McCain: Governors Are the G.O.P.'s Future

posted by Josh Goodman

This is from a couple of weeks ago, but I thought it was so unimportant that I had to comment on it. John McCain declined to endorse Sarah Palin for president in 2012. Yawn.

You mean that McCain doesn't want to endorse a candidate more than 1,400 days before the election and 1,100 days or so before the Iowa Caucuses? This is supposed to be some sort of affront to Sarah Palin?

But, I did find the second part of McCain's comments interesting. From McClatchy:

"Listen, I have the greatest appreciation for Governor Palin and her family, and it was a great joy to know them. She invigorated our campaign. She was just down in Georgia and invigorated their campaign.

"But I can't say something like that. We've got some great other young governors. I think you're going to see the governors assume a greater leadership role in our Republican Party."

If anyone was slighted by McCain, it wasn't Palin, but rather his fellow Republican members of the "World's Greatest Deliberative Body." But really, is there anyone who doesn't think a governor or former governor will be the G.O.P.'s 2012 nominee?

In 2010, a Repeat of the Wacky 2002 Elections?

posted by Josh Goodman

Finally, with the presidential race behind us, it's time to start talking about the 2010 governor's races. The first question: Will the results be as wacky as they were eight years ago?

November 5, 2002, must have been Opposite Day. Republicans won governorships in Democratic bastions, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Maryland and Hawaii. Democrats returned the favor by scoring wins in Republican redoubts including Wyoming, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona and Tennessee.

One big reason for these surprising results was the sour economy at the time. New leadership seemed like a good idea, even if it meant Republican voters supporting a Democrat or vice versa.

But, it's also important to note that in gubernatorial politics there isn't really such a thing as a surprising result. National political affiliations haven't often matter much for governor's races over the past few decades.

We think of Massachusetts as a Democratic state because it votes for Democratic for Congress and president. Wyoming is a Republican state because it favors Republicans in federal elections. But, Massachusetts has a long history of electing Republican governors. Wyoming has a long history of electing Democrats governors.

And that gets at why the question of whether the 2010 elections will look like the 2002 elections is on my mind. Over the past eight years, we've heard a lot about how the country has become more polarized, mainly because of perceptions of federal politics (the nation is divided into red states and blue states, etc.). The 2002 gubernatorial elections clearly defied that polarization. But have partisan divisions become more severe since then?

Jindal Says He's Not Running in 2012, But...

posted by Josh Goodman

Big news in the 2012 presidential race last week: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal isn't running for president.

That reminds me of a similar pledge from another Southern governor:

Flying low over the rice fields of the Arkansas delta, fresh off campaign stops at a shoe factory and a one-room country church, Gov. Bill Clinton (D) muses: "I may have blown my timing."

He is not talking about the trial of running for a fifth term in a year when voters seem fed up with politicians. He is talking about the tribulation of not running for president in 1992.

Clinton promised his constituents he would serve a full four-year term when he announced for reelection eight months ago. Back then, President Bush's approval ratings were in the stratosphere, and 1992 seemed like a good year for a young presidential hopeful to hang tight in a holding pattern.

That article appeared in the October 26, 1990 Washington Post. The rest, of course, is history.

Seeing Red in Oklahoma?

posted by Josh Goodman

NPR ran a piece this weekend in which host Scott Simon called Oklahoma "the most Republican state in the Union" and then asked his guest, an Oklahoma political scientist, what lessons the G.O.P could learn from the party's success in Oklahoma.

I wouldn't have picked Oklahoma for that title, but I can see why NPR opted for Oklahoma. While by most measures Utah, Wyoming and Idaho are more Republican than Oklahoma, the Sooner State, unlike those other three, clearly is becoming more Republican over time.

John McCain won Oklahoma 65.6% to 34.4%, slightly besting President Bush's 2004 performance. Republicans just won control of the state Senate. They won the state House of Representatives a few years earlier. Both of Oklahoma's U.S. senators and four of its five members of the U.S. House are Republicans.

But, if Oklahoma is one of the best examples of a state where Republicans are ascendant, that only proves a point that's very different from what NPR intended: That grouping states into red and blue might make sense from the standpoint of presidential politics, but usually oversimplifies state and local politics.

As Utah Goes, So Goes Idaho

posted by Josh Goodman

When I wrote a post last week identifying Iowa as the new bellwether state in presidential voting, a commenter asked what the worst bellwether state might be. Since it's an interesting question -- and since this commenter happened to be my grandfather -- I decided to take a crack at it.

I've identified the five most un-bellwether states for each of the past six presidential elections. To do that, I did the same thing I did in the other post: find the difference between the national popular vote margin and the margin in each state. So, for example, if Barack Obama won the national popular vote by 6.87 percentage points, but lost Wyoming by 32.24 percentage points, than I'd list Wyoming as 39.11 because 6.87 + 32.24 = 39.11.

Surprisingly, Iowa, which I identified as the best bellwether based on its performance the past five elections, was the fifth furthest off in 1988. Iowa had a serious case of Dukakis fever.

My analysis of which state is the worst bellwether is below. First, though, here are the numbers.

The Election's Nearly Over

posted by Alan Greenblatt

It looks like Missouri finally falls into the McCain column, leaving Obama with a total of 365 electoral votes.

With Begich the winner over Stevens, that leaves just the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff and completion of the slow-drip counting of Coleman vs. Franken for the 2008 election season to be over.

Just in time for Christmas, if not Thanksgiving.

Move Over Missouri, Iowa Is the New Bellwether State

posted by Josh Goodman

There's some hand-wringing going on in Missouri right now. Unless Barack Obama improbably rallies to win the Show-Me State when provisional ballots are tallied, Missouri will, for the first time since 1956, give its electoral votes to a losing candidate. Is Missouri no longer a bellwether state?

I have some good news for Missouri: You haven't lost anything. You haven't been a bellwether state for quite a while, except under the most simplistic definition of the term.

By definition, a bellwether is "a person or thing that shows the existence or direction of a trend." Sure, a state that goes with the national winner is showing the direction of the trend to some extent. But, a state that mirrors the national popular vote gives a much better indication of the trend. This year, Virginia was a much better bellwether than Vermont.

In 1996, Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in Missouri 47.54%-41.24%, for a 6.30 percentage point victory. Nationwide, Clinton won by 8.52 points. That's a 2.32 percentage point gap between the Missouri result and the national result -- not bad.

But, in 2000 the gap was up to 3.86 points, in 2004 it was 4.74 points and, this year, it was 6.89 points. Each time, Missouri was more Republican than the country as a whole. So, the truth of the matter is that Missouri has had a small but consistent (and increasing) Republican lean for four straight presidential elections.

Nebraska's Electoral Vote Split: One and Done?

posted by Josh Goodman

By splitting its electoral votes for the first time this year, Nebraska made history. By 2012, the system that made the split possible could be history.

John McCain won Nebraska as a whole and carried the 1st and 3rd congressional districts in the state. Obama prevailed in Omaha-based 2nd district. In every state except Maine and Nebraska, Obama's victory in the 2nd would have been irrelevant. However, under Nebraska law, Obama will receive one electoral vote -- the first time a Democrat has won any of Nebraska's districts since the vote-splitting law went into effect for the 1992 election.

Nebraska's governor is a Republican, Dave Heineman. The legislature is nominally non-partisan, but I'm fairly sure that in reality Republicans have a majority. As a result, the question now is whether Republicans want to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state again -- and, most likely, ensure that the state gives all of its electoral votes to Republicans for the foreseeable future.

 They're thinking about it. Here's what CQ reported last week:

Was Palin's Task Impossible?

posted by Josh Goodman

Since the election, we've now had a few days of recriminations against Sarah Palin and a few days of Palin fighting back. Palin's bid to repair her reputation will continue at the Republican Governors Association meeting today.

There's one argument that you can make in Palin's defense, though, that I doubt we'll hear from the governor: As a small state executive without a background in most federal policy issues, she never had a chance.

To understand what I mean, let me take you back to an argument I made in April, when I made one of the worst predictions of all time. I predicted that Sarah Palin didn't stand a chance to be picked as John McCain's running mate. Here's part of what I said:

Can Obama Corral Congressional Dems?

posted by Alan Greenblatt

We've been negligent in not linking to a column our own Alan Ehrenhalt published today in The New York Times. He offers a reminder to Obama fans that the last two Democratic presidents also took office alongside congressional majorities that seemed promising for their agenda, yet Carter and Clinton failed to push through much of their plans because of factional rifts or congressional logjams.

Obama faces a different challenge:

The Democratic Party in Congress is no longer the fragile and ideologically disparate group it was in 1977 or even 1993; it is now a remarkably cohesive left-of-center majority, with the presence of several dozen fiscally conservative “blue dog” Democrats in the House only a minor obstacle to its unity. Now the question is not whether the next Congress will be willing to support President Obama’s vision, but whether this majority will want to move further in a liberal direction than the country wishes to move.