Apparently, Iceman wants to be New Mexico's Governor. Let the lulz begin.

Texas Toast

One of the most positive things about the rise of the blogosphere, IMHO, is the rise of what might be called "applied political science": ordinary people (as well as political professionals) applying actual data to political trends, rather than merely opining, with the goal of affecting actual elections or policies, rather than merely for the sake of knowing things.  A good example can be found at Swing State Project recently, concerning the success rate of Congressional candidates on their second try for office:

Unfortunately, there wasn't a particularly high success ratio: of the 14 races that were considered competitive where the Democratic candidate was making a second run, only three four made it over the finish line (Dan Maffei, Eric Massa, Mary Jo Kilroy, and Larry Kissell). These candidates seemed to benefit from a perfect storm of traction from a repeat run, and running against weakened opponents (a different opponent for Maffei in the wake of Jim Walsh's retirement and a bungled GOP recruitment, and befuddled, unlikable opponents for Massa and Kissell). (On the following table, * indicates a different opponent in 2008.)

The others seemed to falter, either in the face of a nutty GOPer but too red a district (Brown, Wulsin, probably Esch) or an uncontroversial 'moderate' incumbent with a strong hold on a suburban district (Seals, Burner, Feder). By contrast, because of the confluence of swing districts and craptacular opponents, NY-25, NY-29, and NC-08 seem like races we likely could have won with or without a returning opponent (although the prospect of a Maffei rematch may have caused Walsh's retirement)... which isn't to say that we should avoid rematches, simply that it may not provide as much of an advantage as conventional wisdom currently holds.

Also, I can't help but notice one troubling pattern: the male reruns improved on their 2006 numbers. The female reruns declined. If you look at the names above from the 2004-06 cycles, you see the same pattern (Nancy Boyda excepted). I won't attempt to psychoanalyze that, but it's disappointing nonetheless.

It's worth reading in full.  I would love to see some of these guys get in touch with the more academic side of the poli-sci blogosphere (e.g. The Monkey Cage or Crooked Timber)--I suspect there might be some reinvention of the wheel, and even if not I suspect there's a lot of commonality that could be profitable to both groups.

National Journal has an article in their latest issue that focuses on the 18 states the Dems have won in each of the past 5 presidential elections (i.e. Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Obama):

After Barack Obama's sweeping victory in November, 18 states and the District of Columbia have now voted for the Democratic nominee in at least the past five presidential elections. The last time Democrats won that many states so consistently was from 1932 to 1948, when Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman won 22 states in five consecutive presidential races.

Together, these 18 states are worth 248 electoral votes--roughly one Ohio from the presidency.  The piece uses this hook in an interesting if somewhat conventional-wisdom-esque sort of way.

Granted, their methodology lends itself to cherry-picking (why the last 5 elections, aside from liking round numbers?).  And frankly, I'd be more intrigued to hear a piece that laid out a Republican comeback strategy, although it would be harder to write.  Nevertheless, it's a good analysis--check it out.

Editor's note: Today's will be part 1 of a special two-day Building a Voter File extravaganza! Quite frankly, this topic is just too awesome to be tackled in one entry, so check back tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion.

Nate Silver had an interesting conjecture recently, in a post about how exactly Norm Coleman got his list of "improperly rejected ballots" in the never-ending Minnesota Senate race:

What I suspect Coleman did to come up with his list of 650 is something like this:

- Create a database of all ballots that were rejected for a non-matching signature ... maybe there were 1500 of these or something statewide.

- Run some algorithm to determine the likelihood of each of these 1500 ballots being a vote for Coleman as based on things like the precinct the ballot was cast in, any information Coleman has about the voter in his voter file, and perhaps even the voter's name (you can tell more than you'd think about someone based on their first and last name).

- All ballots determined by this algorithm to have a >50% likelihood of being Coleman votes were included on his list ... there turned out to be about 650 of these.

There's more beneath the fold:

It's the most...wonderful...time...of the year.  That is, the time when the data for the 2008 elections finally comes in.  There's more...

Via Steve Benen, Politico is reporting that the RNC will launch an in-house think tank to get its policy groove back:

The think tank will be called the Center for Republican Renewal, and it has been mentioned as part of RNC Chairman Mike Duncan's platform for reelection, but was begun shortly after the election as a new RNC office, separate from the campaign, a Republican official said.

Though Washington has many conservative think tanks, many inside the party and the conservative movement viewed November's failures as, in part, a product of stale ideas, and like the Democrats after 2000, some in the GOP have called for a revival of the conservative intellectual infrastructure.

Read more...

Portfolio, oddly enough, has a good interview with David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager; it's a good backgrounder and has some interesting thoughts.  Worth checking out.

Democracies use elections to transfer power from one regime to the next (in other locales they have different methodologies to promote regime change). Elections are only viable when the electorate (you, me) believe the reported results are accurate. Of course, American history is full of stories where various officials and powerful persons attempt (sometimes successfully) to manipulate the outcomes of elections. Another source of error in the electoral process is random chance. People, including election officials, make honest mistakes. Many have suggested that computers should be used more extensively in the election process to minimize the number of mistakes made. Unfortunately, people program the computers and anyone reading this page knows well the peril of computer glitches.

Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold) manufacture custom terminals for elections. They handle the data collection (voting) and voting results (addition). At first blush, this seems like an ideal solution to the problems of hanging chads and paper ballotts. Unfortunately, the software these computers use to count and tabulate the results are proprietary. As voters, we must "trust" Premier to build reliable machines. Of course, election officials run tests on these machines, but it's difficult to design a comprehensive test for the machine without knowing how it operates internally.

After reading this, I must confess that I do NOT trust these machines. The computers "lost" 197 ballotts in a single county in CA. It appears to be an honest mistake, not intentional fraud. But, the implications of this error are enormous. Although I love statistics, election results should NOT include a margin of error above zero. In practice I realize that this is nearly impossible to achive, but imagine a scenario where half of the counties in the nation "may" have "lost" upwards of 200 ballotts. In a tight election, the official returns would become meaningless. The election of 2000 could become an example of good governance by comparison.

I am planning on writing my congressional representatives about this. Personally, I want the government to require ALL computer systems used in elections to run exclusively on open-soure software. If I can not see the source code with my own four-eyes, I am unable to determine the veracity of election returns. The transition to computer based elections is an opportunity to increase transparency in the process, not stifle it.

-pluribus

Hat-Tip to the guys at RedState.

This is the kind of toy that could entertain me for days. It's a map of America, with red and blue pieces for each state!  Everyone should buy one now.

DD

Normally, we like to provide our own analysis, but there is absolutely nothing we can add to this.

Before we start making ridiculous generalizations about black people, it helps to do a little research.

DD