Phantom Menace
Like much of the nation, New Hampshire is in a frenzy over illegal immigration. In 2005, a police chief from New Ipswich, a sleepy small town near the Massachusetts border, arrested an illegal immigrant, who had pulled over on the side of the road, on the grounds that he was trespassing in New Hampshire. "We're applying a state law to illegal aliens, instead of federal law, because the federal government refuses to enforce its own laws. Someone needed to bring it, so I brought it," the chief told the Concord Monitor. READ MORE >>
Phantom Menace
Obama's White Problem
Delaware, Jon Chait's favorite state, tells an interesting, and disturbing, story about the battle for the nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. While Obama won the state, he did so because of overwhelming support from black voters, who made up 27 percent of the primary electorate and went for Obama by a stupendous 89 to 11 percent. That's the kind of margin one would expect if Obama were running against George W. Bush, not Hillary Clinton. If you look at the reason, it seems to have been a backlash vote. READ MORE >>
Georgia On My Mind
The Georgia results seem to show two things: 1) Almost all the John Edwards vote, which was primarily white, went to Barack Obama, 2) Obama slightly increased his already large margin among black voters over the last weeks. If you look at the Mason-Dixon poll from early January, Obama had 36 percent of the overall Georgia vote, Clinton 33 percent, and Edwards 14 percent, with 17 percent undecided. Blacks often say they are undecided, so it is probably a fair guess to say that more than half of these undecided voters were African Americans. READ MORE >>
Race Matters
It would have been fine, of course, for a political scientist or a journalist to make the observation that Hillary Clinton stood little chance in the South Carolina Democratic primary running against a black candidate. And it would have raised no eyebrows if he or she drew comparisons between Barack Obama's win and Jesse Jackson's 1988 victory. But Bill Clinton is a master politician who calibrates the exact effect of his words upon an audience. And as Clinton well knew, linking an opponent to Jackson, READ MORE >>
Are Edwards Voters Obama Voters?
Who will get John Edwards's votes? The exit polls give a split verdict. Those in Iowa and South Carolina show a slight tilt to Hillary Clinton. If you look at those voters among whom Edwards enjoyed disproportionate strength, it was among voters less likely to switch to Obama. In Iowa, it was among older (60-64 years old) and conservative voters. In South Carolina, it was among older (60 years and up), white male, moderate or somewhat conservative voters who wanted to keep troops in Iraq "as long as needed." READ MORE >>
Correspondence: John Judis Responds to Andrew Kohut
Here is how I actually characterize Andrew Kohut’s argument. I quote from my article: READ MORE >>
Poll Potheads
What We Can Learn From The Republican Exit Polls
Arizona Sen. John McCain defeated former Gov. Mitt Romney to win the New Hampshire Republican primary. And there is a delicious irony in this result. If you look at their political history before the presidential race began last year, Romney is the more moderate of the candidate, particularly on social and economic issues. His main foreign policy advisor Mitchell Reiss is also a former aide to Colin Powell and probably more critical of the conduct of the Iraq war than McCain ever was. READ MORE >>
What We Can Learn From The Democratic Exit Polls
I've looked at the current Democratic exit polls, which, incidentally, are adjusted later to fit the final results, so what I have to say here must taken as subject to revision. READ MORE >>
