Tag Archives: gop candidates

The Ideal 2012 Presidential Candidate

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With all of the hyper-partisanship of the primaries weighing us down, we decided to daydream a little today and look at where the ideal 2012 presidential candidate would stand on economic and social issues. To figure that out, we relied on recent Gallup survey data (July 2011 to the present) and our understanding of the median voter theorem.

In short, the median voter theorem—probably best explained in the political sense in Anthony Downs’ An Economic Theory of Democracy
–states that in a two party system like the United States, the competition is for the voter whose opinions are at the median. The candidate who gets the closest to that point without alienating his or her base will win the election.

Below, we took several pertinent economic and social issues that Gallup has polled on since July 2011 (the issue text links to the Gallup survey) to create our ideal median voter candidate. We used a 51% rule to construct our ideal; that is, the ideal median voter candidate will support (or oppose) an issue when at least 51% of those surveyed also support (or oppose) that issue.

So what does the median voter look like? Let’s take a look:

Issue

The Median Voter Candidate
Abortion Favors laws requiring information about abortion risks, parental consent for women under 18, a 24 hour waiting period, a ban on partial birth abortions and strongly opposes a law prohibiting abortion clinics from receiving federal funds.
Death Penalty Favors increased usage of the death penalty for murder.
Cutting the Federal Deficit Favors cutting the deficit mostly with spending cuts but is open to some tax increases (see below).
Taxes Favors increasing taxes on corporations and on individuals with incomes above $200,000 and families with incomes above $200,000.

In an upcoming article we’ll look at how our current crop of candidates compare with this theoretical Median Voter Candidate. But until then: what do you think? Join the discussion below or let us know via Facebook or Twitter.

Spending in the 2012 Elections: Who is getting the Most Value for Their Campaign Dollars? – March 7 Update

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With Super Tuesday now behind us, we wanted to return once again to the question of how much each active candidate has spent per delegate earned. As of our last update, Ron Paul was still dominating as the candidate getting the least number of delegates per dollar spent, paying around $1.8 million per delegate compared to the runner-up Gingrich’s $941,000. But have things changed after Tuesday’s primaries?

The following chart compares the four GOP candidates on the total amount of money raised/spent as of February 31, 2012. (Unfortunately, newer numbers are not available at this time). These figures include revenues/expenditures by the campaigns and the Super PACs that support the campaigns. The delegate count comes from here (accessed 3/7/12).

Candidate Money Raised Money Spent Delegates Overall Cost per Delegate
Newt Gingrich $31,500,000 $27,300,000 105 $260,000
Ron Paul $34,700,000 $32,800,000 47 $697,872
Mitt Romney $100,400,000 $63,900,000 415 $153,976
Rick Santorum $9,700,000 $7,600,000 176 $43,182

The bad news for the Paul campaign is that their candidate is still at the top of the list in terms of spending the most and getting the least. The good news, however, is that things are getting better: on February 1, each delegate cost Paul around $3 million, compared to ‘only’ $697,823 today. And once again, the Santorum campaign — at $43,182 per delegate — is gaining the most amount of delegates for the least amount of money.

We’ll continue monitoring this race for #1, and, as always, we’re interested in what you have to say: Join the discussion below or let us know via Facebook or Twitter.

 

Immigration: Deportations on a slow but steady climb – Part 1

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Current Events 2012

On the issue of immigration, President Obama can’t seem to do anything right. On the left, immigration reform advocates have been disappointed by the lack of reforms—whether comprehensive reform of the entire immigration system (one of Obama’s 2008 campaign promises) or less far-reaching reforms such as the DREAM Act—and by the record number of deportations, including many for minor offenses, that have occurred as a result of the administration’s Secure Communities program.  From the right, the 2012 GOP candidates all claim that Obama has been soft on illegal immigration, and call for a tightening of U.S. border security and an increase in the number of deportations.

While we aren’t going to delve into the debate on what constitutes the right approach to fixing our (clearly broken) immigration system, the irreconcilable positions that Obama is simultaneously too tough and too weak on immigration did make us wonder what the facts are on this issue. Specifically, we wanted to see how Obama compares to past presidents in the number of deportations, as well as the percentage of these that were due to criminal offenses (which we’ll discuss tomorrow in Part 2).

The following chart uses data from the Department of Homeland Security’s 2010 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics to show the number of deportations from 1892 to 2010:



Note: Removals are the compulsory and confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States based on an order of removal. An alien who is removed has administrative or criminal consequences placed on subsequent reentry owing to the fact of the removal.

 

As this chart shows, there has been a massive increase in the number of deportations across this period, especially at the tail end (starting around 1997). To get a better sense of this change, the next chart looks only at the data from 1992-2010:

Perhaps surprisingly, the first jump in deportations occurred under a Democratic president (Bill Clinton) from 1996 to 1997, increasing from 69,680 to 114,432, respectively. Also surprising is that the number of deportations actually decreased in the year following 9/11: from 189,026 in 2001 to 165,168 in 2002. That said, since 2002, the number of deportations has been steadily increasing, with just a slight decrease in 2010.

In short, while it is true that deportations have hit record levels under Obama (a fact that goes against recent claims by 2012 GOP candidates), it would be shortsighted to ignore the fact that they were already on an upward trend before he came to office.

Tomorrow we’ll continue our analysis by looking at the the types of people who are being deported. Specifically, has the President succeeded in his focus on finding and deporting the most serious criminals?