The Ideal 2012 Presidential Candidate

Posted on March 19, 2012 by thefactfile

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.

February 2012 Unemployment 8.3%

Posted on March 9, 2012 by thefactfile

This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its report on the U.S. employment situation for February 2012, confirming the positive signs shown in ADP’s payroll figures released earlier this week. As the chart below shows, while the unemployment rate stalled at 8.3% in February; 0.5% higher than January 2009 when President Obama was sworn in, but at the same as rate as his first full month in the presidency (February 2009) the economy added a significant number of jobs. (The chart is color coded red for months that President Bush was in office, and blue for President Obama).

In February, total nonfarm payroll increased by 227,000 jobs. Job growth was widespread throughout the entire private sector, with large increases in professional and business services (+82,000 jobs), health care and social assistance (+61,000 jobs), and manufacturing (+31,000 jobs). Government employment, however, continues to stagnate: in the past 12 months, the sector has lost 22,000 jobs. Additionally, the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for December was revised from +203,000 to +223,000, and the change for January was revised from +243,000 to +284,000.

On the less positive front, the number of long-term unemployed (e.g., those who are unemployed for 27 weeks or longer) remained high in February at 5.4 million, accounting for 42.6% of the unemployed. However, that was down from 5.5 million in January.

In short, as with the recent upwardly revised numbers on GDP growth for the 4^th quarter of 2010, the economy continues to trend in the right direction, nevertheless, it would appear that higher growth and more jobs are still needed to reverse the massive decline brought on by the Great Recession.

We would like to hear from you. How does the employment situation look in your hometown?

It’s Mitt…I mean Rick…I mean Newt

Posted on January 22, 2012 by thefactfile

If you are anything like us, you are wondering what in the world is going on with the Republican Presidential Nomination process. Just a few days ago, we learned that Rick Santorum won the Iowa Caucus. As far as we know, Mitt Romney still won New Hampshire and now, we know that Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary. It seems like every time conventional wisdom concludes that Mitt Romney will be the nominee something happens to change that.

Really though, if you think about it, we should have expected these results. It may simply be that Republican voters are selecting the most viable regional candidate. In Iowa, the split may have been because of Rick Santorum’s Pittsburgh roots versus Mitt Romney’s Michigan roots. In New Hampshire, Romney’s Massachusetts ties made him the favorite son. In South Carolina, Georgia’s own Newt Gingrich was the obvious choice.

In spite of what the pundits have said, this may prove to be an exciting race to the wire. It is much noted and frequently lamented that the Republican Party has become a Southern party and that may place Newt Gingrich in an interesting place as the nomination race winds it way through the South. We would be interested in hearing what you think.

A Special Brand of Democracy, Part One: The Psychic Founding Fathers

Posted on January 18, 2012 by thefactfile

The World’s Example for Democracy

The United States is well known for spreading democracy around the world, from Woodrow Wilson’s request that Congress declare war on Germany so the world would “be made safe for democracy” to U.S. support for the Arab Spring. With the excitement of this election year inspiring us, we decided to look at democracy in the United States. Over the next several weeks, we will be presenting a four-part series on how government has evolved in the United States.

The Government that Finally Stuck

Today we start with the beginning—not exactly the beginning of European-style government in the Americas or even democracy for that matter—instead, we begin with the enactment of the current form of government in the United States under the Constitution. As you fifth graders and other scholars of history well know: the first national government the colonists formed was the Articles of Confederation, which quickly failed due to an emphasis on states’ rights and an inability to levy taxes. The failure of the Articles of Confederation paved the way for the Constitution of course, but before we get to that story, we need to establish a few facts such as the definition of democracy.

In the purest sense of the word, democracy is a government of the people. The founding fathers must have known how busy Americans would be, so they settled on a unique form of representative democracy wherein rather than continually debating and voting on issues, citizens could show up once every two years and cast votes for people who were willing to leave their homes, go to Washington, and make laws.

Representative Democracy?

In the representative democracy originally set out in the Constitution, each member of the lower house of the legislature—the House of Representatives—would represent 33,000 people and be elected by a direct election. (Interestingly, there are some who argue for a return to that system, which would mean about 9,450 representatives rather than the current 435). The Constitution also establishes the upper house—the Senate—with each Senator elected not by way of direct elections, but indirectly by the state legislatures. (There are also some who argue for a return to that system).

As for the executive branch, the Constitution stipulated that the President would be elected by electors who were themselves elected directly by the people; this is the one system from the founding father’s initial notion of how elections should work that is still in effect today, although most people apparently want the president elected by popular vote.

What About the Courts?

Finally, the Constitution intended for the Judiciary to be kept outside of politics by allowing the President to appoint judges and the Senate to confirm. Originally, the justices of the Supreme Court were also supposed to serve as judges in the Federal Circuits, but as the country (and, as a result, caseloads grew), this practice was changed. However, the vestiges of this can be seen even now as specific justices on the Supreme Court are assigned to particular circuits.

Using a single congressional district as an example, the chart below shows how the original system worked.

In the second part of this series, “The Progressives Shake It Up” we look at how the progressive reforms of the early 1900s changed this.

New Hampshire Primary Polling Report Card

Posted on January 11, 2012 by thefactfile

The 2012 New Hampshire primary has come and gone, and after months of being bombarded with poll after poll predicting how the voters would vote, we finally have our answer: Mitt Romney took first with 39% of the vote, followed by Ron Paul (23%), John Huntsman (17%), Newt Gingrich (10%), Rick Santorum (10%), and Rick Perry (1%). To close our analysis of this event, we thought it would be interesting to look at how close the pre-election polls were to the final vote results.

There were five polls conducted between January 8, 2012 and January 9, 2012, including ARG, Suffolk, Rasmussen, PPP (D) , and UNH/WMUR. Below we show their predictions along with the actual vote percentage for each candidate. The results are coded bold when the poll prediction was within 1% of the actual vote, and italic when it was not.

		Romney		Paul		Huntsman		Gingrich		Santorum
*Poll*	*Date*	*Poll*	*Actual*	*Poll*	*Actual*	*Poll*	*Actual*	*Poll*	*Actual*	*Poll*	*Actual*
ARG	Jan 9	37%	39%	17%	23%	18%	17%	10%	10%	11%	10%
Suffolk	Jan 9	37%	39%	18%	23%	16%	17%	9%	10%	11%	10%
Rasmussen	Jan 8	37%	39%	17%	23%	15%	17%	12%	10%	13%	10%
PPP (D)	Jan 8	35%	39%	18%	23%	16%	17%	12%	10%	11%	10%
UNH/WMUR	Jan 8	41%	39%	17%	23%	11%	17%	8%	10%	11%	10%

Overall, the best predictions came out of the later polls (ARG and Suffolk), which predicted the correct vote share of 4 of the 6 candidates while narrowly missing on Romney (underestimating his support by 2% in both polls) and completely missing on Paul (underestimating his support by at least 5%). On the whole, the five polls were the most accurate predicting the final vote for Huntsman and Perry, while being the least accurate on the final vote for Ron Paul (every poll missed by more than their stated margin of error).

Truly, if we weren’t such strict graders and held all of the polls only to their margins of error, then they would have predicted all of the vote percentages correctly with the glaring exception being Ron Paul. The question then remains of why predictions for Ron Paul were so incorrect across the board: Is it because he is most popular with youth (as we noted in our earlier post) who are notoriously hard to reach, or is there some other reason? We would be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments below.

2012 New Hampshire Primary: Trends in Last Night’s Voting

Posted on January 11, 2012 by thefactfile

As we did last week following the Iowa caucuses, today we look at the major voting trends from last night’s voting in the New Hampshire primary. In some aspects, we see similar trends as last week: for example, Ron Paul once again dominated the youth (18-29) vote, while Romney dominated among voters with the highest family incomes. In other aspects, however, voting patterns differed from what many of us expected.

The following are some of the most interesting voting trends (using MSNBC polling data) from last night’s New Hampshire primary:

Gender: Mitt Romney received nearly 38% of the male vote and 40% of female, distancing himself from Paul who received 26% and 20%, respectively.
Age: As at the Iowa caucuses, Ron Paul once again dominated the youth vote by receiving a near majority (47%) of votes casts in the 18-29 age range. This support waned, however, in older age groups: among 30-44 year olds, Paul received 32% (compared to Romney’s 36%); among 45-64 he received 19% (compared to Romney’s 42%); and among 65+ he received only 12% (compared to Romney’s 42%). The other candidates saw less variation across the ages, though both Gingrich and Huntsman received more support the older the age group.
Marital status: Perhaps a testament to his massive sex appeal, Ron Paul received much more support from the unmarried—35% supporting him, more than any other candidate—than the married (19%). This result is unsurprising, however, given that Paul garners most of his support from younger (and thus unmarried) voters.
Total family income: Romney dominated the upper income bracket, receiving 51% of the vote from voters with family income of $200,000 or more. His support weakened as family income lessened, with a low of 31% from voters with family incomes under $30,000 (compared to Paul’s 36%).
Political ideology: Somewhat surprisingly, Romney received a plurality of the votes in all of the categories of political ideology, including “very conservative”. Among “very conservative” voters he received 33% (runner-up with Santorum with 26%), and among “somewhat conservative” and “moderate or liberal” voters he received 48% and 37%, respectively.
Support for tea party: Also surprising (and in contrast to the polling data from the Iowa caucuses) is that Romney gained the most support from voters who strongly support the Tea Party movement, with 36% compared to Paul’s 21% and Santorum’s 20%.

The New Hampshire Primary: A Primer

Posted on January 9, 2012 by thefactfile

After months of speeches, debates, hand shaking, baby kissing , and all the other political gestures that we’ve all come to love(?), we’ve finally reached the New Hampshire primary—the first primary election held in the United States. Together with the Iowa caucuses (which we profiled last week), the New Hampshire primary is one of the most important events in a presidential election year, creating momentum for some campaigns, while killing it for others. (As we mentioned previously, every candidate that has won both Iowa and New Hampshire has gone on to win the nomination; only George McGovern (D) in 1972 and Bill Clinton (D) in 1992 won the nomination after losing both).

This article provides some background on this event for our readers who (perhaps like ourselves only hours ago) know very little about this primary, and who wonder why such a small state has such a large role in the nomination process.

Background

While primaries are normally either “open” (e.g., allowing all voters, regardless of party identification, to vote in either party’s primary) or “closed” (e.g., allowing only registered party members to vote in their party’s primary), New Hampshire is often called “semi-closed” in that people registered in one party can’t vote for the other, but “undeclared” voters who are not officially registered in either party can vote in either. Like general elections, voting is done entirely by secret ballot, with the state’s 12 delegates being divided among the candidates with the most votes through proportional representation.

Voter Turnout

Compared to the Iowa caucuses, turnout for the New Hampshire primary is very high. In 2008, 527,350 people (51.3% of the total voting population in the state) voted, with 287,557 voters in the Democratic primary and 239,793 in the Republican primary. These numbers are comparable with national voter turnout in a typical general election, which normally hovers around the 50% mark.

For this year’s primary, the turnout will undoubtedly be much lower as a result of having only one contested primary. (Democrats will also have a primary, but the 13 challengers to President Obama are weak, to say the least.) To get some sense of the expected level of turnout in this year’s primary, we have to look back to 2004, when Bush was running for reelection as an incumbent. In that election, 29.2% of the voting population turned out: 219,787 on the Democratic side, and 67,624 of the Republican side.

The following table shows in graphical form the percentage of the total voting population that has voted in the past 3 presidential primaries:

Sources: Presidential Primary Election Results, Federal Election Commission, 2000, 2004, and 2008; “Annual Estimates of the Resident Population by Sex and Age for States: April 1, 2000, to July 1, 2009,” US Census Bureau, June 2010.

Finally, it must also be noted that the voters who participate in New Hampshire differ from those in Iowa: whereas the Iowa caucuses tend to attract party activists and donors, the “semi-closed” primary rules in New Hampshire has the effect of attracting more independents, even taking into account the fact that the majority of these “undeclared” voters actually self-identify as either Republicans or Democrats (as polling data from the University of New Hampshire has shown).

How representative is the population to the US as a whole?

Finally, as we did with Iowa, we wanted to look at the social/economic/demographic characteristics of the population in New Hampshire to get some sense of how representative it is to the US as a whole. (We accept that almost no state is perfectly representative, but it is useful to get a sense of how far a given state is from the mean).

Starting with economics, New Hampshire is clearly better off than most other states in the U.S. According to survey data from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the median household income of $63,033 (in 2009 inflation-adjusted dollars) far exceeds the US average of $51,425. And like Iowa, the unemployment rate is low relative the rest of the country: at 5.2%, New Hampshire has the 4^th lowest unemployment rate in the country at 5.2%, well below the US average of 8.6%.

Turning to demographics, as the next chart makes clear, the population in New Hampshire (like Iowa) is remarkably homogeneous with 94.8% white, followed by Asians (1.9%) and Blacks (1.1%).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2005-2009 American Community Survey

In terms of education, New Hampshire is much more highly educated than the US average, with 90.5% graduating high school (compared to US average of 84.6%) and 32.4% receiving a bachelor’s degree or higher (compared to US average of 27.5%).

In short, in many ways New Hampshire is not representative of the rest of the country. The question is: does it matter? Should candidacies be made or undone based on the preferences of one small New England state? We’ll leave that for you to discuss.

TheFactFile.com: The Week in Review

Posted on January 7, 2012 by thefactfile

TheFactFile.com is a non-partisan fact-checking site that analyzes the facts behind the big issues of the day. Our goal is to let facts and data speak for themselves, regardless of whether that makes us appear “liberal”, “moderate”, “conservative”, or something else entirely. This first week has been a lot of fun for the staff at TheFactFile.com, seeing our dream come to life. If you had seen the excitement when our first retweet happened and our first comment arrived you would have retweeted and commented all day.

While we work on more articles for next week, we decided to give you an easy way to catch up with what was up on TheFactFile.com this past week.

Monday:

Fact Checking the Fact Checkers - In this article, we answer the big question of why we decided to start TheFactFile.com.

The Iowa Caucuses: A Primer - The Iowa caucuses mark the start of the election season. But what is a caucus? And how important is Iowa in selecting nominees for president?

Tuesday:

The Iowa Caucuses: Voter Turnout - This article analyzes past trends in voter turnout for the Iowa caucuses. And the result? Turnout is extremely low, even in “hot” years.

The Iowa Caucuses: Is Iowa Representative of the Rest of the U.S.? - Is Iowa representative of the rest of the US? Here we analyze official demographic/economic data to show that the answer is… yes and no.

Wednesday:

2012 Iowa Caucuses: Trends in Last Night’s Voting - This article looks at how demographic and economic characteristics affected voting in the 2012 Iowa caucuses.

Income Inequality in the U.S.: Are the Rich Really Getting Richer? - Is income inequality increasing the the US? Here we answer this question by examining CPS data from 1967-present. The short answer: yes.

Thursday:

The Endless Campaign for the Presidency - If it seems like presidential campaigns are getting longer, well…they are. Here we look at the average length of campaigns from FDR to today.

Friday:

New Year’s Resolutions: Six Days and Counting - 75% of people who make New Year’s resolutions fail within 6 months. This article looks at research on the determinants of success or failure.

Please remember to register so you can comment on TheFactFile.Com without having to fill out the captcha box each time—it is free and easy!

The Endless Campaign for the Presidency

Posted on January 5, 2012 by thefactfile

If it seems like presidential campaigns are getting longer, well…they are. Ignoring Jimmy Carter’s Watergate-era early announcement, which came shortly after Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, 2012 will be the longest presidential campaign in recent history.

Since 1932, there have been 10 non-incumbent candidates elected president. The average campaign for these candidates lasted 400 days, with the shortest being Franklin Roosevelt’s 129-day campaign to unseat Herbert Hoover in 1932, and the longest being Jimmy Carter’s post-Watergate run in 1976.

In contrast, in 2012, the last candidate to enter the race was Rick Perry, who announced 525 days before the election. At the time, the pundits declared that Perry may have waited too long; noting that by the time he entered the race there had already been several Republican debates and straw polls. No matter who wins in 2012 it looks like the trend toward a perpetual campaign will continue.

Source: We relied on 4president.org (http://www.4president.org/) which maintains an archive about presidential campaigns and links to the presidential campaign kickoff speeches.

TheFactFile

Separating Fact from Opinion

Tag Archives: presidency