It's hard to imagine political personalities changing the state probability matrix much...it's mostly ones and zeroes for all practical purposes, regardless of who runs on the tickets. It's been that way for decades. The matrix isn't fixed, but change is glacial.

Moreover, if my hypothesis is correct, and regional effects are small compared national effects, picking a candidate based on some critical "leaning states" seems a very marginal strategy. Better to select a candidate who plays well broadly and cross your fingers that the national news breaks your way. Christie struck me (and so many others) as a relatively good Republican pick, but not now given his troubles, and his odds would still have been very long even in the best of post-Sandy times. Hail Mary is not much of a strategy.

Any Republican candidate who isn't deluded or delusional must know this. What sort of candidate runs to lose? When election results are preordained, that's terrible for representative forms of government. Scary indeed.

Each cohort of "the youth vote" is a new cohort. One cycle's youth vote doesn't tell much about the next.

The near-term impact of likely-Democratic voter registration in Texas would probably be not to actually win the state, but to make a Republican presidential campaign have to pay attention to it.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. There is a group called (I think) "Blue Texas" or "Turn Texas Blue" (or something similar) who has been putting millions of dollars into a registration drive for Texas Latinos. This is a long-term project, obviously, but the fact is that Texas Latinos vote at a much lower percentage than Latinos in other nearby states. So some smart Dems put some money towards reversing this trend and getting Latinos registered and to the polls. We'll see, in 2014 and in 2016, whether this has any effect at all, but you've got to admire the effort.

-CW

That's an interesting question. How do second-term midterms relate to the following presidential election?

My inclination is to say "not much, probably," but this time around it could be more important.

To take your options (out of order), if the status quo wins and neither house flips, then not much will change politically (that's my guess). Senate will pass stuff, House will pass their own stuff, very few things will make it through conference committee, and we all have exactly the same issues to fight about in 2016.

If the GOP wins big and takes the Senate, then Congress will pass a whole bunch of stuff (after the GOP totally throws out the filibuster for legislation in the Senate), and Obama will veto most of it. The lines will clearly be drawn for 2016, since the vetoes will be big headlines each time.

If, however, the Dems win big and take the House, then we will see the dam burst. There will be a pent-up flood of legislation pushed by Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid, and all sorts of things Dems have been wishing for will pass (immigration reform, voting rights, equality legislation, etc.).

Now, this is the point where partisanship has to enter into your projection. If you believe the Dem agenda is a good one, then you will believe that this will all bode very well indeed for Dems in 2016. But if you believe the Dem agenda is far outside the mainstream, then Dems will pay the price of a big backlash in 2016, possibly losing them the White House.

It's an interesting question, especially (for me) that last one. What does anyone else think Dem control of House and Senate after 2014 would mean (a) for Obama's agenda, and (b) for Dems' chances in 2016? Let's hear your take on it...

LizM -

I asked about Biden because I personally believe that he's the only one who would even be capable of giving Hillary a run for her money. Well, maybe Elizabeth Warren would make for an interesting race, but I don't think she'll run this time around, personally.

But Biden's got name recognition going for him, and he's got a lot of charisma on the stump. Plus, he'll have served 8 years with Obama instead of 4 (for whatever that's worth, good or bad). I think he'd have a shot at the nomination, actually.

TheStig -

Aha! Analysis!

I got my main data chart from Electoral-Vote.com (they have a spreadsheet of every election in the 20th cent., broken down by percent for each state -- very handy -- I can look up the link if you can't find it on their site:

http://www.electoral-vote.com

They haven't updated the spreadsheet for the 2012 election, though, so I added those numbers in by hand. Should have mentioned my sources in the article, sorry.

GA - OK, this was mostly wishful thinking on my part. I wanted to be a little fair, since I had put PA and WI into Dem Lean. But the demographics of northern VA and NC are working the same way (but slower) in the suburbs of Atlanta. Sooner or later, GA will go purple. But you're right, I'm probably being premature.

WV - This one's interesting, because there is a lot of generational love for unions in the state. Also, a lot of racial influence (to be polite). I'll put it this way: if Hillary Clinton had been the Dem nominee, then she just may have taken WV in 2008. Of course, this could be sheer wishful thinking on my part, as by the numbers alone, WV has moved to solid red. Obama was briefly up in the polls in WV a few weeks before the election, and McCain's support was weak, but then there aren't a whole lot of polls out of the state, so it's tough to tell.

Overall, I agree with your call. 75% sounds about right, absent actual candidates' names. You're right -- it's a steep, steep hill.

One thing I should have mentioned in the article is that one shift which counters the blue-state shift to some degree was reapportionment. If Obama had won exactly the same states in 2012, his electoral count would still have been down from 2008. More people have been moving to the South (TX picked up FOUR House seats, while CA picked up none and states in the northeast lost seats). This won't be an issue again until 2024, but it is another trend worth pointing out.

-CW

Dusting off some of my own spreadsheets from '12...

I would rate most of your Safe Dem picks as at least 0.95 probability of a Democrat win, with some of the lower hanging fruit (Nevada) closer to 0.9.

Your Safe Republican picks seem even safer to me, rate them all 0.99 Republican wins, shoot, make that 1.0 for simplicity.

All of your Democratic Leaning picks strike me as strong leans, 0.75 or better odds of a D win.

Here's another minor quibble, I would place Georgia and West VA in the safe Republican Column, with near certainty of Republican pick up, give them a 1.0 to be on the safe side.

My own analysis indicates state voting shifts towards Red or Blue in any given cycle are highly correlated with each other (national trends strongly dominate local trends) so a good predictor of a Democratic electoral college win is to sum electoral votes in descending order of state probability until you reach or exceed 270. The probability of the last state or states putting Blue over the line is the overall predicted probability of Blue winning the Presidency. I don't claim the model is perfect, but it seems pretty reliable.

So, using my above odds for Blue safe and leaning states (which sum to 272 electoral votes) I'm making A Ridiculously Early Prediction that the Democratic candidate has at least a 75% chance of winning in 2016, based on electoral fundamentals.
That's the hill the Republican candidate must climb.

The remaining swing states don't impact the prediction, including traditionally critical Ohio.

Given these long odds, the most important feature of any Republican nominee ought to be how well he/she tilts a relatively few critical state level races. That's probably much more discipline than the primary/caucus process will allow.

Good reasoning.. :D

Michale

Biden got less than one percent of the vote in the 2008 Iowa caucuses.

Nothing much has changed since then. That is what surprises me.

I would be very surprised if he did.

I am very surprised you said that.. :D

Michale

Think Biden's going to run?

I would be very surprised if he did.

This, more than anything, will determine the 2016 election..

It won't matter what states lean Left and what states go Right.. If Democrats cannot prove to the American people that they are capable of LEADING, then the GOP will win the day.

To date, the Dem's leadership capabilities in leadership have been... found wanting...

Michale

IE..

What happens in 2016 if the GOP shellac the Dems in 2014 and extend their majority in the House and take the Senate..

What happens in 2016 if the Dems trounce the GOP, take the House and extend their majority in the Senate..

Also, what happens in 2016 if the status quo remains the same...

Hmmmmmmmmm??? :D

Michale

I think I've already dipped a toe into the candidate waters a bit (Christie, mostly), but I don't think I've looked at the Dem side of things at all. Maybe not next week (State Of The Union week...), but soon. Promise!

Think Biden's going to run?

dsws -

A couple of loose observations...

Obama brought in young voters, single women, and he increased minority voting. If Hillary runs, the single women (at least) will likely stick around to vote for her. The youth vote? Maybe, maybe not. Latinos, on the other hand, are becoming a bigger and bigger political presence, and I think they are well aware of their growing clout, so I see this as more of a long-term trend that's not going away any time soon.

Several states either have changed (NV, CO, NM), are in the process of changing (VA, NC) or may change in the near future (TX, GA) based on the demographic changes of their population. People moving around, more suburbanites, Latino presence growing, etc. I gave only Dem examples (states moving towards Dems) here, but I could easily give a few GOP examples in the other direction, too. I think the suburbs of Arlington and Atlanta are doing more to flip VA and possibly GA than gaining new votes from non-voting groups, to put this another way.

TheStig -

That last sentence of yours is kind of scary. The more I think about it, the scarier it gets. Just had to say that...

Of course, if the GOP ever does anoint the second coming of Saint Ronald of Reagan, then they could flip a lot of states back. Unfortunately for them, I don't see Ronnie II anywhere out on the horizon.

-CW

The next Republican Presidential nominee has an even bigger hill to climb than Romney did. Said nominee can run the swing states and still lose the electoral college.

If a GOP candidate has no reasonable chance of winning the presidency, only an ideologue has much incentive to run.

Any sign that either party is doing so? Who are the non-voters?

The exception, of course, was the flip of the Solid South from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican over the course of 1948 (Strom Thurmond's run as a Dixiecrat) to 1980 (the last time the so-called "Reagan Democrats" were identified as Democrats). Even that was aided by the shift of evangelicals from a stance of withdrawing from the evil of worldly politics to a pattern of wallowing in it.

Nice work.

Next week, can we talk about who the candidates will be? :)