Look Familiar? The Politics of Marriage Equality

Yesterday the school of my college years became the 11th state to extend marriage rights to gay couples.  Delaware follows Rhode Island who became the 10th state just a week before.  Both Minnesota and Illinois are half-way there, having marriage equality bills that were passed by one chamber and await certain signature by the respective governors if the other chamber passes it.

So we could soon have marriage equality in as many states as there are stripes on our flag.  But the road to one for every star will probably take a while.

California will probably have marriage equality after the Supreme Court rules on Proposition 8 next month.  Nevada has also taken steps towards legalizing gay marriage, but the prospects there are (forgive me) dicier, because the issue wold have to be put to voters, and that can't happen until 2016.  (Oregon will vote on the issue next year.

So I started thinking about where we stand on this issue.  And it occurred to me that with the District of Columbia, we may soon have 16 jurisdictions that allow gay couples to marry.  All of them voted for President Obama's re-election.  So did all the other states that allow gay civil unions but haven't been mentioned yet. (CO, HI, NJ, WI)

So I made this map to show the breakdown of the states by political leanings.  We now have 21 states (including DC) that have completed or taken significant steps toward legalizing gay marriage.  They are all blue.  There are 7 blue states that have not.  It seems to me that the 6 blue states are going to be the next places for equality proponents to advance the cause.  (New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia and Florida, in rough likelihood of them coming around on the issue).

All 24 Romney states limit marriage to heterosexual couples.  Will any of them budge before these last few blue hold outs?  My guess is now.  And in about 4 years, we might have a map that exactly matches the electoral college division.

Deep Blue-Marriage Equality States

Pale Blue-States with Civil Unions or Where Marriage Equality Legislation Has Passed One Chamber

Yellow-Obama states that have not moved toward equality

Red-Romney States

Thoughts on Oscar

Best Picture.  I saw six of the nine nominees.  I doubt that Amour, Les Miserables or Life of Pi is going to win, so I won't trouble myself over missing these three.  Of the remaining six, I liked them in this order.

1. Lincoln.  I was so ambivalent about this movie.  I adore Abraham Lincoln but I have grown very tired of Spielberg's aesthetic and need to be nice.  But he took some chances with this movie, and I liked it very much.  I also am going to go against the consensus and predict that it will win this category because....

2. Zero Dark 30.  I was mildly disappointed by this movie for the opposite reason that Argo irked me.  I think that Catherine Bigelow felt overly constrained by the need to get the details right, and that made for less than cinematic movie making.  But she's a great talent and this is still a very strong film.

The most interesting thing about this movie is the reaction of various political camps.  Last fall it was assumed that this movie would be a thinly veiled campaign flick for the President.  They wisely delayed the release to avoid that controversy.  But the President is barely mentioned in this movie; the most political thing about the movie is the honest depiction of the torture that our interrogators put subjected suspected terrorists too in the early part of this decade.  The reaction of the right-wingers is particularly interesting.  They like to point out that these "enhanced interrogation" techniques preceded the capture of Bin Laden but they haven't quite embraced this movie as a sop to their sensibilities precisely because it shows that (back to English) torture in an accurate and honest way.  And no one, not even Dick Cheney, can bring himself to run around saying that we should be proud of having treated people like that.  (And of course it must be emphasized that torture led to many dead ends and distractions that might have delayed the eventual killing of bin-Laden by a number of years.)


3. Argo.  I perfectly fine, adequate, entertaining movie that will probably be most remembered for the liberties that it took with history.  I think the only reason this movie is considered the favorite is that it's written around the idea that people from Hollywood once behaved bravely and produced a minor miracle.  Maybe that's enough to get it over the top but the fact that Ben Afleck was not nominated for Best Director makes me suspect that support for the movie is weaker than believed.

4. Djano Unchained.  Difficult to watch. I swayed back and forth during the movie between admiring Tarrantino for not pulling any punches in depicting how brutal the institution of slavery was and feeling queasy that he was using this violence in an exploitative way. And the 3rd act is way too long.

5. Silver Linings Playbook.  Cute and mildly ambitious for the genre but doesn't quite deliver.

6. Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Heavy handed and kind of dull.

Best Actor.  Daniel Day-Lewis will win and he deserves too.  Denzel was terrific in a pretty mediocre film.  Bradley Cooper stepped up his game.  Did not see Hugh Jackman sing or Jaquin Phoenix in the Master but if there's going to be an upset here, I think it would be Phoenix.

Best Actress:  Jessica Chastain was very good in Zero Dark 30 so I'm rooting for her but I think it might go to  Emmanual Riva for Amour, a film that I have not seen.

Best Supporting Actor:  Quite a field. All 5 nominees have won before, in either the lead or supporting category.  I think Alan Arkin deserves it among the nominees I saw but I'm once again thinking that there could be an upset from the Master.  I also wouldn't rule out Robert Deniro because it's been a long time since he's won and Silver Linings seems to have been very popular with the Academy.  Tommy Lee Jones is the betting favorite and I enjoyed his performance but it wasn't much of a stretch for him to play a curmudgeon.  Christopher Waltz was fine but he wasn't even the best supporting actor in his movie.  That would be Samuel L. Jackson, who was robbed of a nomination this year and probably should have won the whole thing.

Best Supporting Actress:  I didn't see Les Mis but I know Oscar bait when I see it and Anne Hathaway has all the makings of a trooper.  She will win.  Helen Hunt gave the best performance that I saw in this category.  (I have no literally no memory of Bradley Cooper's mom in Silver Linings but I guess she impressed someone.)  The lifetime achievement Oscar should go to Amy Adam's agent.  Year in and year out she plays mediocre parts in movies way better than her performance and yet she's been nominated for 4 Oscars in 8 years.  Remarkable.

Best Director: Spielberg

The Ron Wood

@ronalddavidwood Would you rather fight a horse sized duck or 100 duck sized horses?
— Frank Venis (@spiderstumbled) February 19, 2013

It's the little things in life.  Earlier today I sent a tweet to Ron Wood, and he made it a "favorite".  That's high praise and worthy of such a lofty subject.

Who Are You Going to Believe, a Bookie or a Disreputable Creep Like Dick Morris

In recent days Michael Barone, George Will and the incomparable Dick Morris have all predicted that Mitt Romney will be elected President, and by a significant margin.  Mr. Will even has him carrying Minnesota, a state that has not voted Republican since 1972, when Nixon beat George McGovern in 49 states. Karl Rove has also predicted a Romney win, albeit my more modest margins.  Mr. Rove after all has to raise a lot of money every two years, and it helps to not completely shoot your credibility when you ask people to trust you with their money.

If you know someone that also believes that Mitt Romney is going to win tomorrow, please encourage them to wager on it.  Google led me to a web site where one could bet $100 on Romney and collect  $295 if he should be elected tomorrow night.  To bet on the President being re-elected, you would have to risk $340, just to win $100 if he wins.

Bookmakers make a profit by minimizing their risk.  Political pundits get paid to please an audience.  The bookmaker's goal is to minimize risk by having equal amounts of money ride on either outcome.  So a 3 to 1 betting line reflects the real actions taken by actual bettors with their own money.  That should influence your thinking, whether the result is one that you wish for, or not.

Nate Silver's prediction model, which correctly predicted every state except for Indiana last time, and has correctly predicted all but one of the last 60-odd Senate elections, predicts that the President's re-election is 92.2% probable.  The Intrade Future Market has the President's re-election at 67.3% likely.

My official 2012 Presidential Prediction:

• Barack Obama 50.2%/303 Electoral Votes
• Mitt Romney 48.4%/235 Electoral Votes
• Gary Johnson 0.9%
• Jill Stein 0.4%
• Virgil Goode and assorted eccentrics: 0.1%

303 Electoral Votes represents the President winning every jurisdiction he carried except for IN, Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, NC and FL.

A few days ago I wrote a post about how to follow the electoral math on election night.  It considered nine states in play.  But today I find it very unlikely that Romney can win NV or WI.  I also think he can't win without taking NC, the only swing state where he is a significant favorite.  Reducing the variables to these six states, the math becomes even simpler.

The President has 253 likely Electoral Votes and his challenger has 206.  With 79 EV to be determined on Election Day, Barack Obama needs to win only 17 of them.  He can get there just by winning Ohio or Florida.  Or Virginia and one more state among NH, CO, or IA.   One last path to 270 would involve losing OH, Fl and VA, but sweeping NH, CO and IA.

So I'm confident.  Not because I want the President to be elected, but because the available evidence tells me that he is likely to.

Romney Has 5 Paths to 270 (and one to 269)

The Presidential race is 4 days away and the President has a pretty clear upper hand in his re-election effort, but Mitt Romney has several paths to winning the election.

Here are my assumptions: The outcome of 41 states plus the District of Columbia can be predicted with at least confidence.* President Obama can bank on winning a minimum of 237 Electoral Votes (EV) while Mitt Romney is assured of 191.  Romney therefore needs to win 79 EV out of the 110 EV in the nine states that might be carried by either candidate. I think that any path Romney might have to 270 involves him winning North Carolina (15 EV).  So for the scenarios below, we'll say that he starts with 206 EV and consider eight states up for grabs, and I would put them into two categories based on their number of electoral votes:

Three Large Swing States: Florida (29 EV), Ohio (18), and Virginia (13),
Five Small Swing States, Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4).

The winner of the election will largely be determined by how the Large Swing States go.  Keep these scenarios in mind as you watch the results come in on Tuesday.

1.  If Romney wins Florida, Ohio and Virginia:
If he wins all 3 of the Large Swing States, he will have 266 EV and will need to win just one Small Swing State.

2.  If Romney wins FL and OH but not VA:
He will have 253 votes and can be elected by:
A. Wining WI and CO.
B.  Winning WI or CO  if he also wins two of the other Small Swing States: (IA, NV, NH).

3.  If Romney wins FL and VA but not OH:
He starts with 248 EV and can be elected by:
A. Winning CO and WI plus one other Small Swing States (IA, NV, or NH).
B.  Winning WI or CO if he also wins NV and IA.
Note: if he wins CO, IA and NV, then he gets a 269-269 tie, which would mean Romney being elected President and Joe Biden remaining Vice-President under the provisions of the 12th Amendment.


4. If Romney wins OH and VA but not FL:
He starts with 237 and must sweep all five Small Swing States.

5. If Romney wins FL, but loses OH and VA:
He starts with 235 and must win all five Small Swing States.

Winning just OH or VA while losing the other two Large Swing States does not present any way for Romney to get to 270.

As long as Romney wins NC, he has several permutations to get  over the line.  But every time one of those remaining eight swing states gets colored blue, he loses an "out". If these swing states provide 33 EV for the President, the election is over.



* President Obama could pull an upset in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional district.  This is unlikely to occur and very unlikely to determine the winner, although it could avoid the 269-269 tie scenario discussed above in Section 3B.

Electoral Math

This election will be very close.  I will be very surprised if the difference in the popular vote is greater than 2 percent.  And there are plausible scenarios for each candidate to win.  But the President is a clear betting favorite, despite consistently trailing in the Likely Voter model of the two most well known daily tracking polls.


Nate Silver's forecasting model is the best evidence for why the President remains the betting favorite.  Silver has become quasi-famous in this cycle and his track record justifies his status as the go-to prognosticator for political forecasting.  In 2008 his popular vote prediction was off by just 1 point.  And he correctly predicted every jurisdiction except for Indiana and Nebraska's 2nd congressional district.  In the last 2 congressional races he has correctly predicted all but one Senate race.

Silver is a Democrat and he has (predictably) become a target of some right wing bloggers who claim bias in his forecasting.  But what's most interesting about his track record is that almost all of his incorrect predictions were very close and none exhibit a bias against Republicans.  In 2008, he thought Barack Obama would win the popular vote by 6.1 points.  He won by 7.2.  And Indiana and NE-2 were both carried by the President.  The only Senate race he has gotten wrong was Alaska in 2008.  There he predicted the Republican nominee to win, but the race ultimately went to a more moderate Republican winning as a write-in candidate.  So none of his (very few) mistakes involved mistakes in favor of the Democratic party.

Silver currently projects that the President will win the popular vote by a point and a half.  He projects that the President will lose Indiana, North Carolina, Florida and Nebraska-02.  Every other locality will be carried by the same party that won them in 2008.  This would result in an electoral college tally of 303 for Obama, 235 for Mitty Romney.

So how does Mitt get to 270?  Well, it would take a number of upsets in specific states.  Here is a breakdown of the states where Romney is most likely to score an upset:

1. Colorado, 9 Electoral Votes, 42.3% chance of a Romney win.  This gets him to 244.
2. Virginia, 13 EV, 40.2%.  These two get him up to 257.
3. New Hampshire, 4 EV, 29.5%.  Now he's up to 261.
4. Iowa, 6 EV, 27.7%.  Up to 267....still needs one more upset.
5. Ohio, 18 EV, 26.5%. Now he crosses the line with 285 Electoral Votes.

If Romney pulls all five of these upsets, and avoids being upset in Florida (36.2% chance of an Obama win) he will be the Next President of the united states.  Put differently, he would need to win every state that he has at least a 25% of winning in order to be elected.

The odds of pulling all five upsets are quite long.  If you multiply each of these probabilities, you find that there is a less than one percent chance of pulling all 5 upsets. But this is a somewhat misleading number because the outcome of these states are not completely discreet events as the voters there will be influenced by similar forces, such as the tenor of the news for the next nine days, the jobs report that comes out on Friday and of course, the weather, which could drive turnout up or down significantly.

And Romney could also win Wisconsin (10 EV, 13.7% chance for Romney), which would allow him to lose several of the above states and still get to 270, assuming he doesn't also lose North Carolina.  (13 EV, 17.5% chance for the President).

So the President is not 99 to 1 favorite.  But he is about a three to one favorite.

The Questions I Would Have Asked at the Debate

Last week I came up with three questions for each candidate at the town hall meeting.  Only one of the six was actually asked.  These are the questions I would have asked, if I had the opportunity.

For Mitt Romney:

1.  In your convention speech you said that business experience was the "basic qualification" for being President and you blamed a lot of his failures on this fact.  Why then did you choose Paul Ryan, a man with absolutely no business experience to be your running mate?

2.  You have said that you would build three new submarines a year for the next 10 years.  These additional submarines would add at least $75 billion to our deficit.  What strategic purpose would these additional boats serve?

3.  (This one was actually covered, more or less.)  Your tax plan calls for a twenty-percent across the board reduction in all income tax brackets but does not specify a single deduction that you would eliminate to pay for these cuts.  Why are you being so specific about the benefits and so vague about the costs?

For President Obama

1. With the exception of reducing the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, your drug policies are more or less the same as your predecessors.  What specific changes in drug policy will you implement in a second term?

2.  Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was intentionally killed under your orders by a drone in 2011.  What policies have you put in place to ensure that no one will be denied due process during the process of adding names to this list.

3.  The American public remains very divided on whether or not Climate Change is caused by humans.  What steps will you take to convince the public of the science behind this problem and how will this influence your energy policies?