Charles Franklin takes issue with Stan Greenberg’s contention that media polls are “criminally bad” because of a variety of reasons, especially that “They are not carefully weighted and, as a result, show wide swings in voter preference that the media interpret wrongly as voter fickleness.”

I’d be curious what constitutes careless weighting. Almost all pollsters weight the data to demographic distributions derived from the Current Population Survey (a huge monthly government survey with over 90% response rate and therefore considered particularly reliable.) Pollsters might differ on some technical issues here but it is hard to believe that media polls are that different from Greenberg’s own methods. None of the weighting techniques are in any way secret– just buy a textbook on survey sampling or read the journals or attend panels at AAPOR (the pollsters conference) and the variety of options are all right there in the public domain. So there is little reason to think that variation in weighting practice is due to either secret knowledge that Greenberg and colleagues have that is unavailable to others, or that “media pollsters” systematically choose to be reckless by using poor weighting schemes.

[...]

My bottom line is that polling techniques and methodology are “open source.” Take classes in grad school and you can learn all the theory. Work in a polling firm and you’ll also learn a lot of practical wisdom. Survey professionals all have access to this. Greenberg may well think that his polls are superior to those conducted by others, but I’d disagree that this has anything to do with secret knowledge or methods.

I’m dealing with an excerpt of Greenberg’s argument, which is made in a book I don’t have access to, so it’s hard to assess his claim.  Certainly, media polls conducted early in cycles tend to be rather sloppy, in that they seldom apply “likely voter” screening.  They also tend to vary wildly from one another, which would seem to indicate that either 1) the people running them didn’t attend graduate school or AAPOR conferences or 2) polling is really hard and simply applying the basics isn’t sufficient.

Even late in cycles, when most of the national polling outlets switch to likely voter models, there’s wide variation in the numbers.  That’s not a big deal in races, such as the most recent presidential contest, where the margin is wide.  In close races, though, they’re virtually worthless.

Full disclosure: My wife, as I’ve mentioned more than once, is the COO of Public Opinion Strategies, the major Republican polling firm, which partners from time to time with Greenberg on, oddly enough, some media polls (for NPR and MSNBC).

I’d be interested to see the comparisons between the polling of Greenberg, POS, Gallup, and the various major media polls and electoral outcomes.   My strong suspicion is that the first two are closer in alignment with the thing they’re trying to project than the others, especially on a sustained basis.

Link via Political Wire.

Radley Balko notes a “strange dichotomy” in the election polls:  Obama’s lead in the national head-to-head polls is narrowing at the same time his Electoral College numbers based on state-by-state polls is widening.

Sure enough, that’s the case.   Here’s the RealClearPolitics snapshot:

Here’s the current Electoral College map from electoralvote.com, which has the race at Obama 320 – McCain 204  – Ties 14:

How to explain the difference?   Radley argues that it’s the Bob Barr factor.

Barr isn’t yet mentioned in many of the national polls. But in state polls, he’s consistently pulling in five percent or more, and it seems to be coming mostly from McCain. My colleague Dave Weigel–who follows this stuff more closely than I do– thinks it’s too early to give Barr that much credit. He may be right. But for the moment, Barr’s hurting McCain. If McCain’s spending money in Texas or North Carolina after Labor Day, this is going to be a bloodbath. Of course, that kind of showing from Barr would also force the GOP to pay more heed to its neglected limited government wing, and less to its David Brooks faction.  So that would in general be a pretty good thing.

I tend to agree with Dave and Mark Blumenthal on this one.  Polling, especially early polling, for third party candidates is always vastly overstated.  Plus, Ralph Nader’s running, too, and will likely offset Barr in any case.

And, as always, the usual caveats apply.  The same map for July 15, 2004?  Kerry 322, Bush 205.

Jesse Jackson’s statement that Barack Obama’s “talking down to black people” makes him so angry that he “wants to cut his nuts out” has caused quite the stir.

Charles Hurt of the NY Post has the most concise report:

In a vulgar tirade caught on tape by Fox News, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said he wanted to “cut his [Barack Obama's] nuts out” and he accused the fellow Chicagoan of “talking down to black folks” by giving moral lectures to African-Americans, source said Jackson’s shocking quotes were picked up by a hot mic before an interview on health care in Fox’s Chicago studio last Sunday. Fox planned to air the recording on Bill O’Reilly’s “The Factor” show.

Jackson has apologized for the remarks and the resulting hubbub, CNN reports.

Speaking to CNN Wednesday, Jackson said he feels “very distressed” over the comments.
“This is a sound bite in a broader conversation about urban policy and racial disparities. I feel very distressed because I’m supportive of this campaign and with the senator, what he has done and is doing,” he said. “I said he comes down as speaking down to black people. The moral message must be a much broader message. What we need really is racial justice and urban policy and jobs and health care. That’s a range of issues on the menu.

“Then I said something I regret was crude. It was very private. And very much a sound bite,” he also said.

In a statement issued earlier Wednesday to CNN, Jackson said, “For any harm or hurt that this hot mic private conversation may have caused, I apologize. My support for Senator Obama’s campaign is wide, deep and unequivocal. I cherish this redemptive and historical moment.”

My reaction was along the lines of Andrew Sullivan’s: This is “the kind of electoral gift any politician dreams of. Obama gets his Sistah Souljah moment handed to him on a plate … by Bill O’Reilly.” Indeed, getting castigated by Jesse Jackson furthers the whole mainstream, articulate, bright and clean vibe.

I do wonder, however, what so peeved Jackson. In what way was Obama “talking down to blacks”? Simply because he channeled Bill Cosby in a speech and forgot to add the usual caveats about how everything is ultimately society’s fault?

I’m also a bit curious about Fox News’ editorial judgment. The event happened Sunday but they held off the tape until Wednesday? I could understand saving it for their Monday prime time lineup. But three days?

Meanwhile, Kate McMillan and her commenters amuse themselves with various plays on the “nuts” theme.

Thomas Schaller,  the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, argues that the notion that Barack Obama has a good chance of winning Southern states because he’ll energize black turnout is based on fallacious reasoning.

The first myth is that African-American turnout in the South is low. Black voters are actually well represented in the Southern electorate: In the 11 states of the former Confederacy, African-Americans were 17.9 percent of the age-eligible population and 17.9 percent of actual voters in 2004, analysis of Census Bureau data shows.

And when socioeconomic status is held constant, black voters go to the polls at higher rates than white voters in the South. In other words, a 40-year-old African-American plumber making $60,000 a year is, on average, more likely to vote than a white man of similar background.

My guess is that this is largely a function of the enormous influence of black churches, which do an amazing job of getting their congregations motivated to vote and have an infrastructure in place to get them to the polls.

The second myth is that Democratic presidential candidates fare better in Southern states that have large numbers of African-Americans. In fact, the reverse is true, because the more blacks there are in a Southern state, the more likely the white voters are to vote Republican.

He cites the case of Mississippi, where Bush beat Kerry by 20 points in 2004, and shows that even a massive increase in black turnout would not do the trick unless he could simultaneously get a 50 percent increase of white voters over Kerry.  Ignoring the Bob Barr factor entirely, Schaller contends the same dynamics hold true in Georgia and North Carolina.

The one reasonable target, then, is the Old Dominion, where “a huge influx of upscale non-Southerners, who have taken over the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia” could make him viable.  This, despite the fact that the “black population in Virginia is, as a percentage, among the lowest in the region.”

Stacy McCain agrees wholeheartedly, except to point out that, “this trend applies generally nationwide. Even in Northern states, the larger the black population, the more heavily the white vote tends to shift toward Republicans.”

Jonathan Martin notes that Schaller isn’t telling us anything that V.O. Key didn’t know in 1949, when he told us “departures from the supposed uniformity of southern politics occur most notably in those states with fewest Negroes and in those sections that are predominantly white.”

Dan Riehl, meanwhile, thinks, “There is a very good chance that the media, liberals and Blacks will be expecting to wake up to the first Black POTUS one November morning, only to be shocked by the result. Think of it as the OJ verdict in reverse.”

Rather than taking the lesson that he might as well just give up on the non-Virginia South, though, Obama and his strategists would be served to double down on their efforts to avoid running as “the Great Black Hope.”  If he runs as “the black candidate” and has surrogates constantly charging “racism” every time he is challenged, he’s going to have a hard time making inroads in any state Kerry didn’t win in 2004.  Then again, all he needs is to peel off 18 Electoral Votes.  Virginia, with its 13, wouldn’t do it.  Ohio, with 20, would.  Or Virginia plus Iowa or New Mexico or Colorado.  Or simply Iowa plus New Mexico plus Colorado.

Schaller’s right, then, that Obama can win the presidency without competing in the South.  But campaigning in such a way as to give himself a chance — or make McCain spend money in — the South will likely help himself in those other states as well.

Thus far, he seems to be doing just that, including making a big play for Evangelicals.

Story via memeorandum. Photo credit: The Trail/AP.

Steve Tuttle takes to the pages of Newsweek to proclaim the ascendency of Appalachia as the decider of the next president.

“Hick.” “Hillbilly.” “Redneck.” “Inbred.” “Cracker.” “Ridge Runner.” I heard and self-effacingly used them all when I left the mountains of Appalachia to attend college in the great metropolis of Williamsburg, Va., in the ’80s. I was mercilessly ribbed as a rube when I brought along my sky-blue JCPenney suit—with reversible vest—and my stack of Willie and Waylon albums, and entered a world that was as foreign to me as I must have seemed to my fancy William & Mary roommates from the private schools. Imagine my surprise at their surprise when, thinking nothing of it, I casually mentioned that I missed my mom’s home-cooked squirrel.

Well, look who’s laughing now. In this strangest of political seasons, Appalachia, the last forgotten place in America, suddenly matters. Never mind Florida and Michigan. In a close election come November, the difference between President McCain and President Obama could come down to me and my people: a bunch of ornery, racist, coal-minin’, banjo-pickin’, Scots-Irish hillbillies clinging to our guns and religion on the side of some Godforsaken, moonshine-soaked ridge in West Virginia. The Democrats comically pandered to all these stereotypes during this spring’s primaries, when the 23 million people of Appalachia—that 1,000-mile mountainous stretch from southern New York to the middle of Alabama—briefly hijacked the presidential race. Scrounging for every last vote, the candidates went out of their way to look country. Hillary got all twangy. Barack tasted beer.

West Virginian Don Surber figures this is old news, noting that, “If Al Gore, boy genius, had taken Arkansas or Tennessee or West Virginia, Florida would not have mattered.”  Tennessean Glenn Reynolds adds, “Apparently, the vote for me, you ignorant rednecks approach isn’t working that well.”

Of course, as Clark Stooksbury points out, “I’m not sure how dumb hillbillies decided the 2000 race when every single state mattered–had George Bush lost one more state anywhere, he would not have been president. If you compare the 1996 and 2000 electoral maps, you see that Gore lost a lot of states, with more than 100 electoral votes, that Clinton carried in 1996.”

True that. A lot of states are likely to be in play this go-round.  All of them matter.  Indeed, for all we know, it could come down to Georgia and how many votes Bob Barr siphons off from John McCain.

McCain-Feingold, the signature legislation of the presumptive Republican nominee for president, took another blow yesterday as the Supreme Court struck down the so-called “Millionaire’s Amendment” in yet another 5-4 decision.

“Supporters of reasonable campaign finance regulation are now zero for three in the Roberts court,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “This is a signal of what is to come. What could easily fall following this case are the longstanding limits on corporate and union spending in federal elections.”

The law at issue in Thursday’s decision imposed special rules in races with candidates who finance their own campaigns. Those candidates are required to disclose more information, and their opponents are allowed to raise more money. The Supreme Court has upheld campaign finance laws meant to drive the potentially corrupting influence of large contributions out of politics. But the millionaire’s amendment, part of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, is based on a different rationale: that of compensating for the additional financial resources available to candidates willing to spend their own money.

[...]

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said the asymmetry imposed by the law was unacceptable. “We have never upheld the constitutionality of a law that imposes different contribution limits for candidates who are competing against each other,” Justice Alito wrote.

The law allows opponents of candidates for the House who spend more than $350,000 of their own money to receive triple the usual amounts — $6,900 rather than $2,300 — from individual contributors when a complex statutory formula is met. The law also waives limits on expenditures from political parties. The law was a response to Supreme Court rulings that forbid limits on the amount that candidates can spend on their own behalf. But Justice Alito wrote that the legislative response was unconstitutional because it “imposes an unprecedented penalty on any candidate who robustly exercises” free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Rich candidates, Justice Alito said, must “choose between the First Amendment right to engage in unfettered political speech and subjection to discriminatory fund-raising limitations.”

[...]

“Different candidates have different strengths,” Justice Alito wrote. “Some are wealthy; others have wealthy supporters who are willing to make large contributions. Some are celebrities; others have the benefit of a well-known family name.” “Leveling electoral opportunities means making and implementing judgments about which strengths should be permitted to contribute to the outcome of an election,” Justice Alito continued. “The Constitution confers upon voters, not Congress, the power to choose the members of the House of Representatives.”

[...]

Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter, dissented, saying that both “reducing the importance of wealth as a criterion for public office and countering the perception that seats in the United States Congress are available for purchase by the wealthiest bidder” offered valid justifications for the amendment. “The millionaire’s amendment quiets no speech at all,” Justice Stevens wrote. “On the contrary, it does no more than assist the opponent of a self-funding candidate in his attempts to make his voice heard; this amplification in no way mutes the voice of the millionaire, who remains able to speak as loud and as long as he likes in support of his campaign.”

While I firmly agree with the outcome and the reasoning of the majority, Stevens actually has the better public policy argument.

The Court here continues a long line of opinions which proclaim that, in political campaigns, the ability to spend money to buy television advertising is tantamount to speech. Yet, it also lets stand than aberrant ruling which says that the desire to protect against the theoretical corrupting influence of outside money is a sufficiently compelling public purpose for restricting said speech. Under that premise, then, it’s hard to argue that preventing rich people from outspending a candidate hamstrung by the law isn’t equally compelling. If a candidate is going to be corrupted by having a corporation or interest group donating $100,000 why isn’t it corrupt for, say, the CEO of said corporation or head of said interest group to spend $3 million getting himself elected?

For his part, John McCain is not concerned by the ruling. He notes that this provision was, as the name implies, an amendment “added on the floor during debate.” (Contra Ann Althouse, a floor amendment has little in common with a Constitutional Amendment. The former is often necessary compromise to get a larger bill passed; the latter is an independent action requiring supermajority passage.) The takeaway is that “Today’s Supreme Court decision in Davis v. FEC does not affect the Court’s landmark ruling in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission upholding the constitutionality of the soft money ban contained in BCRA. That ban is at the core of the reforms I worked for in the long bipartisan fight to pass campaign finance reform.”

He’s right. Yesterday’s Court decision protects the interests of a relative handful of millionaire candidates for office. But it does not restore the rights of tens millions of Americans who have organized themselves politically to spend their money — which the Court acknowledges is speech — as they see fit in trying to defeat said millionaires. It’s a very strange paradox.

Barack Obama has a 12-point lead in the latest Bloomberg/LAT poll, giving those of us who thought the 15-point lead in last week’s Newsweek poll was an outlier some pause.

In a two-man race between the major-party candidates, registered voters chose Obama over McCain by 49% to 37% in the national poll, conducted Thursday through Monday. On a four-man ballot that included independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr, voters chose Obama over McCain by 48% to 33%.

Obama’s lead — bigger in this poll than in most other national surveys — appears to stem largely from his positions on domestic issues. Both Democrats and independent voters said Obama would do a better job than McCain at handling the nation’s economic problems, the public’s top concern. In contrast, many voters said McCain was the more experienced candidate and better equipped to protect the nation against terrorism — but they ranked those concerns below economic issues.

McCain suffers from a pronounced “passion gap,” especially among conservatives who usually give Republican candidates a reliable base of support. Among voters who described themselves as conservative, 58% said they would vote for McCain; 15% said they would vote for Obama, 14% said they would vote for someone else, and 13% said they were undecided. By contrast, 79% of voters who described themselves as liberal said they planned to vote for Obama.

I’m still skeptical of the numbers but find the conclusions reasonable. Indeed, I didn’t need a poll to tell me that Americans care more about domestic issues than foreign policy, especially now that the war in Iraq has moved to the back burner, or that Obama has more intensity of support than McCain.

The numbers just don’t make sense. We now have two polls showing double-digit Obama leads, while most taken during the same time period show a very modest gap:

Aside from the fact that Newsweek and LAT/Bloomberg are sampling registered voters whereas Rasmussen and USA Today/Gallup are using likely voter screens, it’s not obvious what methodological differences might account for this degree of variation. More oddly, Gallup’s registered voter tracking poll shows a closer race than their likely voter poll for USA Today, albeit within the margin of error.

The bottom line is that we don’t have a very good read right now and, as I continue to emphasize, June polls are historically poor predictors of November behavior. The RealClearPolitics average of 7.5, though, is probably as good an indicator as any on where the national race stands.

Of course, we elect presidents via the Electoral College, so what really matters is how the candidates are doing in each of the 50 states. Nate Silver has it at 343.8 to 194.2. (He’s also got an intriguing hypothesis about Obama’s strength as a Midwestern candidate that I may revisit in a later post.) Electoral-Vote.com has it at Obama 317, McCain 194 with Florida too close to call. Those numbers are the ones to watch.

If the election were held today, Barack Obama would cruise to victory with 317 Electoral Votes to John McCain’s 194, according to projections tabulated by Electoral-Vote.com. Florida, with its 27 electors, is too close to call. Again.

Compared to 2004, Obama would pick up Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, and Virginia while McCain would pick up no states that George W. Bush didn’t carry. Further, McCain is barely leading in North Carolina, Georgia, and Nevada, all of which Bush won.

Then again, on this day in 2004, John Kerry was leading President Bush 285 to 249 and had slight leads in both Florida and Ohio. As you may recall, it didn’t turn out that way.

A Newsweek poll of registered voters shows Barack Obama with a whopping 15-point lead over John McCain, 51 to 36. Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh is stoked.

Barack finally has his bounce. For weeks many political experts and pollsters have been wondering why the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain had stayed so tight, even after the Illinois senator wrested the nomination from Hillary Clinton. With numbers consistently showing rock-bottom approval ratings for President Bush and a large majority of Americans unhappy with the country’s direction, the opposing-party candidate should, in the normal course, have attracted more disaffected voters. Now it looks as if Obama is doing just that. A new NEWSWEEK Poll shows that he has a substantial double-digit lead, 51 percent to 36 percent, over McCain among registered voters nationwide.

[...]

The latest numbers on voter dissatisfaction suggest that Obama may enjoy more than one bounce. The new poll finds that only 14 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction of the country. That matches the previous low point on this measure recorded in June 1992, when a brief recession contributed to Bill Clinton’s victory over Bush’s father, incumbent George H.W. Bush. Overall, voters see Obama as the preferred agent of “change” by a margin of 51 percent to 27 percent. Younger voters, in particular, are more likely to see Obama that way: those 18 to 39 favor the Illinois senator by 66 percent to 27 percent. The two candidates are statistically tied among older voters.

Um, Tim, this is one poll. It’s safe to presume, then that voter dissatisfaction is already being factored into the Obama numbers.

Andrew Sullivan notes that, “You need to go back to Dukakis to find a similarly big Democratic lead.” Then again, as Eric Kleefeld reminds us, Dukakis “went on to lose the election.”

Furthermore, the Newsweek numbers are ridiculous. As Nate Silver observes, “Newsweek’s data tends to be fairly volatile, and we have a whole bunch of polling on both the state and national level that implies that Obama’s real margin is closer to 5 points.” And that’s including the Newsweek numbers! Here’s the latest poll aggregation from RealClearPolitics:

The latest Gallup poll, also released yesterday, found, “Among likely voters, Obama led McCain by 50%-44%, an insignificant change from his earlier standing of 49%-44%.”

As the chart of polls at Pollster.com shows, Newsweek has huge swings from month-to-month that just aren’t showing up in the other polls. Simply put, there’s either something serious wrong with their methodology or that of all the other major polls. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the former. I simply don’t believe, for example, that Obama has a 7 point lead among men. Or that only 16 percent of Independents are undecided.

This campaign has been going on a long time. And people are particularly engaged in politics this season because of the war, gas prices, and a general sense that we’re “headed in the wrong direction.” But the fact of the matter is that most Americans are barely paying attention at this point. Polls taken in June, before the conventions and before the general election campaign begins in earnest, are just incredibly poor predictors of the future outcome. Indeed, more often than not in recent elections, the person ahead at this stage goes on to lose.

Further, as if it needs to be pointed out after the last two presidential cycles, national head-to-heads mean precisely squat. It’s the state polls and the race to 270 Electoral Votes that matters.

That said, my dismissal of the Newsweek findings goes to magnitude, not direction. I think the following are true:

• Obama is ahead nationwide and in enough states to win the Electoral College

• President Bush is the most unpopular president since Richard Nixon and McCain’s association with him is toxic

• The public desperately wants “change” and Obama’s youth, energy, party ID, and color make him the more plausible vehicle for that

• Obama’s a better campaigner than McCain

• Obama will have a huge financial advantage which should help him expand on the other advantages

Were the election held today, I’m pretty sure Obama would win. The only reasons I’m not absolutely sure is that Obama’s appeal is particularly strong with demographics that historically don’t actually show up to vote (although I think they will this time) and, frankly, I have no way of gauging the “Bradley effect,” since we’ve never had a person of color as a major party presidential nominee. As to the latter, I think it’ll be a factor but a rather minor one, since most of the documented cases are from quite some time ago and there’s evidence that it’s no longer much of a problem.

Of course, the election is not being held today.

Megan Cerpentier observes that, “despite the stereotype that my taxes should go up under a Democratic tax plan and down under a Republican, it seems that Obama’s tax plan is most likely to lower my tax bills and McCain’s plan will do little or nothing at all for me.” This, because Obama proposes giving self-employed Megan a “Making Work Pay” credit whereas the McCain tax cuts won’t help her much because she makes a relatively modest income.

Ezra Klein expands on this insight

Just as a small sliver of the population controls a massive amount of the national income, so too does the same sliver pay the lion’s share of the taxes. In recent years, their tax burden has been easing even as their incomes have been rising, but in absolute terms, the folks with the bulk of the money are still the folks paying the bulk of the taxes. Democrats often raise taxes on these folks — who are often called “the rich” — which means raising taxes on 2 percent or 5 percent or 10 percent of the population, depending on how you’re counting. But in increasing the burden of the rich, they’re often able to lower it on the poor and working class. So even as revenues go up because Bill Gates’ bracket is raised to 41 percent, the tax burden of 60 percent of the country might go down. The government takes in more money, but the median American pays less in taxes.

To recap: Under Democrats, the tiny percentage of Americans who pay almost all the taxes will pay even more so that those who pay hardly any taxes can get a tiny rebate. Under the Republicans, those who pay the most taxes get the most tax relief.

Certainly, it’s a crafty electoral model. As my colleague Dave Schuler likes to say, “When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul.”

One could reasonably argue, of course, that cutting taxes during wartime is bad policy, let alone when we’re borrowing massively to pay for the war. But if we’re going to reduce the tax burden, it makes sense to do so in a way that targets those actually burdened by taxes.

Image: BlogNetNews

It’s received precious little notice here in the States but Irish voters have rejected the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU’s latest move towards reform and greater consolidation of power in Brussels:

DUBLIN, Ireland – Ireland’s voters have rejected the European Union reform treaty, a blueprint for modernizing the 27-nation bloc that cannot become law without Irish approval, electoral officials said Friday.

In a major blow to the EU, 53.4 percent of Irish voters said no to the treaty. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen now will join other EU leaders at a summit next week to try to negotiate a new way forward.

Anti-treaty groups from the far left and right mobilized “no” voters by claiming that the treaty would empower EU chiefs in Brussels, Belgium, to force Ireland to change core policies — including its low business tax rates, its military neutrality and its ban on abortion.

“This is a very clear and loud voice that has been sent yet again by citizens of Europe rejecting the anti-democratic nature of Brussels governance,” said Declan Ganley, leader of Libertas, the most prominent anti-treaty campaign group in Ireland.

The euro common currency fell to a one-month low on the news.

Ireland, one of the greatest beneficiaries of EU largesse, is hardly hostile to the EU. With generous EU grants Ireland has been transformed from one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Rejection of the treaty was probably due to some combination of a reassertion of Ireland’s pride in its own distinctive institutions and the failure of proponents of the treaty to produce a convincing plain language explanation of the benefits of approving the treaty. The opaque bureaucratese of the treaty certainly made it impossible for the treaty’s text to speak for itself.

I’ve put additional thoughts on the implications of the rejection at The Glittering Eye.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Given that I’m now professionally an Atlanticist, I’m a bit torn on this. I am, however, unreservedly amused at David Kopel’s headline, “How the Irish Saved Civilization, Again.” And I agree with him on this point:

Treaty proponents lamented that Ireland, with only 1% of the EU population, could derail a 27-nation treaty. But the very fact that only 1% of the EU’s population was allowed to vote on a treaty which would massively reduce national sovereignty and democratic accountability was itself an illustration of the enormous “democratic deficit” of the EU in general, and the Lisbon Treaty in particular. According to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Lisbon Treaty would be defeated in every EU nation if referenda were allowed.

I never liked the heavy-handed workaround of the Lisbon model, thinking that if the EU member states are going to cede significant sovereignty they ought at least do it in an open, transparent process.

The EU continues its eastward expansion, which I believe mostly good, partly by holding out the economic carrots of membership but partly, at least, by touting its “shared Western values.” It requires would-be members to jump through substantial hoops in order to get in accord. It’s only fitting, then, that it should abide by those same shared values in such an important process.

UPDATE (Dave Schuler)

I’ve found the complaints about how un-democratic the treaty being defeated by the Irish is being floated by supporters of the treaty enormously amusing. The reason that Ireland was the only country to vote the treaty down was that Ireland was the only country to hold a popular vote on the matter. The probability that a direct popular vote in all 27 EU countries would have resulted in the treaty being approved is, was, and always has been zero. Indeed, the only way the measure proceeded as far as it did was that the other EU countries’ governments avoided a popular vote.

Barack Obama has gotten his predictable (in the sense that I predicted it) bounce in the polls after having emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee and Hillary Clinton formally conceded and backed him, helping begin the healing process within the party. According to the latest Gallup poll, he’s up 48-42 nationwide among registered voters. Indeed, Obama is at least nominally ahead of McCain in every single poll tracked by RealClearPolitics, with an average lead of 4.2 percent.

Andrew Sullivan notes that this is Obama’s “strongest showing to date in the Gallup poll.” That’s technically true but misleading: The two candidates have been steady, fluctuating only within the margin of error, since it became clear that Obama would win.

Indeed, Daniel Larison is surprised at just how small the bounce is.

Kevin Drum, meanwhile, is willing to “bet that Obama never has much less than a five point lead for the rest of the campaign.” That’s plausible but unlikely. My guess is that Obama will build a double digit lead over the next few weeks as Democrats coalesce around him but that his numbers will fluctuate dramatically based on events on the ground. McCain will almost certainly get a convention bounce late. Beyond that, Obama will make the inevitable gaffes candidates make during a long, grueling campaign and he’s more prone to embarrassing revelations than McCain simply because he’s less of a known commodity.

UPDATE: And, yes, as commenter vnjagvet points out below, John Kerry had a much larger lead four years ago than Obama does now. Indeed, as I noted a few days ago, it would have been a a Kerry landslide win had the election been held May 29, 2004. The gap had narrowed slightly by four years ago today but Kerry was still projected to win 312 electoral votes to Bush’s 226 on June 9. Those same projections show it Obama 287, McCain 227 today.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy” has been controversial but Barack Obama is going to attempt to test it this fall, Sam Stein reports.

Obama will likely start the general election with 180 or so “reliably Democratic” electoral votes. With the goal of getting to 270, the DNC believes it could play a role in carrying the rest of the burden. The party already has more than 200 field staffers on the ground, and grassroots training programs in all fifty states. In addition, new Internet and communications operations have been started with the goal of facilitating participation in, and donations to, Democratic causes.

These might seem like ad-hoc measures. But if Sen. John Kerry had received ten additional ten votes per precinct in 2004, he would have won Iowa, Ohio, New Mexico, and, subsequently, the White House.

But that’s a lot of votes! Presumably, it would have been a Bush landslide had he won 10 additional votes per precinct in states that he narrowly lost.

Still, Obama is a particularly attractive candidate, it’s an unusually bad time to run as a Republican, and there are a lot of open Republican seats, and Obama has a huge fundraising advantage over John McCain. So, if ever there was a time to try to expand the coalition, this would seem to be it.

To the extent that Obama remains relatively popular and a big draw, it’s certainly a good strategy down-ballot, regardless of whether it helps him get past 272 Electoral Votes. If the election is looking tight after the conventions, though, expect to see Obama revert to a more traditional swing state strategy.

Had the 2004 election been held on May 29th, John Kerry would have won handily:

Five years later, it’s Obama 266, McCain 248, Tie 24.

Via Andrew Sullivan, who presumably is trying to illustrate that Obama doesn’t have it wrapped up quite yet and needs to keep pushing on, who in turn got it via Ben Smith, who presumably is hoping to show McCain still has a shot, so we mustn’t give up.

Obviously, a lot can change between now and Election Day. Like, oh, a campaign. Polls are just a snapshot in time, after all.

Further, as Mark Blumenthal notes, our state-level polling is not very good at this stage of the game and is unlikely to be for quite some time. So these averages are based on one or two polls of varying quality.

That said, the best evidence we have available to us right now suggests that Obama should be considered the front runner. If I were forced to bet right now, that’s the way I’d go. But it’s a long way to November.

FDL’s Thers is piling on the “has conservatism run out of ideas” bandwagon and inadvertently helped demonstrate why conservatism will never die.

The piece is entitled “The Autumn of Wingnuttia” and doesn’t disappoint. He dismisses “a belief in free markets, free people, and in the greatness of the American people and the American nation” as “fatuous slogans and overripe bullshit,” at least “in the eyes of people who aren’t morons.” Similarly, “modesty toward what problems government can ever solve” translates as “wanking.”

It turns out that conservatism was never “an intellectual movement at all” but rather “an essentially nihilist politics of vicious opportunism, where the entire goal is power for its own sake.” The forty percent or so of Americans who self-identify as conservative? “[C]ompletely crazy idiots.”

Like political parties, political movements in the ascendancy invariably overreach. Too many conservative Republicans interpreted a narrow Electoral College victory in 2000, which gave them nominal control of the policymaking apparatus, as a universal mandate. A cottage industry of books insulting the forty percent of Americans who [identify with the other party]* as stupid (If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d be Republicans), traitors (Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism), both (The Enemy Within, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder) or barely worth talking to (How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)).

Now that the Republicans are down, too many on the other side are making the same mistake. Conservatism has been rejected! Everyone agrees with progressive ideals now! Only the stupid, racist few disagree these days!

It’s not inconceivable that the November elections return the White House to Democratic hands, increase the party’s House majority, and even provides a filibuster-proof margin in the Senate. But it’s a lead pipe cinch that they’ll screw it up, became the corrupt, power-at-all-costs goons that they now accuse their opponents of being, and piss off enough of the country that they’ll be thrown out on their butts. Not because they’re bad people who hate America but because that’s what people in power do.

Correction: The original had “vote the other way” where the brackets are. Closer to 50 percent voted for the Democratic nominee, Al Gore, in 2000 — indeed, more than voted for Bush. My intent was to discuss the rough 40-40 split between die-hard supporters of the two major parties, not voting behavior in a specific election.