Flipping Maine: Paul LePage, Third Parties, and Democratic Weakness in New England

One of the more painful results from last fall was the election of Paul LePage in Maine. It reminded me of an election in my home state two years earlier - the 2008 Vermont Gubernatorial election. State Sen. Libby Mitchell's campaign was undoubtedly poor, leaving room for an independent challenger to make inroads. While Eliot Cutler's support was decided moderate, as a third-party observer, it seemed pretty clear that voters were far more interested in liberal-moderate governance rather than a conservative executive, yet the vote-splitting allowed Governor Paul LePage to claim a plurality with only 38% of the vote. And in electing Gov. LePage, Maine wasn't receiving a run of the mill New England Republican - LePage came out of nowhere to win the Republican primary on the back of a surprisingly strong tea party showing, and even during the campaign, Gov. LePage's crass, non-apologetic, bullying style was on regular display.

If people weren't familiar with LePage last fall, they certainly are now - he has kept his rhetoric outrageous, followed in the footsteps of Walker & Co., and even spearheaded his attack on mural's at the Maine Department of Labor. Not only has he been ineffectual, but he's been a caricature of a governor.

So how, in a New England state like Maine, does a guy like LePage get elected? After sifting through the data, I've come to my conclusion - the Democratic brand in Maine is terribly weak. In a generic, state election, the LDI suggests that Maine Democrats only possess a 52-48 edge over Republicans.



I know what people are thinking - that margin just doesn't seem right. Yet if you dig back into history, while Maine has voted Democratic since 1992, it hasn't been my any astounding margin - Al Gore edged George Bush by 5% in 2000. Simply put, perceptions of Maine as being political similar to New England really ought to be aimed at similarities with New Hampshire, where there is still a strong Republican brand.

The other issue at play can also be found in the 2000 results - Had Ralph Nader not been in the race, Gore's margin perhaps could have doubled, as he was able to secure just shy of 6% of the vote. Maine's strong third party tradition may not be seen when you look at distribution of legislative seats, but it is unmistakable.

The Maine Green Independent party is the longest standing Green party in the United States, dating back to the early 80's, and they have found considerable success in Portland, where they have held a number of city council seats, and where the party's highest ranking elected official in the county, Rep. John Eder, served from 2002 until 2006.

This independent presence has been especially felt in gubernatorial elections. In 2010, independent candidates combined for over 40% of the vote - in 2006, over 30%. In fact, since 1982, only one gubernatorial candidate has received a majority of the vote, and that candidate was Independent governor Angus King. The result is a Democratic party that has routinely lacked strong performances at the top of the ticket, and instead depended on local candidates alone.



In neither the house, nor the Senate does the Republican party hold strong majorities, and with all seats up for election every two years, both chambers are free for the taking. Maine does not redistrict until 2013, so these numbers are especially relevant, as these are the exact seats they'll be contesting (and when I say exact, I mean it - the wonderful folks at the Maine SoS office have very detailed election results, allowing for me to use district-by-district data for every race). In both chambers, Democrats can swing majorities simply by winning back the seats that lean their direction - that said, because of Maine's term limits, holding currently held seats isn't as easy of a task as it might be in other states we have looked at, where Democrats will be looking to wrestle back control in 2012. Still, LePage has not given his party any help since taking office, and in 2012, I would bet on Republican control disappearing in a big way.

Lastly, I would draw attention to this chart below, which is the start of the real analysis I am excited to do with this project. What I've done above is plot out the compare the distribution of scores in the Democratic half of each state's Index.



One of the things I'm interested in watching is how well parties function based on how their legislators are distributed. I think it is a fair assumption that given the views of their state, the Maine Democratic Party is underperforming its colleagues in states like Ohio, and to a lesser degree, Wisconsin. That being said, they are obviously a lot stronger than a party in more serious trouble, like Nebraska. While Democratic parties in all states are going to compete in a wide range of districts, I have a suspicion that the straighter the above line is, the better a party would perform. It is not that a party can't represent a wide range of views - we have done this very successfully in Congress. But when there is a big separation between these constituencies, it becomes a lot easier for groups to question whether their views are being best served in Congress.

Ohio and Wisconsin both have fairly straight lines - to my knowledge, there is little in the way of third party politics in either state. In Maine however, there is a pretty steep drop-off from the Portland seats to the rest of the Dem-leaning territory. With this in mind, it seems pretty straightforward that Portland progressives might feel that their views are better represented by someone else, like the Green Independents, rather than a Democratic party that is going to have to push a different message for many of the races they campaign in. While I haven't officially published the Vermont data yet, in my past experience I saw a similar situation, and it was in those separated seats that the Progressive Party built its legislative caucus, centered in Burlington.

Kasich Sinks Even Lower - Will the Legislature Follow?

Back on Monday, I released the Ohio District Index, and in the article, I tried to take some guesses at what kind of blowback Republicans were looking at in response to the right-wing policy agenda they've been pushing this year. While no one is out there polling state legislative districts, given the "wave" nature of the 2010 elections, I think we can learn a lot about voter's preferences from their souring opinion on Governor John Kasich. People who bought into the Republican promises last fall have been changing their minds fast, and my guess is that the result will be serious changes in legislative preferences.

So when I published my article Monday, I looked at results from a mid-March PPP poll, where they found a 17 point swing from Gov. Kasich to former Governor Ted Strickland, if the election were held again today. While its a rather crude measurement, I took the most Democratic seat a Republican held (R+16), and said that if you tack on 17 points for Democrats, and have them win all the seats more Democratic than that, you would pretty much wipe away Republican house gains from 2010.

Well, PPP just brought new results back from the field, and they suggest that the public has turned on Gov. Kasich even more. Unlike in Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker has fired up his base with his actions, Kasich is failing to inspire anything among his party faithful, and the result is a staggering 33-56 approval rating.

What is even more interesting to me however, is that the Strickland-Kasich re-do margin has grown by another 8%. If you tacked that on to the index, then competitive seats would be ones that had a slight Republican advantage. If this is borne out in the 2012 elections, we may see that there has been a real whiplash within the electorate - in 2010, Democrats in friendly districts had to really fight to hold their seats, where as in 2012, Republicans in friendly territory will similarly be on the defensive.

Unfortunately, the scholarship on what inputs effect state legislative elections is virtually non-existant. Part of this project is about trying to improve our knowledge about how voters respond in state legislative elections, and so by getting these numbers together now, in a time that seems poised for serious political change, hopefully we will have plenty of data sets to work off of come election day. While new districts will be drawn for Ohio, by getting all the background data in place now, we'll be in a position to easily convert our data into the new boundaries, so that we can really observe the changes that occur in 2012 - what districts have moved dramatically, what indicators are driving electoral preference shifts, etc.

As I mentioned on Twitter, I had my wisdom teeth yanked a few days back and needless to say, the headaches have made staring at Excel a less than desired way of spending my time. However, I'm making headway on districting Maine, where we are going to have perfect district-by-district data to share, which I know will make a lot of people happy, and we have some other states coming up the pipeline where we'll be able to use as detailed data as possible.

The Kasich Wave and the Ohio Six

The Ohio Legislature has done their best trying to draw national attention this year, but they've remained the ugly step-sister to Wisconsin on virtually issue.  While the lack of coverage has kept Governor John Kasich out of the national spotlight, it certainly has not helped his prospects in Ohio, where Public Policy Polling found in mid-March that he would lose a hypothetical rematch with Governor Ted Strickland 55-40 - a full 17 point swing in electoral margin.  

Now, Kasich's leadership from the top has been problematic. In the midst of all the scrutiny over the new crop of Republican governors in the Midwest, Kasich still got himself enough camera time to rub people the wrong way.  But ultimately, what makes the case in Ohio interesting is that people haven't soured on Kasich because of a scandal (though his effort to make his cabinet as white and male as possible was noble nonetheless); his fortunes have changed because voters appear to fundamentally disagree with the policies he has proposed - policies like Senate Bill 5 that have been given the green light from the Ohio legislature.

So if voters are chomping at the bit for an opportunity to swap out Kasich, what do they think about his team on the floor of the legislature that has brought them the change they've rejected?  

The area to keep our eyes on is the Ohio House of Representatives.  Forced to face the voters every two years, this current class rode into office on the back of the 2010 Republican wave, and is now going to be forced to defend an activist session where they limited collective bargaining and stood by an increasingly unpopular Republican governor.  That Republican swept up 13 Democratic seats and flipped control of the chamber, and so Republicans ought to be concerned about finding themselves back in the minority after 2012.



It doesn't take more than a quick glance at the numbers to see there are a few red lines up a little too high on the page.  To give a specific example, Rep. Todd McKenney in District 43 (D+5) probably isn't going to be a legislator for long, unless he is ready for a hard fight - he managed a 55-45 win over Rep. Steve Dyer in 2010, while outspending him by $100,000 - twice of what Rep. Dyer spent.  Well-funded challengers should be strong enough to win back almost all of the Democratic seats, which would almost completely erase the Republicans 2010 gains.  Additionally, beyond winning back those seats, there is a decent chunk of Republican seats up for grabs that barely lean Republican which Democrats could attempt to pick off.

The Ohio Senate is where the real action is.  What will be interesting in seeing how the voters will treat the Ohio Six - the state senators who broke with their party but were one vote short of preventing Senate Bill 5's passage.  In 2012, only Senators in even numbered districts will be up for re-election, but that still gives us a chance to evaluate some senators electoral prospects.  I've highlighted the six Republicans who broke with their caucus in light gray.  



The Republicans standing up against S.B. 5 run the ideological gamut.  For Sen. Tom Patton (SD-24, D+15), regardless of whatever his individual leanings on the bill were, this vote was a matter of self-preservation.  At D+15, we're talking about a district that is 60-40 Democratic territory, and so any vote that would fan the Democratic flames has to be taken cautiously.  If the AFL-CIO's press conference the other day is an indication that they might be willing to put some muscle and money behind Republicans who have voted against some of these damaging bills, this could be the kind of decision that buys him another four year term.
Not every Republican is in the same position however.  For Sen. Bill Seitz (SD-8, R+14), one of the senators who was pulled from his committee assignment to break committee deadlocks stalling the bill, the issue was a matter of good public policy - and he laid out the effects in no uncertain terms.

"It's a 'heads I win, tails you lose' proposition,'' Seitz told the Cincinnati Enquirer. "We don't have to get down into the weeds of the finer points of the law. Average Americans and Ohioans understand that 'heads I win, tails you lose' is not a very fair method of dispute resolution."

Votes are not without consequences though, and it will be really interesting to see what happens in the 8th Senate District - the ground is fertile enough for a primary challenge from the right, so the issue will have to be whether or not willing to dismantle unions has moved into being an issue at the core of the conservative movement.

The other senators voting against the bill fall between the two, ranging from 56D - 44R territory to 48.5D - 51.5R; these are seats that would be contentious regardless of the election year or issues, and a "Yes" vote in any of these races could've made them a nice target for outside groups.  Despite the electoral implications however, I think there is a strong case to be made for some of these Republicans simply feeling as though the movement was seriously overstepping their boundaries and uprooting a fundamentally important process.

Additionally, I've been receiving lots of feedback and questions about interpreting the numbers.  As I've said before, a district's index score is a measurement of how much greater the average R/D margin is compared to the state as a whole. Thus, the numbers aren't on the same measurement scale as the Cook Partisan Voting Index, with which most people are familiar.  However, if understanding them in the context of Cook is helpful, I'm happy to help.

When all is said and done, the goal is to have an additional index that legislative seats from ALL states can be a part of, comparing their scores to the national average - but I won't have those numbers until the individual indexes for each state are accomplished.  While the LDI includes additional factors on top of the two elections Cook PVI evaluates, you can make a quick approximation of the PVI of a district by adding the average margin to the score of a district, and then dividing by two.  As an example, take the most liberal assembly district in Ohio - the LDI says it is District 12 at D+46.  If we add the state's average margin (D+4) to that total, and divide by two, we end up with an approximate PVI of D+25.  Keep in mind that they won't correspond directly with PVI data - for example, areas where Democratic strength has been boosted by a surge in minority population may be undervalued because the 2008 election is valued lower - the LDI ranks districts that have seen consistently strong Democratic performance at every level higher than areas that went through the roof for Obama in 2008.

There are a few states in the pipeline all ready, thanks to your suggestions, but I'm always open to bumping places up that people are particularly interested.  Want to see what is really going on up in Minnesota with the legislature's recent fascination on stifling the rights and dignity of same-sex couples?  Or what about the folks intent on turning gay into a four-letter word in Tennessee?  Let me know in the comments what you are looking forward to.

Looking at the Unicameral

Nebraska was one of my original test states - I figured it would be a nice place to start, given that I knew virtually nothing about how the Unicameral (Nebraska's unique single-chambered legislature) functions, politically.  An additional complicating factor is the fact that Nebraskan Senators are technically non-partisan, meaning that the party identifications I have assigned don't come from the ballots themselves but rather from as much information as I could gather.  If I've got someone wrong, please let me know so I can get on top of it.

To try and better understand what the rankings mean relative to each other, I am not prominently featuring the average result in the state.  Unlike Wisconsin, where a typical race featured a Democratic margin of 51.5 to 48.5, there is no surprises where Nebraska falls on the spectrum, with Republicans holding a 28% margin on average.  Keep in mind, that mean that the 6th most liberal district in the state, District 5, is an even 50-50.

I think these two reference points are really helpful in understanding the composition of the legislature.  Sometimes, the natural lean of a state gives one party a very distinct, built in advantage - there's no question that if Republicans start out with that kind of advantage, it is going to be very difficult for Democrats to grab the reigns.



This is where the index comes in handy.  By demonstrating where seats rank in the comparison to the state average, we can evaluate which seats Democrats need to make gains in if they are going to be successful.  At that point, the strategic question becomes how to do so.

For Nebraska Democrats, it is a difficult proposition.  For Districts 18, 23, 25, 27, and 29, strong Democratic campaigns would be able to claim the seats, but beyond there, it seems to me like one would have to field fairly conservative Democrats to gain any other ground.  The result is that even if Nebraskan Democrats were able to build a winning coalition, it would be incredibly divided between legitimate progressive interests and a large body of very conservative Democrats, who may be more keen on governing with Republican colleagues.

It will be interesting to see how Nebraska stacks up with the rest of the conservative states - Republicans perform very strongly here thanks to two nearly 50 point victories for incumbent governor Dave Heineman, but they don't have an iron grip - no one here would be quick to forget about Sen. Ben Nelson, Obama captured the 2nd Congressional District, and Scott Kleeb ran some spirited campaigns in the past few cycles.  But as a brand, the Democratic Party is hurting in Nebraska, and has no where to go but up.

In other housekeeping news, the blog has now been updated with some new features - an extended explanation of the methodology behind the index, and there is now a central page where you can easily grab the data yourself via Google Documents.

A Second Look: Revising the Model and Republishing Wisconsin

So - like any ambitious project, the launch hasn't gone off without a few hiccups. My good friends over at DailyKos Elections raised a handful of questions about my Wisconsin Assembly data I posted - important ones that needed answers. So with all that said, I want to offer up some answers to those concerns, and revise the Wisconsin numbers I published earlier this week.

In my first Assembly post, I had identified a Wisconsin (AD-31) seat at Democratic when it really was Republican. Part of the reason I try to get as much public input as possible on this project is because when it comes to state legislatures, it is not always easy to get the most reliable data on the spot. I've crosschecked those lists again, but I am always going to rely on readers to let me know if I've got something wrong - the help is invaluable.

A few other folks started raising concerns about data that didn't line up with their on-the-ground knowledge of Wisconsin. Immediately, I found there were two real causes behind this, both very different in nature.

The first was a simple Excel problem - the dynamic spreadsheet I use to put all my data in was supposed to auto-update in areas, but failed to do so - that quick fix made up for some of the misleading data we were seeing.

The second problem, and the larger one, was one structural with my model. The level of data I use largely depends on how many people the legislators represent - and in most cases, county level data is accurate, and much more efficient than having to go ward by ward for every single seat. My prior exception was only for major American cities, just because they have such a high concentration of districts that if I did not, you would wind up with a chunk of districts all with identical scores - not a very accurate reflection of reality.

During my testing, I look at a wide ideological range of districts to make sure my process was accurate. One thing I failed to account for, however, is the serious urban-minority/suburban-white divide that exists. I use state legislative elections as a local check in the system to account for community differences in party preference - but that simply isn't a strong enough check when the communities have so little in common - economically, ethnically, and politically - with each other. As a result, I've decided that I'm now going go ward-by-ward when possible for all counties over 200,000 residents.

The result is a picture that I think my Wisconsin readers will find as a much more accurate assessment of the two chambers, and will prove a better model for future states. I want to thank everyone who raised concerns and sent questions my way for making it this much better.

Let's talk about the Senate first. In my first projections, I urged caution over getting too optimistic about the recount this summer - other than Sen. Dan Kapanke (SD-32), the rest of the recalled Senators (Ballotpedia has an easy to read list you can use to match names to districts) represent areas that appeared fairly reliably conservative - a major ground change would be required for the Democrats to get the three seats they need in order to flip control of the chamber.



Sen. Kapanke's district (D+6) has moved even further into Democratic territory, and is now the 9th most liberal seat in the Wisconsin Senate. As I'm sure the Senator would attest to, the frustrating thing about recalls is that they really don't offer a graceful political exit - you can't make up an excuse to not run in a race to fill out a term that you previously signed up to serve. And now, a year removed from being a serious challenger for Congress against Rep. Ron Kind, Sen. Kapanke is going to lose his state senate seat - not the desired trajectory for a political career.

However, the effort it will take to claim the two other necessary seats is remains high. As discussed last time, if you apply a universal seven percent swing on the best Democratic result from the fall, Dems would be on track to win a R+4 seat - but my fixes to the index haven't brought the other seats any closer. Commenters have noted that union membership is very uneven across these contested districts - and so the bar to beating Republican support may be lower.

Questions have also been raised about turnout, but my guess is that with all that is at stake, there is going to be some pretty serious mobilization - on both sides - and assuming Democrats are going to have a remarkable turnout advantage seems to be an inappropriate strategy. But between the personal troubles of Randy Hopper (SD-18... before his wife kicked him out and sent him to live in Madison after learning of an affair with an aide) and the varying union membership, flipping control of the Senate appears to be a very attainable objective.

On the house side (name for districts here, you can see the real changes. To start, the most heavily Democratic districts are twice as Democratic as before - they are the heavy minority districts that the previous model was missing out on. It also shows the amount of Democratic votes that are sunk into these seats. Only 42 of the 99 seats are more Democratic than the state on average. The current districts are not an overt gerrymander - they date back to a 1992 compromise plan between then-Governor Tommy Thompson and the Democratic Legislature. In 2002, the districts were merely altered by the courts to balance the population shifts. The result is a fairly high amount of Democratic vote sinks that seem destined to only grow Democrats can grab control of some part of the redistricting process this summer.



Also, I have got some news going forward - over the next few days I will be releasing data for Nebraska and Ohio, where another one of Governor Scott Walker's friends has been running into popularity problems lately, jeopardizing his legislative majorities. I'm also working on embedding spreadsheets into the blog via Google Docs so that people can quickly input the rankings for their own calculations. For updates on the project's progress, and any random questions you want to throw at me, follow my Twitter account, TheLDI.

Wisconsin, Part 2: The General Assembly

EDIT 5/19/2011: This data has been revised, for more information read this article on the changes made to the Wisconsin index.

As promised, here is the results for the Wisconsin General Assembly. I'm not going to do much in the way of commentary on this one - though it is worth noting that the 94th - where a Democrat just recently won a special election, was considered a relatively liberal district by my model to begin with, despite its longtime Republican hold.

In the coming days, I'll be updating the site so that you can navigate state-by-state, and get just the data you are looking for. I'm also considered setting up a Google Doc so that readers can get this information for their own research.

Would love to know your thoughts in the comments.

-Matt

A look at the recall: The Wisconsin District Index

EDIT 5/19/2011: This data has been revised, for more information read this article on the changes made to the Wisconsin index.

First things first, the data:

Now, time for some explanation:

If there is one thing that Wisconsin's state legislative standoff has taught us, it is that state legislative politics don't receive nearly as much attention as they deserve.  In a very brief span of time, Wisconsin Republicans came close to completely wiping out important rights for a large expanse of Wisconsinites.  Since the news broke, I think it's fair to say that people have seemed a lot more interested in what is happening in state capitols - these are not trivial battlegrounds.

A few week back, I had the pleasure of listening to Rachel Maddow speak, and one of the things Ms. Maddow touched on was that it seems as though there is really a heightened interest in these issues that we used to consider "local" politics.  Not only did the significance of these stories merit their coverage, but frankly, there appears to be a growing audience for these types of political issues.

For the past two years now, I've been trying to build something that would give a framework to these conversations about state legislative politics.  While I'm a still in the midst of working on the data, there are a few pockets that are all ready complete, and given the interest in what's happening in Wisconsin, I wanted to share them with you guys as soon as possible.

It is called the Legislative District Index.  This ranking system functions as a more nuanced version of the Cook PVI, trying to account for differences between state and national parties, and in the hopes that I can create a common language to discuss state legislative seats.

The ranking is a weighted average of three presidential elections, two gubernatorial races, and then the most recent state legislative race, which I've found allows my system to capture some of the unique political pockets within states to a better degree than just simple Presidential numbers.  Furthermore, in using gubernatorial results to balance for state with strong state parties but weak national parties, when all is finished, the index should allow for cross-state comparison, but that is a few months away for now.  Instead, what I'll be up to, is continuing to churn out individual state indexes.  With redistricting underway, that means for some states, configuring their makeup for the current session, as well as what they're going to look like for the next decade.  It's a lot of number crunching, but I think it's going to be really valuable anytime you find yourself up late watching election turns for random state special elections.

So, now that I baited you with the numbers, lets go back to Wisconsin.

I've taken the same graph from before, and highlighted the Republican Senators who are facing recall attempts this summer.  I think from this data, there are a few things really worth looking at.

1) Dan Kapanke is going to lose.  Simply put, with the kind of swing that is being seen in Wisconsin, I just have a hard time imagining that this seat doesn't flip. For the state of Wisconsin, my model finds that Democrats have a 4 point advantage over Republicans (i.e., in a typical statewide election with generic candidates, the Democrat would win 52-48).  Of the 33 seats in the Wisconsin Senate, Mr. Kapanke's is the one that mirrors the politics of the state as a whole the most.

2) After Mr. Kapanke, it is REALLY unclear what will happen.  The huge bulk of Republican seats that could flip to Democrats aren't available for recall this year, as most of them were seats that the 2010 Republican wave carried.  We have no real measurement of the kind of ground shift that is happening in Wisconsin, as I'd hardly consider a state supreme court race related to this.  The closest thing we have is polling on re-doing the 2010 Governor's race.  At the end of February, PPP released a poll that found a 7% swing from Governor Scott Walker to his fall opponent Tom Barrett if the election was held again.

If 7% is the size of the anti-Walker swing, I'm not sure the special election is going to look good for Democrats. In 2010, the most conservative seat Democrats won had a WI-DI score of D+2.  A seven-point swing from there would only allow for Mr. Kapanke's seat to fall.  If you add those seven points onto the most conservative seat Democrats won in 2008, then you get into territory where Democrats would start winning seats, but that would be a huge political shift - outperforming President Obama's numbers in a special election seems like a really tall hill to climb.  There are special cases, like Sen. Randy Hopper, who appears to live full time in Madison, where addition factors might lead to a legislators demise, but without those personal factors, it's going to take a real uphill battle.

That being said, PPP found a much larger shift in election results when you looked at union households - I have no data on union membership in the Senate seats, but if there are union heavy pockets among the areas Democrats are targeting, Republicans might be in a little more trouble.

All this together, the recall process definitely seems like the right one, and I'd venture to guess that when Gov. Walker is the one on the ballot, flipping the Governor's office would certainly be within reach.  But pulling together the votes to overturn these state senate seats is an uphill battle - if successful, I don't think Democrats are going to have to worry too much about Wisconsin for a long while.