denham (R), is a former NASA .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/NASA .. astronaut and the son of Mexican immigrant migrant workers who didn’t learn English until age 12. Ms. Demings, who is challenging freshman Rep. Daniel Webster (R), .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Daniel+Webster .. is Orlando’s .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Orlando+(Florida) .. first female chief of police and also African American. Expect to hear a lot about these two as the campaign progresses.
Israel says that in recruiting, he looks for problem-solvers. And once recruited, he’s telling his candidates to “run like a mayor.” In other words, ideologues need not apply.
“If you knock on a door, and somebody says there’s a pothole outside, and you say, that’s not my job, my job is to figure out what to do about the European debt crisis, you will lose,” Israel says. “Get a shovel, get some asphalt, fill the pothole.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/House/2012/0228/Election-2012-Can-the-Democrats-retake-control-of-the-House
========
Boehner: 1-in-3 Chance Democrats Could Take House .. April 23, 2012, 6:36 PM ..
“We have 50 of our members in tough races, 89 freshmen running for their first re-elections, and we have 32 districts that are in states where there is no presidential campaign going to be run, no big Senate race, and we call these orphan districts,” Mr. Boehner said. “You take 18 of them—[in] California, Illinois and New York—where you know we’re not likely to do well at the top of the ticket, and those districts are frankly pretty vulnerable.”
To some degree, this runs contrary to the message of other GOP leaders that they’re confident they will keep the House. Democrats need 25 seats to retake control, and some neutral analysts estimate that if the election were held today they’d win about 10.
more .. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/04/23/boehner-1-in-3-chance-democrats-could-take-house/
======== .. to the race for President ..
Hispanic Voters Less Plentiful in Swing States
By NATE SILVER June 19, 2012, 4:57 pm
As I wrote on Tuesday morning, .. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/what-obamas-immigration-decision-might-mean-for-2012 .. President Obama’s decision to suspend deportations of some young illegal immigrants should entail mostly upside for him from a political standpoint. Based on polls about his decision .. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-19/obama-immigration-policy-favored-2-to-1-by-likely-voters.html .. and the way that Republicans are reacting to it, the evidence that public opinion is on Mr. Obama’s side is reasonably clear.
So I don’t agree with other analysts who have termed the decision risky or puzzling. Mr. Obama has learned this year that being the incumbent at a time when most voters think the country is on the wrong track is not necessarily an advantageous position. But an incumbent president can still help himself at the margin with his policy and agenda-setting powers.
I do agree with Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics .. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/06/19/obamas_puzzling_immigration_decision_114531.html .. about one key point, however. It is one reason why the caveat “at the margin” very much applies to Mr. Obama’s decision, and may somewhat diminish its electoral importance.
As Mr. Trende writes, “Latinos are underrepresented in swing states”.
Below is a table showing an estimate of Hispanic turnout in 2008. These figures were determined by multiplying a state’s overall turnout by the share of voters who described themselves as Hispanic or Latino in exit polls. In total, about 11 million Hispanics turned out to vote in 2008, according to these estimates.
However, almost 40 percent of the Hispanic vote was in one of just two states – California and Texas – that don’t look to be at all competitive this year. The fact that Democrats are winning clear majorities among Hispanics is one reason that California is no longer competitive, of course. And perhaps Texas will become more competitive in another 8 or 12 or 16 years. (Although note that many Hispanics in Texas have been there for generations and might not be thought of as immigrant communities.) But voters in these states just aren’t likely to sway the Electoral College outcome in 2012.
New York and Illinois, which also aren’t at all competitive, and New Jersey, which is only very marginally so, also have a decent number of Hispanic voters. You do see Florida up near the top of the list, however, and Arizona and Colorado not far down, so I will need to be a bit more precise about my analysis to defend my claim.
The way that the FiveThirtyEight presidential forecasting model .. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/election-forecast-obama-begins-with-tenuous-advantage/ .. measures the competitiveness of a state is through what it calls the tipping point index. .. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/arizona-is-probably-not-a-swing-state/ .. This is a measure of the likelihood that a state will make the marginal difference in the election, giving a candidate the decisive 270th electoral vote.
The list of tipping point states is narrower than you might expect. The relative order of the states just doesn’t change very much from election to election, especially when an incumbent is running again and we know what voters thought about him four years earlier.
Many states might be competitive, meaning that they might plausibly be won by either candidate, but most of their electoral votes would be superfluous in an election that truly came down to the last vote. The tipping point index accounts both for how close a state is relative to the national trend, and how many electoral votes it has.
Right now, the model thinks that the odds are about 50/50 that one of just two states, Virginia and Ohio, will play the tipping point role. Each of these has a below-average number of Hispanic voters.
Colorado is third on the tipping point list, and it has an above-average number of Hispanic voters. But Pennsylvania is fourth, and it has a below-average number again.
Nevada, with an above-average number of Hispanics, is fifth on the list, but it is followed by three very white-dominated states (Iowa, New Hampshire and Wisconsin).
Then comes Florida, which is lower on the list than you might expect, especially since it has 29 electoral votes. The model “thinks” about the different electoral combinations very carefully when it runs its simulations, and considers how the states might move in relationship to one another based on their demographics, as well as in comparison to the national trend.
Mr. Obama could certainly win Florida – we give him about a 35 percent chance of doing so — but these simulations find that he usually has easier paths to the victorious 270 electoral votes. The president’s polling and the “fundamentals” factors that the model considers are more favorable to Mr. Obama’s in each of the eight states that appear above Florida on the tipping point list. Most of the time that he wins states like Virginia, Ohio and Colorado, for instance, Mr. Obama will already have a winning map unless he takes some unexpected losses elsewhere.
Moreover, many of the Hispanics in Florida are Cuban-Americans, and they do not always behave like the predominantly Mexican-American population of the Southwest, or the Hispanic populations of the Northeast, which include many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.
The model also doesn’t think much of New Mexico as a tipping point state. .. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/presidential-geography-new-mexico/ .. It really wasn’t close at all in 2008, and polls there have shown Mr. Obama with a double-digit lead at a time when he is barely ahead of Mitt Romney nationally. Mr. Obama could lose New Mexico in a landslide, but it just doesn’t meet the definition of a tipping point state. Even the broader term “swing state” probably mischaracterizes it somewhat.
Nor does the model think that Arizona is a tipping point state. If has a fairly large Hispanic population, but the white population there is old and quite conservative. Arizona is something of the opposite of New Mexico – a state Mr. Obama could win this year, but probably only in a landslide where it does not provide the decisive electoral votes.
On the whole, if you take a weighted average of the Hispanic turnout in each state based on its tipping point index, it comes out to about 6 percent, less than the 9 percent Hispanic turnout throughout the country as a whole. That means a Hispanic voter is somewhat less likely to swing the Electoral College outcome than if they were evenly distributed (as a share of the population) throughout all 50 states.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/hispanic-voters-less-plentiful-in-swing-states/
========
538 Forecast .. Scenario Analysis
How often the following situations occurred during repeated simulated elections.
Electoral College tie (269 electoral votes for each candidate) 0.2%
Recount (one or more decisive states within 0.5 percentage points) 5.7%
Obama wins popular vote 61.6%
Romney wins popular vote 38.4%
Obama wins popular vote but loses electoral college 2.1%
Romney wins popular vote but loses electoral college 3.2%
Obama landslide (double-digit popular vote margin) 9.6%
Romney landslide (double-digit popular vote margin) 3.3%
Map exactly the same as in 2008 0.9%
Map exactly the same as in 2004 <0.1%
Obama loses at least one state he carried in 2008 88.2%
Obama wins at least one state he failed to carry in 2008 26.5%
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
January 31, 2012, 12:34 pm
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Facing two large hills to climb in November — maintaining control of the Senate and winning back the House – some Democrats are saying that there’s new evidence that the second is in the realm of possibility.
Mark Gersh, a political statistician with a long history of crunching numbers for Democrats, argues in a memo to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that the party’s support among voters in recent polls puts Democrats in a better position than Republicans enjoyed at this time in 2010, when they captured 63 seats and swept into control. In polls from January of that year, Republicans had a 4 point lead over the Democrats.
Mr. Gersh cites a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, .. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/26/10243659-nbcwsj-poll-majority-would-vote-out-every-member-of-congress .. in which, when asked which party they prefer to control Congress, voters cited Democrats, 47 to 41 percent, as well as a recent National Journal poll that found that found 48 percent of voters prefer Democrats to take control of the House while 37 percent want Republicans to stay in control. In October, the same poll showed a statistical tie.
These polls come on the heels of other such surveys, as well as events on the Hill in recent months in which Democrats have seemed to emerge from legislative battles .. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/us/politics/democrats-see-signs-of-hope-in-election-battle-for-congress.html .. with a slight upper hand.
“There is no precedent for a party maintaining control of the majority of the House of Representatives if they lose the popular vote by 6 percent or more on Election Day,” Mr. Gersh wrote. Democrats need to recapture 25 seats to take the majority.
The dynamics of the 2012 Congressional races are complex. Voters appear to blame Republicans more for the various debacles on the Hill over the last year, and have pretty consistently favored Congressional Democrats over all in recent polls, even though approval ratings for Congress as a whole are historically low.
However, on a race-by-race basis, Republicans appear to enjoy some advantages, including that far more Democratic incumbents in both the House and the Senate are retiring this year, .. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/redistricting-and-partisanship-fuel-house-departures .. making those seats harder to maintain.
Further, while redistricting battles .. http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/reapportionment/index.html .. have yet to be ironed out in a few big states like Texas and Florida, Republican-led legislators in other states have shored up many incumbents in Congressional Districts where they enjoyed marginal or even significant disadvantages in 2010.
Lastly, an anti-incumbent mood among voters can hurt both parties.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/democrats-see-a-shot-at-retaking-the-house/
========
Can the Democrats retake control of the House? .. Election 2012
Congressman Steve Israel says a net gain of 25 seats – what Democrats need to win back
control of the House in Election 2012 – is 'in range.' The key, he says, is independents.
By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer / February 28, 2012
Washington
Steve Israel isn’t ready to predict that the Democrats will retake control of the House in 2012. But the New York .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/New+York congressman in charge of his party’s House reelection effort promises it’s going to be “razor-close.”
Related stories
Shaking up 2012: US senators who aren't running for reelection
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2011/0210/Shaking-up-2012-US-senators-who-aren-t-running-for-reelection/Olympia-Snowe-R-of-Maine
How payroll tax gridlock in Congress finally came unstuck
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0216/How-payroll-tax-gridlock-in-Congress-finally-came-unstuck
In payroll tax battle, GOP shows cracks under Democratic pressure
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/1221/In-payroll-tax-battle-GOP-shows-cracks-under-Democratic-pressure
Why is Rep. Barney Frank retiring? (VIDEO)
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2011/1128/Why-is-Rep.-Barney-Frank-retiring-VIDEO
Start with the proposition that it’s been only 16 months since the Democrats suffered the shellacking of 2010, when the Republicans .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Republican+Party .. netted 63 seats, and that Congress’s popularity is at record low levels. To win back control, the Democrats need a net gain of 25 seats. After three straight “wave” elections – in which one party suffers a net loss of at least 20 seats – a fourth would be highly unusual. It hasn’t happened in 60 years.
But in Congressman Israel’s view, that goal is “in range.” Speaking at a press breakfast sponsored by the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way, Israel laid out his rationale: Some polls show Democrats leading Republicans in the “generic” ballot for Congress. Redistricting has given the Democrats opportunities to pick up seats. The party is recruiting some strong candidates. And the House Democrats beat the House Republicans in election committee fundraising last year.
The key, says Israel, is independent voters.
“You want to know why we lost the House in 2010? We lost 9 million independent voters,” says Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Democratic+Congressional+Campaign+Committee .. “They were with us in 2006. They were with us in 2008. They were frothing-at-the-mouth angry in 2010.”
Focus groups show that in 2010, Americans were voting against the Democrats, not for the Republicans, Israel says. The Democrats’ job now is to fill in the blanks in defining these newly elected Republicans, many of whom embraced the tea party.
Nonpartisan analysts maintain that the Democrats still face a steep climb in their effort to retake the House after just one term out of power. True, the DCCC outraised its Republican counterpart, the National Republican Campaign Committee, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/National+Republican+Congressional+Committee .. by $7 million in 2011. But outside spending by Republican super PACs is expected to wipe out that advantage.
On the congressional redistricting front, Israel sees pickups in several states, including two to four seats in California, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/California .. three or four seats in Illinois, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Illinois .. and seats in Texas, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Texas .. regardless of how the final map looks there.
Still, redistricting will cost the Democrats elsewhere, as Republican-controlled state legislatures redraw maps to favor GOP House .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+House+of+Representatives .. members. In addition, the Democrats are losing some of their more conservative members to retirement. According to the Cook Political Report, .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/The+Cook+Political+Report .. five seats being vacated by Democrats are favored to go Republican. None of the open Republican seats are expected to go to Democrats.
On his claim of strong recruiting, Israel mentions two names, Jose Hernandez .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Jose+Hernandez .. of California and Val Demings of Florida. .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Florida .. Mr. Hernandez, who is taking on freshman Rep. Jeff Denham (R), is a former NASA .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/NASA .. astronaut and the son of Mexican immigrant migrant workers who didn’t learn English until age 12. Ms. Demings, who is challenging freshman Rep. Daniel Webster (R), .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Daniel+Webster .. is Orlando’s .. http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Orlando+(Florida) .. first female chief of police and also African American. Expect to hear a lot about these two as the campaign progresses.
Israel says that in recruiting, he looks for problem-solvers. And once recruited, he’s telling his candidates to “run like a mayor.” In other words, ideologues need not apply.
“If you knock on a door, and somebody says there’s a pothole outside, and you say, that’s not my job, my job is to figure out what to do about the European debt crisis, you will lose,” Israel says. “Get a shovel, get some asphalt, fill the pothole.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/House/2012/0228/Election-2012-Can-the-Democrats-retake-control-of-the-House
========
Boehner: 1-in-3 Chance Democrats Could Take House .. April 23, 2012, 6:36 PM ..
“We have 50 of our members in tough races, 89 freshmen running for their first re-elections, and we have 32 districts that are in states where there is no presidential campaign going to be run, no big Senate race, and we call these orphan districts,” Mr. Boehner said. “You take 18 of them—[in] California, Illinois and New York—where you know we’re not likely to do well at the top of the ticket, and those districts are frankly pretty vulnerable.”
To some degree, this runs contrary to the message of other GOP leaders that they’re confident they will keep the House. Democrats need 25 seats to retake control, and some neutral analysts estimate that if the election were held today they’d win about 10.
more .. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/04/23/boehner-1-in-3-chance-democrats-could-take-house/
======== .. to the race for President ..
Hispanic Voters Less Plentiful in Swing States
By NATE SILVER June 19, 2012, 4:57 pm
As I wrote on Tuesday morning, .. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/what-obamas-immigration-decision-might-mean-for-2012 .. President Obama’s decision to suspend deportations of some young illegal immigrants should entail mostly upside for him from a political standpoint. Based on polls about his decision .. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-19/obama-immigration-policy-favored-2-to-1-by-likely-voters.html .. and the way that Republicans are reacting to it, the evidence that public opinion is on Mr. Obama’s side is reasonably clear.
So I don’t agree with other analysts who have termed the decision risky or puzzling. Mr. Obama has learned this year that being the incumbent at a time when most voters think the country is on the wrong track is not necessarily an advantageous position. But an incumbent president can still help himself at the margin with his policy and agenda-setting powers.
I do agree with Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics .. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/06/19/obamas_puzzling_immigration_decision_114531.html .. about one key point, however. It is one reason why the caveat “at the margin” very much applies to Mr. Obama’s decision, and may somewhat diminish its electoral importance.
As Mr. Trende writes, “Latinos are underrepresented in swing states”.
Below is a table showing an estimate of Hispanic turnout in 2008. These figures were determined by multiplying a state’s overall turnout by the share of voters who described themselves as Hispanic or Latino in exit polls. In total, about 11 million Hispanics turned out to vote in 2008, according to these estimates.
However, almost 40 percent of the Hispanic vote was in one of just two states – California and Texas – that don’t look to be at all competitive this year. The fact that Democrats are winning clear majorities among Hispanics is one reason that California is no longer competitive, of course. And perhaps Texas will become more competitive in another 8 or 12 or 16 years. (Although note that many Hispanics in Texas have been there for generations and might not be thought of as immigrant communities.) But voters in these states just aren’t likely to sway the Electoral College outcome in 2012.
New York and Illinois, which also aren’t at all competitive, and New Jersey, which is only very marginally so, also have a decent number of Hispanic voters. You do see Florida up near the top of the list, however, and Arizona and Colorado not far down, so I will need to be a bit more precise about my analysis to defend my claim.
The way that the FiveThirtyEight presidential forecasting model .. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/election-forecast-obama-begins-with-tenuous-advantage/ .. measures the competitiveness of a state is through what it calls the tipping point index. .. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/arizona-is-probably-not-a-swing-state/ .. This is a measure of the likelihood that a state will make the marginal difference in the election, giving a candidate the decisive 270th electoral vote.
The list of tipping point states is narrower than you might expect. The relative order of the states just doesn’t change very much from election to election, especially when an incumbent is running again and we know what voters thought about him four years earlier.
Many states might be competitive, meaning that they might plausibly be won by either candidate, but most of their electoral votes would be superfluous in an election that truly came down to the last vote. The tipping point index accounts both for how close a state is relative to the national trend, and how many electoral votes it has.
Right now, the model thinks that the odds are about 50/50 that one of just two states, Virginia and Ohio, will play the tipping point role. Each of these has a below-average number of Hispanic voters.
Colorado is third on the tipping point list, and it has an above-average number of Hispanic voters. But Pennsylvania is fourth, and it has a below-average number again.
Nevada, with an above-average number of Hispanics, is fifth on the list, but it is followed by three very white-dominated states (Iowa, New Hampshire and Wisconsin).
Then comes Florida, which is lower on the list than you might expect, especially since it has 29 electoral votes. The model “thinks” about the different electoral combinations very carefully when it runs its simulations, and considers how the states might move in relationship to one another based on their demographics, as well as in comparison to the national trend.
Mr. Obama could certainly win Florida – we give him about a 35 percent chance of doing so — but these simulations find that he usually has easier paths to the victorious 270 electoral votes. The president’s polling and the “fundamentals” factors that the model considers are more favorable to Mr. Obama’s in each of the eight states that appear above Florida on the tipping point list. Most of the time that he wins states like Virginia, Ohio and Colorado, for instance, Mr. Obama will already have a winning map unless he takes some unexpected losses elsewhere.
Moreover, many of the Hispanics in Florida are Cuban-Americans, and they do not always behave like the predominantly Mexican-American population of the Southwest, or the Hispanic populations of the Northeast, which include many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.
The model also doesn’t think much of New Mexico as a tipping point state. .. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/presidential-geography-new-mexico/ .. It really wasn’t close at all in 2008, and polls there have shown Mr. Obama with a double-digit lead at a time when he is barely ahead of Mitt Romney nationally. Mr. Obama could lose New Mexico in a landslide, but it just doesn’t meet the definition of a tipping point state. Even the broader term “swing state” probably mischaracterizes it somewhat.
Nor does the model think that Arizona is a tipping point state. If has a fairly large Hispanic population, but the white population there is old and quite conservative. Arizona is something of the opposite of New Mexico – a state Mr. Obama could win this year, but probably only in a landslide where it does not provide the decisive electoral votes.
On the whole, if you take a weighted average of the Hispanic turnout in each state based on its tipping point index, it comes out to about 6 percent, less than the 9 percent Hispanic turnout throughout the country as a whole. That means a Hispanic voter is somewhat less likely to swing the Electoral College outcome than if they were evenly distributed (as a share of the population) throughout all 50 states.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/hispanic-voters-less-plentiful-in-swing-states/
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538 Forecast .. Scenario Analysis
How often the following situations occurred during repeated simulated elections.
Electoral College tie (269 electoral votes for each candidate) 0.2%
Recount (one or more decisive states within 0.5 percentage points) 5.7%
Obama wins popular vote 61.6%
Romney wins popular vote 38.4%
Obama wins popular vote but loses electoral college 2.1%
Romney wins popular vote but loses electoral college 3.2%
Obama landslide (double-digit popular vote margin) 9.6%
Romney landslide (double-digit popular vote margin) 3.3%
Map exactly the same as in 2008 0.9%
Map exactly the same as in 2004 <0.1%
Obama loses at least one state he carried in 2008 88.2%
Obama wins at least one state he failed to carry in 2008 26.5%
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
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