PA Voters Display the Red, (White) & Blue

Last week's Dem primary in PA revealed some familiar results: it was red voters vs. blue voters with Hillary representing red and Obama blue. It was the same old urban vs. rural and suburban we've come to know so well, with a few additional twists. The empirical evidence:

In both 2000 and 2004 George Bush won with the strong support of rural and married voters. In Pennsylvania, Clinton has done the same. The mean population density for Bush counties was 108 inhabitants per square mile in 2000 and 110 in 2004. This compared to 739 inhabitants for Gore and 836 for Kerry. In Pennsylvania, counties won by Clinton have a mean density of 238 inhabitants versus 2290 for those won by Obama. Married voters strongly preferred Bush by 53% against 47% for Gore and 57% against 42% for Kerry. Likewise, as measured by county census shares, married households leaned toward Clinton.

A few other factors came into play in Pennsylvania: race, age, income and gender. In 2000 and 2004 black and white populations were correlated with the vote, but a regression model revealed that the proportion of female heads-of-household had greater explanatory power than the proportion of blacks voting Democrat. In Pennsylvania this was no longer true as race rendered female heads-of-household meaningless as an explanatory factor. This was mostly due to the overwhelming number of blacks who voted for Obama (92%), regardless of household status, and the concentration of black voters in PA urban centers.

On income, Clinton counties had a median family income of $44K while Obama counties had a median of $54K. Age was skewed as older voters preferred Clinton while younger and more educated voters favored Obama. As expected, older white women identified and voted heavily for Senator Clinton. On religion, exit poll data shows that religious voters supported Clinton, especially among more orthodox Catholic and Jewish voters.

To parse this all out we can use a simple regression equation matching county characteristics against vote outcomes in 67 Pennsylvania counties. The results reveal that the most important demographic factors determining the results were population density, median family income, and race.

Sounds familiar, no? It seems the two Democratic candidates somehow managed to slice and dice Pennsylvania into red and blue enclaves with nary a Republican strategist or Bush conservative in sight. It’s tough to blame this on Karl Rove.

How could this happen? The answer is the same as it was in 2000 and 2004. Our partisan polarization is not determined by party ideologies, strategists or media stereotypes, but by more enduring lifestyle choices that vary between cities, suburbs and small towns. (See research at www.redstatebluestatemovie.com) Clinton and Obama line up perfectly on the ideological scale and their differences in policy are negligible, but the competitiveness of a tight nomination race pressured both candidates to divide and conquer Pennsylvania’s Democratic voters by introducing wedge issues like guns, religion, race and gender into their campaigns. Thus, Clinton became the candidate of an older, white, embittered working class “clinging to guns and religion,” while Obama became the black urban elitist who cannot grasp small-town American values. Applying these wedge issues pushed voters towards ideological extremes most consistent with their lifestyle preferences. Voilà– red vs. blue all over again. Silly? Certainly. Guns and church attendance are correlated with rural traditions, not determined by partisan ideology.

Senator Clinton clearly won the Pennsylvania primary because she was able to take the outer suburbs by almost a 20% margin. With the overwhelming support of rural areas she was able to claim 60 of 67 counties across Pennsylvania. If this had been a national election with Clinton as the conservative and Obama as the liberal, she would have won in a landslide.

So, will liberal activist Democrats absorb the lessons of Pennsylvania? After the Bush presidential elections it was accepted wisdom among urban liberal elites that the Bush Republicans were solely to blame for polarization. But such rationalizations have been far too convenient and self-serving. Pennsylvania’s results reveal serious damage to Obama in identifying himself so closely with urban liberal and identity group interests. The Wright episode and the chiding of gun owners and church-goers will continue to haunt him unless he’s able to demonstrate that he understands and has learned from these mistakes. It should even be more disconcerting to liberal sensibilities that race played far more of a factor in a Democratic primary than it did in the past two presidential elections.

Red and blue polarization in American politics is more prevalent and deeply rooted than we suspect. And it has become fundamental to electoral politics. The escape route must bridge disparate communities through ideological positions based on more universal principles that can transcend narrow identity politics. But the most recent results prove candidates, parties, media pundits and most important, voters have yet to demonstrate they will reject this electoral dynamic, despite the obstacles it creates for democratic governance. An appreciation for these realities is perhaps the first step toward change.

Voter Sorting

There's a good review of an excellent book on political polarization in the WSJ today. It's a book by Bill Bishop of the Austin-American Statesman called The Big Sort and the analysis is spot on. The red-blue divide in our politics is by county geography and is largely due to sorting behavior and constituent targeting by parties and political campaigns. But the sorting behavior is not driven by ideology, it's mostly driven by innocuous lifestyle choices. The ideology has been deliberately applied as a strategic afterthought by parties and political activists. Thus, if one chooses rural living, there's a high propensity to enjoy hunting as a pastime, be a homeowner or own a small business. But an ideological conflict over gun control or tax policy then pushes this voter towards the Republican party. This is even more true for some of the more divisive issues identified by party strategists. (Note: Morris Fiorina homogenizes most of these differences by analyzing exit polls at the state level.)

The way out of this is for parties, politicians and voters to recognize these real divergences in preferences and focus on policies that bridge the divide. These policies must be built on broader principles that transcend identity politics. The problem is that electoral politics often rewards the divide and conquer strategy, while the media inflates these conflicts. Both Obama and McCain promise to overcome this, but it will take more than a good captain to turn this ship.

Why Polarization Will Likely Persist

Read an interesting book yesterday on the Red-Blue divide, Common Ground by Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel, based on their opinion column of the same name in USAToday. The book, subtitled How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America, is filled with commendable analyses of the historical and structural explanations of the bipolar disorder that currently afflicts American politics.

They have several chapters devoted to prescriptions for how to end polarization, mostly aimed at candidates and parties. The authors also argue how the voters are frustrated and fed up with the dysfunctional politics of partisanship and this certainly seems confirmed in this election cycle with the success of both Barack Obama and John McCain. Polarization works very well for electoral campaigns until it doesn't and it's to Obama's credit that he recognized we were reaching that point. McCain is arguably far closer to the ideological center than Pres. Bush, while Obama has also made conciliatory politics the cornerstone of his campaign. (Unfortunately, Obama's brief public biography doesn't yet give evidence of that commitment, forcing him to spend considerable energy defending himself against charges of orthodox left liberalism. But this is the kind of opposition he'll face if nominated and elected--the nation is nowhere near as liberal as Barack Obama appears.)

My only caveat to this book and its authors is that recent polarization in American politics is not a complete fabrication of the polarizers. It's based on some real differences in lifestyles and ideology that do line up with geography. True, the Red State-Blue State narrative is mostly myth, but the tension between red rural/suburban and blue urban is real and significant--those county maps are not fabrications of pundits' imaginations. This configuration is rooted in the voters preferences, as Obama and Clinton have discovered in rural PA, so it won't be easily wished away by whoever becomes president. The rural-urban divide is between different voting constituencies and any compromises will need to draw both extremes toward the center. Both Obama and McCain expect their opposition to do most of the moving, but no matter who prevails, the future president will need to do a little pulling of his own party base as well as pushing against the opposition.

To stake out the center requires the strong support of independents and moderates to counterbalance extremists like MoveOn on the left or James Dobson on the right, who can significantly influence close elections. So far McCain has demonstrated his independence better than Obama, but this is partly a reflection of nomination pressures on the Democrats' side. The battle between Clinton and Obama is so tight that neither one can risk offending any constituency within the base. This has prevented them from moving toward a more centrist general election campaign strategy.

Anyway, when it comes down to Democrats vs. Republican I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing a lot more noise about guns, religion, gays, abortion, race, the war, etc. and these spats will sound as partisan as ever. But recognition of the rural-urban divide can help remove many of these wedge issues, especially differences over guns, religion and gays. The question is how many of us will be willing to see past the party, the man and our ideological prejudices to the issues we face? If not, we'll be driven into our respective corners again and have only ourselves to blame. If you're a knee-jerk liberal or a jerk Republican, take heed.

Obama’s Wrong Wright Message

Senator Barack Obama has impressive skills as an orator with a charismatic personality. He also displays a ready and willing intelligence. Such talents have propelled him from a relative unknown to international political celebrity in little more than three years. But this rapid rise has only raised greater curiosity about his personal history and values. Now, seeping facts about his biography have begun to define him in ways that undermine his winning message. First there was the flap about his pastor, Rev. Wright, and his casual refusal to adopt common patriotic symbols such as flag pins. Now there is more evidence that he adheres to the conventional liberal conceit that rural folks cling to cultural habits out of bitterness. We haven’t even gotten yet to his 1960’s style of policy prescriptions.

All of this was foreshadowed for anyone who read his memoir, Dreams From My Father. In his book Obama reveals a young man obsessed with a search for racial identity during his coming of age. Early on he seems to have decided to adopt the identity of his African father over that of his white mother or Indonesian stepfather. He seems to have viewed the white half of his heritage as the “other,” which is difficult for those of us of a single racial background to comprehend.

When he chose his political career path he seemed more determined to assert his black identity in his adopted hometown of Chicago. There, his ambitions as a community organizer and ward politician led him to Trinity Church and Rev. Wright. In this black church Obama could assert his credentials for black authenticity. It is this psychological need for identity and his conscious choice to be “black” that explains why he attended Trinity Church for twenty years and never saw the need to contradict Rev. Wright’s views on America. Unfortunately, this experience also contradicts his newfound desire to be a national political figure and the entire logic of his campaign. Obama promises to turn the page on divisive politics of the baby-boom era, to unite Americans for a common cause, but the only test of this commitment suffered twenty years of benign neglect in his relationship with his spiritual mentor. If Obama cannot bring a revered "uncle" back into the fold over a period of twenty years, or not even try, how will he create a big tent that encompasses red and blue voters? And how many of Trinity’s congregation have been sidetracked by Wright’s separatist racial values over the years? Now Obama has belatedly discovered that what works in the wards of Chicago’s South Side doesn’t play so well in rural Pennsylvania or suburban Florida. In fact, this week he also discovered that what plays well in the salons of San Francisco also doesn’t resonate well in the rustbelt. It is beginning to sound more like Obama's vision of unity is based more on persuading conservatives of the supremacy of liberal values - good luck with that.

The true divide in American politics is between liberal progressives and rural traditionalists, with the suburbs at the tipping point between inner suburbs leaning Democrat and outer suburbs leaning Republican. The mistake Obama fell into was the urban progressive attitude that rural traditionalists are out of touch with their inner selves due to economic transformations or Republican brainwashing. But Thomas Frank has it all wrong – these are deliberate lifestyle choices. Over the past twenty-eight years Republicans had the great fortune to have these constituencies delivered to them by Democratic blunders on religion, guns, crime, family values and abortion. Now Obama seems to have botched it again. Not because he misspoke or used the wrong words, but because he just doesn’t get it. Urban progressives really need to reprogram their conceits about American politics.

The sad reality is that Obama defined himself as the urban, “black” candidate long before the Clintons tried to pin the label on him by comparing him to Jesse Jackson. The rest of us in awe of Obama’s rhetorical magic are just discovering this. And the unfortunate reality of which few will speak is that defining American society through a racial division of black and white is rapidly losing its relevance in 21st century America. Hispanics, East Asians, South Asians, Russians and Middle Eastern immigrants have little desire for a national conversation on race that focuses solely on blacks and whites and so blacks’ opportunities to focus the debate on problems unique to their communities are slowly fading. We see this is in broad support for Clinton among these other groups. This is why it is imperative for a candidate like Obama to transcend his black African heritage and become the first mixed race candidate, rather than the first black candidate. As Shelby Steele has argued in his book on Obama, this may not be possible. If so, it is a missed opportunity, but the viability of his candidacy is still a notable achievement. The worst lesson to take from this would be for blacks and whites to conclude he lost because of racism rather than because his appeal was limited and his policy positions out of touch with the majority of Americans.

Border Follies

Political debates on illegal immigration and border control can quickly veer off course, miring the discussion in a swamp of recriminations. This is where we currently find ourselves. To escape the quagmire we should acknowledge some recurring myths and fallacies:

1. Frequently we lump together lawful immigration and illegal immigration, but there is an important political distinction between the two: There is wide public support for lawful immigration, but little tolerance for illegals;
2. The illegals themselves are the wrong focus. Attacking or catering to illegal immigrants and migrants only invites distracting charges of racism or pandering. Illegals are responding rationally to the incentives in place; to change their behavior we need to change the incentives. This, as opposed to mass deportation, is within our control;
3. This is not a partisan issue between Republicans and Democrats, or liberals and conservatives. The costs and benefits of uncontrolled immigration fall along the lines of elites vs. non-elites. Both political and business elites benefit from a free flow of labor, while ordinary taxpayers and workers get stuck with much of the bill. The power of the ballot box is the only recourse these citizens have;
4. All countries benefit economically from open markets (this includes capital and labor markets as well as goods markets), but the costs and benefits of trade are unevenly distributed across society. A political solution must allow for the distribution of these costs and benefits in some manner that insures free and open trade. It’s foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater;
5. To increase border security we must first control the flow of economic labor migration and this can best be addressed by changing the incentives.

The nature of the problem is two-fold: an economic disequilibrium between the US and less developed countries in their stocks of capital and labor and their growth rates; and a stark disparity in the provision of social benefits between rich and poor countries. These two related issues color both the economics of trade and politics of labor migration.

The way forward is to remove structural barriers to the cross-border rationalization of the supply and demand for goods and services. This means allowing price changes by removing price subsidies and tariff protection for industries on both sides of the border, which requires political fortitude from US and foreign governments alike. Only market price adjustments can affect the flow of capital and labor across borders. The result will be that some goods and services prices in the US will rise and some US industries must migrate to low wage countries to survive.

The second problem requires a clear recognition of the social and political consequences of trade. Illegal labor migration is a rational response to greater demand for labor in the US and the increased social benefits this labor can earn, such as education and health care. But these gains must come from increased labor productivity, which requires a substitution of capital for labor. Illegal migration impedes this substitution as industries find it easier to use cheap workers instead of investing in more expensive capital equipment. This inefficiency must be subsidized, and this is where the taxpayer gets hit paying for the socialized benefits we provide citizens and non-citizens with public education, first-rate health care and social welfare services.

Resolving immigration is critical to our national politics and the foregoing analysis suggests the following policy guidelines for comprehensive reform:

1. Establish a system of temporary labor migration and identification to facilitate the economic adjustment period;
2. Secure the borders with a controlled flow of legal immigration and temporary migration;
3. Reduce industry prices supports, protectionist tariffs and non-tariff barriers in the US and apply political pressure to trading partners to also liberalize their economies;
4. Establish a reasonable enforcement mechanism to sanction employers who hire illegal labor. We know which industries these are and a decreasing supply of these workers will push wage and price increases in these industries;
5. Target social adjustment benefits for dislocated labor toward retraining and relocation assistance;
6. Revise current immigration and citizenship laws to be consistent with a policy of controlled immigration;
7. Reform entitlements consistent with the reality that social benefits ultimately are earned through economic productivity, not political redistribution. There is no Santa Claus in Washington.

These guidelines are economically and politically consistent and can help restrain the partisan politicization of immigration that bogs us down. The US is the world’s beacon for immigration and as globalization continues marching forward most people around the world would welcome US leadership on the issue.

The Case for Partisanship?

In this month's Atlantic magazine Matthew Yglesia makes a case for partisanship and polarization by drawing on historical comparisons. [link here]

But his analysis blurs important distinctions between current and past polarization in American politics. The good and bad of polarization must distinguish between its functional effects as our current divisive politics has served electoral politics well but hampered the process of governing. We can observe this in the dynamics of the Bush-Clinton years where partisanship has defined voter differences but impeded important legislative compromises on entitlements, health care, national defense and immigration. One can assume citizen frustration with this experience is a large factor in Senators Obama and McCain’s support.

Our current partisanship has been detrimental because of an historical anomaly where voters’ ideological and subcultural identities have coincided, yielding Red and Blue America. As James Carville might say, "It's the voters, stupid." This coincidence - which is illustrated best with geography, hence the Red and Blue maps - has been exploited by parties as well as mass and new media. What this has meant is a hardening of political identity and less room for candidates to cross party lines (re: Lieberman). Ideological identity has been harnessed by candidates and parties to win elections, but this only works to a point. It was Obama’s moment to recognize the growing frustration with this dynamic and change his electoral appeal to post-partisanship. We’ll see how well it works as the underlying topology of red and blue remains.

Mr. Yglesia mentions the growing frustration with the two party system, but majoritarian winner-take-all rules force compromise and centrism necessary to win elections and enact legislation within a diverse polity. Multiple parties would only yield fragile party coalitions with the illusion of political effectiveness (re: Green, Freedom and Libertarian parties). As Mr. Yglesia concludes, we’re probably better off dealing with the frustration of the current system as it has served the nation well and its present dysfunction is most likely temporary.

Democrats' Dream Ticket?

With the Democratic primary race looking more and more like a stalemate there's been buzz around liberal salons about a 'Dream Team' ticket with both candidates on it. This seems like a reaction to some serious concerns by pulling a rabbit out of a hat. One recent poll shows 28% of Clinton supporters would rather vote for McCain if Obama wins the nomination, and 19% of Obama supporters would rather switch if Clinton wins the nomination. So, as Obama and Clinton tear into each other, there's a fear that this may be the only way to salvage the general election against McCain.

One wonders. First, it would have to be at the point of a gun for Obama, who has no interest in having a Clinton tag team in the White House. Not only does it create potential for power struggles, it violates Obama's main argument to independents and moderates for his candidacy: turning a new page from the Bush-Clinton, baby-boom culture wars. And Senator Clinton must have little interest in playing second fiddle since she's been doing that for forty years. Now is her time.

On the other hand, Clinton would be more amenable to having Obama as VP, but that presents quite a gamble for him. Just consider what a Clinton VP slot did for Al Gore? An independent Obama would be much better off in the Senate and eventually running for governor of Illinois before taking another shot at the presidency.

More important though is to consider if the two together really represent the strongest ticket against McCain. An African-American and a woman on the same ticket seems to ask moderates and independents to take a gamble on two historic firsts at once. These voters are usually more conservative. It also appears the Democratic primary battle has been hog-tied by identity politics and this would raise identity politics to the forefront of the campaign. How many voters would just decide that McCain would be the safer bet? Certainly older women and Hispanics might lean that way.

The most significant reason why the 'Dream Team' may be more suspect is that both candidates are more liberal than the general electorate and this will not go unnoticed for long. The usual VP strategy is to round out the top spot with a candidate that brings different assets to the ticket - such as a candidate strong on defense experience, economic centrism or a different regional appeal. If we can get past the identity thing, on the issues Obama-Clinton really look more like mirror twins, which concentrates rather than spreads the risk of being out-of-sync with large groups of voters. One thing we learned from the past two elections is that there are some significant geographical differences in voter preferences across the nation.

Given these caveats, it would seem that a "Dream Team" is rather unlikely and, if pursued, risks turning into another presidential election nightmare for Democrats.