Politics
Alaska: Land of Contradictions
The politics of the Last Frontier are a strange brew of libertarianism, moralism, privacy and a love of government handouts.
In many ways, the politics of Alaska are a study in contrasts.
On one hand, the state receives more federal money per capita than any other state in the union ($506.34, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense), and 1 in 3 jobs there is connected to the federal government. But a strong anti-government libertarian tradition resonates — in 1990, the state even elected a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party, Walter Joseph Hickel, to be its governor.
On one hand, Alaska is a remarkably sparsely populated state, with just 0.22 percent of the U.S. population (670,000 people) living on a giant landmass that would simultaneously touch Southern California, Florida and Lake Superior if superimposed on the lower 48 (it is 570,380 square miles, just slightly smaller than all of Iran). But the majority of Alaskans (61 percent) lives in a single metropolitan area (Anchorage).
On one hand, Alaskans take their right to privacy seriously — Alaska is the only U.S. state in which possession of marijuana is legal (in small amounts). But the state is also home to an increasing number of evangelical Christians, who consider a broad range of supposedly private vices to be a public matter.
Peeing Off the Porch
One of those conservative Christians is Gov. Sarah Palin, who burst onto the national scene last month when John McCain tapped her to be his running mate, putting Alaska on the radar of the rest of the country.
To many Americans in the lower 48, Alaska is a strange and far-off place. The classic stereotype is a land of unforgiving climate and rugged individualism, the kind popularized by books like Going to Extremes by Joe McGinnis or shows like Northern Exposure.
This, however, is increasingly a myth, said Carl Shepro, a professor of political science at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
“There’s this idea that you can live in Alaska and be happy and nobody will be around, and you can go out and pee off your porch and nobody’s going to see it,” he said. “And that’s just not the reality in Anchorage or Juneau or Fairbanks.
“There are people who perceive themselves to be rugged individuals,” he added, “and there are some people who do live that way, but the real myth is the fact that we’re so independent and we distrust government and we don’t want anything to do with government, and the reality is: Look at Senator (Ted) Stevens. He was able to bring home earmarks. The state is right out there with their hands out. Sarah Palin was right out there with her hands out.”
Fifty years ago, the ethos of independence might have been closer to the reality. When Alaska joined the union in 1959, most of its residents had grown up in sparsely populated frontier colony that reinforced a sense of individualism. They even wrote an explicit right to privacy into the state constitution.
It is a right to privacy that Alaskans continue to take seriously. In 2003, for example, the Alaska state Legislature passed a resolution condemning the USA PATRIOT Act, instructing state police not to “initiate, participate in, or assist or cooperate with an inquiry, surveillance or detention” without “reasonable suspicion of criminal activity under Alaska State Law” — quite at odds with the stance of the national Republican Party.
It is also this right to privacy that guarantees Alaskans the freedom to possess small amounts of marijuana.
But starting in 1968, with the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, and in 1977, with the completion of the Trans-Alaskan oil pipeline, an oil boom began attracting increasing numbers of transplants from oil-producing states like Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma; with them arrived conservative Christian values commonly seen in those states. Alaska has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, and almost all of its elected leaders since then have been Republicans.
And as more and more transplants arrive (the population of the state has grown steadily, from 226,167 in 1960 to 626,932 in 2000), the state Republican Party has become more religiously oriented.
“The popularity of the religious right has been growing, and probably the reason (Palin) got elected is because of the number of people who identify with the religious right,” Shepro said. “Palin is in the vanguard of the religious Christian right in Alaska.”
Gerald A. McBeath, a professor of political science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, described Alaska’s political culture as a hybrid of individualistic and moralistic cultures, drawing on Daniel Elazar’s typology of state political cultures. (Elazar breaks state political culture into three domains: moralistic, individualist and traditionalistic.)
“Individualism obviously fits into the frontier mystique, the self-reliance given very extreme climate circumstances,” said McBeath, author (with Thomas A. Morehouse) of Alaska Politics and Government. And moralism, he said, refers to the increasing religious dimension of politics.
America's Breakaway Republic?
And what about the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party, whose convention Sarah Palin attended and of which her husband Todd was once a member?
The party was founded in 1973 by a man named Joe Vogler, who objected to the federal government telling him how he could use his mining claims. In 1986, he ran for governor and won about 10,000 votes (5.5 percent of all votes), tapping into the strong individualist element in the population. Part of his platform was secession from the United States.
Though it looked like the party was finished after that, in 1990, Walter Joseph Hickel, who had been a Republican, successfully ran for governor as a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. But Shepro said that Hickel never really took the secessionist agenda seriously.
“The rhetoric was there, but for all practical applications, he was a Republican.”
McBeath, meanwhile, dismissed the Alaskan Independence Party as “a flash in the pan,” part of a larger “sagebrush rebellion of oppositional sentiment” that took place in many Western states in the 1970s and ’80s.
But the Alaskan Independence Party does fit into a larger populist tradition in Alaska. McBeath notes that the state has a relative openness to political upstarts and low statewide election filing fees ($100) to make it easy for newcomers to enter the fray.
“In most American states, Sarah Palin would never become governor,” McBeath said. “But Alaska provides the kinds of opportunities for ambitious people that are not available elsewhere. So she took her moralist approach and decided to enter, and it was easy for her to do so.”
Alaska also has strong tradition of statewide ballot initiatives. “We’re constantly wanting to throw stuff in front of people,” McBeath said.
Then there are the taxes — or, rather, the lack of taxes. In 1976, the state government set up something called the Alaska Permanent Fund, which manages the surplus in state oil revenues and gives every resident of Alaska an annual tax refund of about $2,000. Alaskans pay no taxes, except for a property tax.
Yet, Shepro said, “Alaskans feel they are overtaxed. We have the lowest tax burden in the U.S., but if you talk to the average person on the street, they say they are being taxed to death and want to elect Republicans. People say they hate socialism and government ought not to be doing all the things it does, but they’ll take a check from the government as a reward for living in Alaska.”
But perhaps in this contradiction, Alaskans are not so unique after all.
“People like road building and the money they get, and they don’t like government,” McBeath said. “Tell me something new. These contradictions are a fact of life everywhere.”
http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/730
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Are Polls Overstating Obama’s Support?
Are Polls Overstating Obama’s Support?
There is a long history of black Democratic candidates doing worse than pre-election polling would suggest. Two recent studies disagree on whether this problem is still with us.
By: Lee Drutman | September 30, 2008
California. 1982. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a Democrat, is running to be the first black governor in his state's history. Days before the election, he is up by almost 10 points in the polls. But when the returns come in, Republican George Deukmejian is declared the winner.
Virginia. 1989. Lt. Gov. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, is running to be the first black governor in his state's history. Days before the election, polls give him a nine-point lead. When the returns come in, Wilder is indeed the winner — but only by a few thousand votes.
Some call it the Bradley Effect; others call it the Wilder Effect — this idea that pre-election polling tends to overstate the support for black candidates, especially Democrats. This happens, it is alleged, because there are a significant number of voters who tell pollsters that they'll support their party's candidate. But then, because they are ultimately uncomfortable voting for a black candidate, they don't.
With polls suggesting America is on the verge of electing its first black president in just a few weeks, both campaigns have largely been quiet on the issue of race. Race is, of course, a factor: A widely cited poll by AP-Yahoo News in late September found Obama's race is costing him 6 percentage points in support before the general election.
But the question lingers: Should the Obama campaign be worried that polls are overstating his support? Is his narrow lead safe from private racist sentiments that white Democrats refuse to share with pollsters?
Two recent academic studies have come to different conclusions on this question by examining past senatorial, gubernatorial and mayoral races with black candidates.
Daniel J. Hopkins, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's department of government, is convinced that the Bradley/Wilder Effect is largely a thing of the past. His analysis suggests that, at least since 1996, pre-election polling on black candidates has been accurate. Racism may still exist, but it no longer skews polling.
But Christopher Stout and Reuben Kline, both Ph.D. candidates in political science at University of California, Irvine, think that the Bradley/Wilder Effect is still very much with us, and that, all else being equal, polling numbers will overstate support for black Democrats by about three percentage points.
Stout and Kline argue that in order to understand the Bradley/Wilder Effect, one should pay attention to how competitive the election is. They find that in close, high-turnout elections, the effect tends to be more pronounced.
The reason, they argue, is that in a close election, Democratic voters feel more social pressure to support the Democratic nominee, fearing that any stated deviation from their party would make them look racist, since what other justification could they have for voting Republican in such a close race?
"They don't want to look racist to the pollster, but then they end up not voting for the black candidate or just not voting at all," Kline said.
Controlling for closeness of election, turnout and a few other contextual factors, their model predicts that, on average, pre-election polls will overstate support for black candidates by 3.3 percentage points.
Though a simple plot of elections over time makes it look like the Bradley/Wilder Effect fades post-1996, Stout and Kline argue that this is actually an artifact of other trends. One, there haven't been that many close elections involving black candidates in recent years. And two, there are more black Republicans running, and Republican voters are more comfortable telling pollsters they will vote against a black candidate (hence, no Bradley effect).
"People say the Bradley Effect is going away, but they're looking at elections that are not competitive and more Republican black candidates," Stout said.
Hopkins, however, argues that the post-1996 disappearance of the effect is indeed real but easily missed because of a frequently overlooked aspect of polling bias — the tendency to for polls to overstate the frontrunner generally (his best guess is that there is a 2.5 percentage point bias in favor of a leading candidate). "I think the Wilder Effect can sometimes be confused with the frontrunner effect," Hopkins explained.
Taking the frontrunner effect into account, Hopkins finds that evidence for a Bradley/Wilder Effect of about 2.3 points but only until 1996. Then, he finds, it just drops off pretty suddenly.
"One thought is that this is a generational effect, and that there is a particular generation that harbors racial biases but an anti-racist norm, and the Wilder Effect is a factor of those two processes together," Hopkins said. "But if that were true, it should disappear gradually."
Rather, Hopkins thinks it has something to do with the way the political agenda changed around that time. "By 1997," he noted, "welfare was off the agenda, crime's prominence as an issue had declined; so two racial issues are less salient. And starting in the 1990s, Republican candidates have run fewer racialized campaigns."
Hopkins also points to the work of Zoltan Hajnal, whose recent book, Changing White Attitudes Toward Black Political Leadership, has shown that white voters who have concerns about black political leaders tend to lose those concerns once they actually experience black political leadership. So, Hopkins wonders: "Did Wilder himself help to eliminate the Wilder Effect by showing that there wasn't much to fear from an Afro-American executive?"
And what about the upcoming presidential election? What should we expect?
"It's a close election and a high-turnout race, and all this indicates there's going to be a decent Bradley Effect," Stout said.
Kline, meanwhile, noted that in swing states such as "Ohio, and probably Michigan, you have socially conservative Democrats, and that's probably a problem for Obama because it seems like those should be the voters most likely to falsify their preference (i.e., lie to pollsters). They should be voting Democratic, but they may be reticent to do so."
Indeed, a recent AP-Yahoo News poll found that 40 percent of white Americans and more than a third of white Democrats and independents maintain negative attitudes toward blacks. But this doesn't mean necessarily that Obama's support is overstated. In fact, it may be one reason why Obama is not doing better.
"The Wilder Effect is often misunderstood," Hopkins said. "People tend to think that if there is no Wilder Effect, then there's no racial bias, but the Wilder Effect is one form of racial bias, and race can in many ways influence voter choices without producing a Wilder Effect."
http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/732
There is a long history of black Democratic candidates doing worse than pre-election polling would suggest. Two recent studies disagree on whether this problem is still with us.
By: Lee Drutman | September 30, 2008
California. 1982. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a Democrat, is running to be the first black governor in his state's history. Days before the election, he is up by almost 10 points in the polls. But when the returns come in, Republican George Deukmejian is declared the winner.
Virginia. 1989. Lt. Gov. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, is running to be the first black governor in his state's history. Days before the election, polls give him a nine-point lead. When the returns come in, Wilder is indeed the winner — but only by a few thousand votes.
Some call it the Bradley Effect; others call it the Wilder Effect — this idea that pre-election polling tends to overstate the support for black candidates, especially Democrats. This happens, it is alleged, because there are a significant number of voters who tell pollsters that they'll support their party's candidate. But then, because they are ultimately uncomfortable voting for a black candidate, they don't.
With polls suggesting America is on the verge of electing its first black president in just a few weeks, both campaigns have largely been quiet on the issue of race. Race is, of course, a factor: A widely cited poll by AP-Yahoo News in late September found Obama's race is costing him 6 percentage points in support before the general election.
But the question lingers: Should the Obama campaign be worried that polls are overstating his support? Is his narrow lead safe from private racist sentiments that white Democrats refuse to share with pollsters?
Two recent academic studies have come to different conclusions on this question by examining past senatorial, gubernatorial and mayoral races with black candidates.
Daniel J. Hopkins, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's department of government, is convinced that the Bradley/Wilder Effect is largely a thing of the past. His analysis suggests that, at least since 1996, pre-election polling on black candidates has been accurate. Racism may still exist, but it no longer skews polling.
But Christopher Stout and Reuben Kline, both Ph.D. candidates in political science at University of California, Irvine, think that the Bradley/Wilder Effect is still very much with us, and that, all else being equal, polling numbers will overstate support for black Democrats by about three percentage points.
Stout and Kline argue that in order to understand the Bradley/Wilder Effect, one should pay attention to how competitive the election is. They find that in close, high-turnout elections, the effect tends to be more pronounced.
The reason, they argue, is that in a close election, Democratic voters feel more social pressure to support the Democratic nominee, fearing that any stated deviation from their party would make them look racist, since what other justification could they have for voting Republican in such a close race?
"They don't want to look racist to the pollster, but then they end up not voting for the black candidate or just not voting at all," Kline said.
Controlling for closeness of election, turnout and a few other contextual factors, their model predicts that, on average, pre-election polls will overstate support for black candidates by 3.3 percentage points.
Though a simple plot of elections over time makes it look like the Bradley/Wilder Effect fades post-1996, Stout and Kline argue that this is actually an artifact of other trends. One, there haven't been that many close elections involving black candidates in recent years. And two, there are more black Republicans running, and Republican voters are more comfortable telling pollsters they will vote against a black candidate (hence, no Bradley effect).
"People say the Bradley Effect is going away, but they're looking at elections that are not competitive and more Republican black candidates," Stout said.
Hopkins, however, argues that the post-1996 disappearance of the effect is indeed real but easily missed because of a frequently overlooked aspect of polling bias — the tendency to for polls to overstate the frontrunner generally (his best guess is that there is a 2.5 percentage point bias in favor of a leading candidate). "I think the Wilder Effect can sometimes be confused with the frontrunner effect," Hopkins explained.
Taking the frontrunner effect into account, Hopkins finds that evidence for a Bradley/Wilder Effect of about 2.3 points but only until 1996. Then, he finds, it just drops off pretty suddenly.
"One thought is that this is a generational effect, and that there is a particular generation that harbors racial biases but an anti-racist norm, and the Wilder Effect is a factor of those two processes together," Hopkins said. "But if that were true, it should disappear gradually."
Rather, Hopkins thinks it has something to do with the way the political agenda changed around that time. "By 1997," he noted, "welfare was off the agenda, crime's prominence as an issue had declined; so two racial issues are less salient. And starting in the 1990s, Republican candidates have run fewer racialized campaigns."
Hopkins also points to the work of Zoltan Hajnal, whose recent book, Changing White Attitudes Toward Black Political Leadership, has shown that white voters who have concerns about black political leaders tend to lose those concerns once they actually experience black political leadership. So, Hopkins wonders: "Did Wilder himself help to eliminate the Wilder Effect by showing that there wasn't much to fear from an Afro-American executive?"
And what about the upcoming presidential election? What should we expect?
"It's a close election and a high-turnout race, and all this indicates there's going to be a decent Bradley Effect," Stout said.
Kline, meanwhile, noted that in swing states such as "Ohio, and probably Michigan, you have socially conservative Democrats, and that's probably a problem for Obama because it seems like those should be the voters most likely to falsify their preference (i.e., lie to pollsters). They should be voting Democratic, but they may be reticent to do so."
Indeed, a recent AP-Yahoo News poll found that 40 percent of white Americans and more than a third of white Democrats and independents maintain negative attitudes toward blacks. But this doesn't mean necessarily that Obama's support is overstated. In fact, it may be one reason why Obama is not doing better.
"The Wilder Effect is often misunderstood," Hopkins said. "People tend to think that if there is no Wilder Effect, then there's no racial bias, but the Wilder Effect is one form of racial bias, and race can in many ways influence voter choices without producing a Wilder Effect."
http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/732
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