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February 10, 2008
Huckobamastanland?
Last night it was made clear that in both parties there's major dissatisfaction with the establishment candidates. In her discussion this morning of Obama's big night (and concomitant squabbling among Democratic activists), Ann Althouse linked this wonderful interactive map showing the states which the Democrats have won so far. Another map at the same site shows the states the Republicans have won so far. Looking back and forth at both the GOP and the Democratic maps, I thought I'd merge them and check for overlapping patterns of dissent. Here's hybrid version of the GOP map, modified to show the states won by Obama and Clinton.
The breakdown is as follows (listed from largest to smallest numbers of overlapping states): The first thing I noticed was that Obama's greatest strength is in Huckabee states, and Huckabee's strength is greatest in Obama states. At the other extreme, Clinton is weakest in Huckabee states, while Huckabee is weakest in Clinton states. But notice that Obama does better in Romney states than in McCain states. While the two "party consensus" candidates -- Clinton and McCain -- have the largest total number of overlapping states, these 7 states are less than half the total (17). While none of this conclusively demonstrates anything, it does appear that there's a shared ("bipartisan" if you will) animosity against the party line in states which favor non-party consensus candidates. The big question, of course, is who will best be able to exploit this anti-Establishment division in November. (Were I McCain, I'd want my opponent to be Hillary. Were I Hillary, I'd be saying that I'd be the best candidate to beat McCain. But it would be hard to sound sincere.) AFTERTHOUGHT: The more I think about this, the more tempted I am to conclude that Romney's withdrawal may have given Obama the boost he needed to capture the nomination. I think uncertainty in the GOP may have caused Democrats to favor the establishment Hillary, but now that they know McCain will be the opponent, they're thinking about who can best trump his maverick "outsider" image. MORE: Glenn Reynolds links this website and mentions Obama's Messiah factor. But what about Huckabee's Miracle factor? Might there be a statistical correlation between Messiahs and miracles? posted by Eric on 02.10.08 at 10:27 AM
Comments
Some interesting thinking here, although I suspect that simple demographic factors outweigh the protest vs. establishment issues you are focusing on in this post. Also, in my opinion yesterday's results don't really add all that much to the analysis, since they were all from caucus states. In fact, that is something that would also be worth looking at: i.e. caucus vs. primaries, because that has certainly played into various campaign strategies (underdogs trying to create an illusion of momentum by winning marginal contests). I found two things to be significant about yesterday, at least on the Republican side. First is that although Huckabee won in Louisiana, he did so by an extremely narrow margin in an area where I thought he would win handily. And second, in Washington State (where I live and caucused), the turnout in the Republican caucus was very high (the "regulars" said they had never seen this many people, outweighing previous turnouts by a factor of something like 10 to one). When I saw some "I like Mike" hats and a guy with a Ron Paul sign out front I thought it was only going to be Huckabee and Paul supporters... And yet McCain was the winner. Not big, but big enough. So not only did overall turnout ramp up, but McCain's supporters bumped up their attendance to match Huckabee's. Just my two cents worth. HTL · February 10, 2008 05:02 PM Post a comment
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The pain is everywhere and no one knows how to stop it.
It is 1960 - we have been at war with the Soviets officially (Churchill's Iron Curtain speech) for 12 years. The air raid drills and constant fear are getting everyone down. Kennedy will save us. In fact he got us closer to a nuclear war over "diplomatic" issues than we have ever been, before of since.
I think people want miracles.
At least with Hillary or McCain you know if they got into trouble , they would slog their way out. Huck and Hussein? They would make it go away by magic.
Americans were never known for their sitzfleish. A trait that is not near as handy as most people think. It is useful occasionally, however.