Has Obama Given Up in North Carolina?

Paul Begala more than suggested last night that the President is not going to win in North Carolina and that he is giving up there:



But this is not borne out by the Obama campaign's spending. The Obama campaign ran more than 3,000 ads in North Carolina last week according to data reported by John Sides. Indeed, David Axelrod and company pushed back hard against the idea that they've given up in North Carolina this morning.

As I've pointed out many times, North Carolina is not central to the President's path to 270. It is also clear he's behind there by a little bit, probably 2-3 points.



So should the President give up on North Carolina? I don't think so.

Even though North Carolina is not likely to be the state that puts the President over the top, it is absolutely critical for Mitt Romney to win it. There is a law of diminishing returns in running ads everywhere else. Running more ads than you currently are in Ohio is not going to get you very much. So why not run ads in North Carolina and run an active campaign there if only to put some pressure on Mitt Romney? It is not so far out of reach that the Romney campaign can afford to pull resources from there and put them somewhere else. That's the reason to keep the pressure on in North Carolina.

Post-Debate Panic Among Democrats

Most of my Democratic friends (which is most of my friends) are in full freak-out mode about Obama's debate performance. Some of these people value my opinion on these things. Some of them seek out my opinion not because they believe it but because they figure I'll give them the pro-Obama spin and they just want to be comforted. Still others don't ask me for my opinion because they think I'm an apologist for everything Obama's ever done. Whether you want my opinion or not, here it is:

Settle down people, settle down. Read what John Sides has to say. Or read what Sam Wang has to say.

These are smart people. Very ... professorial. When did THAT become a bad word???

Look, the only way Romney can gain ground is if he wins over some undecided voters or if he wins over some voters "leaning" towards Obama who are persuaded to move. There are VERY few undecided voters out there. If half of them made up their minds tonight (not likely) and those people break for Romney 5 to 1 (not likely) ... he picks up a net of about a point to a point and a half. How many of those "leaning" towards Obama changed their mind? Not a lot. Could Romney gain 2 points? It's possible but 1 point is a better bet.

How Can Obama Be Doing So Well?

A lot of different pieces from a lot of different angles seem to be making similar arguments and asking a similar question.

The argument: Obama shouldn't be in good shape, yet he seems to be ahead.
The question: Why is Obama ahead?

I've been pointing out for some time that Obama seems to be in better shape than the national horserace polls suggest. For instance, almost two weeks ago, I pointed out that swing state polls seem to be better for Obama than his national polls. About a week ago, I highlighted a couple of electoral models, one put together by Nate Silver and one put together by Ezra Klein, John Sides, Lynn Vavreck, and Seth Hill that each suggested Obama was a favorite to win even with some mildly pessimistic assumptions about job approval and economic performance.

But there's more.

1) Two days ago, Nate Silver wrote a sophisticated piece looking at Obama's "magic number" on jobs. Three months earlier, Silver had written an article arguing that the President needed to average about 150,000 jobs created per month in order to win reelection. Now, Silver argues Obama's "magic number" seems slightly lower, closer to 125,000 jobs created per month. In effect, Obama seems to be doing better with less-than-robust jobs numbers than Silver had anticipated.

2) A couple of days before that, in a guest post by John Sides posted on Silver's blog, Sides asked "Is Obama More Popular Than He Should Be?" Sides finds that Obama is indeed more popular than he "should be" using a model of expected job approval based on a bunch of variables including economic performance, scandals, and other significant events that affect job approval. Sides speculates that Obama is "more popular" than he should be because of personal traits (he is likable) and because more voters continue to blame George W. Bush for the weak economy than Obama.

3) Yesterday, Mark Blumenthal posted an article pointing out that Obama seems to be running stronger in the key swing states of Ohio, Florida, and Virginia today than he was at a similar juncture in 2008 when he ... ya know, won those swing states. This is true despite the fact that he is running behind his 2008 numbers in the national horserace polls.

4) Finally, a number of observers have pointed out that the Electoral College math seems to favor the President. Chris Cillizza made this argument well about a week ago. Today, Michael Cooper of the New York Times wrote about nine swing states deemed "critical" to the presidential race. If you put all 9 of these states in the "tossup" category, Obama would have 217 electoral votes that are fairly solidly his. Romney would have about 170. But, as Cooper points out, all 9 of these states are states Obama won in 2012. More importantly, polls currently show Obama with leads (some significant) in a number of these states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Virginia, and even Ohio. The inclusion of Pennsylvania strikes a particular nerve with me. Every four years, everyone talks about Pennsylvania being a "swing state." The problem with this argument is that it doesn't "swing." In 2008, Obama won Pennsylvania by 11 points while winning nationally by about 6.5 points. Pollster.com's current polling aggregator shows Obama ahead there by 7.6 points. The last Republican to win Pennsylvania was George H. W. Bush ... 24 years ago and he only beat Mike Dukakis by 2.3 points. So, if we just take Pennsylvania off the list of "swing" states and give it to Obama, he's just 33 electoral votes away from victory with a lot of different paths through the remaining 8 "swing" states to get to 270. Then, add in a couple of other states that are very competitive that Cooper doesn't mention (Arizona, North Carolina) and you see that ...

... Obama seems to be doing surprisingly well for someone with job approval numbers under 50%. Why is this?

One big reason was hit upon by John Sides in pointing out that the President seems more empathetic, etc. than Mitt Romney. While the President's job approval numbers are borderline for an incumbent, people seem to "like" the President, at least more than they "like" Mitt Romney. The President's favorability rating is 47.8%. Romney's is 37.0%. Here's an interesting mental exercise to demonstrate the importance of these numbers. Run back through the last 10 presidential elections and the two major party nominees in each one. Which seemed like the more likable personality? My answers would be Obama, Bush, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, 1988???, Reagan, Reagan, Carter, 1972??? I put question marks for 1988 and 1972 since both candidates "seem" equally unlikable to me in those elections but the winner in every other case is the more likable personality. The one who you can imagine smiling more, the one who you can bear having on your television screen for the next four years, the one you can stand. That's who tends to win. Is that Obama or Romney? I think it is Obama.

Another reason Obama is doing well is that he has paid a lot of attention to key swing states like Ohio since he was elected in 2008. Last November, the Wall Street Journal pointed out that Obama has visited swing states more than any of his predecessors did as president. Yesterday, the President kicked off his campaign officially with stops in two states - Ohio and Virginia. From this perspective, the 2008 campaign never ended for Obama in these states.

Whatever the reason, the President is currently ahead by a variety of measures. Political pundits and journalists appear baffled by this for two reasons: 1) They want it to be a close race and 2) It makes no sense to them that the President could be ahead given that the economy is as weak as it is and given that the 2010 election was as bad as it was for the President and his party.

The election will be close. At a minimum, it will be close in the national horserace numbers. But it is also the case that the President has some built-in advantages described above and I'd rather be holding his cards than Governor Romney's. My one plea to everyone is just this ... can we stop calling Pennsylvania a swing state? Please?

Forecasting the Election

John Sides, Lynn Vavreck, Seth Hill, and Ezra Klein created a model for Klein's Washington Post blog to forecast the election outcome based on just 3 variables - incumbency, economic growth, and presidential approval. Since incumbency won't really "vary" for the 2012 election, there's effectively only 2 variables here. The model is similar to others like the one put together by Alan Abramowitz in advance of the 2008 election and the one put together by Nate Silver last November.

This new model is a bit more simple than Silver's model (the main difference is that it leaves Romney's ideology out of the equation) and it is quite a bit more simple than Abramowitz's model (insert math here).

The other interesting difference is the conclusions to be drawn from the Klein model. To put it most simply, Klein's model yields some pretty happy results from the Obama campaign's perspective. This is because Klein's model seems to count incumbency as more of an advantage than the other two. Just to give a sense of this, if we plug in some conservative (or even pessimistic) assumptions about the state of the economy (say 1.6% growth) and the President's job approval (say 46%), the President is a 78.4% bet to be reelected. Even at 0% growth and a 44% approval rating, the President has a 45.6% shot at re-election in the Klein model. The comparable numbers from Silver's model are 40% and 19%. Obviously, more optimistic scenarios (say, 3% growth and a 51% approval rating) make the President a very solid bet to win in either model (95.3% in Klein's model and 71% in Silver's model).

Are these models useful and, if so, which is likely more accurate? If you're having trouble sleeping at night because you have to know the outcome of the November election right now, these models are not going to help you. Even if they are done perfectly, they are only probabilities. And as someone who drafted Albert Pujols with the second overall pick in my fantasy baseball draft because he was a "very good bet" to be a fantasy monster, I would like to remind everyone that an event that has a 5% likelihood of happening like say, Albert Pujols hitting no homers in April, does happen ... roughly 5% of the time. But these models can tell us something useful. One useful piece of information is that, even though the models don't totally agree on the absolute likelihood of Obama being reelected under various circumstances, they do vary in roughly the same way. In other words, presidential approval and economic growth seem to have the same effect across these models as they move up and down.

As for which of them is most accurate, we really won't even know that after the election because (as these models demonstrate by providing probabilities) there are other variables that can and will affect the outcome. But I will say that Klein's model seems slightly closer to reality to me. One reason Klein's model seems like a better forecast is that Obama has some built in advantages in some of the key swing states like Ohio. I discussed this in more detail a couple of weeks ago and Chris Cillizza wrote about the problems Romney faces in the electoral math just yesterday. In addition, the incumbency effect that seems to be weighted more heavily in Klein's model really does matter. The President is, after all, the President. He has a really cool backdrop (the White House, the presidential seal, Air Force One, etc.) everywhere he goes and he has real presidential kind of accomplishments he can point to. As Mel Brooks would say, it's good to be the king.

Right now, Obama is ahead and Romney needs something to change whether it is the economy, some other intervening variable, or maybe a "game changing" VP pick. And since I have yet to see a single historical example of a VP pick delivering victory to a presidential candidate, I'm gonna rule that third option out.

Evangelical Latinos

Here's an interesting piece by Troy Gibson and Christopher Hare highlighted by the Monkey Cage on the effect of religiosity on ideology and partisan affiliation among Latinos.

One of the key conclusions is that Evangelical Latinos are roughly evenly split in terms of partisan affiliation while Catholic Latinos are Democratic by better than a 3:2 margin and secular Latinos are even more Democratic. The most surprising findings to me was that among Evangelical Latinos, 47% identify as Democrats and the authors look at Latino Catholics generationally and find that post-Vatican II Latinos are the most Democratic among Catholics.

These are very, very bad numbers for the Republican Party IF they hold in the long run (that's a big "if" of course). I would have guessed that Republicans had at least a nominal lead among Evangelical Latinos but they don't. Additionally, younger generations of Latinos are more Democratic. This is no different than the effect of age on the population as a whole (if anything the effect is muted among Latinos) but it is not a good sign for the future of the Republican Party nonetheless.

One question that is not addressed by the paper is the geographic spread of Evangelical Latinos. Where they are matters a lot at least in terms of presidential politics.

Was Michigan a Crippling Blow for Santorum?

I think it really was but first, let me tell you all the reasons why you might think I'm wrong.

First, Romney's victory in Michigan was not a blowout and he had to employ some messy backroom dealings to win the most delegates. Furthermore, it is likely that Romney will lose badly in Georgia, the biggest Super Tuesday prize in terms of delegates. Indeed, when you look at the Super Tuesday map, there are a few other delegate-rich states where Romney will likely lose including Oklahoma and Tennessee. Finally, the latest polls seem to indicate Romney is still just a couple of points behind in Ohio. Romney will surely win more delegates in Ohio because of the ineptness of the Santorum campaign but a popular-vote loss in Ohio would really look bad. As for the delegates, I suppose one would rather win more delegates than not but (and I've argued quite a bit with Jon Keller about this) the delegate count is really irrelevant in just the same way that the Super Delegates really didn't matter in the end in 2008. There was simply no way the person "perceived to win" more states and more delegates was going to have the nomination taken away from him (or her) in 2008 because of elites in the party and it isn't going to happen in 2012 either.

In addition to all of that, there is the possibility that Gingrich will bow out of the race after Super Tuesday because he'll only win his "home" state of Georgia and won't be very competitive elsewhere. A little more than a month ago, John Sides and Lynn Vavreck posted some data to support their argument that Gingrich or Santorum dropping out would not help the other. In other words, they argue quite a bit of the "not Romney" vote would go to Romney rather than just coalescing behind the last "not Romney" standing. Nate Silver presented at least some data to contradict Sides and Vavreck.

So, that's a lot of reasons to think Romney has not quite locked down the nomination. But here's why the race for the nomination really is over.

1) The Narrative - The way Romney won Michigan was more important than the fact that he only won by 3 points. He was trailing in most polls (by a lot in some) until about a week before the primary. Because Michigan is one of Romney's "home" states, the race there became a key test of his campaign. So, expectations were set low (ie, "he may lose") and it was viewed as important (ie, "he has to win"). By winning, even by a little bit, Romney emerged with something a lot more important than delegates. He emerged with momentum and the sense that his campaign had exceeded expectations.

2) Organization - Ohio is not the only place the Santorum campaign's lack of organization has hurt them. Virginia votes on Super Tuesday and both Gingrich and Santorum failed to get on the ballot there. More generally, the Santorum campaign has been remarkably inept in its messaging. Santorum himself has a tendency to say things that are controversial. In some senses, this is what many of his supporters like about him. But it would help a lot to have a real campaign organization that would put the candidate's comments in context or put the right spin on them and it would help to have a campaign organization that can respond to Romney's criticism's of the candidate. These are all but absent.

3) Gingrich - Does Gingrich leave the race after Super Tuesday? My prediction is that he won't. Alabama and Mississippi vote one week later on March 13. I'm not a psychologist but Newt Gingrich's ego doesn't need much in the way of evidence to convince him America fundamentally needs him. His "big" win in Georgia might be enough and, if Santorum does even a little worse than expected on Tuesday, Gingrich will have even more reason to believe he is the alternative to Romney everyone has been waiting for. I know this is silly. But it is really how Gingrich thinks. He's silly.

4) Money - You may have heard that Mitt Romney is independently wealthy. Even with his fundraising troubles, Romney has the money to go on and the others simply don't. They can go on in the technical sense but they don't have much money and that gap is going to grow after Super Tuesday as fewer and fewer people believe there is a path to victory for Santorum or Gingrich. How bad is the money situation for Gingrich? To date, he's still raised less money than Rick Perry ... who quit the race for the second time before South Carolina and endorsed Gingrich. How bad is the money situation for Santorum? Even accounting for the $4.5M he's raised so far in the first quarter of 2012, he's still raised less money than Michele Bachmann and about the same amount as Jon Huntsman ... who quit the race after New Hampshire because nobody outside of New Hampshire supported him. The trickle of money Gingrich and Santorum were raising is going to dry up further after Tuesday.

I'm not saying Santorum (or Gingrich as I've stated above) will drop out after Tuesday. But the race is likely to be effectively over. And, when we look back, I think it will be the case that Michigan was where the race really ended. Before Michigan, Romney was in some trouble and there was a lot of discussion of whether someone else would jump in the race if Romney was defeated there. After Michigan, Romney has been viewed as back in the driver's seat and he followed up with a win in Washington where polls suggested he was losing just a week and a half ago. The worst-case scenario (losing Ohio by a small margin) on Tuesday still has Romney winning most of the states and the vast majority of delegates across all 10 states. There is simply not likely to be any more oxygen for Santorum or Gingrich.