Tag Archives: voting

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.

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

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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

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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 Iowa Caucuses: Trends in Last Night’s Voting

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The Iowa caucuses have come and gone, and while we all know the big (?) winner of last night—Mitt Romney—we were left wondering about the underlying demographic and socio-economic trends from last night’s voting. Did one candidate dominate the youth vote? Did educational backgrounds affect one’s choice in candidate? And how about income?

Among the most interesting results found in MSNBC’s exit polling are the following:

  • Age: Ron Paul dominated the youth vote, receiving 48 percent of the votes among 17-29 year olds compared to 23 percent for Santorum and only 13 percent for Romney. Conversely, Romney received the most support among voters 65 and over with 33 percent, compared to 20 percent for Santorum and only 11 percent for Paul.
  • Education: The top three candidates received similar shares of the vote across the “more than a high school graduate” and “high school graduate or less” categories. Santorum received the highest share of votes from those in the “more than high school graduate” category with 26 percent, compared to 25 percent for Romney and 22 percent for Paul. Romney received the most votes from high school graduate or less with 22 percent versus Paul’s 20 percent and Santorum’s 19 percent.
  • Income: As with age, there were big swings in support depending on the voter’s total family income. Paul received the most support of voters with incomes under $50,000 with 31 percentcompared to Santorum’s 19 percent and Romney’s 16 percent. Santorum received the most votes in the $50,000-$99,999 category with 29 percent compared to Romney and Paul’s 21 percent. Finally, Romney received the most votes among those with incomes of $100,000 or more, with 36 percent compared to Santorum’s 24 percent and Paul’s 14 percent.
  • Ideology: The largest swings among the three top candidates were seen in voters’ political ideology. Among those self-identifying as “very conservative,” 35 percent supported Santorum with Romney (14 percent) and Paul (15 percent) trailing far behind. In contrast, Romney received the most support among “somewhat conservative” voters, with 32 percent compared to Paul’s 21 percent and Santorum’s 19 percent. Finally, Paul narrowly edged Romney among “moderate or liberal” voters with 40 percent of the vote compared to Romney’s 35 percent. (Santorum’s support among this group dropped to only 8 percent. 

In short, what we saw last night are large vote swings depending on one’s demographic and economic characteristics. Support varied the most depending on one’s age, income, and political ideology.  

The Iowa Caucuses: Voter Turnout

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As mentioned in yesterday’s post, caucuses are only open to registered voters of each party. As such, the percentage of Iowans who vote in caucuses is clearly going to be low. For the second in our series of posts on the Iowa caucuses, we look at just how low turnout has been in previous presidential election years. (To cut to the chase: with the exception of 2008, turnout tends to fall in the range of 5-7% of the voting-age population in Iowa).

The next chart presents estimates of the number of caucus-goers in 2000, 2004, and 2008, as a percentage of the total voting population in Iowa.

Sources: US Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0398.xls); NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/us/politics/04elect.html?pagewanted=all); Des Moines Register (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/NEWS09/41208005/0/caucus)

 

Aside from the 2008 caucuses, in which approximately 239,000 Democrats (10.5% of the voting-age population) and 108,000 Republicans (4.7% of the voting-age population) participated, the proportion of the Iowa population participating in presidential caucuses has ranged between about 5% and 7% of the voting-age population. (As point of comparison, national voter turnout in presidential election years normally exceeds 50 percent of the voting-age population.)

Furthermore, these caucus-goers tend to be different from the typical general-election voter, with a higher proportion of party activists and donors. In a recent survey by the Des Moines Register, for example, 34% of likely Republican caucus-goers described themselves as “very conservative” (34%), with an additional 41% describing themselves as “mostly conservative”. (In comparison, a gallup poll from October 2011 looking at nation-wide trends in political ideology found that 21% of Republican survey respondents identified as “very conservative.”)