Posted by Larry Bartels
One of the things to watch when the election returns (finally!) come in tomorrow night is how the voting behavior of specific states and demographic groups differs from what it has been in recent elections. In a 1992 book chapter on "The Impact of Electioneering in the United States," I used a scatterplot of state presidential votes from 1984 and 1988 to underline the importance of enduring partisan loyalties in voting behavior. In a 1998 piece in Electoral Studies I showed that the stability of voting patterns from one election to the next has been greater since the 1980s than in the previous several decades.
A recent post by Andrew Gelman shows the corresponding scatterplot for 2000-2004, which shows very modest deviations despite the intervening 2000 election controvery, massive redistributive tax cuts, 9/11 terrorist attacks, and war in Iraq. Gelman also compares Obama's standing in recent state polls with Kerry's performance in 2004. Not surprisingly, there is a considerable upward shift, but also a good deal more scatter. How much of that is due to noise in the polls, and how much to shifts in the underlying partisan landscape? The answer to that question may provide an early clue to whether 2008 will mark a significant departure from the evenly balanced, highly polarized electoral status quo of the past 20 years.
; "Election Night 08")
; "WWS Grad Students Watch the Final Debate of 08")
; "Unequal Democracy")
; "EJ Dionne (Washington Post)")
; "The American Electoral Process conference")