Sabato's Crystal Ball

Sound and Fury: Feeding Frenzies in the Presidential Silly Season

Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik, U.Va. Center for Politics May 17th, 2012

In the beginning, there was the Etch A Sketch.

After the Illinois primary on March 20, which signaled the beginning of the end of the Republican presidential nominating process, Mitt Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom discussed how his candidate would pivot toward the general election: “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

Several days later, there was President Obama, who told Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would have “flexibility” to negotiate on missile defense after the election.

Then there were the comments from Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, who said that Ann Romney (wife of Mitt) “never worked a day in her life.”

And last week, after his vice president pushed him into a corner, Obama surprised no one by endorsing gay marriage, a Darwinian evolution from his earlier position of supporting just civil unions. The very next day — in a bit of timing we’ll simply call curiously coincidental — the Washington Post reported that Mitt Romney, as a prep school boy, cut the hair of a purportedly gay classmate in an act of bullying at his elite boarding school.

What do all of these things have in common? They are all, to at least some degree, “feeding frenzies.”

Candidates beware: With the presidential silly season upon us, you are entering what can be described, contra Bill O’Reilly, as the “All-Spin Zone.” Without actual news, the press will fixate on any gaffe, big or small. But how many of these frenzies actually matter?

What is a feeding frenzy?

A feeding frenzy — as defined by the book of the same name — is “the press coverage attending any political event or circumstance where a critical mass of journalists leap to cover the same embarrassing or scandalous subject and pursue it intensely, often excessively, and sometimes uncontrollably.”

Not all feeding frenzies are the same, but they generally can be classified into three levels of severity:

The context matters

So far at least, all the examples listed above from the 2012 campaign season probably belong in the “frenziette” category. But that doesn’t mean they are meaningless.

When assessing media feeding frenzies, the context matters. Incidents that seem to confirm or reinforce an existing stereotype about a candidate have a better chance of being covered. For instance, when President Gerald Ford said during a 1976 debate that “There is no Soviet dominanation of Eastern Europe,” it played into the (false) image of Ford as a clumsy bumbler. In the same election, Jimmy Carter gave an interview to Playboy saying that he had “committed adultery in my heart many times.” In an interview setting that was clearly designed to change Carter’s image as a sanctimonious, holier-than-thou candidate, he came off sounding… well, sanctimonious and holier-than-thou.

The four incidents from recent weeks all have important subtexts:

From a policy standpoint, President Obama’s embrace of gay marriage is not a minor issue: It is a notable shift that might have some bearing on how some voters will vote, even in an election that almost assuredly will be dominated by the economy. For instance, we can imagine that Obama’s decision will boost his fundraising and help him turn out the youth vote. It also might play well in some libertarian-leaning states, such as Colorado (where white evangelicals, probably the main group that will react negatively to the announcement, made up only 21% of the 2008 electorate, according to exit polls). Meanwhile, Obama might be hurt in states with bigger evangelical populations, such as two states he won in 2008: Indiana (43% evangelical in 2008 exit polling) and North Carolina (44%). For context, exit polls indicated that white evangelicals made up 26% of the national electorate in 2008, and they favored John McCain, 74% to Obama’s 24%.

But the ephemeral stories wrapped around Obama’s announcement — Joe Biden’s forcing Obama’s hand by announcing his support for gay marriage a few days beforehand, and the revelation about Romney as a high school bully — probably do not matter much. Biden put his boss in a box by undercutting him and forcing him, reportedly, to make his announcement before he wanted to. But barring a switch in Veeps prompted by Biden’s goofs — a possibility we see as nearly inconceivable at this point — Obama’s actual change in opinion is the only thing that is important.

Timing is everything

Some elections are defined by major issues and profound disagreements about policy. For instance, 2004 was largely about the Iraq war and 2008 was about the economic collapse. The Iran hostage crisis and stagflation defined 1980. This election, as we’ve mentioned, is likely to be dominated by the slow recovery.

But not all elections are that way. The election of 1988 was largely about social issues such as crime. The most memorable artifact of that election was the Willie Horton ad, which stirred passions about race, law and order, and punishment. A dozen years later, the campaign between George W. Bush and Al Gore was considered so vapid it was called the “Seinfeld election”– an election about nothing.

In 2000 Gore’s “frenziettes” received substantial negative attention: his kissing now ex-wife Tipper at the Democratic convention, his “creating the Internet” and his odd sighing and creeping up on Bush during a debate, among other things. Meanwhile, Bush suffered a full-blown frenzy just days before the election, when reports surfaced of a drunk-driving arrest from the 1970s. Again, this played into the existing subtext some reporters had about Bush — that he was an unserious partier who had simply capitalized on the family name — and, because of the timing, it’s possible that the revelation actually cost him many votes.

Bush strategist Karl Rove claimed, in the days before the election — and the DUI story — that his candidate was on track to win 320 electoral votes. Obviously, Bush ended up losing the popular vote, and he barely won the presidency (271 electoral votes) after a legal battle over the razor-thin Florida result. Bush campaign officials believed that the DUI story undercut Bush’s main anti-Clinton campaign theme of “honor and integrity” and depressed turnout among evangelical Christians, possibly costing Bush the popular vote. Whatever the truth of that, the disclosure just before Election Day had to be damaging. If the story had surfaced in, say, July, it probably would have been forgotten by November. Former Bush spokesman Scott McClellan was correct when he argued in his memoir that Bush should have disclosed the drunk-driving incident earlier in the campaign so that he could have discussed it on his own terms.

Returning to an earlier example, Ford’s gaffe about Eastern Europe in 1976 clearly hurt him in his close race with Carter, given that the post-debate media frenzy changed viewers’ first polled reactions to that debate: They initially thought Ford had won, but days later gave the debate to Carter after the negative press coverage of Ford’s gaffe. The controversy went on and on, partly because of Ford’s stubbornness in refusing to admit he had misspoken. Given the closeness of the election — Ford would have won if he had flipped roughly 18,000 votes in Wisconsin and 6,000 in Ohio (both places with significant populations of voters with Eastern European lineages) — the gaffe might have cost Ford a full term as president.

Conclusion

One of the reasons why campaigns can be so boring and scripted, with candidates rarely saying anything interesting on the trail, is that they are desperate to avoid even a “frenziette.” Similarly, in frustration with the buttoned-up campaigns, journalists will jump on any little slip-up and report it as a gaffe. Call it a frenzied Catch-22 of the contemporary campaign.

Media storms and squalls will inevitably burst in the next few months, even though the only candidate-initiated move that might change the electoral calculus before the conventions is Romney’s selection of a vice president. Even that big announcement may not move the electoral needle very much, though we all recall the list of modern VP candidates who generated major controversies and full-fledged frenzies: Spiro Agnew (1968), Thomas Eagleton (1972), Geraldine Ferraro (1984), Dan Quayle (1988) and Sarah Palin (2008).

Therefore, if you like significant media frenzies that can have an impact on the election, you may have to wait for Mitt Romney’s running-mate unveiling. Until then, you’ll have plenty of frenziettes to occupy your time and attention.

The States That Put Presidents Over the Top

Geoffrey Skelley, Political Analyst May 17th, 2012

We all think we know which states are the pivotal players in the Electoral College. The Crystal Ball’s most recent look at the map showed that there are seven “Super Swing States:” Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia. How these states vote on Nov. 6 will likely decide the outcome of the 2012 presidential contest.

But which state will put either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney over the top? In other words, which state will actually prove to be the decisive domino in the race to 270 electoral votes?

A simple yet meaningful way to look for the decisive state is to order the states according to the winner’s margin of victory. By arranging the states in this way, we can find the cut-off point where the winning candidate crosses the 270 electoral vote threshold. The state that gives a candidate a majority of the 538 votes in the Electoral College is the decisive state.

In 2008, that state was Colorado. Obama won the Centennial State by about nine percentage points over John McCain; had Obama failed to carry Colorado and every state that he won by a smaller margin, the Electoral College result would have been a 269-269 tie, a result that would have thrown the election into the House of Representatives. (Actually, the one electoral vote Obama won in the Second District of Nebraska would have given him a 270-268 victory, but our analysis here is state-based.) By carrying Colorado’s nine electoral votes, Obama clinched his victory.

Considering that the final tally in 2008 was Obama 365, McCain 173, it is easy to overlook the concept of the decisive state. In a blowout win, such as an FDR or Reagan landslide, the margin of victory in the decisive state can be nearly 20 percentage points. However, in a too-close-to-call election, that margin might be tenths, even hundredths, of a percentage point. Just look at 2000, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by .01% of the vote in Florida to reach 271 electoral votes. Flip Florida and Gore wins.

Examining the decisive states in recent elections naturally prompts the question: Which state has been decisive most often in American presidential elections? In the spirit of the 2000 election, it’s a tie, at least if we start our analysis with the first Democrat-versus-Republican contest in 1856. The chart below details the deciding state in each election, while the map illustrates which states have been most decisive. Keep in mind that the electoral vote count has changed over time as states were added and populations have shifted; the current total, 538, was not reached until 1964, when the District of Columbia first cast its three electoral votes.

Chart 1: Decisive states in presidential elections, 1856-2008



Map 1: The most decisive states in the Electoral College, 1856-2008





Source: Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

It may surprise contemporary election junkies that New York has been one of the two most decisive states in history. Yet it will shock no one that Ohio is the other. Both states have clinched election victories six times, accounting for 12 of the 39 elections between 1856 and 2008. Ohio did so most recently and memorably in the close 2004 contest. For Richard Nixon, Ohio proved to be a good friend — it went for him in his 1960 loss and ensured him victory in both 1968 and 1972. As for New York, the last time the Empire State put a winner over the top was in 1944, when its then-47 electoral votes guaranteed Franklin Roosevelt’s final presidential triumph. But New York’s heyday as the nation’s pivotal swing state really came in the late 19th century, when it decided three straight closely-fought elections (1880, 1884, and 1888).

The Land of Lincoln is the next most-decisive state, with five wins to its name. Appropriately, Illinois’ electoral votes were the deciding factor for Abraham Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. Next is three-timer Michigan, which put Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush over the top in 1984 and 1988, respectively. Four states have proven decisive twice (California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Tennessee), and 11 have done so once. The smallest state to settle an election is Rhode Island, whose then-five electoral votes certified Warren G. Harding’s win in his 1920 landslide victory.

What state will prove decisive in 2012? Ohio is always in contention, but so might be Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, or several other Purple swing states. Given that Virginia was the state closest to the national average in 2008 (Obama took 52.9% nationally and 52.6% in the Old Dominion), the Crystal Ball’s home state could be the crucial, final domino for one party or the other in November — which would be its first turn as the decisive state in the Democrat-versus-Republican era.

A Senate That’s Fit to Be Tied? Updating the Battle for Congress

Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik, U.Va. Center for Politics May 10th, 2012

Some analysts have been making the case that 2012 is going to turn decisively one way or the other — perhaps evolving into a 2008-style margin for Democrats or Republicans.

Maybe they are right, but every objective piece of evidence so far suggests that this election will be quite close and highly competitive for the presidency, Senate and, to perhaps a lesser extent, House.

It’s not 2008 anymore. There are contradictory trade winds blowing hard, some lifting President Obama, and others Mitt Romney.

Enthusiasm seems restrained for both men in critical parts of the electorate. For Obama, what was a crusade four years ago is a mere campaign today. Governing realities and a stubbornly slow economic recovery have tempered the heady expectations that powered Obama to a decisive win. “Hope and change” has become a rote movement “Forward” without an obvious destination.

For Romney, few are under any illusions that he has a magic elixir to solve the protracted problems the nation faces. Given his breathtaking ideological evolution over the years, many in his own party base are unsure what he will actually do on many issues, should he be elected.

Perhaps we’re heading toward another 2000 or 2004-style election: A close, gritty affair where neither side will score a towering victory. In other words, while it’s easy now to see either the Democrats or Republicans doing well in November, it’s hard to see either doing great, at least right now.

Shifts in the Senate

Sen. Richard Lugar’s (R-IN) landslide defeat on Tuesday night adds yet another wrinkle to this year’s battle for the U.S. Senate. Lugar would have been a shoo-in for reelection, but now Democrats have at least a modest chance to grab the seat. Rep. Joe Donnelly, the Democratic nominee, has to be ecstatic. We still believe that Richard Mourdock, the Republican state treasurer who defeated Lugar on Tuesday, is the favorite to win this seat, but we are changing the rating from “likely Republican” to LEANS REPUBLICAN. Lugar ran a miserable campaign and was dogged by questions about his residency — it appeared that he hadn’t lived in the Hoosier State since the 1970s. Lugar’s loss is a lesson that politics, like all other sports, requires practice, and after finding himself in a real race for the first time in decades, Lugar was out of shape. It cost him. Hoosier Republicans wanted a more conservative senator, too — and they might get him.

Meanwhile, it is tempting to give the same rating to the Republican incumbent commonly thought to be most vulnerable in this cycle: Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts. That’s because Brown is a steady, cagey campaigner, and his opponent — liberal favorite and consumer protection advocate Elizabeth Warren — has had a terrible couple of weeks. After stories emerged about her being listed as a minority at Harvard (she is reportedly 1/32nd Native American), Warren made a clumsy gaffe:  “I still have a picture on my mantel and it is a picture my mother had before that — a picture of my grandfather. And my Aunt Bea has walked by that picture at least a 1,000 times remarked that he — her father, my Papaw — had high cheekbones like all of the Indians do.” If the 2012 election has a “Macaca” moment — referring to the infamous incident from ex-Sen. George Allen’s (R-VA) 2006 reelection campaign — this could very well be it.

That said, we are keeping this race a toss-up for now.

The problem for Brown is that he’s going to have to overcome a Democratic wave in November of presumably epic proportions. In 2008 Obama defeated John McCain in Massachusetts by about 62% to 36% — or a margin of 795,000 votes. Even though Massachusetts native Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee, Obama will still win comfortably. Let’s say that Obama wins by only 700,000 votes. That still means that Brown would need more than 350,000 of those voters to split their ballots for him in order to turn the tide. Assuming turnout is about the same — 3.1 million ballots cast in 2008 — he’ll need at least 11% of voters to split their tickets in his favor. That’s a lot in a partisan era, even against an imperfect candidate. However, Warren needs to get her act together.

In the wake of Warren’s gaffe, a new Rasmussen poll showed the two candidates tied at 45% apiece, not a bad result for Warren under the circumstances.

Speaking of faltering candidacies, Rep. Connie Mack (R) has been floundering in his challenge to Florida Sen. Bill Nelson (D). Mack has struggled with basic inquiries from reporters, and he faces the same questions about residency — his wife, Rep. Mary Bono Mack, lives in California — that helped sink Lugar. Mack reminds us a bit of Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the presidential contest, and we’re not being complimentary. Like Perry, who entered the White House race late and had trouble articulating why exactly he was running, Mack seemed to jump into the Florida Senate contest only when it became apparent that the existing GOP field was not very good.

However, it is not clear how that GOP field — which also includes ex-Sen. George LeMieux — will shake out. And perhaps a big Romney wave in Florida will lift Mack, too.

If the election were today, we’d probably pick Scott Brown in Massachusetts and Bill Nelson in Florida. But it isn’t, and we’re going to wait a bit longer before we move those races out of the toss-up column.

There is one toss-up we’re now comfortable moving: We now favor the Democrats in New Mexico’s Senate race. The reason has little to do with the two likely big party nominees: Rep. Martin Heinrich (D) and ex-Rep. Heather Wilson (R). It does have to do with the fact that New Mexico looks to be squarely in Barack Obama’s camp in November, and we don’t see a huge crossover vote boosting the Republican Wilson. Obviously, if Romney opens up a lead in the presidential race, and if New Mexico becomes competitive, we’ll have to revisit this rating. But, for now, this race LEANS DEMOCRATIC.

Finally, and though he had a tougher-than-expected run in 2010, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is looking strong, in part because his opponent is the lackluster businessman and perennial candidate John Raese, whom Manchin defeated in 2010. We’re moving this race to SAFE DEMOCRATIC, despite West Virginia’s Republican lean at the presidential level. Note that Manchin has declined to endorse his party’s president, Barack Obama, and he did not indicate if he, like so many other West Virginia Democrats, preferred prison inmate Keith Judd to the sitting president.

The Senate calculus is now this: If all members not up for reelection return to the Senate next January, and all the seats where we favor one party go that way in November, the Senate is 47-46 Democratic, with seven toss-ups.

Chart 1: Crystal Ball Senate rating changes



Tweaking the House

Republicans remain strongly favored to keep the House, but it looks like Democrats will be able to pick up at least some seats to cut into the GOP’s 242-190 edge (with three Democratic vacancies). That said, Republicans are not without opportunities.

Chart 2: Crystal Ball House ratings changes



On Tuesday, the National Republican Congressional Committee had a good night. In two competitive races, the GOP establishment’s preferred candidate won: first, freshman Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN) held off a challenge from activist Kristi Risk; and second, state Sen. David Rouzer (R) won the right to challenge vulnerable Rep. Mike McIntyre by dispatching 2010 McIntyre challenger Ilario Pantano. A Pantano candidacy would have kept this district a toss-up; with Rouzer’s win, we now give him a slight edge. Also, retiring Rep. Brad Miller’s seat appears almost certain to go to former U.S. Attorney George Holding (R); the winner of the Democratic primary for that seat announced before the primary that he would not be a candidate in the fall, forcing Democrats to find a new contender. At this point, Republicans are favored to win four Democratic-held seats in the Tar Heel State, but Democrats could possibly limit these losses to a couple.

Rep. Mark Critz (D-PA), who won a tough member-versus-member primary against Rep. Jason Altmire, will face Keith Rothfus, who almost beat Altmire in 2010 in this re-shaped Western Pennsylvania district. We previously rated this race as leans Democratic with the thought that Altmire would win the primary, because under the new Republican-drawn Keystone State House map, the district was actually a touch bluer than Altmire’s current district. However, because Critz won, this district could go either way — Critz’s current territory is several points bluer than the new PA-12, where he now must run.

We are continuing to alter and monitor developments in New York, where redistricting maps were released relatively late and where the primary is late (June 26). Still, some big names — such as Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rep. Steve Israel (D) and Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King (R) — seem safe.

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), the eccentric octogenarian, is now an underdog against wealthy Democratic businessman John Delaney, who since our last update won a smashing primary upset and is well positioned to capitalize on a Democratic gerrymander and retire Bartlett.

At this point, we rate 234 House seats as safe, likely or leaning Republican and 188 as safe, likely or leaning Democratic. That leaves 13 toss-ups — if the Democrats can sweep those (hardly a given), they would have an eight-seat gain. But it will take cutting into seats where we currently favor Republicans — and holding some currently Democratic-held seats we believe at this point will flip — to really threaten John Boehner’s speakership.

With the election now less than six months away, we will be making more frequent updates to our House ratings. To see our full House ratings, click here; and our Senate ratings are available here.

Conclusion

A good early bet is for the margins of control to narrow in both houses of Congress. Republicans should win the House of Representatives again, but Democrats will pick up some seats, maybe cutting the GOP majority of 25 by a third or (only if Obama wins handily) by as much as half. The Senate appears likely to be very narrowly divided, with Democrats holding on by a seat or, more likely, Republicans gaining technical control by a seat or two. It might even come down to a tie-breaking vote by the newly elected vice president or the eventual party-choice decision of Maine’s Angus King, the Independent frontrunner for Republican Olympia Snowe’s Senate seat. We believe he’ll ultimately caucus with the Democrats, but there’s a lot that can happen between now and next January that might change that calculus.