Knocking off Mitt Romney will be tough, no doubt about it. We’ve seen Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry take big shots at his Bain record in the last week or so, and the response in defense of Romney, and against Gingrich and Perry, has been fairly wide-spread. There are many forces in the Republican party beside the activist base, and they have a lot of resources at their disposal – a potential rival to Mitt Romney that upsets too many parts of the GOP will see major headwinds in his effort to derail a Romney nomination. Going against Romney’s war chest AND drawing the fire of people who aren’t necessarily Romney fans but are certainly party stalwarts will be incredibly difficult; a candidate who is deemed acceptable by the most factions of the party would stand the best chance of surviving the showdown with Romney.

In this diary, I’ll try to assess each individual candidate’s chances of prevailing if the nomination contest comes down to a three-way battle of Romney vs. Paul vs. Candidate X.

Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich would probably attract the most blowback were he to be the final non-Romney standing. We know that Congressional Republicans who remember his leadership in the 90′s are almost universally against him. Business interests resent him for his Bain rhetoric. Finally, the part of the GOP apparatus that cares most about electability could never bring themselves to believe that Gingrich, with his past history of scandal and partisan image, is more electable than Romney.

Rick Perry

Rick Perry doesn’t have a past history of annoying fellow Republicans like Gingrich does. However, with his ‘vulture capitalist’ attacks on Romney’s Bain record, he did join Gingrich on the enemies list of a lot of business interests. He also is unlikely to be acceptable to the ‘electability caucus’ within the GOP, which has already rendered its verdict on Perry, evidenced by his slide in the polls.

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum hasn’t attacked on Bain; however, he is still somewhat suspect on fiscal issues, with a past history of earmarks, among other things. The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel and AEI’s Kevin Hassett have already editorialized against Santorum’s tax proposals; it seems that if it came down to Romney vs. Santorum, Republican opinion-makers who care most about fiscal policy will view him like they did Mike Huckabee, and line up with Romney – and money and super-PAC ads will follow. (Note: I do not mean to debate the actual merits of Santorum’s tax policy here.) In addition, with Santorum’s social conservatism being so prominent, many in the electability crowd might balk and pull out the stops for Romney.  With a small war chest, Santorum would find this a very steep hill to climb indeed.

Jon Huntsman

Jon Huntsman’s policies are the favorite of fiscal conservatives, with the Wall Street Journal giving a big thumbs up, compared with their verdict of timid for Mitt Romney. He’s not a dyed-in-the-wool social conservative, but being solidly pro-life and anti-gay marriage makes him acceptable to social conservatives, perhaps even more so than Romney, since Huntsman has been consistent in his views. He has proven his appeal to independents and swing voters, so the electability caucus has no beef with him. His biggest problem is that a lot of conservative voters see him as somehow “more moderate” than Romney, in large part because of the ambassadorship. If, however, the primaries end up at Romney vs. Paul vs. Huntsman, there will be a lot of articles explaining that, actually, Huntsman’s a pretty conservative guy, which many primary voters haven’t yet come to realize. In pretty much every comparison one can make, no matter one’s biases, he comes out ahead of Romney, so all of the factions in the GOP will hold their fire, or even support Huntsman (e.g., the Wall Street Journal). Romney’s campaign operatives will be the only ones driving an anti-Huntsman narrative, and they don’t really have much – Romney has already tried dissing Huntsman “working for Obama” in the New Hampshire debate and gotten smacked back, so what else is there?

One additional advantage – admittedly, a small one – Huntsman would have is that he is probably the candidate best equipped to pick up the handful of Paul voters that might decide to vote tactically in a Romney 40%, Candidate X 30%, Paul 20% race, given his views on winding down the war in Afghanistan and his proposal to reform Too-Big-To-Fail.

In short, I think that Huntsman stands the best chance to take out Romney, if he were to become Romney’s main rival. Now, about getting from here to there…

So I’ve heard some rumors that a lot of you REALLY don’t want Mitt Romney as the nominee. If that’s the goal, what’s the best way of moving voters who are leaning towards Romney away from him?

Well, PPP has done us a service in providing a ton of cross-tabs in their last NH poll. They asked the question, “What is more important to you when deciding who to vote for: a candidate’s ability to beat Barack Obama in the general election, or their positions on the issues?”, to which 37% of voters answered electability, and 55% answered policies. Look more closely and you’ll find that Romney cleaned up among the former group: of those voters who answered electability, Romney won a whopping 55% (see page 11 of the crosstabs), whereas with those answering policies, Romney only took 20%, finishing in 3rd place behind Paul and Huntsman. If you look at it the other way around, 58% of Romney voters say that electability is most important, to only 32% who care more about policies (see page 22 of the crosstabs).

So it would seem the best way to peel Romney voters away is to convince them that a different candidate would be more electable. Which candidate should that be?

Well, I think we can surmise that Romney’s electability voters are looking for someone who seems reasonably able to appeal to swing voters, who can hold his own in a debate, and has a clean and strong record in government. (Isn’t that always what electability voters want?) Romney voters have a negative view of Perry (23-67) and Gingrich (34-56) but a relatively positive view of Santorum (48-39) and Huntsman (49-35) (see pages 17-19 of the crosstabs). I think it is clear that Gingrich’s ethics and Perry’s flubs have cost them major electorability points in the eyes of most Romney voters; they’ll have a hard time winning them back. Santorum doesn’t have the same flaws, but he doesn’t have a slam-dunk electorability argument, especially since he’s so associated with taking a hard-line stand on social issues and seems like he’s constantly having to explain himself on that front. (He’ll also be reminded of his last election if he tries to bring electability up.)

That leaves Huntsman. Huntsman has all of Romney’s perceived electorability strengths (an image that’s not hard-line conservative, no ethical issues, reasonably articulate) and none of Romney’s weaknesses (no flip-flopper reputation, no vulnerability to Wall Street job-cutting demagoguery, an ability to attack ObamaCare without having to sound horribly inconsistent), so it seems clear to me that he would be the candidate who has the most potential for eating into Romney’s numbers. I’d love it if he can make that case, along with reminding conservatives that he has a solid set of conservative positions, along with a great record as governor, and win the nomination. Even if you prefer some other non-Romney, however, you should hope that Huntsman stays reasonably strong so that he can cut into Romney’s base.

In part 1 (please read it first!) I made some general remarks about electability, and laid out several factors that go into it. In this entry, I’ll turn to the individual candidates and try to rate them on each component. I’ll do my darnedest to be objective, but undoubtedly there will be disagreements here. Remember, in this diary, I am concentrating solely on electability concerns; I am not trying to determine who would make the best president. Please keep that in mind when you comment!

One further caveat: since he’s such an outlier, I find it impossible to try to judge Ron Paul on these criteria. Sorry; you’ll have to get your Ron Paul electability analysis somewhere else.

Ability to win over swing Obama voters

Remember that minorities and educated whites swung particularly hard to Obama. We don’t have anyone who would be particularly stronger among minorities than anyone else, but for college-educated whites, things are a bit different. Romney, Gingrich, and Huntsman might fare best at appealing to this crowd.

Digging into more specifics, Romney (for the most part) still has his reputation as a relatively moderate candidate, which helps him with swing voters, but his famous position changes might cause him to suffer. Huntsman also has credibility with moderates but without the drastic shifts – even better. Also, I know most RedStaters don’t like what his ambassadorship says about his level of partisanship, but if there is one truism about swing voters, it’s that they are not strict partisans, and therefore would appreciate the show of cooperation. Huntsman’s soft-spoken style and obvious qualifications won’t hurt with swing voters, either, but he could use more charisma at the same time.

Gingrich is good at making arguments that might sway minds, but has his own baggage. Many centrist voters who remember his speakership will view him as a partisan Republican, with the government shutdown and the Clinton impeachment and his strong rhetoric. (There is an argument that he wasn’t actually that partisan, but we’re talking impressions here.) Perry would be middling here – no severe weaknesses, but he’s definitely seen as quite conservative (and is moving even further that way) and is not particularly practiced at winning over moderates in Texas. Santorum might be OK, if he isn’t perceived as talking about social issues all the time; he seems to be unable to state the conservative case in a way that goes over well with moderates for some reason.  Bachmann is seen as extremely conservative, and likes it that way; she does not fare well in this category.

Keeping McCain voters unified and energized

Let me start by positing that no candidate is great at this particular aspect; if there was a perfect candidate, he would already have lapped the rest of this weak field in the primary polling.

Romney would probably be able to get most everyone behind him, but many will be be unhappy about it. Huntsman would also be able to get a unified party with fewer nose-holders, but he has yet to show that he can get anyone truly excited on his own. Santorum has a similar problem, but we’ll see how well he does in Iowa.

Newt Gingrich wouldn’t lose any particular wing of the party, and would be able to fire up his supporters. However, we know that some Republican voters would be very turned off by his lobbying/ethical/marital issues. We also know that the party establishment, particularly those who served with him in the House, would loathe his candidacy; the media would easily find GOP leaders to snipe at him. This will inevitably take its toll among those Republican voters who pay attention to that sort of thing.

Bachmann will energize ultra-conservatives, but seems unable to avoid turning off GOP moderates.

I suspect Perry would be the best at energizing conservatives; he won’t thrill every single wing of the party (center-right pundits like George Will, and the voters that follow them, will probably be tepid towards him), but he doesn’t raise huge red flags, either, and has proven adept at base-rallying. The biggest issue is that his propensity to forget his policy proposals will cause embarrassment for those in the party who care about intellectual credibility. (Don’t scoff. It’s actually a big problem for the GOP that it is stereotyped as the ‘dumb party’.)

Vulnerability to personal attack and caricature

Gingrich: Large vulnerabilities, on multiple fronts. I won’t go into them since they’re well-documented.  Democrats will portray him as an insider, a creep, a hypocrite.

Romney: The narrative about him has long been planted: a flip-flopping corporate raider with no real core. Not insurmountable, but it’ll be a drag, particularly since there’s plenty of truth to it. There is no doubt Obama and Axelrod have been game-planning for this eventuality for years.

Perry: The insinuations against him will undoubtedly be that he’s a dumb hick – a slicker George W. Bush squared. His Texas mannerisms will reinforce this in a lot of northerners’ subconciouses. The Obama campaign will have to be subtler about using this attack than the ones against Gingrich or Romney, but people like Jon Stewart won’t. Perry already has something of this reputation just among the Republican electorate; if he becomes the nominee and does something like blank in a debate or forget a Supreme Court justice’s name during the general election campaign, it would play right into this and spell disaster.

Bachmann: The Dem playbook will be entitled “Return of Palin”. She’ll be portrayed as an extremist with few credentials.

Santorum: Unclear. Maybe the tactic will be to insinuate that he’s obsessed with, and reactionary on, social (read: sexual) issues? Expect the neologism involving his last name to play a role among young voters.

Huntsman: Undoubtedly the least vulnerable on this front. Democrats can’t promote him as being dumb, unreliable, or a wild-eyed extremist, because then the question gets raised: if so, why the heck did Obama appoint him to be our ambassador to the largest country on earth? They can mock him for being boring, I suppose, or a plutocrat, but that seems to be about it.

Polling Evidence

So far in early polling vs. Obama there has been a fairly clear pattern that Romney has fared best, and Perry, Gingrich, and Bachmann do worse. Santorum and Huntsman get incompletes due to a lack of data.

Prior Campaigns

Numerically, Romney has the most impressive performances, getting 41% (against a local icon) and 53% of the two-party vote in his two campaigns, in a state that has a PVI of D+12. That’s an average of 9% above the Republican baseline of 38%. However, one might argue that Romney circa 2012 is a very different candidate. (He won’t be getting 53% in Massachusetts in 2012, that’s for sure!)

Santorum has 2 narrow statewide victories in a D+2 state, but also has a big loss. Of the three elections, his average performance in the 2-party vote was about 48-49%, so roughly in line with an average Republican, though with a severely downward trajectory.

Huntsman earned 58% and 80% of the two-party vote (average: 69%), but in an R+20 state, so he’s right about at the baseline.

Winner of several state-wide races, Perry garnered 59% of the 2-party vote in 2002, and 56% in 2010; I’m skipping 2006 since it was a messed up 4-way race. However, Texas has an R+10 PVI, and both 2002 and 2010 were good Republican years, so this is actually underperforming somewhat, with a slight downward trajectory. (For comparison, George W. Bush earned 54% (against a strong incumbent) and then 68%, for an average of 61%.)

Bachmann: 54%, 52%, 57% of the two-party vote in an R+7 district is below-average. In addition, all three elections featured a significant independent candidate, so her highest true vote percentage is 52.5%.

Gingrich: Incomplete. Never ran statewide and I don’t know how to find PVIs for his districts back in the 80′s and 90′s, but Gingrich post-speakership is a very different candidate anyhow.

Candidate Discipline

Romney, Huntsman, and Santorum are pretty good as far as this goes. Perry has had several missteps (mostly due to a lack of recall more than a lack of discipline) but has gotten better recently. Bachmann is more of a loose cannon and we’ve already seen Gingrich forced to walk back several statements of his.

Debating Skill

Gingrich comes out on top here, with his quick wit, obvious command of facts, and ability to tie things together. Most of the rest seem decent, particularly Romney. Perry is probably weakest in this category, although he’s improving. All of our candidates will be more practiced than Obama by the time this is over.

Fundraising

Romney and Perry have proven their abilities in this area already. The rest of the field had been languishing but if/when one of them rises in the polls, the money will inevitably come in, and the party apparatus will kick in, so I don’t think anyone is particularly weak in this area.  If I had to guess, I’d say Huntsman and Gingrich would be the best of the remaining four at schmoozing with the big money donors.

Crisis Management

I have my thoughts, but they’re much too subjective to bother writing down in this diary entry. I don’t think anybody truly knows who would be best here until we actually see them in action.

Swing States

The obvious one is Santorum in Pennsylvania, although the early polling hasn’t shown a home state boost for him; it doesn’t help that he got routed in his last election there. Bachmann is from Minnesota but is not at all popular statewide. Romney has his ties to Michigan, but those are pretty loose. So I’d say nobody really stands out.

Where does this leave us?

Here’s how I’d summarize the candidates through the electability prism:

Michele Bachmann seems like she would have the weakest chance against Barack Obama. Her only strength is in whipping up the conservative base (granted, she does that very well). Neither her staunchly right-wing image nor her scant record of accomplishment give swing voters any reason to vote for her, unless there’s a major Obama administration scandal or economic collapse between now and election day. The evidence so far bears this out, as Obama consistently romps in polling against her.

Newt Gingrich’s greatest electoral strength is that he is the best at personally stating the case against the Obama record in debates. However, this is not the primary method that campaigns use to attack the opponent: candidates usually do not appear in attack ads (other than to state “I approved this message”) for a reason. In addition, Gingrich has some severe drawbacks: he would not have a unified party (since a significant portion of the establishment does not like him personally at all); he is undisciplined as a candidate, due to his propensity to share every idea that comes through his head; he is viewed as a partisan figure by many swing voters; and he has a significant amount of personal and ethical baggage. All of this is reflected in the fact that he would start out with a significant deficit in the polls.

Rick Perry shot to the top of the Republican polling when he first announced. He has a strong record in Texas he can be proud of, and an unblemished electoral record as well, to the point where I think he pretty clearly has a better shot of winning than Gingrich or Bachmann. However, looking more closely at his electoral record reveals that he underperformed the Texas Republican baseline, even in strong GOP years, and was not very effective at reaching out to moderates and swing voters (he got a very strong moderate 3rd party challenge in 2006, and another one, albeit less strong, in 2010, and he even encountered a moderate primary challenge from Kay Bailey Hutchison). He usually explicitly ran from the right, and is running even further to the right in 2012. Just judging from this data, one can conclude that he’d easily be able to rally the core conservative base, but winning swing voters nationwide won’t be something he does well.

In addition, we should examine why he lost his lead in the GOP primary, to the point where he now has  negative favorables even among Republican voters. Pretty clearly, this had to do with his series of gaffes in which he blanked on things he ought to have remembered, along with his underwhelming ability to articulate his thoughts. The impression that Perry gave a lot of Republicans (and everyone else paying attention) was that he’s not intellectually capable enough to be president. Please note that I think that this is false. However, it’s the image that Perry has unfortunately created for himself, and it will handicap him for quite some time, particularly in contrast with Obama, who still has his media-airbrushed image of intelligence mostly intact. (Yes, I realize it is a bit of a facade – but again, we’re talking images.) Perry’s rhetorical style and accent don’t really help matters. He will have a lot of work to do if he is to make up ground among the college-educated white voters that swung to Obama in 2008, especially in northern states (he’d start at a large disadvantage in the polling), and any fresh gaffe in the fall of 2012 would likely doom him in a way it wouldn’t doom others. Unfortunately, he’s a distinct underdog, in my estimation.

Mitt Romney’s case for electability starts with the fact that he runs well ahead of the previous three candidates when matched up against Obama. That’s not nothing. He also has the most impressive electoral results. However, the Mitt Romney that won in Massachusetts is long gone: it is hard to see how he has any special appeal to centrists any longer, given his transparent shifts rightward, other than the fact that he’s obviously qualified for the job. Nor does he rouse any particular passions on the part of conservatives, for the same reason. The Obama campaign is fully prepared to exploit his vulnerabilities on inauthenticity and his “Wall Street” background (yes, I realize that Bain Capital is very different from the banking industry, and that Newt Gingrich was absolutely wrong to try to attack on that, but most people do not). Given these weaknesses, I can’t see Romney being able to grow much beyond his current numbers vs. Obama, which means their matchup won’t be much better than a brutal slog of a toss-up all the way to election day.

For me, Rick Santorum is a hard candidate to evaluate. There isn’t much in the way of polling of the Santorum vs. Obama race, with the exception of Pennsylvania where he performs approximately the same as Romney, maybe a couple points worse. His two state-wide wins in Pennsylvania are great, but his huge loss cancels them out. He does have a fairly right-wing image, and the fact that he talks more than usual about social issues (sometimes in blunt terms that give the MSM the vapors) might tend to exacerbate this, as the media, for whatever reason, tends to equate social conservatism as somehow less “mainstream” than economic conservatism. (Yes, this is BS, but you know how the media can get…) In addition, his attention to social issues might cause him to seem a bit out of step with the economic worries of the times, although he does connect the two fairly well. His major strength is that what you see is what you get with him – with the exception of a minor flap regarding his residence and kids’ schooling, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of particular vulnerabilities for Obama to attack here. He’s not the most inspiring figure, and might even be a little bit dour at times, but it seems to me Obama will pretty much have to stick to the issues and his record when facing him, which in itself is a big win for us. What does this all add up to? Maybe a decent chance? I suspect so, but I must admit that my estimation of him is much more speculative than the others.

This brings me to Jon Huntsman. I’ve been defending him a bit on RedState, but I will admit that he wouldn’t be my first choice if I were choosing the president. That said, I do think he is the most electable candidate that we have. There are really two big reasons for this:

1) He’s well-equipped to win swing voters.

Both stylistically and in terms of his personal history, he comes across as less partisan than usual.  He’s clearly qualified and competent. All of these qualities, which are largely independent of his actual policy positions, are ones that swing voters value, and as I read comments on other blogs (eg, Ross Douthat’s and Rod Dreher’s), I’ve seen ample evidence that he has already begun to attract such support. (I’m not alone in this: see EE’s statements about Huntsman here.  We can also look at his 80% win in 2008 as evidence that he’s able to appeal broadly.) Will some of it fade away once the Obama machine gets going? Probably. But it’s vastly easier to start with a positive impression among swing voters and then try to keep them, than it is to start out with a negative impression and try to win them.

2) He’s inoculated from a lot of potential attacks.

Pretty much all of the insinuations about personality are out, due to his ambassadorship.  His record as governor is pretty much unassailable by Obama. (As a quick comparison, Perry has a good record, too, but since Texas is a poorer state there are a lot more bad statistics that can be cherry-picked.) Even the knocks on his wealthy status can be deflected by noting that his business experience is not in the much-demonized financial sector, and that he has a plan that ends the Too Big To Fail problem, unlike
Obama.  Democrats would be left with just the standard policy playbook.

What are Huntsman’s electoral downsides? He doesn’t have a great relationship with the conservative base right now. I suspect this will change as more conservatives take a good look at his platform. If it doesn’t, he won’t get the nomination anyway, so it’s not worth worrying about too much. It’s doubtful that he’d ever get the base extremely fired up for him, but if enough attack ads get the base fired up against Obama, that’s almost as good.  Another concern is that we don’t yet know how well he’d do parrying attacks, since nobody has bothered to criticize his proposals yet, but this is another thing we’ll learn about should he gain viability in the primaries. The last electoral knock on him that I can think of is that he’s not charismatic. This is quite true: stylistically, I view Huntsman as akin to George H. W. Bush* – similar resumes, more wonkish than populist or ideological, steady and respected but not beloved. My feeling is that after 4 years of a not-particularly-successful celebrity president, most Americans are ready for someone kind of boring. Don’t you think a low-drama competence would sound nice right about now?

(*: Before you object that GHWB lost: he had Ross Perot spoiling things, and a recession that was pinned on him. If it were a Democratic recession instead, and he was going up against Clinton one-on-one, I think he wins pretty comfortably despite Clinton’s decided charisma advantage. And before you object that GHWB compromised with Democrats and raised taxes, note that I’m not trying to make a policy comparison here. I think Huntsman is more conservative than GHWB, and would probably have a GOP congress to boot.)

Out of all the candidates, I think Huntsman is the only one that has a decent shot at breaking through the polarization and winning with more than 51%. If conservatives are able to get over the initial snub that he gave them and allow him a chance to patch things up with them, he would be a nominee with a platform that’s at least acceptable to conservatives who can nevertheless be appealing to moderate voters and be immune from counterattack – that’s a good recipe for a victory.

Electability. It’s a word that gets bandied about a lot these days. But what is it, really? How much does it matter? And can anyone be said to truly have it?

In this diary, I will describe what I see as the different aspects of this nebulous “electability” quality.  In a subsequent diary, I will try to objectively assess how the various candidates stack up on each aspect.  Note that I am not trying to argue that electability should be the only criterion by which we measure candidates; this is merely an attempt to systematically think through what electability means, and what we should be looking for if electability were our only concern.

Why Electability?

Let me start by explaining why electability matters, and how we should think about it.

“Well, duh,” you might say. “Obviously we should pick someone who will be able to win. We just need to pick the best candidate among those who can win.”  All true, as far as it goes.  But I submit to you that one cannot just separate candidates into binary camps of “Will Win” and “Won’t Win” – the prediction business is much too difficult for that. All sorts of events – wars, economic crises, scandals – could intervene and move the outcome by a couple percentage points; our best candidate (from the standpoint of electability) could still lose, and our worst candidate theoretically could eke out a win, given the right set of circumstances.   Instead, we should judge electability by probabilities: from very good chances of winning to rather poor chances, and every gradation in between. Different people might rank candidates differently, too, but we need to acknowledge that there aren’t any hard and fast lines between Winner and Loser.

A couple additional reasons why we should think about degrees of electability: mandates and coattails. Even if it were possible for two candidates to be guaranteed to win, with everything else equal (policies, leadership, etc.), I’d rather have the one that can win with, say, 57% of the vote rather than the one that only is able to win with 51%, because that gives the candidate a better base from which to affect policy, and might bring in a stronger Congress for him or her to work with.

Electability in 2012

I believe electability is particularly important in 2012. Here’s why: we all agree that this is an incredibly important election, with a lot at stake in how this country responds to the various crises that have emerged over the last few years, and an opponent who certainly would take us in exactly the wrong directions. With so much on the table, even a 10% additional chance of winning would prove massively valuable. How much are you willing to raise the risk of another Obama term – in order to have a nominee who agrees with you on minor issue X? That is a calculation every primary voter has to make.

On the other hand, the Republican field is actually remarkably close together on the biggest issues of the day (repealing ObamaCare, the budget/entitlements, and abortion are the top-tier ones in my book).  There are policy differences to be sure, but it is testament to Paul Ryan (among others) that we have achieved something of a consensus among our potential nominees on entitlements and spending.  They are unanimous on repeal of ObamaCare.  Some candidates might emphasize their opposition to abortion more than others, but there is no Rudy Giuliani this time around.  With the differences (at least on policy) between our nominees relatively small compared to previous primaries, and especially small when you compare those differences with the distance to the far left where Obama is, factors such as electability are magnified.

The mandate and coattails effects also seems particularly relevant in 2012. The next GOP president is going to have to deal with the explosion in entitlements, particularly Medicare. Any solution will be controversial, to say the least. How much easier would it be if he had the political wind at his back, so to speak, both in terms of voter mandate, and also in terms of strength in Congress? Also, there are an unusual number of potentially competitive Senate races in swing states this year – OH, MI, WI, MO, VA, PA, FL, NV, NM. And let’s not forget that we’re trying to keep out Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts! All of our Senate candidates would benefit from a nominee who can win with room to spare, as opposed to one who can only win in a photo finish.

What is Electability?

In this section, I’ll discuss various factors that go into electability. They vary in importance; the first three I’d say are the major ones, and then I’ll go through a bevy of smaller factors.

Ability to win over swing Obama voters

Fairly straightforward. We lost a lot of voters between 2004 and 2008; we need to get them back.

One thing to keep in mind is that, relative to the usual Democratic baseline, Obama overperformed among minorities, among college-educated whites (think suburbs of Denver, Raleigh, Philadelphia, and northern Virginia), and in some areas like the German/Scandinavian belt stretching from northwest Ohio to Wisconsin and over to the Dakotas and eastern Nebraska (somehow skipping Minnesota – convention effect? maybe they liked Palin’s accent there? who knows?). You can see a map of this here.  These groups make up a disproportionate number of the voters that swung from 2004 to 2008; a candidate that can particularly appeal to these demographics would have a leg up in this electability factor.

How does a candidate appeal to such swing voters? One, convince them that your policies are better and that you are qualified to lead.  Two, make it seem like you share their general values and aren’t too “extreme”.  For the former, we should be looking for the candidate’s ability to persuade people on the merits of his principles and abilities, and also for a record of success that the candidate can point to as evidence for his policies’ effectiveness.  Basically, can you make people believe that you know what you are talking about?  For the latter, it’s primarily about reputation and style.  The impressionistic view that people have of the candidates’ ideologies, personalities, and demeanors might not be very accurate (nor relevant to how well the candidate might actually do as president), but it does matter in how they vote.

Keeping McCain voters unified and energized

For pure electability purposes, I rank this as slightly lower in importance than the first factor.  For one thing, there are fewer McCain voters that might be lost than Obama voters that might be won*.  But more importantly, much of the work on this front is already accomplished due to Obama’s unpopularity – the anti-Obama vote from the right will be huge and this will be true no matter who the nominee is.  (For instance, note that the demographic that swung most towards the GOP in 2008 was the rural white working class, particularly in Appalachia.  All polling indicates that Obama is still mightily unpopular among these voters, so any competent GOP candidate should retain these votes.)

It’s important to point out that this does not just refer to the conservative base. Our 46% share in 2008 comprised conservatives and centrists alike; fans of McCain’s mavericky moderation as well as Palin’s most devoted disciples. Folks like George Will and Ross Douthat aren’t popular around these parts, I know, but the nominee will want them aboard his train, since there are definitely many Republican voters that are influenced by voices like theirs. Call them whatever names you want, but you cannot disavow their votes. (One additional thing to keep in mind: if you lose a conservative voter, he probably sits at home. If you lose a moderate voter, he might sit at home, or he might vote for Obama – a bigger loss.)

*: Here are some numbers for you. Obama won the popular vote roughly 70M-60M. If no voters change sides but our candidate is able to excite the base and turn out 15% more voters (which would be miraculous), we still lose. If our candidate does not pull out more base voters, yet convinces just 7.5% of Obama voters to switch sides, we win.

Vulnerability to personal attack and caricature

We all know that Obama will be looking to attack with his hundreds of millions of campaign funds, since he will be trying to take the focus off his record.  We also know that his allies in the media will gladly play along with the narratives that the Obama campaign tries to spin about our nominee. Now, all of our nominees will face roughly the same attacks on the policy fronts, branded as protecting corporations and the wealthy, against the environment and poor people on Medicare, etc.  But there will be personal and character attacks as well, as the Democrats try to paint a caricature of the GOP nominee, and these will vary by candidate. Some will be easier to caricature than others; we should be aware of each candidate’s vulnerabilities on this front.

Polling Evidence

There’s a lot of overlap between this and the other factors, and the race is still quite early and the vague impressions that Americans have of the candidates will inevitably change as we get closer to November. However, we do have some objective data points to work with, and they shouldn’t be ignored completely.

Prior Performance in Elections

Another objective data point. How well did the various candidates do in their previous electoral runs, relative to the generic Republican baseline?  The bigger the races, the better; winning 53% in a blueish district  is more impressive than winning 53% in a red state.

Candidate Discipline

Basically, the ability to stay on message and avoid gaffes. Obviously a valuable skill.

Debating Skill

Probably not as important as some think (George W. Bush won two elections, after all), and has very little to do with one’s actual performance as President, but it still has some use when it comes to getting elected.

Fundraising

A necessary evil, I suppose. I rate this as a minor factor since the eventual nominee will have gained fundraising prowess as he (she?) rises in the primary polls, and once he becomes the nominee, the entire party apparatus will be at his disposal, so differences between candidates will probably be small in the end.

Crisis Management

There’s always going to be the unexpected during a campaign. In 2008, when the Lehman bankruptcy hit, McCain didn’t handle it particularly well and that was the beginning of the end. Can the candidate think on his feet and come up with reassuring responses when events intervene and all eyes are on him?

Swing States

Does the candidate have local ties to a swing state that might give him a boost there, independent of all the other factors?

Stay tuned for part 2 of this diary, in which I’ll discuss individual candidates and how I see them stacking up in the various aspects of electability.  In the meantime, here’s a summary of the argument I was trying to make above:

• Electability isn’t as simple as listing “Can Win” vs. “Can’t Win”; one needs to talk about gradations.
• Electability seems particularly important this year, compared to past years.
• There are many different factors that go into electability; one can’t judge it on a single axis.