All posts by NuQum

Yes Virginia, the Two-State Solution is Dead

Opinion

By Kent Kroeger (Source:  NuQum.com, December 22, 2016)

“I believe that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an existential necessity if Israel is to remain a Jewish homeland,” recently wrote Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder and president of J Street, a nonprofit advocacy group that lobbies to end the Israel–Palestinian conflict peacefully and diplomatically. “As important, I believe ruling as an occupying power over millions of Palestinians for 50 years while denying them their rights is not only strategically unwise but also morally unjustifiable.”

“Never before has a diplomatic novice been placed in this sensitive post, where a single wrong word or move could pour fuel on fires already burning in the region,” wrote Ben-Ami in a Washington Post editorial opposing the nomination of David Friedman, a New York bankruptcy lawyer, as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel by President-elect Donald Trump.

Friedman’s response to Ben-Ami and his other Jewish-American critics has been harsh, to say the least.  He’s even included a particularly ugly and noxious slur that relates Ben-Ami and J Street supporters to “Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps.” I don’t know Mr. Ben-Ami but what I’ve read and heard from him — in his own words — does not strike me as deviant from the mainstream opinions within the American-Jewish community.

In Pew Research’s October 2013 survey of Jewish Americans, 61 percent of Jewish Americans said they were optimistic that there is a way for Israel and an Independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully, compared to only 50 percent of adults in the U.S. In the same survey, 44 percent of Jewish Americans said Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories “hurt” Israel’s security, compared to only 17 percent who said the settlements helped.

Interestingly, Ben-Ami’s position on the necessity of the “two-state solution” is also consistent with the stated position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in May 2016 said, “We are willing to negotiate with the Arab states’ revisions to the (Arab Peace) initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in our region since 2002, but maintains the agreed goal of two states for two peoples.”

I am not suggesting Ben-Ami and Netanyahu are of a like mind on how to achieve a two-state solution, but at a minimum their stated goal for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not deviate from the UN resolutions on the “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine” that date back to 1974.

I know little about David Friedman, except what he wrote about Ben-Ami and J Street and what I’ve heard and read about him in the media.

My general rule is:  Don’t make a judgement about someone through what you hear or read about them through the media.  I have also learned with age that sometimes people we don’t agree with (or even like) can be that shock to your own system of beliefs that moves you into a new and more productive direction. Friedman may fill that role if he becomes the U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

In a June 2016 interview on Israeli TV, Friedman said: “I think if you look at the Palestinians, they share something in common with the entire Muslim world, which is 90% or so of them are perfectly fine, good people. They’ve been hijacked by the 10% that observes radical, Islamic jihad. I think if you went to those 90% and said to them, ‘Would you rather live under an Israeli regime or under a new Palestinian state,’ I would be shocked if the majority of them wouldn’t prefer Israeli rule,” he said.

Prepare to be shocked, Mr. Friedman. I don’t think 90 percent Palestinians will agree with you on that. However, more and more Israeli and Palestinian activists, sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, are also saying that the two-solution is O.B.E. (Overtaken by Events) and that the resolution to the conflict requires a new paradigm.

In a recent conversation with a young Palestinian, currently studying at Iowa State University, he gave me his diagnosis on the two-state solution.

“It is dead,” he said.

“What replaces it? The one-state solution?” I asked.

“Right now, nothing. It’s the status quo – which is the most unacceptable version of the one-state solution.”

But, unlike even five years ago, when it was hard to find anyone talking about a ‘one-state solution,’ there are now prominent activists sharing the same sentiment as that ISU student. Scholars Noura Erakat and Leila Farsakh, after attending a meeting with European Union leaders in 2013, concluded that the failure of the two-state solution has left the region with a de facto one-state solution. Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, has been quoted as saying, “Good riddance! The two-state solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is finally dead.”

(Source: http://poica.org/)

In his eulogy for the two-state solution during a book tour in 2013, U.S. religious scholar, Reza Aslan, gave what may be the simplest explanation for its demise:

“When Oslo was signed (in 1993) there were about 100,000 settlers living in Palestine. That was when the peace process was started. And 20 years of the peace process has led to 500,000 Israelis living on Palestinian land. The two-state solution is over.”

On that conclusion, Aslan, Barghouti, Erakat, Farsakh, Friedman and likely Netanyahu, too, aren’t that far apart. Obviously, the nature and future direction of this de facto one-state solution substantially separates Friedman and Netanyahu from the aforementioned academics and social activists. Nonetheless, Trump’s consciously provocative nominee for the U.S. ambassadorship may at least serve the purpose of cutting through the cynicism and unrealistic posturing that continues to dominate the mainstream rhetoric of Israeli, American and Palestinian leaders.

After eight years of failed American leadership with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is time for change.

Hillary Clinton Would Have Lost A Popular Vote Election Too…Here’s Why:

Opinion, , ,

By Kent R. Kroeger  (Source:  NuQum.com, December 20, 2016)

CLINTON IS MORE POPULAR THAN TRUMP!  SHE WON THE POPULAR VOTE!

“He (Donald Trump) lost the popular vote to (Hillary) Clinton by more than 2 million votes,” recently wrote New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who goes on to scold Trump supporters “who don’t want to hear that more people actually voted for Hillary.”

This decontextualized fact is used by many to discredit Trump’s electoral college victory and inspired attempts to force vote recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and to persuade Republican electors to become “faithless” and vote against the preference of their state’s voters.  All were wastes of political energy .

Unfortunately, the promulgation of the “Hillary won more votes” narrative ignores the real story of the presidential vote in 2016.  More importantly, it prevents many Democrats and Never Trumpers from moving forward and rebuilding their political capital.

Our analysis of the 2016 presidential vote finds that, had the Trump and Clinton campaigns been as active in the non-swing states as they were in the swing states, Trump would have squeaked out a narrow popular vote victory of 48 percent to 47 percent.

When I first shared this finding with my wife, her reaction was swift:  “Are you kidding me?! Isn’t winning the election enough for you?  You have to take away Hillary’s popular vote victory too!”

No, I am not denying the raw popular vote total.  The almost 3 million vote gap in Clinton’s favor is real.  Fifty-years from now, when talking about the 2016 presidential election, pundits across the ideological spectrum will cite Clinton’s popular vote advantage. But while the vote difference is real, it is not as meaningful as we are told to believe it is.

Why?  Others have made this next point better, but I will summarize:  Both candidates understood going into the election that it is an electoral college election, not a popular vote election.  The type of election (popular vote versus electoral college) informs campaign strategy.  In an electoral college election, swing states (i.e., states where the popular vote is competitive) become the battleground states.  In contrast, in a popular vote election, the optimal campaign strategy is to concentrate campaign activities in densely-populated areas.  Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, put it simply to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd: “Had this been a race for the popular vote, we would have won that too, because Mr. Trump would have campaigned in California, in New York, stayed in Florida, gone to Illinois, perhaps.”

After hearing Conway’s statement on MSNBC, my curiosity demanded a more formal test of her assertion.  In this effort, I used a simple statistical model to adjust the actual popular vote for the net campaign effects witnessed in the vote results from these swing states:  Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

IN A NOT-SO ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE, CLINTON LOSES THE POPULAR VOTE IN 2016

My popular vote adjustment is a two-step algorithm: (1) Calculate the net campaign effect in the swing states, and (2) apply this campaign effect to the non-swing states so the adjusted national popular vote accounts for the campaign dynamics observed in the swing states.

Here, I will keep the explanation short, but feel free to access the full analysis at this link:  Adjusted 2016 Popular Vote.  Also, given the on-going counting of ballots, particularly in California, some of the numbers used for this analysis have changed.  (Can you imagine if this country used the popular vote method for selecting the president and the outcome was so close we had to wait over month after Election Day for California to certify its results?  It would be the political equivalent of an all-out thermonuclear war that would never be resolved in a way satisfactory to the losing candidate.  Perhaps a reason we should stick with the electoral college?)

From David Wasserman’s Cook Political Report analysis, we know that Clinton won the presumptive popular vote by almost 3 million votes.  However, she lost the 15 swing states by almost 1.5 million votes, even while winning the non-swing states by over 4 million votes.

Diving deeper into the swing state results and the early polling, we see the effect of the Trump campaign’s tactics and strategy.  Using the state-level RealClearPolitics polling averages as of October 1st, Trump probably trailed Clinton by almost 1 million votes.  This means the Trump campaign generated a net turnaround of 2.2 million votes in the swing states between Oct. 1st and Nov 8th.   The chart below shows the Oct 1st polling averages and final vote percentages for the swing states.  In only two states (Colorado and Nevada) did Clinton see a positive campaign effect.  In all other swing states, Trump improved his vote percentages relative to Clinton’s between Oct. 1st and Election Day.

(Note:  Some readers have criticized this analysis’ assumption that Trump’s swing state ‘campaign effect’ can be transferred to the non-swing states.  I agree that this is a strong assumption and it is interesting to note that Clinton had a positive campaign effect in the two of the three western swing states (Colorado and Nevada) and may reflect the strength of her message among Hispanics.)

Forget the 80,000 vote margin in the three rust belt states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania) often discussed in the media.  That is a meaningless post hoc analytic.  The important number is the extent to which Trump campaign’s tactics (local media buys, candidate appearances, and surrogate events) changed the final outcome.  That number is the “net campaign effect” as measured by the net vote change divided by the size of the vote eligible population (VEP) in the swing states. The number is 2.6 percent (in Trump’s advantage).  Not a big number, but a profoundly important number.

The next step requires a big assumption and asks this question: What if the candidates’ swing state campaigns were conducted in the non-swing states as well?  In my popular vote adjustment, I assume that Trump would have had a similar campaign effect on the popular vote outcomes in those states.

“The non-swing states are too different to make that assumption,” my wife averred, thereby dismissing out-of-hand my finding that Trump would have won the popular vote if he had competed in all 50 states.

But isn’t it more ludicrous to think Clinton’s vote advantage in California (over 4 million votes at last count) wouldn’t have changed if both Clinton and Trump had campaigned in a substantive manner there?  He doesn’t have to win California in a popular vote election, he simply needs to do better – and he would if the contest required him to do so.

By applying the 2.6 percent campaign effect in Trump’s favor to the results in the non-swing states, I estimate Clinton would have won the non-swing state popular vote by 600,000 votes — not enough to overcome her 1.4 million vote disadvantage in the swing states.  The adjusted 2016 popular vote is therefore:  64.8 million for Donald Trump to 64.0 million for Hillary Clinton.

DID THE COMEY LETTER CAUSE CLINTON’S LOSS?  NO, IT DIDN’T.

If my analysis says anything, it says the Trump campaign was superior to Clinton’s — not a controversial finding.  But if you  want to know the extent the Russians or the Comey letter contributed to Trump’s advantage, I can’t help you here.  My hunch is, not much.  Based on my interviews with Iowa voters (not representative of all U.S. voters, to be sure), Clinton’s “deplorable” remark was memorable to voters.    The “deplorable” comment was an in-your-face, playground insult that didn’t require translation by cable news pundits.

The John Podesta emails, on the other hand, reinforced a “crooked Hillary” narrative that had become entrenched among swing voters long before his personal emails were released by WikiLeaks.  To claim the DNC and Podesta emails or Comey’s letter caused Clinton’s demise is analytically problematic.  In a regression modeling context, statisticians call it a ‘multicollinearity problem’ which can make it difficult to quantify the causal effects of discrete events in the presence of simultaneously occurring events.

Yet, 538.com founder Nate Silver confidently asserts that the Comey letter  was a difference maker.  However, I am not as confident in that conclusion. First, the announcement of the Obamacare premium increases occurred on Oct. 24th — just four days prior to the Comey letter.  At that time, 538.com’s model said Clinton had a 86.3 percent chance of victory.  The day of the Comey letter’s release (Oct. 28th), her chance of victory had already fallen to 81.5 percent.  A nearly 5 percent probability decline in just four days that CANNOT be attributed to the Comey letter.

If you were to extend the trend in Clinton’s probability decline from Oct. 24th to Nov. 8th, the final Clinton probability would be 71 percent…which is where it stood on Election Day, according to 538.com (see graphic below).  Yes, Clinton’s decline accelerated after the Comey letter, but it also recovered (a little) after Comey said the FBI found no new evidence to change their conclusion regarding Clinton’s emails.  The end result?  Clinton stood at a 71 percent probability on Nov. 8th.  You don’t need to reference the Comey letter to explain the Clinton’s probability of victory on Nov. 8th.  Her decline began days before the Comey letter.

                                                          (Source:  538.com)

LIES!  ALL LIES!  THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE STOPPED HILLARY!

If our adjusted popular vote is right, you can’t blame the electoral college on Clinton’s loss. Instead, it was the product of difficult electoral context (a slow-growth economy, Obama/Clinton fatigue, ISIS threat, etc.) and an opponent that captured the national mood far better than Clinton’s ‘career of fighting for children and women’ message.

I attended rallies here in Des Moines for both Clinton and Trump.  The difference in energy could not have been more dramatic.  The Clinton crowd was large but lacked excitement.  With the exception of actor Sean Astin (Rudy), the warm-up speakers were dull and uninspiring.  By the time Hillary made it to the stage, people were slowly moving to the back of the crowd so they could get to their cars quickly once Hillary was done.  it was a weird crowd dynamic.  The more Hillary talked, the more the crowd dissipated.  If she had talked 15 more minutes, she would have been addressing the clean-up brigade.

The Trump rally had a different vibe.  The crowd grew slowly but consistently.  Trump was late, of course, but it didn’t seem to matter.  Crowd chants passed the time mixed in with a few speakers that kept their unmemorable comments short.  But once Trump arrived — BOOM!  People didn’t want to leave.  He didn’t even say much.  His speech was a loosely connected series of extemporaneous riffs.  It was short (or, at least, seemed short) and included all the classic hits: “Build the Wall”  “End Obamacare” “Crooked Hillary” yadda yadda yadda.  Like the old O’Jays song said, “Give the people what they want.”

When I emailed my popular vote analysis to a friend living in southern California, she nailed its insight immediately.

“I didn’t see the same campaign you saw in Iowa,” her email reply started.  “I didn’t see many Clinton or Trump TV ads; there were no rallies; and my newspaper (LA Times) was openly pro-Hillary.  I thought Hillary would win in a blowout.”

She did…in California.  For those of us living in swing states, a blowout never seemed possible.

No, Clinton didn’t lose because of the voting process.  When you the mine the deep-vein data, the story is clear.  Trump out campaigned Clinton.  That’s a winning formula whether you are in a popular vote election or an electoral college election.

WHO SHOULD BE MORE TICKED OFF?  AL GORE or HILLARY CLINTON?

“I still think Hillary would have won a popular vote,” my friend wrote in the email postscript.  “And Gore was robbed too!”

And, on that assertion, I agreed.

If our country changed to the popular vote method (or some near variation), it would not change the election outcomes much.  Except in one case.  Unlike Clinton, Al Gore was truly stiffed.  Al Gore won that election against George W. Bush in both the electoral college and popular vote — that is, had the true preferences of Florida voters been reflected in Florida’s popular vote.  Unfortunately, for Al Gore, a bizarre “butterfly” ballot design in Palm Beach County altered the election.  Gore’s victory was hijacked.  And it didn’t help that the Gore campaign made a bad decision on how and where to contest the Florida vote.  They should have pushed for a statewide recount.  They didn’t.

That’s all water under the bridge, however.

EVEN IF IT DOESN’T ALTER THE RESULTS, DOESN’T THE POPULAR VOTE MAKE MORE SENSE?

Calls for changing to a popular vote are understandable.  In the final analysis, however, I don’t think it really matters.  In fact, there may be some unintended consequences.  For example, the popular vote may increase the importance of money in our presidential elections.  All else equal, a popular vote election would certainly increase the need to buy TV and radio ads in the major population centers.

The 2016 presidential election provides vivid evidence that an under-funded candidate can beat a well-funded candidate.  Money is important in elections, of course; but so is the quality of the candidate and the election’s zeitgeist.  Though Trump raised less money than Clinton ($650 million versus $1.2 Billion, respectively), he lessened that disadvantage by being a better campaigner who promoted an anti-establishment message when the national mood favored such an outsider.

My analysis here makes some strong assumptions.  However, I am confident – had the 2016 presidential election been a popular vote election – Donald Trump would not have lost by nearly 3 million votes.  Instead, it would have been a close race…a very close race…and Donald Trump would win the popular vote by about 1 million votes.

So, to all CNN and MSNBC on-air talent, enough with the “She Won the Popular Vote” preambles and epilogues.  Without running the 2016 election as a popular vote contest, it is pure conjecture to say she won the popular vote.  My analysis says Clinton would have lost that too.

Iowa Democrats in the Wilderness: A Campaign Post-Mortem

Opinion

By Kent R. Kroeger

(Source:  NuQum.com, December 5, 2016) “Winning campaigns is a thrilling experience, but losing campaigns crush your soul,” veteran Republican communications strategist, Michael McKinnon, recently wrote in The Daily Beast.

Having worked on my brother’s unsuccessful Iowa House District 60 campaign this past election, I understand McKinnon’s lament all too well.

My brother, Gary Kroeger, the Democratic candidate for the Iowa House District 60 seat that covers most of southern Waterloo and Cedar Falls, was running against Walt Rogers, a three-term Republican incumbent and an assistant leader in the Iowa House.

We lost 58 percent to 42 percent.

In the immediate aftermath, I needed to blame someone, besides myself. So, I went with the most available target: Hillary Clinton. I know. Too simplistic (and mostly wrong). But it felt good. However, now, a month removed from the election, the answer is more complicated and more organic than found in a single person.

In my 30 years of working on political campaigns (mostly as a Virginia Republican), I have come to one inviolable conclusion: Political campaigns don’t matter as much as we think they do. At best, they nibble on the margins. External factors, such as the economy, incumbency, and the partisan composition of the electorate, explain most of the variation in outcomes. A well-run campaign using the available tools (TV, radio, direct mail, canvassing, phone banks, social media, etc.) to their maximum utility may gain a candidate three or four more percentage points. But not much more. In close races, that boost matters. In our race in District 60, it wouldn’t have mattered.

McKinnon’s diagnosis of Clinton’s defeat serves here as well: “Sometimes the currents are so deep it doesn’t matter how hard or how well you paddle.”

To Gary’s supporters who continue to send me emails or troll me on Facebook so they can tell me we should have gone negative against Walt Rogers, I say, “I’m changing my email address and there is no negative attack that would have changed this outcome.”

Let this sink in for a moment: Not a single Democrat won this year running against an incumbent Republican for the Iowa House. Some Democratic challengers ran negative ads and some didn’t. It didn’t matter. They all lost — by 11 percentage points, on average. Based on my statistical modeling of Iowa House races, Gary actually did two percentage points better than expected given the partisan composition of District 60.

In Iowa House elections from 1996 to 2014, incumbents from both parties won 93 percent of their races; Republican incumbents won 94 percent. In a Democratic year (2008, 2012) it’s hard enough for a Democratic challenger to beat an incumbent; in a Republican-dominated election, it’s nearly impossible.

Yet, in at state where Barack Obama can win twice and Trump won this year, there is enough year-to-year variation in voter preferences to defeat incumbents more often. Why are incumbents so safe in the presence of this much voter elasticity? There are long answers to this question. I will give you the short answer: both political parties like it that way and built a system to make it so. They are risk averse organizations whose pain in losing their own incumbent is far greater than the joy they feel in defeating another party’s incumbent. Subsequently, state parties spend most of their money and time keeping incumbents in power.

Gary’s defeat was determined before he even declared his candidacy — but there are others that must share the blame.

Let’s start with the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP). It didn’t help that Gary couldn’t catch a draft from the IDP’s hand-picked candidates for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House’s 1st District. Monica Vernon, the Democrat’s U.S. House candidate, was a good campaigner running against a tough opponent, but our Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, Patty Judge, was a biblical-scale cataclysm. While acknowledging Chuck Grassley was a tough out, Judge was, as Donald Trump might say, “low energy.” And that’s being kind. She was the electoral version of the airship Hindenburg. All we missed was Simon Conway on WHO radio crying out “Oh, the humanity!” as her candidacy crashed and burned.

As part of the IDP’s post-election soul-searching, it must include an examination as to why their leadership felt it necessary to put their thumb on the scales during the primary process in favor of candidates like Judge. One of her primary opponents, Rob Hogg, an Iowa Senate Democrat from Cedar Rapids, worked harder than any candidate I’ve ever seen. How did he lose to her? Seriously, an honest competition would have resulted in a different outcome. Genuine competition at the primary level makes for better general election candidates. The IDP needs to internalize that message.

After the Democrat’s caucus debacle in February, the Des Moines Register editorialized that “something smells in the (Iowa) Democratic Party.” The IDP convened a commission to make recommendations for changing the caucus process within the Democratic Party. However, I have seen nothing from that commission or the IDP that addresses the problems I saw caucus-night in Des Moines’ Precinct 59. It was an organizational mess posing as grassroots democracy. Had it not been for Iowa’s gracious Attorney General Tom Miller taking charge of our caucus as it spun out of control, we’d still be counting heads in Central High School’s auditorium.

Yet, my ultimate frustration is not with the IDP but at the presidential level. And you can’t talk about Democratic Party politics at the presidential level without talking about the Clintons – both of them.

It was Bill Clinton that began gutting the Democratic Party in 1992. Today’s pundits point to how the number of congressional and state-level Democrats declined under President Obama. Under his leadership, the Democrats transitioned from the party that dominated local, state and congressional politics to the regional out-of-power party that it is today. The fundraising machine he built to facilitate his election and re-election also saw the Democrats lose both U.S. congressional chambers in 1994.

The congressional Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, proved the perfect foil for President Clinton, whose major legislative accomplishments occurred after the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress. The Democrats wouldn’t see a meaningful majority in either chamber until 2007.
Fast forward to 2016.

When Politico reported in May that the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee ostensibly organized to distribute funds to the state parties, was alleged to be a money diversion scheme to avoid restrictions on how much money the Democratic National Committee could pass to the Clinton campaign, we found it all too familiar. It was the Clinton way. It’s how they do business.

The result of that Clinton cleverness? The Democrats nominated a candidate who, in her vainglorious greed, ensured that money that would have helped the state parties ended up in her coffers. This Clintonian strategy of putting too heavy an emphasis on the presidential campaign helped the Republicans keep control of the U.S. House, U.S. Senate, governorships, and state legislatures. Oh! And they also won the presidency.

With the HMS Titanic at the top of the Democratic ticket, Trump and the Republicans were the HMS Carpathia tactically positioned to capture those working-class Democrats that jumped right before the Clinton campaign’s stern disappeared beneath the water.

The Kroeger for Iowa House campaign witnessed this in real-time on the election’s front lines: District 60 – a district Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012.

We conducted two telephone opinion polls: one in late-September and one in late-October. In those polls we saw locally what echoed the Trump phenomenon nationally: A sizable number of Democrats abandoned their party in the last days of the campaign. We did not see it coming. Some Democrats, such as Iowa Senator Jeff Danielson, knew how to step outside the IDP playbook and run an independent-minded campaign that protected his support base when the Trump tsunami hit.

So, in late September after our first poll, the Kroeger campaign was feeling good. We estimated Trump and Clinton were basically tied. In the same poll, we estimated Gary was slightly ahead Walt, and was getting support from 75 percent of Democrats, half of independents, and 12 percent of Republicans. We were on target to hold our Democratic base at around 90 percent support, win a majority of independents (the largest party bloc in District 60), and hopefully grab over 10 percent of Republicans. That would be a winning outcome for us. We felt confident as we launched our first TV ad and a direct mail piece targeting independents.

By late-October, something changed. It was as if we woke up one morning and found ourselves in Idaho, not Iowa. Our final survey showed Trump with an 8-point lead over Clinton, mostly from an increase of 11 percentage points in support among Democrats in District 60. He saw little change in support from independents and Republicans. In Gary’s case, the change was more dramatic and devastating. His support from Democrats fell 30 percentage points to 45 percent and what was once a close race now had Walt ahead by 20 points (60% to 40%). What happened?

We were losing Democrats in District 60’s working-class neighborhoods.

The weekend before Election Day, having mined the October survey data, I canvassed Democratic households in Precincts 1 and 4 in Waterloo’s 1st Ward, an area south of University Avenue and west of Ansborough Avenue. These are working-class Democrats in precincts that voted for Obama over Romney by a wide margin in 2012 (58 percent to 40 percent).

The few folks that answered the door that warm, sunny afternoon were polite but blunt. A young mother summarized what I heard at other doors: “I won’t vote for Kroeger because he supports Hillary Clinton.”

“He’s a Democrat,” I said. “He has to support his party’s presidential nominee.”

“She’s corrupt,” she shot back. End of conversation. There is no script that can respond to that sentiment. The decision was hard-coded.

Yet, don’t assume the drivers in Trump support were easy to summarize in those working-class Democratic households. Other doors revealed different reasons for supporting Trump: Immigration, jobs, terrorism. Each door had its own its own rationale, though inevitably, the conversation would lead back to Clinton’s trustworthiness.

One father of two, who decided in the last week of the campaign to vote for Trump, provided what may be the reason why this election was so hard to predict based on polling:

“Hillary will win, so I’m voting for Trump in protest,” he said.

If that sentiment was common among voters, it suggests it would have been better for Clinton if the polls favored Trump in the final days. The impending reality of a Trump presidency might have driven more than a few Trump voters back into Clinton’s camp.

The rule-of-thumb in the campaign management handbook is that a candidate’s perceived ‘inevitability’ is a good thing as it creates a bandwagon effect.

However, based on this last election, I would modify that maxim this way: When most voters perceive the ‘inevitable’ candidate to be untrustworthy and dishonest, the bandwagon effect no longer works in that candidate’s favor.

I ended that afternoon thinking, “With so many different people and motivations out there, how do politicians win elections?” My 10-year-old son provided the best answer I’ve heard to date: “Somebody has to win.”

The opposite tendency among political pundits is to make simple things seem complicated. They often emphasize campaign tactics which tend to lead to more explanatory factors than are necessary to understand the outcome. I love when campaign consultants talk about ‘micro-targeting’ or ‘data mining.’ I know from experience these are false gods.

Yes, polling and marketing are critical to a successful campaign, but if Donald Trump has taught us anything, it is that ‘winging it’ works too. He is authentic in that he thinks the way voters think. That’s not a bad thing, if your goal is to win elections.

The morning after Election Day I made a list of the Kroeger for Iowa House’s tactical mistakes: We didn’t attack Walt’s voting record enough; we didn’t match Walt’s door-knocking prowess; we couldn’t match Walt’s late media ad buy – much of it funded by his party – that was eight times larger than ours; we didn’t answer his ads attacking Gary for his qualified support of Obamacare; and, finally, Walt’s campaign never gave us a genuine opening for attack. When incumbents do lose, it is often due to major gaffes and scandals. Walt was too disciplined for that.

Yet, beyond those factors, something more important worked in Walt’s favor. He ran an issue-based campaign. The nastiness that did occur was tame by modern standards. And while I may disagree with many of Walt’s policy positions, I respect the power of the “Smaller, Smarter” slogan that drove his candidacy. If we still believe public opinion polling (and I do), most voters across this nation support this message. In broad principle, at least. More importantly, the national Republicans have reinforced this message for over 40 years now and it has driven them to the dominance we see today at all levels of government.

McKinnon calls it a campaign’s narrative architecture. “Voters are attracted to candidates who lay out a storyline,” writes McKinnon. “Losing campaigns communicate unconnected streams of information, ideas, (and) speeches. That last line pretty much sums up our campaign’s communications. I failed my brother on that score. In contrast, Walt has carried the “Smaller, Smarter” water bucket since he was first elected in 2010 and it underscores his campaign’s communications.

Walt’s campaign told a story: (The threat) Iowa’s government is too big, too wasteful, and too intrusive. (The victims) All Iowans, but particularly the working class, suffer the most from the government’s wasteful spending and regulatory over-reach which inhibits economic growth. (The villain) There is no problem Democrats won’t try to solve using your money and increasing their control over your life. (The solution) Reduce the size of government, lower taxes, and increase the efficiency and accountability of existing government programs. (The hero) Elect Republicans, like Walt Rogers, and they will make government smaller while solving Iowa’s problems.

The cynic in me knows the Iowa Republicans will over-reach and all those noble ideas will become public policy disasters such as the one on the horizon with privatized Medicaid. But will the Iowa Democrats be there to take advantage of that oncoming train wreck?
A month removed from defeat, my heart won’t accept that Gary’s race was unwinnable. No doubt many party insiders thought Dan Dawson (R – Council Bluffs) had no chance against Iowa Senate
Leader Mike Gronstal (D – Council Bluffs), a seemingly permanent fixture in the Iowa legislature since 1985. Gronstal lost to Dawson by 8 percentage points. Incumbents can lose.

No, I won’t accept that the District 60 race was some vain quest. Instead, as the passions of the campaign subside, I blame myself for not knowing how to build the right narrative for Gary in this election. We failed to follow McKinnon’s campaign model. We didn’t tell a coherent story and Walt did.

And, of course, I also blame Hillary.

How could pollsters get the Iowa vote so wrong? They didn’t

Opinion

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com, February 6, 2016)

We would love to brag that we were the only data-driven political forecasters to predict Cruz’ victory in the Iowa’s Republican caucuses.  We won’t.  Not that we don’t want to, but the truth is a bit more complicated than “we got it right and they didn’t.”

No, it would be wrong for us to highlight the logical flaws in J. Ann Selzer’s Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll, who was deemed our nation’s most accurate pollster by Nate Silver, whose own FiveThirtyEight.com forecast was similarly off the mark in Iowa’s Republican caucuses.  No, we will not boast because we would have to ignore the facts…and the facts actually support the pollsters and data modelers who predicted Trump would win the Iowa Republican caucuses.

What?  But, Cruz beat Trump 28 percent to 24 percent while the polls, summarized by RCPs rolling average, said Trump would beat Cruz 30 percent to 24 percent.  Selzer’s Iowa Poll had Trump winning 28 percent to 23 percent over Cruz, as of the weekend before the Monday caucuses.  The surface evidence indicates they missed.  But I would argue the pollsters were right given what they asked respondents and it was the caucus results that perverted the true sentiments among Iowa caucus-attending Republicans.

You may recall a similar argument about the Florida election results in the 2000 presidential election in which the final tallied results indicated George W. Bush beat Al Gore even though the exit polls indicated a majority of voters preferred Gore to Bush.  The exit polls were most likely correct; it was the vote tally that was wrong.

The argument that the caucus process perverts the true sentiments of Iowa caucus voters starts with my own experience at an Iowa Democratic caucus.  My wife and I moved to Des Moines, Iowa four years ago and she’s always been curious about how an Iowa caucus works.  While Iowans find the process a democracy-affirming experience, outsiders often find the process confusing and even undemocratic.  Further complicating things, the Republicans and Democrats have different caucus processes with the Republicans using a secret ballot and the Democrats using a multi-stage, non-secret balloting system.  The end result however makes the two processes more the same than different.  Though the Republicans use a secret ballot to cast caucus votes, the first step in the process has supporters for each candidate grouping together so they can select someone to speak on behalf of their preferred candidate before everyone casts their “secret” ballot.  The actual result is that each caucus voter discovers very quickly who their neighbors are voting for and that is start of the problem.

Back to my experience in the Democratic caucus.  I am kind when I say the process started out disorganized and devolved at each step.  The precinct chair’s first problem was the unusually large number of caucus-goers in attendance.  Over four hundred.  At least that is what the signed register indicated.  But even that official count of qualified voters was under suspicion when the first head-count of candidate preferences was taken after everyone moved to a specific section of the high school auditorium depending on their candidate preference.  Soon after the head-count, the precinct chair announced that the total number of first ballot voters exceeded the registered total by almost 30 voters.  Voters were counted that had not officially registered.  Did they forget to register?  Did they sneak in?  Sneaking in would not have been hard to do.  We were in a 600-seat auditorium with over eight separate doors to enter and exit and no security to speak of.  Yes, there were people standing at some of the doors, but they didn’t seem stop anybody from entering since there was no way to know if their eligibility had been validated and they had signed the register.  It was an honor system.

The register and vote total discrepancy was not a problem, said the precinct chair.  He asked that anyone who had failed to sign the register should do so before the next head-count vote.  We waited about 20 minutes while that process was completed and counted heads a second time.  We were off by only 20 or so people the second time.  Um.  A less trusting precinct chair would have read off the names from the register and kicked out anyone whose name wasn’t called.  But not this precinct chair.  Not on this night.  He declared the vote total, the one that exceeded the official register by over twenty voters, to be the final vote total and the Clinton and Sanders delegates were divided up proportionately, six for Sanders and four for Clinton.

Did I mention I, along with 27 other people, caucused for Martin O’Malley?  No matter.  We didn’t have enough O’Malley supporters to earn a delegate.  We weren’t viable.  Technically, we should have been allowed to select another “viable” candidate, but this precinct chair wasn’t about to introduce more complications into an already deteriorating situation.  We went with the 6-to-4 delegate result and walked out of the auditorium.  My wife had experienced her first Iowa caucus and as she left the auditorium wondering out-loud why Iowa should be given the honor of starting our country’s presidential selection process.  I told my wife that Stanford-educated elitists like herself are not in any position to judge our time-tested caucus system.  We also agreed not to talk about what we saw that night ever again.  We willingly participated so we felt somewhat responsible.  We felt unclean.

How does my experience relate to Cruz beating Trump?  Perhaps it doesn’t.  Maybe I just wanted to get it off my chest.  What I do know is that the Iowa caucus system is a disaster and more people, not just in Iowa, need to voice this opinion each time Iowans go through the process.  As to why Cruz beat Trump, we need to remember where Cruz drew his support — people who self-identified as “very strong conservatives.”  And these voters tend to be very religious and tend to live in rural areas.  Iowa’s rural communities are tight.  Every family knows every other family.  You know how much your neighbor owes on their house; you know how many cars they’ve owned; you know where they go to church on Sunday; and you know if they don’t.  Small Iowa communities exert a palpable pressure on its citizens not to deviate from local norms.  Of course, some do anyway.  They’re called Democrats.

The rest are Republicans and this leads us back to our original thesis:  The Iowa caucus process perverts the true sentiments among Iowa caucus-goers.  And so we get to caucus night, February 1, 2016.  Ted Cruz went from 23 percent in the Iowa Poll to 28 percent in the actual caucus results.  One theory is that conservative evangelicals in Iowa are far more organized in their get-out-the-vote efforts than other constituencies.  This is true.  But the Iowa Poll measures vote turnout intentions and its predicted evangelical turnout did not vary significantly from the actual turnout (for those details, go here).  No, the answer to the question “why did the polls get the result wrong?” lies not with differentials in socio-demographic turnouts and candidate ground-games.  The answer lies in the process itself.

People change their intended vote preferences when they see their neighbors (and their religious leaders) standing for a specific candidate.  This year it was Ted Cruz. Four years ago it was Rick Santorum.  In 2008, it was Rev. Mike Huckabee.  How do I know this?  Because I’ve seen it.  Not as much in the 2016 Democratic caucus I attended, but I saw it in 2012 when I caucused for Ron Paul and watched the Santorum contingent grow minute-by-minute as caucus voters walked in and saw neighbors and fellow parishioners standing together.  The arm-twisting was congenial but unmistakable.  “Are you supporting Santorum?”  In various forms, I heard the same question over and over.  It was not nefarious.  It is the caucus process.  It is not that much different from the peer-pressure dynamics in high school.  In fact, it is exactly the same.  Only in high school, it determines what clothes you wear, not who should be the next President of the United States.

The polls were correct leading into the February 1st caucuses. It was the Iowa caucus process that got things wrong.  The Iowa caucus system needs to end.

 

NuQum.com Predicts Clinton and Cruz to win 2016 Iowa Caucus

News, Opinion

By NuQum Economists (Source: NuQum.com, 1/31/2016)

NuQum.com is predicting Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz will win tomorrow’s Iowa presidential caucuses.  As of 11:30am (CST), NuQum.com forecasts that Ted Cruz will win the Iowa Republican caucus by two percentage points over Donald Trump (29 percent and 27 percent, respectively).  This forecast is in contrast to most of the recent polling and prediction market forecasts that show Donald Trump winning the Iowa Republican caucus.  NuQum.com also forecasts Marco Rubio to finish a distant third at 15 percent of the caucus vote, followed by Ben Carson (12%), Rand Paul (4%), Jeb Bush (3), Mike Huckabee (3%), Rick Santorum (3%). Chris Christie (2%), Carly Fiorina (1%), and John Kasich (1%).

In the Democratic race, NuQum.com forecasts that Hillary Clinton will win 52 percent of the Democratic caucus votes, followed by Bernie Sanders with 45 percent and Martin O’Malley at three percent.  The NuQum forecast shows the former Secretary of State with a more comfortable advantage over Bernie Sanders than most of the recent polling in Iowa.

NuQum Iowa Caucus Forecast 2016

Methodology:

NuQum.com economists utilize Real Clear Politics’ poll averages for its initial forecast and then modify this forecast using marginals from the most recent public poll (in this case, the Des Moines Register Iowa Poll) to adjust caucus vote percentages for each candidate.  The adjustment employed for the Iowa caucus involves identifying the urban/rural composition for each candidate and weighting results accordingly.  Based on a historical analysis, NuQum.com corrects for known biases in Iowa caucus polling data that typically under-represent rural votes in the final vote percentages.  For example, in the 2012 Iowa caucus, most polling data significantly under-represented the final Santorum vote totals.  In the 2016 caucus forecast, Ted Cruz benefits most significantly from this bias adjustment.  It is a safe assumption that this bias adjustment accounts for the ability of the Iowa evangelical community to organize and get out the vote for their preferred candidate(s).  For this election, those candidates most benefiting from evangelical support are Ted Cruz and Ben Carson.

If you have any questions about our election forecast, please give us a call at (515) 512 2776 or email our senior economist at:  kroeger98@yahoo.com

 

Hillary Clinton: The “Work Hard” Candidate

Opinion, , ,

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com, January 28, 2016)

Outcome.  Shmoutcomes.  All you need to know is that Hillary Clinton has spent a political lifetime working tirelessly for (insert interest group).

When a young Iowa voter asked Hillary Clinton why there is so little enthusiasm for her candidacy among his age cohort, Hillary forcefully summarized her core argument for why she should be the next president:  “I’ve been on the front line of change and progress since I was your age.  I’ve been fighting for kids and women and the people who are left behind to get the chance to make the most out of their own lives. ”

It was Hillary’s best moment at CNN’s town hall meeting televised a week out from the Iowa caucuses.  Her response to the young man would be oft-repeated in the town hall’s news coverage.  It was a good line, delivered effectively.  More importantly, her full answer to the young man highlighted one of her genuine successes as First Lady – the Children’s Healthcare Insurance Program (CHIP), which, in the ashes of her failed attempt to bring universal healthcare to the U.S., needed Republican support in order to become law.  Yet, as I listened to her, her response seemed just another political bromide where the meaning had been sucked out by a decade and a half of economic stagnation for America’s middle and working classes.

American’s median income has been in decline since 2000.  Bill Clinton can justifiably be proud that Americans’ income growth rates during his administration were among the strongest in the past 50 years.  Still, even that positive outcome was built on a bipartisan economic deregulation program — particularly in the banking, investment and insurance industries — whose long-term ramifications borne out during the 2007 world financial crisis laid waste to much of middle class America’s economic gains from the 1990s.

However, even if we generously forgive the Clinton administration for the excesses left unchecked by economic deregulation, to what extent should Hillary share credit for the economic gains during her husband’s administration?  Well, she was there.  I suppose that’s enough.  According to the polling data, it is enough for a majority of Democrats and may be enough for the majority of voters in the 2016 general election.

In fairness, based on her own rhetoric, Hillary is not asking for support based on her husband’s accomplishments.  She emphasizes her tireless efforts to improve the lives of children, women, minorities, low-income households, and the middle class. The problem is this argument holds little weight when displayed next to the actual economic and social outcomes experienced by these social groups.

Hillary repeatedly tells us she works hard.  I do not doubt it.  She may work too hard, as evidenced by her recently released email where she sent an email to a subordinate to tell another subordinate to make hot tea for an upcoming State Department meeting.  Who doesn’t just directly email the tea-making subordinate?  People that work hard, apparently.

I am being a bit harsh towards Hillary, I agree, but I struggle to find concrete evidence of her claimed accomplishments.  I mentioned CHIP and, yes, she gave an historic speech in Beijing, China in 1995 on women’s second-class status in far too many parts of the world.  Her speech is as relevant today as it was then.  But that is the problem!  Very little has changed since Hillary gave that speech.  It was a great speech.  Yet, if we measure it relative to outcomes, it was just a speech.  Not much more.   I’m sure she worked hard writing it.  Unfortunately, my thoughts turn towards the Yazidi women and girls in ISIS-controlled Syria and the question as to whether our nation’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 –- with Hillary’s influential and regrettable support — perhaps contributed to the rise of ISIS and its subsequent crimes against men and women.

Again, this is a harsh conclusion regarding Hillary’s culpability in the suffering of Middle Eastern women, but not as hard a conclusion as it should be.  I will leave to others discussions of her role in the destabilization of Libya, Syria, and Iraq.  She isn’t alone in bearing some responsibility for these messes, and certainly is not the primary culprit.  Nonetheless, her neo-conservative-inspired default positon on questions of U.S. military interventions in the Middle East, driven by what I believe to be a purely political calculation to maintain her credibility with military- and security-focused voters, must be considered part of her foreign policy resume.  Outcomes must matter more than effort and intent.

Now, there is one special interest group that has benefited handsomely from Bill and Hillary’s collective hard work — that would be Bill and Hillary Clinton.  From 2001 through 2013, the Clintons jointly earned over $160 million, largely from speeches and book sales.  By now, that total most likely exceeds $200 million.  And I have no doubt Hillary worked really hard on all those books and speeches.  That should be enough for the American voter, right?  We will find out in the next ten months.

 

An Open Letter to Colin Cowherd

Opinion, , ,

An Open Letter to Colin Cowherd:

As the self-selected representative of the State of Iowa, I want to apologize to Pac-12 fans, Big Ten fans, the College Football Playoff committee, The Disney Company, Brent Musburger and the Stanford band for my Iowa Hawkeyes failing (again) to put a competitive football team on the Rose Bowl field this past January 1st.

We didn’t belong in that game.  The game was so painful to watch I’m sure even some in the Stanford band felt their halftime show crossed the line from irreverent to cruel.  In truth, we did not earn the right to play in a game of that stature.

Therefore, Colin, I want to thank you for attempting to open the eyes of Hawkeye and college football fans to the virtues of taking risks in order to become something better than what is otherwise possible if you choose instead a safer path.  It was an important life lesson you were imparting to us, even though most of my Hawkeye friends chose to either attack the message with inaccurate assertions (e.g., Pittsburgh is not top-tier college team), to hurl expletives at the messenger (before Twitter, what did Iowans do to defend their state?), or in most cases, just to ignore the message.

For others reading this letter and not familiar with your argument, your basic message was that Iowa’s football team is a fraud because the coach (Kirk Ferentz) chooses to play a creampuff non-conference schedule in order to inflate Iowa’s won-loss record and present a false pedigree to AP voters and the national college football audience.  As a result, like the life cycle of 17-year cicadas, every other decade an Iowa Hawkeye football team ends up in the Rose Bowl…and finds a way to lose in a fashion more epic than their previous epic Rose Bowl loss.

Iowa Rose Bowl games almost feel scripted.  A fake-fumble play when Stanford was already ahead 28-0 perfectly fit the game’s dramatic (or comedic) arc.  It is Lucy pulling football away from Charlie Brown just as he thinks he will actually kick it this time.  But, of course, he doesn’t.  He never will.  And Iowa won’t win the Rose Bowl.  Not until we choose to accept more risk on our schedule.  And probably not even then.  Perhaps when global warming makes Iowa a warm, coastal state and the best players choose to come here?

To be blunt, the best college football is played at schools where the best athletes choose to attend.  There is no substitute in football for quality athletes and Iowa doesn’t get them.  We haven’t since the days of Alex Karras.  Good coaching matters, but good players matter more.  And elite players are what separate Alabama, Ohio State, and Clemson from the pack.  And Iowa is part of the pack.

But there is always that fluke year when a good program like Iowa’s bubbles up to the front of the pack.  But unless that team plays top-tier teams early and often, you can never know for sure if this really is “the year.”  Sadly, the Rose Bowl is not the place to find out if your team is for real.  This is the fatal flaw of Iowa’s non-conference scheduling strategy.  An approach, by the way, started under legendary Iowa coach, Hayden Fry, who wanted to ensure that his teams were healthy (and undefeated) heading into the Big Ten schedule.  This strategy has continued under Fry’s student, Kirk Ferentz.

How much better would Iowa fans be feeling today if their team scheduled LSU or Georgia in 2015?  Is it not better to challenge yourself and be a deserving 11-2 team in the Capital One Bowl than a deceptive 12-1 team in the Rose Bowl.

Colin, I can tell you that most Iowans are in denial.  The typical Iowa sports writer is saying, “Despite the Rose Bowl outcome, Iowa had a great season.”  But I believe in their private thoughts they know what I know — this Iowa season will be defined by an embarrassing loss to Stanford in the Rose Bowl.  If Donald Trump teaches us anything, it is that the winning is more fun than losing.  To be fair, there are some Iowa fans and sports literati, such as sports radio hosts Marty Tirrell (an East Coast transplant) and Ken Miller, who are conveying the truth (even if doing it a bit more gently than you, Colin).  Stanford was bigger, stronger, faster and better coached than Iowa.  That is a perfect recipe for a really bad game.  [And Stanford is probably not in Alabama or Clemson’s class!]

I will end this letter by imploring all of us to learn the unintentional message sent by Coach Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeye football team.  Aiming low does not prepare you for the real world.  Challenge yourself.  Hike the steeper and longer trail even if a gently-sloped and shorter trial is available.  It makes reaching the ultimate destination much more rewarding.  Take the hard calculus class, even if it is not a graduation requirement.  Put your grade point average at risk.  It will pay off the day you sit before an employer and can talk more intelligently about econometric modeling and regression parameters than the student who  received A’s taking only multiple-choice math classes.  Take risks.  Compete with the best.  And enjoy the journey wherever it takes you.

Or, you can be like Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes and dial up North Dakota State and Miami (Ohio) for the 2016 schedule and whose toughest game is a home bout against Michigan.  Other than the Michigan game, Iowa will be favored in all of its other games next season.  And if all goes according to Ferentz’s plan, look out Pasadena, you might see those tour buses and Winnebagos from Iowa coming over the San Gabriel Mountains once again in 2017.  Consider yourself warned.

Sincerely,

Kent R. Kroeger (a lifelong Iowa Hawkeye fan)

Des Moines, Iowa