What Do the Exit Polls Really Tell Us about Virginia?

To understand what the 2017 exit polls are telling us in Virginia, it is first necessary to understand what they got wrong in 2016. Estimates we have done for our Voter Trends in 2016 project indicate that Virginia's voters in 2016 were 38 percent white noncollege and 32 percent white college. White noncollege voters supported Trump by 67-27 and white college voters supported Clinton 51-42.  

Compare this to the 2016 exits in Virginia. The exits claimed that Virginia voters were 38 percent white college and just 29 percent white noncollege. They pegged the white noncollege vote at 71-24 Trump but actually had Clinton losing the white college vote 45-49. 

So, 2016 exit polls in VA practically reversed the correct proportions of white college and noncollege voters. In 2016, there were still more white noncollege than white college voters. Also, the 2016 exits overestimated the white noncollege Republican advantage and didn't catch that white college voters likely supported Clinton by a solid margin in the state.

OK, now to 2017. The 2017 Virginia exits claim that white college educated voters vastly outnumbered white noncollege voters by 41-26. They further claim that Northam carried the white college vote by a narrow 51-48 margin, while losing white noncollege voters by 26-72.

Extrapolating from the 2016 comparison above between exits and our data, I'd say better estimates for VA in 2017 are as follows:

• White noncollege and white college were likely close to equal as shares of voters (perhaps around 35 percent each), not heavily weighted toward white college as the exit polls claim.
• The white noncollege margin for Gillespie was likely closer to 40 points than 46 points.
• Impressively and significantly, white college graduates, judging from the shifts in the exits between the two years and using our 2016 figures as a baseline, may have given Northam a mid-teens advantage not the narrow 3 point margin shown in the 2017 exits. That could be quite important going forward.
• As for black voters, I am OK with the 2017 exits' estimate on margin (around 75 points) since our estimates and the exits agree on this data point for 2016. Possibly black voter share is a bit overestimated by the 2017 exits, judging from previous patterns. I suspect, however, that the slight decline in black voter share relative to 2016 registered by the exits is probably real. 

What Democrats Have Learned in the Year Since Losing to Donald Trump

According to John Cassidy of The New Yorker, it's all in our new report!

The Democrats, the White Working Class and Virginia

Could this man pull it off? Well, if he does, you can be sure he will owe his victory to white working class voters. That's Michael Tomasky's thesis in his Daily Beast column that draws heavily on the new Griffin/Halpin/Teixeira CAP report on "Voter Trends in 2016". 

The experts say Northam should win. But if you want something to worry about today, I implore you to read this report issued last week by Ruy Teixeira, John Halpin, and Rob Griffin of the Center for American Progress. The three authors set about to check the accuracy of last fall’s exit polls.

They looked at “a multitude of publicly available data sources” to try to find out whether last year’s exit polls told the story of the election accurately. They found that in a few respects, the exit polls were right. But boy did they miss some stuff, and one fact in particular.

The exit polls, they found, dramatically understated the percent of the total vote cast by non-college whites—that is, the category that best correlates to the famous white working class. Exit polls had non-college whites casting 34 percent of all 2016 ballots, and college-educated whites casting 37 percent. The actual numbers, according to the new study? College-educated whites were in fact just 29 percent of the total vote, and non-college whites were a whopping 45 percent of the vote.

I know what you’re thinking: There was a massive Trumpian white working class surge that the exit polls missed. But even that isn’t really right. Because they studied the 2012 results too, and found that almost exactly the same thing happened then. The 2012 exit polls had both groups of white voters at about 36 percent. But Teixeira, Halpin, and Griffin found that college-educated whites accounted for 28 percent of the 2012 vote, and non-college whites 45 percent. So apparently, exit polls just consistently undercount the white working class.

The way in which one can speak of a Trumpian surge is that of course these white working-class voters gave Donald Trump a bigger share of their vote in 2016 than they gave to Mitt Romney four years before. The authors note, in fact, that if Clinton had equaled Obama’s 2012 levels of support among non-college whites, “she would have carried, with more robust margins, the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Iowa (and just missed carrying Ohio). In fact, if she could merely have reduced the shift toward Trump among these voters by one quarter, she would have won the election.”

So there’s your explanation as to why we were all so shocked last election night. A heavily Republican demographic was dramatically undercounted.

Let's hope we're not shocked again. The Democrats appear to be running a solid margin among white college grads and a very strong one among black voters. But the white working class is a very different story and it is there the election could be lost. Stay tuned. 

What's Happening in Virginia?

The finale of the Virginia governor's race is upon us. Two things are clear: (1) Northam is running a narrow lead over Gillespie; and (2) voting cleavages by demographic group look very similar to those in 2016. The latter is actually quite an interesting development.

In 2016, according to the synthetic data analysis we conducted for our recent voter trends report, there was a very significant margin swing toward Democrats among white college graduates in Virginia, from losing this group by 5 points in 2012 to carrying it by 9 points in 2016. That's the main reason why Clinton carried Virginia by a greater margin than Obama--an unusual pattern for the 2016 election. 

That trend is evident in the just-released Upshot//Sienna poll of Virginia voters. Northam leads Gillespie among white college grads by an identical 9 point margin. 

As for white noncollege voters, Clinton lost them by 40 points in 2016 and Gillespie leads Northam by an identical 40 points in the Upshot poll. 

Black voters in the Upshot poll give Northam a 75 point margin over Gillespie, similar to Clinton's relatively poor showing in 2016 (a 79 point margin vs. 88 points for Obama in 2012). 

Perhaps it will all come down to turnout. In 2016, our estimates indicate that Virginia black turnout was down 3 points while white noncollege turnout was up 2 points. If the discrepancy in black and white noncollege turnout trends persists this Tuesday, the Democrats' newfound ability to dominate the white college vote might not be enough to carry the state.

Which Way for the Democrats?

Dan Balz has a good piece in the Washington Post that leans heavily on the recent Griffin/Halpin/Teixeira CAP report in posing this question:

At a minimum, the unfolding [Brazile] controversy among Democrats is a distraction they don’t need right now. But it could reflect deeper differences inside a party that can’t shake off 2016 and is still searching for a comeback strategy that goes beyond being anti-Trump.

That question hinges in part on which voters are seen as most important to the party’s coalition: African Americans and other minorities or the white working class. A new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank, offers fresh analysis of 2016 that tries to answer that question. The authors, Rob Griffin, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, plumbed available resources to produce the analysis, one that they say provides a more accurate portrait of the electorate than did the exit polls. The study does not attempt to evaluate the impact of Russian hacking on the campaign.

Among the conclusions is the electorate on Election Day 2016 included a higher percentage of white voters than the exit polls said at the time.

More significant, the composition of those white voters was strikingly at odds with the exit poll estimates.

“Briefly put, the exit polls radically overestimated the share of white college-educated voters and radically underestimated the share of white non-college-educated voters,” the authors write.

Exit polls said white college-educated voters made up 37 percent of the electorate, while white non-college-educated voters constituted 34 percent.

The CAP analysis says whites with college educations accounted for 29 percent of the electorate while whites without college educations made up 45 percent. A post-election online poll by SurveyMonkey reached a similar conclusion.

The report looks at the national electorate as well as those in some of the key states that decided the election, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the three Rust Belt states that sealed Trump’s victory.

After assessing how shifts in support and levels of turnout affected the most crucial states, the authors made other calculations and argue that Clinton would have won the election if either of two things had occurred. She would have won if black turnout and support levels had been identical to those of 2012 or if white non-college-educated voters’ support had been similar to that of 2012.

Neither course was as easy as it might have seemed, however.

The authors note that any Democrat would have had difficulty re-creating black turnout and support levels of 2012, given the election involved the first African American elected to the White House.

Anyone following would have struggled to generate both the turnout and support levels of those campaigns.

Nor do the authors underestimate the difficulty of retaining the 2012 levels of support among white non-college-educated voters, given shifting allegiances among that group that have been ongoing.

But the authors argue that even a modest improvement in her performance in 2016 would have allowed Clinton to win the three Rust Belt states.

Trump will be vulnerable in 2020, but Democrats still must better learn the lessons from Clinton’s defeat. To appeal to the full range of voters they need to win, the authors argue, Democrats must “go beyond the ‘identity politics’ versus ‘economic populism’ debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class coalition.” Is there a leading Democrat out there who has cracked that code yet?

That about sums it up, right? 

Science Fiction Saturday: Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter is a prolific British hard SF author who has written some of the most mind-blowing SF of the last several decades. The universe is his playground! His best work is contained within the awesome Xeelee sequence, one of the premier future history series ever produced, going from the primordial universe to the singularity at timelike infinity. Here's a description of the sequence:

Baxter's "Future History” mode is based on research into hard science. It encompasses the monumental Xeelee Sequence, which as of September 2015 is composed of seven novels (including the Destiny's Children trilogy), plus three volumes collecting the 52 short pieces (short stories and novellas) in the series, all of which fit into a single timeline stretching from the Big Bang singularity of the past to his Timelike Infinity singularity of the future. These stories begin in the present day and end when the Milky Way galaxy collides with Andromeda five billion years in the future. The central narrative is that of Humanity rising and evolving to become the second most powerful race in the universe, next to the god-like Xeelee. Character development tends to take second place to the depiction of advanced theories and ideas, such as the true nature of the Great Attractor, naked singularities and the great battle between Baryonic and Dark Matter lifeforms. 

Great stuff. Other good books by Baxter include the Manifold trilogy (Fermi Paradox fans, take note!) and the singleton, Evolution. I don't care too much for his various alternate history works and some of his other stuff is hit or mess. And don't expect elegant writing; he's no Paul McAuley. But that old "sense of wonder" hits on all cylinders with Baxter.

So dig into the Xeelee sequence if you haven't already. Meanwhile, watch out for those photino birds! And don't get me started on the dreaded Qax...

Obscure Music Friday: The Jim Carroll Band

Jim Carroll, a writer probably best know for his terrific memoir, The Basketball Diaries, was also a rock musician on and off. "People Who Died", the song linked to here, is remarkable and the best thing he ever did as a musician. In my view, it is a classic. It never fails to send a chill down my spine.

The video here is from his first--and best--album, "Catholic Boy". I debated whether to use that video, which has the crisp album version, or this messier live version with Lou Reed. Both are great.

Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
Judy jumped in front of a subway train
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others,
This song is for you my brother

Those are people who died, died
Those are people who died, died
Those are people who died, died
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

Wow.