Letter from Britain 2

Who would have believed it? America has elected a black, liberal, intellectual. What caused this amazing outcome? Who caused it? In this second Letter from Britain I use the British psephological tool, `swing' to illuminate the what and the who of the 2008 American Presidential Election. "Swing" measures the votes state-by-state (Table 1 - see below) which compares the Bush-Kerry election of 2004 to McCain-Obama in 2008 and the demographic and attitudinal outcome (Table 2 - see below) in 2008 compared to 2004 (where we can, using exit poll data[1]). At its heart, swing measures the number of voters who have `swung' from one candidate to another between two outcomes. The formula is simple: if a = 2008 result and b = 2004 result, swing is (b+a)/2, e.g., in 2008 Senator McCain lost to Senator Obama by 46% to 53%, a 7 point difference. In 2004, President Bush beat Senator Kerry by 51% to 48%, a 3 point difference; (7+3)/2 = 5, in the aggregate, 5 people in 100 switched in 2008 from the Republican candidate to the Democrat. What Table 1 (Swing by State) tell us *1. Across the USA's 50 states plus the District of Columbia, the total vote added up to was 127,142,278. There were 67,066,915 (52.7%) for Senator Barack Obama; 58,421,377 (45.9%) for Senator John McCain, and 1,653,986 (1.3%) for other candidates. This gave the election to President-elect Obama by 8,645,538 votes (6.8%), which equates to a "swing" of 5%, five voters moving from the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, in 2004, to the Democrat, Barack Obama, in 2008. This is our basic comparison. The state-by-state vote gives us the best data to compare and draw our hypotheses for any number of measures, and those who know each state's record and composition, attitudes and values, will be able to use these findings to draw their own, and undoubtedly more sophisticated conclusions, but several stand out. *2. The biggest swing in any state was the 18% in Hawaii. There will be several reasons for this, starting with the `local boy' factor, voters proud to help elect someone born in their state. No doubt other factors were at work, as politics generally (and psephology specifically) is a complex analysis task. Clearly Obama attracted racial minorities in larger numbers than ever before. This may be a reverse "Bradley effect", which was much simplified in the media idea that white people don't vote for black candidates. The so-called Bradley effect was derived from academic studies based on data from the decade ending in 1982, the year the polls in California `forecast' as easy win for the black Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in his race to become governor of California, only for the voters in California to elect his white opponent. In many speeches and radio and TV interviews I supported the idea of a slight Bradley effect, no more than 2% overall, because the "Reverse Bradley effect" which seems to have impacted in Hawaii and other states where a large racial minority exists. Also, that where a true Bradley effect does exist is largely in the already safe Republican (`red') states, mainly in the South. *3. The regional outcome analysis supports this hypothesis. In the Southern states the swing was less than half (2.3) the national average (5.0). Voters in the Southwest were the next least `enthusiastic' in their support for Obama (3.5). The greatest swing to Obama was in the mountain states (7.4). Most others were close to the average, the mostly `blue' (Democratic) states having a 4.5% swing, the central states 5.4%, although Indiana, a central state, had, next to Hawaii, the greatest swing. The 11% magnitude of the swing in Indiana moved Indiana into the Democratic column for the first time since 1964 when the Lyndon Johnson landslide included Indiana. *4. There were only three states which "counter-swung", to McCain. They were Tennessee (-0.5%), Louisiana (-2.0%) and Arkansas (-5.5%), Arkansas a combination I suspect of disappointment that Hilary Clinton's not being the Democratic candidate, and a Southern state tradition. The other 47 states all swung to Obama. *5. I have always carried a `compressed spring' hypothesis about, that it is easier to move politically from 50% to 60% than from 85% to 90%. This seemed at first inspection to be sustained by the normally strongest Democratic states which had low (further) swings to Obama, such as Massachusetts (0.5%) and District of Columbia (2.5%) but a quick statistical analysis reports otherwise. After removing the explicable states of Hawaii and, Arkansas, and the District of Columbia, the ten most Democratic had an average swing of 5.4%, the next ten 5.2%, the third ten 5.2%, the fourth 3.9% (which contained Indiana, and the last, 5.2% again. Repeating the exercise by ranking by Republican strength the analysis proved to vary the national 5.0% by as little a spread between 4.8% and 5.2% across the five segments. I am sure that there is much more to be made by state specialists and academic political scientists, pollsters and others of a psephological bent, and I would be glad to have sight of their contributions to our collective knowledge. So what then of Table 2, the demographic and attitudinal analysis? *6. There was little difference in the "gender swing". While in 2004 the 3% Bush victory turned into a 7% Obama win in 2008 overall, a "shift" of 10%, among men Bush led by 11 percentage points, 55% to 44%, while women voted for Kerry 51% to 48%, a 14% total, thus a 7% "gender swing". In 2008, Obama won both among men and women, but men only by 1% and women by 13% (which must give the Palin apologists pause for thought). Yet when turned into the swing between 2004 and 2008, there was little difference, men 6% and women 5%. Very little discernable Palin effect. *7. Not so with the age analysis. As predicted, without the 18-29 age cohort (18% of voters this time v. 17% in 2004), the young's enthusiasm for Obama, the election would have been much closer, as the 18-29s swung 12.5% to Obama between 2004 and 2008, no fewer that two thirds, 66%, voting for Obama vs. 32% who voted for McCain, giving the Democratic candidate a 34% lead in 2008, a huge jump up from just 9% more of younger people voting Democratic in 2004. There was also an above average swing among the next older cohort, 30-44, 6.5%, the next cohort down to 1% of the 45-64s, and a nil swing among the quarter (18% in 2008, 24% in 2004) of voters in the 65+ age group, who gave McCain almost exactly the same percentage of the vote that they gave Bush four years earlier. *8. Nor race, for if only whites had voted Senator McCain would be the President-elect. He isn't. White folks may be three quarters (77%) of voters, but that means that nearly a quarter (23%) aren't, and 19 out of 20 blacks voted for Obama, and just 4% for McCain. Among Latinos, two-thirds voted for Obama. Much was made of the voting patterns of Hispanics/Latinos by the media early on. The received wisdom was that they would not vote for a black man in many numbers. In 2004 this was true to some extent, but only to the extent that Latinos were less supportive of Kerry (53%) than were the blacks (88%). Still, Latinos gave Kerry a 9% lead in 2004, but a massive 36% in 2008. Their 13.5% swing to Obama was among the biggest of any grouping. Latinos represented 9% of voters in 2008. *9. Asian-Americans are still only 2% of the electorate, and they too swung to Obama, by 7.5%, half again the 5% average across all groups. *10. One of the biggest swings, and biggest surprises, came from a tiny but important segment of the electorate. Just three percent of the electorate in 2004 admitted to the exit poll interviewers that their household income exceeded $200,000. They voted by 63% to 35%, nearly by two to one, for President Bush over Senator Kerry in 2004. Despite the Obama promise that he would introduce tax cuts for 85% of the American taxpayers (and that clearly meant a tax rise for the wealthy), they nonetheless swung by a massive 17% to give Obama a 52% to 46% win in their segment (in 2008, their ranks had increased by 100%, from 3% in 2004 to 6% in 2008). So much for the often repeated false premise that people tell pollsters they will vote Labour/Democrat but if threatened by tax rises they don't in the voting booth. Not true in Britain in the 1997 Blair landslide or in USA in 2008. *11. The other important income group for Obama was, perhaps unsurprisingly as they include a disproportionate percentage of black voters, the least well off, who have household incomes of under 15,000 to $30,000 income group, was a below 5.0% swing measured, 4.0%. *12. Those 4% who are the least well schooled, with no high school, again disproportionately black, were strong supporters of Obama, giving the Democrat a 13.5% swing and a majority of 28% this time, compared with just 1% in 2004. Interestingly, those with a college education, even those with post-graduate education, swung somewhat less to Obama than the average. Since the days of Adali Stevenson there has been the hypothesis that less-well educated voters wouldn't vote for an intellectual. Those with no high school with their 13.5% swing against the less than 4% for those with at least one college degree showed that other things trumped anti-intellectualism. An American equivalent of a first from Harvard for Obama vs. a poor third for McCain seemed not to carry much weight. *13. Party ID is an important factor in American elections. According to the always useful Pew polling, towards the end of the long campaign 37% said they thought of themselves as Democrats while 31% were Republican supporters. In the popular vote, it's much easier to get to 50% +1 from 37% than 31%. That said, the nine in ten of Democrats told the Edison/Mitofski gang that they'd voted for Obama, and nine in ten Republicans supported McCain. Before the election began, the Democrats had a record ten point lead in party ID. The 28% of those who wear the `I vote for the person, not the party' badge, the independents (unknown in British political parlance) were level-pegging in 2004, with just a one point lead for Kerry; this time it was a 3.5% swing to Obama, 52% to 44%. He did well with them, but not nearly as well as the pundits and analysts had anticipated. They represented 26% of voters in 2004, 29% in 2008. *14. America voted for a self-confessed `liberal'. It wasn't long ago that `liberal' was a dirty word in American folklore; anyone who was tarred with the `liberal' brush could not be elected. Obama, a self-confessed liberal just was. The ideology profile of the 2004 American voter was 21% liberal, 45% moderate, and 26% conservative. In 2008 it was 22%/44%/34%, not much change. In 2004, 85% of liberals voted for Kerry, in 2008, 89% for Obama. There the `compressed spring' theory works, for Obama's swing was 3.5%. Among moderates, who split more evenly last time than this, the swing was 5.5%. Even among Conservatives there was an above average swing of 6.0%. *15. First-time voters in 2004 gave Kerry a 7 point lead; in 2008, they voted 69% to 30%, delivering a massive 16 point swing to Obama. They were 11% of voters in both 2004 and 2008. *16. One of the most intriguing findings from the exit poll this year is that while in 2004, those wavering voters who decided finally how they were going to vote in the last three days of the campaign gave a 13 point lead to Kerry, but in 2008, they leaned to McCain, giving him a five point lead, 52% to 47%, which must take some explaining. *17. Protestants, (54% of voters both then and now), swung to Obama by an average 5.0%, Catholics (27% of voters) 7.0%, and Jewish (2% of voters) by 4%. The respective leads were McCain by 9% amongst Protestants, Obama by 9% among Catholics and among Jews a massive 78% to 21%, nearly four to one. *18. McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate probably captured more headlines than any other single event in the election, and certainly more discussion. There are no comparative figures from 2004, but the result is certainly interesting if a bit contradictory. There are two pair of findings: of the 7% of voters who considered Palin's appointment as the most important issue of the election to them, there was a five point Obama lead and of the rest who said it was important (not `most' important), a third of voters, it was a five point lead to McCain. On the `minor factor' group, one in five, a massive 2:1 lead for Obama, but an equally huge 2:1 lead for McCain among those who said it was not a factor, and they were a third of voters. *19. One most interesting finding relates to the 12% of the voters who are members of trade unions, especially because it has been reported that Barack Obama has given the unions a promise both the abolish the Right to Work Act and the secret ballot for officers of trade unions. So how did they reward him? By a nil swing from Kerry, while those who do not belong to trade unions swung half again beyond the average, to 7.5%. Any errors in the tables which follow and the analysis above are entirely my own, and I would be grateful for any corrections or questions/comment. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Edison Media/Mitotsky Exit Poll data obtained from www.CNN.com