Now Writing at RealClearPolitics

Greetings -

I presume you have come here to see if this blog has been resurrected in advance of the 2008 election. It has. RealClearPolitics hosts it, and it can be accessed at:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog

Please stop by and visit. I have been writing there since May, 2007 - so there is a lot of stuff that you might find of interest.

Sincerely,
Jay Cost

Election Analysis Part II: Bush and the Republicans

Note: Sorry this is a tad late. The Horserace Blogger needed to sleep in today!!!

As Bush-Cheney 2004 (BC04) was a reelection campaign, it had a fundamental advantage – it had the experience of four years ago upon which to draw. There were many lessons for them to have learned from Bush-Cheney 2000 (BC00). BC00 was run much the same that traditional Republican campaigns have been run. It was a top-down affair. BC00 did a masterful job of cultivating a good relationship with the media. Bush was decidedly chummy with his traveling press corps, and this chumminess engendered many a positive story – if you have any doubt, check out Alexandra Pelosi’s fantastic Journeys with George. It is important to remember that Bush was perceived differently that year. Bush and Rove worked very hard to cast Bush as a transcendent Republican, i.e. a Republican who could make peace with the Democrats, a Republican who could end the animosity that lingered after Clinton’s impeachment, a Republican who was not cast of Gingrich’s mold. Bush’s personality was perfectly suited to this task. He is, by all accounts, a very, very amiable fellow. A combination of Bush’s personality and the general theme of the campaign made this quite a smart strategy.

However, as it typical with the traditional GOP candidacy, they did not put as much effort into their ground game as the Democrats did. Traditionally, the GOP relied on weekend mailings and a few odd phone calls to get their people to the polls. This generally held them in good stead. This is usually effective – GOP base voters are much more enthusiastic about voting than their Democratic counterparts, and thus require less motivation on Election Day. Things broke down for BC00 when the DUI story broke the weekend before the election – the press relished this October Surprise and gave the governor hell for it. He who lives by the media spotlight dies by media spotlight. BC00’s major problem was that, because they were not focused on getting out their voters, ensuring that they arrive at the polls, the story hurt him with his conservative base, which was turned off by such a striking example of his raucous past. It might have cost him the popular vote – as I have noted elsewhere on this page, evangelical turnout in 2000 was (statistically) significantly lower relative to other groups.

Flash forward four years into the future, and we see BC04 doing everything it can to avoid such a debacle again. There were four primary tactics, all designed by Karl Rove, to avoid another depressed GOP turnout. The first was an unprecedented overhaul of the Republican Party’s get-out-the-vote effort, which party types took to calling “the 72-hour program.” Basically, the “program” was organized on a precinct-by-precinct level. It emphasized person-to-person communication in the weekend leading up to the election. GOP organizers canvassed precincts to determine who the Bush voters were in each area. Then, on Election Day, Republican poll watchers monitored who had and who had not voted. After a certain point, they would contact those who have not yet voted to get them to the polls. This is why, on election night, we saw the red counties become more red and the blue counties become less blue. This was particularly the case in places like Western Ohio and the Florida Panhandle. Bush netted thousands upon thousands of votes thanks to this program. In particularly, he netted thousands upon thousands of evangelical Christian votes. Bush, Rove and the Republicans were wise to develop the basics of this program in time for a trial-run in the 2002 midterm election. It was what brought Jeb such a convincing victory, and what swept Saxby Chambliss, Norm Coleman, Elizabeth Dole and Bob Ehrlich into office. By 2004, the program had been perfected.

Get-out-the-vote was not the only modification made by BC04. Another modification was in their communication’s division. Here, Karl Rove took a page from Mark Hanna’s book. Hanna was the Republican national chairman during the 1896 McKinley/Bryan campaign. It was Bryan’s idea to bring small, single-issue groups to McKinley’s house in Canton, OH – and for McKinley to give speeches to each group. It was an ingenious tactic that managed to counter the impassioned oratory of the “silver messiah,” William Jennings Bryan. Rove updated this tactic for the 21st century by bringing niche media organizations – specifically the media for Christian evangelicals, gun rights activists, and pro-life groups – directly to Bush. Ditto, incidentally for communicating to the spiritual leaders of black evangelicals. This was a fantastic way of getting the President’s message out to various groups, as it avoided the usually anti-Bush filter that comes with using “ABCCBSNBCCNN.”

Another page taken from Hanna’s book was the use of surrogates. I have never seen a campaign make such effective use of surrogate campaigners: Rudy Giuliani for the security moms, Ed Koch to security-focused Jews in South Florida, Rod Page and Lynn Swann to the black community, Zell Miller to skeptical Democrats, Mel Martinez to Hispanics, just to name a few. These surrogates frequently came in under the radar of the MSM, but the groups for whom the message was intended always made note.

The final link in the chain came with the promotion of specific issues at specific times. In particular, his immigrant amnesty program and his gay marriage amendment proposal were pitches to specific groups where BC04 thought electoral inroads were possible. This was a brilliant bit of politicking. BC04 was wise to promote both issues in the winter/spring, when swing voters who might be turned off by the initiatives were not really paying attention. The cultural right and the Hispanic community made note of the proposals, though, and remembered them throughout the course of the campaign – even as Bush no longer talked about them.

This four-pronged strategy was simply superb. Unsurprisingly, Bush made inroads all across the nation. He won the votes of more Democrats, more blacks, more Jews, more Catholics and Protestant evangelicals, than he did in 2000. More than this, though, he was able to appeal to each group without alienating or frustrating the others. Winning presidential coalitions are composed of sub-groups whose views are often irreconcilable. Thus, for instance, relatively secular “security moms” in the suburbs might be turned off by the gay marriage amendment (or perhaps Bush’s pro-life stand), while evangelicals might consider such a proposal a prerequisite for their vote. A good campaign manages to make a specific pitch to each subgroup, keeping them relatively separated from one another. If this is not done, if the campaign melds its message into a single pitch, it is possible for swing voters, or evangelicals, or (worse) both, to become turned off by the singular message. Because he was working on multiple levels of communication, Bush could play the security issue to the group where security was the top concern, and he could play the cultural conservative issue to the group where that was the top concern. This, incidentally, was something which Kerry never really mastered. For instance, he could never find a way to communicate his disgust of the Bush administration’s foreign policy to his leftist base and communicate his terror war credentials to swing voters. Ultimately, both the lefties and the swingers were turned off by him.

The only group among which Bush seems to have under-performed relative to 2000 was independent voters, who are most frequently affected by the mainstream media’s coverage. Bush’s strategy to focus on specific groups under the media’s radar affected his standing with independents because it angered the mainstream press, upon which independents generally rely. Never has a candidate suffered such negative press coverage as Bush suffered. One of the big reasons for this was, I think, that Bush did not play baseball with the press. BC04 reversed the strategy of BC00. Whereas the first campaign cultivated friendly relations with the media, most notably through frequent access to the candidate, BC04 was entirely unhelpful to the press. Bush himself was virtually inaccessible. The staff was tight-lipped and uncooperative – when asked a question, they routinely delivered talking points. This undoubtedly angered the “pressies,” who found good BC04 campaign stories hard to come by (the press, by the time the campaign had begun – was already a little annoyed because the Bush White House is virtually leak proof and Bush himself rarely makes himself available to the press). Thus, bad press followed. Thanks to KE04’s general incompetence, Kerry did not get good press until roughly October when McCurry and Lockhart joined their team. I believe it no coincidence that when KE04 started massaging the media, news cycle after news cycle was spun their way. You could even see this on Fox News. Carl Cameron’s reports from KE04 were simply more interesting, more engaging, more newsworthy than the reports coming from the BC04 correspondent.

Was this a mistake on BC04’s part? I am inclined to say yes, but with important caveats. One big difficulty that comes with any incumbent campaign is that the aura and mystique of the presidency must be preserved, as it is a campaign’s greatest weapon. Since Bush is such a friendly, warm, personable guy – frequent contact with the press might ultimately have harmed him, as it might have worn off the “POTUS mystique” that every incumbent enjoys. Now, do not get me wrong. I do not mean to say that Bush is naturally unpresidential. Far from it. In fact, the “POTUS mystique” exists purely in the public’s mind. Reagan was always Reagan. Truman was always Truman. Bush has always been Bush. However, once each man becomes the chief, he is viewed differently, and the way he is viewed is a natural asset for a reelection campaign. So, Bush’s separation from the press was not necessarily a foolish mistake. Another big problem for Bush was that the press – which is mostly old-school liberal – obviously does not like the Iraq war. They were much more hostile to Bush after the WMD case collapsed. Frequent contact with the press might actually have damaged Bush in the long run – at every point of access that the mainstream media had with Bush this year, they were obsessed with asking “Gotcha!” questions designed to put Bush on the spot. So, the essential idea of separating Bush from the press was sound.

This is not to say that it worked as well as it could have worked. It is not to say that some kind of compromise solution could not have been found, or at least a strategy developed to make BC04 competitive in the news cycle relative to KE04. I am not sure. One thing of which I am convinced though, is that the White House was extremely smart to avoid responding to Kerry and the Democrats early in the year. I know the skin of many a conservative was a-crawling in February. Conservatives were desperate for Bush to respond to the Democrats. But Bush was prudently quiet. Any response would have done nothing except elevate Kerry in the public’s mind. It would have transferred to Kerry a tiny bit of the “POTUS mystique,” as the public would realize that Kerry had tweaked the President. You will note that Bush, when he spoke of Kerry, rarely referred to him by name. Rather, he always called him “my opponent.” This was intentional. Calling Kerry by name might elevate his standing in the public.

There were some definite blunders by the campaign this year, most notably in the White House Communications Office. I think that it failed the president this year. Examples of this failure abound. For instance, they never developed a decent response to the issue of jobs – and thus enabled the media to turn at least two news cycles a month into, “Hey…did we mention lately that there haven’t been any jobs created?” Even when jobs were being created – as they were in March and April – the press still mentioned the previous months of relative joblessness. This was preposterous. The job growth statistic is, at best, a rough estimate that gets re-jiggered at least twice after it is first released, and it only measures growth of a certain type of job. You’ll note that a decent number of jobs per month is about 140,000 – and, despite the ups-and-downs of job month-by-month job growth, the economy has added, on average, 140,000 jobs per month in the last year. In other words, jobs should never have been such a salient issue this year – it was the fault, I think, of the White House Communications Office, which let the press turn the jobs statistic into a perpetual weapon against Bush.

This was not, unfortunately, the worst instance of White House incompetence. The worst came with the CBS memo scandal. Bloggers quickly determined that those memos were forged. But where was the White House on it? Those memos were, simply put, a smoking gun against Bush’s story. Thus, if you are Communications Director Dan Bartlett, and you believe that Bush has always told the truth about the national guard, would you not instantly be skeptical about those memos? Would your gut not first tell you, “If those memos say the President received assistance, they must be forgeries.” That was the gut reaction of the bloggers – that was why it was sniffed out so quickly. Is the White House Communications Office incompetent, or did they simply not believe the President? Either way they were a real hindrance to Bush’s reelection. Generally, if it were not for the hard work of the blogosphere in dissecting the CBS story (and, fyi newbies, I had absolutely nothing to do with that work – so I am taking no credit), it was quite possible that Bush would have lost.

They were similarly incompetent in this year’s first iteration of the National Guard story. They dumped hundreds of pages of document in the lap of the media without explaining any of them. It is difficult to do anything that angers the press more than an unexplained “document dump.” They hate having to figure stories out for themselves – particularly when they must derive the story from 30 year old, technical military documents and dental records!

Another mark against both the White House Communications Office as well as BC04 would have to be their reluctance to begin the campaign. Now, I am not suggesting that they should have sent Bush on the road in March, or even should have begun an active push in the media. As I said, it was prudent to keep him from diving into the muck with Kerry. However, they should have transitioned into “campaign mode” earlier. They should have been more conscious that the Democrats had begun their campaign, and thus more careful in their public comments and actions. Bush, for instance, seemed ill-prepared for his March press conference. That was where he made the mistake of saying that he could not think of any mistakes he had made. Around March was when one of Bush’s top economic advisors had commented that outsourcing was a good thing for the economy. In March, 1996, such gaffes by the Clinton administration would not have been all that costly, as the general campaign had not begun. However, given that the Democrats had stepped-up their process, the White House should have been more prepared.

This is not to say that BC04 did not have some notable successes in the media. Their convention was a true masterpiece. It rivaled Clinton/Gore 1992 for the way it communicated a message clearly, effectively and convincingly. The conventional wisdom after the Kerry convention was that there was no bounce to have. I knew at the time that this was a bunch of goobledygook. Conventions matter. A good convention is a requisite part of a good campaign, and Bush’s convention was a good convention, a very good convention. It did an excellent job of framing the debate for September. If Bush’s first debate performance had matched his convention speech, the last month of this campaign would have been a non-event.

In general, I must say that I think BC04 was a masterful organization. Bush’s campaign is the reason Bush won reelection. The president had made a conscious decision to spend his political capital on the Iraq war, rather than parlay it into his reelection bid. Note that this is the sign of a gutsy politician and a true leader; Clinton would never have risked his reelection on an issue of policy. At the same time, though, by March, 2004 Bush’s political capital was spent, which meant that this election was going to be a long, hard fight. Without a savvy campaign which motivated the base and drove the agenda, it is very possible that the Democrats could have taken advantage of the fact that Bush lacked a cache of political capital.

BC04 and KE04, for opposite reasons, are key indications of why campaigns matter. Good ones win elections. Bad ones lose them. BC04 was a good campaign, a great campaign.

Election Analysis Part 1: Kerry and the Democrats

I have decided to break my election analysis into three parts. The first shall cover Kerry and the Democrats. The second (coming tomorrow) will cover Bush and the Republicans. The third (coming tomorrow or Thursday) will cover the media and the polls. Perhaps a final concluding note after that will follow.

Kerry and the Democrats

The Democrats biggest problem this year was the issue of their line-up. Their list of decent presidential candidates was as shallow as the Pittsburgh Pirates' pitching roster. None of the candidates in the Democratic primary were very inspiring -- none of the ones who chose to avoid the primary were inspiring, either. This is the only reason that that maniac Dean was able to influence the primaries. There was no Democratic balast to steady their ship. We have seen this happen before -- this is the only way Buchanan was able to make such a run against the GOP in 1996. Dole was of insufficient heft to stop Pitchfork Pat before he could do any damage. So it went with Kerry. He, like the rest of the primary candidates, lacked that combination of authoritativeness and personability that could have made the primary a non-event. Kerry won because, quite literally, he was the last man standing.

The characterization of Warren Harding, our 29th president, by Connecticut Senator Frank Brandegee is quite appropriate for understanding the Kerry candidacy: "There ain't any first-raters this year...; we got a lot of second-raters and Warren Harding is the best of the second-raters."

Successful presidential candidates, the "first-raters," are usually able to create for themselves at least a modest cult of personality. The bland ones (Dole, Kerry are the best recent examples) are unable to do this. This is why the CW in the press was always "anti-Bush sentiment is driving the Democrats." Of course it was. That is a quadrennial truism -- the strong partisans always dislike the other side. The problem that the Democrats had is that they could not find a candidate who could turn that negative sentiment into something positive for himself. Clinton, Reagan and Bush have all been able to do that.

Kerry had the same amount of personal appeal that all the losing candidates have, which is to say that he had no personal appeal at all. Ultimately, he was an awful candidate. I do not know whether he is a likeable person in real life, but I do know that whatever likeability he has did not transfer onto television, which at this point in time is all that matters. If Kerry had been a bit more personable, a bit more normal-seeming, it would have made a big difference.

I think all of this has ultimately to do with the 1994 landslide. It cleaned so many Democrats out of the governors' seats, the breeding ground of strong presidential candidates, that the best gubernatorial prospects - Ed Rendell, Rod Blagovich, Jim Doyle, Mike Easley, Bill Richardson -- were still early in their development. None of them were ready this year. This is due largely, I think, to the fact that the Democrats only started regaining ground on the governorships in 1998. Look for a stronger Democratic candidate in 2008. All of these people could jump into the fray.

Kerry's problems did not end with blandness. He was stuck with a leftist base that was simply not in tune with the rest of the nation. It seems that the left went in the opposite direction of moderates/conservatives after 9/11/01. This created severe problems for Kerry in this election. All candidates have to shift to the center after a primary. It has everything to do with the median voter theorem. To win an election, you have to win the voter who sits right smack dab in the ideological center of the electorate. The median voter in the primary is a lot more extreme than the median voter of the general election. The trouble is that you can often appear to be shifting in the political winds when you shift from one median voter to another.

Most candidates can get around this potential difficulty because, generally, the issues of top concern in the primaries are quite different than the issues of top concern in the general election. Base voters and swing voters are usually concerned about different things. For instance, Republican primary voters are very frequently more concerned about social issues than the general electorate. Thus, a Republican can move to the right socially in the primary and still preserve his position on the key general election issues, which (in times of peace) tend to be fiscal policy issues. Not so for Kerry. The left was all hot-and-bothered about the war on terror and the war in Iraq -- the two top issues on the general public's mind. Kerry had to appease this base to win their votes. He had to start talking down the Iraq war and he had to start talking down the Patriot Act. During the general election, he had to move to the center on those same issues. This is what left him open to the flip-flopping charge, which was particularly effective at ensuring Kerry retained low marks on leadership qualities throughout the whole campaign.

Neither of these problems were, however, insurmountable. Neither were they really Kerry's fault. He could not help that he is inpersonable. He could not help that his base was out-of-whack with the rest of the nation on the issues of the day. Every candidate faces problematic independent variables such as these. For instance, Bush's problem in 2000 was that he was his father's son. The question is how does the candidate deal with a problematic independent variable? Bush worked his way around this problem by making sure his mom and dad had low profiles in 2000. He used his high name recognition without using the reason he had high name recognition. That's smart politics.

Kerry could have solved these two problems as well, but his campaign was generally too conservative, imprudently conservative, for a challenger. Challengers face a high burden, and thus they must play it risky. Kerry never played it risky. He always played it safe. He played it safe on Iraq. You'll note that Kerry's opinion on the issue changed roughly as the popular opinion on the war changed. At the very beginning of the general election, right after Kerry emerged as the front-runner and Dean had been dispatched (i.e. after Kerry could move away from the Democratic median voter and toward the general median voter), support of the war was high because it was believed that Hussein was a threat too grave in a post-9/11 world. Accordingly, Kerry supported the war because Hussein was too grave a threat. When support of the war was high but people were disgruntled about no WMD, though they did not consider Bush to have lied, Kerry's position was that he supported the war but was disgruntled about no WMD but did not think Bush lied. When support of the war was high, but problems with Bush's managment took the forefront, Kerry supported the war but blamed Bush's management. When support for the war itself dropped, Kerry stopped supporting the entire idea of the war. This is simply playing it safe. It also shows a lack of good political judgment. In troubled times, shifting with public sentiment is not what will yield public support. Safe is not necessarily smart.

The risky-but-smart move for Kerry, I think, would have been to move to Bush's right on the Iraq war. The Fallujah debacle was definitely a lost opportunity for Kerry. He should have excoriated Bush for "pussy-footing" around with those Iraqi troops. He should have insisted on decisive action in Fallujah, Samarra and other places. Now, these were practically impossible things for Bush to do. America is playing a political game with Iraqis like al-Sistani and al-Sadr of which most Americans are unaware. A President Kerry would never have undertaken the actions candidate Kerry should have suggested. However, it would have made for good politics. He only half-heartedly moved to Bush's right on the hunt for UBL in the Afghan hinterlands -- and he did this far too late in the game.

Similarly, the choice of John Edwards was imprudently conservative. Edwards really brought nothing to the table -- and every challenger must have a veep candidate who brings something to the table. Sure, the Democrats wanted Edwards, but that was no reason for Kerry to have selected him, given that the Democrats were united. Kerry's choice was not like Reagan selecting Bush in 1980 in an effort to unify the Republican Party. That was a politically savvy move. Ditto for Clinton's selection of Gore in 1992. Clinton had already solidified his party; the selection of Gore was right in line with the message of (generational) change. Savvy, too, were Gore's selection of Leiberman and Bush's selection of Cheney. Both veeps solved problems for their top guys. Edwards solved absolutely nothing for Kerry -- a veep cannot provide a candidate with charisma. (Perhaps a candidate who could turn anti-Bush sentiment into pro-Kerry sentiment would have been helpful, but such a man or woman would already have thrown their hat into the ring for the presidency.) Kerry only selected Edwards, I believe, because the polls of the party faithful showed him to be the favored choice. The prudent move, I think, would have been to select Gephardt, who has a good reputation on the Iraq war and the general war on terror. The selection of Gephardt would have worked well as an overall summer-autumn shift to Bush's right on these issues.

One can say all of this about the convention, too. It fit the Kedwards' pattern: too conservative and generally unsavvy. The Democrats made a conscious choice to make no news at their convention. This was just bad strategy for a challenger. If you are the challenger, you need to give the press news that the public will appreciate, and the convention is a great opportunity for this. As for unsavvy, that convention was like a four-day replay of George Bush's "Message: I care." Simply saying that John Kerry would be tough on terror time and again is simply not enough to get the message across to the nation. The message must be communicated subtextually.

In general, Kerry should have followed the Kennedy/Johnson model of 1960. Kennedy moved to Nixon's right on foreign policy. He also offered people a campaign of big, inspiring, American ideals. That is the right formula for a campaign during troubled times. You have to convince the American people that you would offer people something bigger, something better than your opponent. Kennedy also found a wonderfully inventive way to merge domestic issues and foreign issues into one, broad them: "The New Frontier." People who argue -- as Mara Liasson just did on Special Report -- that Kerry should have focused on economic matters are simply wrong. Kerry had to promise people something about the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Those are the issues of the day, and they could not be ignored. Kerry had to confront them -- the smart move would have been to find a broad, unifying theme that would encompass both domestic and international concerns.

Kerry's lack of a Kennedyesque message can be seen by the shifting themes, shifting slogans, and shifting strategies of his campaign. Kerry was truly a flip-flopper of a camapaigner. Compare this to BC04, which developed a superb strategy back in January and stuck with it. Kerry was all over the map: focusing on domestic issues, then focusing on international issues, then focusing back on domestic issues. He tried to advance pro-business fiscal policies, and then populist fiscal policies. And we already covered his shifts on foreign policy. He ran a visionless campaign that was overloaded with too many strategists, spokespeople and policy advisors. It was only late, far too late, in the campaign that he trimmed his inner circle and began to focus on a few key themes with the requisite precision.

Kerry also made general tactical blunders time and again, which deserve mention. He should have diffused this Swift Vet controversy ten years ago. Many of those vets were mostly angry that Kerry was an anti-war activist -- and the 1994 normalization of relations with Vietnam would have been a perfect place for Kerry to largely renounce his VVAW activities, a requisite move, I believe, for any candidate for president. So, we'll label that a deep tactical blunder. Another tactical blunder was his assumption that black Americans would march lock-step with him. Early data indicates that this was not the case in MI, FL, OH and WI. And Kedwards should have realized early on that BC04 was actively working to improve its standing with black voters relative to BC00. Efforts back in April could have made a big difference.

Kerry's best tactical move was to bring aboard the Clintonistas in October. This was a smart, gutsy, decisive move which must surely have wrankled his extant staff. But it was well done. It focused his attention on a few key themes. It also enabled him to drastically improve his coverage in the press. McCurry and Lockhart deserve top marks for spinning the debates, and for generally making sure Kerry won almost every news cycle in the last month of the campaign. I think they brought him about 2% of the popular vote, and perhaps delivered WI, PA and MN. They have a bright future in Democratic presidential politics.

As for general ground game management, I think Kedwards and the DNC made a tactical miscalculation in outsourcing it to the 527s. The thinking in both organizations was, I believe, that they desperately needed to match BC04 in terms of advertising money -- and that the campaign finance laws essentially precluded them from doing both heavy GOTV and heavy advertising. They chose to emphasize the latter and leave the former to the 527s. As it turns out, the Democrats held virtually steady in GOTV this time around relative to 2000. This year, I estimate that about 41 million Democrats and 41 million Republicans voted. That is roughly the same number of Democrats that voted in 2000. The Republicans, meanwhile, increased turnout by about 5.2 million voters. Independents made up the rest of the increase (about 3.0 million extra voters). Given the amount of resources the 527s poured into GOTV, to only hold steady is a sign that the money was lost to increased information costs and general first-time incompetence, about which I have written previously. I am guessing that in 2006 and 2008, the Democratic 527s will improve their effectiveness. This year, they were not at all impressive -- to spend that much more time, effort and money to draw even with Gore in 2000 is pathetic. They can only go up from here.

Their decision to pour resorces into television was also unwise in retrospect. The Republicans had a majority of advertising dollars in the past, but bringing the Democrats to parity simply eliminated, I think, the effect of political ads this year. There were simply too many on the market. The voters tuned them all out. Much more wise, I think, would have been to develop a few really excellent, really devastating ads to run, the sort of ad that no amount of advertising dollars from the other side can match. The NAACP James Byrd ad from 2000 was that kind of ad. It was very, very effective.

The Democrats, I believe, should have poured most of their resources into GOTV, spent less on advertising, and put Carville and Begala on the project of developing perhaps a dozen really superb ads to release throughout the year.

As for the DNC, do not expect McAuliffe to disappear. First and foremost, he is Clinton's guy, and this remains Clinton's party. Furthermore, I do not think he can be blamed for this fiasco. The Democrats have had problems of one stripe or another since 1980. Blaming McAuliffe for 2004 is like blaming Gephardt for 2002. I do not think it is fair. To McAuliffe's credit, he was extremely smart and lucky to have collapsed the Democratic primary. It was smart because it gave the Democrats a single challenger to confront President Bush. A prolonged primary battle would only have benefitted Bush -- as he would have stood alone against a bunch of bickering, small-seeming, challengers. Of course, McAuliffe was also lucky that that psychopath Dean did not get the nomination. He can thank the scream to end all screams. Look for the GOP to speed their nomination process for 2008. They do not want a prolonged battle if the Democrats are going to have a nominee quickly.

I would also like to make a note about John Edwards. His political career is over. America dispatches losing vice-presidential candidates to the political wilderness quickly and ruthlessly. Just ask Ferraro and Kemp (if you can find them), or, for that matter Bob Dole. It took the latter twenty years and three tries to move from the vice presidential nomination to the presidential nomination. I am also pretty convinced that Edwards was never really in the hunt for the presidential nomination. I believe that because Edwards' presidential campaign was nothing except one staged media event after another. He did not have a base of support. He did not even try to cultivate one. He had a miniscule staff. He had no notable supporters. He went from one staged event to another simply to get onto the television. I think his goal was always second place. Nobody wins first place without some savvy hook -- a good ground organization, a unique personal characteristic, an important endorsement. Edwards had none of these. To the media's credit, they sniffed him out pretty quickly. That is why they kept asking him time and again about the veep nomination during the primaries. Edwards essentially tried to game the "system", which makes him one of the most egotistical men ever to seek the presidency, and also one of the dumbest. The system cannot be gamed. What is the system? Well, it is an informal one, but it still exists. It is what basically prevents first time politicians from winning the nomination. To win it, you must serve a certain amount of time in a certain office. The reason for this is that you must impress certain inside baseball people to get on board with you. There is no quarter for upstarts in the presidential race. Edwards only gamed the system by half, by getting himself on to a ticket. However, a winning presidential candidate would have been smart enough to see through Edwards' cheap ploy. A Clinton never would have selected an Edwards. Neither, for that matter, would a (Jack) Kennedy. Winning politicians win because they have keen instincts. Kerry lacks them, and thus was unable to sniff out Edwards. Accordingly, Edwards never was going to game the system all the way. It was fait accompli.

Finally, the buzz among Democrats will be that Hillary is "in" for the 2008 nomination. Do not count on it. The Democrats are notoriously unreliable in granting the nomination to the candidate who has "earned" it. They are unlike Republicans -- who in the last 52 years have had a person named Nixon, Bush or Dole on every ticket but one. They are always inclined toward the upstarts -- Kennedy in '60, Carter in '76, Clinton in '92. Expect any or all of those aforementioned governors to challenge Hillary in 2008. Expect Hillary to underperform as well. She is actually an atrocious campaigner. New York was sufficiently friendly to her in 2000, but the rest of the nation is not going to let her get away with the kind of campaign she ran that year.

Look for Bush's OH margin to increase...

...still no results from Paulding County. Bush won it by 2,000 votes (out of 9,000). If it follows the trend of other West OH counties, we can expect more...

BIG NEWS: BUSH TURNS AROUND OH VALLEY!!!!

This is what was worrying me...

Bush now up 3,000 votes in the whole OH valley...

OH looks like it is slipping away from Kedwards. Take that witPB. Jl. Pajajaran, Bogor 16151
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BIG NEWS: BUSH TURNS AROUND OH VALLEY!!!!

This is what was worrying me...

Bush now up 3,000 votes in the whole OH valley...

OH looks like it is slipping away from Kedwards. Take that with a grain of salt...just an impression. Lots of votes left...

Erie County, OH Update

...turnaround from before. Bush nets 2,900 votes this time around. Good news in this NE Ohio County.

OH Update

Bush nets 20,000 votes in Butler County, Cincinnati Suburb.

Bush nets 856 in NE Wayne County. Bush still up 1.7% in NE Ohio...waiting on more Cuyahoga.

Bush nets 1990 in Marion County, West Central

West Ohio...Bush nets 2,900 votes in Darke County.

Central Ohio...reports my Hawkeye, "Good news for Bush. Bush up significantly in the following counties: Clark +5 (big county) Greene +3 (big county) Ross +2.6 (med county) Down BIGTIME in Coshocton (9% down) but it's a really SMALL county. All of the other 16 counties in my group, Bush is doing better by about 1-3%. But these are smaller counties (but every vote counts). Maybe down by a fraction of a point in a couple small counties."

Bush holding his own in Dayton and Columbus, reports another Hawkeye: "Bush's percentage increase is about 1%. With 60% in Franklin (Columbus), Bush is ahead 50-49.5 -- he lost it 48-47 in 2000. With 73% in Montgomery (Dayton), Kerry is ahead 50-49 -- in 2000, Gore won it by 50-48."

Translation: Ignore Susan Estrich's spin. Overall, Bush is doing well across the board, except in the Ohio Valley, but we still have data problems down there...

Mrs. Horserace Blogger reports that MSNBC is "very blue" and Joe Scarborough is being "magnanimous."

NM Update

Bush doing better in SW NM...up 8% relative to 2000. Through the whole South NM, Bush is up 20,000 votes.

North: Doing better in Colfax, Quay, McKinley. Holding steady in Mora County.

IMPORTANT: BUSH DOING BETTER IN BERNALILLO COUNTY...Albuquerque swing area. He is winning as of right now.

Also...MSNBC all but calling FL for Bush. Calling it "grim" for Kerry.

OH update

West. Bush nets 96 votes in Huron County.

West Central. Bush nets 1,415 votes in Champaign County.

Ohio Valley. Kerry outdoing Bush 52-48. In 2000 it was reversed. 8% switch.

Things do not look good in IA thus far...

WI Update

Bush up 52-48 in NE WI. Slight Kerry advantage here.

Bush doing much better in SE WI, especially Milwaukee County. 9% overall, 17% in Milwaukee County.

OH Update...

...Bush continues to do well in West Central OH. He nets 2,631 votes relative to 2000 in Richland County. He nets 3,605 votes relative to 2000 in Shelby County. He nets 2,336 votes in Preble County. Bush nets 1,903 votes in Ottawa County in the west.

So far, the West and West Central look good for Bush. The Northeast looks good. The Ohio Valley seems sketchy for him, but there are still data issues down there. I'm not sure what is going on there...

Bush still doing well in Northeast. He is up 1.74% relative to 2000. Still up 5% in Cuyahoga, current vote totals about 47% less than in 2000. Still waiting on heavily Republican Cleveland exurb Medina County...all in all, things look good there. Good news...Kerry only nets 1,033 votes in heavily Democratic Ashtabula County.

Bush doing better in Central Ohio relative to 2000. This time around it is 59.47%. Last time 58.87%. Still waiting on heavily Republican Jackson County and heavily Republican Tuscawaras County.

FL Update

Good news...

Florida Update:
Bush nets 14,500 votes in Bay County. Panhandle.
Bush nets 14,899 in Okaloosa County. Panhandle.
Bush nets 13,845 in Santa Rosa County. Panhandle.
Bush nets 9,000 votes in Collier County. Southwest Fl.
Bush nets 11,269 votes in Manatee County. Tampa Area.

Ohio Update...

...Putnam County (Western OH), Bush up 2% of the vote relative to 2000 with 7% more voters than 2000.

Northeast Ohio getting closer to 2000 results...Bush up 4.70% (lots left to still be counted).

Doing better in Cuyahoga (9.90%) and Ashtabula (up 9.55%). Holding relatively steady in Ashland, Geaugua, Portage, Stark, Wayne (down slightly in all).

Early news out of Lucas County (West) has Bush down 9% relative to 2000. This is still early (only 21% reporting)

Some good news? Turnout in conservative Hancock (West Central OH) was up relative to 2000...Bush nets 2,228 votes. In Henry County (West) Bush nets 580 votes.

Bush looking decent in Columbus.

PA Update

Dn't sweat the PA results spilling out on the screen. Heavy Philly returns.

In Philly, Bush is up 1.14% compared to 2000 with 93% reporting...doing better in Lebanon County.

Holding generally steady in York County (SE PA)...down a little bit, I guess (less than 1%).
North Central PA: Bush up 6% relative to 2000 with 34% of vote in...

Western PA...Allegheny County (Pittsburgh and near suburbs), Bush is getting outdone. Turnout up and Bush is down about 2%...Bush is doing better in Armstrong and (tiny) Greene County. No change relative to 2000 in Erie and Clarion Counties...Doing a little worse in Butler County (Come on, Raiders...vote for Bush!!! Note, my Hawkeye thinks something smells with CNN's Butler CO data)...doing better in (tiny) Indiana County. Worse in Lawrence County (rust belt area). About the same in Beaver, Venango, Washington, Westmoreland.

If these Western PA #'s don't change, it will be tough for Dubya.

NOTE: Mrs. Horserace Blog says CNN speculates Maine's last EV might go to Bush.

WI Update

Bush in lead in SW Wisconsin 52.1% to 47.9%. In 2000, he lost it to Gore by about 3 1/2%.

Bush slightly up in NE Wisconsin -- 52.1% 47.9%. This actually amounts to a 1.8% net boost for Kerry relative to Gore (NE WI went heavily for Nader in 2000)...results still very, very early...

Bush up 11% in Western WI relative to 2000. He is doing better in St. Croix and Saulk. Still very, very early...

SE WI still too early to say...Bush looks good, but no data from Madison, WI yet.

FL Update

Bush nets 1,246 votes in Gulf County (Panhandle)

The First Hawkeye Among Equals, Gary Kovar, Reports the following BIG news from Tampa: Osceola, Hernando, Pinellas all look like they've turned from Gore to Bush. Generally, Bush is up in every Tampa-area County for which there is data (overall, up 1.52% relative to 2000)

In heavily Democratic Leon County (FL Panhandle), Kerry nets 9,324 votes relative to Gore in 2000. One of Kerry's (few) bright spots.

Ohio Updates

Fulton County: Bush Nets 613 Votes

Bush Down in Ohio Valley...my Hawkeye says it may be because of bad data from Mahoning County. Stand by.

Vote percentages roughly the same in Butler County, OH. Still early...

Bush still up 8% relative to 2000 in North East OH. Up 8% in liberal Cuyahoga...

Rough news from Dayton (Montgomery County). With 30% of the vote in, Bush's percentage change is a 13% decrease in Montgomery Co. Currently 57-42 Kerry; 2000 was 49-47 Gore.
Still early, though...Overall, Bush's % increase from 2000 is 1% in Central OH.
West Ohio, Van Wert County. 51% of vote in, Bush up 7%.

Another Panhandle County...

...another big Bush boost.
HOLMES
2004 Bush 6,410 0.7725
Kerry 1,810 0.2181
2K Bush 5,011 0.6776
Gore 2,177 0.2944

More Panhandle Results

Jefferson
2004 Bush 3,298 0.4411
Kerry 4,133 0.5528
2K Bush 2,478 0.4392
Gore 3,041 0.5390
A Pickup of about .5% for Mr. Bush.

2004 Bush 22,818 0.7653
Kerry 6,715 0.2252
2K Bush 36,274 0.7209
Gore 12,802 0.2544
4%+ improvement for Mr. Bush over 2K

Another FL Panhandle

Good news...
Calhoun County
2004
Bush 3,780 0.6341
Kerry 2,116 0.3550
2K
Bush 2,873 0.5028
Gore 2,155 0.3771

Net 946 Votes

Big News from Brevard County, FL

Big GOP stronghold...
"Bush net gain in votes over 2000 is 24,803 with 95.5% reporting. Bush 57.71% Kerry 41.50%"

OH Update...

...
Bush wins Lake County 51%/49%. This is closer than in 2000, but voter turnout increased 20%, so the jury is still out on how much the net gain or loss is.

Seneca County: With 37% of the precincts reporting, Bush is up 6% over his 2000 results in this small rural county.

In the reporting Ohio Valley counties, while returns still early, Bush has increased his margin of victory by 2.08%

Erie County (West): With 43% of the precincts reporting Bush is up 9% over 2000 results. This is huge even in this small rural county.

Crawford County (West): Up over 5% for Bush over 2000 with 22% of the precincts reporting in this small rural county.

Bush holding steady in Central Ohio...currently winning 57.24% (58.87 in 2000).

Northeast: Bush is still up 7.68% relative to his 2000 percentage in this heavily Democratic area.

West Central Ohio: 3.34% ahead in Allen (relative to 2000)
1.66% ahead in Franklin (relative to 2000)
1.33% ahead in Hancock (relative to 2000)
0.68% ahead in Logan (relative to 2000)
-3.19% behind in Marion (relative to 2000) (very small data set)
2.83% ahead in Morrow Allen County (relative to 2000) (north central Ohio) is the only one close to completed, with 88% of the precints in. The total turnout is about 95% of last years there.

Mercer County (West): Bush is showing small gain in Mercer County with 26% of the precincts reporting. Bush up at 71% vs. 68% in 2000.

My Hawkeye says Barone is Wrong on Broward...

...he says..."With 84% precincts reporting the vote Bush net vote increase over 2000 is 49,026!"

More on SW Florida...

...
Bush Nets Votes in the Following Counties:
Desoto: 4,486
Pasco: 19,165
Desoto: 664
Hernando: 1,998

Kerry Nets Votes in
Charlotte: 692
Sarasota: 2,893
Lee: 900

Bush Flips Osceola County

Blue in 2000...Red in 2004.

He nets 4,486 votes. Osceloa is the county south of Orlando. Gore won it with 51.12% in 2000. Bush is on track to win it with 51.72%

Another Panhandle County...

...another big Bush boost.

This one is from tiny Layfayette County...Bush nets 733 votes, increasing his total by 7%.

Bush closes gap in Monroe County...

...in the Southeast tip of Florida.
Bush nets 235 votes there relative to 2000.

More Good OH News...

This one from West Ohio...

"With 23% of the precincts reporting, Darke County is up 5% over four years ago for Bush. 68% in this small rural county."

Ditto for Central OH

results are quite preliminary...

Says one of my Hawkeyes..."With 10% of the vote in Franklin Co (Columbus), Bush is about 1% ahead of 2000. In Allen Co, he's about 5% ahead."

The early word on West Central Ohio...

...Bush is beating his 2000 margins:

Bush + 3.34% in Allen County relative to 2000
+ 1.66% in Franklin County
+ 1.33% Hancock
+ 0.68% in Logan
-3.19% in Marion (very small data set)
+ 2.83% ahead in Morrow

Early signs look good in NE Ohio

So far, Bush is doing 6.36% better than he did in 2000 there. Things are still early, but this is a good sign.

Note that Kerry must improve his margins in NE OH to win this election.

Correction on Flagler...

...it has gone from blue to red.

Last time it went to Gore by 1,284 votes. This time it went to Bush by 1,061 votes.

Kerry makes gains in Leon County...

...heavily Democratic panhandle county north of Tallahassee.

He has net about 5,700 votes.

MORE FL GOOD NEWS :-)

Bush nets 674 votes in the FL Panhandle County Wakulla....

...whither the exit polls...

Big News from the FL Panhandle

Bush nets 6,632 votes in Suwanee County!!!

No voter media-oriented suppression this time around :-)

FL Panhandle Update

Bush wins Hamilton County (no surprise)
He nets 110 votes relative to 2000.

There seems to be problems with the exit polls...

...shock of shocks!

Best example: Bush is kicking ass and taking names in FL...but the exit polls had him down.

Other examples (from NRO):

**In 2000, George W. Bush lost the white Catholic vote in Wisconsin. This
time, he appears to be winning it by 10 percentage points. Yet I believe the
exit polls have the white Catholic vote shrinking from more than one-third of
the population to less than one-quarter. There's no reasonable explanation for
it.
***In North Carolina, the exit polls show the voting population to be 63
percent women. That is obviously far too large – and it explains why the exit
polls have the President up by only one in North Carolina. That figure won't
stand up when the votes are counted; the President will carry North Carolina by
a wide margin.
*** The exit polls have President Bush up in South Carolina by only seven
points. He will win South Carolina by more than seven; you can take that to the
bank. The Latino population makes up a larger percentage of Florida's population
than in 2000. The President is carrying the Latino population in Florida by a
greater margin than four years ago. Yet the exit polls have Latinos comprising a
far smaller voting percentage of the population than four years ago.
***In Ohio, the exit polls show the vote among men to be 50-50. The final
votes will almost surely be higher than that.
***President Bush is winning 43 percent of the Hispanic vote -- which, if
that remains, means he should win re-election.
***Florida is a state in which you can measure absentee ballots early to
get a good idea of where things stand. Right now we are dominating in absentee
ballots in Florida. To be precise: we are leading by 154,000 votes – while in
2000, we won by only 98,000. So we are in much better shape this election that
the last on this significant matter.

Good FL News (again)

From a Hawkeye on SW FL...

We are still nowhere near being close to done, but the counties reporting all show a Bush Increase over 2000! Some as low as .5% One county that is almost closed (Pasco 95+ percent) shows a 10% increase for Bush, 26% increase in voters. It's early but looking good.

Also, Flagler County on the East (north of Daytona) has gone from red to blue. Bush nets 2,345 votes.

Bunning looks safe

2% spread between him and the Dem...and Northern KY left to go.

Bush looks to carry Pasco County, FL

It went to Gore in 2000...49.15% to 48.45%. Right now it looks to be Bush 53% to Kerry 47%. That's in Tampa area...a big deal.

Good news from the FL Panhandle

Bush carries Wakula County, 57.4 to 42.7. He expanded his margin there by net 910 votes.

Operation Hawkeyes Begins...

...in T-Minus 24 minutes. That's when NH closes. That's when we open!

More Thoughts to Consider

1. If these exit numbers NRO is reporting, you would have to change the difference by Bush by 1.47% just in Bush's favor provided that they are working off a 59-41 M/W split, provided that men and women break the way they did in 2000 and provided that the turnout is 48% M/ 52% W.

2. What other kinds of sampling skews do these exit polls contain? Are they a realistic sampling of Republicans/Democrats, whites/blacks/Hispanics, etc? We do not know either way.

3. Consider the source of these exit polls. This is a completely untested system. They junked VNS in 2002, and decided to go with this consortium deal. But who knows whether this will be an improvement? As a matter of fact, exit polling has not been decent since 1998.

4. For those of you prone to panic, think about why I decided to excise ARG from my polling averages. I did so because I have no idea who they are, whom they are calling, how they are deriving their numbers, etc. The same holds true with these numbers that many of you are undoubtedly seeing on the Internet. Who is telling these bloggers these numbers? What sort of sampling derived these numbers...are they "scrubbed" or not? Where are those sources getting them from? The parties do not have direct access to this data...it is ultimately coming from the press to the parties, filtered down through party circles, and then to the bloggers. (I am surprised we have not seen an exit poll that shows Kerry: 49%, Bush: Purple and Yellow Elephant)

Basically, all we have is a bunch of numbers without supporting internals reprinted roughly fifth hand...numbers that will never formally be published by the exit polling consortium (read: no accountability for false leaks).

In other words, to be worried about these numbers is, in turn, to be totally unworried about good method when it comes to data analysis.

5. Again, have a little faith in BC04. If Republicans have not yet shown up at the polls, the GOP is on it. They are not going to let their voters sit on their hands.

6. The mid-day numbers seem to be trending back to Bush...are Bush voters really out voting from 2 PM to 5 PM? And yet the numbers are trending back.

"The Man" Speaks...

...and throws more cold H20 on those exist polls, which -- by the by -- are smelling more and more like Kedwards plants. Remember that they have McCurry and Lockhart, two masters of managing the media spin cycle. Gov. Bob Wise (D-WV) is out right now spinning these numbers...what does that tell you?

He is a poll watcher for the GOP in Anytown, USA. Heavily Democratic precinct -- the Democrats were like "white on rice" there.

By the time he left today at 1 PM, he said that about 30% of their voting targets had voted (80 voters). Meanwhile, the estimate at the precinct was that 50% of the total vote had been cast (300 voters). We know that the exit polls are oversampling women. If what "The Man" has found is happening nationwide, then they might be undersampling Republicans.

He also noted that Moveon.org was at the precinct but looked "pathetic." They were sitting outside the precinct in a Subaru trying to solicit people to come talk to them! The only ones taking them up on it were the old, gray hippies.

"The Man" reminds me of an important point: the GOP GOTV force has not yet begun making its telephone calls. That starts at 5 PM. You can get no indication of the race from the exit polling because both campaigns have the ability to react to the data they receive. The GOP seems to have better data than the Dems, and certainly better data than the Subaru-driving Moveon folks.

Another thing: Myster Pollster notes that there is no survey ever done to measure whether GOPers vote early or later. My guess is that one of the reasons for this is that VNS never released a scrubbed copy of their mid-day totals. Anecdotally, in 2000 -- VNS early returns heavily favored Gore (putting him up in AZ, FL and CO).

I am out to vote now...have decided, grundgingly, to vote for that maniac Alan Keyes...

Ignore the exit polls...

The raw numbers trickling out are just that...raw. Exit polling is heavily "scrubbed" at the end of the day to account for turnout in each precinct, to account for pre-existing demographic sensibilities (i.e. samples are re-jiggered for sex, race, income, etc). These raw numbers obviously cannot be scrubbed in this matter. This means that the MOE is so high for Bush and Kerry that they are basically useless. What's more...you don't know what kind of data out there is reliable or not -- it is all rumour and innuendo.

I know you are all desperate for information, but this is not what you are looking for. Please no posting of exit polling data on this site.

Personal observation: The numbers I have seen are extremely implausible in at least five out of fourteen different polls -- that casts a heavy fog over all of them. The rest of them are so close to one anot