Now that's a decisive win. Conservativism is making a comeback. Romney leads the medal count. I will welcome all the Fred supporters with open arms after tonight in SC.

Labels: mitt romney, primaries

The first "primary" race in Virginia just took place today! And Romney won.

At 1:30 today, Mitt Romney filed 15,000 signatures to meet the requirements for Virginia presidential primary.

Every campaign in the race will tell you that Virginia has the most difficult process to get on the ballot. You have to submit 10,000 signatures with at least 400 signatures from each 11 congressional districts. Each county or city entity has to have its own petition page for signatures and you need the voter address and in some cases the last four digits of the social security number for it to be valid. People who collect signatures have to be registered voters in Virginia (in other words you can't farm this out to high schoolers).

The VA ballot submissions opened up yesterday and as far as we know Romney is the first candidate to file.

Other candidates like Huckabee are paying 50 cents per signature. Thompson and Edwards are just getting started.

It will be interesting to see on December 14th who the actual candidates will be on the ballot.

As background, there are only a handful of paid staffers for Romney in Virginia but dozens (if not hundreds) of volunteers chipped in during the elections in November to help get the signatures required. Whole Saturdays were dedicated to rounding up the needed votes. Unlike other campaign Romney did this with a grassroots flare and did not outsource it.

Kudos to Team Romney, Lt. Gov. Bolling, and the VA team for making this happen.

This is one more example of why Romney is the best candidate to face the formidable forces of the DEMS in the general election.

Labels: grassroots, primaries, primary, Virginia

By now you may have heard the latest in the primary arms race, with the Wolverine State weaseling its way into what might have otherwise been a stabilized calendar. Previously:

1/5 – IA caucuses
1/12 – NH primary, WY caucuses
1/19 – SC primary, Nevada caucuses
1/29 – FL primary

According to inside sources, the two state parties in Michigan have agreed to move the state's primary legislatively (so as to avoid national party sanctions for pre-empting Feb 5) to Jan. 15.

Making things even more interesting, indications are that this will be a closed primary, requiring voters to request their registered party’s ballot.

"It ensures maximum participation by Republican activists and supporters. Although going on Jan. 15 is not our first choice, we will join with the Democrats and hold our primary on that day." -- MI GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis

It's estimated that a primary could draw a million votes for each party. A statewide primary would cost $10 million.
…
The Rev. Jesse Jackson won an open primary in 1988, an outcome not viewed favorably by Democratic Party leaders who said Jackson was the beneficiary of crossover voters who wanted only to tamper with the Democratic presidential nomination process.
Republicans feel they got burned in an open primary in 2000, when Arizona Sen. John McCain was an upset winner over party establishment favorite George W. Bush. GOP leaders said independents and Democrats tilted the vote to McCain.

So, who wins and who loses with a closed MI primary on Jan 15? While Governor Romney has yet to decisively take the lead in MI polls (as he has done in IA and NH), he has several strengths there over the more liberal Rudy Giuliani. And while McCain won the state in 2000, any stumble in Michigan’s closed, early, and expensive primary will serve to remind the public that not only has McCain lost his comparatively spry 64 year old mojo, but he has trouble wooing the Republican base.

Labels: primaries

In our continuing quest to predict the outcome of the 2008 race I submit the second in a series of posts examining how the academic world perceives primary elections.

Last week I examined recent computer models predicting that the GOP nominee will be known earlier than the Democratic nominee because of the type of primaries utilized by each party. I surmised that this phenomenon currently bodes well for Mitt Romney who is leading in New Hampshire and Iowa.

This week we examine momentum in more specific terms
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Momentum is a powerful thing. Will the traditional model of front-loading wins in primary states, the so-called New Hampshire effect, hold true for 2008?

In his 1983 study, M. Malbin reported that George Bush and Ronald Reagan allocated ¾ of their respective total 1980 campaign budgets to early primary states. A 1987 study reported that the New Hampshire election grabbed 20% of the 1984 season’s news coverage. You might also recall Howard Dean’s burnout because he spent so much money up front.

This pattern has been well established for over two decades. In short, early primary states have historically garnered a disproportionate amount of attention. But for good reason.

Tilman Klumpp and Mattius Polbor in their 2005 paper “Primaries and the New Hampshire Effect” (pdf file) describe this interesting phenomenon: “The outcome of the very first primary election creates an asymmetry between ex-ante symmetric candidates which endogenously facilitates momentum in later districts.”

Endogenous is a great Scrabble word meaning: “no apparent external cause.” In other words, the momentum factor of early primary wins is a very real and hard rule of elections.

They go on to note:

Although our analysis compares mainly two extreme cases—completely sequential elections versus completely simultaneous elections—, the distinct results of the sequential case basically apply to a mixed temporal structure as well, as long as it involves some sequential elements at the early stages. One can argue that such an intermediate system is closer to the modern primary races, in which there are dates (such as “Super Tuesday”) when several states vote simultaneously.

Nevertheless, even in this case, some primary states vote in sequence at the very beginning of the nomination process. We show that this is enough to generate (and sometimes even amplify) the momentum effect and the spending pattern that arise in a completely sequential system.

Put a babel fish in your ear and read that paragraph out loud: “Regardless of the adjective you use to describe that infamous Tuesday, as long as New Hampshire and Iowa come up first, a candidate has a better than even chance to build some serious kick-butt momentum.”

Another 1005 study by L. Keele was more explicit:

We find that, while front-loading has significantly shortened the primary season, it has not altered the effect of finishing strong in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But for Klumpp and Polbor this is not just fun theoretical musing. The goal of their paper is to recommend campaign expenditure models. At one point they examine the comparison to sporting tournaments:

[I]n sporting tournaments it is often desirable to induce contestants to spend a maximal amount of effort, or to induce an effort allocation that increases the chance of a close contest, as this enhances the excitement level the tournament generates. For primary elections, on the other hand, we are interested in finding a design that minimizes wasteful campaign expenditures and avoids long, close battles as these will be very costly.

Channeling the Powell doctrine this adds up to: “use overwhelming force to win before it even gets close.”

OK… now this might seem absurd (it is academia after all) but Klumpp and Polbor go on to identify an actually mathematical formula to predict how much money and effort must be expended in early primaries to win outright. Here’s part of their equation:

I know. That’s sick and wrong. Calling John Derbyshire!

They bring the model back to earth with a pretty straight forward table showing who won New Hampshire and what percentage of primaries they won in Feb/Mar and Apr/May.

They conclude from this table:

One implication of our model is that winning the first primary makes it more likely to win the nomination. Out of the ten races in Table 4, six were such that the winner of the New Hampshire primary was the eventual nominee. Although this seems hardly indicative of the existence of momentum effects described in this paper, one needs to keep in mind that in most of these races there were more than two candidates in the New Hampshire primary.

Their overall conclusion is also striking:

The winners of early districts is endogenously more likely to win later districts than the loser, not because voters react to performance in previous elections, but rather because of equilibrium candidate spending behavior. In addition to reproducing these stylized facts from primary races, our model also provides a rationale for why political parties have chosen a sequential organization of primary elections: First, it induces lower expected expenditures and higher expected rents than a simultaneous structure. Moreover, if one candidate has an ex-ante advantage over the other, either in terms of campaign effectiveness or in the number of assured districts, a sequential organization selects the stronger candidate with probability close to one, provided there are sufficiently many districts.

Now, I think you know what conclusion I’ll draw from this. Let’s just say, the guy currently spending tons of dough in NH and IA and earning double-digit margins in return will likely win the nomination: Mitt Romney.

(Please note, lest you think me outright biased, there are a few of characteristics coming up that favor candidates other than Mitt)

More to follow...

Labels: primaries

Much of what we discuss in the blogosphere about the 2008 election is anecdotal. Of course, when the latest poll clears the wires we wax scientific but the core element of our discussion is usually one of reason, persuasion and argument, not science.

But when you get down and dirty in the academic world… this won’t fly. They would no sooner cite a post from Powerline Blog than they would from Paris Hilton to predict who will win the election.

Recent academic studies have brought to light numerous characteristics to define a classic campaign and possibly predict the outcome of the presidential primary and general elections. Let’s examine 12 of these characteristics in more detail and predict the candidates who have an advantage.

1) Classic “Type of Primary” Influences

Apparently, there are two characteristics that are typically employed in academic circles to assess what influence specific state primaries have on the nomination. The first is the lengthening effect of proportional primaries. The second is diverse voter preference. Let’s take this first element.

Alexandra L. Cooper, a profession of Law and Government at Lafayette University, produced a computer simulation to study these two elements. Her conclusion: “The simulations show that both proportional allocation and more diverse voter preferences increase the number of primaries that must be completed before a single candidate can amass sufficient delegates to guarantee nomination.”

Quick admission here. This is heady stuff and it took me about hour to decipher what Cooper is getting at. Let me translate:

There are basically three types of primaries:

1) Caucus or Conventions (CC)
2) Proportional Primaries (PP)
3) Winner Takes All (WTA)

The Democratic Party has a significantly larger number of “PP” states which indicates, according to Cooper, that their candidates will have to wade through more state primaries before a winner becomes evident. The GOP only has a handful of PP primaries which may indicate that the nominee will be solidified earlier than the DEMS.

For example, the DEMS have set up New Hampshire, Florida, and South Carolina as PP primaries. This means that even second tier candidates have a chance to win a “proportional” amount of delegates.

On the other side of the aisle New Hampshire is the only early state for the GOP that uses proportional delegates.

Then, on February 5th, over 44% of the delegates for each party are up for grabs. For the DEMS, 13 of the 18 states that have primaries on that date utilize PP for their allocation of delegates. Compare that to the GOP where no state uses a strict PP allocation and 10 states use the “Winner Take All” approach on that fateful Tuesday.

The outstanding question is: will this classic characteristic hold true for the election in 2008? Will early wins in IA and NH truly propel a candidate over to Super Tuesday per tradition?

So the prediction I have for this first characteristic: Mitt Romney will likely win the nomination if he continues his lead in New Hampshire and Iowa. Even if only a handful of Super Tuesday primaries go his way… he will win because of the predominate “Winner Take All” approach. This isn’t rocket science but it is science (according to Cooper and her peers).

Next week we’ll tackle the “New Hampshire Effect” in more detail.

Labels: election, primaries

Here's the thing, no matter how popular the flavor of the month is (Gingrich, Giuliani, Thompson) the real question is "Who can win?" We answer this question by asking "Who's got game?"

You see, you cannot win simply by a popular vote a year out from Iowa. You have to show "game"!

The chart below ranks the GOP candidates based on all the elements of a ground game (or, at least, all the elements we could think of). This is essentially a "ranking" or "scoring" chart showing the "tier" rank for each candidate.

The lower score (higher rank) shows serious ground game.

Labels: ground game, John McCain, mitt romney, primaries, primary, score

There has been a lot of jive-talk in the blogosphere (can I say jive-talk?) about Mitt Romney having a bad week. I indicated to a few people last week that he has the endorsement edge and probably the money edge as well; he organized a robust South Carolina team and a very solid Georgia team.

"Oh," I say in realization, "you mean he had a bad week in the blogosphere?!" Here are the facts of where we stand and why I'm not worried (and I'm not worried for different reasons than those that help Dean Barnett sleep well.

1) Nobody but political junkies are paying attention to the election right now. - Accoding to a Pew Research Report just 24% of Republicans are paying attention to the 2008 race right now.

2) The early polls reflect name recognition not voting decisions - For example, in late February 2003 Joe Liberman was leading the Democratic contendors.

3) Romney is better positioned than past candidates at this point in the race. Let me draw you a picture:

For the dark horse candidates at this point in the race (especially pointing out Governors from small states) Carter was at 1% in 1975; DUkakis 1%; Clinton 2% in 1992. Even McCain stood at just 3% in 1999. Once again, name recognition does not a primary make.

4) Romney has STRONG favorability ratings among voters who have heard about him. A recent Quinnipiac poll clocked this number at 83%.

5) How about what really matters - the KEY primary states? - Let's take Iowa and New Hampshire:

Romney's polling at this point is even more impressive when you consider that his December 2006 numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire were 6% and 9%.

In short, this is a historically excellent start for a no-name small-state governor running for President.

Labels: bill clinton, carter, comparison, dukakis, iowa, mitt romney, New Hampshire, Polls, primaries, primary