WARNING:  Right brained readers of this blog may want to skip today’s post as it is the perfect example of what happens at the end of an election cycle if you have three too many degrees in political science.  And had the good fortune of studying under two of the most noted behavioral social scientists in America.

Last night I had a dream only a political scientist who has studied voter behavior since 1968 could have.  I was back at the University of Virginia, except it was not 1968 when I penned my first electoral analysis in a term paper titled, “George Wallace Is Alive and Living in Boston.”  It was November of 2020.  In the dream my professor John Ellwood asks his students, “After 2016, is there anyone in this class stupid enough to think he or she can predict who will carry Florida this year?  If so, now is the time to make your case.”  I timidly raised my hand to which Dr. Elwood replies, “Why am I not surprised?”  Below is the analysis I would have shared with him. (NOTE:  Dr. Ellwood, who earned his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, wrote the recommendation that was the sole reason I was accepted to his alma mater despite a less than exemplary undergraduate academic performance at UVA.)

One of the advantages of the graduate program at Johns Hopkins University was the opportunity to take classes outside one’s own department.  At the time, the political science department at JHU was among the best in political theory, but short on faculty with experience in empirical research.  To make up for that deficiency, I took a class in game theory with James Coleman, best known for his study of the learning gap resulting from years of “separate but equal” policies in public education, and created an independent study with psychology professor Warren Torgerson whose research focused on typing abnormal behavior (a skill I found most helpful for my dissertation on voting blocs in the U.S. Senate).

The major lesson I learned from both of these academic icons was no different than most situations in life.  Filter out the noise and look for the signals.  And noise has certainly been the order of the day this election cycle.  Equally important, the numbers are only as good as the assumptions used for any predictive model.  So let me start there.  The model I created for predicting the Florida outcome on November 3rd depends on the following assumptions.

• When Democrats vote, Democrats win.
• Partisan defections affect the magnitude of the outcome, but do not determine the winner.
• Shifts in behavior by voters with no party affiliation (NPA), i.e. independents, can make the difference.

You may be surprised there is nothing related to demographics, either seniors or college educated suburban women, the focus of much media punditry.   Nor does it depend on early versus election day balloting.

Ready?  Put on your green visors.  Here come the numbers.  First, to test the validity of the model, I applied it to the actual 2016 results, initially relying on the second and third assumptions.

2016 Election

In 2016, 4.9 million registered Democratic voters in Florida cast a ballot of which 90 percent voted for Hillary Clinton and eight percent for Donald Trump.  On the GOP side of the equation, 4.5 million registered Republicans cast ballots with almost identical results–89 percent for Trump, eight percent for Clinton.  The 3.5 million independent voters broke for Trump by a 47-43 percent margin.  Despite the independent vote advantage, the model predicted Clinton should still have carried Florida by 177,230 votes.  Why?  Although independents made up 26.8  percent of all registered voters, they accounted for only 20.7 percent of all votes for president.

Either the model was flawed or another factor determined the outcome.  That is where partisan turn out becomes critical.   Just under 75 percent of all registered Florida voters cast a ballot in 2016.   When party affiliation is taken into account, Democrats made up 37.9 percent of all registered voters and 38.1 percent of 2016 Clinton ballots.  In contrast, Republicans outperformed.  Although only 35.3 of all registered voters, GOP ballots constituted 38.7 percent of actual voters.  With this additional factor, the model predicted Trump would win Florida by 90,000 votes, just 24,000 votes different from the actual margin of victory of 114,000 votes.

2020 Election

Which brings us to 2020 and the question, “What, if anything, has changed in the last four years?”  First, there has been an increase in voter registration by Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  The advantage, as his been widely reported, goes to the GOP with an addition of 427,000 registered voters.  Democrats added 299,000 registrations, while NPA/Independent registrations increased by 175,000.

But that is the only good news for the GOP.   According to a consensus of polling data, registered Florida Democrats will vote for Joe Biden by a margin of 96-2 percent, a six point increase from 2016.  However, Republicans remain slightly less united behind Trump with an anticipated margin of 91-7 percent.

The bigger news is Florida independents are now predicted to break for Biden by a 49-41 percent margin compared to the 47-43 Trump advantage in 2016 (Source:  October 7, 2020 Quinnapiac survey of Florida voters).  Without factoring in Democratic turnout, the model predicts a Biden win by 565,600 votes or 4.08 percent, slightly better than the FiveThirtyEight average of 2.4 percent Biden lead.

Therefore, it will again depend on Democratic voter turn out.  As of this morning, 51.6 percent of registered Democrats have already voted compared to 47.5 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of independents.  If the model is valid, Biden already has a 649,700 vote lead a week before election day.  Without a Trump in-person turnout of biblical proportions on election day, this margin will be hard to overcome, especially if Biden supporters also continue to vote in record numbers.

Just to make sure I do not make the same mistake twice, I went back to all my political posts in October and November of 2016.  It was a relief!  Fortunately, I never predicted a Clinton victory despite referencing polling data which suggested she would win.  In fact, I found that I have been pretty consistent.  Consider the following excerpt from the October 12, 2016 post titled, ” Why Trump Has Gone  Nuclear?”  It just as easily could have been written this morning.

As this election cycle comes to an end, and barring a major reversal of fortunes, Donald Trump will not be the next president of the United States.  Rather than exit with some modicum of dignity, he has elected to up the ante, trashing anyone and everyone who has abandoned his “crusade.”  Pundits attribute this to energizing his base of die-hard supporters.  However, is it more likely he views his constituents as potential consumers rather than voters?

Will Trump pull another inside straight?  He is betting the American voter is insane, and as Albert Einstein suggested, is doing the same thing over and over assuming the outcome is going to be the same.  I have more faith in the people of Florida and am putting my money on George W. Bush, who infamously tried his best to remind us, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

Hopefully, on November 4th, 5th or 6th, I will not have to change my alias from Dr. ESP to NostraDumbAss.

For what it’s worth.
TBD

I look at it, I view it as, in a sense, a wartime president.

~Donald J. Trump/March18, 2020

Hearing those words, almost two months after he had been warned by his national security team COVID-19 would be the single biggest challenge of his presidency, one would think Donald Trump had signaled he now understood the threat and was willing to take it on.  Media heralded the about face and Trump’s approval ratings rose to the highest level since he took office.

But there is a difference between being in office when an enemy is waging war all around you and actually engaging in the fight.  Even then Trump claimed the battlefield was limited to just a few hot spots, and the rest of the country need not worry.  Where had we heard this before?  Maybe a September 27, 1938 broadcast to the British people by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in reference to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war.

However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbour, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in war simply on her account. If we have to fight it must be on larger issues than that.

To hear echoes of Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Fourth Reich, all you have to do is substitute “washing your hands” for “digging trenches.”  “N95 masks” for “gas-masks.”  Convince mid-westerners that New York, California and Washington state are the equivalent of a “far away country.” There was no reason to believe something “already settled in principle” would not “miraculously disappear.”  And finally, why would one ever consider a national response to a “big and powerful” health crisis confined to a few blue states?

How could two men, one with the benefit of “four score and two years” history and enlightenment following World War II, be so alike?  Perhaps, Chamberlain provides the answer in his June 1, 1937 remarks at Caxton Hall upon his election as leader of the Conservative Party.

I myself was not born a little Conservative. I was brought up as a Liberal, and afterwards as a Liberal Unionist. The fact that I am here, accepted by you Conservatives as your Leader, is to my mind a demonstration of the catholicity of the Conservative Party, of that readiness to cover the widest possible field which has made it this great force in the country and has justified the saying of Disraeli that the Conservative Party was nothing if it was not a National Party.

And to what extent was Trump’s non-answer about his response to the pandemic when George Stephanopoulos asked him during a September 15, 2020 town hall, “So you regret nothing?” straight out of the Chamberlain playbook.  In the same broadcast, the Prime Minister assures the audience:

You know already that I have done all that one man can do to compose this quarrel. After my visits to Germany I have realized vividly how Herr Hitler feels that he must champion other Germans, and his indignation that grievances have not been met before this. He told me privately, and last night he repeated publicly, that after this Sudeten German question is settled, that is the end of Germany’s territorial claims in Europe.

In that same ABC broadcast Trump took the opportunity to tell the viewers he was more akin to Winston Churchill than Chamberlain.  In Trump’s version of Bullfinch’s Mythology (in which “finch,” in this case, is now a euphemism for excrement), he claims his decision not to disclose the nature of the pandemic mirrored Churchill during the Battle of Britain.

When Churchill was on the top of a building, and he said everything’s going to be good, everything’s going to be – be calm.

What Churchill actually said in a speech to the House of Commons on January 22, 1941.

Far be it from me to paint a rosy picture of the future. Indeed, I do not think we should be justified in using any but the most sombre tones and colours while our people, our Empire and indeed the whole English-speaking world are passing through a dark and deadly valley. But I should be failing in my duty if, on the other wise, I were not to convey the true impression, that a great nation is getting into its war stride.

And four and a half years later, after a well-planned, concerted and coordinated effort by the allied forces, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany miraculously disappeared.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s three liberal members to leave intact a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision extending by three days the time for receipt of absentee ballots and allowing those with illegible postmarks to be counted if received by the deadline.

~Jess Bravin & Brent Kendall/Wall Street Journal

There being only eight justices following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a 4-4 decision requires the Supreme Court leave any lower court decision under appeal intact.  As is usually the case in such circumstance, neither side issues an opinion explaining the basis for their individual votes.

And right on cue, Republicans attacked the Chief Justice for siding with the three justices appointed by Democratic presidents.  If you had any doubt why Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell want nominee Amy Coney Barrett confirmed before the election, the answer is now obvious.  If already seated, this third Trump appointee would most likely have provided the pivotal vote to reverse the lower court decision potentially depriving tens of thousands of voters a voice in the presidential election.  And in the event of a close Biden victory in the Keystone State, I have no doubt Judge Barrett might still get her opportunity to weigh in on the issue.

How do you then explain Roberts’ joining with the three remaining Democratic appointees to create the deadlock?  The answer may lie in the less publicized news on Monday when the Court announced it would hear two cases involving challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts to curb immigration at the southern border.  The first challenge involves redirection without Congressional approval of $2.5 billion for defense projects  to build Trump’s border wall.  The second relates to the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy, by which Spanish-speaking migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. must stay in Mexico while their requests are processed.  In both cases, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, i.e. against the Trump administration.

If I had to guess Roberts’ motivation, it is a combination of two things.  First, it is an admission he believes Joe Biden will become president on January 20th.  Second, regardless of his ideology, Roberts knows his legacy depends on his ability to eschew being viewed as a hypocritical partisan.  Therefore, in the waning hours of a Trump administration, it is in the interest of a right-leaning court to to tamp down efforts by Trump to expand executive authority.  Then, if the court is asked to consider any similar efforts by the Biden administration, Roberts can reference these pending cases as evidence of consistent rationale.

For example, suppose Biden declares a national emergency in response to future spikes in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.  And one element of the declaration involves the re-appropriation of farm subsidies to fund urban food banks.  Who could argue with the Chief Justice this is no different from shifting dollars to build a wall.  It would be similar violation of Congress’ power of the purse authority in Article I of the Constitution?  Or in a post-Roe v. Wade world, policies affecting reproductive rights will revert to the states.  Roberts can point to his vote on the Pennsylvania voting deadline to proclaim, “As I have consistently done from this bench, render unto states what belongs to the states under the 10th Amendment.”

From a Constitutional perspective, that might not be a bad thing.  Americans would be well-served if both the judicial and legislative branches started to push back against the presidential power grab which has been the norm for too long when it comes to separation of powers as well as federal checks and balances.  The only remaining question would then be, “Can Chief Justice Roberts get the remaining five conservative judges to adopt a similar stance?  Or are we more likely to see them hypocritically hide behind the mantle of “originalism” to carry out their own activist agenda?”

I am still waiting for Justices Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to show me the Constitutional language which justified their finding in Citizens United that money equals speech.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP