Busy Primary Day, With An Emphasis On D.C. Mayor's Race

Let's get a little more current.  Today wraps up the primary season leading into November's midterms, gubernatorial, and various state and local races.  Seven states are up and there are a number of interesting races.  The one that is getting the most ink is the Republican Senate primary in Delaware.  A month ago this race was on nobody's radar.  The presumptive nominee is longtime Republican vote getter Mike Castle.  Castle is one of the politicians I profiled last year in my post on small state politics.  A fixture in state political circles since the mid '60's Castle has served as both governor (two terms) and as the state's lone House member since 1993.  Castle has fashioned himself as a prgamatic moderate, perfectly suited to a state which typically votes Democratic statewide.  The state GOP establishment has been firmly behind Castle and everything pointed to an easy pick-up for Republicans of the seat vacated by now VP Joe Biden. 

That, of course, was before the year of the Tea Party.  Over the past several weeks, Castle has seen his sure thing become much more precarious as Christine O'Donnell, fueled by a Sarah Palin endorsement and a slew of out of state funding and manpower, has tightened the race.  Like earlier contests in Utah and Alaska, which saw incumbent GOP Senators defeated, tonight's contest in the First State could provide fireworks.  The winner faces Chris Coons, New Castle County Executive.

Closer to home, the big tilt today is the DC Democratic mayoral primary (Washington Post blog coverage here).  Given the underlying political affiliation of DC voters, this is the whole shebang.  The winner will be the mayor.  Watching this race up close over the past months, this race has become fascinating.  The incumbent, Adrian Fenty shot to prominence four years ago through a retail politics performance par excellance.  He won every precinct in the city, casting himself as a results oriented reformer.  As is so often the case with reformers, patience and prudence take a back seat to action.  The flashpoint in all of this has been Fenty's efforts to reform the long moribund DC education system.  Under Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Fenty has overseen a mayoral takeover of the school system and a process of school consolidation and widespread teacher firings--with test scores both improving and ebbing as a result.  In a nutshell, Fenty has been highly polarizing, especially among DC's older establishment.  His opponent, City Council Chair Vince Gray has campaigned on the notion of "One City."  To supporters, he will bind back together what Fenty has blown up.  To detractors, he will be a throwback to the dysfunction of latter day Marion Berry/Control Board DC government.  The prevailing view of the underlying dynamics of this race suggests that race and age are the faultlines upon which the election will be decided.  Fenty has tended to draw his support from white, more educated, and younger voters whereas Grey is seen as strongest among African American and, especially, older voters.

John has been doing yeoman's work looking at this race from the ground level--see here, here, and here.  We're both going to try and get out today to capture some of what's going on at various polling places.  I'm also going to post as results start coming in later tonight. 

Also of note today is the GOP gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin.  Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker is taking on former 1st District Congressman and one time Senate candidate Mark Neumann.  The winner will take on Milwaukee Mayor and former 5th District Congressman Tom Barrett in the general.

UPDATE: As the results start coming in tonight, we're going to get very focused on the micro level for the DC mayor's race.  Here's a DC ward and precinct map so you can play along at home.  If the race shakes out as predicted, expect to see Gray do extremely well in Wards 5, 7 (his home), and 8.  Fenty can be expected to do well in Wards 2 and 3.  His home Ward 4 could be the real bellwether.  Wards 1 and 6 should be relatively competitive too I would think. 

John and I are going to hit some of the precincts in Ward 5 to get some local flavor.  Hopefully we'll have some pictures to go along with the numbers.  This should be Gray territory big time.

Philadelphia

We're now starting to get some ward level results for Philadelphia. Since the exit polling started coming out, the correlation between race and support for Obama/Clinton has intensified. I'm not the first one to present the contrast shown above, but I thought I'd put my two cents in. If you look at the city of Philadelphia, broken down by race, you see a pretty solid linkage between race and vote choice. This is a dynamic similar to what we saw in Ohio seven weeks ago and its a trend that's gotten Obama supporters extremely nervous. Further complicating this is the fact that the upscale suburbs that I thought would do well for Obama were much more evenly split.

So how do we explain this?? There seem to be a couple of explanations--perhaps in combination--that can give us some answers. The first explanation would be that, yes, white working class voters won't vote for a black candidate. The "Pennsyltucky" or Appalachian phenomenon is used to bolster this argument. As I've been mulling this data and these maps, my mind keeps going back to the state I'm most familiar with and would seem to act as a counterfactual--Wisconsin. While not Appalachian, Wisconsin is certainly filled with white ethnics and working class voters. Yet it went overwhelmingly to Obama. Not only did he win where one thought he would--Milwaukee and Madison--but he won by large margins statewide.

Now either Wisconsin is an outlier or we need to look for other explanations. Two come immediately to mind. The first is political. In both Pennsylvania and Ohio Senator Clinton had powerful and popular governors--and their respective machines and GOTV operations--on her side. John and I have already speculated that this might explain Clinton's success in the Philly suburbs. In Wisconsin, Governor Jim Doyle is an Obama supporter. The second explanation brings race back in but speaks more to the calendar of the Democratic race. Wisconsin voted before the Reverend Wright controversy erupted. Thus, Badger state voters were looking at an Obama who hadn't had much of his shine rubbed off. Wisconsin voted after Obama had run off an impressive streak of consecutive wins in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, and elsewhere. In other words, momentum was on his side and states were voting in a compacted schedule, thus minimizing the chance that any attack on Obama could metastasize. By the time Ohio, and especially Pennsylvania came around, he had not only been subject to much greater scrutiny but would have to spend weeks on these issues as they dogged his campaign. Thus, white voters may be perfectly willing to vote for a black candidate as long as they haven't been thinking about race beforehand. When that issue becomes activated, Obama fares worse.

How Similar are Milwaukee and Cleveland???

Coming out of Tuesday's primary in Ohio, I was somewhat surprised that while Obama won Cleveland, his numbers weren't as high as I would have thought. As a Wisconsin native, I've always viewed Milwaukee and Cleveland as, in many ways, sister cities. Therefore, I figured they'd vote the same. They're roughly the same size rust belt metropolises with a history of heavy manufacturing, ethnic based neighborhoods and politics, and a not too pleasant legacy of segregation and racial strife. To be more specific, I've dug up some demographic statistics, as well as the voting data from the Wisconsin and Ohio primaries.

I should note first off that I haven't been able to find the final vote tally for the city of Cleveland yet. Also, for the city of Milwaukee, the best I've been able to find, apart from the overall city totals (89,899 Obama to 34,462 Clinton) is the above map produced by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. So I've decided to go out a level and look at Milwaukee county and Cuyahoga county (essentially the 10th and 11th congressional districts). What we see are two very, very similar metropolitan areas.

While Cuyahoga County is larger (1.4 million vs. 915 thousand), in all other respects these two counties are almost identical. Milwaukee county is 66% white, 25% African American, and 9% Hispanic (Milwaukee city is 44% white, 40% African American, 15% Hispanic). Cuyahoga is 67% white, 27% African American, and 3% Hispanic (Cleveland city is 42% white, 51% African American, 7% Hispanic). The median household income in both counties is $39,000/year. Milwaukee county's poverty rate is a bit higher at 18.5% versus 13% in Cuyahoga.

In the Wisconsin primary, Obama won Milwaukee county 64% to 35% for Clinton. So, going into the primary, what might we have expected?? Given that Clinton was polling ahead of Obama among voters making less than $50,000/year, we might not have expected much advantage to Clinton given the parity of the two counties in terms of median income. In fact, the county's lower poverty rate might have actually been a net benefit to Obama. Cuyahoga county is slightly more African American than Milwaukee, which should have helped Obama, especially within the city of Cleveland.

How did Cuyahoga county go?? While Obama won, his numbers were much smaller than he saw a few weeks earlier in Milwaukee. The final vote was 53% Obama to 46% Clinton. So what happened? There are a number of workable explanations that I'm sure will be fleshed out over the coming weeks. First, given Clinton's success statewide, there was obviously some spillover effect within Cuyahoga county and the city of Cleveland. Just compare the county by county maps of both states to see this. A second hypothesis would by the role that race may have played. The Milwaukee city map above shows that Clinton did indeed win a few wards in the city of Milwaukee, namely on the Polish and German dominated south side. John highlighted a few days ago how this dynamic may have played out in Cleveland, especially with Dennis Kucinich facing a tough primary (which would drive up turnout). Indeed, Clinton won in Kucinich's district. Again using the county by county data, Obama did much better in the overwhelmingly white counties in outer Wisconsin (he won the vast majority of them) than he did in Ohio (he lost the vast majority). Looking at this more historically (see earlier posts), George Wallace did much better in Cleveland than he did in Milwaukee in 1968, so maybe there's some faint remnances of this dynamic still at work. A third hypothesis would be the attention each candidate paid to these states. In the compressed schedule between the Potomac Primaries and Wisconsin, Obama was much more visible and active in Wisconsin than Clinton was. He spent much more money and was on the air to a greater extent. A final explanation might be the role of local leaders and their advocacy for each candidate. In Milwaukee, Obama had the support and network of both Governor Jim Doyle and Congresswoman Gwen Moore. In Ohio, it was Clinton with the advantage, having the endorsement of Governor Ted Strickland and Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (11th district).

Anyhow, there is a lot of work yet to be done examining these numbers but this offers a jumping off point. It shows, though, that we can't assume all cities--even those that look very similar on the surface--are going to behave the same. There will be other factors at work.

WI 08: Going Blue?

Over the past few election cycles, Wisconsin's 8th congressional district has been getting more competitive. For decades a Republican stronghhold, in 2006 the 8th elected Democrat Steve Kagen to the House. The previous incumbent, Mark Green, vacated the seat to run unsuccessfully for governor. In the process, he underperformed quite dramatically in his home district. This got me thinking about whether or not the 8th was changing. I must admit that traveling to the area several times per year (I grew up in the neighboring 6th), I haven't noticed any striking change. Nonetheless, the numbers don't lie. The 8th is anchored by two of Wisconsin's larger cities, Green Bay (Brown County) and Appleton (Outagamie County). I've plotted the Democrats' performance over the past four most competitive statewide elections: 2006 governor, 2004 president, 2002 governor, and 200 president. The county is on the x axis and the Democratic percentage of the vote is on the y axis. Note the extremely high Democratic performance in Menominee County. This is in fact on of Wisconsin's Indian reservations so it acts as an outlier.

I should note that I had to do a bit of number massaging to allow me to plot Democratic performance. In the 2002 Wisconsin governor's race, independent Ed Thompson (brother of former governor Tommy Thompson) ran as an independent and performed quite well, largely along Libertarian lines. I decided to divide up his vote between the Democratic candidate (Attorney General Jim Doyle) and the Republican (Governor Scott McCallum) to allow for some comparison between the two major candidates aside from a calculation of the two party vote that would have excluded Thompson. Given Thompson's lineage and platform I decided to award McCallum 2/3 of the Thompson vote and Doyle the remaining 1/3. I had a similar dilemma for the 2000 presidential race and the Nader vote. Here I awarded Gore the entire Nader vote on the assumption that he would have received these votes without Nader in the race.

What we see is that over the 2000-2006 timeframe Democrats have indeed improved their performance with the exception of a downtick with Kerry in 2004. This is especially notable in Outagamie County but is seen clearly across the entirety of the 8th district. This would seem to bode extremely well as Congressman Kagen seeks to be the first Democrat re-elected in this district in thirty years. The data from the 2008 Wisconsin presidential primary would seem to add more creedence to this tentative conclusion. While we obviously can't directly compare the Democratic and Republican primaries given how relatively settled the Republican race is, the turnout disparities between the parties is nonetheless worth paying attention to. Turnout in the Democratic race was over two times the Repubican (133,940 vs. 57,303). On the Democratic side Obama beat Clinton 56%-44% which was slightly below his statewide total of 58%. On the Republican side, McCain beat Huckabee 56%-44% which essentially mirrored his statwide total of 55%.