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Let us skip the discussion if debates really matter for a moment and focus instead on who won the debate.

The first point is that, just as regular people, columnists saw the debate through their partisan eyes. In general, Republicans found McCain to be brilliant and Democrats agreed that Obama won the debate handily. Below are a few news headlines [from Real Clear Politics]:

McCain Wins Substantive Debate - David Yepsen, Des Moines Register
Obama Wins Debate On Tactics and Strategies - Joe Klein, Time
The Mac is Back - Roger Simon, The Politco
Tie Goes to Obama - John Dickerson, Slate
McCain Won, But That’s Not Enough - Fred Barnes Weekly Standard

The second and probably more interesting point is that Obama did better among Republicans than McCain did among Democrats.  Polling conducted in California by SurveyUSA shows that of Republicans, 56 percent thought that McCain won, 25 percent said Obama and 19 percent considered it a tie. As for Democrats, 72 percent said that Obama won, 13 percent thought McCain got it and 15 said that it was a tie. In other words, Obama did better than McCain because 1 in 4 of the Republicans answered that Obama won whereas 1 in 8 of the Democrats thought that McCain won.

Finally, also the group of uncommitted voters saw Obama as the winner. CBS asked a nationally representative sample “Who won the debate?” and 39 percent of them said that Obama won while 24 percent said McCain. 37 percent concluded that it was a tie.

written by Jacob \\ tags: McCain, Obama, politics, polls

The political strategists were at hard work before Obama’s speech (from NY Times):

On Thursday afternoon, workers were still making changes to Invesco Field, home to the Denver Broncos, so it would feel more intimate, less like the boisterous rallies that served Mr. Obama so well early in the primaries, but also created the celebrity image that dogs him. They were still testing camera angles to the very end, so Mr. Obama would appear among the giant crowd, not above it.

Was it just me, or didn’t they succeed a little too well? I now know exactly how Obama’s mole looks like. Thank you strategists!

written by Jacob \\ tags: Obama, politics

Soon Obama and McCain will pick their running mates. Speculation has been going on for a long time. Here is Huffington Post’s latest take on the subject:

According to the latest speculation, Barack Obama’s VP short list has tightened to two Senators and one governor — Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, and Tim Kaine. But several other figures have been considered, and may still be in the running, including Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Sens. Chris Dodd and Hillary Clinton. Also considered long-shots are GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel, Texas Rep. Chet Edwards, and Sen. Jack Reed.

Obama is leading the race over McCain both according to political gambling sites and the polls. Does this make any difference in who they will pick?

Research on risk perceptions indicates that when issues are framed in a positive light, like when a win is plausible, then people are more risk averse than if issues are framed in terms of losses, like a loss is impending (see for example Tversky and Kahneman’s research). That is, people who are in tight situations go for the long shots whereas those in favorable positions take the safe choice.

If risk research is any guide to the choices of running mates, McCain probably picks a riskier candidate, someone who can change the outcome of the race, while Obama goes for the safer alternative. It is therefore more likely that Obama will pick Biden rather than someone like Mike Bloomberg. (This does of course not mean that McCain will introduce Rush Limbaugh as his running mate since there are limits to these effects.)

written by Jacob \\ tags: McCain, Obama, politics

Facebook has a feature called Lexicon and it can be used for several interesting purposes. Facebook explains:

Lexicon is a tool to follow language trends across Facebook. Specifically, Lexicon looks at the usage of words and phrases on profile, group and event Walls. For example, you can enter “love, hate” (without quotations) to compare the usage of these two words on Facebook Walls. You may enter up to five terms, where each term can be a word or two-word phrase consisting of letters and numbers.

One of their examples is party tonight and hangover. As the graph below shows, party tonight peaks on Friday and Saturday and hangover lags closely behind, peaking on Saturday and Sunday.

I did a search on Obama, Barack, Clinton, Hillary. (Click on the picture below for a bigger graph.) I also point out a few important primaries/caucuses in the graph. And I admit willingly that I do not have a black belt in calligraphy.

A few results:

• Barack Obama is discussed more than Hillary Clinton.
• Big jump for Obama after his surprising win in Iowa.
• People refer to Barack Obama as Obama and Hillary Clinton as Hillary. Perhaps because there are many Clintons, perhaps because she is a woman. I do not know.

That Obama is a more popular discussion topic than Hillary Clinton is perhaps not surprising since the average Facebook user is young and often well-educated.

But note also that publicity is not always good. The graph below is for Knicks, Celtics, the two basketball teams from New York and Boston, respectively. Knicks played poorly this year, as they have done many years now. Celtics, on the other hand, improved their game dramatically compared to last season. The jump during the spring for Celtics reflects the beginning of the playoffs.

The spike for Knicks reflects a spectacular loss against the Celtics in November 29, 2007. They lost by about 10,000 points and it was shown on prime time television.

So just because people talk about you does not mean they praise you. However, I think it is a safe bet that the spikes for Obama reflect mostly positive comments as polls repeatedly show his popularity among young people.

written by Jacob \\ tags: facebook, Hillary Clinton, Obama, politics, sports

Obama has taken some heat for his remarks that people in small towns are paying too much attention to social issues, such as gun control and abortion, rather than focusing on the big problem, i.e. their own economy. Hillary Clinton, McCain and many others have been quick to criticize Obama for his “elitist” remarks.

I think it is interesting that there is a What’s the Matter with Kansas-moment in the debate, but the key point seems to have gotten lost: Is Obama right? (With Obama now backtracking from some of his remarks, this question is getting even more obscured.)

The argument by Thomas Frank in What’s the Matter with Kansas is essentially that the Republicans have tricked working-class Americans to be concerned with social issues rather than to worry about real problems. By reducing class-based voting, Republicans have thus gained power in the central areas of the United States. New Yorker write about the book (I copied from Amazon’s site):

Kansas, once home to farmers who marched against “money power,” is now solidly Republican. In Frank’s scathing and high-spirited polemic, this fact is not just “the mystery of Kansas” but “the mystery of America.” Dismissing much of the received punditry about the red-blue divide, Frank argues that the problem is the “systematic erasure of the economic” from discussions of class and its replacement with a notion of “authenticity,” whereby “there is no bad economic turn a conservative cannot do unto his buddy in the working class, as long as cultural solidarity has been cemented over a beer.” The leaders of this backlash, by focussing on cultural issues in which victory is probably impossible (abortion, “filth” on TV), feed their base’s sense of grievance, abetted, Frank believes, by a “criminally stupid” Democratic strategy of triangulation. Liberals do not need to know more about nascar; they need to talk more about money and class.

The problem for Democrats is that relatively unsophisticated people usually do not vote by their pocketbook. Research shows that it requires a degree of political sophistication to see the connection between elite politics and your own pocketbook. Consequently, it is only sophisticated voters that engage in this type of behavior. Politically unsophisticated citizens usually vote by how the national economy is doing (Gomez and Wilson 2001).

Since the national economy is doing pretty poorly right now, Democrats should do fine also among unsophisticated voters. However, the argument is that if only people in Kansas (i.e. working-class Americans in general) could see how their own economy is being hurt by Republicans, this would help Democrats.

written by Jacob \\ tags: elitism, Obama, politics

It is likely an understatement to say that Americans in general are politically unsophisticated. After all, only half the population can place South America on a map (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996) and less than a third of the public understands political ideology (Converse 1964).

Consequently, any time there is talk of strategic political behavior I raise a skeptical eyebrow.

The last example of alleged strategic voting, and this is pretty amazing if it is true, is that the talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been able to persuade fellow Republicans to go out and vote in the Democratic primaries. Limbaugh wants the Democratic “soap opera” to continue because he believes that it will benefit McCain. Some primaries are open to all partisans so it is possible to vote in the opposing party’s primary in certain states.

In the Mississippi Democratic primary 12 percent of the voters identified as Republicans. 12 percent is a high enough number to suggest that people are actually following Limbaugh’s advice. After all, people who vote in primaries are more politically sophisticated than most citizens. At first blush, the data also supports this idea. The data is from the exit poll in the Mississippi Democratic primary. The sample includes 147 self-identified Republicans who voted for Clinton. From Mystery Pollster’s column:

• 85 percent rated John McCain favorably, and 58 percent had a “strongly” favorable opinion of him
• 41 percent said they would be dissatisfied if Clinton were the Democratic nominee.
• 56 percent said Clinton has not “offered clear and detailed plans to solve the country’s problems.”
• 62 percent said Clinton does not inspire them “about the future of the country.”
• 72 percent said Clinton is not “honest and trustworthy.”

The important point, however, that turns the strategic voting part on its head is that these Republicans dislike - hate is probably a more accurate term - Obama so much that they simply think Hillary Clinton is a substantially lesser evil. Again, from Mystery Pollster Mark Blumenthal these are the Republicans from the exit poll:

• 91 percent said Clinton is more qualified to be commander in chief; only 3 percent said Obama is more qualified.
• 94 percent said Obama does not inspire them “about the future of the country.”
• 89 percent would be dissatisfied if Obama were the Democratic nominee.
• 86 percent said Obama is not “honest and trustworthy.”
• 86 percent said Obama has not “offered clear and detailed plans to solve the country’s problems.”
• 82 percent said Clinton should not pick Obama to be her running mate if she is the nominee.

It therefore seems reasonable to conclude, as Blumenthal does, that the Limbaugh effect has been overstated. Republicans are driven more by emotions and less by strategic voting.

written by Jacob \\ tags: Hillary Clinton, Limbaugh, Obama, politics, polls, primaries

I asked a linguist today about the pronunciation of Barack Obama. She claims, and I think she is right, that it is a universal tendency to pronounce the k-sound with Obama because Obama starts with a vowel. She exemplified with “an apple”, which is pronounced as “a napple”. Barack Obama is thus pronounced “bara kobama”.

I previously implied that this was a mostly a Swedish tendency. Since this is obviously a tremendous insult to all Swedes I want to say that I am sorry. However, I still maintain that Swedes have perfected the art of butchering foreign words in their own specific ways.

A napple

written by Jacob \\ tags: language, Obama

This one is so obvious that I am not going to cite sources: experience is a good thing for a candidate.

One of the big differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is the experience. She has more of it. She is older, and that gives her a head start, but she has also done things that Obama hardly can match. As a first lady (oh I hate that term) she did not just sit idly or turn her energy to cookie making. She did stuff; some of it failed (e.g., the health care reform) and other things were more successful (e.g., immunization policies, adoption and safe families act). Regardless of the outcome of her effort, it must have given her valuable knowledge and experience. She should know how the executive branch works better than most people. Admittedly, Obama has another type of experience and it might be worth more than some of Hillary Clinton’s experience. However, even if this is taken into account, it seems impossible to match her in this aspect.

Commentators are criticizing Hillary Clinton for beefing up the experience numbers. They argue that she should withdraw 15 years of the 35 she claims to have served the public because during 15 years she worked at a law firm in Arkansas. She did public work on the side, but according to the commentators this was not her main focus during these years.

The interesting part is why Obama is not hitting Clinton harder with her odd math. A commentator suggests that by doing so, it would bring unwanted attention to Obama’s business with Tony Rezko, the shady landlord.

I think the answer is less specific; it is not about Rezko. Obama simply does not want to discuss experience at all because if he does it will bring attention to the big difference between the candidates. Experience should not be on the table from his perspective; he does not want to be priming people with this factor (Iyengar and Kinder has written a good book on priming). If people start bringing experience into their considerations when they select the candidate, Obama will be at a disadvantage.

The Clinton campaign have tried to make experience the big thing, but I believe that they have focused too much on just Hillary’s experience. We know that she has experience at this point. What the campaign needs to do now is to hammer home the importance of experience regardless of who has it. They should point to all the bad things that can happen because of lack of experience and all the good things that come from experience. Just by putting experience on the agenda, to make it accessible in the minds of people, Hillary Clinton will gain from it.

written by Jacob \\ tags: Hillary Clinton, Obama, politics, primaries, priming

Obama has just finished another victory speech. I might have missed some critical details because after about 10 minutes I pushed mute. It was relatively boring and I had to prepare for tomorrow’s lecture. The most dramatic event of the night actually happened before the speech.

In the middle of Hillary Clinton’s speech in Ohio, Obama jumped to the stage in Texas. Surely his campaign staff must have known that Hillary was talking at the same time. At the moment when he started to talk, all television networks switched from Hillary Clinton to Obama. I wonder if the Obama-campaign would have dared to pull off this move if Obama had not won so many states in a row. It would have been embarrassing for him if the television networks had stayed with Clinton.

Some suspect that Obama might not be prepared for a hard fought campaign with the Republicans because he is too courteous and mild-mannered. The way he brushed away Hillary Clinton tonight suggests something different. He seems ready.

written by Jacob \\ tags: Hillary Clinton, Obama, politics, television

I hear reports that Swedes cannot pronounce Barack Obama’s name properly. I would say that it is almost like a popular sport in Sweden to butcher foreign names, so I am not surprised. That said, Swedes are not particularly bad at pronouncing foreign names, any culture have problems with unfamiliar names. The problems seem to vary though. In Spain I smiled every time I heard someone say Spice Girls. Espice Grrls were still somewhat popular when I lived there.

Barack Obama knows it can be difficult to pronounce his name. In a speech from 2006 he said:

First, they’d ask, “Where’d you get that funny name, Barack Obama?” Because people just couldn’t pronounce it. They’d call me “Alabama,” or they’d call me “Yo Mama.” And I’d have to explain that I got the name from my father, who was from Kenya.

So what is it that Swedes do that is so bad?

They pronounce Barack Obama as Barackobama. It almost sounds as Bananarama, according to my sources. I would be happy to hear any other opinions on this topic. Is it true? And if so, why? Most Americans have learned to pronounce his name correctly and in the process they have not started calling him barackobama.

Barackobama?

written by Jacob \\ tags: language, Obama, Sweden