Prop 14 Impact

California's Prop 14 is a "Top Two Primaries Act." This means that all parties participate in the primary, with only the top two vote getters in the primary advance to the general election. When the general election comes around the voters will have to vote for one of the major parties.

There are four "third parties" in California, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, Green, and American Independent. American Independent is affiliated with the Constitution Party nationally. So there are two parties on the right and two on the left. They aren't just on the right and left. The two on the right are considered to the right of the Republicans, while the two on the left are to the left of the Democrats. Assuming they vote in the general election again, these people will probably vote for the party on their side of the aisle.

This is significant, because third parties are very popular in California. Almost every time they have a candidate they'll get 5,000-15,000 votes. The chart below shows the margin of victory for the major parties, along with the number of votes the minor parties received.

The two parties on the right got 127,719 more votes than the two on the left. This vote proved decisive in the 11th. If the Republicans had only gotten a quarter of the American Independent vote they would've won. Overall, Republicans lost 2.3% more than Democrats. In the seven races where more than one party appeared on the ballot, the left wing parties had more votes overall. This shouldn't be surprising, however, since 5 of 7 of these contests were in left wing counties.

That was 2010, a Republican year. What about 2008, a Democratic year? Surely, the left wing parties did better.

Better than in 2010, but the right wing parties again took 1.1% more of the vote. The left wing parties even had the advantage of Cindy Sheehan. Unlike all other third party candidates she received a lot of publicity and spent money on her campaign. The 37 votes for Peace and Green in the 9th isn't a typo. There was no candidate on the ballot. Those are write-ins.

At first glance it doesn't look like this is a big deal. After all, they only changed the outcome of one race. That's true, but in 2012 many districts will be drawn competitive. So 11,000 votes could be the difference between a win and a loss. And that should favor the Republicans.

2012 Congressional Race Ratings

While many people have tried to rate the races without knowing what the districts look like, the recent maps show that a judgement like that should only be made after the maps are approved. So I'm only including districts I know about and those in states with 2 seats. They won't change that much.

Republican Seats
MT-AL Likely Republican
NH-1 Likely Republican
NH-2 Toss-up
LA-4 Likely Republican
AR-1 Lean Republican

Until I know the maps I'm going to treat the district # that won't be around in 2012 as the lost district. Thus, Republicans lose IA-5, IL-19, LA-7, MO-9, NY-29, OH-18, and PA-19. It looks like MO-3, currently a Democratic seat, will replace MO-9 as a Safe Republican district. I'll wait until I see the final map and include MO-3 as a flip if the district is drawn that way.

Democratic Seats
IA-1 Lean Democrat
IA-2 Lean Democrat
IA-3 Toss-up
AR-4 Likely Democrat
OK-2 Likely Democrat

Democrats will lose MA-10, MI-15, NJ-13, NY-28, and OH-17.

Redistricting in Iowa and Arkansas

The congressional maps in Iowa and Arkansas and Iowa are done. The results seem to benefit the Republicans. First here's Iowa's 2010 congressional vote as it was in 2010 and how it would've been with the new districts:

Since these are 2010 numbers, they'll probably be about 2-3 points more Democratic in 2012 than they were in 2010. Iowa, like the rest of the Midwest, has been trending Republican. So it might not be that high.

There are two ways to look at this. Republicans had two safe districts and shots at three other districts. The new configuration only has one. So the Republicans could easily end up losing the district. On the other hand, the 3rd probably leans Republican and the GOP has a better shot at the 1st and 2nd. Republican win?

The 1st moves towards the Democrats, but not by much. The 4th, the only one the Democrats hold, is a lot more likely to be in play. Considering the Democrats controlled all the levers this is a very good map for the GOP.

Government Shutdown

The conventional wisdom about the 1995-1996 government shutdowns is that Bill Clinton won and the Republicans lost. Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996, after having very low approval ratings two years before. It's likely that Clinton did benefit, although Bob Dole was certainly an underwhelming opponent.

The Republicans didn't get punished as a result. In the 1920 election the Republicans picked up 62 seats. Two years later the Democrats won 76. In the next 60+ years a wave election was followed by a wave the other way in the next election with the exception of the 1930-1936 and 1974-1976 periods. Both of those were extraordinary circumstances, the Depression and Watergate. The Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 1932. The Republicans recaptured both houses in 1946, only to lose them both in 1948. They took both them again in 1952, only to lose both again in 1954.

In 1994, the Republicans took 54 Democratic House seats in 1994, along with 8 Senate seats. They once again had the majority in both houses. Heading into the 1996 elections, the Republicans held 236 seats in the House. The Democrats had at least 242 seats in the House after every election from 1958 to 1992. They should've won at least 46 seats, probably more because their President won re-election.

The Senate numbers were similarly in favor of the Democrats. Republicans were defending 19 seats to the Democrats 15. The party with more seats usually has a net negative. This happened in both 1972 and 1984 when the Republican President won in a landslide.

The Republicans were likely to get shellacked in 1996. They didn't. The GOP lost 9 seats in 1996, retaining a 22 seat advantage over the Democrats. The conventional wisdom is that if a party doesn't win a seat in a wave election, they won't win it in the next election. Yet the Republicans won 13 Democratic seats.

The Republicans retained 18 of their 19 seats, and managed to pick up 3 of the Democrats' 15 seats. Thus, they increased their majority. This was the first time since 1928-1930 that Republicans won the House and Senate and didn't lose them in the next election.

If that's being blamed, the Republicans should hope for the blame again.

Where Gerry meets Dummymander

States are currently doing redistricting for congressional seats. In states where one party has control, they’re trying to gerrymander the districts to get as many seats for their party as they can. A new term is floating about, the Dummymander. A dummymander is when a party creates a district that they’ll win and then they lose it within the next election or two. Thus, they’ve created a district for the other party, not their own.

After redistricting in 2002 most of the country’s congressional districts had a similar number of people. Now, ten years later, 116 of the 150 most populated congressional districts are represented by Republicans in congress. Ninety-one of the 135 least populated congressional districts are represented by Democrats. This is remarkable and couldn’t happen by accident.

Democrats dominate urban city districts, while Republicans dominate more rural districts. In the last ten years there’s been a mass exodus from northern cities. The 50 districts with the smallest number of people includes four in Chicago, five in Northern Ohio (Cleveland), two each in Detroit, Northern New York (Buffalo-Rochester), Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Providence. There are also districts in Kansas City, Cincinnati, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, and Flint. These districts aren’t just represented by Democrats. Seventeen of them are represented by African-Americans.

So, there’s been an exodus of Democrats, especially African-Americans from mostly northern mostly urban areas. Where have they gone? Thirty-nine of the 50 most populated congressional districts are in 9 states. Twenty-one of those are in Florida and Texas. All 3 districts in both Nevada and Utah are among them.

Besides growth from northern Democrats, some of it is from Hispanics. They tend to vote Democratic. It’s likely that these 50 districts have a lot more Democrats than they used to be. That means that while the district may be represented by a Republican now, the addition of Democrats may change that. In Utah and Texas this is probably not a big deal. An R+16 can become more Democratic and still be safe Republican.

The biggest potential trouble for Republicans is in California, Florida, and Nevada. The GOP doesn’t control redistricting in California and Nevada, but they do in Florida. Fair Districts Florida may restrict how Republicans can draw the districts, but they’d be wise to make sure that they draw a nice compact district with lots of Democrats in Central Florida, because if they dummymander they’ll lost more seats than the one they might save now.

The flip side of all those Democrats moving into Republican areas is that there are now less Democrats in Democratic controlled districts. Many of those districts are heavily Democratic, but there are ten districts that would be opportunities. Because these districts have lost so much population, six of them are in states that’ll lose seats. While that might limit the opportunities, there’ll be districts that cover these areas. There may be opportunities there.

Of course the population shifts will impact Senate and Presidential campaigns. Thus, Nevada, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona are likely going to become tougher for Republicans to win. Texas would be a big linchpin, but I think it’s too Republican now to move over to the Democratic side.

While those states maybe tougher to win, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Iowa should become easier. The two groups have roughly the same number of electoral votes. The big question will be then, which states will flip soonest.

Obama's Strategy

When people look at the 2008 election they assume that Barack Obama won because he was an exciting new candidate and the Republicans were ridiculously unpopular both with everyone, including Republicans. This was't the whole story. A state by state analysis shows that Obama's performance was better than the 53% of the vote he got. Here's how the 2008 vote looked.


What if the two candidates split the vote in 2008? In order to do that we'd need to deduct 3.3 points from Obama and give them to McCain. So we'll take 3.3% of the votes from Obama in each state and give them to McCain.


Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina swing over to McCain. Obama still wins, although it's close.This shows that Obama's campaign was effective. They weren't trying to win more votes overall, but trying to win votes in swing states. And they were successful. McCain could rack up all the votes he wanted in Texas, but Obama wasn't concerned with how many he could get in New York. In fact, Obama could've lost the popular vote and still won the election. And not by the half a point Bush lost the election in 2000.


McCain could've won by 1.7 points and still lost. Obama knows how to run an effective campaign, efficiently using his resources. That makes him tougher to beat.

Why Hispanics don't matter as much as you think

The media has discovered Hispanics. And they're in love. Add Chris Cillizza, Christian Science Monitor, Dave Wasserman, MSNBC, Others to those alerting us to the Republican Hispanic problem.

Having worked in Hispanic advertising for many years, I do find it funny that the MSM is acting as if 20-30 million Hispanics suddenly showed up in the U.S. There has been a steady increase for 20 years. Hispanics, however, aren't the force the MSM seems to think they are.

Because Hispanics don't vote. Some of the Hispanics aren't currently citizens and are unlikely to become citizens any time soon. So that isn't a vote to worry about. Yet, even setting them aside Hispanics just don't show up at the polls.


This chart shows how Hispanics, despite being 15.7% of the population, were roughly 9% of the electorate in 2008. In 2010 it was 8%. They were 8% in 2004 and 2006 and 7% in 2000. Despite being the driving force for U.S. population growth Hispanics aren't voting much more. Only 23% of Hispanics vote, while 42% of Blacks, and 45% of Whites do. Because many Hispanics are under 18, the numbers are a little better as a percentage of the voting age population. White people, on the other hand, show up to vote. The Democrats got roughly half the White vote in the 1990s, but they have dropped sharply in the last ten years.This isn't reported because getting Hispanics is cool and any party that goes after White people is racist.

The proclamation that the sky will be falling on California Republicans in 2012 ignores the light Hispanic turnout. Instead the pundits are proclaiming high Hispanic populations will doom the GOP.


If turnout in our sample district is similar to what it was in 2008, a high watermark for Hispanics, a 50% Hispanic population district is actually a district with 35% of the electorate being Hispanic. Such an electorate is winnable for a Republican getting around 35% of the Hispanic vote. That might not happen, but a 35% Hispanic electorate isn't one that's 50%.


The low turnout shows up in the vote totals. If you look at the 10 lowest voter turnout districts in California you'll see that 8 of them are in the top 10 most Hispanic districts.

Republicans undoubtably have some problems with the Hispanics right now. Will they continue to do so in the future? Predicting how the electorate will vote in 12-20 years when Hispanics might actually be a force is difficult. Voting patterns change a great deal. The Democrats' major appeal to Hispanics is "the racist Republicans hate you." That may work right now, but what happens if the immigration issue goes the way of "Don't Ask. Don't Tell?"

If Obama had done as badly as the Democrats did with Whites in 2010 he would've lost in 2008. Democrats having been turning off White more and more each year. That's a far bigger factor in 2012 than the Hispanic vote.