It’s the Thought that Counts

There’s been substantial coverage lately of how the Obama campaign seems to be putting a lot of effort into states that have normally seemed utterly beyond reach for any Democrat.  You can’t really blame them for dreaming — there has been some impressively close polling out of states you wouldn’t expect (Alaska? Indiana?).  Nevertheless, these states have been so lopsided in the past that you can be “impressively close” without really having any chance of winning.  The other reason, of course, why they’re willing to spend a lot of money advertising and organizing in Georgia and Montana is that they have a lot more money to work with than McCain does (though really you need to include the RNC and DNC in these calculations, and that drastically shrinks the gap).  Their efforts in the reach states haven’t prevented them from matching (and usually outdoing) McCain in the traditional swing states.

Still, you’ve got to ask yourself whether this is really the best allocation of resources.  Sure, Obama has been out-organizing McCain in Ohio, even while organizing in Georgia, but wouldn’t it be better if the gap in Ohio was even wider?  The answer depends on what assumptions you make about how state results relate to each other.

One possible assumption is that states generally move in tandem with each other.  If Obama goes up or down nationally, that move is seen roughly equally reflected in each state.  Certain states are just more conservative/liberal than others.  Say Pennsylvania is slightly more liberal than Ohio.  They could both go the same way, or Obama could win Pennsylvania while losing Ohio, but it’d be nearly impossible for him to win Ohio but lose Pennsylvania.  Under this assumption, as Obama becomes less popular, Ohio always flips first.  Now, you could imagine that campaigns can push individual states through greater advertising/campaigning/organizing efforts, but these things being equal, states have a stable ordering in their general willingness to vote one way or the other.

If this assumption is true, there are only a handful of states where the campaigns should be focusing.  The efforts should go not to the place that is most borderline at any particular time, but to the states that are closest to the national average.  That’s because these are the states that will be casting the deciding electoral votes in the event that the election is very close.  There could be national trends that push Obama far ahead, making Georgia very competitive, but in that case he’s winning regardless, so it doesn’t matter if he put the organizing into Georgia that was necessary to push that state in particular over the edge.  Similarly, efforts in Connecticut could help Obama reduce the margin of defeat in some cases, but never change the outcome.  Only states where campaigning could make the difference in the event that the national popular vote is close to 50-50 are worth focusing on.

Under this assumption, Obama’s strategy is very much out of whack.  He should be putting more money and time into Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, and Michigan.  His time in Indiana, Georgia, and his other dream targets is wasted.  The only way it makes sense is if you believe that, given the huge investment already made in traditional swing states, the marginal benefit from additional resources is very low, and that the complete lack of opposition he’s seeing in traditionally Republican states makes them more vulnerable than the swing states.  I don’t think anyone really believes this.  Maybe Obama can win North Carolina, but even with McCain ignoring it, it’s just a tougher target for him than Colorado.

The opposite assumption is that states move greatly in ways that are totally independent of each other.  Because of local differences in media coverage, which issues are important, demographics, etc., it is possible for candidates to go up significantly in some states while going down significantly in others.  In this case, it’s very possible for some of the “stretch” states to go for Obama while the traditional swing states don’t.  If this is true, he should try to get lots of states within range of random variation flipping them.  He should take advantage of the fact that his efforts probably do the most good in states where he’s unopposed, and try to make those states competitive.  If a lot of states are very close, he’ll almost definitely win some of them.

Obviously the truth is in between the two extreme versions of reality, but I doubt it’s far enough towards the latter to really justify the level of attention Obama has been paying to some states that really just look out of reach.  There is, of course, another set of reasons to pay attention to these states, unrelated to the outcome of this presidential election.  One is that over the long term, making the Democratic argument in those states will slowly increase the acceptance of those arguments, and maybe make it so that in some future election these states really are winnable.  In the short term, he could at the very least make his presence on the top of the ticket less of a harm to down-ballot candidates.  These goals are incredibly important, and I’m all for them.  I just hope Obama isn’t biting off more than he can chew.  I’d really like to see him as president, and that is by no means sewn up yet.

Tags: barack obama, politics