The Monday Muse; Is Obama Unelectable?

April 28th, 2008

Yes He Can’t?

There have been thousands of words spent by pundits and columnists over the last week about whether or not Barack Obama could actually win a general election if he can’t win big states, finish off Clinton, or prevent skeletons from coming out of his closet. There have been those wondering whether he’s actually closer to an Adlai Stevenson than a Jack Kennedy. The Muse will attempt to take an in depth look into what the chances the Illinois senator has of winning the election.

According to current polls, weighted by pollster accuracy, if the election were held today, Barack Obama would lose a narrow general election race by a tad over 1%, getting 49.4% of the vote against John McCain, while realclearpolitics.com’s polling average has Obama beating McCain by 1.5%. Adjusting for margin of error, this tells you that right now the number of people who prefer Obama and McCain are divided almost exactly evenly. Among Hillary Clinton, you see a slightly bigger split when weighting polls, as she leads by 3% in the realclearpolitics average, while fivethirtyeight.com’s projection has her losing to McCain by 2.2%. Again, you can roughly estimate that her support and McCain’s support are roughly even as of now in a general election situation. Given two Democratic candidates with 50/50 splits with their Republican opponents, what needs to be done is see who can win based on states they do well with and demographic groups. There are two ways of doing this: If the election was held today, and what a candidate’s floor and ceiling is.

 If The Election Was Held Today

If Barack Obama and John McCain were on a ballot today, his chance of success would boil down to winning Pennsylvania (45% chance of winning), Ohio (40% chance of winning), North Carolina (24% chance of winning) or Virginia (23% chance of winning). He’d also need to hold on to his leads in New Mexico, New Jersey, Nevada, and Colorado, which he only has a 10% chance of doing, so in all likelihood he’d have to win at least two of the red-leaning swing states. Overall, he’d have about a 45% chance of winning the election if it were held today, according to fivethirtyeight.com simulations. This math, however, is influenced by situations that wouldn’t happen, but the machine says would happen, such as hail-mary shots of Obama winning Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Texas, and Alaska. As such, Obama’s winning percentage is a tad exaggerated by the simulator and is probably a bit closer to 40%.

Hillary Clinton has a very similar chance of beating McCain, but a drastically different route. Clinton’s whole chance of beating McCain goes through the Democrats’ “triple bank-shot strategy” that Gore and Kerry attempted to employ. Out of Florida (47%), Pennsylvania (68%), Ohio (67%), and Michigan (33%), Clinton needs to win three of the states. Florida must be one of those three states she wins, and if the other two aren’t Pennsylvania and Ohio (say they’re Pennsylvania and Michigan for instance) then she needs to win Missouri, New Mexico, or Florida. In all likelihood, for senator Clinton, it will require a quadruple bank shot of Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan to wear the brass ring. Fivethirtyeight.com puts her chances at winning the presidency over McCain right now at 40.2%, which is about what Obama’s is when you remove the Hail Mary probabilities. If the election were held today, Clinton and Obama would have virtually the exact same chance of beating senator McCain.

Long Term

There is, however, reason to believe that in the long term, Clinton would be the less electable candidate. For starters, all of Obama’s “hail-mary” states become swing states, all of Obama’s bluish swing states become safe states if he gets a post-convention bump. Due to the way their support is distributed in states, Clinton would not get nearly as much electoral college help from the same bump. Here’s a quick run-down on what certain battleground states become after a reasonable post-convention bump of 5-7 points.
The likelihood in an Obama-McCain match-up is listed before the comma, the Clinton-McCain match-up is listed after the comma
Alaska: Obama leaning, McCain safe
Arkansas: McCain safe, Clinton leaning
Colorado: Obama safe, McCain leaning
Florida: McCain leaning, Clinton leaning
Georgia: Tossup, McCain safe
Iowa: Obama safe, tossup
Indiana: Tossup, Heavily McCain leaning
Kansas: Heavily McCain leaning, McCain safe
Kentucky: McCain safe, tossup
Michigan: Obama safe, tossup
Missouri: tossup, Clinton leaning
Montana: Tossup, McCain safe
North Carolina: Tossup, McCain safe
North Dakota: Obama leaning, McCain safe
Nebraska: Obama leaning, McCain safe
New Hampshire: Obama Safe, tossup
New Mexico: Heavily Obama leaning, Clinton leaning
Nevada: Obama safe, Clinton leaning
Ohio: Obama leaning, Heavily Clinton leaning
Oregon: Obama safe, Clinton leaning
Pennsylvania: Obama leaning, Clinton safe
South Carolina: tossup, McCain safe
South Dakota: tossup, McCain safe
Texas: McCain leaning, Heavily McCain leaning
Utah: McCain leaning, McCain safe
Virginia: tossup, McCain safe
Washington State: Obama safe, heavily Clinton leaning
Wisconsin: Obama safe, Clinton leaning
West Virginia: McCain Safe, Clinton Safe

So of the 29 states in which the two candidates differ in electability, Obama does better in 22 of them. The other thing to take into account is that the Obama campaign’s superior fundraising and legitimacy would allow them to increase their polling numbers from where they are now a lot more than Clinton’s campaign, which has consistently shown that its polling numbers drop the longer a campaign lasts. Clinton could also get little to no polling bump because her nomination, if delivered by super-delegates and last minute rule changes, would appear to be illegitimate and undemocratic, and would likely hurt her severely among black voters, among whom she is polling worse than any Democrat since Adlai Stevenson (only getting 59% of black support right now, could get even worse if it looks like she stole the nomination). The bottom line is that both candidates can beat John McCain, but for Hillary Clinton it would be an uphill battle, and for Obama it wouldn’t be, so the questions of Obama’s electability are a bit dubious.

And that’s the Muse.