2012 President

(TAMPA, FL) — Before the 1970s, the political primary process was usually little more than a charade; party leaders met after the primaries were over to do the real work of picking a nominee. Or maybe not even the party leaders. After being rebuffed for the Republican presidential nomination one last time in 1952, Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio (son of a president, father of another senator and grandfather of a governor) supposedly said that, “Every Republican candidate for president since 1936 has been chosen by the Chase Bank.” It’s a sentiment to which Taft’s ideological descendants, some of whom reside in the Ron Paul wing of the GOP, probably would subscribe as they watched Mitt Romney, who made his wealth through Bain Capital, assume their party’s presidential mantle. On Tuesday afternoon, the Republican Party officially nominated Romney, but not before each state got its moment in the sun to announce its votes for the former Massachusetts governor, usually along with some entertaining fact. The spokesman for Idaho charmingly called it the “43rd star on the American flag”; the speaker for American Samoa said that it was the only American soil in the Southern Hemisphere; and an Oregonian, oddly,

The conventions are upon us, and the Crystal Ball team will be reporting live from Tampa and Charlotte. Follow @larrysabato, @kkondik and @geoffreyvs on Twitter for commentary on the party pep rallies, and look for the Crystal Ball on Friday, Aug. 31, and Friday, Sept. 7, for our thoughts on the conventions. That means, for the next two weeks, the Crystal Ball will be published on Friday as opposed to our regular Thursday edition, so we can take the entire convention into account in our report. — The Editors Basketballs have them, Tigger has them, and presidential candidates have them — at least most of the time. They are bounces, and for the respective major party nominees, the upticks in support typically show up in national horse race polling right after their party conventions. Once an actual mechanism for selecting a party’s presidential nominee, party conventions now serve as scripted infomercials for the parties and their candidates. The only drama comes in seeing whether one of the parties makes a major mistake or in trying to quantify the convention’s effect. Hence, we measure the bounce — if it occurs — and see if it lasts. Charts 1 and 2 show

Veepstakes 2012 is over. Mitt Romney has chosen, and pundits will now search their crystal balls on other subjects, at least until sometime in 2015 or 2016 when vice-presidential speculation will begin anew, this time regarding Veepstakes 2016. But before putting this year’s version totally behind us, it’s worth thinking about what we’ve learned. Every vice-presidential selection is different. The selector and his inner circle always differs, as does the pool of possible candidates and the context in which the choice is made. Nonetheless, Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) illustrates that the process involves recurring patterns as well as variation, predictability as well as innovation. Here are 10 lessons Veepstakes 2012 reaffirms: 1) Choose presidential: Whether the electorate will ultimately view Ryan as presidential remains to be seen, but the Romney camp seems to have accepted the notion that a presidential candidate facing what appears to be a close election has to choose someone who appears to be a plausible president. The timing of the selection makes it inevitable that political considerations will dictate the choice. Presidential candidates make the selection with the fall campaign in mind. Absent polls predicting a likely blowout, presidential candidates choose a running

To see the Crystal Ball’s initial reaction to Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate and how Ryan compares to previous selections, click here. Earlier this year, former Bush political strategist Karl Rove issued a mea culpa about his opposition to then-Gov. George W. Bush’s selection of Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000. “[Bush] knew I was opposed and invited me to make the case against his idea. I came to our meeting armed with eight political objections. Mr. Bush heard me out but with a twist: I explained my objections with Mr. Cheney sitting, mute and expressionless, next to the governor.” (Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that room.) After the meeting, Bush told Rove he was right about the political problems the Cheney selection would have presented, but he said, effectively, that Rove just had to deal with them. Even though Cheney of heavily-GOP Wyoming added nothing in the Electoral College, Bush got elected anyway, barely, and Rove said Bush was right to have not listened to him about Cheney. Cheney was selected to add gravitas to the ticket, and Bush preferred him to some swing-state possibilities, such as

Finally, the Veepstakes is over — and Paul Ryan is the winner. What does the Ryan pick mean for the fall campaign, and how does his selection compare to previous choices? We break it all down in this special weekend edition of the Crystal Ball, which includes the return of our video series (to see the video, just click on the link below). — The Editors The favored Republican adjective for Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan is “bold.” The favored adjective for Democrats is “risky.” The word that historians will choose to describe the selection, though, is anyone’s guess. Ryan, who the Crystal Ball listed among its final five Veepstakes contenders (from an original 23), is certainly not the safe pick that a Rob Portman or Tim Pawlenty would have been. The House Budget Committee chairman is perhaps the leading conservative economic spokesman in the Republican Party, and his now famous (or infamous) budget plan, with its changes to how Medicare is delivered and its multitude of cuts to social programs, became a major lightning rod earlier this cycle. By selecting Ryan, Romney has essentially taken ownership of Ryan’s budget ideas. That’s probably a relief to Republicans, who question

The Crystal Ball is pleased this week to feature an essay from Prof. James E. Campbell, UB Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Prof. Campbell is one of the nation’s foremost experts in election modeling; he developed the trial-heat and economy presidential election forecasting model (with Ken Wink) in 1990 and also developed a seats-in-trouble forecasting model for House elections that proved to be highly accurate in predicting the 2010 midterm election. As Prof. Campbell himself notes in his piece, he is a Republican, and in his essay he clearly lays out the economic challenges President Obama faces in winning reelection. — The Editors Forget Bain Capital, tax returns, whether the President says you built your business or not, Fast and Furious, Romneycare, Obamacare, overseas gaffes and the campaign story du jour. These are side issues and distractions. This presidential election should be primarily about one thing, which is the issue that is perennially most important to American voters: the economy. The economy should be center-stage particularly this year because it was the basis for Barack Obama winning the presidency in the first place. Despite widespread dissatisfaction with the later years of the Bush presidency,

While no one enjoys dissecting the presidential swing states more than we do, we also recognize that swings in the states are oftentimes uniform — as in, changes in the national polls will trickle down to the states. And there just hasn’t been much movement in the national polls in months: for instance, on April 14 — right around when Rick Santorum’s exit from the GOP presidential race effectively gave Mitt Romney the nomination — President Obama was up 2.4 percentage points on Romney in RealClearPolitics’ national poll average. Now he’s up two points — so the race was basically a tie in April, and it’s basically a tie now. Like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama is a polarizing president — perhaps because we have a polarized nation — and his half-a-nation ying has almost automatically created Romney’s half-a-nation yang. Neither millions of dollars in television advertising nor three weak monthly job reports in a row (with perhaps another one to come Friday morning) have moved the needle very much, and the supposed gaffes that dominate the daily news cycle have even less effect. The vast majority of presidential voters cannot be pushed or pulled by the little

With more than three months left until Election Day, the 2012 general election campaign is well under way. President Obama and his presumptive Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, have been actively campaigning in states that are expected to be battlegrounds in November. And Obama and Romney, along with their political allies, have also been busy raising millions of dollars that will be spent airing television ads in those same states. By the time Election Day arrives, the amount spent on TV ads by the candidates, political parties and allied groups is expected to easily break the record set in 2008. All of the campaign visits and all of the money being spent on television ads raise an important question for scholars and interested observers of presidential elections: How much difference does all of this campaigning and spending make? According to some recent polls, more than 90% of voters have already made up their minds about the presidential contest, so there aren’t many undecided voters left to persuade. And political science research has shown that even well-organized voter mobilization campaigns have only a small impact on turnout. An awful lot of money and effort are being expended to influence a sliver of

And then there were five. After starting out with more than 20 names a few months ago, we can now count our list of Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential possibilities on one hand. Leading the list is the man generating national buzz at the moment: Tim Pawlenty. The former Minnesota governor, who told us jokingly that he was “one chromosome” away from winning a spot on John McCain’s ticket in 2008, would be a credible choice who would offer some regional (Midwest vs. Northeast) and stylistic (blue collar vs. white collar) contrasts with Romney. Pawlenty’s short-lived presidential campaign flopped last year in part because of a mistimed strategic decision — deciding to go all-in at last August’s activist-driven Iowa Straw Poll just as Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign hit its peak. Pawlenty’s poor straw poll showing, and a nearly empty war chest, forced his exit. Given that damaged candidates who were electorally weaker than Pawlenty had moments in the sun during the primary season — including Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum — it’s possible that Pawlenty might have made some progress had he found the money to stay in the race. Whether or not voters do like or will like Pawlenty, it seems

The wisdom of Yogi Berra can illuminate most situations life presents. That versatility became apparent again last week when former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (MN) described being considered to be the running mate for Mitt Romney as “a little bit of déjà vu all over again.” Four years ago, Pawlenty was runner up to Gov. Sarah Palin (AK) to be John McCain’s running mate. Pawlenty cleared his schedule and waited expectantly for the call that never came. Instead, McCain chose Palin after his staff belatedly added her to the long list, then the short list, and vetted her on an accelerated basis. Finally, McCain met with her, right before making his selection. Although Pawlenty is the most conspicuous repeat entry in Veepstakes this year, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was also among those McCain vetted in 2008 (although much less seriously than Pawlenty). Jindal appears a more serious contender this time than he was four years ago. Sen. Rob Portman (OH), then coming off a tour as George W. Bush’s budget director, drew some mentions in 2008, but he was not among those seriously considered. Portman and his congressional colleagues, Sens. Kelly Ayotte (NH), Marco Rubio (FL), John Thune (SD) and Rep.

As pollsters and political commentators have focused on the outlook for the November general election, swing voters have invariably been getting a lot of attention. According to a recent AP/GfK Poll, swing voters — those who are undecided or uncertain about which candidate they will support — make up 27% of the electorate. In what is expected to be a close race, which way they swing will go a long way toward deciding the winner. The AP/GfK estimate that swing voters make up 27% of the American electorate is consistent with the results of other recent polls in which voters were asked how certain they were about their candidate choice. But there are good reasons to question whether there are nearly that many voters whose candidate preference is actually changeable. Evidence from a 2008-2009 panel survey conducted by the American National Election Studies shows that the proportion of voters who actually shift their preference during the course of a presidential campaign is much smaller than the proportion who claim to be uncertain about their choice. Moreover, most of the shifts that do take place appear to be explained by voters’ prior party loyalties rather than anything that happens during the

We are pleased this week to publish Alan Abramowitz’s first forecast for the 2012 presidential election. Prof. Abramowitz, one of the nation’s top experts on election modeling, has tweaked his model to reflect the nation’s polarized electorate. The polarization variable, as he explains, makes his model more accurate, including when it’s applied to recent elections featuring first-term incumbents Bill Clinton in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2004 (President Obama, of course, is also a first-term incumbent). The changes to the model, and its conclusions, provide more evidence that at this point, the presidential election’s outcome is very much in doubt. — The Editors In less than four months, millions of Americans will go to the polls to choose their next president along with all 435 members of the House of Representatives, 33 U.S. senators and thousands of state and local elected officials. The 2012 election will take place at a time of deep political division in the United States. Democrats and Republicans differ sharply over Barack Obama’s performance in office as well as over a wide range of issues from government spending and health care to immigration and gay marriage. These divisions are shaping the strategies of the candidates

Our Political Map of the United States was such a big hit that we’ve decided to drill a little bit deeper by taking the same political map concept — sizing states by their population — to the county and city level. This week, the Crystal Ball examines the political geography of three presidential battlegrounds in 2012: Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina. Crystal Ball team members Geoffrey Skelley and Kyle Kondik, natives of Virginia and Ohio, respectively, and former Crystal Ball staffer Isaac Wood of North Carolina take a look at the key regions to watch in their native states. — The Editors The idea of Virginia being a swing state is an entirely new concept, but it’s something the Commonwealth — and the nation — is going to have to get used to. The nature of the state’s population growth since the millennium has brought about major demographic and cultural shifts. Virginia is now the New Dominion, rather than the Old. Of the state’s 13% growth in population between 2000 and 2010, a large portion occurred in Northern Virginia, the diverse suburbs and exurbs of Washington, D.C. Examples of rapid growth abound: Prince William County grew 40% while Loudoun County

Ohio, the great maker of presidents, remains vitally important in presidential elections because it is one of the biggest of the 10-15 truly competitive states in the Electoral College. But it does not pack the electoral punch it once did. On one hand, the Buckeye State does have the seventh-most electoral votes of any state (only California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania have more). Of those states, only it and Florida have voted for the winning presidential candidate in each of the past five elections. On the other hand is this sobering fact for lovers of the Birthplace of Aviation — the last time Ohio cast less than 18 electoral votes for president (its new total after losing two votes following the 2010 census), Andrew Jackson was carrying it on his way to his first presidential win in 1828. That was 184 years ago. A friend and fellow Northeast Ohio native sometimes suggests that the old Western Reserve — a part of Northeast Ohio that once was part of Connecticut — should just break off from Ohio and form a new state. That would probably be just fine for Northeast Ohioans — and also for Republicans in the