The Paradox of Electability

Political journalists, being journalists, tend to focus on campaign happenings and controversies as a key determinant of election outcomes. Research, however, indicates that most people vote as dogmatic partisans and that most of the election-to-election variance can be explained by macroeconomic trends. Some elections, obviously, are very close and thus "the campaign" turns out to have been a decisive figure, but even in these cases a very close election like the 2000 election featured so many "important" campaign factors (Bush's coverup of his DUI citation, Gore sighing in the debate, Bush not knowing the names of foreign leaders, the press insisting that Gore claimed to have invented the internet, etc.) that it's hard to believe that any one of them was actually all that important.

Primary campaign voters, by contrast, are more fickle because there's much less underlying difference between the contenders. And one thing primary voters look at is electability, and another thing they look at is elite support and elites look a lot at electability. Voters and elites alike, meanwhile, like reporters, tend to wildly overestimate the importance of contingent campaign happenstance on election outcomes. Consequently, a primary season campaign gaffe that's seen as potentially harmful during the general election is arguably more likely to hurt you in the primary because of the perception that it'll hurt you in the general than it is to actually hurt you in the general election.

Comments

Consequently, a primary season campaign gaffe that's seen as potentially harmful during the general election is arguably more likely to hurt you in the primary because of the perception that it'll hurt you in the general than it is to actually hurt you in the general election.

Couldn't agree more.

Things look increasingly ugly in the Obama/HRC battle. But it's hard to imagine -- especially amidst this economic meltdown -- that decisive numbers of Clinton voters would shun nominee Obama (or vice versa in the unlikely result of an HRC nomination) in favor of four more years of GOPism.

Posted by Jasper | March 15, 2008 5:32 PM

"It's hard to believe that any one of them was actually all that important." This is transparent Somerby baiting. Please, some consideration for his time. To take his side, what macroeconomic trend favored Bush over Gore?

Posted by matt | March 15, 2008 5:38 PM

How Senator Obama handles the Wright situation is a test of leadership that will influence assessments of his electability: http://acropolisreview.com/2008/03/barack-obama-condemns-reverend-jeremiah.html

Posted by TC | March 15, 2008 5:50 PM

How Senator Obama handles the Wright situation is a test of leadership that will influence assessments of his electability: http://acropolisreview.com/2008/03/barack-obama-condemns-reverend-jeremiah.html

Posted by TC | March 15, 2008 5:51 PM

I guess this means that no one will care that Barack Obama was seen nodding away at a Wright sermon in July 2007?

Except, of course, it makes Obama a liar.

Wright laced into America's establishment, blaming the "white arrogance" of America's Caucasian majority for the woes of the world, especially the oppression suffered by blacks. To underscore the point he refers to the country as the "United States of White America." Many in the congregation, including Obama, nodded in apparent agreement as these statements were made.

Posted by Cal | March 15, 2008 5:51 PM

IMHO the Wright flap is going to backfire on Clinton. The Democratic Party elders and the superdelegates are not going to want to stand around and watch their Party implode. The ugliness coming out of the Clinton campaign is going to create a situation where the smart Democrats are going to want this thing to be over sooner, rather than later. Don't be surprised to some more of the SD's moving into the Obama column soon.

Posted by guido sarducci | March 15, 2008 6:36 PM

"Consequently, a primary season campaign gaffe that's seen as potentially harmful during the general election is arguably more likely to hurt you in the primary because of the perception that it'll hurt you in the general than it is to actually hurt you in the general election."

Shorter Matthew:

Today's Rasmussen tracking poll "reflects an unusually sharp change from yesterday’s results" as Clinton gains and Obama falls, and I don't want to think about what this would mean for Democrats if Obama is the nominee, so I'll just pretend that events that happen now have no impact in the fall.

Posted by Petey | March 15, 2008 6:47 PM

The campaign to deliver a nomination not worth winning to a damaged candidate proceeds apace.

Who would profit from that happening? My list of suspects is short, containing only two names, and only one of them is a Democrat.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | March 15, 2008 6:48 PM

Ohmigod! The Rasmussen tracking poll has fluctuated! It's been an unfailingly reliable indicator, through the whole primary season, of a very important trend that fails to correlate perceptibly with other tracking polls! And for it to fluctuate now of all times -- NOW, when PA is only six weeks away! When November itself is only . . . well, let me count for a sec, bring up the calendar program, uh ... when November ITSELF is only a little more than thirty-three weeks away! It's over.

Oh, if only I had listened to Petey when I had a chance! He warned me! He *told* me to vote for John Edwards . . . and then later to vote for Clinton -- but NO, I had to go and pick a loser. If only all those states, and all those votes and delegates, hadn't gone down the drain with one day's data.

Posted by Ted | March 15, 2008 7:02 PM

Uh Petey, you do realize that you can't use a tracking poll covering the Dem primary to refute Matt's argument, right?

Posted by Chris O. | March 15, 2008 7:08 PM

Isn't it just that it makes sense to pay more attention to the things that can be changed than the things that can't be, even if the things that can't be account for more of the aggregate? If most of the vote is accounted for by things that no one can change, but a small part can be changed by campaign tactics, policy advocacy, personal connection voters feel with the candidate, etc, then focusing on that small part is reasonable. After all, if my house is burning down, but I can rescue a few precious things from it before escaping, then it might make more sense to let the house burn down while taking the few things that I can than trying to put the fire out when I don't have the means to do so and my attempts would be futile.

Posted by Julian Elson | March 15, 2008 7:19 PM

National tracking polls are going to up and down, and they are more of a reflection of the day-to-day campaign than what might end up in the end. Not such a short time ago, Clinton was WAY ahead, and now she's tied with Obama. So what if she moves up! This nomination is almost wrapped up. There's really nothing else she can do this primary season to stop Obama from winning the nomination. And, since most Americans have serious ADD, I highly doubt they'll remember what happened this month when they go to cast their vote in November.

Posted by charmedcitypolitico | March 15, 2008 7:21 PM

"Uh Petey, you do realize that you can't use a tracking poll covering the Dem primary to refute Matt's argument, right?"

Sure. Almost all electability arguments are unrefutable.

Matthew's argument here is basically similar to the piece in TNR the other day that tried to make the case with a straight face that Obama's weakness in Pennsylvania was good for Obama. Also wrong and also unrefutable.

Much of Team Obama has a visceral contempt for the electorate, so it's not all that surprising to see them making fallacious electability arguments. If you hold the electorate in contempt, why should you care what they think?

Posted by Petey | March 15, 2008 7:30 PM

When Hillary Clinton’s vast finance department chair, Geraldine Ferraro, parroted the message Hillary herself and hubby Bubba, put forth to discredit Barack Obama on the basis of race, Geraldine’s remarks were intentional. Yet, Geraldine tap-dances around where she could have made the utterance, if she did in fact make it, or to whom it might have been made. By publicly disavowing Geraldine’s remark, Hillary only compounds a very thin transparency. Which begs the question; why not just take responsibility for the racial faux pas?

The Reverend J.A. Wright didn't preach anything that college professors all over America haven't been teaching for decades. Ward Churchill ring any bells? On the other hand, Hillary Clinton has had entire books written about her “spiritual life,” and even invented her own brand of college (at which Ward Churchill did in fact speak), but neither she nor Bill Clinton ever attend church. Let Barack Obama himself tell us what he believes. Some folks take longer than others to wise up; the Clintons, both of them, are kryptonite: http://theseedsof9-11.com

Posted by Peggy McGilligan | March 15, 2008 7:39 PM

All I can think of is Bhutto's assassination and how it was going to change everything and how that was supposed to mean that Guiliani was going to be the next president. Our collective addiction to refreshing blog pages and hyperactively reading every tidbit of information is part of the reason for the enormous premium placed on the here and now. Sorry folks, but if your name is in the comments section of every single MY post, you're a junkie looking for your fix.

Posted by TheF79 | March 15, 2008 7:40 PM

Petey, is it too much to hope that you might decide to strike and withhold your searing insights from this and all other political discussions? Alegre might be your friend, you know....

Posted by bluemass | March 15, 2008 7:43 PM

Better pro-Clinton trolls, please.

Posted by Greg Abbott | March 15, 2008 7:55 PM

I don't get the idea that Obamabots are viscerally contemptuous of the electorate. Even if you think that our statements along the lines of "superdelegates shouldn't override the pledged delegates where there is one candidate with a clear majority of pledged delegates; superdelegates should really only intervene if the pledged delegate count is unclear, and you have something like a three-way race with a Condorcet paradox and ambiguous voter will" are opportunistic, and that Clinton would say the same thing about respecting the sovereign will of primary and caucus voters if she were in Obama's place, and that Obama would be trying to win the nomination by getting superdelegates to override the pledged delegate count if he were in Clinton's place, I hardly see how that shows disproportionate contempt of the electorate on Obama supporters' parts.

Naturally, if you think that Obama's support for the sanctity of the pledged delegate count and Clinton's skepticism of it are products of circumstance, then they are both the Clinton and Obama camps are equally contemptuous and equally respectful of the electorate.

Posted by Julian Elson | March 15, 2008 7:56 PM

Much of Team Obama has a visceral contempt for the electorate, so it's not all that surprising to see them making fallacious electability arguments. If you hold the electorate in contempt, why should you care what they think?

Uh-oh. I better lower the sensitivity on my FUD-o-meter before it explodes.

Posted by Gherald | March 15, 2008 8:02 PM

Gherald- besides the FUD, note the world-class projection.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | March 15, 2008 8:43 PM

AT LAST Petey sees where IT IS AT!

Posted by robert ethan | March 15, 2008 8:43 PM

wow. meta.

Posted by max | March 15, 2008 9:14 PM

Matt:

"It's hard to believe that any one of them was actually all that important." This is transparent Somerby baiting. Please, some consideration for his time. To take his side, what macroeconomic trend favored Bush over Gore?

Trend? None. Since everything was going pretty well, a portion of the electorate allowed themselves to indulge in Nader or a so-so businessman who didn't cheat on his wife.

Posted by cmholm | March 15, 2008 9:39 PM

Assuming everything Matt describes is true, there is no "paradox" here: primary voters are just being dumb and misjudging what matters with respect to "electability". That said, I actually think that Matt is wrong, and indeed that he is performing a variation on what he described: he is "wildly overestimating" the important of "gaffes" and such to primary voters.

Not to the media, of course--they love the drama. But Matt, like most members of the media, has a hard time grasping that voters don't actually fall for this stuff as hard as the media thinks--not in the general election, and not in the primaries either.

Posted by DTM | March 15, 2008 10:15 PM

If most of the vote is accounted for by things that no one can change, but a small part can be changed by campaign tactics, policy advocacy, personal connection voters feel with the candidate, etc, then focusing on that small part is reasonable.

Julian, the analogy I would use is discretionary spending in the Federal Budget.

voters don't actually fall for this stuff as hard as the media thinks

I think I disagree. Voters say they don't like negative campaigns, yet negative campaigning always works.

Posted by Just Karl | March 15, 2008 10:59 PM

Hilarious. Its the meta of meta, the psychologizing of voter psychology. But then again, it wouldn't be very interesting if the pundits said,
"Well, the candidates are basically trapped in the currents of history and so while they might make a lot of speeches, and have their surrogates debate each other on Wolf Blitzer's situation room, short of urinating on a moderator during a debate, nothing they say or do will really have that much impact."
No, that would not work at all. But for awhile it would be very funny.

Posted by The Gaffe Master | March 15, 2008 11:13 PM

Matt: "the press insisting that Gore claimed to have invented the internet, etc.) that it's hard to believe that any one of them was actually all that important."

Wow.

Hope you at least had fun in college, even if you were oblivious to the destruction our democracy was in the midst of.

Matt, of course, is too smart to be so dumb. These posts are done on purpose.

BTW, did you hear, Russert isn't biased against Dems!

Posted by Andruw | March 15, 2008 11:29 PM

(Bush's coverup of his DUI citation, Gore sighing in the debate, Bush not knowing the names of foreign leaders, the press insisting that Gore claimed to have invented the internet, etc.)

1. Bush didn't cover up his DUI, he just didn't broadcast it. The Jewish Left media knew about it months beforehand but held onto it to spring it on the eve of the Election. The media game cost Bush the popular vote and nearly the election. It was a well-planned, well-executed conspiracy hy some very smart people agreeing to wait.

2. Gore's sighs and bizarre behavior "Explain to me Dingle-Norwood!" really hurt him. The debates were like job interviews and Gore was like a guy with a great work history and references showing up clacking ball bearings in his hand and giggling.

3. Bush not knowing the names of a few exotic foreign leaders didn't bother that much, because independents knew the smartass reporter was clueless on the names 10 hours before his interview with Dubya and it was a pure "Gotcha!" question on something 99.9% of Americans would also not have done any better than Bush on. Lefties thought it was a huge "coup" back then, but it really didn't have the impact of the DUI or Gores awful debates.

4. Gore and the Internet was a wash except as another reason for independents to cite to indicate Gore was a Southerner-hating, gun-banning Elitist Puke.

Posted by chris ford | March 16, 2008 12:09 AM

Bush not knowing the names of a few exotic foreign leaders didn't bother that much

You must be talking about the coup in Pakistan that let to state support of AQ and directly to the attacks of 9/11, right?

God, chris, you're a total tool.

Posted by justinb | March 16, 2008 12:16 AM

You're right, but you're more right this year than usual. Americans have real problems this year--they're canceling summer vacations because of gas prices, health care is now eating up 10% of their after tax paychecks, the price of food is going up, their kids can't attend college because the tuition is too high, they're a paycheck away from losing their house, their 401K (if they have one) has bit the dust, they're worried about the kid they coached in Little League who went to Iraq and camp back without any legs, and they're worried about their job.

In this environment, media crapfests don't play well. Hillary's tears=NH victory. Obama's plagiarism=Wisconsin landslide. Terry Schiavo=the beginning of the end for the Republican majority.

In this context, Wright doesn't play well. I spent the day in Pennsylvania. I talked with 50 regular voters throughout the day in south Central PA. The name Wright was not uttered once. And that's my real problem with the beltway media...they don't get outside of the beltway. They don't talk to voters and ask them to name their concerns. When they actually talk to voters--60 Minutes--they ask leading questions that conveniently allow the crapfest controversy of the hour to be taken as a legitimate issue, even though it's not...

Posted by The Bag of Health and Politics | March 16, 2008 12:17 AM

I think you're right Matt -- Primary kerfuffles really do fade in time. Among the evidence I would cite is...

Gennifer Flowers.

I wasn't yet enthusiastic about Bill Clinton when the Flowers story broke in the 1992 primary season. And I was sure he was toast after that. And then he goes and has his "comeback kid" 2nd place finish in the NH Primary. (You can probably thank the 60 Minutes appearance for that, too.)

I'm not delusional enough to think that the Wright episode won't mean a somewhat rocky period for BHO, but it strikes me he's handling the fallout pretty well.

Posted by DairyStateDad | March 16, 2008 1:01 AM

Eh, Matt has a weird view of what a "campaign" is. A good field program, a good air program, smart gotv, good surrogates giving good speeches, getting endorsements from local leaders of various stripes. Those are a campaign, and they can actually make a significant difference, not necessarily because they change a lot of minds (Matt is right that most people are actually fairly partisan) but because they drag more supporters to the polls.

The blatherings of the TV pundits about earth tones, eh. No one really pays that much attention to that.

Posted by Dan | March 16, 2008 1:38 AM

Shorter MY: campaign controversies are not important and talk of how they effect electability is misguided now that the controversy involves my favorite who appears to be less electable than he was on Monday.

I did appreciate elevating the spin to the meta level however. It is somewhat refreshing from the daily piffle that advocates often write. I will concede that most individual events, with certain exceptions (young call girls?), are minor but the resulting narrative can be very difficult to overcome.

Posted by skeptic | March 16, 2008 3:46 AM

Consequently, a primary season campaign gaffe that's seen as potentially harmful during the general election is arguably more likely to hurt you in the primary because of the perception that it'll hurt you in the general than it is to actually hurt you in the general election.

Wait, isn't this trivial? Anything a candidate does that has a chance of hurting his general election chances will definitely hurt his primary chances, precisely because one of the criteria a primary candidate has to meet is having good chances in the general election (i.e., be electable).

I'm not sure what is paradoxical or interesting about any of this. It seems the same as saying, "You know guys, even though this Rev. Wright stuff is definitely hurting Obama in the primary, remember that, if nominated, it might not hurt him in the general." To which the rejoinder is: "Er, yeh, but it might hurt him in the general though."

Posted by David Morris | March 16, 2008 6:08 AM

Matt is on to something here. Its not what most people think of as politics that determines elections.Gaffe Master and The Bag of Health and Politics seem to get it too: The press does not cover the one area that more than any other determines elections.

The only area where pundits agree that presidents have little control is the economy. Its treated as a willful, independent force, kind of like the weather. Even last week, when the federal reserve transfered at least $500 billion to privately held banks, used valueless mortgaged-backed securities as short term collateral for loans, and hired JP Morgan's old firm to be the liquidating trustee of America's fifth largest bank, there was little discussion of economics by the candidates or political press.

Matt thinks that voters vote based on macroeconomic trends. I agree, but why doesn't the press focus on it? The possibilities I can think of are: 1. They are too lazy 2.they are too stupid, 3.they are tied into the folks who rely on these wealth transfers for the preservation of their positions.

Posted by Peter Driscoll | March 16, 2008 6:37 AM

There is also the fact that primary contests have elections that last over days and can remain competitive for months, while the actual general election voting takes place all at once. That can affect voter fickleness.

Shorter Petey: Pay attention to me! "I'm significant," said the snowflake.

Posted by Reality Man | March 16, 2008 6:57 AM

Just for fun, I'll just paste this comment Petey left over at Ezra Klein's place:

"If you don't think 12yo's can be arousing, you're really not thinking correctly. Sex with them wouldn't be against the law if people didn't want it.

There are plenty of things that can be arousing that folks should avoid actually doing for moral reasons. Non-consensual acts are at the top of that list.

But thinking that good morality precludes arousal is insane thinking.

Posted by: Petey | March 13, 2008 5:02 PM"

Posted by Reality Man | March 16, 2008 7:12 AM

RM, what's the point of pasting that comment from Petey here?

I don't like the guy either, but this seems an ad hominem attack.

Plus his point is basically correct except he should have the word "some" in front of "people".

Posted by amaretti biscuits | March 16, 2008 10:36 AM

I just read the text of Wright's "Audacity of Hope" speech that inspired the title of Obama's book. It contains none of the vitriol we see in the video clips now on Youtube, and it shows a decency and depth of thinking that helps explain Obama's attraction to Wright. Nice to have a less cartoonish image of the pastor, one that might help us all understand why Obama stayed with him through the years. Obama should encourage people to read it for perspective on the current firestorm.

No doubt, Obama should have distanced himself long ago. But as is always the case, the reality is more complex, and the human dynamics more understandable, than the media's frenzied narrative suggests.

Posted by Stephen | March 16, 2008 11:29 AM

Reality Man's descent into buffoonery is now complete.

Posted by The Obama Initiative | March 16, 2008 1:21 PM

The Jewish Left media knew about it {Bush's DUI} months beforehand but held onto it to spring it on the eve of the Election.

Notorious left-wing megaphone Fox broke the story, on its local affiliate in Portland, ME.

I realize the Jewish Media Conspiracy is pretty insidious, but to have taken over Fox from within -- that's really slick.

No wonder we're powerless before it.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | March 16, 2008 3:19 PM