The Jobs Report and the Post-Debate Environment

I moderated a panel on the election last night with Chris Kofinis and Greg Strimple, two nationally prominent political consultants. Kofinis is a Democrat and Strimple is a Republican. One of the striking things about the discussion was how much they agreed on the debate and the post-debate environment. They both felt the debate was a very, very bad night for the President and that Romney was now back in the game after his campaign had been floundering for 60-90 days. I asked them both where the polls would be by early next week. Neither gave a specific number but Kofinis said the race would "tighten" and Strimple seemed to say Romney would get an even bigger boost and that Romney would be tied or even could lead.

This morning, Rasmussen released their daily tracking poll which includes one night of post-debate numbers. The topline numbers were unchanged but Rasmussen did note

The single night of polling conducted after the debate did show some improvement for Romney, but it remains to be seen whether that will continue or if it was merely statistical noise.

In the immediate aftermath of the debate, I said I thought Romney would pick up 1 to 2 points. I still think that's about right.

Then, today's jobs report came out. The economy added 114,000 jobs in September and the BLS revised upward the number of jobs the economy added in July and August. Perhaps most importantly from a political perspective, the unemployment rate dropped below 8% to 7.8% ... exactly where the unemployment rate was in January 2009 when President Obama was inaugurated. So what effect will this have on the race?

First, it helps Obama change the subject from his poor debate performance. The biggest problem with the debate performance was the echo chamber of the media talking about it. That discussion will now be more muted in the media or, at the very least, the media will be talking about the question of "does the jobs report change the subject?" That's what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy folks. Second, the jobs report strengthens the President's argument in the next debate in response to the most important question in the campaign: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Not only can the President say, "We inherited a disaster and we've now turned the corner." Much of the coverage of the last 30 days has focused on the President's rise in the polls being related to missteps by Governor Romney. What has been under-emphasized in the coverage has been the rise in consumer confidence. One good measure of this is Gallup's Economic Confidence Index.

Today's news is going to continue the trend we see there. And that is good for Obama.

Let me add this one last point: The next debate will be a town hall format and there WILL BE a question where a person stands up and says they are unemployed and want to know "what each of you will do specifically to help people like me." Count on that question. The President should answer the question with some specific things he's doing and planning to do to help. But he should then also pivot to say, "We inherited a mess created by the exact same policies that Governor Romney wants to double down on. And now we've tried it my way for four years and the result has been 5,000,000 private sector jobs added to the economy and we've brought unemployment back down to where it was when they left me with this mess. We shouldn't go back, we should keep going forward."

That's the job the President has for the next debate and this jobs report makes it easier to make that argument.

The Anti-Bounce?

Lots of Democrats are hoping for a big bounce in the wake of the Democratic Convention which was capped off by a terrific speech by the President.

My initial reaction was that the speech and the performance were very good (particularly the end) but that Obama would get very little or no bounce because of many of the same reasons that Romney did not get much of a bounce.

Today, the jobs report was very disappointing. The unemployment rate ticked down because many people stopped looking for work but the economy added under 100,000 jobs.

The bounce was likely to be non-existent and now this jobs report is bad so could Obama actually lose ground in the polls? Not likely. First, some will focus on the fact that the unemployment rate ticked down, even though it is not for good reasons. Second, the news is disappointing but not disastrous. The "locked in" electorate is not likely to be moved in EITHER direction very easily.

Finally, if anyone is looking for the tiniest ray of hope in the jobs report (or if you're just inclined to be blissfully delusional), it is this: The public sector continued to shed jobs in August and public sector job losses were revised upwards for June and July. You're probably thinking "how is that good news?" The answer is that those public sector job losses are likely to stop in September and October. If that could be combined with some slightly better private sector job growth, the jobs picture could improve.

But that's a faint hope for another day. Today, I think the Obama campaign is hoping to just tread water.

Bump Bump

Bill Clinton was clearly fantastic last night. Deval Patrick and Michelle Obama were great the night before. My guess is that Obama will be very good if not great tonight. There are also some indications the jobs report due out tomorrow morning will be decent at worst and possibly quite good.

So, what will it mean? Will Obama get the bounce that Romney seems not to have gotten?

I don't know but, if forced to guess, I think he will get a small bump ... a muted bump. David Plouffe made the case today that the campaign is not expecting a bump. That was at least partly his effort to lower expectations of those excited by Clinton's speech. But there is some truth in his explanation. Much of the electorate is locked in. Also, there are simply less people watching than we've seen in the past. Instead, what people see is the media reviews the next day. And there, they'll see Fox panning it and MSNBC saying it was better than the sermon on the mount. They'll see what they want to see.

All of that is my guess. But, if I'm right, it is not all that bad for Obama. He's winning right now. If the conventions pass with little or no movement, Romney will have missed an opportunity to change the dynamic of the race and I think he needs that dynamic to change. There will be more opportunities but not too many of them. It matters that he's missed one here.

Movement?

A couple of days ago, Quinnipiac released polls in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania showing Obama with leads of 6, 6, and 11 points respectively among likely voters.

Yesterday, Pew Research Center released a national poll showing Obama with a whopping 10-point lead with Romney's unfavorables ticking up to 52%.

This morning, the monthly jobs report held moderately good news for Obama ... a gain of 163,000 jobs in July. We've said previously that averaging job gains of even 125,000 a month would probably be good enough for the President to get reelected.

Finally, Nate Silver's model has Obama's probability of winning ticking up a bit over 70% and that has not yet factored in the decent jobs report.

So, is there real movement in the race here or just statistical noise? Let's break down each piece of news here. The Quinnipiac polls are probably the most positive indicator in all this as they are a good pollster and the Ohio and Florida numbers are surprisingly strong for Obama (please don't get me started on Pennsylvania again). Quinnipiac has moved to a likely voter screen here though and, while that normally gives a slight bump to the Republicans, it could do almost anything depending on how they are screening likely voters. So, it is entirely possible there is no movement here at all and Obama's lead in Ohio and Florida in these polls is just a function of a bad likely voter screen. Similarly, it could be statistical noise though these polls had very large sample sizes (over 1,000 likely voters in each state).

The Pew poll shows a very large lead for Obama that is out of step with other polls. Pew has had a significant house effect towards Obama for some time now so the "lead" would need to be discounted some just for that reason alone. Nate Silver discussed this at length last night.

The jobs numbers are decent for Obama but not incredible. The new numbers basically stem the erosion of confidence in my view rather than boosting Obama. This is good news for Obama no doubt but it is not a "game-changer."

Taking all that together, I think it is fair to say it has been a good couple of days for Obama but "no movement" is a good day for him right now. He doesn't need the dynamic of the race to change. I am not sure we're seeing actual movement in any numbers here. We'll know more in a week or two but count me as one who believes the breaking news here is ... nothing, nothing is happening.

Why Aren't Obama's Numbers Dropping?

There has been a lot of bad news for the President recently. The jobs numbers were very bad. The President compounded the problem with a bad gaffe. Karen Tumulty reports Democrats are starting to panic. Global opinion of Obama has started to slip. Carville and Greenberg are convinced Obama has the wrong message on the economy. Indeed, independent voters do not like what Obama is saying on the economy. Meanwhile, Eric Holder is under renewed fire and Obama's Secretary of the Commerce had a strange health episode over the weekend that led to several hit-and-run accidents.

It's been a rough patch ... and yet,



What's going on here? Some possibilities:

1) Maybe the bad news for Obama is just not yet reflected in these polls. Perhaps, but there are several polls out in the past couple of days that do take most all of these stories into account. If this is the best explanation, we should see Obama's numbers decline in the next few days at the latest.

2) People dislike Romney too much to turn to him. Possible, but that would at least cause Obama's numbers to drop a little more than they have with some voters moving into the undecided category.

3) What I think is going on here is that there are just fewer voters than usual that are "persuadable." There just aren't very many people who have not already made up their minds about the November election. Most voters have very clear, fixed views of the Democratic and Republican brands, Obama personally, his leadership, etc. If there is one area where at least some voters are still movable, it is focused on Mitt Romney. Some voters (a small number) do not yet know enough about him to render a final verdict.

Because of that last point, the campaigns are now going to spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars defining who Mitt Romney is, what his policy proposals mean, and what a Romney presidency would look like. Sure, Romney will spend a lot of money explaining how Obama has done a very bad job. Most of this spending is a waste. The vast majority of voters have already come to their own conclusions on that and the few that might change their minds will change their minds based on events (the economy, etc.). They will not be moved by Romney's ads.

UPDATE: Nate Cohn makes virtually the same point.

Gotcha

Yesterday, the President made the mistake of saying something technically correct but politically sinful. The President was making the point that the reason job growth has been so slow has been layoffs in the public sector at the state and local level. This is ... true. Private sector job growth (800,000 jobs this year so far) has actually been "fine" to quote the President but states, counties, and cities are facing tremendous deficits and have been laying off workers fairly steadily. This not only reduces job growth in the short term by offsetting private sector job gains, it also makes it harder for the private sector to create jobs in the longer run because the multiplier effect of those government jobs is lost.

So ... the President said,

As I've said, we created 4.3 million jobs over the last two (years), 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weakness in our economy have (sic) to do with the state and local government, often times cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government. And who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.

Within context, the President's remarks are true but politically unwise. Out of context, the President's remarks are a nightmare. Here's the first ad cut by the RNC using the quote:



And Mitt Romney quickly jumped on the out-of-context portion ...



Just as an aside, Romney proves himself to be a very, very bad candidate at every turn. Notice, in the middle of the gift the President gave him, he sort of gives one back by arguing

He [Obama] says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did.

Now, this is not a mistake on the order of Obama. But this is also not the argument you want to be making Willard. The American people DO want more firemen, policemen, and teachers.

Anyway, the President felt the need to walk back his remarks:



It is fair to say some damage has been done and the Republicans will use this quote over and over I'm sure. I know and you know this is a "silly season" issue to use the President's common phrase. There is nothing actually at stake here. The President is aware that the jobs issue is job #1 and he's not misunderstanding it so much as Mitt Romney is mischaracterizing it. But being right isn't what wins elections when it is this close. He's got to be more careful and I think he's got to start engaging the campaign a bit more directly than he has been.

The Jobs Report is Bad for ...

... everybody. It is just a very disappointing set of numbers.

It is also bad for Obama's electoral prospects. The only good news is that it is early and the jobs numbers are a bit better in key swing states like Virginia. But the problem with that latter positive spin is that the jobs numbers affect the election in two distinct ways. The real victims, people who are out of work and looking for work will feel pain and be apt to punish the President no matter what the jobs numbers are. The other impact is the perception that these poor numbers create. So, even if you live in Virginia where the numbers are not quite as bad, you still see pretty much the same news story (ie, "the economy is very sluggish") and feel the same pessimism about the direction we're headed.

All of that said, this is one data point that will be replaced by others that are more important (for instance, next month's jobs numbers). I suspect Obama's numbers will drop just a tiny bit on today's news. Tomorrow, next week, etc., is another day.

Del Boca Vista Turnout Low

As I mentioned the other day, turnout was quite low in Florida compared with 2008. So reports Michael McDonald and he plots turnout by county compared with 2008 against Gingrich's share of the vote. What he finds is that turnout was particularly low in the places where Romney did well and particularly high where Gingrich did well.

What do these data mean? McDonald says:

What will happen in the general election if Romney is the nominee is anyone's guess. I suspect that Republican conservatives will line up behind Romney, but they will not do so enthusiastically. And while Romney does well among moderate, urban and suburban voters, the lack of enthusiasm exhibited by these voters should caution Romney that he may not continue to do as well among these voters when his opponent is Barack Obama. This would not matter in deep red states, but could matter in some battlegrounds like Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia -- states where the Obama campaign appears to be targeting and where he can rely on enthusiastic African-American voters.

I think McDonald is understating the importance of what we're seeing here. Independent voters are not liking what they are seeing from Romney so far. Today's jobs report is not going to sour them on Obama further ... at least not right now.

Romney will get conservative voters to turn out for him. We've known that. What has been unclear is what price he'll pay among independents for getting them to show up. If Newt Gingrich can hold on to conservative support until Super Tuesday, he can do some damage there and force Romney to do some more pandering to the right. It is already a good bet that Romney will have to pick a running mate who is Palin-esque. DeMint anyone?

It seems to me the low turnout in Del Boca Vista and the surrounding communities is a bad sign for Mitt and his hair. Getting on stage with the Donald isn't helping any.