Creating a good Narrative

Don’t let the facts get in the way of the narrative!
- John Stewart citing the fact that of 82 of 84 incumbents on the June 8 ballot won.

According to “The Narrative,” incumbents are in trouble.

“The Narrative” is what reporters use to call “the story.” But now it is the point of view of conventional wisdom that is cited with an all-knowing air of inevitability, by journalist who can use it to see into the future.

Ever since Scott Brown (R-Mass) beat Martha Coakley to win “The Kennedy” seat “The Narrative” predicted a strong anti-incumbent wave would wash office holders out to sea.

Never mind that Coakley was a weak candidate who was so out of touch with her state that she could not understand it was a mistake to say in a radio interview that Curt Shilling played for the Yankees. (Coakley’s gaffe made Number 2 on First Read’s Top 10 list of Political Gaffes for 2010. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/06/18/4527838-top-10-candidate-gaffes-of-2010).

“The Narrative” drew strength from former Republican Arlen Specter’s (R/D-PA) loosing the Democratic nomination for US Senate; despite the fact that he openly stated he switched parties to win, thus undercutting his support even before he started to campaign.

There was Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) who was not renominated by the Utah Republican Convention. This was seen as proof of the rising strength of anti-incumbent anger, even though as far back as November of 2009, a poll taken by the Deseret News showed 58% of respondents said they preferred that someone else have a chance a Bennett’s seat. (http://www.pollster.com/blogs/poll-update/2009/11/29-week/).

Despite all of this “The Narrative” decreed “all incumbents are in trouble.”

Then Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) won her run-off for the Democratic nomination for US Senate against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. The old “Narrative” vanished in a puff of smoke and was replaced by the “Year of the Woman Narrative.”

So what forces create and feed a “Narrative”?

The first is the shrinking number of reporters who follow candidates on the campaign trail.

Walter Shapiro wrote about following Nikki Hailey around South Carolina in the final days of the Republican Gubernatorial primary. (//www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/11/nikki-haley-and-rand-paul-races-where-have-all-the-reporters-go/) During that time there wasn’t a single reporter from a South Carolina print, wire, radio or TV outlet.  The only print reporter not from the usual “national press pack” was an occasional reporter from the AP wire service. The State, which is the largest newspaper in South Carolina, did not have a reporter following Hailey on the campaign trail at all.

Local and regional papers are laying off and buying out reporters, who in elections past had been able to dig into a campaign, talk to voters and find out what was going on.  According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 13,500 journalist lost their jobs since 2007. Newsrooms lost 5,200 reporters last year alone. Reporters that are left are covering multiple beats. (http://asne.org/article_view/articleid/763/decline-in-newsroom-jobs-slows.aspx) Reporters have just enough time to write and file a story, but not to analyze a candidate’s positions or effectively report on a campaign.

Which leads to the second factor: with fewer reporters, the media has developed a greater reliance on polls to tell a political story. As a result polls can drive the story, and in some cases become the story.

Blanche Lincoln’s run-off win over Bill Halter is a good example.

Over and over the press reported how “polls show” Lincoln was big trouble and was going to lose. The polls cited were almost all from the same polling organization - Research 2000, and were commissioned by the liberal blog Daily Kos. On June 6, in their last poll before the primary, they showed Lincoln down by four points in an election she won two days later - by four points.

Research 2000 is not in the top tier in Nate Silver’s ranking of polling companies at Fivethirtyeight.com, and was the source of nearly all the polls cited showing Lincoln was going to loose. (Silver’s poll ratings can be found at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/pollster-ratings-v40-results.html.) It wasn’t until after the election that the press reported on Lincoln’s excellent field organization, on her Arkansas focussed campaign or how Halter was having trouble with “card check” in Wal-Mart’s home state.

Another danger in letting polls drive the story is all polls have a statistical lean or “house effect,” created by the poll’s methodology, towards one side or party over another. All polls have some level of house effect. The better the polling company, the smaller its house effect. Widely quoted polls with distinct house effects can drive an election story in a particular direction.

We might be seeing this in the Nevada US Senate race. The first poll released after the Senate primary showed Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle far ahead of Democratic Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). Strange that a state so full of retiree’s and so opposed to hosting a nuclear waste site, would go all in for a candidate in favor of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear waste dump and phasing out Social Security. This poll will drive the story on what deep trouble Harry Reid is in.

But the poll that showed Angle’s lead was released by Rassmussen Reports - which has a strong Republican house effect. A recent Washington Post profile on Scott Rasmussen also discusses his long association with the Republican party and conservative causes, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/16/AR2010061605090_pf.html).

The press’ reliance on polls to tell a political story is a house built on sand. Polling is changing as fewer and fewer households have telephone land lines. Federal law prohibits polling robo-calls to cell phones. With polling firms struggling to find new channels to reach respondents, talking heads on the 24 hours cable shows create their narratives without the insight of in depth reporting or solid polling.

On election night, while covering the California Republican primary, Chris Matthews of MSNBC, asked guest after guest whether US Senate nominee Carly Fiorina and Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman would stand with Orly Taitz, the notorious “Birther,” if she won the California Republican nomination for Secretary of State. Chuck Todd finally pointed out Taitz was getting buried in the election returns 3-1.

Until then, Matthews was not going to let facts get in the way of the “narrative” he wanted to create. With fewer reporters on the beat and polls from a survey industry in flux reporters may create a “narratives” to drive the story they want to tell, despite what voters may actually think.

Winners and Losers

49% Halter, 45% Lincoln, 6% Undecided
- Daily Kos/Research 2000 Poll, 06/02 - 06/04/10

52% Lincoln, 48% Halter
- Final vote count, June 8, 2010 Primary

On June 8, 2010 a “Super Tuesday” primary night, US Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) survived a strong challenge from Arkansas Lt. Governor Bill Halter. She beat her opponent by 4 points. This after the last poll take before the primary had Lincoln down by four points, (http://www.pollster.com/polls/ar/10-ar-sen-dempr.php). With money and support from organized labor pouring in from all over the country to support Halter, everyone in the media had written Lincoln off. In addition, the “narrative” went, this is a toxic year to be an incumbent so she was bound to loose.

She defied the “narrative” and won.

Lincoln showed that running a good campaign focussed on constituents can win in any year. She successfully portrayed her opponent as someone who would put the interests of outsiders over the interests of the State. She ran commercials where she said she would do what was right for the State even if it cost her her Senate seat. This played into the perception that Halter was a man on the make and more interested in himself than his voters.

She also showed that good, basic campaign nuts and bolts matter. She has a strong geographic base in her former congressional district in Little Rock. Her campaign built an effective get-out-the-vote effort with a contact list of 120,000 identified Lincoln supporters which she effectively contacted and got to the polls.

Other centrist Democrats who are currently in trouble, like Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) can look at Lincoln and start following her play book. You can bet Reid has already filmed his commercials describing his opponent Sharron Angle (R) as out of touch with Nevada and under the control of special interests. He has already begun running positive image advertisements to Nevadans on what he has done for them.

Presidents Bill Clinton and Barak Obama both showed they have coattails.

Clinton campaigned heavily for Lincoln and Obama made a number of robo-calls on her behalf They both proved that they can move voters when needed. It is no surprise that President Clinton is now scheduled to campaign in Nevada for Reid.

The big losers of the night were organized labor and liberal net-roots.

Arkansas, home of Wal-Mart, has one of the lowest union membership rates in the country. But organized labor poured $10 Million into Halter’s campaign, because Blanche Lincoln is firmly against “card check” which would make it easier for Unions to organize non-union shops. This gave Lincoln the perfect opportunity to appear to stand up against outside interests in favor of her State.

At the same time she was able to protect herself from appearing too pro-business by proposing some of the toughest new provisions, in the Senate’s regulatory reform package, aimed at controlling the excess of the financial industry. Halter could not come out in favor of card check because it would not sit well with Arkansas voters, He couldn’t come out against it, because it would anger the people who were bankrolling him. Trapped he could only squirm around the question, and look insincere.

The other big loser in Arkansas was the left-leaning net roots. Last year, on the Rachel Maddow Show, Jane Hamsher from the liberal website Firedoglake dared Lincoln to join the filibuster against Public Option in Obama’s health care reform package. If she did, Hamsher promised, they would find a strong primary challenger to Lincoln so fast it would make her spin.

She did and they did.

The left net-roots raised money and volunteers for Halter all across the country. Emboldened by their success in 2006 in using Ned Lamont to drive Joe Lieberman from the Democratic party, and their success in 2008 supporting Obama and Clinton, they felt they had the power to throw around.

They brushed off local issues and ran a campaign focussed on their pet national issues. But issues important to Firedoglake and the AFL-CIO are not necessarily important to local voters. Card check is a big deal to the AFL-CIO but not to votes in a State with less than five percent union membership, and home of one of the largest non-union businesses in the world. Conservative voters in Arkansas are not going to immediately embrace a large new government program no matter what the NYC-Washington corridor feel about Public Option.

Labor and the net-roots staked a lot of their image and reputation on this race and Halter’s loss hurts them. They created the perception that Lincoln was beatable and that they had her taken care of. By not defeating her they shrank themselves back down to size.

They forgot one of the central laws of election politics: “All Politics is Local.” Break that law and you will loose, no matter who righteous you feel your cause to be.

In politics winning is power.