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Election 2020 – Alachua Style

Election 2020 – Alachua Style

by | Oct 29, 2020 | Political Consulting

Was asked a question, “What precincts are you watching closely for Election Night in Alachua?” The true answer is “none”, but if I were to watch some here is what they would be:

There are several precincts that were close to 50 / 50 in 2016. There are 5 that were within 5% of each other: 47,11,29,46,16.

There are two precincts that almost matched closest to Alachua’s average (58% Clinton – D, 36% Trump – R) in 2016: 48 and 22.

And just for giggles – I’d watch precinct 13. Why? Because in 2016, 94% of the vote went to Clinton and only 4% to Trump.

What am I looking for? Changes on the margins – especially in the close to 50/50 precincts.

2016 Alachua Results by PrecinctDownload
Large MapDownload

POTUS IMPEACHMENT – More Research Needed

POTUS IMPEACHMENT – More Research Needed

by | Feb 1, 2020 | Political Research

Interesting test this week with Meer Research in regard’s to the impeachment of President Donald Trump. This is a cross-post from Meer Research.

We had an internal debate on the potential wording of the question. Instead of guessing, we set out to do a quick simple test – exploring a small variation in a question.

  • Donald Trump has not done anything wrong and doesn’t deserve impeachment or removal from office.
    • Donald Trump has done nothing wrong and doesn’t deserve impeachment of removal from office.
  • Donald Trump has done something wrong, deserves a reprimand but not impeachment or removal from office.
  • Donald Trump has done something wrong, deserves impeachment, but not removal from office.
  • Donald Trump has done something wrong, deserves impeachment and removal from office

That was the test – the first question.

Again, quick test. Put it on Facebook and another request on reddit. Survey started 1/30/2020 and ended 2/1/2020. (In the end, there was no difference between the question versions.)

However, an observation indicates additional research is likely needed on the impeachment question.

Let me add some MAJOR caveats here: This is by no means a proper sample. When compared to registered voters, respondents skew whiter (much), skew older, and likely skew towards higher levels of education. Interestingly, the distribution among ideology is almost a perfect bell curve -ranging from very conservative to very liberal.

Ambivalence

Often impeachment is offered as a binary choice – Yes / No, and often this is a decent indicator in today’s political environment. But there is significant research that indicates the public has a much more nuanced approach to issues. For example, abortion. Abortion is pretty black and white and often presented in a binary choice – pro-life vs pro-choice. But there is a significant body of research showing Americans often have a more nuanced approach to the abortion issue. (Shout out to Dr. Craig and Dr. Martinez at University of Florida – Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut, Sometimes You Don’t: Citizens’ Ambivalence About Abortion)

What we observe with this small, flawed survey is that early, exploratory indications are there may be some nuance towards impeachment even in this hyper polarized environment.

Impeachment by Party

Impeachment by Ideology

(I apologize for not making the graphs prettier but there is only so much a person can do while waiting on his daughter to finish dance class) But they are color coded from green (President Trump did nothing wrong, should not be impeached, should not be removed from office) to red (President Trump did something wrong and should be impeached and removed from office)

I took a peek at impeachment across party identification and ideology (5 point scale).

I repeat: this is NOT a scientific survey – BUT this shows me impeachment deserves a deeper look than the binary choice offered by the process.

Well not among my liberal and Democrat friends – you guys are pretty much in lock step with “throw the President out.”

But my conservative friends, moderate friends, and Independents – all are blinking “nuance”.

Conclusion on Impeachment Indicators

I want to be be very clear: I wouldn’t draw anything from this other than more research is needed on the topic, but……. if I am a Republican operative, I would do the research quickly.

PS. A respondent offered their own choice: “Donald Trump has done something wrong but doesn’t deserve impeachment or removal.” (dropping the reprimand) I do think that is a valid point and even more nuance.

Florida Voter File – Churn

Florida Voter File – Churn

by | Jan 23, 2020 | Political Research

Some weekend projects start with a simple question, this past weekend was no different.

“How much churn is there in Florida’s voter file?”

We wanted to get a sense of how much churn was in the voter file leading up to the 2020 election. We took the voterfile from Jan 2019 and compared it to the voterfile in December of 2019. (We went county by county using the R library CRAN compareDF) For the period of 2019, we wanted to explore how many records changed, how many were added, and how many were removed.

In the aggregate, it would appear there isn’t much churn or turnover in the voterfile. The number of registered voters grew about 2% for the year. However, that masks the story.

On average, 7% of the voters had changes in their data (this can be anything from switching parties, address changes, having the precinct number change, etc), 7% were additions, and 5% were removed during that time.

In 2020, Florida added 979,146 voters and removed 741,312 voters.

But my take away is this – remember there are differences in macro- behavior and micro-behavior – and macro level changes maybe masking much larger micro-shifts.

Below are the county breakdowns, some of the counties that exhibit high percentages of change were shifting / changing precinct numbers.

[table id=13 /]

Scandal in politics – where is the line?

Scandal in politics – where is the line?

by | Aug 20, 2019 | Political Consulting

I have written about political scandal before, but that research seems outdated in today’s political landscape.

Today’s landscape seems bi-polar. Sometime scandal will drive people from office to resign in shame- Sen Franken, Gov Sanford – while other times it just doesn’t POTUS, Gov Northam, Roy Moore.

Where is the line? I am not sure I can answer that, but I did come across a study by Dona-Gene Mitchell in Political Psychology entitled: “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? Assessing How Timing and Repetition of Scandal Information Affects Candidate Evaluations” (someone on twitter linked to it, and for the life of me I can’t remember who – but I thank them.)

We remember from other blog posts, voters remember negative information more easily and weigh it more heavily.

This specific study uses a panel experiment to look at timing effects. It is an interesting study, but the main criticism is that it assumes media coverage.

Frankly, with today’s state of journalism at the local level NONE of these findings may be applicable. But that is a screed for another day.

Bottom line: scandal matters, but just it REALLY matters when the press covers it AND new information drips out.

Seems like voters punish a candidate for the first hit, but after than voters reach a saturation point and repetition doesn’t really matter than much.

HOWEVER, if NEW information drips out with repetitions of the initial claim, voters will update their perceptions.

When ongoing scandal coverage fails to reveal new details, voters may eventually tune out repeated references to the candidate’s misconduct.”

In addition, the study finds that timing matters a lot because scandal effects decay rapidly – especially late in the campaign.

It is an interesting read, and I suggest you give it a go. Here is a link to the study: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

I am interested – what if anything is disqualifying in today’s political climate?

PS – A major takeaway for clients and potential clients: if you have scandalous information best to hang a light on it, early AND make sure you hold nothing back.