The Iowa Caucus is not a democratic institution

The Iowa Caucuses are tomorrow. Trump! Clinton! Sanders! Cruz! Jim Gilmore! It's very exciting, as this is the first official voting for the 2016 Presidential candidate nominating process.

Unfortunately, the Iowa caucuses are plagued by low turnout, and, in the case of the Democrats, undemocratic vote counting procedures. Four out of five Iowa adults are not going to attend a caucus. Even among Iowans who vote in general elections, a majority will not come out to caucus tomorrow. If you are interested in some numbers, you can continue below. If not, just remember that when the media report that "Iowans chose candidate x", 80% of voting age Iowans did not attend a caucus.

In 2012, less than 20% of registered Republicans voted in their party's caucus. In 2008, turn out was just over 20% for the Republicans. 2008 saw record turnout for the Democrats, but even that turnout was only a little less than 40%. Mind you, Iowa is a closed caucus, meaning that only registered party members can vote. Independents, who now make up a plurality of the US electorate, are shut out of the process (unless they change their party registration). A measure of turnout that incorporates these independents would be to divide the number of caucus goers by the number of voters who end up voting for the party nominee. In 2008, 828,940 Iowans voted for Obama in the general election, and 239,872 caucused (for any candidate) in the Democratic caucus, resulting in a lower turnout figure of 29%. Of the people who would end up voting for Obama in the 2008 general election, less than a third came out to the Democratic caucus (for any candidate), and that was a high turnout year for the caucus.

But we don't have to get fancy with the numbers. There are well over 2 million adults living in Iowa (about 3 million people total, according to the Census website, and 23.4% are under 18). It's highly unlikely that total turnout for both caucuses will be above 400,000 (it would require record breaking turnout for both caucuses). So, in the most optimistic scenario, less than one in five Iowa adults will caucus tomorrow. One in Five. When the media report that "Iowans chose candidate x", remember that four in five Iowans over the age of 18 didn't caucus.

Why is turnout so low? Turnout in US elections is terrible in general when compared to other countries, although a majority of adults do vote in the presidential general elections. Primary turnout is worse. The Iowa Caucuses are particularly bad because they happen at a set time, meaning that anyone who has to work at that time or needs to take care of family members then is unable to caucus. This has a disproportionate impact on working class people, who have less flexible work schedules and are less likely to be able to afford childcare, as well as women, who are more likely to be saddled with family responsibilities.

One final problem- In the "Democratic" Caucus, no total vote total is calculated. We won't ever know whether Sanders or Clinton had more supporters at the caucus. That is because results are tallied through "state delegate equivalents", which are based on the specific caucus location. This is essentially a state equivalent to the electoral college, only no one knows the popular vote. A candidate that receives fewer votes tomorrow may well be declared the winner, and no one will ever know that they had fewer supporters.

Despite these serious problems, the winner of tomorrow's caucuses will have achieved a major victory, particularly in the media, and will be well on their way to winning their party's nomination. 

Understanding the Limits to Citizens United

I recently came across the following image on Facebook. It was posted by “The Other 98%”, a liberal group with over 1.6 million likes.

Actually, the constitution never mentioned democracy.

Do a search for the term! You won't find it.

When "democracy" was mentioned in the Federalist Papers, the documents justifying the Constitution, it was brought up as an inadequate form of governance which could lead to such horrors as "an abolition of debts [or] an equal division of property", which would be prevented in the federal US republic.

That comes from James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution. He continued that “Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions."

Again, Madison was afraid of the violations of "rights of property" and the call to have equal possessions which would occur in a democracy. For Madison, democracy leads to some form of socialism.

Madison was right.

The constitution was set up to prevent this.

Citizens United, then, was merely the equivalent of having your motor boat leak gas in the middle of the BP oil spill. Something to feel bad about normally, except that you have much bigger problems to worry about.

I want to expand on this point. The “Citizens United” case receives a lot of attention from liberals. A group exists with the name “End Citizens United”. But I would argue that the problems of democracy in the United States began long before  Citizens United vs FEC. Efforts to create democracy in the United States must take this into account.

We need not take a radical view of democracy to make this point. Let us restrict our understanding of “democracy” to mean having the views of the majority of the population enacted into public policy. This is not a good understanding of democracy. It ignores power imbalances involved in the creation of public opinion. It assumes that a majority should be able to dictate commands to a minority. But let’s keep this definition for now, despite the problems with it. My rationale is that it allows us to ask the question “Is the government responsive to public opinion, and therefore democratic?” fairly easily. A more complex understanding of democracy would not be so testable.

When the United States Constitution was first adopted, only white male property owners could vote in both states. About 20% of the country was enslaved. Women could not vote, in most states.[1] Even poor white men were frequently barred from voting. Through struggle, the right to vote was expanded and by the 1960’s when the ability to vote was no longer determined by race, gender, or class, at least not openly. Restrictions continue though. Felons are frequently disenfranchised while incarcerated and after they are released. Thanks to racial disparities in the prison system, felon disenfranchisement has a disproportionate impact on African-Americans and other people of color. According to a report by the NAACP, approximately 30% of African-American men are expected to be disenfranchised at some point in their lifetime, based on current incarceration patterns, and 13% of African-American men are currently disenfranchised.[2] Thus, while the right to vote has been expanded, it is still not a universal right among American citizens, despite claims to the contrary.

The lack of democracy in the US is not only, or even mostly, a consequence of these explicit voting restrictions. These restrictions affect a minority of citizens, but it is in fact a majority (or at least half) of citizens who have little to no say. We know this thanks to the work of Martin Gilens, a Professor of Political Science at Princeton who has done important research on the responsiveness of government to public opinion. In his book Affluence and Influence, Gilens found that the opinions of people at the 10^th and 50^th percentile of income had no discernable impact on federal public policy when their opinions disagreed with people at the 90^th percentile of income. That is, the federal government was not responsive to people  the 10^th and 50^th income percentiles, and any initial correlation that existed between federal policy making and public opinion at those percentiles was a result of wealthier people (90^th percentile) agreeing with people at the 10^th and 50^th percentiles. The views of the poor, and even people in the middle of the US’ income distribution, simply did not matter in determining public policy.

The implications of this result is that the federal government was not responsive to the wishes of  

at least half of the population. This is clearly inconsistent with the definition of democracy given above. Quite simply, the United States is not a democracy, if democracy means that the views of the majority get enacted. It is also not a democracy if “democracy” is taken to mean that there is some rough equality in the impact that private citizens have on policy making, since these results demonstrate that the average citizen has no impact on federal policy.

So the United States is not a democracy. The government responds not to the needs of the poor or middle class but instead the wealthy.[3] Importantly, the data these results come from span from 1981-2002. Before Citizens United. Citizens United could not have decreased the impact that the average citizen had on federal policy making since that impact was already zero. I will not in this post discuss the potential mechanisms for this finding. That would make a good topic for a future post. Summarizing Gilens’ findings is sufficient to debunk the blame mistakenly placed on Citizens United for the problems plaguing our republic, which is all I set out to do at the moment.

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[1] Voting laws are almost always decided by states. Hence, while I do write of general trends throughout the paragraph below, some states did not follow those trends. For example,  New Jersey allowed women to vote throughout the 1790’s.

[2] NAACP, Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, 2011.

[3] While people at the 90^th percentile aren’t rich, Gilens did not distinguish between the effect their views had as opposed to people at the 99^th (or 99.9^th) percentile), meaning that it would not be impossible that even the views of the people at the 90^th percentile had no impact on public policy when their views disagreed with those higher up economically.

Huffington Post Misses the Mark in Trump Poll Commentary

Natalie Jackson, writing in the Huffington Post,[1] argues today that “Donald Trump’s lead isn’t as solid as it looks”. What’s the evidence? Rather than focus on which candidate is winning the “horse race”, garnering the most would be voters, Jackson thinks it is more important to look at the percentage of voters who would consider supporting a particular candidate.

The number of potential supporters is important. If, for example, 30% of Republican voters supported Trump, but only 40% would consider supporting Trump, then Trump’s ceiling would be an important factor in the race, since presumably another candidate could consolidate the anti-Trump vote. However, this isn’t at all what the data show. Alternatively, in a national NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released recently, 33% of Republicans supported Trump, and 65% of Republicans could see themselves supporting Trump for the nomination. Trump’s “ceiling” is well above 50%, meaning that a non-Trump presidential candidate would have to win over a sizable number of potential Trump supporters to win the nomination.[2] These numbers would seem to be good for Trump. However, Jackson thinks they bode poorly for him.

Here are the numbers in full.[3]

           

Jackson points out that by this measure Trump is not actually doing the best; Cruz and Rubio have higher potential support than Trump, and Carson is not far behind.  On this metric, Trump is not a singularly dominant candidate, but is instead in the middle of a 4 way popularity contest. Jackson notes that Trump has not once been the candidate with the most number of potential voters. I would add that none of this is particularly surprising. Trump has angered many Republicans for a variety of offenses, from his previous liberal attitudes to his lack of religiosity. Candidates like Cruz, and particularly Rubio, have done far less to make themselves unsupportable. What matters, of course, is not how many people  are willing to vote for a candidate but how many actually vote for that candidate. Candidates need to be the first choice, not the third choice, of voters. When polls ask who their first choice is, Trump always leads nationally, and by wide margins.

Jackson argues that Trump’s high support in those questions reflects high name recognition. In her formulation, poll respondents answer with a person whom they know, and, who, we can add to strengthen Jackson’s argument, has been frequently discussed recently in the media. The candidate people actually decide to vote for may be different, and “no one actually knows” what will happen.

A certain skepticism in analyzing polls is needed. Polls can be wrong. Undoubtedly, Jackson is correct that people who currently say they will vote for Trump might not in fact vote for him. But it would be a mistake to discount what the polls tell us. Trump has more support than any of the other candidates, and a majority of Republicans can see themselves supporting his nomination. Trump is not alone in having a majority of voters consider voting for him in the primaries. But he has, at the moment, done a far better job of turning those potential supporters into actual supporters. Cruz, Rubio, and Trump are likely to be the final three candidates in the race, and all of them are well liked enough to gain the support of the majority of the Republican Party. My own take, to be explained in a future post, is that Rubio is more likely to win the nomination than any other candidate. But at the moment, Trump has a big lead in the national polls.[4]

As an addendum, I want to note my own big takeaway from the “Could Support” question, which is that among candidates who participated in the most recent primetime debate, John Kasich is in the worst position, followed by Bush. Even if Kasich were to finish in a strong second place in New Hampshire, he would have trouble gaining momentum nationally. Kasich would need to get the votes of people who currently could not see themselves supporting him, as 55% say they could not see themselves supporting him. He would need to do this from a position of having only 28% of Republicans already willing to vote for him. Jeb Bush similarly has a majority of Republicans unwilling to vote for him, although he at least has a substantial minority of 42% willing to back him. Marco Rubio is uniquely well positioned to take advantage of any momentum coming out of New Hampshire, where the establishment campaigns have focused their resources. Chris Christie’s position is inferior to Rubio’s but better than Kasich’s and Bush’s.

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[1] Here is a link to the article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-lead-challengers_us_569fa289e4b0875553c26a3c?te=ThinkProgress

[2] This assumes at least semi-democratic processes in the nominating process. A nominee could in fact be chosen without gaining a plurality or majority of votes.

[3] The data come from the NBC/WSJ poll as compiled by the Huffington Post. The chart was made in Excel.

[4] There are reasons to be skeptical of the impact this will have. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/polls-suggest-trump-will-win-between-8-percent-and-64-percent-of-the-vote/

Is Sanders Up By 27 in New Hampshire? Probably Not

Today saw the release of a new CNN poll in New Hampshire, showing Bernie Sanders beating Hillary Clinton 60-33. The poll is certainly good news for Sanders, but as is expected it has received far too much attention from the media and from Sanders supporters.

This is just one poll. Today also saw the release of an ARG poll[1] showing Sanders leading by just 6 points in New Hampshire. Although ARG is a less reputable polling firm,[2] the lack of attention on the ARG poll underscores the extent to which so many Sanders supporters want to believe the most optimistic news possible about their candidate.

Sanders is at the moment probably winning in New Hampshire. But he probably isn’t winning by 27 points. Since January 1, there have been 7 polls released for the Democratic primary in New Hampshire. I list the margins between Sanders and Clinton below, with all data coming from Huffpost Pollster.[3]


PPP            Ending 1/6: Clinton +3
NBC/WSJ  Ending 1/7: Sanders +4
Fox             Ending 1/7: Sanders +13
Monmouth Ending 1/10: Sanders +14
ARG           Ending 1/10: Sanders +3
CNN           Ending 1/18: Sanders +27
ARG           Ending 1/18: Sanders +6

At this point, it seems unlikely that Clinton is leading in New Hampshire, given that she has led in just 1 out of the last 7 polls, and that one time was a small lead of only 3 points. But we simply don’t know whether Sanders is leading in the mid single digits, as some polls suggest, in the teens, as others point to, or in a blow-out 27 point lead as per the CNN poll. Caution is in order. Until subsequent polls also have Sanders winning by 27 points, it is best to assume that the actual margin is somewhere between an essentially tied race and a gargantuan 27 point lead.

                                                                 

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[1] http://americanresearchgroup.com/pres2016/primary/dem/nhdem.html

[2] http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/pollster-ratings/

[3] http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-new-hampshire-presidential-democratic-primary

Welcome

Welcome to "The Spectre Haunting"!

I'm excited to start this blog! I've always wanted to have one but have not been able to find the time.

What can you expect at The Spectre Haunting? Well, if you couldn't tell from the name (which comes from the Communist Manifesto), a fair dose of far-left politics. This will include theoretical pieces but will be more news oriented. That means analysis of current events and links to relatively obscure stories that you otherwise may have missed.

I am based in the United States, and while discussions will be centered on the US I absolutely plan to discuss what's going on around the world.

During the semester, I plan on writing weekly. Until February, however, I should be able to write 2-3 times a week.

I guess I should leave a personal note here: I am a student at Bard College majoring in sociology. My favorite hobby: chess. My favorite colors: red and black.

Feel free to leave constructive criticism in the comments. I look forward to engaging with you.