FairVote Feed: Presidential Tracker

Presidential Tracker: The Orphaned States of America

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:20:30 -0700

Three weeks ago, voters in South Carolina looked on as President Obama passed them by once again. Since coming into office in 2008, the president has held 18 events in North Carolina, yet has not once held any sort of event in South Carolina. Geographically, religiously, and historically, the Carolinas are quite similar. The big difference: In 2008, President Obama won North Carolina with 49.9%, but lost South Carolina with 44.9%.That modest difference means everything given the way states currently cast their electoral votes.

Under the current system, presidential candidates must target all their attention towards swing states, meaning those politically divided states that could tip the majority of the Electoral College towards one candidate. Candidates have no incentive to focus any resources on states that will predictably vote Democratic or Republican in nationally competitive elections. Even with the similarities between states like North and South Carolina, a small percentage of difference can be the gap that labels a state either an election favorite or an election orphan.

As we track the movement of the president, his trend to focus on swing states stands out. According to The New York Times, 34 states will decidedly vote Republican or Democrat this election. Most analysts reduce the number of states that can truly tip a close election to seven or eight.

Both major party candidates will funnel resources away from predictable orphan states like South Carolina into battleground states like North Carolina. The Boston Globe reports the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has given $25 million to state parties for voter outreach in about a dozen swing states, and that a Super PAC tied to Mitt Romney has bought $4 million in ad time to be spent in those same states.

The Globe reports the DNC has already invested $976,000 in North Carolina, exceeded only by donations to parties in the usual trio of big swing states: Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.

That kind of focus is also demonstrated by our Presidential Tracker, which reports on every event and state visit by President Obama since assuming the presidency. Just as in 2004, when George Bush ran for re-election without a primary opponent, the White House will again keep a close eye on swing states when prioritizing where to travel.

President Obama’s Five Most Visited States:

Ranking	State	# of Total Events	Margin of Victory (%)	% of National Donations in 2008
1	New York	59	25.5% (D)	10.52
2	California	45	23.6 (D)	17.8
3	Florida	38	2.6 (D)	4.91
4	Virginia	37	6.3 (D)	5.27
5	Ohio	31	4.6(D)	5.98

In a practical effort to lead the United States, candidates are left with no other option than to bypass millions of American voices in order to hear the few that will actually influence their victory. Utah, for example, has not come within 6% of voting Democrat since 1912 – and is among the least likely swing states for at least another generation. .

That means presidential candidates have consistently lacked incentive to seek the voice of Utah citizens, Republican, Democratic or independent. Unsurprisingly, Utah is among the five states with the biggest drop in youth turnout over since the voting age was lowered 40 years ago.

This year, all 2.8 million Utah residents will again stand by watching with the majority of the United States as candidates from both parties pour millions of dollars into a handful of states as they bounce back and forth speaking and advertising to the few voters with any decision power.

With the polarization of parties and shrinking number of battleground states, the electoral system is muting an increasing number of American voices. The current system stifles the majority of Americans by locking them into geographic regions where they are barred from casting a vote that carries any weight. While 72% of Americans favor a national popular vote in presidential elections, the Electoral College continues to speak on their behalf.

More than 98% of campaign events and campaign spending took place in only 15 states in the final months of the 2008 election. These states make up 37% of the nation’s eligible voter population, and their voter turnout was only 67%. In other words, 25% of the country’s population received 98% of attention from candidates in 2008. From within the 25% of Americans that voted in these swing states, the real campaign targets were a small pool of swing voters who can decide a state like North Carolina, but not one like South Carolina.

A national popular vote, in contrast, would shift the focus of presidential candidates from fighting ruthlessly over the margins of an already marginalized country and on to listening to the rest of U.S. voters. It won’t happen in this election, but if the national popular vote determines the president in 2016, maybe 98% of funds and campaigning will be used across 98% of the country.

Follow our Presidential Tracker as we update you on President Obama’s location on the campaign trail. We will also be keeping you posted on former Governor Romney’s campaign whereabouts as things heat up before elections. Keep your eyes open for the Romney Tracker.

Tracker Highlights from White House travels 2012:

*38% of events held by Obama in 2012 (30 of 80) have been held in swing states. We predict this number will surpass the current 38% as the campaign season continues forward.

* President Obama has held five public events in Ohio, a swing state, since January and hasn’t yet gone to Ohio’s neighboring states of Indiana, Kentucky or West Virginia since May of 2011.

*115 electoral votes are currently tossups between 9 swing states.

* Obama has held 23 of 45 campaign fundraising events in California, New York and Florida so far in 2012.

Presidential Tracker: New Evidence of our Shrinking Battleground

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:57:30 -0800

Since FairVote's last presidential tracker update in December, President Barack Obama's travels have followed the standard rule of prioritizing the swing states. Indeed, just like his predecessor George Bush as he prepared for re-election, the president's destinations and the nature of his visits followed the same trends that we've seen in the past: battlegrounds and fundraising.

According to the Washington Post's POTUS Tracker, since the first of December, Barack Obama has officially visited 11 states and held a total of 17 events, excluding his personal trip to Hawaii over the holidays. Of the 12 most likely battleground states for the 2012 election, the President visited eight of them in the past 2 months alone.

As indicated in the chart below, events in the New Year are similarly shaping up to be a complimentary mixture of fundraising and swing state public events. During his trips to New York and Illinois, both typically strong blue states, the President held a total of seven events, all of which were for fundraising. And, battlegrounds are gaining momentum, as expected. Last week, the president completed a 3-day battleground tour to Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, and Michigan, with an additional visit to one state that is unlikely to be a real battleground: Arizona.

This is what his 2012 is shaping up like so far:

States	Type of Event(s)	No. of Events	State Status
Ohio	Public & Private	2	Battleground
Illinois	Fundraising	3	Safe Democrat
Florida	Public	1	Battleground
New York	Fundraising	4	Safe Democrat
Iowa	Public	1	Battleground
Arizona	Public	1	Leaning Republican
Nevada	Public	1	Battleground
Colorado	Public	1	Battleground
Michigan	Public	1	Battleground

As discussed in previous tracker updates, visits to these so-called "battleground" states (and safe states for fundraising) meet a strategic need in a candidates bid to get elected to the office of the president. Typically, the President takes a public tour or delivers remarks in battleground states. Yet, it is also common to travel frequently to certain safe states that can lend a helping hand in the fundraising department. President Obama regularly held events in New York and California over the past year - both of which top the list for most events held in 2011 and are famous for many big campaign donors.

This focus on swing states is a direct result of the winner-take-all system of our Electoral College. Once the nomination is decided - which it effectively is for Obama, as he avoided a primary challenger - presidential candidates have every incentive to focus all of their campaign-related attention on a dwindling number of swing states. This leads to many being excluded from the national conversation. Indeed, there is no real need for the President to be concerned with "safe states" under such a system (other than for fundraising purposes). It is the incentives created by the system.

When Obama had different incentives, he campaigned differently, of course. In his hard-fought race for the Democratic nomination in 2008, he visited nearly every state. But in his three years as president, he still has yet to travel to nine states - a direct result of our indefensible way of electing presidents.

To wrap up the past year, in 2011, 61% of the country received 100% of the attention and event visits from the president, but more than half of those states are considered "battleground". Although fundraising in safely democratic states was high on the agenda during the past year - a combined 52 events - public events in battleground states totaled a hefty 49.

As you can see from the map below, 20 states in total never had one event in all of 2011-including the nine that have never received a visit since he took office in 2009. 15 other states across the nation still had three or fewer visits. Iowa, New Hampshire and Minnesota are the only "battleground" states to have less than four events in 2011. In fact, of the 12 battlegrounds for this election, 11 of them each had three or more events in the past year.

Data on President Barack Obama's travels is obtained from the Washington Post's POTUS Tracker

2011 Year-end Summary

Presidential Tracker: Looking at the Structure

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:20:52 -0800

I update our ongoing report on President Barack Obama's travels on our POTUS tracker on a near-daily basis. Since my last presidential tracker analysis update on October 14^th, the President has travelled to 10 states and held 41 separate events.

Over these past six weeks, a battleground state had a 50% chance of a visit, whereas a non-battleground had a 8% chance of a visit. In other words, of the 10 states that President Obama has travelled to since mid-October, seven of them are considered one of the 12 battlegrounds for the 2012 election and only three are among the 38 "non-battleground" states.

White House attention to the states that matter in the 2012 elections has been noticed. This week the Wall Street Journal reported that President Obama's visit to Scranton, Pennsylvania on Wednesday marked the 56^th event (according to their tally) in a battleground state since the beginning of this year. This means that President Obama has surpassed both Clinton and Bush with official event visits to battleground states in the year before re-election.

The WSJ also reports that critics accuse the President of "intertwining campaigning and governing." But of course, as the Journal's story shows, this is nothing new - and only to be expected when you have electoral rules that make some voters so much more important than others.

Indeed, why are people critiquing the number of events in battleground states when we should be critiquing the fact that the events are in so-called battleground states in the first place? It is the rules of the current system that make this pattern of travel so likely.

And why aren't we asking what could happen in our country's Electoral College landscape that would lead to the problem becoming even more pronounced?

What FairVote's analysis shows clearly is that in every new presidential election over the past 20 years, the partisan divide in this country has been stronger and the number of swing states, which traditionally garner all candidate attention, diminish. Because of these trends, general election candidates are forced to focus on only those "important" states that they have a potential of winning (should they campaign enough!) - hence the term, "battleground."

As discussed in my blog post earlier this fall on former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter's blunt statements about the value of being a battleground, this distinction inevitably affects White House attention. You can see it in the image below (as posted in the WSJ), Clinton, Bush, and Obama each gave significant attention to battleground states.

It should not be surprising that an electoral system that produces inequality in votes will produce inequality in attention. It should also not be surprising that visits to these battleground states by presidents and candidates have been increasing with each election. The structural system encourages it, political consultants promote it, and the emotional, partisan inferno that divides our country politically makes it a necessity.

Tracking the president's events and visits doesn't produce surprises considering the electoral system under which he operates, but it does provide insight into the inadequacies of our current structure -- affirming that the rules have a direct correlation on the outcomes.

A note on methodology: Our tracking data is based on the Washington Post POTUS Tracker, from which we gather information daily. We categorize each specific event according to its purpose, therefore reflecting some difference in event numbers compared to the WSJ.

Download the NPV flyer that was made using the WSJ image! "Unless you live in one of a few states, your voice and vote just don't matter."

Below is a snapshot of each type of event in the 12 highlighted battleground states for the 2012 election year:

Battleground Events since January 2011

	Public	Private	Fundraiser	Total Events
Colorado	2	0	2	4
Florida	4	0	7	11
Iowa	3	0	0	3
Michigan	4	1	0	5
Minnesota	3	0	0	3
Nevada	1	2	1	4
New Hampshire	1	0	0	1
North Carolina	6	1	0	7
Ohio	4	0	0	4
Pennsylvania	7	1	2	10
Virginia	10	0	0	10
Wisconsin	3	0	0	3
Total Events	48	5	12	65

Presidential Tracker: "Show Me the Money"

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:48:01 -0700

Over the past month, President Barack Obama’s state visits and events have correlated with typical general election campaign strategy –formulated around our winner-take-all rules for allocating electoral votes. Although political calculations of course don’t govern all travel decisions by a president, they are clearly factors (just as evidence shows they were in 2003-2004, when George Bush ran for re-election without a primary opponent).

Under these rules, swing states are often prime for public events, same-party “safe” states are frequented for fundraising and most opposing-party “safe” states are ignored. The White House today continues to show this pattern. For example, since the last Presidential Tracker update on Sept. 14th, President Obama has visited the following nine states, according to the Washington Post. They are:

· New York (safely Democratic, good for fundraising)

· Ohio (swing state)

· Washington (leans Democratic, good for fundraising)

· California (safely Democratic, good for fundraising)

· Colorado (swing state)

· Missouri (leans Republican, but within reach)

· Texas (safely Republican)

· Pennsylvania (swing state)

· Florida (swing state)

These nine states comprise an insightful mixture of “safely” Democratic states, swing states and one traditionally Republican, but very wealthy state. When we look closer at the type of events held in each, the reasons for those visits (and how they fit into the winner-take-all dominated campaign strategy) make a lot more sense.

Based on our analysis, New York, California and Washington are all considered blue states. New York and California are safely Democratic, while Washington State is leaning Democratic. Both New York and Washington saw two campaign fundraising events in the last month. California, on the other hand, had a total of five fundraising events in just two days.

Swing states top the list as most visited in the past month. Ohio, Colorado and Pennsylvania each received a public event visit, while fundraisers were the only events in Florida and Missouri. These five swing states will most likely receive more attention as time passes.

Then there is Texas. In Texas, two public events and two fundraisers were held – all in one day. Although this type of visit could mean that the Obama campaign believes the Latino vote in Texas could turn the state blue , it’s more likely the fact that this big state earns special attention for its wealth and importance for the national economy.

In all, trips to these nine states over the past month consisted of 22 total events: seven public events and fifteen fundraisers. Clearly, it is still the fundraising time of campaign season, but it’s also a time of increased swing state visits – visits that will only increase in number as time goes on.

Unfortunately, this special focus on certain states is a result of the current winner-take-all rule in states governing how they allocate electoral votes. New York, holding the number one spot for most events held, experienced its 46th event this month (money and size sure can talk even when your state doesn’t matter in general elections!) Meanwhile, 10 other states have never seen a targeted visit by the President since he took office. The map below shows this disparity among state visits, totaling event visits since January of 2009.

Presidential Tracker: "Every Corner of Every Swing State"

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:05:05 -0700

FairVote is now starting to update our Presidential Tracker daily. You can see a state-by-state rundown of presidential visits on our tracker page by looking at the map. We will periodically post an updated spreadsheet detailing presidential travel. Once the Republican Party has nominated a candidate, we will also start tracking the nominee’s travel. This blog helps explain the reason for our project.

During his address to Congress on jobs last week, President Obama declared that he would take his message “to every corner of this country.” Although it has only been six days since his speech, the President has already made visits to tout his jobs plan in three states (with trips to New York and Pennsylvania exclusively for the anniversary of September 11th): Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina.

We suspect it’s no coincidence that these three states are major battleground areas for the 2012 election – based on the 2008 elections, our analysis of state partisanship , and Ohio and Virginia being among the seven states that “Crystal Ball” analyst Larry Sabato recently pronounced as the "super-swing states" for the 2012 election.

As we pointed out in our June 2011 tracker blog, attention to more crucial battleground and swing states will likely only increase as the November 2012 election approaches. Just as with George Bush in his 2004 re-election bid, Barack Obama can look straight to the general election; that year, Bush aide Matthew Dowd admitted that for the last 2 ½ years before the election, one of the richest campaigns in history never wasted a dime on polling a single person living outside of 18 potential battleground states.

The pattern is becoming clearer in our analysis as the election and full-swing of campaign season draw near. Virginia and Ohio are both already in the top 10 ranking of President Obama’s most visited states since 2009, with Virginia at 31 total events held, and Ohio at 23. With the recent American Jobs Act proposal and the election cycle gearing up, FairVote is keeping an eye out for patterns like this and increases in the number of visits to more battleground states like Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Florida.

The Republican party knows the value of swing states, too, of course and the Republican National Committee has planned accordingly, as evidenced by their announcement of a series of press conferences in major battleground states (see our July 2011 tracker blog for more details).

Partisan emphasis and political catering to niche populations are characteristic of campaigning today. When one party’s nominee is comfortably or hopelessly behind in a state, both major parties will ignore the state. Unfortunately, the political climate and campaign strategy that both parties employ are a result of the current winner-take-all system in which they are forced to operate.The winner-take-all rule adopted by states for allocating their electors makes it politically useless for candidates to do what President Obama declared was his goal: “going to every corner of every state in the country.”

As a result, the president and his Republican opponent next year are far more likely to focus on every corner of a dwindling number of swing states. The incentives of the current system and the emphasis placed on just a few states every four years leaves more than two-thirds of Americans ignored, as their votes are discounted for living in states that are too “safe” and “predictable”.

The only way this reality will change is if states institute the National Popular Vote Plan. Only then will every state become a part of the campaign process and all Americans will see that their votes matter.

Bipartisan Over-Attention to Battleground States

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 07:01:50 -0700

FairVote has recently blogged about the disproportionate attention that battleground states have received from President Barack Obama since his inauguration. But political calculation is thoroughly bipartisan. Witness how the Republican National Committee (RNC) is engaging in similar inequitable practices.

On July 7th, the RNC announced a series of twelve press conferences with state party leaders. Among the included states: North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, Colorado, Washington, Ohio, Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and New Mexico. In their communications blog announcing the event, the RNC states that the conferences will be held by, "Republican state parties in battleground states."

All of these states were carried by Obama in 2008 except for Missouri, which represented his most narrow defeat. But George Bush carried, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Indiana in 2000 and/or 2004, while Missouri, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have of historically been hard-fought battleground states. While not a battleground state in 2008 or 2004, its earlier history often labeled it a swing state - Republicans may have visions of once more making it competitive - or someone slipped up and substituted it for the glaringly missing battleground of Florida.

But more than half of the states, representing more than half of all Americans, are not on their list. That includes all of the 12 states that have gone Democratic in every election since 1992 and that were won by at least 10% by Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004. Their list also doesn't include any of the safest Republican strongholds, like the 13 states that the GOP has carried since 1980. (See Neal Suidan's related blog.)

Both parties, and all candidates, place overwhelming emphasis and resources on the few swing states in order to win precious electoral votes. This is due to one simple reason: the current system of electoral vote allocation based on state popular votes.

If enough states adopt the National Popular Vote system, the inequities of presidential candidate attention would be eliminated. Each candidate would need to campaign in all states, as individual votes would matter no matter where they are cast . The entire country would be a battleground.

Presidential Tracker: Following the Money...For Now

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:33:07 -0700

This blog is one of a series which tracks the movements of the President using data from the Washington Post's ‘POTUS Tracker' to examine the effect of battleground status on presidential attention. If you are interested in examining the data, a copy of our compiled data (as of June 27th, 2011) can be downloaded here.

On Thursday, June 23rd, President Obama visited both Fort Drum and New York City and held a total of five events. According to the Washington Post and their 'POTUS Tracker', the three events in New York City were all Democratic National Committee fundraisers. Since his election, the President has attended a total of 59 fundraisers, 12 of which have been in New York. In fact, 50 of the president's 59 fundraisers as president have been in the ten states that donated the most money to Presidential campaigns in 2008.

These ten states are: California (10 fundraising events/25 total events), New York (12/40), Illinois (7/21), Texas (4/11), Virginia (1/30), Florida (8/26), Massachusetts (5/13), Maryland (0/29), Washington (1/5), and Pennsylvania (2/18). They raised $538,059,969 during the 2008 election cycle, and are currently getting significant attention from the President in hopes that they will continue to be such strong donors. 217 Presidential events have been hosted in these ten states. That is 58.3% of President Obama's total events since his inauguration.

However, we can expect nearly all these states to lose the attention of both the President and the Republican nominee as the general election approaches. Historically, strongly partisan states, even those receiving multiple visits due to their monetary importance, are abandoned as the election approaches.

Between September 5th, 2008 and November 4th, 2008, California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Washington received a grand total of zero visits from the major party presidential nominees.

Only Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia received any candidate appearances during that two month period. Together, they received 109 visits in the same period due to their political importance: time spent (or not spent) in these areas could easily sway the election outcome.

Ad spending during this peak season of the 2008 general election underscores the same division. From September 24th to November 4th, 2008 total ad spending in 35 less contested states was only 2.10% of national spending. And in the seven previously mentioned states, ad spending accounted for only .05% of the national total.

On the other hand, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, due to their swing state status, received 44.0% of total ad spending during this period.

Until the National Popular Vote is instituted to replace the statewide winner-take-all rules that govern allocation of electoral votes in states, it is unlikely that candidates from either party will spend any time in California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maryland, or Washington during the last few months of the campaign period.

While these states get significant attention early on in campaigns as a source of campaign funds, the current system de-emphasizes their importance during the actual contest. This diminishes the importance of the millions of voters in these states and also in smaller states that often are not competitive in general elections, like Wyoming, Rhode Island, and Delaware.

Presidential Visits: A Return to Ohio and the Influence of the Electoral System on Presidential Attention

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:45:20 -0700

What's new since our last blog: President Obama has held events for the first time in Puerto Rico, but still has yet to visit South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nebraska, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Vermont.

Ten states with the most presidential events, during the Obama presidency: New York, Virginia, Maryland, Florida, California, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Massachusetts. This remains unchanged since our last entry.

States with 5 or more visits in 2011: California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia.

On Friday, June 3rd, President Barack Obama delivered remarks at the Chrysler Group Supplier Park in Toledo, Ohio. This was his 22nd event in the state of Ohio since assuming the presidency. Yet since his inauguration in 2009, the President has yet to hold a single event in ten states: South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nebraska, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Vermont. Of these 10 states, all but Vermont went strongly Republican in the 2008 presidential election.All but South Carolina (8.9%), North Dakota (8.6%), and South Dakota (8.5%) were decided by lopsided margins of 15% or greater.

Ranked 6th for the number of events attended by the president, Ohio is joined in the Top Ten for presidential attention by such 2008 swing states as Virginia (2nd), Florida (4th) and Pennsylvania (8th). These four states - each won by Obama in 2008 by less than 11% - are seen by some analysts as representing the key to the president's re-election bid in 2012, with a sweep for the president making it nearly impossible for a Republican to win. So far in the President's first term they account for 25% of his total events.

Carried by President Obama by only 2.5% in 2008, Florida continues to receive prominent attention in other ways as well. The New York Times notes that the 848,000 Puerto Rican residents of Florida may be the reason for the President's June 14th visit to Puerto Rico. This will be the first official Presidential visit to Puerto Rico since John F. Kennedy's in 1961, and it is possibly due to the fact that the Florida residents "are not avowed Democrats. This has turned them into pivotal swing voters in a crucial swing state." Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democratic Network , suggests that, "the large and growing Puerto Rican population in central Florida will be key to winning the state in 2012."

The other six states receiving the most attention from the President are New York (1st), Maryland (3rd), California (5th), Illinois (7th), Massachusetts (9th), and Wisconsin (10th). While won by Obama by 13% in 2008, Wisconsin remains a potential swing state.It is traditionally hard-fought, and Wisconsin's manufacturing economy was hit hard by the economic recession. As to Maryland, it is within a few miles of the White House, making it an easy state for events showcasing new polices, while Illinois was represented by Obama in the Senate and is a relatively reliable fundraising source.

So, you might ask, why has Obama been to the firmly Democratic states of New York, Massachusetts and California a combined 76 times? Notably, 23 of those 76 events were fundraisers and these three states donated a total of $276,896,336 during the 2008 election cycle, 34.3% of nationwide donations. This calculation for the entire top ten among presidential visits makes that percentage 60.9%.

The President's political team seems to be doing similar math to many political analysts, and has been allocating Presidential visits and prestige to areas based on whether its electoral votes are in play in 2012. In January 2011, the Cook Political Report narrowed down the highly competitive swing states to a list of just seven: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Four of the seven are among the President's ten most visited states, and the other three are in the top 25. The visits to these seven states (only 14% of the states and 20% of the voting eligible population in 2008) amount to 99 visits or 26.8% of the total visits. The bottom 25 states received 34 presidential visits or 9.2% of the total visits. That works out to 1.36 visits for every state in the bottom 25, with each of the battleground states receiving an average of 14.14 visits.

As the 2012 election approaches, it is likely that President Obama will continue his electoral focus, visiting swing states where his 2008 margin of victory was within reach of Republicans. Our nation's previous president George Bush showed similar travel patterns in his first presidential term, and his senior strategist Matthew Dowd admitted that the 2004 re-election campaign had not polled a single American living outside of 18 potential swing states in the final two and a half years of Bush's first-term. We have no doubt that states like South Carolina, Arkansas, or Kansas matter to presidents, but given our state-by-state, winner-take-all method of electing the president, political incentives for spending energy on these states are nil. Until we have a national popular vote for president in which every vote in every corner of the nation is equally meaningful, expect to see White House political teams making similar calculations.

Presidential Visits: Current Electoral College Rules Distort Attention

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 07:37:19 -0700

The current rules governing the Electoral College distort how presidential candidates and their campaigns act in general elections. In the 2008 presidential election, for example more than 98% of campaign events and campaign spending focused on 15 states representing barely a third of Americans in the campaign's final months. But once a candidate becomes president, does this behavior of greater focus on states that are electorally important continue? The answer appears to be yes.

Relying on the Washington Post's POTUS Tracker, we have compiled the locations and dates of President Barack Obama's public events and found that in general, the White House scheduled more events in the "battleground states" that were major players in the 2008 presidential election.Given the influence of the current Electoral College system and the fact that incumbent presidents are aware of the next election from the start of their presidency, the results may not be surprising -- but provide another reform to seek reform.

FairVote first spotlighted this phenomenon in a 2009 innovative analysis that revealed the remarkable degree of extra attention given to swing states in the early months of the Obama presidency. We concluded, as in this blog post, that this inequality, can best be explained by incentives created by the current rules governing the Electoral College.

The trends haven’t been quite so pronounced in the two years since then, but they remain clear. For example:

President Obama has spent seven days in North Carolina, a state he narrowly won in 2008. Yet he has not visited neighboring South Carolina - -although it played a major role in his nomination, it is not considered a general election swing state.
President Obama has spent five days in Iowa, which not only holds the first nominating contest, but also is a general election battleground. He has not visited several nearby states carried by John McCain like Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
President Obama has visited 2008 swing state Nevada for seven days. Neighboring Utah is safely Republican -- and has not had a presidential visit.
Twelve states have not had a single presidential visit. One (Vermont) is safely Democrat, and eleven (Arkansas , Idaho , Kansas, Kentucky , Nebraska, North Dakota , Oklahoma, South Carolina , South Dakota. Tennessee, and Utah) are safely Republican. None are swing states, although Obama did earn one electoral vote in Nebraska in 2008 due to its congressional district rule for allocating electoral votes.

This week, the trend continues as President Obama takes his argument with Republican leaders about budget priorities out beyond the Beltway. Yesterday he held a town hall in the swing state of Virginia, and, after West Coast fundraising and a town hall at the California headquarters of Facebook, will then hold a town hall in the swing state of Nevada. On Monday, he addressed his budget plans on local radio today in Indianapolis (IN), Raleigh (NC), Denver (CO) and Dallas (TX). Three of the four cities are in 2008 swing states, and the fourth (Texas) is one where Democrats have been testing their prospects.

The Hard Numbers

You can download our full, day-by-day spreadsheet here. Looking deeper into the data, we begin at the top of the list with states where presidential visits can largely be explained for reasons other than the current Electoral College system.

Virginia and Maryland are unsurprisingly the top two states in the list because of their proximity to Washington D.C., and relative ease in visiting. Though the number of visits for these states are high in comparison to the rest of the country, it could have been higher -- we excluded various trips the President made to these two states for activities like playing golf (14 trips to Fort Belvoir, VA and 13 trips to Andrews Air Force Base) and visiting Maryland's Camp David (26 times).

The next state to receive a disproportionate number of visits has been Hawaii, where the Obama family has vacationed each winter. Vacationing also adds up for Massachusetts, where the Obamas vacationed for 7 days in 2009 and 9 days in 2010. President Obama spent several days in New York due to the United Nations (4 days in 2009, and 3 in 2010).

New York and Massachusetts, along with California, are also top fundraising states (both in terms of how many fundraiser events were held and how much each state contributed in 2008).

Partisanship and whether Obama won the state in 2008 seems to play a factor in looking at events and visits. The top 14 states all voted for Obama (states with 6 visits or above), and out of states that have three or more presidential visits, 21 of the 25 states voted Democratic. Of the remaining most-visited states, Texas and Arizona have higher numbers in part due to the tragedies of Fort Hood and Tucson, as well as memorial services for miners held in West Virginia.

Despite being a “Republican” state, Obama traveled to Georgia twice. Coincidentally, Georgia could be put into play in the 2012 election - Obama only lost by 5%, which is not a monumental obstacle -- and potentially worth a try, given that it and Texas are the largest "Republican-leaning states going into 2012. Other exceptions include: Wyoming (a trip to Yellowstone National Park); Alaska (stopping by a military base during his Asia Trip in 2009); and three states (Louisiana, Alabama & Mississippi) particularly affected by last year's BP oil spill.

Overall, of the 264 days that Obama has spent outside of Washington, D.C. (again, according to the Washington Post), 202 of those days (over 75%) were spent in 14 out of 50 states (28% of states). Clearly, something is wrong when the President, who represents the entire nation, spends most of his time in a concentrated number of states, especially in public events engaging with ordinary voters.

One way to avoid these inequalities in presidential elections and governance would be for states to adopt the National Popular Vote plan, which is designed to guarantee that the president should be elected by the popular vote of the entire United States. The National Popular Vote legislaition has been signed into law in six states and the District of Columbia, and later this week is expected to be signed into law in Vermont. Once governing our elections after passage in sufficient states, every vote in the nation will be counted as equal, and the distinctions among states in a national election will be secondary to reaching out to all Americans. No one state would have any more importance than another, with the most important goal in an election being simply o receive more votes than one's top opponent. While we may not be able to predict exactly how presidential behavior will change once this proposal is enacted, it's nearly certain that candidates and presidents will treat all states far more equitably than today.