The Lanny Davis Effect

Over at Legal Fiction, Publius has a post on the dynamics of the CT Senate race between Joe Lieberman, Ned Lamont, and Alan Schlesinger. He tries to "game theory" the situation to figure out what the GOP is up to with their crocodile tears over Joe's primary loss and their offers of help in the general. His conclusion: they're likely trying to steer Schlesinger out of the race so that they can replace him with a more credible loser, someone who will take enough republican votes away from Joe to scare him out of the race too, thus depressing angry Dem turnout and saving the House seats of three embattled GOP congressmen. That would be quite a bankshot, but then Karl Rove loves bankshots (e.g., planting forged TX National Guard docs with a gullible Bush-hater to get Dan Rather canned). Still, it seems unlikely that the GOP are pumping Joe up now so that they can scare him out later.

I'm more interested, however, by the suggestion of both Publius and Chris Bowers at MyDD that, no matter how Joe and the GOP play their cards, Lieberman can't win this race since he's only up 46-41-6 in the most recent polls, and his Dem support is sure to dwindle much further while Lamont's can only grow. Now, as I see it, "up in the polls" is, in fact, up in the polls. I'm more surprised by the fact that Lamont hasn't gotten more of a boost from being seen as the "winner." An earlier poll had the three-way at 40-40-13, so Lieberman may have gotten a post-"comeback" jump. My guess is that the current polls are a decent reflection of the CT electorate and how tight this race will be all the way down to the end.

To illustrate, let's try some simple math. Let's assume, for the sake of argument (and not having the real numbers) that CT is 50% Democratic, 30% Republican, and 20% Independent. That may be overly optimistic from a Lamont standpoint, but stay with me. How much of that Dem vote is Lieberman likely to retain? I think most of the Lamont optimists have been projecting that he'll drop down to around 20 or 25%. That strikes me as far too low. Everyone concedes that Joe's a "nice guy." He's been in the Senate for 18 years, and he's got a lot of personal support from voters in a small state who have actually met him or gained some direct benefit from his being in the Senate. That's got to be worth something.

Plus, most people hate to admit they're wrong. I would too if I ever had been. (Ha!-a little joke for #3.) For example, what would it take for the 35% of Americans who still worship George W. to change their minds? What national embarassments are left that haven't already happened? Now, you may say, "Yeah, but those people are Republicans, and they're irrational freaks." Natch, but we've got some of that too. Let's call it "the Lanny Davis effect," for the longtime Clinton advisor who went batshit insane last week, penning a column for the WSJ that equated internet support for Lamont with "bigotry," "hatred" and "McCarthyism." Long-term attachments are funny things. They'll drive otherwise sane people to say and do bizarre things. Voting against Joe now would be like admitting that you've been wrong about him for decades. My guess is that Joe retains at least 30-35% of the Dem vote based on the Lanny Davis effect.

Now look at what that means for the race, based on our assumptions above about the electorate. If Joe wins 1/3 of the Dem vote (for 17% of the electorate) adds just half of the Indies (10%) and half of the Republicans (15%), who know their boy can't win and who've been greenlighted by the RNC and Fox News, that gives Joe 42%. Meanwhile, Lamont gets 2/3 of the Dems (33%) and half the Indies (10%), giving him 43%. Schlesinger mops up the non-gaming GOP partisans for 15%. Talk about razor thin margins. And remember that I started with assumptions about the electorate that were probably optimistic for Lamont. Looking at those numbers, who is most likely to have ground to gain? Seems to me it's Joe, who could cut into the GOP votes with more help from Rove & Co., or Indies with a lot of rhetoric about "unity" and Dem "extremism." Which is exactly what Joe and the GOP have been giving us for the last week. Joe's in this race for good, and, arguably, he's still the man to beat. If the inexperienced Lamont makes a gaffe or has a skeleton we dont know about yet, Joe walks across that finish line. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Dems really need to avoid overconfidence lest they once again put too much faith in reading the tea leaves.