Guest Posting: The Victory Lab visits PPLS Oct 4, 2012

Photo courtesy of Jacob Canter

Guest posting by Jacob Canter, Reed junior and PPLS Steering Committee:

Sasha Issenberg, dressed in a dark blazer and sporting a five o’clock shadow, was speaking at Reed College to talk about his new book The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns. However–as some in the audience expected–this was not to be a discussion on the merits of new media.

Rather, Issenberg’s talk focused on two contemporary political phenomena. The first is about the use of field experimentation and controlled scientific analysis in campaigns. The second is about the explosive rise in information campaigns now have about voters. A combination of test two phenomena has made all parties more effective at reaching their constituencies. For the few people who actually enjoy political campaigns becoming more active, this is undoubtedly a good thing.

But of course, many are not as excited to hear about this newly armed and fully operational battle-(campaign)-station. Two questions during  the Q/A were related to this concern. The first was about the striking lack of privacy it appears weall now have. Campaigns go through thousands of pieces of information to produce a character image that describes exactly who they think we are. Should we be concerned about what these private groups having all this knowledge? The second was about what this new behavior is doing to democracy. If campaigns continue to micro-target, are we no longer becoming a country under a single leader? What is there to stop campaigns from changing the message for every voter, until politics has less to do with compromise than
kowtowing.

Issenberg’s response was essentially that such concerns miss the point. In the US, we have been very willing to give up our information for common conveniences (think about
how much Google knows about us), and campaigns have always kowtowed to specific interests. The mere fact that campaigns are much better at this now than twenty years ago does not suddenly make it a problem. Rather, it means that campaigns are suddenly taking their jobs much more seriously, and that our future political leaders will be determined by who can appreciate the power of these tools. Rather than bemoan the existence of these tools, we should appreciate their existence, and be conscience of their
effects.

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Everyone is middle class in the United States, so Romney’s claims about capital gains may resonate

Ezra Klein correctly points out:

Romney said “Every middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains.” As this graph from the Tax Policy Center shows, few people in the middle-income brackets actually pay capital gains taxes to begin with — most of the burden falls on the wealthy.

and helpfully provides us a pretty chart.

The problem is that if we substitute “middle class” for “middle income” (as Klein does himself at Wonkblog), we run smack into the uncomfortable reality that the vast majority of Americans see themselves as “middle class” even if they have high incomes.

The data shown here are from the 2010 General Social Survey, and while the categories don’t match up to what Klein has posted, 80% still consider themselves “middle class” even among those who earn more than $150,000–only 9.1% of families according to the U.S. Census.

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Swing States or a Swinging Nation?

Image courtesy of the NY Times

There is a really cool graphic in today’s 538 blog at the NY TImes that is making its way around the internet.  The graphic is creative and awfully pretty, but the focus on individual states as independent entities, “swinging” in response to individual presidential candidacies, is almost certainly wrong.

As Jim Stimson showed a decade ago in Tides of Consent, and Ben Page and Bob Shapiro (find me in the acknowledgements!) showed two decades ago in The Rational Public, the nation as a whole has swung in fairly consistent patterns between liberal and conservative policy positions.

What’s revealing to me in the Times figure is which states maintain a position consistently in the middle of the distribution, the consistent swing states, but also those states that move most in response to individual candidacies.

The ability to mouse over and view a state’s trajectory is very instructive.  I can imagine every state politics instructor today is showing this to his students. Continue reading

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A new take on partisan polarization: Dems and Reps just don’t like one another

The results of a recent article “Affect, Not Ideology: A Social identity Perspective on PolarizAtion” by Iyenger, Sood, and Lelkes in Public Opinion Quarterly (gated) probably won’t come as news to many: Democrats and Republicans dislike one another.  The article provides an interesting take on the polarization debate, however. The authors argue that affect, not ideology, is the most appropriate way to think about polarization.

We would like to reiterate that our principal goal has been to reframe the debate over polarization in terms of affect rather than ideology. the evidence is strong that partisans are affectively polarized.

This figure captures the essence of the argument.

From Iyengar et al., “Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization”

Americans have bridged many of our differences on race and religion, but man we hate the folks from the other political party!

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My voter file moment at Vanderbilt

My day in Nashville has been wonderful–thanks again to John Geer and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions for hosting me.

My lecture had one lowlight and one highlight.  I wonder if the highlight is shared by my good friends in the elections community such as Doug ChapinCharles StewartDan Smith, and others.

The lowlight is easy: I never realized that this was a course on elections, not introductory American politics!  When I answered in response to a question that the demographic profile of the early voter mirrored many of the biases in American politics that they have “read about in the interest groups chapter”–even using the  “what accent the heavenly chorus” quote from Schattschneider–I wonder if the students knew what class they were in.

To Geer’s credit, he told me afterward that the students will probably be panicked, and maybe that’s a good thing!

The highlight was so much fun that I high-fived the instructors (Geer along with Josh Clinton and Bruce Oppenheimer).

One thing I enjoy doing is showing citizens how much information is available on the internet about voter registration and voting turnout.  In this case, I decided to do a quick analysis of the North Carolina absentee voter file.  I harvested 10 addresses that appeared to be students at Vanderbilt.  I tried to anonymize them as best I could, reporting just first names and cities.  The display is shown below.

I put this up on the overhead, and up goes a hand in the back of the room.  “I’m Natalie” came a voice from the back of the room.  “I’m Brian” said another student.  It turned out that five of the ten names were students in the room.

10 Vanderbilt University addresses from the NC absentee file

A few students seemed to be nodding off to my somnolent presentation.  They all woke up after that.

Fun times in Nashville.  My daughter, Katie, and I are off to Puckett’s Grocery for dinner and some music.

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Ballot Tracking in NC

I am heading off to Vanderbilt University tomorrow to lecture to John Geer’s introductory American politics class, and I am pretty sure there will be a relative in the audience!

I have been slashing away at the North Carolina absentee ballot file tonight, just to show the students what kind of ballot tracking goes in under the early voting regime.

One thing I stress at this point: there is not a lot to be learned.  I know reporters love to see these early numbers as indicators of something about the campaign, but we are talking about only 134,00o total ballot requests, and as you can see by the figure, only about a quarter have been returned.

The total expected turnout in North Carolina is well over four million.

In short, this ain’t a lot of ballots.  The pictures are pretty, but there is not a lot you can conclude.

P.S. To my Political Science 311 students: you’ll be generating these graphs after break!

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Micro Economies, Micro-Micro Economies, and the Political Challenges in Metro Portland

Washington County, OR

This article by Richard Florida will surely be used as further evidence of the wisdom of the Portland’s economic development trajectory for the past decade.  Florida, after all, was the guru of the “young creative class” model.

Here’s the problem–just as a country as complex as the US consists of thousands of micro-economies, metropolitan areas themselves are far from uniform.

In the Portland/Vancouver metro area, for instance, the population and economic growth engines for the past decade have not been Multnomah County or the city core.  It’s been Hillsborough, Beaverton, and suburban Washington County. Continue reading

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Ezra Klein at Reed

A packed house in Vollum Hall listened to Ezra Klein lay many of the problems of the current American political system–at least in Washington DC–on the institution of the filibuster. Ezra hates the filibuster. He really hates the filibuster, although longtime readers probably already know this.

Much of his talk was a setup to this takeaway point. There was, for instance, a wonderful snippet of a letter written by Lyndon Johnson’s congressional liason regarding Medicare. Paraphrased: “We have 55 votes Mr. President; Medicare passage is assured.”

Today, you seemingly need 60 votes just to appoint a federal dog catcher, not to mention pass substantial legislation addressing global warming, a burgeoning federal budget deficit, or reform entitlements.

As Klein put it most effectively, I think, there is nothing wrong with empowering the minority to become the majority–a job description he attributed to Pete Sessions

Image from the Wonkblog

. What is a problem is when you align the incentives for gridlock (via the filibuster) to the incentive to become the majority.

Ezra asked me at dinner what I, as a political scientist, thought of this talk. I was half honest with him. I liked it a lot as a teacher and community member. Anyone who heard the collective gasp when he showed a chart about filibusters in the modern Senate could not have been failed to be impressed. Continue reading

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Politika Poll: Identify Rejali’s Animal Side

I can’t figure out how to get the results displayed inline, but by semi-popular demand:
Darius’s Animal Side: The Poll
More information here.

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I know what Rejali did last summer, Oz Edition

I just received this email from my colleague Darius Rejali (posted with his permission):

Mudgee the Koala and I posed for pictures – or in the Persian Khers and Khersak (Bear and little bear). Mudgee didn’t mind being pet but wanted to munch her Eucalyptus leaves. She was generally accommodating but didn’t want to hug.

The Cockatoo I have named Ellen – after DeGeneres – and I had an interesting conversation and Little Joey the Kangaroo and I had a stare down in the Yard as well.

Lastly on the cook’s river, I hung out with an elusive Japanese being who was like me visiting.

And yes, before you say it, the resemblance between me and the Koala has also been noted. In fact, the Koala Keeper said, as I stepped up, you do realize you look the same?

Thus the imagined poll:  Darius – Wombat or Koala or Totoro?  Herbivorous nocturnal burrower OR daytime eucalyptus tree climber or small elusive tree spirit? (Paul Gronke – don’t you wish this was the simplest poll you had to do for this election season?)

Why do colleagues send us these kinds of things when they are on sabbatical?  I think I may have to figure out how to implement said poll!

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