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The Democratic Loyalty Gap

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By NATE SILVER Special to the Los Angeles Times

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 24, 2008

Barack Obama seems to enjoy some enormous advantages over John McCain in their pursuit of the White House. Polls show that more than eight out of 10 Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. The Republican brand is in tatters because of the Iraq war and the economic slowdown. And Obama is on pace to raise more money than any presidential candidate in history.

But since clinching the Democratic nomination June 3, Obama consistently has held only a small lead, and now some polls show McCain has moved ahead.

That has led some reporters to conclude that Obama is underachieving. This perception chiefly exists because of the Democrats' substantial advantages in party affiliation. Across several different polls asking registered voters to identify which party they align with, Democrats have about a 10-point edge. Democrats also maintain about a 12-point edge in polls that ask whether respondents intend to vote for the Democrat or the Republican in their local race for Congress. These numbers represent a significant improvement for Democrats from 2004, when the electorate was more or less evenly split between the two parties. In comparison with these double-digit advantages, Obama seems to be underperforming.

Perhaps there should be nothing surprising about this. Other Democratic presidential nominees have done even less with similar partisan advantages. In 1980, for instance, Democrats had a 15-point edge in party identification over the Republicans - yet Ronald Reagan crushed Jimmy Carter by 10 points. Likewise in 1988, Michael Dukakis lost substantially to George H.W. Bush in spite of a slight edge in partisan identification. Although Democratic disloyalty in these races could be traced in part to the weakness of the party's candidates, overall, since 1976, only 80 percent of Democrats, on average, have voted for their party's presidential candidate, compared with 87 percent of Republicans.

Why does this Democratic loyalty gap exist? One possible reason is that in a party made up of multiple interest groups, differences of opinion are more likely. The breadth of the Democratic Party base was revealed during the primary campaign, when more than 35 million voters split their votes between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama across every conceivable racial, religious and socioeconomic line. Coal miners in West Virginia are, by and large, still Democrats, but so increasingly are hedge-fund managers in Virginia.

In congressional elections, this isn't a problem. The candidate can set his pitch to his or her district. But presidential elections are one-size-fits-all events - what works in Wheeling, W.V., might not work in Whittier, Calif. The more diverse and broad-based a party is, the more likely its members are to split their tickets.

For a party to represent a broad coalition of supporters is a nice problem to have. But it does mean that a Democratic nominee, who will appeal to some segments of his party but not to others, will tend to underperform his party's advantage on the generic ballot question of Democrat versus Republican.

But neither McCain nor Obama can be considered a generic candidate, because both enjoy strong appeal among independent voters. This is particularly the case for McCain, who largely has managed to avoid the stigma attached to the tarnished Republican brand.

As long as he maintains his moderate brand, McCain will seem acceptable to some large number of independent voters and some smaller number of Democrats.

In terms of party principles, the Democrats have won the election. The party's liberal base didn't have to compromise on its candidate, whereas a substantial number of conservative Republicans did.

But the Republicans seem wise to have compromised, because polling showed that Obama was headed for a landslide victory if his opponent was an identifiably right-wing candidate.

Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight.com, a political Web site.

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