2009 election: Only a third of the GOP swing was due to turnout

posted at 12:58 am on November 10, 2009 by Karl
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According to Pollster.com’s Charles Franklin:

The shifts in outcomes between the 2008 presidential and 2009 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia were driven far more by shifts in voting preferences among groups than by changes in turnout across those groups. Only age groups show consistently substantial changes in relative share of the electorate. Vote preference, in comparison, shows quite large shifts between election years. While one narrative of the 2009 election was changing turnout motivation, this turns out to be substantially false. Instead, changes in candidate preference drove the Republican wins in both New Jersey and Virginia.

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In Virginia, large shifts in preference came among 18-29 year olds, those without a college degree, independents, rural voters and males. Smaller but still interesting changes came among lower and middle income voters, both of which shifted from majority Dem to majority Rep.

The most talked about shifts are among partisans and ideological groups. The large 16 point shift from 49 to 33 percent Dem among independents has justifiably received a lot of attention. But perhaps as interesting is the similarity of partisan loyalty among Dems and Reps. Neither shifted by enough to make the length of the arrow stand out. Virginia Democrats actually increased their Dem support by a point, while Republicans came home by a small 4 percentage points more than in 2008. Clearly the independents drove the dynamics of the outcomes.

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The giant preference change in New Jersey is among independents, the same as Virginia. NJ independents took a massive 21 point shift from 51 percent for Obama to just 30 percent for Corzine. Also as in Virginia, Republicans came home to their party a bit, from a 14 percent defection rate for Obama to just 8 percent defection to Corzine. Democrats meanwhile barely budge, down from 89 to 86 percent Dem.

There were other substantial movements in vote preference, among 30-44 year olds, moderates, whites, hispanics and males. In short, many groups in New Jersey made substantial movements away from Democratic votes.

Commenters take issue with Franklin (including political scientist Alan Abramowitz), prompting Franklin to expand on his analysis:

The two most prominent arguments are that Democrats stayed home and that liberals also dropped off disproportionately. There is some of that, but not a lot. Democrats were 39% in ‘08 and 33% in 09. Meanwhile Reps rose from 33% to 37% and Independents rose from 27% to 30%. Party ID is the single most powerful political identification and predictor of the vote so this is critical information from the exit poll.

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[D]ifferential composition of the partisan electorate can account for 4.2 of an 11.3 point shift, or just over a third of the swing. That’s not nothing, but it leaves 2/3 of the story to preference changes, which is what I said in the post.

Folks left of center would like to believe that the Independents who voted out Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey are somehow not representative of Independents generally, despite a raft of public opinion polling showing Independents shifting rightward.

The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber has advanced a different argument:

This all sounds pretty plausible: Independents are saying they’re worried about the deficit, that they’ve become more conservative, and that the government is too intrusive. Who am I to say they’re lying.

Problem is, voters almost always say stuff like this when the economy gets worse under a Democrat, and they stop saying it when the economy gets better… My guess is that all of the numbers Brooks is citing are basically reflecting the same thing, which is that independent voters don’t think Obama’s policies are fixing the economy.

That argument does not explain why the Gallup polling shows that Independents have shifted to the right on gun rights, traditional values and abortion. The argument is also a little ahistorical. For example, in 1994, the economy was sluggish, but had been recovering for four years. That is not to say the argument is totally without merit. It is possible that there is a segment of low-information Independents that vote as Scheiber suggests. However, that is a demographic unlikely to vote in midterm elections, which should make them small comfort to Democrats next year.

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