Is Hillary Clinton going to run in #WH2016?On Betfair she’s 5/2 favourite to get nomination even though she’ll be 69 twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 2, 2013

Would this be a contest too far or success at last?

After twenty years at or near the centre of US political life, and four years of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton can now finally put her feet up and enjoy retirement. Or she can start seriously planning the presidential campaign everyone’s expecting for 2016. Take your pick.

In the short term, the two probably amount to much the same thing. After a genuine break, she can spend much of the next two years giving speeches and lectures, writing another book – perhaps the second part of an anticipated trilogy of autobiographies – and making enough TV appearances to remind people that she’s still there, while rationing them sufficiently to make each one count.

As the front-runner and establishment candidate she has the luxury for the time being that most of her rivals are reported to be waiting to see whether she’ll run before deciding on whether to commit to their own campaign.

If so, they may be making a mistake; Obama is where he is now because he didn’t wait his turn.

Indeed, the first Clinton won the White House in no small part because he jumped while others hesitated (including the father of potential 2016 runner Andrew Cuomo). Even if they were to run and lose, a decent campaign would put them up the batting order for 2020.

When a presidential doesn’t seek re-election, the usual form is for the vice-president to pick up their party’s nomination – Nixon, Humphrey, George HW Bush and Gore all did – but that sequence was broken when Dick Cheney chose not to. Biden, like Cheney, was chosen to add experience to the ticket and though he’s hinted that he might run in 2016, it can’t be ignored that he’d be 74 at the end of Obama’s term. There have been septuagenarian presidential candidates but they’ve all been Republicans; most Democratic candidates in recent years have been in their forties or fifties.

Therein may lie one of Hillary’s biggest hurdles: she’ll be 69 by the election and have been a fixture at the top of the Democratic party for a quarter of a century. That might simply be too long for too many. After all, the baton has already passed to the next generation once. Not only other candidates but also activists and the general public may feel that her time has been and gone.

If that is the case, there has to be someone else to fill the gap. Assuming Biden isn’t that person, who then? That’s certainly where the value will lie. The aforementioned Cuomo and Gov Martin O’Malley are, for example, 25/1 to win the White House and 12/1 for the Democratic nomination with Ladbrokes and there would probably have been some value with both there had they not signed same-sex marriage legislation as governors. That is the sort of record on which it becomes difficult to build a national campaign.

Perhaps the Democrats might be willing to risk such a candidate in some circumstances – after all, Obama has twice won without needing the Bible belt – but why chance it when there’s a quality safety-first option. If she’ll run. The upshot of which is that there’s probably little value on the Blue side of the equation and for once, it’s the Republicans who might throw up a candidate from out of the ordinary. But that’s another article for another day.

David Herdson

Pie chart showing the Gallup poll break-down on support for the Obama plans for stronger gun laws twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) January 19, 2013

But he’s got a big battle ahead

Tomorrow morning, in private because it is a Sunday, Barack Obama will be sworn in to start his second term in the White House. The big public ceremony takes place on Monday.

He’s already made clear that a key early objective is his plan, announced on Wednesday, for new laws designed to reduce gun violence.

This has become a huge issue in the aftermath of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut eleven days before Christmas.

The proposals include background checks on those wanting to buy weapons and bans on high-capacity ammunition clips.

In telephone polling that took place on Thursday Gallup found that 53% want their member of Congress to vote for the set of laws, with 41%, want them to vote against.

Reaction to the plan is highly partisan and there’s little doubt that Obama has a massive political battle on his hands in the weeks and months ahead.

Ahead of the White House election in November Gallup was producing the least Obama-friendly numbers so the fact that this is coming from that firm is significant. Voters do divide on party lines. Gallup finds Democrats supporting the plans by 82% to 15% while Republicans oppose by 72% to 22%.

Mike Smithson

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David Herdsonwonders how serious Obama really is about gun control. www7.politicalbetting.com/?p=54996 twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) December 22, 2012

How serious is he about gun law reform?

Barack Obama’s response to the dreadful murders in Newtown, Connecticut – that something must be done – could well make the contest to reform of gun laws the defining political battle of his second term, just as healthcare was in his first. It will not be a battle easily undertaken and certainly not easily won. The question is really whether he has the heart to embark at all or whether his response was just hot air.

That gun ownership is deeply embedded within the culture large parts of the US is indisputable. That powerful lobbies will stand up – as the NRA has already done – in vocal support of the status quo is equally obvious. Taking on such opponents will use up huge amounts of political capital. It may well mean that he can’t achieve much else of significance at all. If the reform fails, so will his second term.

Even so, even more powerful vested interests have been overcome in the past. Obama didn’t object to being compared to Lincoln, JFK or Martin Luther King during his 2008 campaign. Those men were prepared to risk and ultimately sacrifice much in defence of their values, both personally and on behalf of their nation (especially if Lyndon Johnson is tied in with JFK as part of the same administration). Now is the time for Obama to decide if those comparisons were grossly off the mark.

The reality is that even if the Feinstein bill to outlaw assault weapons becomes law – and there’s a good chance that it won’t – it may be ruled unconstitutional and struck down by the Supreme Court. Her law has been passed before but expired under its own terms. Since then, the Supreme Court has been more specific on what the Second Amendment means in practice and a ban sits awkwardly with those judgements.

That brings the debate to the nub of the matter: the Second Amendment to the US constitution, which states that “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. However anachronous that may now sound, it remains the rock upon which opposition is founded.

It is of course possible to interpret that in such a way that the right to keep and bear arms is only protected for the purposes of membership (or potential membership) of a militia. It’s even possible to argue that the right is only protected while the opening assertion remains valid and that if it’s not, then neither is the right to keep and bear arms. However, the Supreme Court doesn’t even come close to the former interpretation, never mind the latter, and justices who might favour such an interpretation are unlikely to be appointed any time soon. In any case, such a law might well be unconstitutional under the Tenth as well as the Second Amendment.

So, if there’s little prospect of a ban succeeding then what to do? That’s where Obama has to decide how brave to be. If the Second Amendment is the blockage then the solution has to include its repeal. Such a notion will be heretical to many and yet unless it is voiced then it’s difficult to see what can meaningfully be done. Even then, it would only be the start of the journey: the individual states could stand behind or reinforce their own constitutional rights to bear arms.

There is of course no prospect of such a proposal presently gaining Congressional approval, never mind that of the states. Why then do it? Because as with the anti-slavery and Civil Rights movements, a change in the political culture in terms of what is acceptable is necessary before reform can take place and that change has to be led; the flag must be raised. Otherwise, the deaths of dozens of children will continue to be seen as a regrettable but acceptable price to be paid for ancient, if anachronistic, freedoms.

Will he make such a bold move? The answer is almost certainly no: the political costs are too high, the pay-off too small, and he has other more pressing practical priorities such as the looming Fiscal Cliff. But then he didn’t really mean that something must be done; he meant that something must be seen to be done, even if it’s all an illusion.

David Herdson

Edmund in Tokyo on the Obama fight-back

One big question about the presidential election has been whether Republicans enthusiastic about defeating Obama and Democrats merely inclined to keep him, Romney will win the election by differential turnout. The Republicans often poll better among likely voters than registered voters, the combination of a weak economy and an uninspiring debate performance now puts the gap at as much as 5%.

But in an election where 6 billion dollars worth of persuation is being targetted at a small number of unfortunate voters, you may need not need to be enthusiastic to be persuaded to vote. As Iowa election commissioner Tom Slockett put it,

If you vote early they stop calling you,” said Slockett. “The campaigns are pretty well organized these days. Once they check you off as having voted, they take you off the list for robo-calls. The sale has been made.

There is some evidence that the Obama campaign’s organization is turning out voters who may not have been thought likely to vote. While Mitt Romney was blowing away Obama’s national lead in the first presidential debate, the Democrats were mopping up actual votes on the ground in Ohio.

According to PPP’s latest poll of Ohio, 19% have already voted early or absentee, with Obama taking 76% of them, against 24% for Romney.

NBC/WSJ/Marist have a smaller move, but they are reporting an increase in the number of self-identified Democrats in their likely voter sample, from an 5-point lead last week to a 11-point lead this week. They put it down to this:

One factor that may have pulled the party ID more heavily toward Democrats in this poll was early voting. One-in-five respondents (18 percent) said they have already voted, and, of those, almost two-thirds (63 percent) said they voted for Obama.

In other words, people who weren’t considered likely voters have gone ahead and voted.

Obama will be hoping to turn the narrative around in the next debate and close the enthusiasm gap. But in the states where it matters, he might not need to.

Edmund in Tokyo

Edmund in Tokyo’s inaugural guest slot

If the US presidential election were held tomorrow, it looks fairly clear who would win. Nate Silver’s “Nowcast”, showing his model’s estimate of the probability of an Obama win would be if the election day polls were the same as the polls today, currently stands at 95.8%. Neither Silver nor the betting markets currently think an Obama win in November is anything like that likely. Silver’s forecast for the actual election stands at a more conservative 77.5%, while Intrade still gives Romney a 30% shot.

Absent a serious failure in the state polling, Romney backers need to hope that something will happen to turn the race around before the voters cast their ballots. They may hope that the economy will take a dive, or that Obama will make some kind of serious blunder. They’ll be hoping that Romney will do well in the debates. They’ll be hoping that the money they’ve saved up for the last couple of weeks will give them enough of a boost to shift the dial. And they may even hope that after a succession of negative news cycles, a week or two without serious mistakes will be enough to close the gap.

But there may be less time left for that to happen than it appears. Bill Turque’s piece in the Washington Post looks at the impact of early voting. In 2010 a full third of votes were cast before election day, and this could go up to 40% this time around.

Looking at the swing states that Romney can’t afford to lose, Iowa, Virginia and North Carolina are already voting. Litigation-permitting, voting in the key state of Ohio begins on October 2nd, the day before the first debate. Romney could put in strong performances in the debates and turn his deficit into a lead, but for many voters in key states the election will already be over.

A mitigating factor here will be that undecided or weakly committed voters will probably less likely to vote early, and more inclined to wait and vote on the say. But both campaigns will have serious efforts underway to bank as many votes as they can in advance. It is of course possible that Romney could overturn a deficit in early voting by winning traditional election-day voters by bigger margins, but overturning Obama’s small but consistent lead already looks like a fairly high bar. Getting 50% of swing state voters plus one looks just about achievable with good turnout and a following wind. 51% or 52% looks exceedingly tough.

Romney could still turn this race around. But he needs to do it fast.

Edmund in Tokyo

David Herdson asks “Is Obama really so assured of some swingback?”

Conventions come and conventions go.  Providing they go more or less to plan, the candidate will receive a short-term bounce in the polls, some favourable coverage in the media and a reinvigorated campaign.  Such has been largely the lot of Mitt Romney this last week and such will likely be the case for Barack Obama next.  Romney has either closed the gap or taken a slight lead, depending on which polls you believe, but no-one expects it to last once the spotlight turns to the Democrats.

Nor should they realistically expect the bounce Obama will no doubt enjoy to be sustained once the campaign proper begins, post-Labor Day.  Which begs the question as to why it’s pretty much impossible to get better than 1/2 for him to be returned to the White House.

It is true that he built himself a very high base in 2008 from which to start, that most presidents in the TV era are re-elected, and that he’s consistently maintained a lead – albeit a small one – over Romney in head-to-heads all year.  Even so, while he should rightly be favourite, should he really be quite so strong?

The case against rests on a number of points.  There’s the simple maths to start with.  Even before the Republican Convention, Romney trailed by only small single figures, both nationally and in the swing states.  The RCP averages should be taken with a pinch of salt, but it shouldn’t be ignored that around 100 electoral college votes lie in states where Obama is given a lead of less than 2% – way more than enough to swing the contest (there are just 15 ECVs in states where Romney has a similarly small lead).  This is knife-edge territory.

In the subject areas, according to a recent Gallup poll, Obama has a lead on things such as likeability, taxes and Medicare but Romney leads on the economy, which is also seen as the most important issue.  Again, the president probably has the edge overall but it’s close.

On the subject of the polls, a critical factor – possibly the critical factor – will be relative turnout.  Obama enthused many first-time voters to go to the polls in 2008 with his message of Hope and Change.  He’ll find it much harder this time round with a record in office but modelling how far the drop-off goes will be difficult.

That brings us on to negative campaigning.  For all sorts of reasons, it was hard for John McCain to campaign negatively against Obama.  There was his message, where doing down Hope is almost akin to doing down America.  Even more, there was his historic role as the first credible black candidate for the White House.  To some extent that’s still the case but it’s far less so than it was.  His colour is no longer a novelty or even an issue spoken of (though it will still matter to some demographics, most especially the African-Americans).

By contrast, it’s far easier to attack a record in office than a person aspiring to it.  On the other hand, the very establishment a rather stiff character of Romney probably makes for an easier target than McCain did.  It’s also easier if you have the money.  In 2008, Obama outspent McCain by more than 2:1.  This year, spending is likely to be a good deal more even.

Then there’s the campaign itself.  Obama still significantly out-performs Romney in the charisma stakes but there were more charismatic candidates in the Republican primaries and Romney still came through.  He did so principally by not making any fatal mistakes and relatively few mistakes at all.  Considering how many debates he took part in, that was no small achievement.  There’s no reason to expect any different in the general election.  On the other side, Obama has to work out how to avoid the kind of defensive, safety-first, attritional campaign that reduces him to Just Another Politician, where he would be vulnerable.

The big question is whether we can expect the polls to change much between the pre-conventions period and election day.  There are plenty of reasons why they might but not many why they should.  To that end, the odds ought to mirror the polls rather more than they are doing.

David Herdson

Gallup have released some polling, one of which asks, Regardless of whom you support, and trying to be as objective as possible, who do you think will win the election in November.

Barack Obama 58% (+2%)

Mitt Romney 36%  (nc)

The changes are from the last time they asked the question in May.

Given the closeness in the Voting Intention polling, the 22% lead is interesting, and for Mitt Romney, probably disheartening, given “Americans’ prediction of who will win is significant since they have generally been correct in predicting the winner of past presidential elections.”

The Republican convention may give Romney a boost, but Hurricane Isaac may overshadow the convention.

At the time of writing, the best odds on Obama or Romney to win were to be found on Betfair.

Why Electoral College bands are not created equal

We can think about the US presidential election by considering three factors: the national swing away from or towards Obama since 2008, the predictable state-specific shifts (either to be added to or subtracted from the national swing in individual states since 2008), and a random jiggle to be applied to the vote shares in individual states, to take account of unknown state-specific factors and pure chance.

We can estimate the state-specific shifts, i.e. the extent to which a given state will buck the national swing because of known demographic and economic factors, by looking at state polls.

The table shows some key parameters for the battleground states. The second column shows the lead Obama achieved over McCain in 2008; if there were no state-specific shifts and no jiggle, we could predict whether Obama would win a given state in November simply by applying the expected national swing to the 2008 figures.

But we can do better than that: the third column shows the latest average poll figures from Real Clear Politics, which gives us an estimate of the effect of state-specific shift. (You could equally use Nate Silver’s predicted leads for each state to do this analysis).

The table is ranked in order of decreasing Obama poll lead in each state. Let’s start by making two simplifying assumptions: first that the individual state polls correctly capture state-specific shift since 2008, and secondly that there’s no random jiggle. With those assumptions, the result in a given state would depend only on whether the national swing at the election differs from the national swing that polls are showing.

Using RCP’s averages, the central forecast is that Obama will win all the states in the table down to and including Florida (this is the RCP ‘No Toss-Ups’ map). That would give him 332 Electoral College votes; see the last column, which shows the cumulative total EC votes down to and including a specific state in the table, assuming Obama wins all the easier states such as Pennsylvania as well.

Now consider what happens if Obama does a bit better that the polls currently show. To win the next state on the list, North Carolina, he would need to do at least 1% better, taking him to 347 EC votes. This is still within the 330-349 band in Ladbrokes’ Electoral College Votes market. Then things remain stable as we increase the national lead further; Obama remains stuck at 347 EC votes until we assume he is doing 6.3% better, when Missouri falls to him, taking us into the next band with 357 EC votes.

Now look at what happens if Obama does a bit worse nationally than the polls currently suggest. If his lead is just 1% worse, he might fail to win Florida, taking him down to 303 EC votes. However, at that 1% drop in support he’s also at risk of losing Colorado, Virginia and Iowa as well, potentially taking him down to 281 EC votes.

Thus, whilst the 330-349 band covers a chunky -0.9% to +6.2% change in Obama’s assumed national lead, the 310-329 band is unlikely to be a winner because it only happens if he wins Florida but loses Colorado, Iowa, and/or Virginia (but not all three of those)

The 330-349 band is therefore substantially more likely than the 310-329 band, and, in general, the probability distribution of EC votes is non-symmetrical.

Of course to do a full analysis we need to add in a bit of ‘jiggle’, to take account of the fact that the states might not fall neatly in the order we are expecting, and consider the correlation between shifts in different states. Luckily, Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com does all this work for you.

Every time he updates his model, he publishes an Electoral Vote Distribution bar chart, showing his estimated probabilities for given numbers of EC votes. It is a very uneven distribution indeed, with big peaks at exactly 332 (currently 8% probability) 347 (6%), and 303 (5%).

No doubt forecasts will shift around right up to Nov 6th, but, if you’re betting on the EC bands, this is an invaluable resource for figuring out which bands are created more equal than others.

Richard Nabavi is a long standing contributor to PB.