Every Vote Is Equal

Gallup looks at age polarization in the Presidential election:

Interesting chart. But the accompanying analysis says "Barack Obama's appeal to younger voters and John McCain's support among older voters may have created a situation where the outcome will turn on the preferences of middle-aged voters -- particularly those in their 40s." You see analysis of this sort all the time, but it's all based on a mistake -- there's not a demographic electoral college where "winning" particular sub-samples of the population is the key to victory and therefore it's important to focus attention on the most evenly divided demographic groups. If John McCain persuades an Obama-supporting 25 year-old to switch to his camp, that has just as big an impact as one 45 year-old one 65 year-old or one 85 year-old.

Beyond that, if you do want to label any particular group as key (for the sake of deciding which TV shows to advertise on, for example) the reasonable approach isn't to look for closely divided groups, it's to look for groups with lots of people who haven't stated a preference on the theory that those people might be easier to persuade. Voters over sixty have a marked predilection for John McCain, but there are also a lot of undecided voters in this bloc that might be worth going after. For either campaign, who "wins" seniors is irrelevant, you just go after persuadable voters, and it's arguably among seniors where the biggest group of persuadables is.

Comments

What I'd take from this if I'm Obama is that I need to register as many 18-39 year-olds as possible. Put young volunteers at busy public places and have them ask every young adult who walks by if they're registered.

It's odd that Obama does better with 50-year-olds than 40-year-olds and 80-year-olds than 70-year-olds. I would have guessed that presidential preference this year almost directly correlates with age -- not so. Maybe 50-year-olds and 80-year olds both are a little tired of the Vietnam generation.

Posted by Ban Johnson | June 19, 2008 3:40 PM

Being a blogger must be so easy. Its like shooting fish in a barrel.

Posted by Jim W | June 19, 2008 3:41 PM

It's odd that Obama does better with 50-year-olds than 40-year-olds

This has been commented on before. The theory is that 40 year olds came of age politically during the "failed" Carter and "successful" Reagan presidencies, making them more conservative than nearby age groups.

Posted by Jim W | June 19, 2008 3:46 PM

This seems to be one of those cases where raw data isn't given a context. (Hey, Matt's supposed to be adding that kind of value when the MSM does not.) It is made to appear that Obama has a "senior problem," because of McCain's age and "experience." Those over 60 actually broke for Bush in 2004 by 8 points, and indeed a much larger percentage of GOP voters in some big 2008 primaries than Democratic voters were seniors. I can't tell you why, whether it's because income goes up with age, where money = GOP, or because an age cohort is still shaped by the culture wars or Reagan's morning in suburbia. But hey, that's what we come to the blogosphere to learn, much as we value two-sentence, 30-second thinking.

Posted by John Haber | June 19, 2008 3:51 PM

This has been commented on before. The theory is that 40 year olds came of age politically during the "failed" Carter and "successful" Reagan presidencies, making them more conservative than nearby age groups.

Alternatively, 50-59 year olds remember Vietnam very well, so disproportionately want to get the hell out of Iraq.

Posted by right | June 19, 2008 3:56 PM

I think there are a lot of people making a living by slicing and dicing the electorate in more ways than you can imagine, and that the stats produced by this exercise rival the triviality and meaningless of many sports stats. ("He's currently 7th in MLB in doubles hit at home on a Tuesday by a player over 30.")

Posted by LFC | June 19, 2008 4:02 PM

JimW, right: Stop, you're both right. I would guess that those aged 50 to 60 came of age during Vietnam and Watergate, which gave them, as a group, a permanent Democratic leaning, whereas those 40 to 50 came of age during the failed Carter presidency and the successful Reagan one, which gave them, as a group, a permanent Republic leaning.

Possibly those aged 30-39 have been influenced by a relatively successful Democratic presidency between two less successful Republican ones, but I haven't read enough about this group and how they have voted in other elections to be sure.

Posted by y81 | June 19, 2008 4:07 PM

Dividing the electorate into 10-year age groups is pretty arbitrary and not likely to yield much insight into how election will turn out.

Posted by blah | June 19, 2008 4:10 PM

Come now: Every vote in a given state is equal. Between states, votes are massively unequal, and unequal on at least two dimensions. There's both the question of whether or not a state is contested at all (the votes of non-contested state voters are not meaningfully equal to the those of voters in states that are) and the ratio of electoral votes to population within a given state (Senate caused mal-apportionment being a primary driver of this). This is especially true in the context of how campaigns should invest their resources or tailor their messages and commitments, which seems to be the context this post is discussing.

Speaking of which, when people talk about replacing the Senate, what are they thinking about replacing it with exactly?

Posted by washerdreyer | June 19, 2008 4:19 PM

Younger voters are less racist because of popular culture and certain publicly-minded people's efforts. There is progress.

The theory that makes sense to me is that independent voters are the ones in play, and more people identify themselves as independent than in the past, which is why Obama is moving to the center during the general election.

What happened in New Hampshire is that the independents felt Obama had a lock after Iowa and they crossed over to vote for McCain and help him. That and her teary eyes helped Hillary there.

Posted by Peter K. | June 19, 2008 4:19 PM

Agreed. Gallup's analysis pointing to middle-aged voters as the key is a complete non-sequitur. It really makes no sense.

Posted by DNS | June 19, 2008 4:27 PM

Speaking of which, when people talk about replacing the Senate, what are they thinking about replacing it with exactly?

Presumably a new Constitution and a new Republic, since that's what it'd take to achieve that absurd fantasy.

Hope these folks have full confidence that all the provisions in the Bill of Rights would pass as easily today as they did back in the day.

Posted by jbryan | June 19, 2008 4:28 PM

Obama had better hope that the youth vote actually votes this year or it won't do him much good.

Posted by Mo | June 19, 2008 4:29 PM

The thing I find most striking in looking at those graphs is how piddly McCain's "age gap" appears to be when he's winning the 60's cohort by about 8-10 points while Obama's winning the youth vote by 30. If it's true that the political preferences people identify in this age stick with them throughout their life, the GOP is going to get absolutely demolished in a decade.

Posted by jbryan | June 19, 2008 4:33 PM

"Speaking of which, when people talk about replacing the Senate, what are they thinking about replacing it with exactly?"

I don't think there's a consensus on the point, which is one of the reasons our grossly undemocratic senatorial system lumbers forward essentially unopposed.

Posted by Anthony Damiani | June 19, 2008 4:33 PM

Obama had better hope that the youth vote actually votes this year or it won't do him much good.

I don't see this as an issue. Remember that conventional wisdom said they'd never turn out in numbers for the primaries. So much for conventional wisdom.

Posted by LFC | June 19, 2008 4:35 PM

We get a lot of bad commentary on election demographics based on the assumption that one kind of person's vote is counted more heavily than another kind of person's vote. For example, Republicans were long said by the press to suffer a "gender gap" because they did better among men than women. The assumption behind this thinking is that a woman's vote just plain deserved to be counted more heavily than a man's.

What really does matter, though, is what proportion of a group turns out to vote. Obama does well in polls among the young and naive, but they don't vote very much relative to say, 60 to 70 year olds. If he can get them excited enough to remember to show up to vote, he can do better.

Other groups that don't vote much proportional to their numbers include Hispanic citizens and the not-so-bright.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 19, 2008 4:37 PM

I don't think there's a consensus on the point, which is one of the reasons our grossly undemocratic senatorial system lumbers forward essentially unopposed.

That, and the fact that its unammendable nature would require scrapping the Constitution.

Plus the Senate is a good thing, undemocratic or not.

Posted by jbryan | June 19, 2008 4:37 PM

Obama had better hope that the youth vote actually votes this year or it won't do him much good.

Where have you been? A cave?

Posted by Peter K. | June 19, 2008 4:38 PM

Personally, washerdryer, my fantasy is to have a unicameral congress, with each delegate having a number of votes on the floor equal to the number received in the general election, and several delegates representing each district. (i.e., in some district, the Republican gets 450,000 votes, and the Democrat gets 400,000. They both go to congress, and on floor votes, the Republican casts 450,000 votes, and the Democrat casts 400,000.)

Since a committee might not work to well if, say, one person had a million votes and the other eight people on it had a total of 900,000 votes, I'm only sure it'd work for floor votes. Committees might follow different rules.

I'd say internal bylaws of congress would have to be approved by both a majority of delegates, with a single vote each, and a majority of voters-represented, with each delegate wielding the number of votes received.

For the federal constitution, it's hopeless, but sometimes I fantasize about trying to get, say, Missouri to give it a try or the like.

Posted by Julian Elson | June 19, 2008 4:40 PM

Dividing the electorate into 10-year age groups is pretty arbitrary and not likely to yield much insight into how election will turn out.

Right; one reason that the plot is a bit misleading is that the bars don't appear to be scaled to the numbers of people who vote in each of those categories. I mean, if this was all we knew, we might think it reasonable for Obama to be making a pitch for the 80-99-year-olds. He's pretty competitive there! I don't think so.

Posted by RSA | June 19, 2008 4:42 PM

I don't see this as an issue. Remember that conventional wisdom said they'd never turn out in numbers for the primaries. So much for conventional wisdom.

The primary was exciting -- 2 historic candidacies, the Clintons' inherent shamelessness and drama queeniness, etc... -- and the general election so far, not so much. Obama has to somehow re-ignite excitement this late summer and fall without burning out or overexposing himself.

My fear is that in the weeks prior to the election, Obama looks like he has it locked up and it leads to 1) young people getting complacent and not turning out in large numbers; 2) a strong backlash by the hidden conservative vote that always seems to come out during the presidential election; 3) a more pronounced Bradley effect than any we saw during the primaries. Add all that to our crazy electoral college and the 20 - 40 bonus points it gives Republicans for winning the rural states, and Democrats could be looking at another heartbreaker.

Posted by Ban Johnson | June 19, 2008 4:43 PM

Thank you for pointing this out! It's annoyed me for years that a transparent logical fallacy has gained so much currency among political pundits. They seem to casually generalize from the notion that close states are "swing states" (true, thanks to the Electoral College) to the idea that closely divided demographic groups are "swing groups," which isn't necessarily true at all. At the extremes, subgroups displaying near-universal support for one party (African-Americans, etc.) probably aren't the place to look for a large swing in absolute terms, but aside from those special cases, there is no reason to assume that a 50-50 group is more pliable than a 70-30 group.

Posted by Matt Rognlie | June 19, 2008 4:43 PM

"Speaking of which, when people talk about replacing the Senate, what are they thinking about replacing it with exactly?"

I don't think there's a consensus on the point, which is one of the reasons our grossly undemocratic senatorial system lumbers forward essentially unopposed.

Posted by Anthony Damiani | June 19, 2008 4:48 PM

jbryan, I agree that it's practically unamendable, as it would require unanimous consent and therefore be subject to veto by anyone of the states being asked to give up almost all of their power, but the people I'm think of who propose it are those like Sandy Levinson who favor a new Constitutional Convention.

Posted by washerdreyer | June 19, 2008 4:49 PM

"Speaking of which, when people talk about replacing the Senate, what are they thinking about replacing it with exactly?"

I don't think there's a consensus on the point, which is one of the reasons our grossly undemocratic senatorial system lumbers forward essentially unopposed.

Posted by Anthony Damiani | June 19, 2008 4:53 PM

...one 45 year-old one 65 year-old or one 85 year-old.

What, no oxford comma?

Posted by raff | June 19, 2008 5:12 PM

What is the age structure of the electorate? That is the real question for determining where to go vote hunting, but it needs to be refracted through the likelihood of each age cohort to vote. We can't say much about the latter this time around, given that this isn't a normal electoral cycle, but we can make an intelligent guess that younger voters are more likely to vote than in past years. Probably much more likely.

A hundred years ago - even 50 years ago - this age differential, linked to high turnout, would result in a tsunami for Obama. But the age structure has continually flattened out over the years and this differential might just mean a welcome but not decisive advantage.

Posted by Estrien | June 19, 2008 6:53 PM

I have a mother (85) and a mother-in-law (87) who are both life-long Republicans. Both are going to vote for Obama. They both appreciate Social Security and Medicare.

Go find me some Democrats at that age who will vote for McCain. These folks grew up with Roosevelt. I'm not sure I believe the numbers.

Posted by Mudge | June 19, 2008 7:28 PM

It would be nice if the chart could add another dimension weighting for # in each group likely to vote. Is Obama's advantage in a big youth cohort nullified by low turnout? Is McCain's advantage in elders magnified by high participation more than it is diminished by low % of population? Got to get that aspects into the chart to really draw meaning from it.

Posted by Jon | June 20, 2008 12:00 AM

Seems to me it would be a good idea to get a bunch of fresh-faced young Obama supporters to start volunteering in nursing homes.

Posted by john | June 20, 2008 12:52 AM