Issues

There's this typical mode of election analysis where you see that voters who said "change" is important voted for Obama, and voters who said "experience" is important voted for Clinton, so then Clinton won because more people were interested in experience, or else Clinton lost in another state because more people were interested in change. I can't quite prove it, but I'm pretty sure this is wrong. It seems to me that people are drawn to one candidate or another for a murky series of reasons, and then they come to pick up their favorite candidate's themes. So people who like Clinton develop an appreciation for the importance of experience, whereas Obama supporters decide that the Iraq War is the most important issue.

Larry Bartels has a paper about this phenomenon that I recommend to one and all. Certainly, I think pundits ought to do a better job of at least keeping the possibility of this sort of thing happening. In general election terms, for example, Andrew Gelman has observed that the behavior of most voters is pretty consistent and predictable from year-to-year. But the candidates are always changing. So when George W. Bush is the nominee, the sort of people inclined to vote Republican claim that Bush's personal characteristics are really crucial, but when John McCain becomes the nominee the sort of people inclined to vote Republican like his personal characteristics.

Comments

The link for Barels is broken (or at least was so for me).

Posted by Aaron | March 5, 2008 9:25 AM

The link for Bartels is broken (or at least was so for me).

Posted by Aaron | March 5, 2008 9:26 AM

Here it is (as a PDF):

http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/thinking.pdf

I haven't read it yet, so I cannot comment...

Posted by batondor | March 5, 2008 9:29 AM

Here "it" is (as a PDF dated 2006, however):

http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/thinking.pdf

I think the actual link is to a presentation at a PoliSci conference...

I haven't read it yet, so I cannot comment...

Posted by batondor | March 5, 2008 9:31 AM

Matt, Mickey Kaus was making this point back when you and I were just young'uns:

http://www.kausfiles.com/archive/index.02.23.00.html

Incidentally, I think the point is correct, important, and woefully neglected.

Posted by John Cohen | March 5, 2008 9:31 AM

Your facts are good; behavior is predictable, attitudes are fluid.

A simple model is that people are inclined toward certain behaviors, but most adults need a reason/excuse to follow through. Give them the reason to do what they really want, you get results.

Maybe like magnets or electricity.

There is certainly a lot of energy wasted on things that dont really work.

Posted by kim, livonia, michigan | March 5, 2008 9:32 AM

A thousand times yes. And you see it transitively, too. In 2004 exit polls, people who said the Bin Laden tape released the week before the election helped them make up their mind went for Kerry, while people who said it didn't help them choose went for Bush. But this doesn't really make sense if you track the things that have increased Bush's popularity or the down-ballot strategies of 2002 and 2004. Essentially, things that increased the salience of a feared or hated enemy helped Bush.

So why did people answer those polls the way they did? Because Bush's campaign theme was "Agree or disagree, you know where I stand." The campaign made changing one's mind or being unsure into negative traits. By contrast, he drew himself as strong or steadfast or stubborn or unwaivering. People who voted for him were implicitly agreeing that this was preferable. Their exit poll answers were probably given honestly, but they came from a need to eliminate cognitive dissonance.

... or, having written all this, I see from John Cohen's link that I could have just written, "What Kaus said."

Posted by jhupp | March 5, 2008 9:35 AM

Agree totally. Thanks for pointing it out, because this is way up there on my top list of horribly bad pieces of logic that show up time and again in news commentary, along with:

1. "The team that wins game 5 wins the series 79% of the time, so you _gotta_ win game 5!"
2. (Football/soccer version) "The team that scores the first goal wins 70% of the time."

What are people's others?

Posted by Will Hutchinson | March 5, 2008 9:45 AM

Looking over the various exit polling, the factor that determines who wins a state between Obama and Clinton is the age number where candidate preference flips. The older the flip over to Clinton, the more likely it is for Obama to win, and vice versa. This, itself, is a function of exogenous variables. Since Obama's support among African-Americans is constant across ages, states with high black turnout will have a higher age flip. But, it's what explains the Hispanic and white votes, for both men and women.

Neither candidate would be effective directly targeting 40 year olds, though. Both are better off working at driving the respectice "bases" -- people who are in their 20s and 30s versus married women of a certain age who didn't go to grad school. That puts it up to chance, where the decider is whether, on margin, people in their 40s and early 50s, across races and genders, feel young at heart or old in the humors. That ties in to Matt's point, but looking at the states each has one, I'd say that it probably reflects economic anxiety. And what else prematurely ages someone? So, it's pretty great that even though the overall economy's not good, enough democrats are feeling optimistic to give Obama an insurmountable delegate lead. ("yes, we can")

Memo to both candidates: just don't even bother with the cheesesteak. As a native Philadelphian, I am confident that both of you will just embarass yourselves. Stick with the pretzels.

Posted by David B. | March 5, 2008 9:52 AM

David B.,

I agree. It is clear that this primary is not about race or gender but about generations.

The boomers are moving into retirement but are not yet ready to accede their rule to the younger generation. The Clinton campaign is becoming a proxy for the boomers' desperate cling to power and the Obama campaign is the next generation asserting their right to rule. The "change" and "experience" themes fit right into this generational rubric.

Posted by djslippyb | March 5, 2008 10:09 AM

I lean toward Hillary because her health reform plan is better.

Nothing "murky" about it at all.

This isnt "American Idol".

Posted by Horatio Parker | March 5, 2008 10:13 AM

I know it would be a big pain to try to educate people, but could you please elaborate on "her health reform plan is better"? What about it makes it better? I want to know and understand, not just repeat talking points.

Posted by Barbar | March 5, 2008 10:26 AM

Now that Brett Favre is retiring, Packers fans are going to find a whole different play style as crucial to the Packers' continued success...

Posted by Aatos | March 5, 2008 10:33 AM

What do you mean by "decided that Iraq was the most important issue"?

I'm an Obama supporter because I think he'd be more circumspect about pulling out too fast than Hillary, and maybe even McCain. They'll need to look reasonable. He'll need to look tough in order to prevent Obambi from morphing into Carter II.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 5, 2008 10:48 AM

We are pack animals. Living in packs with complicated hierarcys requires being able to "read" a person based on just the clues that person projects: where are they in the hierarchy? Are they going to hurt me? Are they from my pack? Can I hurt them? Will they be my friend..." There is a school of thought that believes the whole reason we have big brains is becasue we need them to survive in our super social packs. All that calculating.

So it makes perfect sense that we would rely on our inate abilities to judge people rather than checking off a list of policies these people say they favor. That has to come into account, but like Matt said, the first instinct is to use your spidey sense. I think that's one big reason why I prefer Obama. He and Hill are pretty similar policy-wise, but I just get a better feeling from Obama. Calmer, less ego-invested in winning. It feels like there are things Hil would do to win that Obama wouldn't.

Posted by cw | March 5, 2008 11:14 AM

post hoc rationalizations, I think that's how David Brooks put it several weeks ago.

Posted by mike | March 5, 2008 11:58 AM