THE CORE

Fruits & Votes is the Web-log of Matthew S. Shugart ("MSS"), Professor of Political Science, University of California, Davis.

Perspectives on electoral systems, constitutional design, and policy around the world, based primarily on my research interests.

Also experiences with growing many varieties of fruit (always organic) and other personal interests. Please see the Mission Statement for more. (There is also an explanation of the banner.)

Other "planters" have been invited to contribute. Please check the "Planted by" line to see the author of the post you are reading.

Join the conversation. Comments are always open. Except, that is, when Word Press mysteriously shuts them down, which happens with distressing frequency.

Core principles:

Henry Droop on the "moderate non-partisan section"

Madison on "dangers from abroad" and "the fetters... on liberty"

The Head Orchardist's other sites:

PRESERVED FRUIT
orchard blocks
  • All
  • FRUITS
  • VOTES
  • wide open spaces
  • 15 August 2006

    Planted by MSS
    Planted in: 2006; USA; VOTES

    Charles, at Political Arithmetik, has one of his many must-read, must-view posts–this time, about trends in 2006 and past cycles in polling for US House.

    As Charles notes, Democrats tend to perform much better in this polling than in the actual voting, where real candidates–including known incumbents–are running, rather than just the “vote for party” option that the polling simulates. Even so:

    In no cycle since 1994 has the Democratic lead approached 10%, let alone exceeded it. So by the standard of “relative lead” in the generic ballot, 2006 reflects extremely strong pro-Democratic forces.

    The current trend of several poll shows an average lead for the Democrats of almost fifteen percentage points! And it has been trending mostly upward for some time.

    Of course, as Charles also notes, it is not only fraught with peril to go from generic polling to estimating the actual aggregate congressional votes, but even more peril lies in estimating seat swings based on (expected or even real) aggregate votes. But such peril never stops F&V!

    I posted some graphs of votes and seats trends over time here three months ago.* If Democrats really had a 15-point lead in national votes, that would mean around 54% of the vote (allowing for the recently typical 5% or so for third parties). Extrapolating from the graph (see link below), that would put the Democrats anywhere from about 240 seats (at the lower responsiveness of recent elections) to about 265 (using the trend over the entire post-1945 period. which is probably less likely to be relevant). (Those are ‘eyeballed’ point estimates off the graph; I think it is pointless to talk about margins of error, as long as we all understand that these are just rough estimates of what would happen if the votes translated into seats in 2006 more or less as they have in the past–whether the very recent past, or the past six decades.)

    Of course, we should not assume the polling will accurately translate into votes. As Charles shows, it does not, or else Democrats would have won each of the last six House elections. (Even 1994, Charles shows, the Democratic party had recovered from its earlier generic-polling deficit by election day!). (They did win 1996, in votes, though not in seats.)

    The following list shows, for each year since 1994, the final polling difference (always D-R), the actual difference in percentages of the total vote, and the actual difference in the two-party vote. Data on the polling are from Political Arithmetik. Actual votes data are from my files (based on Clerk of the House reports).

    The last number, in parentheses, is simply the difference between the final two-party vote and the final generic polling result. (I much prefer to use the shares of the total vote, but pollsters, in their infinite wisdom–and for that matter, most of the country-specialist political scientists–ply their craft as though there were literally only two parties.)

      1994, +3.35, -6.79, -7.05 (+10.4)
      1996, +5.45, +0.30, +0.32 (+5.13)
      1998, +8.03, -0.89, -0.93 (+8.96)
      2000, +5.26, -0.34, -0.36 (+5.62)
      2002, +1.49, -4.62, -4.88 (+6.37)
      2004, -1.07, -2.76, -2.88 (+1.81)

    So, on average, the final poll has overstated the Democratic party vote advantage by 6.38 percentage points! (Note that the one year when the polls showed Republicans ahead was also the year with the smallest error of estimate, while the year the Republicans took control of the House from the Democrats was the year with, by far, the greatest error from poll to actual votes.)

    If we take Charles’s current average of generic polls (+14.65 Dem) and subtract the average difference between final polling and actual votes (6.38), we would have an estimated Democratic advantage of “only” +8.27. That would be roughly 51.6% votes for the Democrat (again allowing around 5% “other”). Now, doing our perilous extrapolations, we get a range of anything from around 225 seats (a bare majority, assuming the votes-to-seats conversion will be as nonresponsive as it has been in the last decade) to around 245.

    Of course, if the generic trend continues upward for Democrats, it would become quite unlikely that they would not be the majority party in the next House. On the other hand, the relative nonresponsiveness of the current House electoral system to votes swings would suggest that even a small recovery for the Republicans in the generic polling by early November could keep the current majority intact.

    No, we can’t make any predictions, unfortunately. It looks bad for the Republicans. You already knew that. But Democrats could fail to capitalize on their current good polling. You probably aleady knew that, too. What I hope this discussion shows is that a failure to “capitalize” would not necessarily be from bad tactics (as the media will tell us), but from underlying structural features of the US House electoral system. To review, those are (not necessarily in order of importance):

      1. Voters vote for candidates, not parties.
      2. The party polling tends to overstate voter preferences for living, breathing Democrats, and has done so for many years (even in 1994).
      3. The process of allocating House seats is not as responsive to vote shifts as it once was.


    * “Votes and seats in the US House,” and

    “Presidential approval and midterm vote and seat loss.”

    Propagation: Seeds & scions (6)


    Fruits and Votes grafted The US Congress result
    Fruits and Votes grafted US House and Senate: Rothenberg’s updates
    Fruits and Votes grafted Candidate quality isn’t everything
    Fruits and Votes grafted 22 seats?

    6 ideas sprouting »

    1. I wonder if you don’t have your final bullet points upside down– it seems to me that the electoral map-drawing is more important than any other factor.

      In fact, you might say that the polls have it right and the elections understate Democratic support. Vote totals in the least competitive districts tend to be much lower than in competitive districts, so the party that wins more of its seats in highly safe race will end up with a lower share of the total vote.

      As for the “vote for the man, not the party” principle: does this refer to the way ballots are made up, or to voter behavior? Because if it’s the latter, I think there’s room for some skepticism. Incumbents who get out of sync with their districts– like Connie Morella, for example– quickly find themselves in trouble.

      Seed planted by J Gibson — 17 August 2006 @ 16:45

    2. JG, excellent point on turnout varying with competitiveness of districts, though I have no idea the extent to which that might affect the translation of the latent party support (as expressed in polls) into actual votes for a party.

      On whether voters vote for party or candidate, of course party remains the buggest predictor of vote. The point I was making is simply the (not very controversial) claim that candidate quality matters. Thus many voters who might generically like one party (and tell pollsters thus) will nonetheless vote for a candidate of the other (for his or her record of constituency service, or personal qualities, or whatever).

      As for the bullet points, they were not meant to be in order of importance. I have edited the post to indicate that.

      Seed planted by MSS — 17 August 2006 @ 17:34

    3. 22 seats?

      The latest issue of PS includes two different political science studies, using different methodologies, which conclude that the Democrats will pick up 22 seats in the House.

      …Back in mid-August when the generic polling lead that the Democrats held was a mere 14.65 percentage points, a twenty-two-seat pickup was at the low end of my very different estimation methodology…

      Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 19 October 2006 @ 09:22

    4. Candidate quality isn’t everything

      …as Stuart Rothenberg notes, this election is shaping up to be one of those rare cases in which candidate quality may not matter all that much.

      Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 31 October 2006 @ 14:03

    5. US House and Senate: Rothenberg’s updates

      If Rothenberg’s district-by-district analysis turns out to be correct, was my aggregate method of estimation prescient or lucky?

      Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 03 November 2006 @ 10:54

    6. The US Congress result

      No further analysis till the aggregate vote totals are in. The USA is the only (allegedly) advanced democracy in which aggregate national party vote totals are not immediately available. Given that I am one of those few (the only?) psephologists who actually use aggregate national party vote totals to understand US elections, I can’t do any analysis yet. I won’t be able to say for a while whether the House result was closer to my projection based on low responsiveness (225) than to a projection based on the longer-range relationship of votes and seats (245) because of a vote swing lower than could have been expected for such an unpopular president, or if the seat swing was low for the aggregate vote swing that resulted.

      Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 09 November 2006 @ 21:07

    RSS feed for comments on this post.

    TrackBacks

    To graft a scion to this planting, please use the following URL:
    http://fruitsandvotes.com/blog/wp-trackback.php?p=896
    (Non-MT bloggers click here to send pings.)

    Grafted scions that are not compatible with this planting's stock will die or be pruned out by the Orchardist.

    About the comment form

    Please note that the name you enter below and the first several words of your comment will appear on the right sidebar of the blog's front page, under "Propagation." New propagators might want to look at the comment policy.

    Please do not enter long URLs into the seedbed. Either mark them up using html hyperlinks or convert them to a "tiny URL." Thank you!

    Seedbed

    The soil is ready for planting:

    `

    FRUIT FEEDS
    PROPAGATION
    Recent comments.

  • Is MMP in Ireland’s future? (8)
    • Tom Round: I’m not unfamiliar with the attraction of MMP. I felt it myself when I first started studying electoral systems. It retains...
    • Wilf Day: Ireland’s Constitutional Convention is a very interesting model of an electoral reform process. It includes 66 randomly selected...
    • MSS: Yes, electoral-syste m change would require a constitutional amendment, which is why it is a topic of the Constitutional Convention. The...
    • Alan: I expect the sixth and last senate place to be decided by very small margins in a number of states. Voting below the line will have more than...
    • Tom Round: Sorry, I should clarify: A legal change to an explicit party list system would indeed require a referendum to amend the Constituti...
  • Do UK elections now allow fusion candidacies? (13)
    • Derek: I’d like to see the idea of equal preferences in a country like UK.
    • Tom Round: Chris @9: “but in not having an UKIP opponent to siphon votes from the right.” Good point. However, given voluntary voting...
    • MSS: UKIP did admit during the recent local election campaign that it did not fully vet its candidates, due to (it was claimed) resource...
    • Chris: UKIP’s candidates for Parliament and MEP do indeed seem to need National Executive Committee Approval before being placed on the...
    • Chris: I think the key thing in being a Conservative-UK IP candidate might not be in having both of their emblems, but in not having an UKIP...
    • MSS: Here is the text (see Jaffr’s link): After paragraph (2A) insert— “(2AA)If a candidate who is the subject of an authorisation by...
    • MSS: Let me call attention here to Jaffr. at comment #1, who notes the amendment to the ballot law was passed earlier in 2013. (This comment was...
  • Distortions of the US House: It’s not how the districts are drawn, but that there are (single-seat) districts (30)
    • Ed: This is another article where the writer attempted to draw non-partisan districts, using a set of criteria an independent commission could...
  • Does STV have anything to do with absence of “free votes” in Ireland? (16)
    • MSS: I was sort of hoping this thread would be about free votes and STV’s possible role in them, but whatever… Uruguay has primary...
  • CROSS-POLLINATION

    FRUITS

    morn_blms_corralito.jpg

    The Fruit Blog (Fruit & fruit breeding)
    Daley's Fruit Tree Blog
    Orchards Forever
    The Orchard Keeper
    The Ethicurean
    The Jew and the Carrot
    Small farms ("real people & real food")
    Life begins at 30 (Farmers markets, etc.)
    Banana
    Festival of Trees
    Rare Fruit News Online
    Cloudforest Cafe


    VOTES

    bulgaria_protest copy

    Comparative democracy

    Psephos (Adam Carr's data archive)
    Electoral Panorama
    World Elections
    African Elections Database
    M. Herrera's Electoral Calendar
    Electoral Geography (Data archive)
    Michael Gallagher's data archive
    Election Finance (Blog, data archive)
    IFES
    Election Law (Rick Hasen)
    VoteLaw (Edward Still)
    Ballot Access News

    Electoral and Political Reform

    The FairVote Blog (US)
    Make my vote count (UK)
    Wilf Day (Canada)
    democraticSPACE (Canada)
    Citizens Assembly Blog (dormant)


    POLITOLOGY

    Blogs of political analysis

    PoliBlog
    Arms and Influence (dormant)
    Outside the Beltway
    Political Science Weblog (abstracts)
    Ideological Cartography (Adam Bonica)
    Frontloading HQ (Josh Putnam)
    FiveThirtyEight
    Vote View (Keith Poole)
    The Monkey Cage
    A Plain Blog About Politics (Jonathan Bernstein)
    Political Arithmetik (dormant)
    Polls & Votes
    Pollster.com
    Polysigh
    Reflective Pundit
    Rustbelt Intellectual
    Simon Jackman
    The semi-presidential one
    Josep Colomer
    Chapel Hill Treehouse (dormant)
    Political Behavior (dormant)
    Dart-Throwing Chimp
    Countries at the Crossroads (Freedom House blog)
    Jacob T. Levy

    REGIONAL ANALYSIS

    Canada

    The Mace
    ThreeHundredEight
    Crawl Across the Ocean
    Idealistic Pragmatist

    Europe

    Centre for European Politics
    Dr Sean's Diary
    A Fistful of Euros
    Political Reform (Ireland)
    UK Polling Report
    British Politics & Policy (LSE)

    Latin America

    Bloggings by boz
    Two Weeks Notice

    S.W. Asia & E. Mediterranean & N. Africa

    Informed Comment Global Affairs
    Lisa Goldman
    Michael J. Totten
    Yaacov Lozowick
    Marc Lynch (@FP)
    Ahwa Talk

    Africa

    La Constitution en Afrique

    E. Asia

    Frozen Garlic (Taiwan elections)

    New Zealand

    Kiwiblog
    No Right Turn

    OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCE BLOGS

    Crooked Timber
    Statistical Modeling
    Social Science Statistics
    Cold Spring Shops
    Marginal Revolution
    Brad DeLong
    Greg Mankiw

    SUN & MOON

    CURRENT MOON

    NEWS

    ABC

    BBC

    CBC

    Democracy Now!

    Deutsche Welle

    El Tiempo

    Guardian

    Haaretz

    Hindustan Times

    The Independent

    Irish Times

    NZ Stuff

    RFE/RL

    ORGANIZATIONS

    About/disclaimer

    California Rare Fruit Growers

    Center for Voting and Democracy

    Californians for Electoral Reform

    Society for American Baseball Research

    Link TV

    SCION EXCHANGE

    HARVESTS
    ORCHARD SERVICES

    Powered by WordPress