2012 President

We all think we know which states are the pivotal players in the Electoral College. The Crystal Ball’s most recent look at the map showed that there are seven “Super Swing States:” Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia. How these states vote on Nov. 6 will likely decide the outcome of the 2012 presidential contest. But which state will put either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney over the top? In other words, which state will actually prove to be the decisive domino in the race to 270 electoral votes? A simple yet meaningful way to look for the decisive state is to order the states according to the winner’s margin of victory. By arranging the states in this way, we can find the cut-off point where the winning candidate crosses the 270 electoral vote threshold. The state that gives a candidate a majority of the 538 votes in the Electoral College is the decisive state. In 2008, that state was Colorado. Obama won the Centennial State by about nine percentage points over John McCain; had Obama failed to carry Colorado and every state that he won by a smaller margin, the Electoral College result would have been

We would make a joke about President Obama only taking 59% of the West Virginia primary vote against a federal prison inmate named Keith Judd, but every possible one was exhausted on Twitter by Wednesday morning. Suffice it to say, it was an embarrassing performance for the president, albeit in a state he has no chance of winning in November. And that’s just it: West Virginians don’t like Obama, they never have and they most likely never will. We could hypothesize on the reasons for that, but it’s beside the point. Obama got crushed there in his 2008 primary against Hillary Clinton (67% to 26%), and he will be crushed there in the fall. But what does Obama’s horrible Mountain State showing say about similar regions, such as Southeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania? Does it indicate that he’ll do poorly in these regions in November? Yes, probably. But he did poorly in these places in 2008, too. Of the 14 counties defined in the Ohio Politics Almanac as part of Southeast Ohio, Obama carried only four. On the other hand, Bill Clinton carried 13 of these 14 counties in 1996. Likewise, in the 26 counties of Western Pennsylvania — defined

Todd Eberly, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, recently wrote a report for the centrist group Third Way about independent voters. Crystal Ball senior columnist Alan Abramowitz addressed that report in a recent article, and Eberly asked to respond. His point of view differs from Abramowitz’s and the inclinations of the Crystal Ball staff, but in order to present readers a full view, we agreed to give Eberly a chance to share his views. — The Editors Are independent voters a myth? That is certainly the conclusion of many who study political science. Research has demonstrated that, when pressed, independent voters often reveal significant partisan preferences: They lean Democratic or lean Republican. When leaners are reclassified and grouped among their partisan peers the share of pure independents in the electorate falls — by some accounts — to less than 10% of the electorate. If the true number of independent voters is less than 10% of the electorate, then independent voters are of little concern. In an age of narrow victory margins in the national popular vote for the presidency and control of the House of Representatives, winning a majority of that 10% can be crucial, but

In 2008, Barack Obama used the phrase “Yes We Can” as part of his effort to energize millions of voters to support his presidential bid. On Monday, the Obama campaign revealed its 2012 slogan, “Forward,” at the conclusion of a seven-minute advertisement recapping the administration’s achievements. The one-word motto builds on the idea that some change has happened under the current administration and that the country should continue to move, well, “forward.” That’s the opposite of the direction Democrats will argue Romney will lead the country. This isn’t rocket science. Republicans will mock the slogan with one-liners such as “Yes, ‘forward’ over a cliff.” We’re also sure that conservatives won’t miss the fact that “lean forward” is the slogan of their cable news nemesis, MSNBC. When creating a slogan, campaigns always need to be careful not to make it easy for the line to be parodied. In 1964, Barry Goldwater’s slogan was “In your heart, you know he’s right.” Democrats responded, “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.” Meanwhile, fans of The Simpsons will surely be reminded of a classic episode when an alien impersonating Bill Clinton declares that “We must move forward, not backward. Upward, not forward. And always

At first glance, the vote from the March Democratic presidential primary in Oklahoma looked like a misprint. The tally from Dewey County showed 86 votes for Randall Terry, 59 votes for Jim Rogers and 47 votes for Barack Obama. Terry is a lightly funded anti-abortion activist. Rogers is a frequent and largely unsuccessful candidate in the Sooner State. Obama is president of the United States. It would be nice to say that the Dewey County vote was an aberration. But it wasn’t. So far in this year’s Democratic primaries, Obama has lost 15 counties in Oklahoma, six counties in Alabama, and three parishes in Louisiana to a mixture of “Uncommitted” ballot lines and little-known opponents that basically serve as human “none of the above” options. That is fully two dozen counties that the president has lost running “unopposed” in the Democratic primaries, with a full month of voting still to go. The basic question is whether these eye-catching results have any meaning for the fall. It is certainly fair to argue that they are much adieu about nothing (or very little). Obama’s primary showings have been weakest in states in the Republican South that he has little chance of winning.

Now that Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee, attention has turned to his impending selection of a vice presidential choice. There has already been so much VeepWatch coverage one might think the deadline for Romney’s pick is measured in days or even hours. We here at the Crystal Ball are as guilty as anyone else: We have explored the VP “Swing State Selection Myth” and have ranked the notable contenders for Romney’s number two slot. However, it’s almost certain that the selection is months — not weeks — away. In the modern era of presidential politics, the VP nominee is typically determined only days prior to the party convention. As shown in Chart 1, the decision has recently been made only about two to six days beforehand. Since 1992 — if one discounts the 2004 outlier, when John Kerry selected John Edwards 20 days before the start of the Democratic convention — candidates have chosen their running mates, on average, just four days before their party’s convention. Prior to 1992, VP choices were sometimes still selected at the actual convention. Chart 1: Selection dates for running mates Sources: Dates for effective end of races are from CQ Weekly; selection

The presidential election could very well come down to one state — which one? We offer our thoughts on the Electoral College, plus answer questions on House, Senate and gubernatorial races, in our latest Crystal Ball video: The London Olympics isn’t the only venue for world-class sport this year. Political gold is waiting to be won in November, and the only way to grab the top U.S.A. medal is to master Electoral College math. It is both deceptively easy and maddeningly complex. A candidate has to accumulate 270 votes in a tiny universe of 538, but those 538 will be generated by 130 million votes cast in 51 separate entities. A game that looks like checkers is really multi-dimensional chess. Still, the deep polarization of party politics has simplified the process somewhat. Remarkably, about 40 states — and maybe more — have almost no chance of flipping from one party to the other in the 2012 Electoral College. If President Obama gets his way, the electoral map will look very close to the way it did four years ago; on the other hand, Mitt Romney needs to flip a relative handful of states to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania

It’s interesting to hear politicians, political analysts and journalists use the term “gender gap.” They do so with great frequency, and it is almost always explicitly, implicitly or contextually focused on women. It is true, of course, that women usually vote 8% to 12% more Democratic than do men. But, that misses three key points: 1. There are, by definition, two sides to this phenomenon: women and men. If they behaved the same, there would be no gender gap. The use of the concept gender gap is almost always to suggest Republican weakness with women voters, but because there are two and only two sides to this coin, logic tells us the Democrats must have an equally large problem with men. That is a simple truism and proven in election after election. 2. It will surprise many to learn when and how the gender gap emerged. From the time women were able to vote in federal elections (1920) until and through the 1976 Carter-Ford election, men and women voted essentially in equal percentages for Republicans and Democrats. But, in the 1980 Reagan-Carter election what we now call the gender gap emerged and has persisted ever since. Although there were both

John Adams, the Founding Father who served as the nation’s first vice president, had this to say about the No. 2 job: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” Nowadays, few people — well, few politicians anyway — would agree with the sentiment. The vice presidency is a coveted prize that can serve as a springboard to the presidency, as it did for Adams and others throughout our history. Last week, we identified 23 Republicans who we think might be selected as likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate. But we knew that there were more names out there, plausible and otherwise, so we asked readers to submit ideas that we did not include in our Veepwatch. The three submissions we liked the best — the ones we’ll reward with a University of Virginia Center for Politics prize package — are all big-time long shots, but ones worth assessing: — J.P. Ludvigson was one of a number of readers to suggest South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and he did so at length. Among the pluses, Ludvigson said that being a minority woman

Now that Rick Santorum has suspended his campaign, Mitt Romney has essentially wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination. Although Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul remain in the GOP race, Santorum was Romney’s last major opponent, having won 11 states in the Midwest, the South and elsewhere. However, as shown in Chart 1, 19 states still have to vote. Some commentators have asked whether or not we may see a significant protest vote against Romney in these remaining contests. With evangelical-heavy states such as Texas and North Carolina on the docket, it could be considerable in some states. Chart 1: Remaining elections in Republican nomination contest The logic goes that if there is a sizable protest vote, it will suggest that the conservative base of the GOP is not rallying around the party’s presidential nominee. On the other hand, should Romney perform well, it may be an indication that the base has acquiesced in his candidacy. This caused us to wonder: how have past candidates performed after wrapping up their party’s nomination? And can this be a sign of things to come in the general election? Since the modern primary process began in 1972, six party-nomination races with no incumbent have

1948: To err is Truman. He’s so unpopular compared to Thomas E. Dewey that Election Day is just a formality. 1952: Twenty years of New Deal presidents proves Democrats have a lock on the Electoral College. 1960: No Roman Catholic, much less an inexperienced 43-year-old, is going to win the White House. 1968: Richard M. Nixon is a two-time loser, yesterday’s man who couldn’t even grab his home-state governorship. 1976: Jimmy Who? There’s a reason the last Deep South candidate for president was elected in 1848. 1980: Ronald Reagan is much too far to the right, and he’d be the oldest president ever elected. 1988: Voters want a change, not someone who reminds women of their first husband and men of a guy born on third base who thinks he hit a triple. 1992: Oh sure, America is going to oust a war hero for a draft-dodging, pot-smoking, womanizing governor of Dogpatch. 2000: The voters’ populist distaste for dynasty will keep the verbally challenged, wayward son of a washed-up former president out of the White House. 2008: An African-American with a thin resume at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? In which parallel universe? 2012: YOUR CHOICE: No controversial president with unemployment over

As part 2 of our Veepwatch series, we’re unveiling our VP possibilities chart. See our video and also our full Veepwatch contenders list, both below. Who might Mitt Romney pick as his running mate? Did we miss anyone? If you think we did, pass along your suggested VP possibility along with a few short pluses and minuses to [email protected]. Put “VP pick” in the subject line. We’ll select the best three candidate suggestions and highlight them in next week’s Crystal Ball; we’ll also send the contributors a University of Virginia Center for Politics prize pack. — The Editors He’s the ultimate Washington outsider, a rare national celebrity who is beloved by conservatives and who knows how to draw a crowd. He would be the telegenic, young complement to the top man on the ticket, and, oh by the way, he made his name as one of the most famous figures from a key swing state. In other words, he’s Mitt Romney’s perfect running mate! But, alas, former Florida Gators Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and NFL sensation Tim Tebow is only 24 years old. One needs to be eligible to serve as president — age 35 — in order to be picked

A recent report from Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, criticized my research and that of other political scientists who have concluded that independent leaners — voters who identify themselves as independents but indicate that they usually feel closer to one political party or the other — are really closet partisans. The Third Way report, which relies almost entirely on data from a single three-wave panel survey conducted by the American National Election Study between 2000 and 2004, finds that these independent leaners have rather unstable party preferences and that independent Democrats in particular are not reliably Democratic voters.  The implication of the report is that Democratic Party leaders and candidates need to adopt more centrist policies to appeal to this large group of swing voters. This is an important issue because according to almost all recent surveys, the large majority of independent voters lean toward one of the two major parties. In the 2008 American National Election Study, for example, about three-fourths of independent voters leaned toward a party, and the vast majority of those leaning independents voted for the candidate of the party they leaned toward. It is this sort of finding, repeated in many surveys of

With Mitt Romney pulling away in the Republican presidential race, we here at the Crystal Ball are ready to turn our attention to what will be one of the biggest political stories of the next few months: the Veepwatch. We’ll unveil our list of vice presidential possibilities next week, but first, we asked one of the nation’s premier experts on the vice presidency, Joel Goldstein, to look back at recent VP selection history. In so doing, Goldstein found that a prominent bit of Veepwatch conventional wisdom — that nominees seek running mates from key swing states — does not stand up to scrutiny. — The Editors One of the persistent ideas regarding vice presidential selection holds that presidential nominees seek running mates from large, competitive states. Guided by that assumption, the Great Mentioners invariably include many politicians from such states on the lists of prospective vice presidential candidates that they compose every four years. The premise seems to be that a running mate can minimally, at best, affect the national election returns but that a popular favorite son or daughter may help swing an important electoral block. This conventional wisdom regarding vice presidential selection practice encounters one significant problem: It’s