Category: Politics

The Problem With Polling Iowa

Pollster Mark Blumenthal has an interesting bit on how selection bias may be skewing the polls in Iowa:

The point here, in case it is not obvious: Non-response bias may have exaggerated the percentages of younger (under 45) caucus goers the 2004 Iowa entrance poll (something I wondered about a month or so ago). And since I’m assuming that age is strongly related to having attended a caucus in the past, the entrance poll estimate of the number of caucus newcomers in 2004 may be exaggerated as well.

Basically, older caucus-goers are less likely to talk with younger polltakers, which means that candidates like Dean or Obama that tend to have more support from younger voters look stronger in the polls than they actually are. The way in which the Iowa caucus system works heavily favors older voters who tend to be a part of the caucuses year after year. That’s why the results in Iowa may be vastly different from the way they’re portrayed—candidates like Obama don’t tend to have the same appeal to the typical Iowa caucus-goer as they do to the typical voter.

I’d be willing to guess that the story coming out of Iowa will be the resurgence of Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s made some major missteps in the last few months, but that’s made it easier for her to steal a page from her husband’s playbook and become the Comeback Kid—and with the latest CNN/WaPo poll putting her comfortably ahead in New Hampshire helps in painting a picture of a campaign on the upswing.

As for the Republican race, the effect of potential poll bias remains to be seen. It could be that Huckabee’s appeal to evangelicals matches with the target profile of Iowa caucus-goers. Or it could mean that Romney, McCain, or Thompson could get a boost from older voters. The race has been up in the air for weeks now, and the potential for change is so great that it’s simply impossible to make a worthwhile call.

Polling is never an exact science, which is why it only has limited utility in a campaign. A candidate like John Kerry who was in the single digits at this point in 2003 can suddenly sweep the nomination. A candidate like Howard Dean that appears unstoppable can end up losing big. Part of the fun in politics is in contests like this where anything could change. (Although it’s much less fun for those on the inside of a campaign.) The first rule of polling should be not to trust polling, as it’s as much of an art as a science. It’s quite possible that everything we’ve heard about the race in the last few weeks may be rendered moot when Iowans actually go into their caucuses and pick their candidates.

Lieberman To Endorse McCain

The Weekly Standard is reporting that Sen. Joe Lieberman will endorse John McCain tomorrow morning. No doubt this will throw the Democrats into paroxysms. Then again, the way they treated Lieberman, it’s unlikely that he would endorse anyone on the Democratic side.

The big question is what this means for McCain. He has the backing of the Des Moines Register and the New Hampshire Union-Leader—which may help him, but it also tends to remind Republicans that he’s the media’s favorite Republican. That doesn’t help him all that much.

Still, McCain was widely seen as out of the race this summer, and now he’s in a position to surprise us all. The best position to be in is the “anyone-but-Huck” camp, and Romney, McCain and Thompson are all in the running for that position. (The other big story is the collapse of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign—although it’s far too early to call him done.) When it comes to the war, McCain is one of the strongest advocates for victory and can claim that he was right about the failures of the Rumsfeld era. When it comes to economic issues, McCain is one of the strongest fiscal conservatives and one of the best position candidates on pork. On social issues, McCain has a solidly pro-life record.

The albatross around McCain’s neck is immigration, but if he can push forward a plan that makes anything looking like amnesty as a distant second to securing the borders that may help him. Indeed, that’s exactly the strategy that McCain has been pushing for a while now.

This race is wide open right now. McCain could be one of the beneficiaries of a race in which any candidate could have an opening. The fact that he can get things pushed through a hostile Congress may work to his advantage, especially in the general election.

In 2003, the Democrats went with “electability” as their mantra. While Kerry was a weak candidate, McCain is not. McCain has the benefit of giving the GOP a real shot at picking up a sizable percentage of independent voters, and he’s right on most of the key issues, and persuadable on the others. McCain has some real momentum behind him now, and as 2003 demonstrated, the guy who’s languishing in the single digits can become the frontrunner overnight…

Huck And Foreign Affairs

Daniel Drezner reads through Mike Huckabee’s Foreign Policy statement and finds it rather lacking:

The essay is a great symbol of Huckabee’s campaign — there are feints in interesting directions, but in the end it’s just a grab-bag of contradictory ideas.

In a New York Times Magazine profile, Huckabee mentions columnist Thomas Friedman and new sovereigntist Frank Gaffney as his foreign policy influences. Those in the know might believe this to be impossible, but Huckabee’s Foreign Affairs essay really is an attempt to mix these two together in some kind of unholy alchemy.

The more one looks at Huckabee the less substance there seems to be. If this guy gets the nomination, it’s lights out for the GOP’s chances in 2008. No wonder the Democrats are pushing for him—he’s the one candidate that makes Obama seem prepared. (A Huckabee-Obama race would be the most vapid Presidential contest in recent history.) His appeal is that he’s a good-old-boy Evangelical, which is enough for about 25% of the GOP electorate, but not enough to win the White House. It won’t even be close.

Thankfully, I don’t think Huck will make it through the nomination process. He’s peaked too early, and now people are asking questions about his record. The Wayne DuMond pardon is just the tip of the iceberg for Huckabee. You can’t be a governor of Arkansas without a few skeletons in your closet, and Huckabee is no exception to that rule.

Huckabee is not Presidential material. He may be a nice guy, he may be a devout Christian, and he may be the sort of person you’d like to have a beer with, but that doesn’t make him someone who could face down Ahmadinejad or work with Congress on solving our Social Security problems. Republican primary voters need to think about which candidate can actually use the bully pulpit of the Presidency to advance conservative ideas—and that will mean working with a hostile Congress and trying to advance American values in an increasingly hostile world. Huckabee’s vapid piece in Foreign Policy demonstrates that not only is Huckabee unprepared, but he possesses a naïvete that is downright dangerous. The GOP can do better than that, and hopefully they will.

SEE ALSO: James Joyner takes a detailed look at what he calls Huckabee’s “Sunday school” foreign policy.

UPDATE: Even Andrew Sullivan gets in on the act. He’s right, though. Huckabee’s statement basically consisted of throwing out the names of two foreign policy theorists that Huckabee could recall off the top of his head, not even realizing that the two stand for essentially opposite concepts of American foreign policy.

Not Ready For Prime Time

Mike Huckabee says that he wants us to stop consuming energy within a decade. Damn straight it’s time we had a candidate willing to stand up against the laws of thermodynamics!

In all seriousness, even if Huckabee meant that we should switch to all renewable sources within a decade, it’s still a silly argument. Even if you try to make sense of the statement, there’s just no way it doesn’t come off as being silly. We need a President who actually understands basic issues of policy. Mike Huckabee constantly comes off as someone who is clueless about the world around him.

Gaffes like this, and his statements which either sly anti-Mormon innuendos or signs he slept through his comparative theology classes demonstrate why Huckabee isn’t ready for prime time. He will probably win Iowa, but the reality is that Mike Huckabee is not a strong candidate, he’s not a conservative, and if he gets the nomination Hillary Clinton might as well start picking out drapes for the Oval Office. The Democrats have been holding their fire against him for months now because they know damned well that Mike Huckabee is a carbon copy of George W. Bush with all the same faults. He’s the sort of guy you want to have a beer with, but he would be a lousy President and his instincts are dead wrong on key issues.

Huckabee is a rising star, but his star will fall just as fast when Republican voters realize that he’s simply unready for the job. His appeal is understandable, but it’s all skin deep. Sooner or later Huckabee will crash, and when he does it will be a hard crash—in this race, Huckabee is playing the role of Howard Dean, and while he has some strong support, at the end of the day he is not electable and Republican primary voters need a candidate who can stand up to Hillary Clinton. Mike Huckabee is not that candidate.

NR Endorses Romney

National Review has formally endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican race for the 2008 nomination:

Like any Republican, he would have an uphill climb next fall. But he would be able to offer a persuasive outsider’s critique of Washington. His conservative accomplishments as governor showed that he can work with, and resist, a Democratic legislature. He knows that not every feature of the health-care plan he enacted in Massachusetts should be replicated nationally, but he can also speak with more authority than any of the other Republican candidates about this pressing issue. He would also have credibility on the economy, given his success as a businessman and a manager of the Olympics.

Romney has some impressive achievements under his belt, but the big question is even if he’s the most reliably conservative candidate (which is debatable), can he actually win in the general election? The essential problem that Mitt Romney has is that he’s too packaged to really connect with the electorate. The victories he’s had have come from spending a lot of money to get his message out, but the rise of Mike Huckabee proves that he hasn’t done nearly a good enough job of closing the deal with Republicans no less the American electorate.

National Review‘s endorsement is a big win for Romney at a time he urgently needs one. However, if he doesn’t beat Huckabee in Iowa and loses New Hampshire, he’s out of the race. He hasn’t built the nationwide campaign and instead has pursued then then-wise strategy of building momentum from the early contests. If that strategy fails, it’s going to be increasingly hard to find a Plan B.

All in all, the GOP could do much worse than Romney, but he needs to show he can connect and he needs to demonstrate a sincere commitment to conservative principles, both on economic and social issues. His heart is in the right place—at least for now—but it remains to be seen whether he’ll stick to his principles should he be elected.

Why You Shouldn’t Trust Polls

CNN has a poll that shows Mike Huckabee surging in the GOP race. Now, this may be true, but the poll itself is worthless as an indicator.

Here’s the key part:

The poll, conducted December 6-9, involved nationwide telephone interviews with 377 registered Republicans voters or independent voters who lean Republican.

Let’s count the number of problems with this poll:

  1. The poll has only 377 respondents for a supposedly national poll. That’s a very low number of respondents and not a large enough sample to be statistically significant.
  2. The poll includes independents who “lean Republican.” Exactly what does that term mean. Are they strongly Republican? Moderately Republican? Sorta-kinda Republicanish?
  3. For that matter, how many voters who “lean Republican” would actually vote in a Republican primary? If you’re sampling a group of people who aren’t likely to vote in a GOP primary then your sample isn’t representative of the real shape of that contest.
  4. The poll was conducted over a weekend. How many people care to spend time answering a pollsters questions on a weekend? Especially if you’re polling Republicans, who tend more often than not to be churchgoers, weekend polling tends to depress results. (Which may explain why the Democratic sample was 467 voters compared to the 377 Republicans sampled.)
  5. The margin of error was 5 points, which is very significant when you’re dealing with so many candidates separated by such small margins.

Here’s the problem: polling at this stage in the race is worthless. You have to find the voters who A) actually care about the race at this point in time and B) actually have a reasonable chance of voting in a primary. That’s a crapshoot, which is why these polls have less than 500 respondents in their samples. That’s not enough to make a statistically meaningful measure, and when you factor in all the other problems you get a result that doesn’t say a whole lot.

It seems likely that Huckabee is doing very well. It could also be that the polls are worthless. As a case in point, look back to a snapshot of the Democratic race at this point in 2003.It’s interesting how much the 2007 Republican race resembled the 2003 Democratic race. None of the candidates had found their niche. There was talk of a brokered convention. The field was entirely up on the air. The primary schedule had been compressed which gave less time for a slow build as in past races. John Kerry was at 4%. He was polling behind Al Sharpton. Howard Dean was unstoppable. He had the organization, he had a group of supporters that were fired up, and he was cruising towards the nomination. By the end of Iowa, Howard Dean was toast and it was John Kerry cruising towards victory.

Could history repeat itself? Will the 2008 GOP race follow the dynamics of the 2004 Democratic race? Who is going to take the role of John Kerry? Will it be Fred Thompson, John McCain, or will Duncan Hunter suddenly rise through the ranks to take the nomination out of nowhere? (OK, so that last one isn’t going to happen.)

I have no clue, and neither do the pollsters. As much as we’d all love to know how things play out, the race is changing too fast for the polls to have much meaning. The polls give the campaigns some ammo, but if you really want to know what’s going on they’re about as good as reading tea leaves.

Romney’s Faith In America Speech

I happened to catch most of Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech and was quite impressed by it. Apparently, others have had the same reaction. (NRO’s The Corner has plenty of other reactions.)

Romney could have easily hurt himself with this speech, but at the very least he’s no worse off than he was before—and now that he’s delivered a speech that shows real passion, I have a feeling it will give him a decent boost. Perhaps not enough to keep Huckabee from winning in Iowa, but enough to keep him in the race.

His rhetoric was excellent, and I also appreciated his metaphor of the loss of Europe’s Christian heritage and the rise of radical Islam. However, the part that really got to me was the end:

Recall the early days of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, during the fall of 1774. With Boston occupied by British troops, there were rumors of imminent hostilities and fears of an impending war. In this time of peril, someone suggested that they pray. But there were objections. “They were too divided in religious sentiments,” what with Episcopalians and Quakers, Anabaptists and Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Catholics.

Then Sam Adams rose, and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot.

And so together they prayed, and together they fought, and together, by the grace of God … they founded this great nation.

I have to admit, in terms of American political rhetoric, I think that part of Romney’s speech was the best of 2007 by a long shot. It was delivered with real passion and conviction, and the message was strong: religious convictions do matter, but they matter in terms of the common principles we all share. There will be those whose theological differences with the Latter-Day Saints will never allow them to support a Mormon for public office—and while I find that attitude perilously close to requiring a religious test for office, there is nothing in the Constitution which prevents individual voters from exercising their individual consciences in picking a Presidential candidate. However, for those wondering just how Romney’s faith will or will not influence his job as a President got their answer.

Romney did exclude atheists and agnostics from his speech, which was a notable and lamentable omission. Still, they’re not the audience that Romney is going for at this point in the race. He’ll have to recognize those groups later and more fully explain how they fit into his vision of America, but that is a task for another day. This was a speech that was directly primarily at Evangelical Christians, and Romney spoke convincingly to his intended audience in language they could understand and appreciate.

In the end, I don’t think Romney will get the nomination, and if he loses Iowa I think he’ll be sunk. Still, today’s speech was a masterwork of American rhetoric, a great speech about our shared values as a society, and it was delivered very well. This was Romney at his best, and he looked and sounded like someone who could do justice to the Office of President. It may not be enough to win the race, but it’s still a speech that will be remembered as one of the best political addresses of the year and perhaps one of the better ones of our times.

It’s About Gravitas

This fan-made ad for Fred Thompson sends exactly the message that the Tennessee Senator needs to get out:

The Thompson campaign should take a good look at this ad, because it suggests a strategy that can distinguish him from the rest of the field. In short, it’s all about gravitas. What is propelling Mike Huckabee into the space that Thompson hoped to occupy is his good-old-boy charm. While most people wouldn’t mind having a beer with Huckabee, he’s a lightweight on policy. He has the same brand of “compassionate conservatism” that while attractive, has already been demonstrated to be neither particularly compassionate nor particularly conservative.

Fred Thompson has a great plan for Social Security. He has a strong plan to deal with America’s immigration concerns. He has a strong tax plan. On the issues—those things that actually matter—he’s head and shoulders above the rest of the field. Not only that, but he’s a principled conservative in a way that Huckabee is not.

Thompson made a mistake in not running an ad like this during the YouTube debate, and if the plan is to win by attacking Huckabee it won’t work. Instead, what Thompson has to do is establish himself as a candidate who is a solid alternative to Huckabee. Huckabee has the advantage of having flown under the radar for months now—now he’s actually being looked at as a serious candidate the skeletons in the closet are beginning to emerge. There’s no need to belabor Huckabee’s problems—what matters the most is being able to distinguish Thompson’s solid conservatism and real policy with Huckabee’s vague platitudes.

This race is completely up in the air. Romney and Giuliani are in trouble, while Huckabee is rising. However, both John McCain and Fred Thompson are well-positioned with voters who are tired of the state of the race now. McCain, while a true American hero and a genuine patriot, has the liabilities of age and immigration. Thompson does not, which gives him an opening.

Realistically, Thompson needs to do better. I’m a Fredhead because I care about policy far more than the average voter—what Sen. Thompson needs to do is show how having real policy positions matters to the average Republican primary voter. If he can do that, competing on substance rather than flash, he can win. But the time is running short.

This country doesn’t need another empty suit. Mike Huckabee is a very compelling figure, and he seems like a nice guy. He’s also poor on policy and his blending of a touch of sanctimony with a dash of big government does not make a great cocktail—when it comes right down to it, “compassionate conservatism” of the Bush/Huckabee style has failed—and this comes from someone who was genuinely receptive to the idea when it was first proposed. The problem is that if people think that government is the solution to their problems, they might as well vote Democratic, since that’s the Democratic mantra. Compassionate conservatism is essentially liberal methods used to try to reach conservative ends—the problem being that conservative ends can’t be achieved that way. Electing Huckabee would be like electing President Bush to a third term, and neither conservatives nor independents have much interest in seeing that come to pass.

Thompson just needs to sell himself more. He’s been campaigning much more effectively than before, but this fight will take money and effort. A decent place in Iowa and New Hampshire and a win in South Carolina could be enough, but even then this race is up in the air. Thompson has the policy chops, but he needs to get that message out. If he does, the dynamics of this race could look very different two months from now.

The YouTube GOP Debate

I managed to catch the CNN/YouTube debate tonight, and it certainly was different from most others. The problem was that the questions that weren’t planted tended to be questions based more on Republican stereotypes rather than on substantive issues. Yes, it’s somewhat interesting to know whether a candidate believes in the Bible or not—but is it the sort of question that should come up at a national debate?

The Good

I think this debate was “won” by Mike Huckabee and John McCain. Huckabee came off as the candidate I’d most like to have a beer with some time, and John McCain came off as the elder statesman. McCain put Ron Paul in his place (which is always a good thing for a Republican to do), and he spoke with great moral authority on torture against Romney’s non-answer. Huckabee’s answer that Jesus was too smart to run for public office was a great line. Huckabee came off as very natural and very personable. McCain came off as a man of integrity and honor.

Mitt Romney was also confident and poised. He confidently failed to give a clear answer with great poise. Both he and Giuliani hurt themselves by fighting over abortion—neither one of them are strong on that issue, and both hurt themselves there. Romney’s a very poised candidate, and he has an impressive business background. His honesty on the abortion issue was questioning. It’s nice to have a candidate willing to come out and admit his mistakes.

There were some decent questions that wouldn’t normally be asked in a Presidential debate. As a space exploration fan, I liked the question about the candidate’s vision for space exploration. NASA consumes a very small amount of the federal budget, and the candidates missed the opportunity to talk about private space exploration. Huckabee’s answer wasn’t bad, but it could have been better.

Fred Thompson was very poised and gave very responsive answers. He didn’t knock it out of the park, but he showed the best mastery of the issues. The problem is that he needs to do better—it’s a crowded field and he needs to stand out more. He’s got the substance, but he needs more flash. He has some great ads out that would have done much better than the attack ad he used.

The Bad

First of all, I think Rudy hurt himself with his exchange with Romney. He’s the front-runner (at least nationally), so he doesn’t need to go on the offensive. Hitting Romney below the belt won’t help him, and made him look like a bully. Overall, his answers weren’t a strong as they could be. Rudy needs to get a boost, and this wasn’t it. While he’s still ahead nationally, he’s vulnerable.

The same applies to Fred Thompson’s attack ad. While all the others talked about themselves, Thompson’s offensive seemed out of place. Not only that, but Romney came back with a very human answer that helped him. Huckabee also had a good response. The other campaigns are calling the video an act of “desperation”—and while I don’t think that’s the case, it wasn’t the right call. I’m in Fred’s corner, but even I don’t think that running an attack ad at that point helped him at all.

Ron Paul is a nut. When given a question that basically asked him whether he believes in a bizarre conspiracy theory, he basically said “yes.” I’ll give him some credit for eschewing an independent run, but he’s still the sort of paleoconservative on national defense issues that we don’t need now.

Rudy also hurt himself with his Second Amendment answer. This was not the right crowd to split hairs on regulating guns. This was not a good night for Rudy, and it may hurt him.

This was a solid and substantive debate (at least on the part of the candidates, if not CNN), and it could end up changing the dynamics of the race. Rudy and Romney, the two frontrunners, engaged in a fight that ended up making them both look bad. Mike Huckabee demonstrated once again why he’s gaining the most traction—he was confident and had a decent command of the issues. Fred Thompson did nothing to take him out of the race. John McCain’s campaign was on life support only a few months ago, but he’s not out of the race by any chance, and many may be willing to take a new look at him after tonight.

The biggest loser: CNN. Having a Clinton campaign advisor not only be allowed to ask a question, but then to follow up live demonstrated incredibly poor judgment. At the very least CNN could have Googled the people they were having speak. Either they were trying to bias the debate or they were simply asleep at the wheel—either way it reflects badly on them.

This race is still entirely up in the air, and even with weeks left until the Iowa Caucuses the rankings could change dramatically. Fortunately, the Republican Party has a solid group of candidates to pick from. The problem is that eventually the field must be narrowed to one—and who that may be is anyone’s guess.

Are The Claws Coming Out?

Robert Novak writes on the rumors flying around Washington that Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has “scandalous information” about Sen. Barack Obama. Allegedly, the Clinton campaign is holding on to the information for now and won’t be releasing it.

It’s a classic Clintonian strategy—and it probably has to do with Hillary’s sagging poll numbers in Iowa. Instead of the story being about how Obama is catching up to Hillary in Iowa, now the story is about what sort of dirt she has on the Illinois senator. In fact, she may be bluffing, but it doesn’t matter politically. The story is already making the rounds, and in the chance there is some dirt to be dug up (and there always is), the oppo people from all the other campaigns are going to be combing Obama’s record in order to find it. If there is something, Hillary can sit on it and look above the fray and let another candidate like Edwards discover it independently and leak it. She gets the benefit of getting the damaging information out without the trouble of doing it herself. It’s the sort of Machiavellian politics that the Clintons just love to play.

As for Obama, it was a mistake for him to run in this cycle. He had plenty of time to build up a national name for himself, running either in 2012 or 2016. Instead, he got too ambitious, and now a man who has never once had to run in a competitive local race is plunging himself into national politics against a well-oiled and vicious political machine. By the end of all of this, Obama will end up being such damaged goods that it may keep him out of national politics for the rest of his career. He still has a chance to beat Hillary, but only a slim one, and even then she’ll end up destroying him in the process. Hillary feels entitled to be President, and if she can’t have it, she’ll make sure that no other Democrat does.

While the Clinton camp is naturally saying this is all a Republican dirty trick, it’s the sort of political maneuver she’s famous for. Hillary’s claws are coming out, and the more Obama threatens her ascendancy, the more likely she will be to use them.