Margin of Σrror

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Category Archives: Race issues

Bill de Blasio’s diverse coalition could clinch contest for New York mayor | Harry J Enten

Given New York’s ethnically divided politics, De Blasio leads the Democratic mayoral primary with historically broad support

Long-time followers of New York City politics know that the vote in city-wide elections usually breaks down along racial and ethnic lines. In this year’s comptroller race, for instance, Eliot Spitzer is winning black voters and losing white voters by a wide margin. The mayoral race, however, is a far different scenario.

The latest trio of mayoral polls puts Bill de Blasio just south of the 40% needed to avoid a runoff with likely second-place finisher Bill Thompson, who is 15pt to 20pt behind. De Blasio has made a late charge, but what’s truly surprising to me is how De Blasio is getting to 40%.

De Blasio is trying to hold together the most diverse coalition in modern history to win the Democratic primary for mayor. In the latest Quinnipiac poll (which is far from perfect, though will have to do), De Blasio is at 44% among Hispanic voters, 40% among white voters, and 37% among black voters. This is despite Thompson being black. So, given the margin of error on subsamples, we could say that De Blasio looks to be scoring equally well among all the main racial and/or ethnic groups.

Compare this racial coalition to that of the last white Democrat to win a mayoral primary, Mark Green in 2001. Green took 83% of whites, 29% of blacks, and only 16% of Latinos on his way to winning a runoff against Freddy Ferrer, who is Hispanic, 51% to 49%. The same racial divisions were evident to some degree in 2005 when Ferrer beat Anthony Weiner, in 1997, when Ruth Messinger defeated Al Sharpton, and in 1989, when David Dinkins topped Ed Koch.

Put another way, De Blasio is trying to achieve something unprecedented. A non-Jewish white candidate has not finished first in the Democratic New York mayoral primary in 44 years. De Blasio may be many things, but he’s not black or Jewish. For those us who use history as a guide, the lesson is that the only tradition that endures is the tradition of change.

Many have ascribed De Blasio’s winning coalition to the fact that he’s become the anti-Mike Bloomberg. De Blasio has run to the left in this Democratic primary – seemingly a smart move in a field crowded with competitive centrists. Yet, the data indicate that De Blasio’s edge is not necessarily down to being an anti-Bloomberg.

De Blasio is doing about as well with Bloomberg backers as he is with those who dislike the departing mayor. In a Public Policy Polling survey completed on Sunday night, De Blasio is at 37% among those who approve of Bloomberg and at 39% with those who disapprove. That matches a Marist poll conducted just a few days earlier.

My own guess is De Blasio has masterfully parlayed a mixture of biography and political positioning into broad appeal. De Blasio’s a white Brooklynite who promises to pay attention to the outer boroughs; this allows him to be competitive with moderate and conservative outer borough whites. He’s the most liberal of the major contenders: hence his backing from white progressives. His stances on policing, and astute ads featuring his biracial son, allow him to bring minorities into his coalition.

That is a team of voters who have brought De Blasio to the verge of winning the primary. The question is whether or not he’ll actually get to the magic 40%, to win outright in the first round. With De Blasio at 36%, 38%, and 39% in recently released polls, and with somewhere between 8% and 10% of voters undecided, it seems quite possible that he’ll make it – should the undecided vote break his way.

I still urge caution. In the last five competitive mayoral primaries, one of the two leading contenders received what they polled in pre-election polls but got no more. The other leading contender picked up the vast majority of undecideds. Normally, it’s the leading candidate of color who picks up the most support. The complicating factor is that Thompson is trailing among blacks by 10pt to 15pt, depending on the survey. So, who knows if history will hold?

Adding to the confusion is potential under-the-radar momentum for Bill Thompson. Thompson’s 25% in the Quinnipiac poll and 20% in the Marist survey are his two highest percentages in those surveys to date. He’s picked up 5pt in the last week per Quinnipiac, while De Blasio has dropped 4pt from 43% to 39%. If that is real momentum (and I don’t know if it is), then it could lead to a much closer election night than most predict.

Finally, there have been two instances in the past 16 years where a candidate fell short of 40% on election night yet reached it once absentee votes were counted. It took weeks before Messinger was declared to be over 40% in 1997. By then, they even held a runoff debate between Messinger and Sharpton!

De Blasio likely has got be more than 0.3pt on either side of 40.0% on election night for us to be confident that absentees would clinch it. The fact that De Blasio’s best numbers have come in the final weeks suggests that absentees may, in fact, be less likely to go for him than ballots cast on election day. That means that, unlike those who straddled 40% in years past, De Blasio is more likely to fall back, than spring forward in post-election day counts – if it’s on a knife edge.

Of course, none of this will matter if Bill de Blasio reaches 41%. If he does, it will cap a remarkable two months for the public advocate. If he doesn’t, Thompson’s likely to give him a good fight in the runoff, regardless of early polling. His favorables are as good as De Blasio’s, and Thompson has a tendency to close well.

But enough with my analysis, let’s hear what the voters have to say.

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Were Republicans really the party of civil rights in the 1960s? | Harry J Enten

Once you control for region, it turns out that Democrats were actually more likely to support the 1964 Civil Rights Act

With Republicans having trouble with minorities, some like to point out that the party has a long history of standing up for civil rights compared to Democrats. Democrats, for example, were less likely to vote for the civil rights bills of the 1950s and 1960s. Democrats were more likely to filibuster. Yet, a closer look at the voting coalitions suggests a more complicated picture that ultimately explains why Republicans are not viewed as the party of civil rights.

Let’s use the 1964 Civil Rights Act as our focal point. It was arguably the most important of the many civil rights bills passed in the middle part of the 20th century. It outlawed many types of racial and sexual discrimination, including access to hotels, restaurants, and theaters. In the words of Vice President Biden, it was a big “f-ing deal”.

When we look at the party vote in both houses of Congress, it fits the historical pattern. Republicans are more in favor of the bill:

80% of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill. Less than 70% of Democrats did. Indeed, Minority Leader Republican Everett Dirksen led the fight to end the filibuster. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina tried as hard as they could to sustain a filibuster.

Of course, it was also Democrats who helped usher the bill through the House, Senate, and ultimately a Democratic president who signed it into law. The bill wouldn’t have passed without the support of Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, a Democrat. Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey, who basically split the Democratic party in two with his 1948 Democratic National Convention speech calling for equal rights for all, kept tabs on individual members to ensure the bill had the numbers to overcome the filibuster.

Put another way, party affiliation seems to be somewhat predictive, but something seems to be missing. So, what factor did best predicting voting?

You don’t need to know too much history to understand that the South from the civil war to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tended to be opposed to minority rights. This factor was separate from party identification or ideology. We can easily control for this variable by breaking up the voting by those states that were part of the confederacy and those that were not.

You can see that geography was far more predictive of voting coalitions on the Civil Rights than party affiliation. What linked Dirksen and Mansfield was the fact that they weren’t from the south. In fact, 90% of members of Congress from states (or territories) that were part of the Union voted in favor of the act, while less than 10% of members of Congress from the old Confederate states voted for it. This 80pt difference between regions is far greater than the 15pt difference between parties.

But what happens when we control for both party affiliation and region? As Sean Trende noted earlier this year, “sometimes relationships become apparent only after you control for other factors”.

In this case, it becomes clear that Democrats in the north and the south were more likely to vote for the bill than Republicans in the north and south respectively. This difference in both houses is statistically significant with over 95% confidence. It just so happened southerners made up a larger percentage of the Democratic than Republican caucus, which created the initial impression than Republicans were more in favor of the act.

Nearly 100% of Union state Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act compared to 85% of Republicans. None of the southern Republicans voted for the bill, while a small percentage of southern Democrats did.

The same pattern holds true when looking at ideology instead of party affiliation. The folks over at Voteview.com, who created DW-nominate scores to measure the ideology of congressmen and senators, found that the more liberal a congressman or senator was the more likely he would vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once one controlled for a factor closely linked to geography.

That’s why Strom Thurmond left the Democratic party soon after the Civil Right Act passed. He recognized that of the two parties, it was the Republican party that was more hospitable to his message. The Republican candidate for president in 1964, Barry Goldwater, was one of the few non-Confederate state senators to vote against the bill. He carried his home state of Arizona and swept the deep southern states – a first for a Republican ever.

Now, it wasn’t that the Civil Rights Act was what turned the South against the Democrats or minorities against Republicans. Those patterns, as Trende showed, had been developing for a while. It was, however, a manifestation of these growing coalitions. The South gradually became home to the conservative party, while the north became home to the liberal party.

Today, the transformation is nearly complete. President Obama carried only 18% of former Confederate states, while taking 62% of non-Confederate states in 2012. Only 27% of southern senators are Democrats, while 62% of Union state senators are Democrats. And 29% of southern members in the House are Democrats compared to 54% in states or territories that were part of the Union.

Thus, it seems to me that minorities have a pretty good idea of what they are doing when joining the Democratic party. They recognize that the Democratic party of today looks and sounds a lot more like the Democratic party of the North that with near unity passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 than the southern Democrats of the era who blocked it, and today would, like Strom Thurmond, likely be Republicans.

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Racism doesn’t explain why Obama’s approval rating is falling | Harry J Enten

Racism likely cost Obama votes in 2012, but his latest polling drop is among non-southern whites and nonwhites

Does being black cost President Obama support among white voters?

We all know that there’s a certain proportion of the electorate that’s not going to support Obama because he’s black. Obama lost the white vote in 2012, according to the final pre-election Pew Research poll. In the south, with its long history of racism, Obama lost the white vote by an astounding 39pt. Compare that to the rest of the country where he didn’t lose the white vote in any other region by more than 9pt.

A very interesting paper (pdf) by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz looked at Google search terms and found that Obama did worse in southern areas where racist terms were searched more frequently. Even if you think Stephens-Davidowitz underestimates the longer term trend of southern whites leaving the Democratic party like Nate Cohn does, almost everybody thinks Obama lost white votes because he’s considered black.

What needs to be pointed out, however, is that most of Obama’s current approval slide likely isn’t because of racism. There’s no way to know that for sure, but a recent piece by Jamelle Bouie points to a rough method for knowing.

Compare how Obama’s approval changed between now and just before the election. We can examine how his support in different regions of the country has shifted in the polling. If Obama’s fall is because white voters can’t stand Obama because of his race, then we’d expect the sharpest fall to be among southern whites.

The latest Pew poll shows that not to be the case. Pew has consistently been one of the best pollsters out there, so I trust their numbers. They break down the vote by region and race.

The greatest fall for Obama isn’t among whites in the south; it’s in the northeast – you know that region that was on the correct side of the Civil War. Obama went from winning northern whites by 10pt in the election to a -12 net approval now. The next greatest drop is in the west where Obama fought to a near-tie in the election, but now has a net approval of nearly -20 among white voters. Close is his 14pt drop in the midwest where Obama’s net approval is now a measly -23pt.

The one place where Obama’s support among whites hasn’t fallen sharply is in the south. Obama’s net approval there is only a statistically insignificant 3pt lower than it was before the election. In other words, it’s likely he completely bottomed out in that region. Lack of white support for Obama hasn’t bottomed out in other regions.

To check my work, I also examined Obama’s Gallup approval and disapproval before and after the election. They don’t break down race by region, though they do break out Obama’s approval by region. Once again, it’s in the northeast where Obama’s drop has most prevalent. Obama has fallen from a 57% approval in the five weeks before the election to only 50.7% in the last six weeks since the NSA leaks.

None of this is to say that racism isn’t playing a role for some subset of the new disapprovers of Obama. There are plenty of racists who don’t live in the south. It’s just that you’re more likely be racist, if you’re from the south. And chances are that if racism was affecting your vote, you probably wouldn’t have turned against Obama in the last few months. You probably did so before now. You likely didn’t vote for him in 2012.

Obama’s current drop among white voters is better explained by the longer term trend of whites without a college degree leaving the Democratic party. He lost these voters by 22pt in 2012 and now manages a very meager -40pt net approval from them. It’s difficult to assign the drop to racism given that these are voters who stuck with Obama twice.

Moreover, Obama is also seeing his numbers drop among minorities. Gallup with its large sample sizes has Obama’s net approval falling by about 10pt since the election among among nonwhite voters. That is, Obama’s problem isn’t only whites without a college degree.

The only group that is staying steady with Obama is whites with a graduate degree. My own theory is that this likely is as much about the economy as education. Whites with at least a college degree happen to be the wealthiest and less likely to be affected by an economy increasingly viewed by the voters as weak.

Pew actually has Obama gaining ground with whites making at least $75,000 since the election. His net approval among them is -13pt compared to losing them by 19pt against Romney. Among all voters, Gallup has Obama’s approval declining by only 1.6pt among those making at least $75,000 versus 4.6pt overall.

Thus, racism definitely played some role in determining Obama’s margins in 2012, but his current slide probably has little or nothing to do with it. Obama is losing ground amongst whites who aren’t southern and among all races. His declines are worst among individuals making less the median income – possibly because of an economy viewed as weak. The losses among whites without a college degree specifically fit well with longer term trends that Republicans can exploit in future non-Obama elections.

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Why the Republican coalition will still work in 2016 | Harry J Enten

Predictions of demographic doom for the GOP are wishful: polling shows that winning big with white voters can deliver

The faultline in the GOP revealed by the party’s internal debate on immigration reform – over whether a future Republican coalition should rely more heavily on whites than it already does, or should try and bring more Latinos into the fold to win the presidency – remains unresolved. What we can say is that the last election and current polling suggest that the Republicans’ path of least resistance is to win even more non-college-educated whites and to try to win somewhat more of the minority vote.

Start with the fact that in 2012 Obama lost a little more than 3pt off his margin of victory in 2008. That swing was not uniform. It’s fairly clear that Obama’s share fell significantly with white voters without a college education, stayed about level with whites with a college degree, gained a few points with Latinos, and may have lost a point or two with black voters.

I don’t view the incongruity between those shifts as a sign that Obama should have done worse or better. In any election, you’re given a certain amount of leverage by the state of the economy, and you need to use it where you can. In 2012, the parties found the coalitions that worked for them. It just so happened that Obama had more room for growth electorally because the economy was “good enough”.

Indeed, there is little to no sign that Mitt Romney did worse than he should have, given the state of the economy. President Obama won by a little less than 4pt, when the two best fundamental models (based solely on numerous different economic factors) had him winning by 3pt and 5pt respectively. Taking into account Obama’s approval rating and the economy, as the original Alan Abramowitz model does, shows Obama should have won by a little more than 4pt.

That’s the reason why I don’t buy the argument that the shrinking white population in this country necessarily spells doom for the Republicans. This is a two-party system where the economy almost always dictates who wins and loses elections. No one has yet proved that the 2012 election indicates that the Republican party needs to change fundamentally in order to win, despite hundreds of column inches expended on the subject.

For Republicans to win, they’d need economic conditions slightly more favorable to the out-party (that would have been, in 2012, a worse economy and less confidence). Following the 2012 pattern, this would allow them in 2016 to continue to do exponentially better among white working-class voters. Sean Trende, who believes that the GOP could win with a mostly white coalition, anticipates Republicans also gaining a few more points among minorities.

Of course, many doubt this steady-state strategy could work for Republicans. Karl Rove said a few months ago that Republicans would have a hard time regularly winning the white vote by 25pt or more. But that’s the funny thing about electoral rules: they’re made to be broken. For example, the aforementioned Alan Abramowitz said that Republicans would have a very hard time getting above the 58% of the white vote in 2010 that they had in 1994. In fact, they won 62% of the white vote in the last midterms.

That’s why Trende has vigorously argued that the demographic wall facing the GOP doesn’t really exist. The worsening Democratic performance among white voters we have seen recently is part of a longstanding trend. If the pattern continues, then white support for Democrats will continue to drop below its current historic low.

So, now we have a test case of sorts in 2014. The economy really hasn’t gone south. Economic confidence is far higher than it was at the beginning of 2013, although it has stalled slightly. The percentage of those who view economic recovery as imminent has fallen slightly over the past few months, but it’s only slightly lower than where it was at the time of the 2012 election. Put another way, there hasn’t been that level of decline in the economy which many thought would need to happen for Republicans to win with the coalition they have.

Yet, Obama’s net approval rating with white voters is no better than -25pt right now. His approval in Gallup’s polling among white voters since the NSA leaks is now only 34.5%. That’s a 4.5pt drop since the election. Pew has it slightly lower, at 33%, which is a 6pt drop off what Obama was showing in their final pre-election poll last year. It seems as though that wall keeps moving.

Most, if not all, of this drop for Obama is among whites without a college degree. Pew found support from that segment of the electorate dropping by a little less than 10pt. In other words, there is a continuity here with the November election result, in which Obama’s support fell the furthest among whites without a college degree. If you think this might be pegged to public reaction to the Trayvon Martin case, the Zimmerman verdict and the president’s response, it’s not. Pew found college-educated whites reacted in the same way as non-college-educated whites to that issue – yet Obama has seen no decline in his standing among college-educated white voters.

Indeed, the swing looks much as expected: we have that drop among the non-college-educated whites, and among minorities to a smaller degree. We can see this by pooling Gallup’s data since the Edward Snowden/NSA affair; this gives us a very large sample size. That’s important because minority sample size in polls is often very small, which is why Pew and NBC News/Wall Street Journal differed so much in their minority findings this week. Gallup splits the difference and discovers that non-white approval of Obama has fallen since the election by 4pt, or about half of the drop we’ve seen with non-college-educated whites.

Now, things could change and this analysis may end up way out-of-date come 2016. I should also add that the eventual party coalitions may look somewhat different then, with Republicans winning back some African-American voters once Obama is out of office, but maybe also Democrats making a slight recovery with white voters.

But the most salient fact is that Obama’s approval among registered voters is a weak 45% – and that’s without a bad dip in the economy or any grave scandal. This soft approval rating gives credence to what the polling suggests: that the Republican party is most likely to win the White House in 2016 with a coalition that includes even more non-college-educated whites and a slight increase among minority voters.

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Why the Republican coalition will still work in 2016 | Harry J Enten

Predictions of demographic doom for the GOP are wishful: polling shows that winning big with white voters can deliver

The faultline in the GOP revealed by the party’s internal debate on immigration reform – over whether a future Republican coalition should rely more heavily on whites than it already does, or should try and bring more Latinos into the fold to win the presidency – remains unresolved. What we can say is that the last election and current polling suggest that the Republicans’ path of least resistance is to win even more non-college-educated whites and to try to win somewhat more of the minority vote.

Start with the fact that in 2012 Obama lost a little more than 3pt off his margin of victory in 2008. That swing was not uniform. It’s fairly clear that Obama’s share fell significantly with white voters without a college education, stayed about level with whites with a college degree, gained a few points with Latinos, and may have lost a point or two with black voters.

I don’t view the incongruity between those shifts as a sign that Obama should have done worse or better. In any election, you’re given a certain amount of leverage by the state of the economy, and you need to use it where you can. In 2012, the parties found the coalitions that worked for them. It just so happened that Obama had more room for growth electorally because the economy was “good enough”.

Indeed, there is little to no sign that Mitt Romney did worse than he should have, given the state of the economy. President Obama won by a little less than 4pt, when the two best fundamental models (based solely on numerous different economic factors) had him winning by 3pt and 5pt respectively. Taking into account Obama’s approval rating and the economy, as the original Alan Abramowitz model does, shows Obama should have won by a little more than 4pt.

That’s the reason why I don’t buy the argument that the shrinking white population in this country necessarily spells doom for the Republicans. This is a two-party system where the economy almost always dictates who wins and loses elections. No one has yet proved that the 2012 election indicates that the Republican party needs to change fundamentally in order to win, despite hundreds of column inches expended on the subject.

For Republicans to win, they’d need a slightly more favorable economic conditions for the out-party. Following the 2012 pattern, this would allow them to continue to do exponentially better among the white working class. Sean Trende, who believes that Republicans could win with a mostly white coalition, gives Republicans a few more points among minorities.

Of course, many doubt this steady-state strategy could work for Republicans. Karl Rove said a few months ago that Republicans would have a hard time regularly winning the white vote by 25pt or more. But that’s the funny thing about electoral rules: they’re made to be broken. For example, the aforementioned Alan Abramowitz said that Republicans would have a very hard time getting above the 58% of the white vote in 2010 that they had in 1994. In fact, they won 62% of the white vote in the last midterms.

That’s why Trende has vigorously argued that the demographic wall facing the GOP doesn’t really exist. The worsening Democratic performance among white voters we have seen recently among is part of a longstanding trend. If the pattern continues, then white support for Democrats will continue to drop below its current historic low.

So, now we have a test case of sorts in 2014. The economy really hasn’t gone south. Economic confidence is far higher than it was at the beginning of 2013, although it has stalled slightly. The percentage of those who view economic recovery as imminent has fallen slightly over the past few months, but it’s only slightly lower than where it was at the time of the 2012 election. Put another way, there hasn’t been that level of decline in the economy which many thought would need to happen for Republicans to win with the coalition they have.

Yet, Obama’s net approval rating with white voters is no better than -25pt right now. His approval in Gallup’s polling among white voters since the NSA leaks is now only 34.5%. That’s a 4.5pt drop since the election. Pew has it slightly lower, at 33%, which is a 6pt drop off what Obama was showing in their final pre-election poll last year. It seems as though that wall keeps moving.

Most, if not all, of this drop for Obama is among whites without a college degree. Pew found support from that segment of the electorate dropping by a little less than 10pt. In other words, there is a continuity here with the November election result, in which Obama’s support fell the furthest among whites without a college degree. If you think this might be pegged to public reaction to the Trayvon Martin case, the Zimmerman verdict and the president’s response, it’s not. Pew found college-educated whites reacted in the same way as non-college-educated whites to that issue – yet Obama has seen no decline in his standing among college-educated white voters.

Indeed, the swing looks much as expected: we have that drop among the non-college-educated whites, and among minorities to a smaller degree. We can see this by pooling Gallup’s data since the Edward Snowden/NSA affair; this gives us a very large sample size. That’s important because minority sample size in polls is often very small, which is why Pew and NBC News/Wall Street Journal differed so much in their minority findings this week. Gallup splits the difference and discovers that non-white approval of Obama has fallen since the election by 4pt, or about half of the drop we’ve seen with non-college-educated whites.

Now, things could change and this analysis may end up way out-of-date come 2016. I should also add that the eventual party coalitions may look somewhat different then, with Republicans winning back some African-American voters once Obama is out of office, but maybe also Democrats making a slight recovery with white voters.

But the most salient fact is that Obama’s approval among registered voters is a weak 45% – and that’s without a bad dip in the economy or any grave scandal. This soft approval rating gives credence to what the polling suggests: that Republican party is most likely to win the White House in 2016 with a coalition that includes even more non-college-educated whites and a slight increase among minority voters.

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What polling on the Zimmerman verdict tells us: use your vote | Harry J Enten

How Americans split on the Trayvon Martin trial mirrors support for Obama. The issue for both is youth and minorities not voting

Why vote? It’s a question often asked. Even for an election junkie, it can sometimes be difficult to know if it will really make a policy difference if we vote. Yet, the George Zimmerman trial and its aftermath offers a prime example of why voting is important. Here’s why.

A Pew Research poll released after the verdict showed that a slight plurality of those surveyed were dissatisfied with the verdict: 42% said they were not happy, while 39% said that they were satisfied. But the racial and age gaps between the two camps were wide.

Whites were in favor of the ruling by a 19pt margin. Blacks against it by an 81pt margin. Latinos were dissatisfied by a 33pt margin. To age: 18-29 year-olds were unhappy by a 25pt margin; 30-49 year-olds by a 11pt margin; 50-64 year-olds were happy by a 1pt margin; while 65+ year-olds approved by a 17pt margin. The general age pattern holds even when controlling for the fact that minorities tend to make a larger percentage of younger voters.

As Nate Cohn points out, these differences look pretty much identical to the coalitions in the 2012 presidential elections.

Any of the changes are within the margin of error. But there is one key difference between the two. The presidential election rundown was among likely voters, while the Zimmerman data are among all adults. While the latter gives us a more accurate picture of how all Americans feel, the former enables a better idea of the possible political ramifications. After all, voters are the people politicians listen to.

When Pew concentrated solely on registered voters, they found that the 3pt margin between satisfied and dissatisfied flipped: 43% were satisfied, while 40% were unsatisfied. Those who are not registered to vote were against the verdict by a 19pt margin. The reason for this is that Latinos and 18-29 year-olds of all races and ethnicities are far less likely to vote. This was mirrored in the 2012 presidential election, when polls of all adults gave Obama a far wider lead among those who did not vote.

The key difference between 2012 and the Zimmerman data is that Obama had a large enough lead to cushion himself against the fact that parts of his coalition were less likely to vote. The takeaway, then, is that if people against the Zimmerman ruling want action, then they need to register to vote.

This is especially the case in Florida. After the Zimmerman verdict, many were calling on Florida governor Rick Scott to speak out or even act against Florida’s stand-your-ground law. Scott refused.

The good news for those who want Scott out is that he’s quite vulnerable in his 2014 re-election bid. I’d probably bet against him, though it is early days. The truth, though, is that if all voters had cast a ballot, Scott would have never become governor.

Scott won his first term in the 2010 midterms by a margin of 1.15pt. That margin would not have held under a 2008 electorate, but younger voters, as they almost always do, stayed home in the midterm election. Plugging the turnout of the 2008 election into the 2010 results would indicate that Scott’s Democratic opponent, Alex Sink, probably would have won by about 1pt – had the 2010 election had 2008 turnout.

The response on stand-your-ground in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict from a Governor Sink would have likely been quite different than what we got from Governor Scott. She would almost certainly have been more sympathetic to the concerns of the African American community.

Many other things would, of course, have been different if Florida had had Sink instead of Scott as governor since 2010. Measures to change state pensions, require drug testing for welfare recipients, cut in teacher pay, and, of course, alter the rules on early voting hours would surely have turned out differently. The response to the Trayvon Martin shooting would undoubtedly have been another instance.

So, when someone tells you that voting doesn’t make a difference, point them to Florida in general and the Zimmerman case specifically. Turnout isn’t usually a game-changer, but in this case, it was – and is. A plurality of Americans are dissatisfied by the Zimmerman verdict, yet a plurality of registered voters are satisfied.

If people see the stand-your-ground law as a leading culprit in the Zimmerman acquittal and want to change it, they need to turn out and vote in 2014.

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What polling on the Zimmerman verdict tell us: use your vote | Harry J Enten

How Americans split on the Trayvon Martin trial mirrors support for Obama. The issue for both is youth and minorities not voting

Why vote? It’s a question often asked. Even for an election junkie, it can sometimes be difficult to know if it will really make a policy difference if we vote. Yet, the George Zimmerman trial and its aftermath offers a prime example of why voting is important. Here’s why.

A Pew Research poll released after the verdict showed that a slight plurality of those surveyed were dissatisfied with the verdict: 42% said they were not happy, while 39% said that they were satisfied. But the racial and age gaps between the two camps were wide.

Whites were in favor of the ruling by a 19pt margin. Blacks against it by an 81pt margin. Latinos were dissatisfied by a 33pt margin. To age: 18-29 year-olds were unhappy by a 25pt margin; 30-49 year-olds by a 11pt margin; 50-64 year-olds were happy by a 1pt margin; while 65+ year-olds approved by a 17pt margin. The general age pattern holds even when controlling for the fact that minorities tend to make a larger percentage of younger voters.

As Nate Cohn points out, these differences look pretty much identical to the coalitions in the 2012 presidential elections.

Any of the changes are within the margin of error. But there is one key difference between the two. The presidential election rundown was among likely voters, while the Zimmerman data are among all adults. While the latter gives us a more accurate picture of how all Americans feel, the former enables a better idea of the possible political ramifications. After all, voters are the people politicians listen to.

When Pew concentrated solely on registered voters, they found that the 3pt margin between satisfied and dissatisfied flipped: 43% were satisfied, while 40% were unsatisfied. Those who are not registered to vote were against the verdict by a 19pt margin. The reason for this is that Latinos and 18-29 year-olds of all races and ethnicities are far less likely to vote. This was mirrored in the 2012 presidential election, when polls of all adults gave Obama a far wider lead among those who did not vote.

The key difference between 2012 and the Zimmerman data is that Obama had a large enough lead to cushion himself against the fact that parts of his coalition were less likely to vote. The takeaway, then, is that if people against the Zimmerman ruling want action, then they need to register to vote.

This is especially the case in Florida. After the Zimmerman verdict, many were calling on Florida Governor Rick Scott to speak out or even act against Florida’s “stand your ground law”. Scott refused.

The good news for those who want Scott out is that he’s quite vulnerable in his 2014 re-election bid. I’d probably bet against him, though it is early days. The truth, though, is that if all voters had cast a ballot, Scott would have never become governor.

Scott won his first term in the 2010 midterms by a margin of 1.15pt. That margin would not have held under a 2008 electorate, but younger voters, as they almost always do, stayed home in the midterm election. Plugging the turnout of the 2008 election into the 2010 results would indicate that Scott’s Democratic opponent, Alex Sink, probably would have won by about 1pt – had the 2010 election had 2008 turnout.

The response on “stand your ground” in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict from a Governor Sink would have likely been quite different than what we got from Governor Scott. She would almost certainly have been more sympathetic to the concerns of the African-American community.

Many other things would, of course, have been different if Florida had had Sink instead of Scott as governor since 2010. Measures to change state pensions, require drug testing for welfare recipients, cut in teacher pay, and, of course, alter the rules on early voting hours would surely have turned out differently. The response to the Trayvon Martin shooting would undoubtedly have been another instance.

So, when someone tells you that voting doesn’t make a difference, point them to Florida in general and the Zimmerman case specifically. Turnout isn’t usually a game-changer, but in this case, it was – and is. A plurality of Americans are dissatisfied by the Zimmerman verdict, yet a plurality of registered voters are satisfied.

If people see the “stand your ground” law as a leading culprit in the Zimmerman acquittal and want to change it, they need to turn out and vote in 2014.

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Weiner v Christine Quinn? She might not even make the NYC runoff | Harry J Enten

The New York City mayor’s race is up for grabs. Quinn is a weak frontrunner who has built a house of cards coalition

Anthony Weiner has made a splash. Following a week of national headlines declaring that his campaign for New York City mayor had began disastrously, Weiner actually picked up 4pt in support. The latest Marist poll of the race has Christine Quinn as the very weak front-runner at 24%, Weiner at 19%, Bill de Blasio at 14%, Bill Thompson at 13%, John Liu at 8%, and Sal Albanese at 1%. Should no candidate reach 40% in the initial round of voting this September, the top two finishers will face each other in a runoff.

The big news, though, is that the poll greatly upsets the general consensus that Quinn is a near lock to make the runoff. Quinn is at her weakest point in the past year. The last two polls from Marist and Rasmussen have her at only 24% of the vote, with near universal name recognition. This late into the primary, that’s the worst standing for the leading candidate this late since 1977, when six candidates, including powerhouses Bella Abzug, Herman Badillo, incumbent Abe Beame, Mario Cuomo, Ed Koch and Percy Sutton were vying for the nomination. A look beyond the topline indicates that Quinn has less support than even that 24%.

Quinn’s favorable numbers have, if you believe Quinnipiac, been falling among Democrats all year. She had a 64% favorable rating in January, 61% in February, 52% by late April, and will likely have 50% by late May. (Note: the May poll did not ask favorables, though her favorables have been running about 10% behind her job approval rating, which was at 59% in the latest poll.) Marist has Quinn’s favorables at 60%, though there isn’t a baseline comparison. As last year demonstrated, different survey houses can have vastly different results when it comes to favorables. What’s important to note here is that when controlling for pollsters, Quinn’s favorables have been falling steadily.

More serious than just the tumbling favorables, Quinn’s current support is soft. In the Marist poll, only 30% of her voters strongly support her. In contrast, 39% of the overall electorate supports some candidate strongly, meaning Quinn has unusually dispassionate support. The only candidate with softer support is Bill de Blasio. Weiner, meanwhile, who some thought was an anomaly of pure name recognition, has a far more fervent support: 43% of Weiner’s voters say they are strongly behind him. Thus, while Weiner may have a low ceiling – as indicated by a 44% unfavorable rating in the Marist survey – his floor might be higher than many thought. If the contest were just among those who strongly support a candidate, Weiner actually beats Quinn, 29% to 25%.

The racial makeup of Quinn’s coalition suggests she’ll have further trouble. I’ve long argued that Quinn’s coalition is a house of cards built on support from minority voters, and that the strategy doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. She’s undermined by her own history, as when she blocked paid sick leave for an extended period, and she’s taken heat from minority groups for her position on stop-and-frisk. Quinn’s largely seen as something of an heir to the mayorship of Mike Bloomberg, whose approval rating is at 49% among Democrats, but only at 42% among Latinos and 40% among African Americans. Quinn, on the other hand, scores 22% among white voters, and 31% among Latinos and 26% among African Americans.

You can actually see how minority voters are slowly dropping Quinn. Her support fell by 4pt and 2pt among Latinos and African Americans, respectively, since an April Marist survey, while her white support has held steady. It should fall further – just take a look at the Bronx. Quinn’s at 32% among Bronx voters – her strongest borough. 52% of Bronx adults are Latino, and the Bronx Democratic organization has already endorsed Bill Thompson.

Indeed, I’m betting Bill Thompson will make the runoff. Per my math, a little less than half of Thompson’s supporters are with him strongly – far ahead of Quinn. He’s also a black candidate in a primary that is going to be near 30% African American, and New York City mayoral elections tend to break on ethnic and racial lines. It’s no surprise that Anthony Weiner’s strongest support comes from Jewish voters, after all. At the moment, Thompson only scores 15% among African American voters – a number that’s likely wrong.

Historically, polls in New York City mayoral elections have been consistently off estimating the minority vote. In 2009, for instance, against Bloomberg in the general election, Thompson was pegged by the final polls to win anywhere from 53%-62% of black voters, and 36%-43% of Latino voters. He won 76% of the black vote and 55% of the Latino vote. The same pattern repeated itself in both the 2005 and 1997 general elections, meaning the Republican candidates had far smaller victories than the polls predicted.

Unsurprisingly, this minority polling problem has caused surveys to underestimate the performance of minority candidates in New York City’s primary rounds for mayor. In 1989, final surveys had Ed Koch and David Dinkins in a tight race; Dinkins won by 8pt. In 1997, Al Sharpton trailed Ruth Messinger by 22pt; he lost by only 8pt. In 2001, Freddy Ferrer and Mark Green were in a dead heat; Ferrer got 5pt more than Green did in the first round. In 2005, Ferrer led Weiner by 5-7pt; Ferrer won by 11pt.

Bill Thompson is likely going to do better than polls suggest, and most of his untapped support is likely to come at Christine Quinn’s expense. Therefore, Quinn’s 24% may actually be closer to the ceiling than the floor of her support. Given that Weiner’s support has been surprisingly strong, I don’t expect his numbers to fall much. That means that the first round of voting could result in a near tie between Quinn, Thompson and Weiner. In that scenario, Quinn could end up with the short end of the stick, and not in the runoff at all.

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Five reasons Republicans won’t win Latino voters with immigration reform | Harry J Enten

If the GOP has decided to embrace immigration reform to bolster its electoral chances with Hispanic voters, it should think again

Republicans may feel electoral pressure to vote for comprehensive immigration reform. They shouldn’t – at least in the short term. Latino voters are Democrats, and Republicans would gain little even by making a 180-degree turn on immigration reform in the next 15 years. Here are five reasons why.

1. ¡es la economía, estúpido!

Latinos didn’t vote for President Obama because Mitt Romney was seen as insensitive on immigration. According to a Fox Latino poll before the election, only 6% of Latinos said that immigration was the most important issue to their vote. A Latino Decisions (LD) election eve poll allowed multiple answers to issues that were important and, still, 65% did not say immigration was important to them.

Latinos instead cared about the economy. About 50% said the economy was the most important issue to their vote. By a 75% to 19% margin, Latinos are more likely to believe in a bigger government, with more services, to a smaller one. President Obama got 75% of the Latino vote in the LD election eve poll – a perfect match.

2. Latinos are liberal

Latinos have said openly they won’t change their vote because of immigration policy. Only 31% of Latinos in the LD survey said they would be more likely to vote GOP, if the Republican party took a leadership role in immigration reform. A full 58% said they didn’t know or it would have no effect, while 11% said it would actually make them less likely to vote Republican.

The reason is that Latinos are 9pt more likely to say they are liberal than the general population. Most of that has to do with the economy, but even on social issues, Latinos, especially second- and third-generation, are no more conservative than the general population. In fact, second- and third-generation Latinos are more likely to believe abortion should be legal and homosexuality accepted by society than the general population.

3. Even “Latino-friendly” GOP politicians never did that well

The best Republican performances among Latinos have still been a big bag of “meh”. Ronald Reagan only got 37% of the Latino vote in 1984, despite winning 59% of the overall vote. Much has been made of George W Bush’s exit performance with Latinos, but it’s important to remember that pre-election polls showed Bush in the low 30s. In fact, a Latino-specific election day poll, with a high number of Latino voters, pegged Bush’s Latino support at only 35%.

The “worst” Republican showings among Latinos haven’t differed much. Bob Dole got 23% of the two-party vote in 1996, which is the same as Mitt Romney in 2012. This narrow band of difference tends to follow the voting patterns of African Americans and American Jews (staple demographic groups in the American electorate) in the past 30 years. We also haven’t seen much movement among these groups – even with extensive voter outreach.

4. Demographics don’t swing elections

Even if Republicans did bring up their percentage of the Latino vote, it wouldn’t make a great difference nationwide. Say Mitt Romney won George W Bush’s percentage of the Latino vote, he still would have lost the nationwide vote by 1.4pt. The reason is that the Latino vote still only makes up 9-10% of the vote in the national exit polls, and slightly less in most other surveys.

The rate of growth of the Latino vote nationwide has been relatively slow. A solid estimate matching past trends from David Broockman and Ethan Roeder put the Latino vote growing about 0.6pt as a portion of the electorate every presidential election through 2024. Obama’s margin of victory would be just 0.7pt higher according to projected demographics for 2024. That puts an onus on Republicans to win more Latino votes, though it’s not as large an imperative as one might assume.

5. Most Latino voters don’t live in swing states

Most of the growth in the Latino vote is occurring in non-swing states. California and Texas are where most the Latino voters are and will continue to be. California will be blue for the foreseeable future, and Texas isn’t going to turn blue for another decade and a half. Arizona is an intriguing state for Democrats, though the recent Republican turn of the white vote makes it a non-swing state.

The only swing states in which Latinos make up the same or a greater percentage of the electorate than nationally are Colorado, Florida, and Nevada. A modest improvement for Republicans in these states could make a difference in a close election. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but the majority of swing states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are more likely to be determined by African-American and non-Hispanic white voters.

All in all, Republican appeals to Latino voters are not likely to win the party many more votes in elections. That’s the bad news for the party of Lincoln.

The good news for Republicans is that Latino voters are, and will continue to be, only a slowly growing portion of the American electorate. And by the time Latinos make up 15% or more of the electorate, in 30 to 40 years, most of them will be second-generation or beyond. As Jamelle Bouie points out, they are likely to assimilate in similar ways to Italian and Irish immigrants before them. When that happens, Latinos’ stances on a whole range of issues will evolve.

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