Fluidity in the "YouTube Campaign"

More than any presidential race that I can recall, this one reveals voters who are uncertain about whom they will ultimately support. Look at any of the more detailed polls, and you find that half or more of any candidate's support is "soft." So many people have not really made their minds yet, that relatively small events may have a big impact on the final result. Hillary's tearing up is only one example of what we can expect will be a series of signature moments when the electorate gets a new perception of a candidate. One such moment, showed an older woman ask McCain, "How do we stop the bitch?" She can only be referring to Clinton, and the entire (Republican) room erupts into laughter, McCain included. He never directly answers the question, but his facial expression reveals some sympathy for the query combined with the realization that he had best treat the incident as humorously as possible. But the question and the crowd response speak volumes about the Republicans.

Another moment, concerning Romney, also was caught on camera and made available on YouTube. In this short sequence, Romney approaches a young man in a wheelchair. No doubt the candidate is expecting to score some points by displaying compassion. But the encounter goes badly for Romney. As the camera rolls, he learns that the young man suffers from an incurable condition, and that the only thing that can ease his pain is marijuana. Romney is against drugs of all forms being legalized under any circumstances, and immediately points out that there is a synthetic form of marijuana available as a pill. This he supports, if prescribed by a physician. But the young man says that the such pills make him ill, and that only smoking marijuana works for him. Romney begins to back away, as the young man asks whether, if elected, Romney would put him in jail for smoking it. Romney does not hesitate to say that he does not endorse such use, turns his back on the man and begins to look for a more congenial conversation. But whoever is holding the camera stops him, and asks if he is literally going to turn his back on the young man. Will he not speak with him? Romney curtly replies that he has already spoken to him and given him an answer.

The whole episode takes less time to see than it does to describe. It makes me dislike Romney who appears slick, self-assured, insensitive, rigid, cold, and "deeply superficial" - by which I mean superficial all the way down, through and through. Now conceivably this was not a characteristic moment. Maybe Romney normally is a really nice guy. But the footage seemed to me a confirmation of what I have sensed about the man all along.

Such YouTube coverage may become a crucial element in this campaign, helping the public to get beyond the spin and the crafted TV commercials. I certainly hope so. But we will also have to be wary of assuming that YouTube videos are themselves completely unvarnished slices of reality. They can be manipulated and edited, too.

The important point is that in 2008 we are experiencing the conjunction of two events that might not have coincided. The first is the wide open race on both sides, with no heir apparent in either party. This basically has not happened in the memory of the electorate. The second is the advent of YouTube, which is so new that it did not play a role in any previous campaign. As we move through the rest of the primaries, look for more of these moments digitally captured and rebroadcast via the Internet. We seem to be witnessing the birth of a major force in the electoral process. Just as radio became important in the 1930s and television in the 1950s, reshaping the political landscape in the process, the Internet may provide a new kind of electoral battleground. In this new form of public space, the ordinary person has more opportunities to be heard, via Blogs and digital imagery. This makes possible new forms of negative advertising, and new kinds of "reality TV" straight from the campaign trail.

Perhaps that is why Barack Obama has visited the Google headquarters at least twice. He can see that the politics of the future will be more interactive and less from the top down. During his second visit Obama gave a rousing address to a standing-room-only crowd, in which he showed himself quite savvy on the issues that concerned such entrepreneurs. Obama's appearance at Google, too, is available on YouTube - which Google owns.

Obama also has a sophisticated on-line fund-raising operation, which has gathered thousands of email addresses from supporters and provided him with infusions of new cash. His homepage is not only well-designed, it generates campaign money for up-coming contests. Obama makes it easy for contributors to match gifts, to provide the names and emails of other likely contributors, and to follow the progress of each mini-fund drive. And contributors have opportunities to chat on-line to one another, too.

Overall, both Obama and Clinton appear more computer literate than either McCain or Huckabee. That ought to position them well to operate in the new world of Internet campaigns, with its unscripted (or semi-scripted) moments on YouTube. This may be crucial in reaching the still undecided electorate. Stay tuned.

Voting Patterns May Favor Clinton and McCain

Forty years ago I worked briefly for the Eugene McCarthy campaign in New Hampshire. That was a heady experience, because the primary became, in effect, a referendum on the Vietnam War. And McCarthy did something no one had thought possible. He embarrassed a sitting President, who won with 49%, by getting more than 42% of the vote. This was hardly an expected result in a conservative state. It was only possible because of massive support from college students and other young people. It did not hurt McCarthy that he had a good education in Catholic universities, so he could appeal to that constituency as well.

Working in the campaign made me acutely aware of the differences between voters. The problem for any candidate is, "How can I appeal to as many groups as possible?" The usual practice is to come up with a general campaign slogan, such as "New Deal," "Fair Deal," "New Frontier" or, this year, simply, "Change," and then develop a variety of specific proposals, which the candidate trots out or barely mentions, depending on the particular audience being addressed. Yet, in the end, each candidate appeals more to some social classes, religious faiths, or racial groups than to others. Some appeal more to men than women, or vice-versa. If only men could vote, then Bill Clinton would never have been president.  What can we learn about the major candidates' constituencies, based on Iowa and New Hampshire? 

Who voted for Obama instead of Clinton? For Huckabee or McCain?  Iowa and New Hampshire voting behavior suggests some patterns to think about. Consider that Hillary's New Hampshire victory essentially was won in small industrial towns, where she got twice the support Obama did. She is also emerging as a working-class candidate who speaks to bread and butter issues. Since the American economy is fading at the moment, with falling house prices and higher unemployment, this aspect of Hillary's appeal bears watching. Another area of strength for her is in terms of religion. The Catholics clearly preferred Hillary (44%) to Obama (27%), with Protestants more evenly divided. In New Hampshire, these Catholics are mostly French-Canadian and Irish. Will Obama find a way to reach out to such voters? Will he have more success with Catholics that have other ethnic backgrounds? He will have to re-think his basic message a bit if he wants to appeal to the less educated and to the working-class. To put this in a more positive way, Obama outpolled Clinton among college students, the better educated, and the wealthy. Among those who have gone to graduate school, he defeated her soundly, 46% to 27%. But could he win a Presidential election primarily based on that kind of support? Perhaps, for Obama seems to attract votes from people with higher incomes, many of them Independents. Among voters earning more than $50,000 a year, Obama had a margin over Clinton of 43% to 27%. 

These kinds of preferences are not written in stone, and candidates can modify their speechs and presentations to woo voters whom they failed to attract early on. For example, Hillary discovered in Iowa that the young were flocking to Obama by a radio of 2 to 1, while she was busy targeting women over 45. To improve in this area, in New Hampshire Hillary began surrounding herself on stage with young people. That may seem a rather minimal change, but it seems to have helped her. 

Overall, one can see that while the total vote for Obama and Clinton was close, support varied greatly within specific groups. Men strongly preferred him, but women brought her the victory. Clinton may be a bit better positioned, with strong support from Catholics, women, and the working class. But Obama will presumably adjust his campaign messages in an attempt to reach more of these voters, all of whom traditionally have been more Democratic than Republican. If he fails to do this, he will have troubles down the road that may undercut the boost he can expect to get from Black voters, who were scarcely present in Iowa or New Hampshire.

On the Republican side, for the last three decades religion has been a particularly important influence on voters. New Hampshire Catholics taken as a whole are rather conservative, and in 2004 gave more support to Bush (52%) than to Kerry (47%). In theory, Huckabee could do as well as Bush. In practice, he did far worse. Huckabee received most of his support from Evangelical Protestants, while in New Hampshire only 8% of the Republican-voting Catholics selected him. McCain literally got five times more Catholic votes, suggesting that he is far more electable in a national contest. More to the point, in the Michigan Primary next week there are three Catholic voters for every two Evangelicals. Furthermore, if one looks at Protestants as a whole, McCain has roughly the same appeal as Huckabee.  In short, Huckabee's born-again Baptist religion ultimately may be a limitation, not a strength. Nevertheless, the latest Michigan polls show Huckabee and McCain in a dead heat along with Romney, with all three getting about 20% of the vote. 

Michigan Primary

Michigan is much different than Iowa or New Hampshire: it is more like the rest of the United States. In that sense, the Michigan Primary could function as a reality check. How might these candidates fare in an industrial, multicultural state? Unfortunately, the Michigan Primary will not function this way, because when it was moved to an earlier date, this was against party rules. Both parties have punished Michigan by taking away delegates to the national nominating conventions. The Republicans took away half, the Democrats took away every one of the delegates. As a result, Obama, Edwards and Richardson have taken their names off the ballot, while Clinton did not. So, on the Democratic side, there is no contest, though voters may choose to vote "uncommitted." In a curious way, the vote then turns out to be a referendum on Hillary. Her or "uncommitted"?

 

In the first two contests, the candidates could reasonably expect to come into personal contact with a good deal of the electorate. On a good day in Iowa or New Hampshire, they might be seen and heard by 15,000 people or more, and multiply that number by the days they spent in the state, and it compares rather well with the turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire. Fully half of the voters in each state got a first-hand impression of the candidates, and anyone who wanted to do so certainly has the opportunity. A friend of mine in New Hampshire wrote me that he and his wife managed to see Obama three times, Clinton, Richardson, and Edwards twice each, plus McCain and Giuliani.  He decided for Obama, saying, "When we first saw him, a year ago at a book signing event, I was underimpressed. But he grew into his candidacy. His Welcome Back to New Hampshire rally the morning after the Iowa caucus was rocking - and actually very moving." 

The voters in the first two states are the lucky ones, because they can really study the candidates and talk about them based on direct contact. Michigan is another matter, and more typical of the campaign for the presidency from now on. To begin with, there is the sheer scale of the State. Michigan is six times larger than New Hampshire, though about the same size as Iowa. More to the point, Michigan has 10 million inhabitants, more than twice as many as Iowa and New Hampshire put together, and they are not going to get many chances to see the candidates in the six days between primaries, no matter how intensive the campaigning. This means that the candidates will have to use the media to reach the voter, and that fact favors candidates with deep pockets.

Since there is no Democratic contest, we should focus on the Republican side. Huckabee and McCain do not have much money, and they will need to calculate carefully how to use the scarce resources. Huckabee will presumably be mobilizing the churches, as he did in Iowa, and McCain can count on support from veterans organizations. By comparison, Romney has more, and apparently plans to spend heavily.

Not only does Michigan demand more money to run a campaign, but it has a more varied electorate. More than 800,000 people in Michigan do not speak English in their homes, including many of the 400,000 Hispanics. Iowa and New Hampshire basically do not have Black people, which makes Obama's success there almost astonishing. Michigan's 1.4 million African-Americans traditionally vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. Had there been a three-way contest with Edwards and Clinton, Obama presumably would have received far more than a third of the Black vote. Even more intriguing, Michigan also has a sizable Arab population, more than 400,000 in the Detroit metropolitan area. Dearborn, where Henry Ford once built his largest factory, today is 30% Arab. It seems reasonable to think that because of his cultural background, Obama would have appealed to such voters. But because the Michigan Primary is meaningless for the Democrats, we will never know how Obama might have done. However, the Arab voter is not necessarily a Democrat. The Arab population is better educated and more highly paid than the Michigan average, and half typically vote for the Republicans. This group may choose Romney, rather than the Bible-thumping Huckabee or militant McCain.  

The Republicans will battle it out in a state whose economy has been struggling for decades. Detroit is the headquarters for General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, and as they have lost market share to Japanese and European firms, jobs have been disappearing. This is a blue-collar state, where only one adult in four has a BA (in New Hampshire it was one in three), and where the number of jobs has shrunk 7% during the Bush years, at a time when the country as a whole has created more than 2 million jobs. Given these local hard times, the populism that Edwards brought into the campaign and that other candidates have picked up, should play well in Michigan. That ought to favor Huckabee and McCain more than Romney. Note also that while Detroit dominates Michigan, it has a large rural area as well, and an entire penninsula, Upper Michigan, that has no large cities. This population is less multicultural and more conservative, and it will be interesting to see how Huckabee and McCain do in these areas. Romney's father was once governor of Michigan (and an unsuccessful Presidential candidate), and the resonance of the name, plus old family connections, can only help his faltering campaign. Indeed, the news today is that Romney has pulled his advertising off the air in South Carolina to focus all his energies in Michigan. This seems to be a recognition of the fact that if he cannot win there, his campaign may be over.

The Michigan Primary could have been the dramatic third act of an electoral drama, pitting the Clinton machine with its strong ties to the labor unions against the Obama wave. Instead, it will be a sort of referendum on Clinton by herself, and if half the Democrats are "undecided" that is a kind of defeat for her. At least on the Republican side there is still a contest, and a very interesting one, between Huckabee, McCain, and Romney, who each have around 20% in the average of all polls, with Giuliani running at about 10% and assorted others garnering a few votes, too. If one looks back over the polls for a year, McCain had a high point of 30% back in March of last year, before his finances collapsed and his campaign seemed hopeless. After falling as low as 10%, his numbers are rising rapidly now. Romney peaked at 26% at the same time that McCain waned. But Romney has been fading a bit ever since then, even before his losses in Iowa and New Hampshire. Giuliani once had 28% in Michigan, but he has been falling to his present 10%. Huckabee, in contrast, has not suffered any relapses. Starting at 0% in June of 2007, his numbers have continually risen to his present tie with Romney and McCain.  If the electorate in Michigan is as volatile as that in New Hampshire, the next week should be very interesting.

Hillary Beats Obama, Just!

I was wrong, and so was everyone else who believed the polls. I looked at them all, and as of two days ago, Obama was widening his lead. But something happened in the two or three days since those polls and the actual election. Clinton got far more support from women than the polls had predicted - they said women would split between the two. In fact, she got 14% more, showing that when women go into the polling booth they are still thinking about their decision. This was decisive, as Hillary defeated him by only two percentage points - 39% to 37%. Obama was also perhaps a victim of his anticipated success, as Independant voters, who can participate in either primary, seem to have gone over to help McCain, because Obama apparently was going to win without their help. Had the polls showed Obama in a close race, then more Independents might have supported him.

Voters clearly were volatile in New Hampshire, and the process of the election brought more energy to Hillary's campaign. This surprised all the pundits, who admitted it on CNN and in the other media. In the last two days Hillary became more populist in tone and more open to questions from the crowds who came to hear her. Until this week, she gave few interviews and the communication was all one way. She also teared up in an emotional moment surrounded by women in a small public meeting. That moment was caught on TV and rebroadcast many times. (This seems to have worked once, but how many times could she become emotional before it would begin to hurt her?) She was learning from what worked for other candidates, and that is as it should be. The primary process gives candidates a chance to know the public and find out what they care about. She refocused on younger voters, as Obama has, making a point to pose many of them behind her on the stage. In her victory speech Hillary sounded a bit like Edwards, speaking about the "invisible Americans" and the hard-working people who cannot afford to pay the bills. She has also begun to attack the oil companies, the pharmeceutical companies, and the insurance companies, which may win the primary for her, but may alienate swing voters and can stimulate these companies to give more money to Republicans. Overall, Clinton presented her self as more emotional, and won over many to the cause at the last minute.

Now we have an open race, with two candidates almost equally strong in the North, and Edwards hoping for a comeback in the South. So far, the campaign has not tested the candidates' appeal in large cities or among Black and Hispanic voters. The next primary in Michigan will be the first in a large, urban, and multicultural state. Can Hillary appeal to that audience as well as Obama will?  Can she continue to outpoll him among women voters? 

On the Republican side, McCain made a tremendous comeback, defeating Romney, who has now come in second twice. But that race is still wide open, as it rolls on toward Michigan. Romney's father was governor of Michigan, after all, so he has one more chance to win a primary. But if he cannot win there, then it may come down to a race between McCain and Huckabee and perhaps Giuliani, with Fred Thompson as a remote outside possibility.

Iowa Caucuses: Not Clinton, Not Romney, but Obama vs Huckabee?

The Iowa caucuses have spoken. The clear winners are Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama. The clear losers are Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, both of whom spent a lot of time and money in Iowa and came up wanting. She was judged the front runner both in Iowa and nationally until a few weeks ago. But Clinton came in third, slightly behind John Edwards, even though she spent vastly more than Edwards did. It is worth noting that Edwards did slightly worse this time around (30%) than he did in 2004, when he garnered 32%. But Edwards is very much alive, having exceeded polling expectations. Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, failed to win, although she had her husband and heavy-weights such as Madelaine Albright at her side.  

Hillary desperately needs to do well in New Hampshire next week, for there is nothing worse in the presidential primary process than losing momentum. Edwards gained some of that last night, while Obama definitively became the front-runner. He is already the most successful Black candidate for the Presidency that the US has ever seen, and he is developing three campaign themes that Americans have always liked: restoring national unity, time for a change, and throwing out the rascals in Washington. What makes his campaign especially interesting is the surge of college students supporting him. Young people do not vote as reliably as older people. But when thousands of them become excited about a candidate, as happened with John Kennedy in 1960 or Eugene McCarthy in 1968 or Bill Clinton in 1992, such students can have a disproportionate influence on the election. For students have more time and energy than most others, and they will throw themselves full time into a campaign they believe in. Will New England's college students also turn out for Obama? If so, that will be a sign that new energies are going to redefine American politics in 2008.

Obama received the same percentage of support (38%) that John Kerry had in 2004. Recall that the front runner before the Iowa caucuses that time was Howard Dean, whose candidacy faded rapidly after his poor showing. This time around the Iowa voters have shown that Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, and Dennis Kucinich have virtually no traction with the voters. Together, all of them managed to garner only 3% of the delegates. They are effectively out of the race, which will be further clarified on Tuesday. Should Clinton continue to falter, then it might become a two-man contest between Obama and Edwards.

On the Republican side, the clear winner was Mike Huckabee, the affable Arkansas governor. He is a charming salesman for banning abortion and other conservative causes. The latest avatar of the "compassionate conservatism" that George Bush claimed to represent in the 2000 election, Huckabee garnered passionate support from evangelicals and other religious minded conservatives. They turned out for him and defeated the far more heavily financed Romney campaign. He has lost some momentum, but has a chance to regain it in New Hampshire, which in theory ought to lean his way. After all, Romney was the Republican governor of Massachusetts, which normally votes Democratic, and he evidently knows how to talk to the Yankee voter. By comparison, the Baptist preacher Huckabee with his southern accent will sound like a foreigner in the Granite State.

However, Romney's main opponents in New Hampshire are John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani skipped the Iowa caucuses, calculating that he would be better off using his time and money on the later primaries. McCain almost skipped Iowa, but decided to make a partial effort there, once he saw that he might place a respectable third, which he did.  So Romney runs the risk in New Hampshire of coming in second again. In that case, he might be through. For Huckabee showed that Romney cannot excite the conservative religious Republicans, even in Iowa; he would surely appeal to them even less in Alabama. Quite possibly either McCain or Giuliani will demonstrate that Romney is also the second choice among the more secular Republicans.

It is early in the campaign, and almost all the votes are still to be cast. But Iowa has suggested the possibility of a presidential race between a White Baptist preacher and governor from Arkansas and a Black lawyer and Senator from  Illinois. For US politics, that would be an absolute (and polarizing?) contrast in political goals, personality, and values. But if these turn out to be the candidates, then Obama will already occupy the middle of the spectrum, while Huckabee will have to work hard to show he represents more than the evangelicals.