The Limbaugh Effect

I just posted this in the comments section of someone else's blog, so I figured I ought to post it to my blog as well. For people who doubt the possibility of the Limbaugh Effect being significant in Indiana, here's the math that I did from CNN's election and exit poll data. (Note: I still hate CNN, but I do like their election tracker stuff.)

Total Indiana democratic primary votes (99% reporting): 1,272,471

Given the choice of Clinton or McCain, 16% of democratic primary voters chose McCain, of which 41% voted FOR HILLARY in the primary -- So that's 1,272,471 * .16 * .41 = 83,474 McCain/Republican supporters who voted for Hillary in the primary, even though they won't vote for her in the general.

Given the choice of Obama or McCain, 18% of democratic primary voters chose McCain, of which 12% voted FOR OBAMA in the primary -- So that's 1,272,471 * .18 *.12 = 27,485 McCain/Republican supporters who voted for Obama in the primary, even though they won't vote for him in the general.

Net gain for Hillary: 83,474 - 27,485 = 55,988 votes

Hillary's margin of victory: 14,413 votes

So without the votes of people who will vote McCain over their own democratic choice in the fall, Obama wins by about 40,000 votes. Obviously, the numbers above are estimates because they're based on the exit polls, but when the estimated net gain for Hillary is almost four times the margin of victory, that's a legitimate concern.

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Incidently, this also allows us to put a lower bound on complete assholes in Indiana at 83,474 + 27,485 = 110,959 complete assholes, or 1.76% of the Indiana population. Go Hoosiers!

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Update:

I've seen a few places reporting that Obama's camp is saying that 7% of the Indiana democratic primary turnout is attributable to Limbaugh's Army. That is also supported by the same exit poll numbers, though admittedly it rounds up to the nearest percent, and ignores the 2% of the turnout who did the opposite of Limbaugh's suggestion and voted for Obama even though they won't vote for him as the nominee. The 7% number from Obama's camp is calculated as follows:

Percentage who would vote for McCain over Clinton: 16%
Percentage of that 16% that voted for Clinton: 41%
Percentage of total electorate who voted for Clinton but would vote for McCain over her in the general: 0.16 * 0.41 = 0.0656 = 6.56% (rounds up to 7%).

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Update:

Most of the media articles I saw on this topic today poo-pooed the idea that the Limbaugh thing had much of an effect. Here are the arguments I saw, and why I think they are less compelling than the argument I posted.

Argument #1: Hillary won self-declared Democrats 52-48 by exit poll data. Some sites just stop there, saying "See, she won democrats straight up, so forget Limbaugh's people, democrats got what they wanted." That's a very solid argument…as long as you think independents don't matter. Since I’m registered as Non-Partisan, that idea naturally offends the hell out of me. Obama won independents 54-46.

Argument #2: Hillary also won self-declared Republicans 54-46, and some sites argue that the data shows those Republicans picked her as genuinely the better candidate; better on actual issues like the war and economy, or on qualities such as leadership. There's a major problem with that analysis: The questions about the issues and leadership in the exit polls asked voters to pick from Obama and Clinton only. McCain is nowhere in those questions, so while some of those people certainly were being genuine in their support, that analysis completely fails to detect those who still think McCain is better than either one of them. Just because a group of people likes Candidate A over Candidate B does not mean they like Candidate A over Candidate C. Limbaugh voters are a blind spot in this analysis, so can it really say much about the effect of Rush Limbaugh? Nope.

Argument #3: Some articles I read have argued that it is legitimate for the Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary even if they intend to vote for McCain in the fall, because they are just trying to give themselves the best two options. I can see how that might occur to people, but it's still unethical. If you intend to vote for McCain, but then vote in the Democratic primary as a Second Choice, you're manipulating the nomination process. You're injecting your second choice vote into the count of Democrats' first choice votes, without any real intention of backing the Democratic candidate. If you intend to vote for John McCain in the election, congrats, he's on the ballot. The Republicans had a primary in Indiana too, as meaningless as it was, and if your first choice is McCain, then your place was there. This argument is morally crippled.

This whole thing has interested me more in a Data-versus-Media Perception way than in a political way. I have a friend who pointed out that it is not particularly tactful for Obama to make a big deal out of this, and I would agree with that – his performance last night all but seals the nomination for him, and there is no need for him to irritate people by saying “Oh yeah, by the way, I should have won Indiana too.” Even by my analysis, he only would have won by a percent or two, hardly anything to brag about.

More irritating to me, however, is that for all the dismissals in the media of a significant Limbaugh effect in Indiana, I have yet to find a good counterargument that provides its own compelling data and/or a reason to dismiss the data that I (and the Obama camp) used. If you see one, send it my way. I think the real reason it’s being dismissed is the same reason I was skeptical at first myself – it’s ugly, and we don’t want it to be true, because of what it says about some voters and about the vulnerabilities of our election system. Maybe the exit polls were way off, absurdly off, maybe they were incompetently run, maybe the sample size was too small (1881 respondents, 0.15% of total voters), I don’t know – but based on the data we have, I think Limbaugh voters just might have flipped the Indiana primary election.

Follow-up: Obama man-on-the-street video

In one of my first posts, I posted a link to a man-on-the-street interview with a young Obama supporter where the interviewer clearly was expecting to get emotional but factually clueless responses to his questions, and the interviewee knocked all of his questions out of the park. Well, it was officially legit, and it received a writeup in the New York Times:

NY Times Article



It's an interesting article, and it has a link in it to a follow-up video the same guy made after 800,000 people watched the You-Tube clip. Aside from some shameless promotion for the guy's band near the end, it's pretty good, though he makes a more emotional rather than factual/policy-based argument.

Blatant hypocricies and obvious bullshit

Last September, my preferred Democratic candidate for President was Hillary Clinton. It's now Obama. What happened? Two things: Obama showed me he's a politician to be excited about. And Hillary showed me that she's got a share of those negative characteristics that are commonly found in the worst polticians: A willingness to pander, commit blatant hypocrisies, and look right in the camera and deliver a smiling line of obvious bullshit.

Three examples from this week:

1. Obama says: Release your tax returns. That's something that politicians routinely do. Hillary has so far refused, saying she'll release them in April after the tax deadline, but not now. Why not? Forget that for a moment, because there's probably nothing there to get excited about. Here's the blatant hypocrisy: In her 2000 Senate campaign in New York against Rick Lazio, she demanded for months that Lazio release HIS tax returns, which he was refusing to do at the time. Definition of hypocrisy.

2. In the two weeks prior to the Texas/Ohio primaries, it is undeniable that Clinton began to get very critical (most would say negative) in her campaigning against Obama. There was the red phone ad, the line in a newsconference saying "I (Clinton) and John McCain have foreign policy experience, Barack gave a speech in 2002," etc. She talked more about Obama's shortcomings, even sarcastically mocking his lofty speeches to her own crowds, than she talked about her own strengths, and won 3 of 4 states after doing so. Here's the hypocrisy: In the aftermath of this week's primaries, Obama said he would begin to get more critical of Clinton in response. Hillary's spokesperson promptly responded by comparing Obama to Kenneth Starr because he is now going to "attack" Senator Clinton. Pot, meet kettle.

3. Here's the obvious line of bullshit, being spouted by Clinton and her campaign officials: Michigan's delegates should be seated because Michigan residents have a right to participate in this process and make their voices heard, but hey, there's no need for a make-up election! Just use the early Michigan primary results! Why it's obvious bullshit: Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan. If you think the Michigan residents should have a voice in the process (and I agree they should) then OF COURSE you need a make-up election with both candidates' names on the ballot. Otherwise they have not had a chance to vote for Obama. Saying otherwise makes it blatantly obvious that you don't really care about the rights of Michigan residents to make their choice, but that really you just want the delegates from an obviously tainted election.

I really sincerely hope that Hillary knocks this shit off, backs off the panic button and returns to running the intellectually honest campaign she was running late last year, in which she ran on her intelligence, experience, and mastery of the details of policy, rather than a negative campaign focused on tearing down and delegitimizing her Democratic competition. She's said several times that the most important thing is that a Democrat defeats the Repbulicans in this presidential election. It's about time she started acting like she meant it.

Open letter to Scarlett Johannson

Dear Scarlett,

Sorry for missing your calls, and thank you for calling to urge me to vote for Barack Obama. Your message was very insightful, both times you left it. I am not sure how you got my number, but clearly we have a mutual friend who thought we might see eye-to-eye on this one. I actually did vote for Mr. Obama, and I would love to discuss him with you. I tried calling the Obama campaign to get your number, but they refused and have since blocked my calls. Leave your number next time!

Hey, this guy looks like a clueless Obama supporter...

Great video clip of a young-ish Obama supporter being approached by a guy with a camera who obviously expected the young Obama supporter to be completely ignorant on issues, but ends up shutting up and letting the guy give some of the best man-on-the-street answers I've ever heard. Possibly fake, of course, but it seems genuine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kica8hmSdAM

The Fay Buchanan email

Dan suggested I start a blog, and then Dan demanded this be my first post. Sounds like Dan should get a blog. Anyway, originally written as an email on Super Tuesday...

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I've got MSNBC on in the background while I work (not CNN...CNN is dead to me), and I thought you might like to know that the Republicans are cannibalizing themselves to an insane degree that is coming to a head in the physical incarnation of Fay Buchanan, who is currently working for the Romney campaign, and who I predict will be dead by the end of the night from one of the following causes:

1) Her fangs clog and her venom sac ruptures, and she chokes to death on her own venom.
2) In her zeal to explain how life-long Republican McCain isn't conservative enough and 2-year Republican Romney is the heart of the conservative movement, she forgets to inhale and suffocates.
3) A studio aide closes the door to the room she is in, and the accumulation of smoke from her fire-breathing kills her by asphyxiation.
4) The depth and contortion of her scowling frown continue to grow at the same exponential pace as her bitterness until it tears her face in two.
5) Angry evangelicals form a mob, grab their torches and pitchforks and break into the studio to burn the witch who dares call their preacher candidate a self-serving lowlife who is selling out the unborn.
6) Death by pretzel.
7) Lynn Cheney enters the studio to aide the Smear McCain effort in person, but their shared passions draw them inexorably into a horrid bestial lesbian romp, which is cut thankfully short when their husbands arrive to first ogle and then stone them to death as Jesus would demand.
8) Dick Cheney mistakes her shrieking for a captive bird and unloads with his shotgun.
9) Huckabee calls in a favor. Lightning, a falling satellite, or a spontaneous plague of locusts do her in.
10) Someone spills water on her. She leaves behind only her clothes, smoke, and an uncontrollable horde of flying monkeys.

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Now that Romney has done the graceful thing and ended his candidacy to prevent the terrorists from winning, maybe Fay can find something more relaxing to do and escape these fates.