PLANK NOVEMBER 2, 2012
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According to the reigning narrative in Boston these days, the entire Obama campaign has been built on a miscalculation: Team Obama believed the way to win was to cast Mitt Romney as a soulless plutocrat; it spent hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours driving that point home. But the only thing all that spending and mau-mauing brought them was a caricature of Romney so fragile it promptly collapsed when the country finally got a look at who he really was. “[Romney] wiped out millions of dollars in attack ads portraying Mitt Romney as a rich guy from Bain Capital,” John McCain said of the debates, channeling the view from Romneyland.
There’s clearly something to this storyline, at least judging from October’s polls. As recently as late September, Americans' unfavorable views of Romney outweighed their favorable views of him by 4-5 percentage points. Today, more people view him favorably than unfavorably. If Obama loses on Tuesday, Democrats will be right to wonder if Chicago made the wrong call on the biggest strategic question it faced.
But ever since the Denver debate, where Republicans first conjured up this story, it has suffered from a potentially devastating flaw: Ohio. Even as Obama’s lead shriveled in other key states, like Florida and Virginia, the losses were smaller in Ohio, where his margin was larger to begin with. The RealClearPolitics polling average, the choice barometer of Republicans, shows Obama coughing up 5.2 percentage points in Virginia since his September peak and 4.4 points in Florida, but only 3.3 in Ohio. Ohio is the only one of the three where RCP shows Obama ahead as of this writing.
What explains this? It would seem to be that most exotic of political specimens, the working-class Ohio voter. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that the Obama strategy wasn’t designed to win states like Florida and Virginia, which would have produced an Electoral College wipe-out. It was designed to secure just enough votes to eke out a victory (perhaps with a small cushion). And to do that, the only swing state the campaign really needed to focus on was Ohio, which Obama carried by 4 points in 2008 (compared with the 7 points by which he trumped John McCain nationally).
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If you started with the premise that only Ohio really mattered, then factored in the auto bailout, one of Obama’s greatest successes, and private equity, one of Romney’s biggest liabilities, it wasn’t hard to see that limiting losses among Ohio’s working-class voters was Obama’s most promising path. (Only 24 percent of Ohioans have a college degree, versus 26 percent of Floridians and 34 percent of Virginians.) In particular, it would be his best bet for keeping that 4-point Ohio margin in positive territory even if his national vote-margin shrank by more than 4 points, as was highly likely. And so Team Obama bombarded the state with ads painting Mitt Romney as the sort of guy who would shutter your factory for kicks. The Obama folks did this early on in the campaign, and they didn't let up.
What the latest polling data suggest is that, even as Romney managed to shed his Monty Burns image in other parts of the country, it’s still dogging him across Ohio. In late September, when Obama’s leads were at their most commanding, a Quinnipiac poll put him up 9 points in Florida and 10 points in Ohio. When Quinnipiac released another poll this week, it showed Obama essentially tied in Florida (up 1), while riding a 5-point lead in Ohio. As it happens, working class voters seem to explain much of the difference between the two states. Among people with no college degree in Florida, Obama went from leading by 11 to down 2—a net 13-point loss. But in Ohio, the story couldn’t be more different. There, Obama had an 11-point lead among non-college grads in September; he has a nearly identical 10-point lead among the same group today.
The results are even starker among the white working class. In Florida, Obama plummeted from an 8-point deficit to a 27-point deficit among whites with no college degree. In Ohio, by contrast, he held almost perfectly steady: a 3-point deficit in September versus a 2-point deficit this week. (Obama carried Ohio voters without a college degree by a 52-46 margin in 2008, and lost whites without a college degree 44-54.) Though it's only one poll*, and the data shouldn't be interpreted too literally, the Obama strategy seems to have worked as intended.
If, as the polling averages anticipate, Obama carries Ohio on Tuesday (and, in effect, the election), it will be Romney who made a colossal miscalculation in the end, not Obama. Team Romney believed most voters would eventually dismiss the plutocrat portrayal of their candidate, and so they didn’t spend much time refuting it. And they were right—most voters did dismiss that portrayal. What the Romney folks missed was that Obama didn’t need to sell the portrayal to most voters. He just needed to sell it to several hundred-thousand Ohioans. And he appears to have succeeded.
*Note: I use Quinnipiac here not because I have any special affection for that outfit. But because it's pretty much the only one that polls Ohio regularly and releases crosstabs detailed enough to consider the kind of question I’m considering here. A lot of Republicans complain that Quinnipiac skews Democratic, which is true. But that shouldn’t matter since I’m only looking at the change from one poll to the next, not using the numbers to evaluate the state of the race in some absolute sense. The bigger problem is that the sub-samples of voters aren't super large--probably in the neighborhood of 500 for people without a college degree, less than that for whites without a college degree. But they should be large enough to reflect broad shifts even if we should be careful about reading too much into specific numbers.
23 comments
Spot on. The only thing you miss is that Virginia's white working class--steel workers at Newport News Shipbuilding, factory workers at Philip Morris in Richmond and Dow Chemical in Hopewell, and coal miners in the entire southwest corner of the state--will quite possibly hand Obama a winning margin there too. Everyone talks about how the educated, liberal DC 'burbs and Virginia's 20% African-American electorate are what has put the Old Dominion into play, but the real swing voters in the state--and there are more such voters here than in some states of the Old Confederacy--are white, lack college degrees and belong to unions. Obama's framing of Romney may have gained less traction in Virginia than in Ohio, but if he wins in Virginia, it'll be for the very same reason, because of Joe Lunchpail. Or rather, Jimmy Ray Lunchpail.
- AaronW
November 2, 2012 at 12:19am
These people are Jim Webb Democrats. Like Webb himself, they've tended to vote Republican over the past thirty years--which is why until recently Virginia has been so solidly read on a presidential level--and Obama's skin color probably hasn't helped him with these folks. Still they're gettable, and Obama's message has been the only one that had a chance.
- AaronW
November 2, 2012 at 12:23am
How do you know so much about Virginia living in Australia, Aaron? I would have had exactly zero idea about those demographics? Impressive, as ever.
- roidubouloi
November 2, 2012 at 12:38am
Two things, one good and one bad: Firstly, I think the hurricane is going to mess with voting in the Northeast pretty badly. Hundreds of thousands of people in several states will still lack power, with shifting polling places and no especial routes to increasing voter turnout like early voting, voting by mail, or no-fault absentee--many of these extensions just don't exist in the northeast for some reason, and I'm not seeing great provisions on this front. This is a problem because of how elections work during presidential years, where states not contested much in the presidential race have lower voter turnout. There actually are fiercely competitive House and Senate races in these states, and many casual and even regular voters may fail to vote because of displacement. Needless to say, the House races affected may easily be determinative of House control, while the Senate races much less so; effects at the presidential level should be muted. This is a development that needs to be monitored a lot more seriously. Secondly, the upholding of Obamacare makes me very excited for 2014 Democratic chances. I've tried to get a response from the DNC on whether they're considering holding a midterm convention, considering how well the 2012 DNC allowed them to gel their message and show off talent. Basically, the extension of health insurance to poor and working class people, especially the working class whites that are the focus of this post, is going to be a huge game changer. This will be a tangible improvement in the lives of Republican leaners that will get them to reconsider their stances and potentially realign with the party that has their back.
- chaitless
November 2, 2012 at 12:59am
I'm a Virginian. Lived my first 25 years there. My father lived there til he died five years ago and my mother just left in 2010. She volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008 and got a wave and a smile from the man himself while she was picking up little after his Newport News rally in October.
- AaronW
November 2, 2012 at 2:26am
Also I'm still in almost daily contact with an old friend from college who still resides in Chesterfield Co, just outside Richmond--Eric Cantor's district--and he keeps me abreast of the mood among the more Limbaughesque characters by whom he is surrounded.
- AaronW
November 2, 2012 at 2:36am
Soulless plutocrat? The portrayal of Romney, supposedly suggested to Obama by Bill Clinton, is as an extremist. Plutocrat and extremist are not the same. Is a soulless plutocrat more like an extremist? Whatever, the portrayal as an extremist was easily overcome when Romney morphed into a bleeding heart moderate (though the ability to morph ever so easily does suggest he is soulless). His image as a plutocrat, however, remains (at least it does for those who know the meaning of plutocrat). A job creating plutocrat, I suppose.
- rayward
November 2, 2012 at 6:30am
Thank you for analyzing the numbers instead of just spouting your opinion. Many papers run the exact same story as their peer group on the same day, confirming our worst fears of journalistic bias and propagandizing. Some of us still like to know the depth and breadth of topics, not just the blather of pundits.
- smabry03
November 2, 2012 at 6:35am
"shudder your factory"? Or "shutter your factory"?
- Tarquin10
November 2, 2012 at 7:53am
I can only wonder what would have happened if the Obama Campaign were prepared for the first debate from a bullying Romney with his list of numbers, a list of nebulous claims, and his warping political orientation like a fun house mirror. Years ago, Bush campaigning against McCain as a fake "reformer with results," seems so mild compared to "$716 billion in medicare cuts" and "Jeep moving its operations to China." Does anyone believe Romney when he says he knows how to fix the economy and can't explain how his own tax plan works?
- Nusholtz
November 2, 2012 at 8:09am
Of course, it probably didn't help Romney's campaign that for most of it, he was casting HIMSELF as a soul-less, clue-less, insensitive plutocrat. "I love firing people", "Bet you $10,000 that's not true", "the 47% will never vote for me, never take responsibility for their lives, they're Entitled. That's what Entitlements mean!" His abrupt about face on the first debate and since has been very nice, if it wasn't completely fraudulent. So it's not Obama's campaign putting stuff on him, it's himself revealing who he really is. Until the debate, when it became himself falsifying his own image.
- AllanL5
November 2, 2012 at 8:34am
Avlon on Ohio: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/02/in-election-s-last-weekend-obama-gains-moderate-momentum-as-romney-flails.html
Bain worked there. More important, actual policy that helps people worked there. No wonder the community organizer is ahead of the Job Creator.- icarus-r
November 2, 2012 at 10:12am
Thanks, aaron.
- roidubouloi
November 2, 2012 at 10:42am
Aaron, your diagnosis is a little off. Southwest Virginia went heavily for McCain and is part of the extremely anti-Obama Appalachians. Romney has successfully characterized Obama as anti-coal. If Obama wins Virginia, it will be because of Northern Virginia and minority and veteran support around Richmond and the Tidewater region. Blue-collar whites in Virginia, even union members, are not voting for Obama. I'll echo Nusholtz, though: this all came down to Obama's weak first debate. That was what allowed Romney to transform into a moderate. Obama's strategy was right, not only for Ohio, but for the country. It just wasn't properly executed.
- polcereal
November 2, 2012 at 11:07am
Obama seems to have become besotted a little to soon with his own apparent success and let his effort and his campaign persona flag. The campaign must be fought to the last moment. There is never a time when it is save to abandon the offensive. Never.
- roidubouloi
November 2, 2012 at 11:09am
The strategy to frame Romney in advance of the nominal campaign season was exactly right. Obama won the election before Labor Day, even though his debate misstep almost screwed it up. If you win the framing battle, you win. He made the mistake of letting Romney slip the frame, but it was too late.
- roidubouloi
November 2, 2012 at 11:11am
Wow. Chesterfield County, the little right-wing hellhole I am stuck living in, gets a Plank feature. I know city dwellers and suburbanites are often at odds politically, but I've never seen the contrast be as brutally stark as it has been driving in from Chesterfield County to the city of Richmond for class. If Virginia goes for Obama it might well be that he gets carried on Kaine's coattails, instead of the other way 'round, and that race is still awfully tight.
- cspencef
November 2, 2012 at 11:24am
Roi. The basic logic seems to be which strategy do you choose: Strategy A would have a certain probability of giving a big win (say 50%), but also a possibility of a loss (say 10%). Strategy B has a low probability of a big win (say 10%), but also a low probability of a loss (say 2%). It's the low-risk strategy. If its a football championship game, and all that counts is a win-- you choose B. But politics ain't beanbag OR championship football .. but rather there are real consequences to the size and nature of a win. To translate to politics, a small win gives you much less mandate AND a much lower chance of carrying the House and Senate. The wisdom of the low-risk strategy really is debateable... and I fear will have real consequences next year.
- drofnats1
November 2, 2012 at 12:08pm
While all the microcosmic scrutiny proceeds, I have to ask whether Mitt Romney was out of character during the Republican primaries. Though not mentioned anywhere in awarding the Obama campaign team full responsibility for portraying the Romney candidate as nasty and above aloof, fact is the Romney campaign and the candidate spoke mighty darkly about some middling Republican candidates. Florida, as I recall, a prominent example. Mitt Romney earns at least as much responsibility as the "Chicago guys."
- lespin
November 2, 2012 at 1:16pm
Re: "Team Obama ... spent hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours driving that point home." How about those woman-hours?
- kbgressitt
November 2, 2012 at 1:41pm
I am sure Ohio will benefit from a President who wants to initiate a Department of Business at the cabinet level.
- john336
November 3, 2012 at 10:21am
John You're of course free to mindlessly parrot Republican speaking points days after they have been thoroughly discredited for being both stupid and distortions. Why you would want to do that in the context of a board consisting of a bunch of high information political junkies is, of course, beyond comprehension, but there you have it. But why you insist on saying something that demonstrates you not only as a partisan shill with no judgement, but a monumentally ignorant one who should be derided is a different matter. After all, if you knew anything at all about the federal government, you would know that there is, currently, not one but two departments of "business" - Commerce and USTR - supported by a bunch other agencies. True business interests, not ignorant shills like you, have been calling for streamlining government support for business. Hence Obama's comment. Now, run along, get back to your playpen, and don't come back until you've finished reading your grade three Civics text.
- icarus-r
November 3, 2012 at 11:54am
Gosh, we are all so absent-minded. Has anyone thought to cc this column to William Galston?
- roidubouloi
November 3, 2012 at 2:45pm