thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
can get from the website that is, all the things underlined in the handout all those for the most part have hyperlinks to them where you can get more information about the rules in the states with regard to whos eligible to vote and information about the delegate selection process. This is something that has to be updated, because all the states havent kind of worked out all their rules yet. And so this is just a very good source about for getting information during the campaign. Im just looking at my notes here. Okay, so thats those are basically the rules. And I think the rules are very important, because with so many candidates in the race it means that the votes and delegates could be divided up in such a way that early on there may not be a clear leader who might be easy to predict in terms of getting the nomination. And this is a case where the rules matter, because to the extent that there are more states with proportional allocation of delegates, that has a way of leading to the process perhaps dragging out in a scenario which could lead to no candidate having at least on the Republican side, no candidate having a majority of delegates by the time of the convention.And the big question every year is, when things look close, is will we wind up having an open convention where theres no candidate whos entering the convention with a majority of votes. And here, I would argue that the rules matter a lot. They can actually affect how quickly and candidates can pick up delegates and how large those numbers are. So I cant emphasize that enough.Okay, so that so much for the rules, and most importantly, how to get more information up-to-date information about the rules.Okay. In the handout, if you go to page nine, the way theyre numbered top right hand corner, page 1 is 1 of 9, and then it goes to 8 of 9, and then after 9 Ive inserted a bunch of different things. Theres and the number circled at the top or at the very top is the page number that Ill refer to. Okay, so the candidates. Now, you might ask before I talk about the data in terms of support for the candidates at the moment, you might ask why is it that theres so many Republican candidates and relatively few Democratic ones? On the Democratic side, there are relatively few basically because Hillary Clinton was seen at the outset as being basically a very formidable candidate and being someone whos sufficiently strong-looking that in a sense that provided a disincentive for other candidates to run. Obviously, not enough of a disincentive for prevent anyone from running, but not a lot.Also, its the case now, this is not something thats widely talked about, but the way political scientists talk about how the question, how many candidates are going to run, they talk about it from the standpoint of the kind of the rational calculation of
a candidate, Is it worth me running? And the first question the candidate, they argue the candidates ask or should ask is, Well, if I run, what are whats the likelihood that Ill win the presidential election? Now, this year is not a good year for Democrats. That is, theyre running after two terms of the Obama Administration with and we can talk about this further with widespread perceptions that the Obama Administration has not done very well. The economys picked up but theres discussions about how wages have been sluggish, theres inequality. Also on the foreign policy front theres just been a succession of bad news there. And also this would be its not the data show that for a Democratic candidate running after a two-term president has had just disadvantages in some fashion, and weve actually seen that kind of thing in the past in recent years. So its not a good year doesnt look like a good year for the Democrats. On the other hand, it looks like a real good year for the Republicans. I mean, the Republicans are riding high in terms of their control of Congress and the Senate the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Senate could go either way in the next election. The House of Representatives looks like its going to be pretty entrenched Democratic for a while Republican for a while unless something happens and the Democrats really triumph in 2016 or a subsequent election.So the chances are odds are from the standpoint of a Republican candidate that if I run for the Republican nomination, if I get the nomination, theres probably a good chance that I would win, particularly compared to past elections. So that has a way of attracting candidates. And then the other thing that makes it easier for candidates to run is the fact that they that while theyre limited in terms of how much money they can raise for their own campaign expenses, they have potentially unlimited money available to them spent by other organizations and individuals campaigning for them unless they but theyre not but those other individuals and organizations are not allowed to coordinate. So they have a lot more potential money available. So if one candidate has one big donor whos ready to put on the line millions of dollars, that candidate has resources that he can count on later on. They key thing, though, is the candidate also has to raise enough money to spend on his own campaign activities, and thats where Perry Governor Perry and Walker were running into trouble.Okay, so thats how we basically got to where we are. Okay, so on page nine the most important piece of information on page nine is the answer to the question: Where can I get data on the latest polls in terms of the primaries and caucuses? Now, there are a number of websites that you can go to. Theres pollster.com, theres 538. These sites are what are called aggregators of polling data. There are others as well. That is, they
assemble the data from all the available polls. All the polling organizations who are doing polls post them on their website, make them available, and they kind of collect them.The one that Ive just found most convenient and useful at this point is a website called realclearpolitics.com. And for the most part, when the American press and the pundits and everybody talks about the opinion, the latest polls, theyre either looking at the latest poll reports theyve read or they just go to realclearpolitics.com or pollster.com to see what the latest is. And these sites are what we call aggregators of polls in the sense they assemble all the available polls that have been done. And then what they also do as part of their own analysis they do their they have their own methods of averaging the polls. Any one poll has many sources of error sampling error, other errors associated with polls; the polls are done using different methodologies. If you want to find out more about how a poll was done, if you look on page nine, for example, you see what in the table, the at the left, the RCP average, thats their average of all the polls. But going down that left-hand column, the first poll listed is IBD/TIPP. Now, I have to tell you I have to click on the link and get reminded who that organization is, but what I usually ask about those polls is questions like how many respondents they have, are they polling only registered voters or likely voters, whats their coverage and so on; but also what method they use. And the things to watch out for in terms of methods is are they using standard telephone survey methodology or are they doing robo-calls automated phone calling or are they doing some kind of internet panel survey. And those have there are debates about different sources of error in each, but the main thing is you have that information available to you there. The polls have different sources have sources of random and other kinds of errors. The averaging has a way of kind of canceling out the errors; thats the basic argument. Of course, its the case if all the polls are bad, youve just youre just averaging bad numbers and this is irrelevant. But the polls, at least to the extent that they are good or bad, they tended to be surprisingly similar in a lot of ways. And so in terms of the latest polling data, the national data are shown on there, and there you see the big story about how Trump, Carson, and Fiorina have been leading. We can talk about that. And then in terms of the more mainstream candidates, Rubio and Bush have looked looked a little bit better there. Now, of course, the national polls are giving a provide a general sense about how the candidates are doing nationally, but you have to keep in mind what matters is whats going to happen in the states, and most importantly, whats going to happen
in the early states. Because the early states are important because candidates who do well in the early states can use that to not only to kind of bolster their support nationally in terms of votes and have credibility, but they can attract campaign contributions. And thats that really is the name of the game early on. And so all this talk about these fringe candidates doing well, well, the argument is the pundits argue that theyre going to their support will eventually fall off, but thats I think thats probably true, but the better they do in the primaries, the more positive attention they get, the more contributions they could attract. I mean, the big question is will Trump accept start accepting contributions in any kind of big way. So the national data only tell us so much. The next couple of pages have the Republican results for Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. And what you can see there and we can just focus on the averages. Its Trump, Carson you have basically the Trump, Carson, Fiorina story, and then theres Rubio and Bush and Cruz in there. New Hampshire, same story. These polls didnt play out this way a few months ago. Things have changed in the course of the Republican debates. The Republican debates have been a great opportunity for the Republicans well, to for the candidates to showcase themselves, but its also been a great opportunity for them to bash the Democrats and the Obama Administration, which is going to be crucial in the general election.South Carolina now, this is a state thats not thought of as being peculiar in the way Iowa and New Hampshire are, and we can talk about their the peculiarities of Iowa and New Hampshire if you want. But even there, Trump and Carson are doing really doing extraordinarily well, much better than any political scientist I know would have predicted. And Florida, which should be a place that would be the bastion of support for Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, Trump is in the lead there, Bush is second, Carson is third, and then theres Rubio and Fiorina. So theres kind of a similar pattern playing out across the board there.Next page, on the Democratic side, this is where we see the well known lead that Hillary Clinton still has nationally. It was greater earlier on. Now, just to point out here, the polls reported here are the ones that were taken during the September through October 1st. If you want to see the earlier data, all of the earlier polls are on the real politics website. I just havent printed them out here for you to look at. But shes well ahead of Sanders, and theyve included Biden in the mix as well even though Biden has not announced. Biden, obviously, is the big wildcard here.The big story, however, is how things are playing out in Iowa and New Hampshire, where in Iowa Clinton has had a consistent lead, but the lead isnt is not particularly great. This is
on page 15, if you look at just look at the averaging. And of course, the big story is New Hampshire, where shes now running well, shes now running behind Sanders and behind Sanders in the race. Now, when I look at these data, I often wonder, well, are these data good and reliable and so forth. The polls that are being relied on there the NBC, CNN, and WBUR seem to be reputable, kind of standard telephone polls. But one thing you have to notice is that in all these polls, the sample sizes are relatively small. Theyre not the more typical sample sizes of 1,000 or 1,500, but since theyre focusing on likely voters in the primaries, then the sample sizes are on the order of 400. So they have a lot of sampling error in them. But the but just the consistency of Sanders being in the lead lends reliability to these particular findings.Page 17 South Carolina. Now, when you get outside of Iowa and New Hampshire, polls for the most part have been showing Clinton pretty sizably ahead. And in South Carolina, shes way ahead of Sanders. Biden does better there. Where Clintons source of consistent strength is can be seen in the comparison in the available data. And theres not a lot on this, but comparing white voters with nonwhite voters, among white voters nationally and Im not sure in South Carolina, I havent seen the data broken down she basically holds a slight lead. But its among nonwhite voters African Americans well, theyre usually lumped together as just nonwhites because the samples sizes are so small you really cant get big enough samples of Latinos and Asian Americans. But my bet there would be that her support compared to Sanders is just much greater among Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans who are registered Democratic voters. And then if you look in Florida, you see the basic same kind of pattern Clinton far ahead of Sanders, with Biden actually doing as well as Sanders, if not better, as we saw in the case of South Carolina. And then OMalley, Chafee, and Web are I mean, theyre really just very far behind and its almost surprising that theyre still in the race. Now, why are they still in the race? Theyre in the race because they can still raise enough money to be active in Iowa and New Hampshire. And what theyre banking on what the candidates who are further behind are banking on is that in Iowa and New Hampshire they can do well enough not necessarily win, but if they do well enough to basically contradict expectations, theyre going to become a story given the way the press looks for interesting things to cover and people might be interested in the fact that all of a sudden theyre going from 1 percent to 20 percent. That would be a significant kind of story. And obviously, the role of the media in all this is very crucial, and the media have been particularly important to the
Republican Party in the context of the debates, where the debates were televised, got a lot of attention, and then all of the story after the debates was about the debates. So the Republicans have been able to dominate the news in a lot of respects because they have the more interesting campaign, but because theyve been theyve been active, doing a lot more, and doing things that are newsworthy.The next page is and these are the least reliable and informative data. These are the data these are the trial heats; how would a particular Republican candidate do against a particular Democratic candidate. And we can look you can look at particular numbers here, but the thing thats very striking is that basically no matter what pairing you see, things look pretty close. I mean, especially this far away, where the polls cant be good predictors of what happens in the general election. That is all signs are here is that this is probably going to be a close presidential election, and judging by recent elections its going to very close. The Democrats and the Republicans are just very competitive in competing for the presidency.The one change that big change thats occurred in American politics is that it used to be the case from the 1940s on till 1980 the Democrats for the most part dominated the aggregate congressional elections; that is, they controlled the House and the Senate. Beginning in 1980, the Republicans got control of Congress on the coattails of Ronald Reagan. 1994 was a very important election; that was when the Republican Party captured, with Newt Gingrich leading the Republicans, the House of Representatives. And ever since then, the Republicans have been very competitive for the House of Representatives and also the Senate. So whats at stake in the upcoming election is whether or not the Republicans will be able to get unified control of the presidency, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. Theres a lot at stake in the election. From the standpoint of the Democrats, theres a lot to worry about.And Im going to stop there for questions.MODERATOR: So well take a few questions from New York and then well move to Washington if Washington has any questions.QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Shapiro, for this briefing. Stephane Bussard from Le Temps newspaper, Swiss daily. I have two questions. First, whats your take on the fact that now its up to the TV cable TV to fix the rules for the debates, for example, and no longer up to the DNC or RNC? Thats in terms in democratic terms it sounds a bit shocking to me.Then second question: Why how do you see the fact that the DNC, for example, is trying to prevent a candidate like Lawrence Lessig from appearing on the debate?MR SHAPIRO: Okay. Thats a very good question, and there are two pieces of that. One is that Id like to emphasize. One is the role of the media. Well, the media are important because the parties dont control the airwaves. They cant they basically
cant get on without that. They might have a shot at C-SPAN in some ways, but thats not going to attract a big crowd. And but working in their favor is the fact that theyre going to get a lot of media coverage, and I think they like that.Now, what they dont like is the fact that theyre not theyre not able to select whos participating in there. And the thing thats controversial about for one, it may be controversial that the media are selecting, but theyre selecting based on their evaluation of the opinion polls, assuming there are opinion polls. Now, remember, polling is one of my areas of specialization. Polls are not automatically done. The government doesnt do polls. Polls are done by organizations that spend their own money to do polls, and a lot of the media organizations themselves spend money, so thats for one thing.Okay, so the but assuming the polls are there, the next question is what polls do you count. And if theres been and theres a whole debate in the public opinion world, my public opinion world, about what poll is good enough to be counted, and theres no real clear agreement on this. And remember, Fiorina was allowed to participate in the last debate because she argued that there were not enough polls since the first debate to give her provide a fair calculation for her, and so she was allowed to participate for that reason. I actually think the polling part is in some ways more controversial than the political part that you mentioned.QUESTION: (Off-mike.)MR SHAPIRO: Oh. That the Democrats dont want him participating yeah. Well, thats where the the media are looking for presenting a good debate to attract large audiences. The party is looking for a serious debate with their with what they think are serious candidates. Theres a conflict there.QUESTION: Hi. Heidi Skjeseth from Dagsavisen, a Norwegian daily. I was wondering if you can talk a little about the Bush and the Clinton names and if the anti-incumbent feelings or these anti-establishment feelings will hurt these dynasties and if you want to call them political dynasties.MR SHAPIRO: Yeah. The U.S. has its political dynasties. Nowadays its the Clintons and the Bushes; in the old days it was the Adams family with two presidents and the Roosevelts, of course. And then, of course, the biggest dynasty of all in a lot of respects well, the biggest family name was obviously the Kennedys in that particular context.I think the question about the rejection of mainstream candidates goes beyond Bush and Clinton. I we cant run the experiment of what the campaign would be like without a Bush or a Clinton, but it seems to be clearly the case that the Republican primary and caucus voters who participate in opinion polls at this time have really rejected mainstream establishment candidates in a very big way. So theres that phenomenon, and Bush and Clinton are kind of crossing are part of that or caught in the crossfire here, so to speak. But no, theyve
obviously contributed to that kind of thing as well.I mean, the big question is is that do we what does it mean to have a Bush and a Clinton running. It is the case we do have sort of a dynasty effect at work here, but my view of this is a little bit more positive and constructive; that is, they granted, they had they obtained a big advantage politically by virtue of their names. But once they started running for office, they were in effect on their own; that is, they had to get elected. And then once they were elected, they established a certain amount of credibility that we can debate this that I would argue that they were able to maintain because of their performance in government Bush as governor of Florida, Hillary Clinton well, we can talk about whether her first lady is a qualification here, but she was obviously a senator from New York State and also she was a the Secretary of State. So at the time of this particular election, both of them were formidable candidates anyway.On the other hand, being a Clinton and a Bush gives them automatic name recognition and attention early on, which has the ability of attracting voters. Voters know who they are, and also it has advantages with regard to fundraising. Is there something unfair, some level of inequality about this in terms of ordinary people aspiring to politics? The answer is yes. But there are a lot of other sources of inequality as well, like money.QUESTION: Vasco DeJesus Rodriguez, VascoPress Communicacoes, Brazil. Im wondering, who establishes the law and oversees the system of contributions? What kind of limitations are imposed on the candidates in this realm? Thank you.MR SHAPIRO: Yeah. The rules with regard to campaign contributions in national elections, okay now, we have to distinguish national elections versus state elections. Individual states make the rules with regard to electing governors and state legislatures, okay. But in terms of federal elections, there its basically laws that were passed by Congress and signed by the President, and also rulings by the courts, in particular the Supreme Court.Currently, the there are strict rules with regard to how much individuals can contribute to individual candidates. The limit is $2,700 per person per race, but of course, that means that a family can a husband and wife can contribute twice that amount. Its also possible that the campaigns can orchestrate contributions by having what they call bundlers, individuals who basically attempt to raise money and bundle people together so they so each individual contributes 2,700, but if you have 10 people, were talking about $27,000. And that those are funds that can be used by the candidate to pay for campaign expenses.In addition and this just the Supreme Court has greatly simplified this there were laws passed by Congress in over the last 15 years that restricted other kinds of contributions, but the current system is basically this: Anyone or any group can contribute an unlimited amount of money to an organization or