The Southern White Vote in Congressional Elections

It is now much harder for Democrats to win House elections in the South. Harry Enten writes at FiveThirtyEight:

We can see the abatement of white Southern Democrats in the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) data set. The poll, which started in 2005, surveys over 50,000 people nationwide every two years, providing more accurate demographic and geographic subgroup data than other publicly available surveys. The CCES also verifies the voting status of all its respondents to see if they’re registered.

In the 2006 House elections, Republicans won Southern1 white voters by 16 percentage points, 58 percent to 41 percent,x

Due to rounding, margins may be different than one would find by subtracting the percentages of the vote that individual candidates received.according to the CCES.3 

That may seem like a wide margin, but Democrats did well enough with white Southerners to win in several majority-white districts. Democrats like Lincoln Davis and John Tanner won in Tennessee. The majority of Arkansas’s delegation was Democratic.
Of course, 2006 was also a very good year for Democrats; they won the national House vote by 8 percentage points. So as our baseline, let’s look at how Republican-leaning the Southern white vote was relative to the national House vote. In 2006, Republicans lost the national House vote by 8 percentage points but won white Southerners by 16 points. The relative difference gives us the lean — white voters in the South were 24 percentage points more Republican-leaning than the country that year.

The 2014 election (the last for which we have CCES data) was a much different story. Southern whites voted Republican 70 percent to 28 percent4— a margin of over 40 percentage points, more than double the GOP’s margin among white Southerners in 2006. Once you take into account the fact that Republicans won the national House vote by 6 points and that the overall CCES sample was slightly more Democratic than the actual vote, Southern whites were still 39 percentage points more Republican-leaning than the nation. That’s a 15 percentage point jump from 2006. To put that in perspective, people are making a big deal over some Midwestern states — Michigan, for example — going from slightly more Democratic than the nation to slightly more Republican between the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. What’s occurred in the House over the past decade is a political earthquake by comparison.

Post-Ideology v. Identity Liberalism

At The Washington Post, James Hohmann reports on the post-election conference at HKS.  He quotes Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio:

“We really live in a world where everybody thinks that ideology is linear, and that, ‘If you answer these 10 questions correctly, that makes you a conservative.’ But not every conservative is pro-life. Not every conservative is anti-gay marriage. Not every conservative puts 100 percent emphasis on this or that.”

“One of the problems is many people tried to look at the Donald Trump phenomenon through the ideological lenses which had defined previous Republicans presidential nominating contests,” Fabrizio added. “Donald Trump is post ideological. His movement transcends ideology … Through his own antennae – and, trust me, many times I had this conversation with him – Donald Trump understood the fold in American politics. It’s the reason so many Trump supporters and so many (Bernie) Sanders supporters agreed on so many things.”
....
“Every time he said something … and doubled down, that was proof to voters he’d speak his mind and not lie to them. It’s what they wanted,” Fabrizio said of Trump.“His best group of voters were those who said they were ‘angry.’ And let me tell you, in the Republican primary, a third of voters would tell you they were outright angry. With another 60 percent telling you they were dissatisfied. So he had a rich pool to tap into.”

...

-- Policy didn’t matter. “What we missed was that nobody cared about solutions,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who managed Mike Huckabee’s campaign until he dropped out and then joined Trump’s operation as a consultant soon after. “They just wanted to burn it all down. They didn’t care about building it back up. They wanted to burn it to the ground and then figure out what to do with the ashes afterwards. There was no understanding of this electorate and the anger on the front end in terms of just how pissed off they were. You may have the best policy in the world to get every single American the best job they’ve ever had. Nobody cared.”

-- Experience didn’t matter. From Marco Rubio campaign manager Terry Sullivan: “We got hit with commercial after commercial about how little experience (Marco had) and how many missed votes in the Senate. It didn’t matter. People don’t care. The Senate sucks. Why would we want to be there? We’re not voting. Who cares? And voters bought into that. Experience was a liability. It was not an asset. We figured that out early, but Trump took it to the next level.”

At The New York Times, Mark Lilla writes:

One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election campaign and its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end. Hillary Clinton was at her best and most uplifting when she spoke about American interests in world affairs and how they relate to our understanding of democracy. But when it came to life at home, she tended on the campaign trail to lose that large vision and slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what happened with the white working class and those with strong religious convictions. Fully two-thirds of white voters without college degrees voted for Donald Trump, as did over 80 percent of white evangelicals.

(Compare and contrast with Bill Clinton in 1992). 

One Nation Money

Robert Maguire writes at Open Secrets:

One of the most active groups in the 2016 cycle wasn’t a super PAC — though those were plenty busy — but a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, One Nation. From mid-2015 through 2016, the group spent about $40 million in a largely successful push to protect the GOP’s fragile majority in the Senate. And it did so without disclosing a single donor to the public.

This was One Nation’s first election in its current form, but the group is not new. Founded in 2010 as the Alliance for America’s Future, it had been dormant for years until operatives from another dark money powerhouse, Crossroads GPS, took over last year.

Under new management and a new name, One Nation’s revenues went from nothing to more than $10 million, according to newly filed tax documents obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics that cover 2015. (One Nation’s tax filing covering its 2016 activities isn’t due until November 2017.)

More than 61 percent of those revenues came from just four anonymous donorswho gave $1 million or more; one topped out at $2.5 million

Sanders and the Media

At Common Dreams, Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan write:

What about Bernie Sanders? The Tyndall Report analyzed major-network campaign coverage in 2015. In over 1,000 minutes of national broadcast television airtime devoted to all the campaigns, Donald Trump received 327 minutes, or close to one-third of all the campaign coverage. Bernie Sanders received just 20 minutes. Hillary Clinton got 121 minutes of campaign coverage, six times the amount Sanders received. “ABC World News Tonight” aired 81 minutes of reports on Donald Trump, compared with just 20 seconds for Sanders.

I asked Sanders what he did to warrant a full 20 seconds of coverage on ABC, and he threw his head back, laughing out loud. “We had the misfortune of actually trying to talk about the problems facing America and providing real solutions,” he said, offering his take on the media’s failure. “Trump was tweeting out about how ugly or horrible or disgusting or terrible his opponents were, in really ugly terms. Perfect for the media. That is a great 12-second sound bite. But to talk about why the middle class is in decline or why we have massive levels of income and wealth inequality can’t be done in 12 seconds. And second of all, it’s not something that they are, frankly, terribly interested in.” While the media may not have been interested in Sanders’ message, the voters were. Despite the media blackout, Sanders won 23 primary contests and 46 percent of the pledged Democratic delegates.

At the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center, Thomas Patterson wrote:

The media’s obsession with Trump during the primaries meant that the Republican race was afforded far more coverage than the Democratic race, even though it lasted five weeks longer. The Republican contest got 63 percent of the total coverage between January 1 and June 7, compared with the Democrats’ 37 percent—a margin of more than three to two.

Sanders in particular struggled to get the media’s attention. Over the course of the primary season, Sanders received only two-thirds of the coverage afforded Clinton. Sanders’ coverage trailed Clinton’s in every week of the primary season. Relative to Trump, Sanders was truly a poor cousin. He received less than half of the coverage afforded Trump. Sanders received even slightly less coverage than Cruz, despite the fact that Cruz quit the race and dropped off the media’s radar screen five weeks before the final contests. For her part, Clinton got slightly less than three-fourths of the press attention given to Trump. Nevertheless, she was, except for Trump, the most heavily covered candidate during the primary period.

Coverage Tone. Our earlier study found that, in 2015, Sanders received the most positive coverage of any of the presidential contenders. That pattern carried into the primaries. During the period from January 1 to June 7, positive news statements about Sanders outpaced negative ones by 54 percent to 46 percent (see Figure 2). In fact, Sanders was the only candidate during the primary period to receive a positive balance of coverage. The other candidates’ coverage tilted negative, though in varying degrees. Clinton’s coverage was 53 percent negative to 47 percent positive, which, though unfavorable on balance, was markedly better than her 2015 coverage when she received by far the most negative coverage of any candidate. During that year-long period, two-thirds (69 percent to 31 percent) of what was reported about Clinton was negative in tone.

Supermajorities

Simon Greenhill writes at The Daily Californian:

In stark contrast to Republicans’ sweep of the presidency and Congress on Nov. 8, California Democrats clinched two-thirds supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature Monday night.

The Associated Press called Democrat Josh Newman’s win for state Senate District 29 over Republican Ling Ling Chang when provisional and absentee ballots gave Newman a lead of more than 2,400 votes.

With Newman’s election, Democrats will control 27 of the 40 state Senate seats. Democrats also control 55 of the 80 state Assembly seats, gaining three seats in this year’s election.

A supermajority gives Democrats the ability overturn a governor’s veto, pass tax laws and put constitutional amendments to the ballot — all without bipartisan support. Split between liberals and centrists, however, the Democratic party’s dominance in California is more symbolic than actionable.

Ranking the Runners Up

A recent post noted that Trump's share of the electoral vote ranks 46th of the 58 presidential elections back to Washington.  What about the losers?  This table ranks the first runner-up in each election since 1804.  (I exclude the first four elections, in which it is possible to identify the winner, but the concept of "loser" is more problematic.  Before the 12th Amendment, each elector cast two votes, with the assumption that the second-ranking candidate would be vice president.  This system blew up with the tie of 1800.)

Clinton did pretty well, 8th among the 54 runners up.

Party designations:
D - Democratic
R - Republican
F - Federalist
W -Whig
NR - National Republican
DR - Democrat-Republican
P - Progressive

1. 1876        Samuel J. Tilden (D)             49.86%
2. 2000        Al Gore (D)                          49.44%
3. 1916        Charles E. Hughes (R)         47.83%
4. 2004        John Kerry (D)                     46.65%
5. 1884        James G. Blaine (R)             45.39%
6. 1976        Gerald R. Ford (R)               44.61%
7. 1848        Lewis Cass (D)                     43.79%
8. 2016        Hillary Clinton (D)             43.12%
9. 1880        Winfield S. Hancock (D)      42.01%
10. 1888        Grover Cleveland (D)           41.90%
11. 1812        DeWitt Clinton (F)                41.01%
12. 1960        Richard Nixon (R)                40.78%
13. 1896        William J. Bryan (D)             39.37%
14. 1856        John C. Fremont (R )            38.51%
15. 2012        Mitt Romney (R )                  38.29%
16. 1844        Henry Clay (W)                    38.18%
17. 1824        Andrew Jackson (D-R)         37.93%
18. 1948        Thomas E. Dewey (R)          35.59%
19. 1968        Hubert Humphrey (D)          35.50%
20. 1900        William J. Bryan (D)             34.68%
21. 1908        William J. Bryan (D)             33.54%
22. 1892        Benjamin Harrison (R)          32.66%
23. 2008        John McCain (R )                 32.16%
24. 1828        John Quincy Adams (NR)    31.80%
25. 1992        George H.W. Bush (R)         31.23%
26. 1996        Bob Dole (R)                        29.55%
27. 1904        Alton B. Parker (D)               29.41%
28. 1868        Horatio Seymour (D)            27.21%
29. 1808        Charles C. Pinckney (F)        26.86%
30. 1924        John W. Davis (D)                25.61%
31. 1836        William Henry Harrison (W) 24.83%
32. 1920        James M. Cox (D)                 23.92%
33. 1860        John C. Breckinridge (SD)    23.76%
34. 1988        Michael Dukakis (D)             20.63%
35. 1840        Martin Van Buren (D)           20.41%
36. 1944        Thomas Dewey (R )              18.64%
37. 1832        Henry Clay (NR)                  17.13%
38. 1952        Adlai E. Stevenson (D)         16.76%
39. 1912        Theodore Roosevelt (P)        16.57%
40. 1928        Alfred E. Smith (D)              16.38%
41. 1816        Rufus King (F)                      15.67%
42. 1940        Wendell Willkie (R )             15.44%
43. 1852        Winfield Scott (W)                14.19%
44. 1956        Adlai E. Stevenson (D)         13.75%
45. 1872        Thomas Hendricks (D)         11.93%
46. 1932        Herbert C. Hoover (R )         11.11%
47. 1964        Barry M. Goldwater (R )        9.67%
48. 1980        Jimmy Carter (D)                   9.11%
49. 1864        George B. McClellan (D)       9.01%
50. 1804        Charles C. Pinckney (F)         7.95%
51. 1972        George S. McGovern (D)       3.16%
52. 1984        Walter F. Mondale (D)           2.42%
53. 1936        Alfred M. Landon (R)           1.51%
54. 1820        John Quincy Adams (DR  )    0.43%

Digital Don

Issie Lapowsky writes at Wired:

MARK ZUCKERBERG IS trying hard to convince voters that Facebook had no nefarious role in this election. But according to President-elect Donald Trump’s digital director Brad Parscale, the social media giant was massively influential—not because it was tipping the scales with fake news, but because it helped generate the bulk of the campaign’s $250 million in online fundraising.

“Our biggest incubator that allowed us to generate that money was Facebook,” says Parscale, who has been working for the campaign since before Trump officially announced his candidacy a year and a half ago. Over the course of the election cycle, Trump’s campaign funneled $90 million to Parscale’s San Antonio-based firm, most of which went toward digital advertising. And Parscale says more of that ad money went to Facebook than to any other platform.

“Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing,” he says. “Twitter for Mr. Trump. And Facebook for fundraising.”
...
Facebook proved to be a powerful way for Trump’s team to hone the campaign’s message with the kind of enormous sample sizes you can’t get with traditional polling. “They have an advantage of a platform that has users that are conditioned to click and engage and give you feedback,” says Gary Coby, director of advertising at the Republican National Committee, who worked on Trump’s campaign. “Their platform’s built to inform you about what people like and dislike.”

....

Social media was Trump’s primary communication channel. It wasn’t a platform for broadcasting pre-planned messages but for interacting with supporters and starting new conversations—however controversial those conversations often were. Bleeker says one of the biggest lessons he’s learned from this election cycle is that social media is increasingly going to be part of any candidate’s so-called “earned media strategy”—that is, the coverage a candidate gets for free in the press. The President-elect has shown he can turn a news cycle in 140 characters or less; in a recent 60 Minutes interview, he said he plans to continue using Twitter as president.

McKenzie Funk writes at The New York Times:

Do you panic easily? Do you often feel blue? Do you have a sharp tongue? Do you get chores done right away? Do you believe in the importance of art?

If ever you’ve answered questions like these on one of the free personality quizzes floating around Facebook, you’ll have learned what’s known as your Ocean score: How you rate according to the big five psychological traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. You may also be responsible the next time America is shocked by an election upset.

For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism “psy ops” work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality quizzes. Respondents — by now hundreds of thousands of us, mostly female and mostly young but enough male and older for the firm to make inferences about others with similar behaviors and demographics — get a free look at their Ocean scores. Cambridge Analytica also gets a look at their scores and, thanks to Facebook, gains access to their profiles and real names.

,,,
One recent advertising product on Facebook is the so-called “dark post”: A newsfeed message seen by no one aside from the users being targeted. With the help of Cambridge Analytica, Mr. Trump’s digital team used dark posts to serve different ads to different potential voters, aiming to push the exact right buttons for the exact right people at the exact right times.