Robert David Sullivan

2012 election not necessarily foreordained by GDP growth

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine piece by Nate Silver, "Handicapping the 2012 Election," is fun in a crossword-puzzle kind of way, but I think it cheats a little in the way it characterizes Bill Clinton's re-election in 1996.

I agree with SIlver's general thesis, which is that the outcome of a presidential race depends more on macro factors (primarily the state of the national economy) than on campaign tactics or Electoral College strategy. As he writes, "The sophomoric strategist thinks he can slice the American electorate into a million little pieces and make it more than the sum of its parts. The smart one recognizes our common bonds."

But it seems to me that the strongest argument against the idea that the election will be a referendum on the economy is the growing polarization and partisanship in the US over the past couple of decades. The problem is that the last election featuring an incumbent Democratic president can be used to support both arguments -- that it's all about the economy and that it's all about the trench warfare between the Reds and Blues.

Is GOP planning to win 2012 election without winning the election?

Jonathan Bernstein is concerned that GOP-dominated state legislatures could conjure up Fox News-ish reasons (like horror at college students casting ballots) to throw out election results they don't like:

The nightmare scenario is that Democrats win the presidential election by a handful of Electoral Votes; Republicans allege fraud, but fail in attempts to overturn it in the courts; and then in one or more states that voted for the Democrat but have Republican state governments, the legislature nullifies the states' election and installs a slate of GOP electors.

I'm sure that Republican leaders hope that they won't be forced to take such action. They sincerely prefer to win by getting more votes than than the Democrats -- in a low turnout where urban areas don't take unfair advantage of the "one person, one vote" principle by casting more ballots than areas with fewer people.

Laws requiring voters to have picture identification, as well as earlier voter registration deadlines and shorter periods for mail-in ballots, are part of the plan to avoid doing what Bernstein fears. As for the "minimal" inconvenience of acquiring and producing picture ID, I recall when I lived and voted in Boston's South End. During the presidential election of 1992, the line in the morning was so long that I saw about 20 people (probably Democrats, given their, ah, complexion) give up after 45 minutes or so and leave, some of them complaining about being late for work.

Certainly, anything that makes voting more complicated and time-consuming is going to have the effect of calibrating turnout downward. I suppose some poll workers in urban neighborhoods might try to speed things along by barely glancing at the photo IDs, but then GOP "poll watchers" will have a handy reason to declare the results of those precincts null and void.