The Hogan/Jealous Election will be Decided by Crossover Voters

In several prior posts I have offered models for the Hogan/Jealous election based on Absentee ballot requests, prior election trends, and allocation of voters based on polling data. In this post, I want to look at all of the early votes and all of the Absentee requests collectively to see if they suggests a Blue Wave is building in Maryland. The Good folks over at Seventh State have already poked some holes in the Blue Wave argument. It's true that early voting is on track to be double what it was in 2014, but that's hardly surprising. Early voting doubled between 2012 and 2016 as well. But that dramatic increase between 2012 and 2016 did not result in a boost in overall turnout. Likewise, 2014 is on track to see turnout at or just below the 2010 level.

The key for this election isn't turnout, it's Democratic crossover voters. Polls taken since August have consistently shown Hogan dominating among Republican voters, winning the vast majority of unaffiliated voters, and receiving the support of between 30 and 37% of Democratic voters. It's easy to apply those partisan breakdowns to the total number of ballots cast or requested as of 10/29/2018. The results are presented in the table below.

If Hogan receives the high end level of support among Democrats then he would theoretically lead among the early votes and absentees by a margin of 53.9% to 43.2%. If Hogan's support among Democrats is at the low end, then the margin would fall to 49.4% to 47.6%.

Under either scenario the news is bad for Jealous because Democrats tend to dominate the early vote. In 2014 and 2016 Democrats accounted for 63% of the early vote, but only 55% of the total vote once Election Day was included. In 2014, Anthony Brown won the early vote by 9 points, but ultimately lost by 5 points. So the early numbers are likely to have the best results for Jealous. In fact, if I allocate the early vote to Jealous, based on Brown's 2014 support and to Hogan based on his 2014 support, then Jealous moves in a 5 point lead - as compared to the 9 point lead that Brown had. 

If the polls are right, and many Democrats intend to vote for Hogan, then all of the focus on turnout has just been background noise.

The 2018 election is unlikely to be determined by turnout. It's going to be determined by how many Democrats crossover and vote for Hogan. If the crossover vote is anywhere near 30% then Hogan wins regardless of turnout. It's not enough for Jealous that Democrats turnout, those Democrats need to come home to their party when they fill in their ballot.  

Updated: Maryland Absentee Ballot Requests May Not Be Good News for Jealous

Originally published on October 11, 2018. Post has been updated to include Absentee Ballots submitted through October 22, 2018.

Faced with daunting poll numbers that suggest Larry Hogan holds a steady double digit lead over Ben Jealous, Maryland Democrats have looked for silver linings wherever they can. In a press release today, they touted an increase in Democratic absentee ballot requests relative to 2014. While it's true that Democratic absentee ballot requests are up significantly, ballot request are up among Republican and unaffiliated voters as well and in 2014, Republicans were more likely to return those ballots.

But the bigger problem for Democrats is the significant cross-over voting suggested by the polls taken thus far in the governors race. According to the most recent polls, Hogan is drawing support from about 33-35% of Democratic voters. Jealous, on the other hand, is only receiving support from about 5% of Republican voters. Among unaffiliated voters, Hogan is supported by 64% to Jealous' 31%. That means that while Hogan will win the lion's share of the Republican and unaffiliated vote, Jealous will share a significant chunk of the Democratic vote with Hogan, while receiving little from Republicans and unaffiliated voters.

It's fairly easy to apply those partisan levels of support to the absentee ballot requests. If you remove the undecided voters from the poll (there aren't many) and use the Gonzales Poll as a guide, then Jealous receives 60% of the Democratic vote, 5.5% of the Republican vote, and 31% of the unaffiliated vote. Hogan receives 37.7% of the Democratic vote, 93% of the Republican vote, and 64% of the unaffiliated vote. The remaining votes from each group go to third party candidates (according to the Gonzales Poll).

As shown in the table, applying those partisan margins to the requested absentee ballots would net 35,288 for Jealous, or 44.4% of the total, and 42,093 for Hogan, or 53% of the total.  Historically, Democrats have dominated the early vote in Maryland. In 2014, Anthony Brown won the early vote by 9 percentage points. 

***Updated with data as of 10/22/2018, Hogan's position has improved. Hogan now receives 53.7% to 43.7% for Jealous. In this model, Jealous doesn't overtake Hogan unless Hogan's share of the Democratic vote drops below 29%. And again, Democrats tend to dominate early voting in Maryland. 

There's no way to tell how the folks who have requested absentee ballots will vote and I'm certainly not predicting a 54% to 44% margin for the election or even among actual absentee ballots. I am saying that any assumption that the absentee ballot requests point to good news for Jealous... is not a safe assumption.

57% Isn't Enough for Jealous to Win

In a recent call with reporters, the Ben Jealous campaign said that they expect Democrats to make up 57% of voters in the gubernatorial election. That would be noticeably better than 2014 when Democrats accounted for only 54.5% of voters. The last time Democrats made up 57% of the electorate was in 2006 when Martin O'Malley defeated Republican incumbent Bob Ehrlich. So would 57% be enough for Jealous to defeat Hogan? Probably not.

Shortly after the 2014 election Jared McDonald with the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland analyzed the 2014 election results to test the theory that Anthony Brown had lost to Larry Hogan because of poor turnout among Democrats. In his analysis, McDonald substituted the 2002, 2006, and 2010 turnout levels for the actual levels in 2014. He found that Hogan still would've won under any of those scenarios. According to McDonald the reason was clear - it wasn't because Democratic turnout was low, it was because nearly 25% of Democrats had voted for Hogan. In other words, Brown still would've lost under each of the 3 turnout scenarios because of the number of Democrats who crossed over to vote for Hogan.

In the following tables, I update McDonald's analysis by applying the 2006 turnout model (which assumes that 57% of voters are Democrats) to the 2018 electorate. In the first table, I assume that Jealous receives the same level of support from Democratic, Republican, and Unaffiliated voters as had Brown. Hogan receives the same level of support that he received in 2014 as well. Under that scenario, Hogan wins by a margin of nearly 60,000 votes and 2 percentage points. But in 2014, Hogan only received support from 23% of Democrats. Polls conducted thus far in the 2018 race suggest that Hogan will do much better among Democrats as compared to 2014. The Gonzales Research and Marketing poll released a few weeks ago showed Hogan receiving well above 30% of the Democratic vote. If I apply the levels of partisan support from the Gonzales poll to the 2006 turnout model with a 57% Democratic electorate, Hogan wins by over 430,000 votes and 19 percentage points (which is where polls put his lead right now).

Table One: 2006 Turnout Model with 57% Democrats

If we assume that overall turnout will rise to 2006 levels and that the electorate is composed of 57% Democrats then Hogan wins even if he simply maintains his level of support among Democrats from 2014. The Jealous campaign said that their goal is to hold Hogan's support among Democrats to less than 30%. My models suggest that Jealous needs to hold Hogan to less than 23% support from Democrats.

Table Two: 2006 Turnout Model with 61% Democrats

Does this mean that all hope is lost for Jealous? Not quite. Oddly enough, the best case scenario model for Jealous comes from the Goucher poll that found Jealous to be 22 points behind Larry Hogan. Though the poll showed Hogan with a commanding lead, it assumed the electorate would be 61% Democrat and only 27% Republican - a decidedly strong showing by Democrats. Hogan led in that poll because of the high level of support he received from Democrats, but, as shown in Table Two, if Jealous could hold Hogan to his 2014 level of support among Democrats then Jealous would win by 41,000 votes and 2 percentage points. If, however, Hogan receives the level of support suggested by the Gonzales poll then Hogan wins by over 311,000 votes and 14 percentage points. In fact, if Hogan received the support of only 26% of Democratic voters he'd still win even if 61% of voters were Democrats.

So Jealous needs two things to break his way, Democrats need to make up more than 57% of the electorate and Hogan's support among Democrats needs to be at or below its 2014 level. Either of those alone will not suffice. Jealous needs both to happen.

Making Sense of the Hogan/Jealous Polls - Update

Update - The Washington Post poll has Hogan ahead by 20 points, 58% to 38% with a MoE of +/- 4.5%. Factor in the upper and lower bounds of the MoE (as detailed below) and the Post poll is seeing the same race as are the prior polls in Maryland. 

Across all 4 polls, Hogan has an average lead of 18.25 points. I had estimated his lead to be between 16 and 18 points in the original post.



Original Post:

In the span of five weeks, 3 separate polls have been released in the Maryland governors race between Larry Hogan and Ben Jealous. The head to head numbers in each poll looked like this:

Gonzales: Hogan 52% / Jealous 36% - a 16 point gap
Goucher: Hogan 54% / Jealous 32% - a 22 point gap
Mason Dixon: Hogan 52% / Jealous 37% - a 15 point gap

I'm a professor of Political Science and in addition to Public Policy, American, and Maryland Politics I teach statistics, probability, random sampling, and survey design. Before becoming a professor I worked for the state of Maryland and conducted survey research of Maryland residents. One of my studies even helped to convince the Census Bureau to change the way in which they measure the number of folks receiving publicly financed health insurance in their annual Current Population Survey. 

After seeing the Mason Dixon poll I took to social media and wrote that the Goucher, Gonzales, and Mason Dixon polls all saw a similar race. That there really wasn't a difference among them. Needless to say, this observation didn't sit too well with folks who don't study polls or probability. So I thought I'd spend a little time explaining why these surveys are seeing essentially the same race.

It all comes down to the margin of error (MoE) and the level of reported confidence in each survey. Because polls rely on a random sample of the population, researchers can never be 100% certain of the results. The MoE tells us that were the poll to be conducted 100 times the observed results would fall with +/- 3.5 of the results reported in the poll in 95 of the polls. The remaining 5 would fall outside that range. The other way to think of this is that researchers are 95% confident that the true results, were they to survey everyone, would fall with the MoE of the results reported from the random sample. A common way of expressing that is to say that we're 95% confident that the true value falls within +/- 3.5% of the reported result.

The first poll, released by Gonzales Research and Marketing found that Larry Hogan led Ben Jealous 52% to 36% - a difference of 16 percentage points in a poll with a margin of error (MoE) of +/-3.5%. Again, were the survey to be conducted 100 times, the results would fall with a range of +/- 3.5% in 95 of the surveys.

Two weeks ago, Goucher College released a poll reporting a Hogan lead of 54% to Jealous' 32% - a gap of 22 percentages points, with an MoE of +/- 4.5%. 

This week, Mason Dixon released a poll of the race and found Hogan ahead of Jealous by 52% to 37% - a 15 percentage point gap with an MoE of +/- 4%. 

The three polls caused some confusion. Some questioned how the polls could show a lead ranging from 15 points to 22 points. As one would expect, the Jealous campaign pointed to the Mason Dixon poll as evidence that the candidate had gained 7 points on Hogan in the time since the Goucher Poll had come out.

That's good spin, but the truth is a bit more complicated.

The Gonzales Poll had Hogan at 52% and Jealous at 36%. That 3.5% MoE applies to each candidate's reported level of support. So in 95 out of 100 surveys we'd expect the level of support for Hogan to fall within an upper bound of 55.5% and a lower bound of 48.5% (just add and subtract 3.5%) and Jealous would have an upper bound of 39.5% and a lower bound of 32.5%. That means, it's possible the true gap between Hogan and Jealous could be as high as 23 percentage points or as low as 9 percentage points - that's because the MoE for each individual candidate (3.5% in the Gonzales poll) must be doubled when applied to the distance between the candidates, so it becomes an MoE of +/- 7%. Add 7 percentage points to 16% and you get 23%. Subtract 7 percentage points from 16% and you get 9%.

We can easily apply these basic rules to the Goucher and Mason Dixon polls and then see how it is that they are all in the same universe. Goucher had an MoE of +/-4.5% among likely voters. So Hogan's actual possible range was 58.5% at the upper bound to 39.5% at the lower bound. Jealous had a possible range of 36.5% at the upper bound to 27.5% at the lower bound. The MoE for the distance between them would be +/- 9% so that 22 percentage point gap could be as high as 31% or as low as 13%. 

Mason Dixon had an MoE of +/- 4% so Hogan's actual possible range was 56% at the upper bound and 48% at the lower bound. Jealous had a possible range of 41% at the upper bound and 33% at the lower bound. The MoE for the distance between them would be +/- 8% so that 15 point gap could be as high as 23% or as low as 7%. 

The standards for whether or not poll results are significantly different from one another are high in survey research - typically requiring that 95% level of confidence to declare what we call a statistically significant difference. In order to state that the Gonzales, Goucher, and Mason Dixon polls show statistically significant different results there would need to be no overlap in the results after applying the MoE to get the upper and lower bounds of each poll. The Mason Dixon and Gonzales polls had nearly identical results, so it's easy to see that there wasn't a significant difference. It's the Goucher poll that seems to be confusing people. But consider Goucher's 22 point gap and Mason Dixon's 15 point gap. The upper bound of Mason Dixon is 22 percentage points, the lower bound of Goucher is 13 percentage points. They quite clearly overlap. As a result, we cannot say with 95% certainty that the results are statistically different. Obviously, the ranges of the upper and lower bounds of the polls show that were we to repeat these surveys 100 times, there would be times when the upper and lower bounds would not overlap. Because of that we can say that the results may be different, but we'd need to lower our level of certainty or confidence below 95% to a level not considered to be an acceptable test of statistically significant difference within survey research. 

As a result of these basic rules of survey research, the best conclusion is that these 3 polls - spread across the past 5 weeks - are seeing essentially the same race. As a matter of simple politics, it would be wise of the Jealous campaign to tout the Mason Dixon poll as evidence that Hogan's lead is narrowing. Politics is about spin. But as a matter of math, the mathematics of surveys and random sampling, it would be more spin than reality. Based on the results of these 3 polls, and the regions of overlap, I'd place the the likely gap between them in the neighborhood of 16-18 percentage points.

Rumor has it that Gonzales Research and Marketing has a new survey in the field. Once we know those results, we can throw the new numbers into this mix.