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May 30, 2003
The Dreaded Flag Debate
When you spend your time arguing about politics, and more specifically Georgia politics, you can't escape from the shadow that this flag casts over our great state.
I find that there are roughly four camps that people fall into.
1. Democrats positively convinced the flag cost Barnes the election.
2. Democrats convinced the flag played a role along with other issues.
3. Republicans who prefer to highlight those other issues (teachers, Northern ARC) while grudgingly admitting the flag might have played a role.
4. Republicans aware of rural Georgia politics who completely disavow the role of the flag or Republicans unaware of rural Georgia election dynamics who had no idea (pre-Nov 5th) that the flag was an issue.
I waffle between 1 and 2. The day after the election I was sqaurely in the camp of 1, probably due to a little shock. Now I agree that the loss of support from teachers hurt Barnes re-election prospects. However, when you examine the numbers that I've compiled, you'll see how Democrats on the state legislative level, who generally supported Barnes agenda wholesale, fared compared to Barnes based on one vote: their support for the 1956 flag or the Barnes flag.
Some background: My data includes 86 rural counties. About 50 of these counties had competitive state representative races, and about 50 had competitive state senate races. Some had both. The total vote in these counties makes up about 17.5% of the statewide vote, and is pretty representative of the "rural" Georgia vote as a whole. Keep in mind, Barnes won in the cities and suburbs, so if he had come close or even won in these counties, and other counties like them, he would be serving his second term.
Now for the data:
[What type candidate is being analysed] Vote% Barnes vote in same counties
Average vote for Democraticic state legislator: 55% 42%
Average vote for Democratic state representative candidate in "open" seats: 46% 39%
Average vote for Democratic state senator candidate in "open" seats: 42% 37%
Average vote for "Turncoat"* Dem. state representative: 55% 45%
Average vote for "Turncoat"* Dem. state senator: 55% 45%
Average vote for Dem. state representative who voted against the Barnes flag and for the 1956 flag: 61% 39%
Average vote for Dem. state senator who voted against the Barnes flag and for the 1956 flag: 64% 37%
* Turncoat = Candidate who voted for Barnes flag.
My conclusion: I believe that the flag vote played, at minimum, a 6% role in the governor's race. I draw this conclusion from two numbers.
One is the difference between the vote for "open seat" Democrats and Governor Barnes. In an open seat, the party performance should be pretty well reflected in the number of votes each candidate received. In these instances, the unknown Democratic candidate received about 6% more votes than Gov. Barnes. It is likely that these local candidates for legislative races pretty much adopted the Democratic platform for 2002, without being tainted by the flag controversy.
The other set of data I use to draw my 6% conclusion is the difference in vote between Democratic state reps who voted for the '56 flag (63% average) and those Democrats who supported the Barnes flag (55% average).
When you consider that Barnes lost to Perdue 46%-52% statewide, you can see how a relatively small swing in half the state could have changed the outcome. In fact, in just these 86 counties, if Barnes had run even with the Democrats running for state legislator (historically the Democratic governor runs about even with the local Democrat running for state legislator), he would have taken 51,000+ votes away from Perdue, leaving him only 1,000 votes short statewide. Considering that there are many other rural counties that were not included in my study, if it hadn't been for the flag, he probably could have more than made up these 1,000 votes. In fact, he probably would have polled somewhere in-between the other Democratic statewide incumbents, like Lt. Gov Mark Taylor (52%), Attorney General Thurbert Baker (55%) and Secretary of State Cathy Cox (60%).
My data conclude that the confederate flag cost Roy Barnes the governorship.
I hope this has helped shine a light on whether the flag played an issue. We can throw rhetorical flames at each other all day long, especially in the comments over at the Political State Report, but eventually, it's in the interest of operatives on both sides to get some conclusive answers.
Please see the extended entry for info on where to download the excel files to verify my work, or draw your own conclusions. Also, please feel free to leave me a comment in lieu of email, as I've just installed the Earthlink Beta Spamblocker, and none of it will get through!
The excel files can be found here:
Posted by Chris at May 30, 2003 03:53 AM
Comments
Let's hear it.
Posted by: Chris at May 30, 2003 05:41 AM
I'll feed your data to a logit model in a few weeks (out of country, wife finishing grad school, moving, life ...). I'm a bit worried about sample selection though. How'd you pick your counties?
Posted by: kog at May 30, 2003 03:29 PM
Since I don't currently have precinct by precinct data (I don't want to pay $600 for it), I can only analyze data by county, as that is how it is presented on the secretary of state's website.
Therefor, I picked counties which were wholly represented by a single senator and/or representative. This precludes counties such as DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett, because I can get a total state rep/senator vote by adding up all the votes for different districts in the county, but there's no way for me to tell which individual districts the voters in the statewide districts live in.
Basically, counties that are wholly represented by a single state senator have less than 145,000 people living in them and counties that are wholly represented by a single state rep have less than 45,000 or so. Plus or minus 5%, of course.
Posted by: Chris at May 30, 2003 03:51 PM
I think impact of the flag issue had just as much to do with Barnes' loss as the impact of the "war" on terrorism. Georgians tend to be slightly more conservative than the rest of the country when it comes to war and such.
My point is that I don't believe you have presented conclusive evidence that the flag cost Barnes the election. I will grant you that it played a partial role, though. :-)
Posted by: Paul at May 30, 2003 04:14 PM
Thanks for the clarification on sample selection. But why won't Cathy just give you the data for free? :-)
Posted by: kog at May 30, 2003 08:03 PM
There was some trouble about people not paying recently. Or more specifically, about Democrats not paying for the same data Republicans shelled out for. I tell you what, I'll talk to some state party people I know (and some elected officials) and see if they won't let me have the precinct by precinct data.
If worst comes to worst, I can just call all the county election offices and get them to fax it to me!
I do know that the parties may not be able to give this data away, though. We'll see.
Posted by: Chris at May 30, 2003 08:14 PM
Let me rephrase -- I think the flag issue is an effect, not a cause. There is something else, like Georgia voters' general political ideologies, or the general ideologies of the candidates, that correlates them along the flag issue. The flag issue, I would suggest, is no more of a cause of any particular election results than any other single issue, though.
Posted by: Paul at May 31, 2003 09:06 AM
That begs the question of why Perdue would touch it ? Is he a neoconfederate himself ? And if so why wouldn't he come out for an actual flag design ?
My take is that the other conditions (like a popular president coming to ATL every weekend to campaign for Sonny and Saxby, teachers being really pissed, redistricting and the "King Roy" BS) would have given Sonny a chance without the flag, and if you watched his campaign they tried to drop it [flag] towards the end when they realized that fact. but the damage was done. They weaned themselves on the milk of the flag and by the time they were ready for solid food, they couldn't back away from it.
So I'm camp #2. If everything else went Barnes' way the flag itself wouldn't have done it. But flag plus anything else wins it for Perdue.
Nice weblog, Chris, thanks for running the numbers. I'll be back.
Posted by: Wes at June 1, 2003 01:43 AM
I'm still in group #3, but the numbers shown here have definitely shifted me toward two (although I am an independent voter). I still believe that Max losing shows an overall rightward shift in the entire state, regardless of the flag. We shall have a better idea in a few years.
Nice post Chris.
Posted by: Ron C at June 2, 2003 10:55 PM
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