A murderous election season

According to the Denver Post, interest in being a county coroner is way up:

Only a handful of coroner races are contested during a typical election cycle, but this year 20 of Colorado's 64 counties have battles for the job of managing death investigations on their ballots.

Whether it's the " 'CSI' effect," the down economy or retiring or term-limited coroners, more people than ever are chasing after the office.

Okay, that's pretty interesting.  As far as I know, there isn't a general increase in candidates for all races.  This is centered on coroners.  Is this happening in other states?

If a TV show can have this effect on politics, may I suggest a new show called "County Tax Assessor"?  Maybe starring David Caruso?  It tends to be hard to find candidates for that one.

Weak growth means the House is in play

It's the end of July and second quarter 2010 economic figures are now available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  And they're not good.  Anyway, these are the numbers I've been waiting for in order to calculate a forecast for the 2010 midterm elections.

Now, before I do that, a note about forecasts.  I do not claim to have any special powers to foresee the future.  I am not doing this to make money.  I think forecast models are helpful when issued before an election for two reasons.  First, they allow us political scientists to test what we know.  It's relatively easy to fit curves after the fact, but it can be very useful to say that this is what we think drives elections, and here's a test based on what's going to happen in the next few months.  Second, they give us a baseline for interpreting the election when it happens.  Republicans will no doubt crow about any electoral gains they make in the fall, but it's helpful to know whether they did better or worse than the models predicted.

Anyway, onto the forecasts.  In my previous posts on this topic (like here), my economic variable has been the growth in per capita real disposable income between the third quarter of the year prior to the election and the second quarter of the election year.  And growth for the current cycle has been pretty anemic -- just 0.88%, while the average prior to midterm elections since 1950 has been 1.69%.  The other figure I include in my calculations is the president's approval rating as of Labor Day, which I'm guessing will be 45%.  That's right about where he's been lately, and his numbers don't bounce around all that much.

Based on these figures, I calculate that Republicans will gain 40 seats in the House.  And guess what?  That's just one more seat than they need to control the chamber.  These figures also predict that the Democrats will lose control of seven state legislatures.

Now, it turns out that I can get a slightly better fit (an R-squared of .64 as opposed to .59) if I instead use the economic growth from the second quarter of the year prior to the election to the second quarter of the election year.  By that measure, Republicans stand to pick up 50 seats, and the Democrats could lose control of 10 state legislatures.

So what does this all mean?  Obviously, these numbers are aren't set in stone, and there are substantial error terms associated with these forecasts.  This is also a pretty simple model: I'm not using data on candidate quality or regional variations, which can be important.  I've used the two variables (economic growth and presidential popularity) that seem the most predictive of midterm election results, but of course these numbers could change drastically between now and November.  The economy could rally, or stall.  (A prediction based on second quarter economic numbers in 2008 would have totally missed the economic collapse that started in September of that year.)  Obama could capture Osama Bin Laden and beat him to death with a shovel on "The View," which I'm guessing would have some short-term impact on his approval ratings.  But barring any major surprises, this is where we are -- a very close contest with a better-than-even chance of a Speaker Boehner being sworn in next January.

Note: My data are available here.

The 70s were so awesome

That's Billy Preston and George Harrison meeting with President Ford in 1974.  From TPM's wonderful photo series on musicians and lawmakers.

The politics of the Jedi

I was trying to avoid posting about Drezner's post on the Jedi, but then Bernstein goaded me.  I crumble under that kind of pressure.

Anyway, Drezner is trying to categorize the Jedi Order politically.  Are they libertarians or big government liberals?  As he says,

I think it would be more accurate to describe them as cartelistic -- they refuse to permit a free market in learning the ways of the Force. After all, the Jedi Council's initial inclination is not to train Anakin Skywalker despite his obvious talents, using some BS about fear as a cover. Only when Qui-Gon threatens to go rogue do they relent. The Council does not inform the Senate that their ability to detect the force has been compromised. They're reluctant to expand their assigned tasks -- they're keepers of the peace, not soldiers. Just as clearly, their anti-competitive policies weakened their own productivity, given the fact that they were unable to detect a Sith Lord walking around right under their noses for over a decade. [Emphasis in original]

I think his categorization is accurate, although I'd hasten to point out that the Jedi Council's original decision not to train Anakin was, in retrospect, the right call.  So there's something to be said for elitism.

There are no great analogues for the Jedi in modern American society.  They are a secretive, powerful religious sect contracted by the Republic to do vital governing tasks that include policing and diplomacy.  Perhaps the Knights Templar were similar in some ways, although I don't think the Knights had any real authority within European society.  Their jurisdiction was the Holy Land.  In some ways, the Jedi sound more like the Taliban than anything we've got going in the U.S.

Politically, it's really hard to categorize the Jedi, or the Galactic Republic in general, because Lucas gives us so few policy issues to work with.  The Republic turns a blind eye to slavery, not so much because they like slavery but because they just largely ignore what goes on on the Outer Rim planets.  That's not so much liberal or conservative as weak.  It's also largely unable to resolve a trade dispute among its own members.  Bernstein's analogy to the Articles of Confederation is spot on.  But the Jedi don't really seem to take positions on any of this stuff.

Update: Welcome Atlantic Wire readers!  Wait, I'm a libertarian?  How will I tell my children, Rand and Galt?

Over-representation in the electorate

Ezra Klein put together some Census and exit poll data yesterday to produce a table showing which income groups are over- or under-represented in the electorate and how those groups voted in 2008.  But why do a table when you can make a graphic?  In the chart below, higher red bars indicate more Democratic income groups, and higher blue bars indicate over-representation of particular income groups in the electorate.

The chart nicely shows that the most under-represented segments of the population are, in fact, the most Democratic.  (Ezra calculates this cost Obama 2.3 percent of the vote.)  Interestingly, the most over-represented groups are not the wealthiest, but those making between $50,000 and $100,000 a year.

It was business as usual in campaign office 619

Via Josh Marshall, here's a fine essay by Joel Pollak, Republican candidate for Congress in Illinois' 9th district, in which he compares himself to Steve Biko.  Because, as we all know, being criticized by an opposing campaign is exactly like being beaten to death by racist police in a jail cell.

Yihla moja.

The party scrambles

Via Colorado Pols, this story, if true (the sourcing is spotty), is quite interesting. For those of you not following Colorado's gubernatorial race, Scott McInnis, the likely GOP nominee, has been damaged by a scandal. Basically, it turns out he got paid $300K to write a bunch of water policy articles a few years ago, had some water policy expert write them for him, and then passed off the work as his own. When caught, he tried to blame the policy expert, who wouldn't play ball. Anyway, even thought this hasn't hurt him in the polls much yet, state Republicans are concerned this will really hurt him in the general election, which is already looking like a tight race.

However, they're not asking McInnis to bow out yet, because they want him to beat Dan Maes in the August 10th primary, since Maes is a Tea Partier type who would almost definitely lose in the general. So they're basically waiting for McInnis to beat Maes and then they're going to try to talk McInnis into dropping out. I'm not sure whom they'd replace him with. Possibly State Sen. Josh Penry, who was pushed out of the race last winter.

Anyway, it's an interesting case of party insiders thwarting primary voters, making estimations of future public opinion, etc.