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Politics

Why It’s Hard to Score the Fiscal Deal

By NATE SILVER

I’ve been on vacation for the past week and have been following the fiscal negotiations with less attention than I normally would. But perhaps that distance gives me a different perspective on the deal.

Most of the observations that I was reading about the deal were highly concerned with tactical considerations: Who had moved most from their previous offers? What precedents were being established for future negotiations?

As news about the negotiations evolved on a daily (or hourly) basis, the attitude of liberals and conservatives in my Twitter feed seemed to change along with it. Liberals seemed considerably happier about the deal on Tuesday night, for example – after the House of Representatives nearly scuttled the deal and then passed it with mostly Democratic votes – than they were early Tuesday morning, after the deal had passed through the Senate with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. But there had been no change to the policy terms of the deal.

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Were Obama’s Early Ads Really the Game Changer?

By JOHN SIDES

Many post-mortems of the 2012 presidential campaign suggest that Mitt Romney erred by allowing President Obama to “define” him early through an advertising blitz in battleground states. Certainly Mr. Obama’s advisers have trumpeted the success of this strategy. A few weeks after the election, a Bloomberg News article about an appearance by the Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said:

…Obama’s campaign made a strategic decision to spend more heavily from May through August, with the belief that campaign ads become less effective closer to elections. “By September, people are disregarding ads,” he said. “They back-loaded. We front-loaded.”

And just last week, in a lengthy inventory by The Boston Globe of the Romney campaign’s regrets, a Romney adviser, Beth Myers, seemed to validate the Obama campaign’s move:

“I wish I had expressed my deep concern more vociferously at that point; this was May, June, when they really went on the offense,” Ms. Myers said. “I remember thinking, ‘This bothers me.’ ’’

The problem, however, is that there is very little evidence that these early ads mattered much Read more…

As Swing Districts Dwindle, Can a Divided House Stand?

By NATE SILVER

In 1992, there were 103 members of the House of Representatives elected from what might be called swing districts: those in which the margin in the presidential race was within five percentage points of the national result. But based on an analysis of this year’s presidential returns, I estimate that there are only 35 such Congressional districts remaining, barely a third of the total 20 years ago.

Instead, the number of landslide districts — those in which the presidential vote margin deviated by at least 20 percentage points from the national result — has roughly doubled. In 1992, there were 123 such districts (65 of them strongly Democratic and 58 strongly Republican). Today, there are 242 of them (of these, 117 favor Democrats and 125 Republicans).

So why is compromise so hard in the House? Some commentators, especially liberals, attribute it to what they say is the irrationality of Republican members of Congress.

But the answer could be this instead: individual members of Congress are responding fairly rationally to their incentives. Most members of the House now come from hyperpartisan districts where they face essentially no threat of losing their seat to the other party. Instead, primary challenges, especially for Republicans, may be the more serious risk. Read more…

In House of Representatives, an Arithmetic Problem

By NATE SILVER

Markets were down sharply on Friday after Speaker John A. Boehner’s tax plan failed to reach a vote in the House on Thursday evening. No Democrats were prepared to support the bill, and Mr. Boehner told reporters that his plan also lacked sufficient votes among Republicans.

A variety of smart political observers have suggested that the markets are misreading the situation. Instead, they say, the failure of Mr. Boehner’s bill makes a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff more likely because it has now become clear that any deal will need to rely upon the support of at least some Democrats, which could ease passage through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Perhaps this is correct. Mr. Boehner has said that the White House and Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, will now have to take the lead in negotiations. The chance that a fiscal deal will be secured on terms that Democrats find favorable may have increased.

But the chance that there will not be a deal at all may also have increased, or at least not one before protracted negotiations that could harm the economy. The difficulty is in finding any winning coalition of votes in the House of Representatives.

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For Scott Brown, a Third Round in the Battle Against Partisan Gravity

By NATE SILVER

8:35 p.m. | Updated An updated version of this blog post can be found here.

In 2010, Scott Brown became the first Republican elected to represent Massachusetts in the United States Senate since Edward Brooke in 1972. Mr. Brown’s victory, in a special election for the seat formerly held by Edward M. Kennedy, was full of substantive and symbolic significance, costing Democrats their 60-seat Senate majority and threatening the passage of the national health care bill that Mr. Kennedy had once championed.

But this November, Mr. Brown was the only incumbent senator to lose his general election bid, falling to Elizabeth Warren by seven percentage points. (Another incumbent, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, lost in the Republican primary.) Mr. Brown may soon get a third opportunity to overcome the odds that any Republican faces when running for federal office in Massachusetts.

If President Obama names Senator John Kerry to be his secretary of state, and Mr. Kerry is confirmed by the Senate, then Massachusetts will hold a special election in summer 2013 to fill out the remaining year and a half of Mr. Kerry’s term. Whoever wins the special election would then stand for election to a full six-year term in November 2014.

Mr. Brown has not yet officially confirmed his interest in the Senate race. There is a chance that he could run instead for governor, an office that has historically given Massachusetts Republicans better chances of success. (Massachusetts voters elected Republicans as governor for four consecutive terms from 1990 through 2002, before the Democrat Deval Patrick won office in 2006.)

But a poll released on Thursday provided encouraging news to Mr. Brown. The survey, conducted by The MassINC Polling Group for WBUR, found Mr. Brown leading a series of potential Democratic opponents for the Senate seat by margins ranging from seven percentage points (against Mr. Patrick) to 27 (against Representative Stephen Lynch).

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Party Identity in a Gun Cabinet

By NATE SILVER

An American child grows up in a married household in the suburbs. What are the chances that his family keeps a gun in their home?

The probability is considerably higher than residents of New York and other big cities might expect: about 40 percent of married households reported having a gun in their home, according to the exit poll conducted during the 2008 presidential election.

But the odds vary significantly based on the political identity of the child’s parents. If they identify as Democratic voters, the chances are only about one in four, or 25 percent, that they have a gun in their home. But the chances are more than twice that, almost 60 percent, if they are Republicans.

Whether someone owns a gun is a more powerful predictor of a person’s political party than her gender, whether she identifies as gay or lesbian, whether she is Hispanic, whether she lives in the South or a number of other demographic characteristics.

It will come as no surprise to those with a passing interest in American politics that Republicans are more likely to own guns than Democrats. But the differences have become much more stark in recent years, with gun ownership having become one of the clearest examples of the partisan polarization in the country over the last two decades. Read more…

In Public ‘Conversation’ on Guns, a Rhetorical Shift

By NATE SILVER

Friday’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., has already touched off a heated political debate. Opponents of stricter regulation on gun ownership have accused their adversaries of politicizing a tragedy. Advocates of more sweeping gun control measures have argued that the Connecticut shootings are a demonstration that laxer gun laws can have dire consequences. Let me sidestep the debate to pose a different question: How often are Americans talking about public policy toward guns? And what language are they using to frame their arguments?

There is, of course, no way to monitor the conversations that take place in living rooms around the country. But we can measure the frequency with which phrases related to gun policy are used by the news media.

If the news coverage is any guide, there has been a change of tone in recent years in the public conversation about guns. The two-word phrase “gun control” is being used considerably less often than it was 10 or 20 years ago. But the phrase “gun rights” is being used more often. And the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is being invoked more frequently in the discussion. Read more…

A Smart Breakaway for Big East Basketball Schools

By NATE SILVER
Georgetown is among the Big East’s seven nonfootball members that could thrive in a new conference.Matt Slocum/Associated Press Georgetown is among the Big East’s seven nonfootball members that could thrive in a new conference.

A variety of reports suggest that the seven Big East schools that do not compete in high-level football may split off to form their own basketball-centric athletic conference.

Georgetown, Villanova, St. John’s, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall and DePaul share a history of relatively successful men’s basketball programs, along with a heritage as Roman Catholic colleges. They have more in common with one another than they do with the other members of the Big East, which has diluted its basketball brand in its effort to remain intact as an elite football conference.

A conference composed of these seven teams, along with select others that do not sponsor Division I football programs, could offer a men’s basketball league that was roughly as competitive as that of major conferences like the Pacific-12 and the Southeastern Conference. The alternative, to remain attached to the other members of the Big East, would put these schools at risk of being associated with a conference that would come to be regarded as second-tier. Read more…

Why Hillary Clinton Would Be Strong in 2016 (It’s Not Her Favorability Ratings)

By NATE SILVER

Let’s start by stating the obvious: Hillary Rodham Clinton would be a formidable presidential candidate in 2016.

Mrs. Clinton’s credentials as secretary of state, as a United States senator and as a politically engaged first lady would be hard for any of her Democratic or Republican rivals to match. She would have little trouble raising funds or garnering support from the Democratic officials, and she might even come close to clearing the Democratic field of serious opposition.

Mrs. Clinton made some tactical errors during the 2008 campaign — particularly, in her staff’s failure to understand the importance of contesting caucus states. But she improved considerably as a candidate over the course of the long primary, and the experience she gained would undoubtedly help her if she were to run again.

But if Mrs. Clinton runs for president in 2016, one thing is almost certain: she won’t be as popular as she is right now. Recent polls show that about 65 percent of Americans take a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton, while only about 30 percent have a negative one. Those are remarkably high numbers for a politician in an era when many public officials are distrusted or disliked.

But part of the reason for Mrs. Clinton’s high numbers is that, as secretary of state, she has remained largely above the partisan fray that characterizes elections and fights over domestic policy.

Over the course of her long career, the public’s views of Mrs. Clinton have shifted along with her public role. When she has been actively engaged in the hand-to-hand combat that characterizes election campaigns and battles in Congress, her favorability ratings have taken a hit, only to recover later.

Mrs. Clinton might be the most polled about American in history, other than those who have actually become president. Between the PollingReport.com database and other publicly available polling archives, I was able to identify about 500 high-quality telephone surveys that tested her favorability ratings with the public. Read more…

Marijuana Legalization and States Rights

By MICAH COHEN

As the Obama administration weighs its response to the legalization of the recreational use of marijuana in Washington and Colorado, a new YouGov poll has found that a slim majority of adults believe the federal government should not enforce federal laws — under which marijuana use is still illegal — in those states.

The YouGov survey, conducted for The Huffington Post on Dec. 5 and 6, found that 51 percent of the 1,000 adults interviewed said the federal government should “exempt adults who follow state law from enforcement.” Thirty percent said the federal government should “enforce its drug laws the same way it does in other states,” the poll found.

Support for legalizing marijuana use — and not simply for medical purposes — has been rising steadily since the early 1990s. The most recent polls have shown a public divided. A CBS News poll from mid-November found an even split, with 47 percent supporting legalization and 47 percent opposed. A more recent Quinnipiac University poll found a bare majority supporting legalization, 51 percent to 44 percent.

But the YouGov poll is one of the first to ask not whether marijuana use should be legal but what the federal government should do about it now that two states have legalized recreational marijuana use.

The share of respondents who want the federal government to leave the states alone roughly matches the share of respondents that polls have found favor legalization: about half.

The difference is in the percentage of adults who favor the federal government still enforcing federal law. While polls have found that half, or close to half, of American adults generally oppose legalization, the YouGov poll found that only about a third of respondents favored enforcing federal law in states that had decided to legalize use.

Instead, 20 percent of respondents in the YouGov poll said that they were not sure what the federal government should do, more than double the percentage of adults that polls have usually found to be undecided on the overall question of legalization.

The YouGov poll is just one data point, and more polling will yield a fuller picture. But a portion of American adults who oppose the legalization of marijuana may also be partial to states’ rights, and those two impulses are in tension here.

The CBS News survey pinpointed the same conflict. According to the poll, 59 percent of adults said the question of legalization should be left to the states, rather than the federal government, including 49 percent of respondents who oppose legalization.