Cluster&%$

Two years ago there was a Senate Primary on the Democratic side that drew a great deal of interest. This years there was no race that drew voters to the Democratic Primary.

I guess I don’t understand why you aren’t saying “There were 20% more voters in 2006 than there were in 2002” and being optimistic about that. Surely the turnout in the general is higher in Presidential years, right? And if the GOP side was down from 2002, isn’t that also a good sign?

I understand your point, I’m just wondering if you’re grading on too harsh a curve.

Not necessarily in the primary—Presidential election years are years in which there generally aren’t big races—the Presidential primary is over by Illinois. The off years are the year for statewide offices and if you look at even earlier numbers with admittedly different boundaries, Hyde did better in 1998 than in 2000.

And in 2002, there were 16,000 more Republican voters in the primary than in 2004.

The thing is, no one was running serious Democratic races for the primary in the past. Even if you take the 2002 numbers, that’s still pretty pitiful given the amount of effort going into this race.

“If Cegelis had this amazing canvass operation and grass roots support that was supposed to make winning the general easier–where is the evidence?”

Larry,

The sarcastic tone wasn’t really needed.

Ask Deb Shore and, before her, Eric Davis, Lali Watt, Jennifer Rogers and others how the canvassing and grassroots support has helped them. With the exception of MWRD those may not be “primetime” offices requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars but the mechanisms are the same.

Going up against the entire DCCC, all the big name Establishment Dems (in and out of Illinois) and even some of the biggest unions and only falling 1000 votes short. I’d say the grassroots did help (and remember, not everyone helping Christine, and certainly not everyone helping Tammy, were in-district and could vote for them) and helped quite a bit. Could Christine and her campaign been better organized themselves? Yes. And maybe it would’ve made the difference, or maybe not.

Regardless, Roskum’s radical Tom DeLay agenda must be stopped by pointing out to the voters in the 6th the progressive principles we all share: honesty, opportunity, responsibility, security, etc.

===The sarcastic tone wasn’t really needed.

It’s a serious question.

All the candidates did was split the same number of voters that were there when there was an uncontested primary. They didn’t boost turnout, they just got fewer people to not skip the race when they were already voting.

I’m not saying grass roots canvassing is a bad thing–there’s just little evidence anything was effective here.

How can you say there’s a “set” number of primary voters based on what happened two years ago? Obviously many factors are involved – weather, other races, what’s going on in the other party.

You’re using a false metric. There’s no way to know what the vote *would* have been with no primary whatsoever. That’s what you’re trying to judge it by, and it just won’t work.

Okay, I looked up something that might serve as a comparison – the 13th.

13th Congressional District
2004 Primary Dem turnout – 37,636 (uncontested)
2006 Primary Dem turnout – 30,010 (contested)

So turnout for the 2006 Dems in the 13th was down 20% … and that’s going from uncontested to contested. No, it’s not an open seat, but still… I’m not sold that open congressional seats really drive most voters.

Turnout for the 2006 Dems in the 6th was down only 10%.

Meanwhile, here’s GOP turnout:

13th Congressional District
2004 Primary GOP turnout – 46,861
2006 Primary GOP turnout – 64,557

Yes, Biggert was (more) contested this time around, but I think the Gubenatorial race had a lot more to do with the significant increase.

As far as open seats being motivating factors, explain why in the 8th, turnout was up by a lower percentage than in the 13th…

8th Congressional District
2004 Primary GOP turnout – 51,558
2006 Primary GOP turnout – 57,545

Those people spent a LOT of money … you’d think at least some of that was GOTV, right? Even if they weren’t “grassroots” the very fact of the open seat should have motivated partisans, according to your theory. But turnout was up by less, percentage-wise, than in the 13th – which again, makes me think the governor’s race had a lot more to do.

Remember, these are open primaries and lots of people don’t realize that, particularly the ticket-splitters who may have wanted to vote for both Topinka and Cegelis (or Duckworth). Hell, when I went out canvassing myself, I know a lot of people LOVED what I had to say about Christine Cegelis, and DEFINITELY planned to vote for her!!! And they wanted to support that Duckworth woman, too…. There’s only so much time in a day to explain the primary process to everyone… And Christine was nearly invisible compared to Tammy in the national and local news. How many TV cameras were at Tammy’s celebration? Because there was only one I saw at Christine’s…

Just because you *think* Christine’s numbers *seem* low doesn’t mean she had an ineffective grassroots canvassing operation. It just means there are LOTS of factors to consider.

I think the difference between an effective grassroots campaign & an ineffective one can be shown in the difference in vote totals between Cegelis & Scott (no offense, Lindy! love ya!!!).

Look, 2002 had a much more highly contested governor’s race… we could go round & round. We simply don’t KNOW what each person’s motivation is to participate, and whether they would have participated were there no grassroots campaign.

The things I’m pointing to may be less obvious to you but as a volunteer (out of district) and talking to those who’ve lived for a long time in the district, there’s something there. How about her fundraising numbers, which were actually great for an independent candidate without Big Patrons or the big PACs or most unions or a personal fortune?

Remember that Cegelis’ goal in the primary was not necessarily to motivate new voters. It was to use her limited resources in the most effective way to WIN the primary. That might be to motivate new voters or it might be to sway likely voters. It’s sort of a toss-up. But “grassroots” campaigns can be used to either end. I think you have to stop being so obsessed with vote totals and look at the results – 40%+ against the Almost-Perfect Storm (in terms of background, media, money & endorsements) that was the Duckworth juggernaut. With a low budget, relying primarily on volunteers (no Obama TV ads for Cegelis!).

With a campaign shakeup just a few months ago.

With no big-wig patrons, and no independent fortune.

Really, not bad, I would say.

What Jakester Said:

The voters were there, they just took Republican ballots.

This isn’t just conjecture on my part, I observed it as a poll watcher: voters I knew to be Cegelis supporters, Democratic voters, but they asked for a Republican ballot.

Because in DuPage County the Democratic ballot, for the most part, is a blank piece of paper. Almost every race is contested by NO CANDIDATE. Even the Democrats are running on the Republican ballot in DuPage.

Another unity post. Love the sarcasm and running people down who gave their all to their respective races.

You ever run for office Larry? Think you could hack it? Think you could stand up to your whitty critiques of how you spent every moment of your life for a few years or months trying to do the best you could, only to have some jackass on a blog pontificate about how you really sucked because he knows better than you.

You all suck. But let’s all get united!

===Another unity post. Love the sarcasm and running people down who gave their all to their respective races.

Are you going around to all of the posts by others that criticize only one candidate? Or is it when I criticize both campaigns that magically you are worried about unity?

===You ever run for office Larry? Think you could hack it? Think you could stand up to your whitty critiques of how you spent every moment of your life for a few years or months trying to do the best you could, only to have some jackass on a blog pontificate about how you really sucked because he knows better than you.

Fuck you. Really. I’m tired of your (not everyone else–your) whining about unity. If you want to pretend that everyone should just pretend this election went well and the big bad Washington people or the people in Chicago beat up on a bunch of people running the best grassroots campaign ever, go ahead, but you get your card pulled in the reality based community.

There was virtually no money spent on voter contact by one campaign and the other had very little help on the ground. Yet neither could boost turnout. You can stroke yourself all you want, but that’s not a good sign. You can make up a thousand reasons why such and such is a bad comparison, but all that does is allow one to claim it was a great job and it must be because no one can show a comparable case that did better because nothing is comparable.

For months the argument I kept hearing was that Christine should be the candidate because she has built up the party infrastructure and could improve the Democrats chances regardless of her ideological stands. By turning this into a base election, Democrats could win because the base will be activated.

Guess what? The base wasn’t activated by anyone. That’s not just a criticism of Cegelis’ campaign, it’s a criticism of all involved. How you can spend $1,000,000 between two candidates and not actually find anymore of the 110,000 Democratic votes in 2004 is a stunning lack of competence.

In particular though, I was told again and again that Christine’s showing with 110,000 votes showed she should be backed. Yet, she didn’t carry any of that over to this primary. I’m having a hard time seeing the logic here. If she had shown some sort of evidence in votes that she was responsible for those 110,000 votes the argument would make sense. She didn’t in this primary and the people who said she simply rode Kerry’s coattails seem to be correct–though they were horribly incorrect that a better plan was in place. No one demonstrated they had much of a clue as to what to do.

If people are going to be pissed at the establishment, let’s not forget the grassroots invested 3 years and $320,000 over the last two years with nothing to show for it come primary time.

Whining that someone is pointing this out is about as counterproductive as I can imagine. If we delude ourselves into thinking everything is okay and this was an impressive show by either side in the primary, let me introduce you to Congressman Peter Roskam. You analyze elections to see what they tell you and this one tells anyone paying attention that there is a tremendous problem.

You aren’t the only who has spent months on a race and lost. Unless you are Christine, you weren’t on the ballot either. I did spend months of my time in 2004 on an election. Josh from Claypool’s campaign and I were joking about it on Tuesday in fact. This isn’t the first time a candidate has lost with many people upset about the other side. However, I’ve rarely seen a group of people who can’t look inward at real problems that existed. In the above post, if you care to read, you might notice I pointed out everyone was ineffective, yet it appears you seem to be upset that someone dare point that out.

And when a close friend of mine lost to the establishment candidate who had more money and more support compared to no committeeman or ward support, we weren’t happy, but we were haunted by missed opportunities, not about how it was someone else’s fault. He was beatable, and we all know we didn’t put it together. It was percentage wise closer than this race. We didn’t execute. I can give you some reasons why the vote estimates changes as other races affected turnout, but all of that could have been overcome. We didn’t execute well enough.

The number of bad decisions made in these two campaigns is astounding. I’ve heard lots of soul searching on one side. I’ve heard none on the other. I’m sure there is some by many, but the loud voices don’t appear interested in seeing how to do it better next time.

It’s also not the campaign with the worst odds—Duckworth got in three months ago. She never held office and until December of 2005, she had no name recognition. Incumbency in lower office or name recognition would be the biggest advantages–and in fact, many others have made runs against those with such backgrounds and put together effective grassroots campaigns. Sometimes they lost, sometimes they won.

Cegelis didn’t have a ton of money, but she had $320,000 raised. It was a choice that it wasn’t spent on voter outreach. That would have been the difference.

His mother was Senator Carnahan. His Father was the Late Governor Carnahan. His sister was running for Statewide office. He was a State Representative. We’d show up at Township meetings with the whole clan there working the room. Matsui gave a contribution through DCCC. Let’s see, SEIU membership wanted to go with Jeff, Russ’ pal from the Lege when the two of them ran the state version of DCCC and lost the majority blocked it. State Party chair actively worked to beat him–threats to anyone who gave him money. On, and on, and on. Bogus FEC complaint. His wife was on the Planned Parenthood Board and NARAL and them went with Russ even though Jeff was ever so slightly more in tune with their positions. And on, and on and on.

But the attitude was always different. And it’s not everyone, but there has been a significant difference that bothers me–the motto for Jeff was Gandi’s quote:

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.

Look, I’m sure there are many supporters who had this attitude, but mostly what I kept hearing was about other forces and not what was going on in the campaign itself.

==Again, you claim that open seat primaries drive voters to the polls, but I’ve yet to see any substantiation of this. It seems obvious to me that it’s one of the LEAST likely races to bring voters in.

That larger races drive more turnout isn’t the question, whether open seat primaries drive more turnout for that race than before is–and the simple answer is found in the mobilization literature that has long found that competitive campaigns actually get people to the voting booth because they are contacting people. Contacts have positive relationships to voting. So competitive races where voters are contacted tend to improve mobilization. The most basic finding is that face to face campaigning is most effective—though the cost effectiveness is a different issue. Gerber from Yale did the most controlled work on this though Huckfeldt and Sprague (who I studied with) also found the effect through tracking of political communication networks.

And let me put this in perspective–personal canvassing is the most effective means to mobilize voters followed by direct mail followed by phone calls. Now, why doesn’t everyone do canvassing–everyone does, just limited resources means that it isn’t that scaleable so mail is often more cost effective and depending on the setting television can be very effective. Phone is used only because it’s least effective, but it has some effect so you try it–especially if you are trying to figure out 1s and 2s and not just get random voters out.

Sprague’s work is a bit more interesting to the infrastructure question that everyone wants to address. Political networks can exist well beyond the social networks in people’s lives and that is good–and they should improve turnout because you get new contacts across these new networks. More networks in a particular type of community should mean more mobilization.

==Christine’s “ground game,” while imperfect, was the only thing that kept her in the race. And it got her damn close.

And what everyone isn’t hearing me saying is that it got her damn close, but that’s not much of an accomplishment given how miserably the other campaign performed. I’m really quite concerned in about the macro conditions of intensity and the micro conditions of anyone knowing what the hell is going on with Dem leaning voters in that District. We knew there was an infrastructure problem, but I’m not sure anyone had an idea that everyone was so clueless. Before Tuesday one could argue either side was right and on the 21st we’d find out who was right. Now we know neither was right. That’s incredibly disturbing.

And Jake–thanks for participating-_I do appreciate your comments and everyones except the one case where I made it clear.

Archpundit:

Cegelis drew 18,000 votes in the 2004 primary. Cegelis drew about 11,000 votes in the 2006 primary. That is the extent of her base. Duckworth has been a candidate for only 90 days. She wasn’t going to get to her vote totals using the Cegelis model, “Coffee Klatches” around the district. Duckworth had to spend money to get there regardless of all the free media she could generate.

Cegelis didn’t expand her base in the minority communities. She was holding onto the white middle class liberals and today they may realize how marginalized they are in IL06. Cegelis stunk it up at fundraising ($320,000-that is pretty pathetic given the demographics of the district) over two years and probably worse, she couldn’t manage the money she did raise.

Duckworth is going to make this close in the fall. She has a fundraising operation in place, she has a pretty compelling story (hang out a the local VFW or Legion Hall and ask those vets who they will vote for in the fall), and she played it down the middle with issues in a district that is decidely Republican. Had Cegelis won the primary, she wouldn’t have gotten to 35% in the fall.

Cegelis nevered bonded with the voters because her candidacy was “progressive” but I would deem it elitist. You should have seen these Cegelis goobers crowing at these forums about munition tainted uranium liked they had hit the motherlode of all issues.

I know Cegelis. I like her. I helped out quite a bit early and a little bit late, and she lost because she didn’t know how to spend her money when she had it, and she waited until she didn’t have money to shake up her staff.

While the problems were not necessarily with Cegelis as a candidate, they were with Cegelis as a manager. She should have canned her campaign manager (a guy I personally liked) after 3Q ’05 when it became obvious he didn’t know how to spend the money. And she never should have hired Adelstein. That was probably the worst decision. At $5,000 a month, I think there has to be a real question of whether the campaign got what it paid for.

That’s what it came down to. If she had that money at the end, she could have won. As it was, the only reason she was that close was because of the grassroots. Still, volunteers can only compensate for so many mistakes.

My Take: Archpundit & Riverred have the clearest views of what happened. I believe Riverred has a good idea of what will happen.

Duckworth’s story will open the minds of most indifferent voters (poly-tics? never touch the stuff).

The worse things get with Medicare D, the more senior citizens will want to vote against Bush – and from what I’m hearing right now, tomorrow would be a good day for an election.

I was in Duckworth’s office twice. The first time I stood around for a very awkward 20 minutes with the distict impression no one was prepared. We had a meeting (covered by a Cegalis supporter with about 40 Tammy supporters).

An Aurora State Rep came out and was terrific. Durkin phoned it in – he to, he was caught in a DC snowstorm.

Tammy came out and was good – but appeared tired and in pain. [Well – that IS part of her story.] She fielded softball questions well and no one asked any hardball stuff. Expected.

Then I asked if anyone present could take my check. Someone did – but it seemed odd and uncomfortable for him.

I live out of the district by 60 miles. I thought that afterwards there would be some specific requests made for immediate help – didn’t happen.

This was a B team. They were untrained, not focused, and their agendas weren’t clear.

I’ve run a number of successful campaigns and participated in a lot of others – both winners and losers. The people in her office were nice, but they had no idea of what to do from one minute to the next.

The second visit was at noon on a weekday. I wanted to give 1,200 pieces of senior-citizen specific literature to an old guy in Lombard – a Republican. He is a family friend and is connected to senior citizen groups, condo associations, and Veterans. Well, I left empty-handed. It was 2 weeks before the election. Not good.

All they had were those huge full color campaign postcards. I think they scream “I’ve got lots of campaign money and no ideas.” If it were me, I would go with a series of single-color 4-fold legal sheets made into a variety of issue-related brochures. Pictures? Yes – candids each illustrating a point made on the general topic of that brochure.

Phone banks – offensive. Trash them. Computer generated phone calls – worse.

To win, Tammy will have to keep it personal, make it local, and accept the outside national publicity with good humor and a grain of salt.

She has a sense of humor and clearly sees the funny ridiculousness of all this. She should share that with bemused amazement with her audiences.

When she is tired or in pain, share it. Be honest. Full recovery is a long, up-hill battle – with so low points along the way. People get that. And she should share a secret with them: That every time she sees her opponet – call him by name – she just gets more determined that he MUST lose. And that has a healing effect on her.

Don’t forget “ONE MAN! ONE WOMAN!!!” (screams of applause)

aka, smear the queer

Larry,
You wrote that you had interviewed Lindy Scott and you were going to publish the interview. I never saw it. If you published it, could you give me the reference? If you didn’t publish it, why not? It seems that the news media and bloggers were afraid to give Scott much press, knowing that with an even playing field, he would have pulled votes away from Tammy or Christine.
NancyZ