It's no surprise that Gov. Scott Walker won the recall. Polls had shown him ahead for some time. The question here is: did the spending make a difference? In such quandaries, a counterfactual is the best way to demonstrate causality. For example, would Walker have won....if he had raised less money? ...or if he had raised a higher proportion of his money from in-state donors? ...or if Barrett had raised more? Seth's attempt to capture such a counterfactual using the 2010 election is reasonable, perhaps because it some of the only evidence we have. I think some readers have found this unsatisfying because the implication is that the two years of intervening political turmoil were, perhaps, meaningless (at least in terms of affecting political change in the form of an election outcome).
My colleague in Wisconsin, Nils Ringe, pointed out an intriguing observation: Barrett received about as many votes as there were signatures on the Walker recall petition (around a million signatures and votes). It seems that nearly everyone who voted for Barrett, perhaps, signed the petition to recall the Governor. There are two ways to read this, with respect to our question above: 1. If Barrett had spent more money (equal to Walker) he could have mobilized more voters--those who supported him but hadn't signed the petition--and surpassed Walker. Or, 2. Barrett successfully mobilized all the voters he possibly could have to support his cause.
Do we have any evidence for either of these? Turnout may be a good indicator of which interpretation is more valid. If turnout was low, then interpretation 1 may carry more weight. High turnout might indicate that interpretation 2 is more plausible. Turnout in Tuesday's election was near 60 percent. In historical terms in Wisconsin, this was not record breaking (in 1960 it is estimated that 72 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the Kennedy-Nixon race), but it is quite high, and much higher than typical, non-national elections in the United States. I find this evidence more consistent with the claim #2 above: just maybe Barrett was able to maximize the mobilization for his candidacy, both in the petition phase and the ballot phase of the recall effort. This does not mean that more money wouldn't have mobilized even more voters, but given the other evidence discussed in prior posts, it seems Barrett may have maxed out his total support (financial and otherwise).
Came in via Dan Drezner's blog, found this really, really interesting especially from a "hey, I work on campaigns perspective."
ReplyDeleteAre there any other indicators other than turnout? Wisconsin has been a historically progressive state, no? Could it be the case there's a number of potential Democrat voters hiding, but the issue had to be different than what it was?
Great new blog guys! Question, doesn't poli sci literature point to money being important in low information or "down ballot" races? That is outspending an opponent by a lot is far more effective in a county commissioner race or congressional primary than a Presidential race where the news coverage is so heavy. If so, the Wisconsin recall might have behaved more like a presidential race where money wouldn't matter that much at all. It was a HUGE event is Wisconsin from the initial recall drive on the legislative side last summer through the petition gatherings to the Dem primary to the final recall. The media even turned it into on of those long running "mega-stories" with focuses on "this divided state" type stuff and the human interest side etc. Any thoughts on that?
ReplyDeleteWell a problem is that Walker never stopped campaigning! He had money to continuously keep ads on TV beginning with ads against the recall itself. There were no ads defending the recalls and giving a rationale for the recall. As a result, exit polls showed that 60% of the people voting were against recalls. So Walker's money did affect the outcome as he convinced the majority of voters that recalls were a bad idea
ReplyDeleteWell, they weren't *so* against recalls that they couldn't vote in one, so I don't read too much into that exit polling. Plus, we have no idea what the public's opinion of recalls was prior to the movement to recall. Thus, I don't find this convincing evidence that Walker's money necessarily affected voters' opinion of recalls. There does, however, seem to be some mounting evidence that Walker's money helped to improve turnout, compared to what it otherwise might have been. Of course, we can't be sure if the balance of that excess turnout favored Walker or not.
ReplyDeleteTom Barrett received 1,162,785 votes in the recall election.
ReplyDeleteThe recall forces turned in 931,053 signatures against Walker, and the GAB certified 900,039 signatures against Walker.
1,162,785 votes is 25% higher than the total of 931,053 signatures turned in.
1,162,785 votes is 29% higher than the total of 900,039 certified signatures.
By either metric, Barrett received either 25% more or 29% more votes than total signatures. I question the premise that "Barrett successfully mobilized all the voters he possibly could have to support his cause."
We'll never know if more advertising would have mattered, particularly in the crucial November 2011-March 2012 time period when Walker had zero competition on the airwaves, but, by being outspent 7:1, Barrett garnered somewhere between 25% and 29% more votes than recall signers.
It seems likely more parity in the money war could have upped this percentage.
Looking back into the contribution data from 2010, Walker had a HUGE individual contributor base, with almost 92% of his contributions [$10.1 mil] coming from over 60,000 individuals. Barrett raised about $5.5 million from fewer than 20,000 contributors. Additionally, if you look at the in v. out of state contribution percentages for both, Barrett received almost about 14% of his money from outside of Wisconsin, compared to 6% for Walker.
ReplyDeleteCompare this to Walker's 2012 contribution reports; he brought in over $27 million, or about 91% of his total fundraising, from 241,252 individuals. This means that FOUR TIMES the number of people donated to Walker for the recall than did for the 2010 general election. Barrett's fundraising trends were about the same as they were in 2010 - ~44,000 contributors donated about $3.5 million, most coming from individuals, with an increase in out of state contributions [up to 25%]. Walker's out of state percentage? Over 50%.
So maybe, just maybe, it's not the dollars... it could be the underlying distribution of the donor base.
I don't think Walker's spending hurt Barrett, so much as Barrett's failure to spend more made it harder to make his case. It looks like Barrett got all or nearly all of the votes of people who disapproved of Scott Walker, so if he could have driven Walker's disapproval higher, he could have done better. Also, if it's true that people didn't feel like Walker cleared the bar in terms of deserving a recall, more people knowing the details about the criminal investigation into his time in the Milwaukee County Exec's office would have put more votes in play.
ReplyDeleteIt probably also would have helped Barrett if he'd gotten into the race sooner than two months before the election.