Download PROF. LARRY SABATO Thank you for the honor of addressing this

PROF. LARRY SABATO
Thank you for the honor of addressing this impressive gathering.
I cannot help but note that you have invited me over on the 4 th of July, American
Independence Day. I interpret this as a sign that all is forgiven and my countrymen
join me in saying we're grateful. The 'special relationship' that exists between the
United Kingdom and the United States extends to our politics and as different as our
systems are we still have much to learn from one another.
This lecture is co-sponsored by the BBC and the Reuters Institute for the Study of
Journalism and I want to acknowledge and thank our BBC host Fran Unsworth and
the Director of the Reuters Institute, Dr. David Levvy. May I also commend you for
appropriately naming this lecture after one of the towering figures in the field of
psephology, Sir David Butler. Since the 1940s Sir David has enlightened and
challenged the elections field with ground-breaking research, including: the Nuffield
Election Studies series he has designed creative innovations such as the famous
"swingometer" and he has helped the news media and the citizenry intelligently
interpret election results. In democratic societies the simple act of voting must be
matched by an understanding of election results and no one has done more to give
powerful meaning to raw numbers than David Butler. On both sides of the Atlantic, we
salute him.
It's often said that we can foresee the small future clearly - but the big future poorly. In
the field of elections that means we can precisely predict the offices to be filled the
dates of the elections and the accepted rules of the game. But we never perceive the
next big thing the next trend that will change the face of politics or the next politician
who will rewrite the rules. I'm currently finishing up a five-year book project entitled:
THE KENNEDY HALF-CENTURY to be released this fall as we approach the sad 50th
anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy on the 22nd of November.
When Jack Kennedy began his run for President few thought the country was ready
for a Roman Catholic President in a nation that was 75% Protestant and fewer still
believed the 43-year old had the seasoning to be President. The wise men of the
media said a candidate might be able to get over one of those barriers - but not both!
Yet Kennedy did – barely with the help of Lyndon Johnson and Chicago Mayor
Richard Daley and perhaps a few civic-minded dead people still on the voting rolls in
Texas and Illinois. Kennedy's win was astounding and unforeseen even - as the
election year began. So were many other recent presidential victories: Richard Nixon's
improbable comeback from oblivion (before returning to oblivion), the unknown Jimmy
Carter's Watergate-era win, and the triumph of a 69-year-old Hollywood B-movie
actor. I still recall the headline in the London Times on Election Day 1980 about the
"too-close-to-call" contest that actually became a landslide for Ronald Reagan.
However, perhaps never in modern American history has our predictive vision been
less acute than for the rise of Barack Obama. He was a mere state legislator four
years before his election as President. He had failed at his only bid for the U.S. House
of Representatives in 2000. And - oh yes, he was African-American and all 43
Presidents of the United States had been white men in a nation that had fought a civil
war over slavery in the 1860s and another near-civil war in the 1960s over Race and
Rights. Still, Obama ran for the United States Senate from Illinois in 2004 and through
a combination of skill but also pure luck his strongest opponent was forced out
because of a scandal and the Republicans substituted a far-right un-competitive
nominee. Obama skated into the Senate enhanced by his surprise pick as the
Keynote Speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
"There is no Red America. There is no Blue America. There is only the United
States of America!"
Thundered Obama at the convention to a prime-time audience of many millions
referring to the colors assigned to the Republican and Democratic parties by the TV
networks. (Talk about media power! The major parties in the United States didn't even
get to choose their own colors.)
By the way, the Democratic presidential nominee who gave Obama his invaluable
national TV debut was John Kerry. I don't think that hurt Senator Kerry when
President Obama was looking for a new Secretary of State six months ago.
When Senator Obama began to run for President just two years after his arrival in the
Senate the response was incredulous.
"Inexperienced! Presumptuous!", shouted the critics.
"And black!" added others in a whisper.
I've admired the way Hillary Clinton has handled the ups and downs of a remarkable
career and I suspect you'll be hearing from her again in some major capacity but she
told me personally in February 2008 that if nominated Obama's race would bring the
Democratic ticket crashing down to defeat and her concerns were widely shared
among the party elite. Early on, most political analysts and pundits believed Clinton
could not be defeated in 2008 by anyone least of all Obama! She had been the
nominee-presumptive for two years with clear leads in national polls of Democrats. It
was a close contest, but by June, the impossible had happened. Barack Obama had
won the Democratic nomination for President. But if you go back and review the
media coverage at the time you will find an enormous degree of pessimism about
Obama's chances in the fall. The media polls were showing Obama and Republican
nominee John McCain in a tight contest and speculation in the press was rampant
that there would be a hidden anti-black vote on Election Day that is some whites were
saying they would cast a ballot for Obama but could not bring themselves to do so at
the polling place.
This phenomenon had indeed occurred in two elections for state Governor involving
African-American candidates in the 1980s. Yet much had changed since then, as we
were to learn. To this day news media accounts of Obama's victory over McCain claim
that the economic collapse in late September that initiated the Great Recession was
primarily responsible for boosting the Democrat into the White House. In fact the
election had been effectively over since the summer. The economy was already weak
and President Bush was so deeply unpopular that his ratings rivaled Harry Truman's
in 1952 low 30s at best - in most polls. Using our election model that incorporates,
among other variables, the incumbent President's poll standing my predictions
website ‘the Crystal Ball’ was able to project in July 2008 months before the election
that Barack Obama would receive about 53% of the popular vote. He garnered 52.9%
in November. Later in the fall, we projected that Obama would secure 364 electoral
votes in the Electoral College; he received 365, just one more than our estimate.
Obama's popular vote percentage was the best showing for any Democrat since the
American Civil War with the exceptions of Franklin Roosevelt's and Lyndon Johnson's
landslides.
I'll return to 2008 in a moment but let's skip forward to the election we witnessed last
year. While the economy wasn't as bad as it had been the unemployment rate still
hovered close to 8% and no President since FDR had been reelected with a rate that
high. Americans were pessimistic about the nation's future, with a large majority
believing the country was seriously off on the wrong track. The theme clearly apparent
in much of the media throughout 2012 was either that Obama might be doomed or
that in the end it would be an extremely close election. Not only was Obama not
doomed he won by 5 million votes 4 percentage points and a large Electoral College
tally that saw only two states switch from 2008 (Indiana and North Carolina).
What did the Press miss? In the age of Twitter and blogs and personnel cutbacks and
a dozen deadlines per day every single thing that happens publicly gets reported in
some detail but we drown in the details. It is almost as though everything is the single
most important thing that has ever happened until it is replaced by the newest "most
important thing". What is lost is fundamentals -boring constants that tell us far more
than the latest gaffe committed by a candidate ever could. Let me cite a few
examples. In U.S. history, since popular elections began in 1824 Presidents who have
sought another term have been about twice as likely to win that term - as to lose it.
Advantage, President Obama. Since 1900 five incumbent presidents have been
denied a second term: William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy
Carter and Bush Senior. In each case, the incumbent faced a serious challenge for
re-nomination within his own party. You could add Truman in 1952 and Lyndon
Johnson in 1968 who decided not to run again - in large part because of major
primary opponents within their own party. Every re-elected President was unopposed
for re-nomination or had very minor opposition. President Obama was unopposed for
the Democratic nod in 2012. Advantage, President Obama.
Research in my field has confirmed what analysts have always suspected: There is
increased difficulty for a party to hold the White House with the addition of every
four-year term it occupies the White House. Grievances, scandals and mis-steps are
cumulative. The obverse of this axiom is also true. It is much easier to hold the White
House when your party has been in control of it for a short period of time. From the
start of the twentieth century until today parties have almost always retained control of
the White House for a second consecutive term. The sole exception? Jimmy Carter
and the Democrats in 1980. Carter was the unluckiest President since Herbert
Hoover; with a horrible economy in the second half of his term, the humiliating Iranian
hostage crisis - and the Ted Kennedy challenge for re-nomination. In 2012 President
Obama and his party had held the White House for just four years. Memories of
President Bush; Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the economic collapse that happened on
Bush's watch, were all fresh. Like his predecessors, Obama could point to Bush
whose poll ratings were still in the cellar in 2012 - and argue:
"I haven't had enough time for my policies to work, and besides, why would we
ever want to go back to the Bush years?"
Advantage, President Obama.
While the Press focused almost obsessively on the unemployment rate political
scientists have long known that another economic measure, the change in GDP
(gross domestic product), is a better indicator of how the public will react politically.
People don't know the numbers, of course, but they sense whether the economy is
improving or not. In the first three-quarters of 2012, the United States' GDP increased
by 3.2% historically just enough for an incumbent president to win. Advantage,
President Obama.
Notice that I have barely mentioned the challenger's name. That is because
traditionally, voters exercise retrospective judgment in choosing a president. If the
incumbent passes basic tests on the economy, on foreign policy (i.e., no unpopular
wars) and on scandal (i.e., no big ones directly connected to him) he is almost
assuredly reelected. Only when an incumbent fails on at least one of these measures
is the challenger seriously considered. An unacceptable challenger - say, far-right
Barry Goldwater in 1964 or far-left George McGovern in 1972 sends people scurrying
back to the incumbent - whatever their doubts. Mitt Romney was no Goldwater.
Romney was far more moderate than even he could admit, in order to be nominated
by today's very conservative Republican primary electorate. Romney could perform
splendidly in a presidential debate as he did in early October but there was no lasting
effect. Romney's many gaffes wiped out whatever gains he might have made in the
debate - writing off 47% of the U.S. public as supposedly too dependent on
government largesse to consider voting for a self-reliant Republican or earlier,
offending our closest ally with some bizarre comments about the Olympics. But gaffes
had little or nothing to do with the election results. The evidence is strong that a
top-tier Republican nominee, such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush or New
Jersey Governor Chris Christie would have fared little better and arguably all of
Romney's actual opponents for the Republican nomination the ones who ran in the
primaries - would have lost by wider margins.
Why is this so? The fundamentals I've stressed are part of it and as I have noted they
receive little attention from a media obsessed with each day's insignificant events.
Overall, though two massive political and social elements explain what is happening in
American politics. They are not emphasized nearly enough by most of the news
organizations covering politics. First, America is polarized into two warring party
camps in a way that is unusual in recent decades. Our current parties are coalitions of
groups, and that hasn't changed, but ideologically the parties have been purified.
From Franklin Roosevelt until Bill Clinton, both the Republican Party and the
Democratic party contained a fair number of ideological apostates: liberal Northern
Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats were relatively common. This
encouraged bipartisanship in both houses of Congress and many state legislatures.
Big legislation and major new programs required backing from both sides to pass. For
example, in the 1960s civil rights bills and the establishment of health care for the
elderly, Medicare, received many votes from both parties. Remarkably in fact because
of the prevalence of conservative Southern Democrats in those days, a larger
proportion of Republicans than Democrats in Congress backed civil rights.
Today, virtually without exception Democrats in Congress are liberal and Republicans
are conservative. One recent study has shown that the most conservative Democrat
now serving in Congress is more liberal than the most liberal Republican in Congress.
Bipartisanship may not be dead, but it is on life support. In ideological terms,
Republicans are from Mars and Democrats are from Venus. Voters have realigned,
too they have sorted themselves out by ideology into the liberal party or the
conservative party and they agree on little at least with respect to controversial social
and economic policies. Crossover voting has been reduced, too, and Americans have
even sorted themselves out ideologically in their choice of home community and state.
Political birds of a feather are now flocking together; if they have economic mobility,
Americans live where they are most comfortable - and where they share the values of
their neighbors. For instance, most U.S. states have become more deeply Republican
Red or Democratic Blue. A pair of presidential contests will illustrate the point. Back in
1976 Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated Republican Gerald Ford by a modest majority
but the election was competitive across most of the nation. Twenty states were
decided by less than 5% of the vote. In 2012 Barack Obama also defeated Mitt
Romney by a modest majority. But only four states were decided by less than 5% of
the vote. A majority of the states (27) went for Obama or Romney by massive
landslides of 15% or more compared to just ten of these landslide states back in the
Carter-Ford race. So much for there being no Red America and no Blue America, as
Obama once declared. The colors have never been more distinct, at least in the
modern period.
What about the independents who don't identify with either party? If you read the
American press and some of the polls they take, you'd think that a quarter to a third or
more of the voters fall into this category an enormous swing group that can go either
way and picks all the winners. It makes for great headlines, and it is totally phony. A
tall stack of research shows that true independents are tiny in number perhaps 5% to
8% of the electorate and many of them are disengaged and do not vote at all. The
"hidden partisans" people who say they are independent because it has social cachet
or helps them avoid family or workplace arguments - actually have clear partisanship
once their voting choices are examined and they vote for one party at least as often
as the fully declared partisans. Thus, much of the media drama about the "undecided
vote" is invented.
Another trend complements polarization, and is even more powerful: the changing
composition of the American electorate. Demography is destiny, increasingly so, and
it is helping the Democrats and terrifying the Republicans - and perhaps spurring the
Republican Party to make long overdue shifts. Bluntly put, much of the voting is
related to race and gender. Democrats now regularly win the votes of about 80% of all
minority voters; African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans - and others.
Republicans win up to 60% of the votes of whites. That white support was enough for
the Republican presidential nominee to win three landslides in the 1980s. Mitt
Romney ran as strongly among whites as did Ronald Reagan and George Bush
senior. Reagan and Bush won overwhelmingly while Romney received only 47% of
the national vote. That's because in the 1980s, whites were more than 85% of the
national electorate; in 2012 whites comprised just 72% of those who voted for
president. Meanwhile, the total muscle of minorities is increasing by about 2% of the
total vote every presidential cycle. I expect minorities to be close to 30% of the
national vote for the next presidential election in 2016. By about 2044 minorities,
taken together, will be a majority of the U.S. population. Even though it will take a
while longer for minority groups to account for a majority of the actual electorate, the
trend is unmistakable and irreversible. Either Republicans begin to win considerably
more than their current 20% share of the minority vote or they will be a permanent
minority party winning the White House only when Democrats forfeit it temporarily
because of a bad recession, an unpopular war, or a serious scandal.
Instead of a two-party system, we could be developing a "party-and-a-half" system.
You might ask: Couldn't Republicans increase their share of the white vote instead?
That is highly unlikely. First, women are a majority of the white vote and a majority of
the overall vote and since 1980, without fail, they have voted considerably more
Democratic for president than have men regardless of which party won the White
House. The gender gap is generated by many factors primarily economics but also
women's views on war and peace abortion and contraception and other social issues.
The Republican Party shows no sign of shifting positions near enough to change the
gender equation. Second, the young - those between the ages of 18 and 30 - have
begun to identify strongly with the Democratic party, mainly because of the party's
positions on Gay Rights, Abortion, Climate Change and other similar topics. Obama
won between 60% and 66% of the young in his two elections. Romney won narrowly
among white youth, but again, the white proportion of the youth vote is diminishing.
And adding insult to injury for the Republicans the available research suggests that
once someone has voted for the same party in three consecutive elections they are
likely to retain that partisan preference for the rest of their lives. Republicans appear
unwilling so far to jettison their conservative social policies which will be essential to
winning more of the youth vote. It's easy to see why they are hesitant. Mitt Romney,
just like George Bush and John McCain... captured nearly 80% of the white Christian
evangelical vote the very people who would abandon the Republican party if it
suddenly became pro-choice on abortion or supportive of gay marriage. Republicans
are also strongest among those 65 years of age and older. But generational
replacement- a wonderful euphemism -reduces the value of this edge with each
passing year. The future of politics, like everything else, really does belong to the
young.
Now, this can change if and when the economy tanks under a Democratic president.
And Republicans can continue to win mid-term elections, as they did in 2010 and may
well do again in 2014 because voter turnout falls so precipitously, up to a third and the
voters most likely to turn out are older whites, the Republican Party's bastion. But
America is a presidentially oriented country. There is no substitute for holding the
White House. It hasn't been just Republicans who have missed the magnitude of
these trends. The news media have been wide of the mark in some cases, too. Some
of their polling affiliates have been partners in crime. I think specifically of the Gallup
polling group, which in 2012 had their worst year since 1948 when they elected
President Thomas E. Dewey. While some got it right the Reuters tracking poll was
close to the mark Gallup and almost all Republican pollsters got the election terribly
wrong. When Gallup showed Romney leading Obama by as much as 6% in October
the pollster came close to declaring the contest over noting that no one so far ahead
that close to Election Day had ever lost the White House. The inadequacies of
old-style polling in the age of cell phones explained part of Gallup's miscall but many
in the media and polling industry have been slow to grasp the fact that old models of
the American electorate are changing quickly. One model that news organizations
grasp is their own business model and unfortunately many of the changes in it have
reduced serious coverage and magnified the worst in journalism. Severe cuts in
resources and staffing have left journalists overworked and unable to devote attention
to matters beyond the daily headlines. Investigative reporting has been slashed, and it
shows. Reporters are too busy blogging and tweeting the day away to spend weeks
piecing together the underlying story and only a very small number of news
organizations can afford the luxury of in-depth reporting.
As the Pew Center has demonstrated television news has shifted heavily to opinion
and away from fact-based journalism and investigation. Opinion is very cheap to
produce - after all, everyone has one and there is an endless supply of party hacks
but much of it is uninformed chatter and obnoxious bloviating from partisan
perspectives. The only useful pundit is analytical, research-oriented and fact-based. In
other words, someone who has as his model David Butler. David may even recall a
popular American TV detective series called "Dragnet" where Sgt. Friday, trying to
ascertain the truth so he could share it with others, would rebuke a witness straying
into opinion and away from objective observations with the phrase:
"Just the facts, ma'am."
That's what we need from the news media and pollsters at election time. That's what
the voters should expect and demand from all of us who have a role in the elections
process. Perhaps we'll get more facts and less opinion the next time around.
Hope springs eternal.
Thank you very much.