Paul Mirengoff says Obama is the favorite now, and by more than a little:

I consider Obama the favorite. One can usually predict the outcome of the general election, and come pretty close on the margin, by considering just a few variables: how the economy is doing, whether we're at war and how popular the war is, which party holds the White House and how long it has held it, and how popular the president is.

This year, these "fundamentals" point to a Democratic victory of at least 10 percentage points.

I actually know a thing or two about such models, having written a dissertation on political business cycles and a couple of papers regarding electoral behavior. A model many of us use as a reference is Ray Fair's Predicting Presidential Elections. It's written by an economist so it favors some of the same variables Paul is using, including measures for war. Fair assumes the war variable currently registers as a zero, so hang on there for a minute while we check everything else and then see whether or not the belief that America is in a war matters for the calculation.

Fair has a calculator you can use to test your own prediction. I plugged in 0.9% for GDP growth forecast for the first three quarters of this year, based on last week's announcement of a 0.6% first quarter growth rate, assuming zero for Q2 and 2.1% for Q3 (these are approximately the WSJ Economist survey data from April; it's possible some of the Q3 growth gets pulled into Q2 because the stimulus checks seemed to come out earlier than we thought, but for this calculation that's a wash.) Inflation over the second Bush administration has averaged 2.8% per year. I'm leaving it there as the baseline; we'll play with that in a bit. The last thing you need is a measure of "good news", or the number of quarters real per capita GDP growth was over 3.2% on an annual basis. I see three such quarters (2005q3, 2006q1 and 2007q3). Using those values, I get 48.61% as the Republican share of the two-party vote total. If you'll guess Barr, Nader and the other fringe candidates draw 1% of the total vote, that gives McCain 48.1% of the vote and Obama 50.9%, a difference of only 2.8%, not 10%.

Inflation doesn't matter too much to this, given that the equation calls for all 15 quarters to be factored in and 13 quarters are in the books. If I add an additional 1% to q2 and q3, it cuts McCain's vote share only by about 0.1%. Inflation this summer may make us feel crabby towards government, but I'm not inclined to believe voters will visit the sins of the Fed on McCain.

Could the war matter, and if so how much? Douglas Hibbs has long been the father of the "bread and peace model", and he reports a comfortable 6-8% Democrat margin. But his model only ascribes a loss of .75% to the cumulative fatalities in Iraq; the rest is his estimation of smaller impact of the Bush expansion than Fair's. Fair tested his model using shift variables for WW1, WW2, and Korea (not Vietnam, a story for some other time). I'm inclined to use that 3/4% adjustment from Hibbs.

I think thus that the margin is much less pessimistic than Paul has painted it. McCain probably starts, ceteris paribus, in a four-point hole, but not a ten. There's work to do, but given the unpredictability of the campaign so far, I wouldn't start heading for the exits just yet.

Labels: economics, elections

Many people are talking about Larry Bartels new book, Unequal Democracy. Paul Krugman talks about the differences in inequality between GOP and Democrat administrations, but he can't figure out why that happens. Dani Rodrik seems to accept Bartels' explanation of why voters still vote for Republicans when they keep giving us recessions and income inequality, which is that voters are myopic. (Russ Roberts calls the data into question -- well worth considering, but not my point.)

Alex Tabarrok makes the key point: We've known this result for some time.

In a nutshell, the theory of partisan business cycles says that Democrats care more about reducing unemployment, Republicans care more about reducing inflation. Wage growth is set according to expected inflation in advance of an election. Since which party will win the election is unknown wages growth is set according to a mean of the Democrat (high) and Republican (low) expected inflation rates. If Democrats are elected they inflate and real wages fall creating a boom. If Republicans are elected they reduce inflation and real wages rise creating a bust.

A certain economist wrote his dissertation on political business cycles in the 1980s and considered partisan cycles. I didn't have at that time the nice chart that Alberto Alesina and Howard Rosenthal (Am Pol Sci Rev, 1989) drew that Alex has updated, but I had noted what they note in their introduction. Democratic and Republican candidates have "polarized policy preferencs" in that Democrats have a higher tolerance for inflation and a lower tolerance for unemployment than do Republicans." (pp. 374-75) There are also economic frictions caused by the presence of wage contracts, that must be set during the period where we don't know whether the Republican or Democrat will win. Because these contracts can be rewritten after the election, most of the shock that occurs when one side or the other wins an election happens in the first half of the new administration; ergo, partisan cycles are the result of settling electoral choices. Unlike earlier political business cycle models, you can generate these results while still having completely rational voters. What they lack is only knowledge of how everyone else in the economy will vote.

Labels: economics, elections

You haven't seen much of this in the main stream press but Italy is the 5th European nation to elect a prime minister who is friendly to the US in the past three years. Did we change leaders? No but the Europeans realize what is at stake. Berlusconi was elected Prime Minister of Italy last weekend - overwhelmingly. The Greens and Communists are out, as in gone, as in no influence, the first time since the end of WWII. Italy is on its way to a two-party system.

Five of the six biggest nations in Europe now have elected leaders who are supporters of the US: (Germany, 82,000,000, Angela Merkel); France, (62,000,000,000, Nicholas Sarkozy); the UK (59,000,000, Gordon Brown); Italy (57,000,000, Silvio Berlusconi); and Poland (39,000,000, Lech Kaczynski). The only outlier is Spain, (40,000,000, Jose Luis Zapatero), in which the mishandling of the Madrid bombings three days before the 2004 election led to a swing to the Spanish Socialist Workers Party.

Why won't we hear much about these successes? Oh, the mainstream media doesn't want us to know - they might have to admit that the USA is not the big, bad ogre they would like to make us out to be.

Labels: elections, Media

I received a letter from one delegate to the CD 6 convention, one portion of which I used in the post just below. Here's the letter in full, unedited:

It was interesting what happened at the CD6 convention and I wanted your take on it. I don't know whether you witnessed any of what went on Saturday or heard from anyone. The session lasted until after 7pm. All of the National Delegate candidates were vetted beforehand to determine whether they would vote for and support John McCain's nomination. That information was provided on the displayed list of the candidates to aid in voting by the BPOU delegates.

From the results of the voting, it appears that the Ron Paul supporters plan to hijack the nomination from John McCain I am making that judgement from observations of went on during the meeting, discussions overheard. Just linking the events together with the results proved to be interesting. Such analasys of causality is characteristic of my profession. The final capper was towards the end of the resolution balloting when the National Delegate selection results were anounced and what happened at the end when a motion was made to bind the selected delegates to vote for John McCain The sound of a stuck pig is more civil than the Paulestinian Jihadists (Ron Paul Supporters) cry of foul. They started getting really uncivilized during the discussion. At least one of the selected delegates selected claimed that he "didn't understand" the question that was asked each delegate. The Rules Committee made it clear during the discussion that during the vetting process everyone was asked the same two questions in the same words.

If one was the suspicious type one might suspect that the Ron Paul supporters were given marching orders before the convention to vote in a block for specific supporters of Ron Paul as delegates. I must confess that I looked over the shoulder of one of the known Ron Paul supporters in violation of their secret ballot privilege to see who they were voting for. My interpretation of the way thing went is that this was orchestrated in advance. If one could get access to the ballot, one might surmise from the numbers there may have been an unbalanced number of votes for the ones who won. Being of a suspicious nature I might further surmise that it wsa an unnaturally high block of votes for supporters of Ron Paul's names that had the highest vote totals. Have you heard any rumblings of such possibilities?

Also it was interesting who wound up being selected as tellers for that process that when I volunteered they didn't want me in the group. Aren't the tellers and assistants picked in advance?

First, I wasn't there as my broadcast duties prevented me from participating at the caucuses, and because I knew the convention was going to go long (I'd pretty much have left after the speechifying, which frankly I'd have to say would be the least interesting part of the day.

Second, the description of the question asked by the nominating committee in this letter says the candidates were asked if they "would vote for and support" McCain. The description on Leo's blog says only support with a 'maybe' answer possible. I'll ask around to get the exact wording, which seems important to me now. As noted by commenter J. Ewing, you can be a Fred Thompson guy who now supports McCain. But if you were asked if you would vote for McCain at the convention and misrepresented that, a more serious question can be raised about whether those delegates should be seated. And regardless, in my view the motion to bind the delegates to McCain, passed by CD6 late in the day, exists and will have to be decided by higher rules and credentialing committees.

Last, I was told by Andy Aplikowski that many delegates left the convention after voting for national delegates, so that while more than 300 were there the vote on binding was taken by a group of less than 200. I would argue this is not a problem for the Paul supporters, if we are to believe that they stayed in higher proportion than the McCain supporters. It is a problem for McCain's supporters. Michael and I have questioned on air whether the McCain campaign in Minnesota has been adequately staffed and organized. That you might have lost that vote because your people left the room should be of great concern to the McCain campaign. Even if you think the national convention will be like a coronation, there's work to be done to be sure the crown rests easily.

Conventions are often messy (and DFL ones more so, taking Kevin Ecker's example) but it appears this one was more than it should have been, and that the majority might have taken a play off, as we say in sports. That's not the minority's fault.

UPDATE: Drew Emmer has an independent assessment from the front. He apparently had no problem telling who the Paul supporters were. Drew thinks the rules were changed ex post; again, I am asking what questions were asked by the nominating committee. I am told that some answers to the two questions were changed during the nominating speeches.

Labels: elections, Minnesota

First I read that they kicked out the video cameras. But perhaps we should have had them, not to help the stalkerazzi but to have seen the end of this clusterfarg.

SD 15 co-chair Jeff Johnson sent a newsletter this morning that included a list of national convention delegates and this note:

Ironically, all of these individuals (except Congresswoman Bachmann who supports John McCain for President) have been reported as Ron Paul supporters. It sure got ugly today at the convention!

I had also heard this on the phone last night via Gary. I saw some reference to this also at Leo's blog. The story has since gone national with a headline at World Net Daily by former KNSI talk host (and erstwhile Huckabee supporter) Andy Barnett.

The story is that 98 delegates were nominated for the three national delegates and three alternates. Leo says they were asked

1: Are you a Republican?
2: Will you support John McCain? (yes, no or maybe).

The answers to these questions were displayed on a screen as the vote was taken. If you answered no or maybe to the second question you could still stand for election, but people would know where you stood. The choices of delegates and alternates were:

Delegates: Congresswoman Michele Bachmann; Ron Baert (Benton County); Bob Swinehart (SD52)
Alternates : Steve Hackbarth (Wright County); Scott Anderson (SD52) ; Dean Mahlstedt (Wright County)

I have met Mr. Baert, who worked in electronics for a long time on the east side of St. Cloud, and he is indeed a Paul supporter. Wish I'd've been there, I could have told people that. Neither electee from SD 52 are in that district's leadership. Drew Emmer had warned of the Wright County phenomenon after his district convention where he warned that 60% of his county's delegates were for Ron Paul and "the delegation we elect to the state and national GOP conventions may contain an unexpectedly high percentage of Ron Paul devotees."

Got no problem with that, but not if they are liars. Andy Barnett continues:

A motion was made to ensure the delegates supported McCain at the national convention.

"I moved that we bind the national delegates and alternates to what they told the nominating committee which is what was reported to the voters," said Aplikowsky [sic, actually our friend Andy Aplikowski.]

A heated debate lasting more than an hour followed the motion. Eventually, the motion passed by a slim margin, but not without harsh words and harsh exchanges.

The feeling among many of the congressional delegates who voted was that the Paul supporters had been dishonest. Ron Baert, one of the elected national delegates and a Ron Paul supporter disagreed.

According to other people I've spoken with or exchanged email with, the discussion was very heated. One emailed me

The sound of a stuck pig is more civil than the ... Ron Paul Supporters cry of foul. They started getting really uncivilized during the discussion. At least one of the selected delegates selected claimed that he "didn't understand" the question that was asked each delegate.

I'm pretty sure Leo transcribed the projected questions, and it is reported that all six elected delegates had indicated "yes" to question #2. If so, what was to understand?

Weeks after his post, an anonymous comment was left:

Excellent, but we more DELEGATES!

1. Sign up
2. Show up
3. If you cannot show up, still sign up
4. If you cannot become a delegate, sign up to be an alternate
5. If it's to late, become a Volunteer

You know what? It is working, it is easy, and this is action that RP will need at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-Saint Paul the first week in September.

This is more then only talk - it is real action....

At least forward the link to minimum 10 potential delegates. That I’m sure you can do.

This is the core of the useful things to do. Way more useful then all this talk. Because DELEGATES=POWER.

Yes, we know it's working, and may be way easier than you think too. Just get people out of their chairs please - to get RP some real help before the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis the first week in Sep.

A link to dailypaul.com left with that comment takes you to a site I am "not authorized" to read.

I note this isn't the only case of Paul supporters becoming national delegates in Minnesota. Bill Jungbauer won in CD 4. You'll note his site is full of Ron Paul links and positive comments. Now will he vote for Paul or McCain? Did anyone ask, did anyone move to bind those candidates? Andy Barnett reports that the Paul supporters swept CD 4, but one of the delegates is Taxpayers League and former state Rep. Phil Krinkie. I will be interested to hear whether he is part of this movement.

One source on the floor of the convention said it appeared to him the vote was orchestrated. There was even concern over the choice of tellers and their assistants for the vote. That source said he volunteered but was told he would not be needed.

Some writers from the left had picked up this possibility even in February. Marianne Stebbins, Paul campaign coordinator for Minnesota, has said herself she thought they would get nine delegates to the national convention from this state. She had created a video presentation last December to show them how to get elected. Republicans by asking the questions asked by the CD6 nominating committee at least tried to stop this, but it appears to have been thwarted by excellent electronic communication among Paul supporters. Far from a sneak attack, this has been signaled all along.

What would the GOP leadership like to do about it? Will it allow those who did not properly represent themselves to the nominating committees to be seated at the national convention?

Labels: elections, Minnesota

It appears a HUGE number of Republicans turned out for the caucuses. We had so many in Lakeville that the auditorium was overflowing into the hallways. We have not had a turnout like this that anyone can recall.

The straw ballot for the precincts that I'm aware of gave Romney well over half the votes. It's not the convention that is drawing them, it's the realization that there are problems the Dems refuse to address. We simply have to do it.

Hope yours went as well as ours.

Labels: elections

We will look forward to visiting with Andy Cilek of the Minnesota Voters Alliance, which has filed suit against Minneapolis plans to institute instant runoff voting. Andy has been our guest before, and just below I will talk a little about IRV. We will also speak with Brian Davis, a candidate for U.S. Congress in the First Congressional District, looking for the opportunity to run against Rep. Tim Walz. Michael and I will visit with him in the last half hour.

As always, the Final Word is heard 3-5pm on AM1280 the Patriot (click that link and then the Listen Now in the upper lefthand corner) or later via podcast when the podcasts gods choose to post our shows. Like monetary policy, shows are posted with long and variable lags.

Back to IRV. Let me help people think about it by a couple of simple thoughts. Why would IRV be bad? After all, we had three viable candidates in the 1998 gubernatorial race won by Jesse Ventura over Norm Coleman and Skip Humphrey. Humphrey came in third. Suppose we had IRV in the state. How would Humphrey's vote been distributed? Would Coleman have gained enough of those votes to overcome Ventura's three percent plurality. At least in one study, the answer is no. So plurality voting -- the system we use most everywhere in the US -- gave us the same result. (My apologies if you can't read that study -- it's good to work at a university.)

We would say that Ventura was a Condorcet winner -- he would have won in a pairwise vote against either Coleman or Humphrey. And perhaps one reason why Ventura would have won is that he turned out people that would not have voted otherwise; 7% more voters participated in 1998 than 1994, and the study cited above indicates that the Ventura presence could account for just about that size effect. An exit poll taken that day indicates that of those who did vote, Ventura voters preferred Coleman over Humphrey, 56-44.

So IRV would not have made a difference there. Where would it? It could if you ended up with cycling, where in a pairwise contest between each of the three candidates you wouldn't find one that beats the other two in heads-up. And it would be perilous if we found instead that Coleman would beat Ventura and Humphrey would beat Ventura in pairwise voting, but Ventura wins in a three-way, plurality-voting contest. That would seem to be something we would want to avoid and could be a case for IRV. And yet, as we joke a bit about voting for bacon, there is a very serious question whether we might end up with a Condorcet loser in the primaries with some states using winner-take-all allocation of delegates. On the Democratic ticket, let's suppose Sen. Clinton is the plurality leader. She would be a Condorcet loser if she would lose a two-person race against either Sens. Obama or Edwards. (I make no claim that this is so.) I'll let others think about how that applies on the GOP side, but I think it fair to say IRV would make the GOP primary different.

I find it interesting that the claim made by MVA is that IRV is too complex. Indeed, the best case one can make for plurality voting is its simplicity. (Try reading the rules for the DFL's walking caucus sometime. They aren't easy.) There are other good reasons to oppose IRV, though they are a bit harder to explain, having to do with lack of single-peaked preferences and the number of parties in play. I've not worked on electoral theory for awhile so I am not going to try to say I understand every bit of this; I don't. Suffice to say, for example, that it can be shown that you can get different electoral outcomes by changing IRV rules only slightly to drop the candidate with the most last-place votes rather than the fewest first-place votes. This is known as the Coombs rule. You could argue Coombs is a better rule, but it would be no less confusing.

A last thought, and a question I'll ask Andy tomorrow: Suppose we could show empirically that IRV increased voter turnout, since one could vote his preference first and then between the two major party candidates later. Would increased turnout be a good thing, and wouldn't you want to support IRV then if so? I know they argue that it hasn't, but would finding enough counter-examples to theirs be persuasive?

Labels: economics, elections, Final Word, NARN

Is on electoral fraud, and included an interview with Rep. Keith Ellison. I could not resist one comment. Gary obviously was posting the same piece at the same time -- pretty funny!

One comment from former St. Cloud mayor (and Scholars lover) John Ellenbecker:

Thousands of non-citizens in Minnesota have Minnesota Drivers Licenses - do they get to vote if they show up at the polls and show their DL?

If it has their current address, and if they do not truthfully reveal their citizenship, either someone has to challenge them or the electoral judge has to somehow determine citizenship. If they do so after the vote is taken, there is no provisional balloting provision that allows the electoral judges to remove that vote. Now most temporary legal immigrants have a mark of "Status Check" on their licenses, which may trigger someone to question whether someone can vote, but that can be an ugly scene. Suppressing voter challenges is as much a part of the electoral process as challenging voter eligibility.

Labels: elections, Ellison, Mrs. S

If you recall the 2004 election, there were many complaints by Democrats of how the Republicans cheated. That's because the Dems lost. In 2006, the Dems won big time. Prior to the election, there were cries of voter fraud, etc. Well, the Dems won - never heard another word, did we.

ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, members completed and filed more than 1,800 fictitious voter-registration cards during a 2006 registration drive in King and Pierce counties in the state of Washington. Seven were accused of voter fraud, three admitted guilt, one has been sentenced.

Did you see this on the evening news? No, I didn't think so.

Labels: elections, Freedom, Media

The press was there, the grassroots people were there. It was a wonderful, happy crowd.

Where? Lisa Murphy's Parkview Cafe in St. Paul, MN, the heart of MN liberalism. As Rudy said, "In a national election, you need to be able to take the battle to the opponent's turf, including a traditionally democratic state like MN. I can do that better than anyone else running for the Republican nomination."

Rudy and his team arrived on time. He was great with the wall-to-wall crowd, shaking hands, posing for multiple photos, sitting at one table and just talking with three young people. He spent at least 45 minutes with the crowd then went outside to hold his press conference.

He's at ease, comfortable with himself, the press, everyone. A couple of photos:

Labels: elections

For the past 10 days or so, an hour a clip, I've participated in the spring ritual of working in my garden. The flowers are planted on a small hill with lousy soil. The location sprouts buck thorn in the adjacent plots. The rabbits seem to think I'm Farmer McGregor and my indigenous flowers, which they are supposed to ignore, are there for their dining pleasure.

Over the years I've worked this glacial moraine soil, adding coffee grounds and egg shells beginning summer of 2005. Surprise, surprise - it's working. This year many plants appear to have a healthier start and the soil is being cultivated by worms. Now I can turn over the ground without stressing my wrist joints.

This spring I even split some lilies and iris - spread the plants for more blooms. I'm removing wild grass and chives that seem to grow in places I never put them.

Gardening is tedious, dirty and sometimes uncomfortable. But what hit me today was that gardening is like politics. You work the soil, make changes, add some new plants, keep out the riff-raff (rabbits and deer), and then enjoy the burst of color, smells, birds, etc. that come after weeks and months of work. When gardening, you cannot ignore the weeds; you need to adapt to the weather; you need to deal with the critters. You cannot go away and in summer hope for the flowers to bloom - you have to cultivate them.

Politics is like that. As much as we hate to take the time to learn what our various levels of government are doing, what is really true about who said what, we need to. If we don't cultivate our knowledge of our nation and politicians, slowly but surely the weeds and critters will take over. Insidiously government will creep into our lives; invade individual rights; sneakily raise our taxes; subtly control our kids, our lives, our language, and eventually us.

Just as my garden requires time, so does my job as a citizen. It is my responsibility to find sources I can trust - not ones with a mantra that espouse one side's agenda, not one that lays a guilt trip on me, not one that wants to run my life. Rather, I need to find those sources and politicians that have solutions, ones that let me keep my money, that think and believe in our nation. I would hope each of us would find an hour a day - radio, Internet, non-standard source to cultivate our minds so we control our government, not the other way around.

Labels: elections, politics

A few weeks ago Andy Cilek of the Minnesota Voters Alliance appeared on the Final Word with Michael and me. Here's the recording. Tuesday I received an email that the MVA has succeeded in getting enough signatures on a petition to get party designations on the ballot in St. Paul municipal elections. From their press release:

Certification of the petition will place the question on the 2007 ballot, allowing voters to decide whether candidates should be identified on the ballot by party affiliation, which would also allow each party to advance from the primary and be represented in the general election along with each qualified independent candidate. ...

Nonpartisan elections deprive voters of knowledge (on the ballot) of the candidates' political affiliations, and fail to guarantee that more than one Party can be represented in the general election. This has alienated the electorate, stifled debate, resulted in many “one Party” elections, and has limited the accountability of elected officials who have no Party platform, or specifically stated principles to abide by.

I can imagine Mitch on a ballot sometime soon. Don't you think it's time people knew who they voted for? Doesn't the label mean anything?

Labels: elections