The Next President of the United States

A collection of 35 of the best photos of President-Elect Barack Obama from the past few months.

The Daily Dozen - Post-Election Edition

1. At 109, slave's daughter reveles in historic vote.
2. Top 30 errors that doomed John McCain.
3. TIME's person of the year will be Barack Obama.
4. Barack Obama in nanotubes.
5. Three positive aspects of Obama's victory.
6. Tax policy in the Obama-Biden administration.
7. U.S. stocks post biggest post-election drop. More economic impact here.
8. Is politics without romance possible?
9. Republicans deserved to lose.
10. Four commitments to Barack Obama.
    
11. 6 reasons why McCain's concession speech was the best of his campaign.
12. A statistical look at what really happened in the election.
    

Prediction Markets: How Did They Do?

The latest tally from CNN:



Missouri is leaning towards McCain with 11 electoral votes and North Carolina towards Obama with 15 electoral votes. That will bring the final tallies to Obama - 364 and McCain 174. This is what I predicted Monday morning, but it looks like I got Missouri and Indiana reversed. Both states have 11 electoral votes, so the final outcome still worked out the same

This is what the prediction markets were showing on October 16th:



I'd say they nailed it, yet again!

Our Next President

(HT Greg Mankiw)

Congratulations to Barack Obama!

Congratulations to Barack Obama on becoming the next American President! This is truly a historic moment.

Expected Election Results

As I wrote yesterday, below is what I expect the outcome to be from today's election. (More details after the link.)


(Created using Yahoo! Political Dashboard)

What a Democratic Victory Will Likely Mean

Assuming a big Democratic win today, where will that leave the country?

First, Democrats will add dominance of the executive branch of the federal government to their control of the legislative branch, the press, the universities, and Hollywood and the arts.

The only major areas of split control are state governments, the federal judiciary, and big business, with Democrats having the upper hand in most states and Republicans having the upper hand in part of the judiciary, the US Supreme Court. (Although most of the military are Republicans, the control of the military is effectively in the hands of the executive branch.) Big business is relatively non-partisan (or equally partisan).

Second, 2009 is likely to mark the high water mark of Democratic control of federal and state governments over the next 4 to 8 years. As a paper that Steve Calabresi and I wrote for the Yale Law Journal shows, the President is a lightning rod for whatever goes wrong, leading to the pendulum usually swinging back toward the party who doesn’t hold the White House. This occurs in state legislatures and governorships, as well as in Congress.

Remember, in 2000 Bill Clinton was accused of having destroyed the Democratic Party in Congress and the states when the decline in Democratic control was only what usually happened. Today, George Bush is accused having destroyed the Republican Party in Congress and the states. In Bush’s case, the charge is probably more justified than in Clinton's case, but a large Republican decline would have been expected in any event.

Third, an increase in the size of the federal judiciary is likely. Increases in the number of federal judges tend to occur in situations of one-party control, which we will have for at least the next two years. Thus, we can expect the federal judiciary to become substantially more Democratic for four reasons: (1) the ordinary power of a President to nominate politically compatible judges; (2) the last Senate’s blocking of large numbers of nominees for existing vacancies; (3) a Senate that is nearly filibuster-proof; and (4) an increase in federal judgeships.

Fourth, having a community organizer as President will likely lead to big changes. But precisely which ones we will have to wait to see. For example, though Barack Obama has indicated his intent to impose national service programs on children and co-opt private charities with public-private joint ventures and federal monitoring of charitable organizations, it is unclear how much of that agenda he will be able to achieve.

Websites to Watch Election Results Roll In

A few websites for watching election returns come in:

CNET does a fairly comprehensive run-down of your options for checking out voting results today, both live on your monitor and over email or text message. Key among them is Google's attempt at a live elections results map and a continuous AP video stream. What sites are you checking as the results roll in?

In the meantime, here are 10 reasons you should probably ignore the exit polls and a round-up of election news.

I'm in class from 6 to 10 PM, so this will be how I'll have to keep up until I get home tonight.

P.S. -- If you're using your computer to track the election, try giving Yahoo! Political Dashboard a try.

A Simple Thought on Voting

Tyler Cowen:

Most of what you do is for expressive value anyway, so you shouldn't feel guilty about voting, if indeed you vote. The people who think they are being instrumentally rational by not voting are probably deceiving themselves more. They are actually engaged in an even less transparent form of expressive behavior (protest against the voting system) and yet cloaking that behavior under the guise of instrumental rationality. The best arguments against voting are simply if you either don't like voting or if you don't know which candidate is better. High-status people hardly ever offer the latter justification, even though the split of opinions among high-status people suggests that not all high-status people can in fact know which candidate is better.

In other words, both voting and not voting are motivated by the thought that you are better than other people. I am glad that we have an entire day devoted to this very important concept.

Why Obama Will Win

Getting on and off the subway in Arlington yesterday, I ran into a ton of optimistic, energized, courteous Obama supporters handing out fliers, encouraging me to vote. It was a reminder of just how excited many people are at the prospect of an Obama presidency. I see no such enthusiasm among McCain supporters.

Among my staunchly conservative friends, the most typical reason I hear for voting for McCain is "at least he's not a Democrat." I have yet to meet anyone I would describe as being "jazzed" about McCain. It reminds me of a similar lack of enthusiasm among Democrats in 2004 who supported Kerry simply because "he's not Bush." When the best you can say about your candidate is "he's not the other guy", that's a very bad sign for a campaign and not the way to win an election.

How States Voted By Income in 2004

Andrew Gelman:

What's A Libertarian To Do?

Several libertarians share contrasting views of who they're going to vote for and why:

DAVID POST: Why I'll be voting for Obama: "I consider myself a 'pragmatic libertarian' – I’m not a big fan of the state, I believe that power inevitably corrupts, that individuals, when left to their own devices, are capable of remarkable feats of self-organization and problem-solving, and that the freedoms of speech, conscience, and association are, by far, our most precious ones and need to be zealously protected from the folks with the monopoly on coercive force."

On the other hand, Manny Klausner says that libertarians in battleground states should probably vote for McCain, however reluctantly.

UPDATE: Charles Martin: Why I'll be voting for McCain.

Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham (1922-2008)

Condolences today to Barack Obama on the loss of his grandmother:

Condolences today to Barack Obama, whose grandmother Madelyn Dunham died from a battle with cancer--the day before the biggest political day of his life and the opportunity to become the first black president of the United States.

Electoral Prediction For Tomorrow

Above is the current prediction from HubDub using prediction market data. A breakdown of each state is shown below. This map hasn't budged at all since six weeks ago. I expect this to be the final outcome tomorrow with only Missouri and Indiana too close to call. If I had to guess now, Missouri will go to Obama (keeping up their nearly perfect 100-year track record) and Indiana will go for McCain. That would make the final tally Obama - 364 and McCain - 174.

Following prediction markets allowed me to call 48 out of 50 states in 2004, coming within 5 electoral votes of the final outcome. It will be interesting to see how well they perform this year.

See a great collection of the most recent poll data on FiveThirtyEight.

A Brief Voter's Guide

Below are three of the general areas I think the President has the most direct influence on and how I see the candidates coming down on each.

1) FOREIGN POLICY -- Presidents arguably have their greatest influence on foreign policy. This is in large part due to both political and Constitutional constraints on the exercise of presidential power domestically.

a) HAWK - If you want a president who is comparatively more prone to favor using military solutions to settle international disputes, you should probably vote for McCain.

b) DOVE - If you want a president who is comparatively more likely to value world opinion and rely on diplomatic solutions to settle international disputes, you should probably vote for Obama.

2) SUPREME COURT - It is highly probable that the next president will nominate several Supreme Court Justices to the bench.

a) FEDERALISM/STATE'S RIGHTS - Republicans tend to nominate Justices that favor stronger state's rights (more decentralized government) and more narrowly construed Congressional power. McCain is probably a better choice is you hold this view.

b) STRONGER FEDERAL GOVERNMENT - Democrats tend to nominate Justices that favor stronger federal power (more centralized government) and more broadly interpreted Congressional power. Obama is probably a better choice if you favor strengthening the federal government.

3) INTERBRANCH TENSION - Part of the design of the American political system is to balance the power of the president against that of Congress. The greater the tension between the two branches, the more inhibited both of them will be in their actions.

a) LOW TENSION - If you believe Congress and the president should be free to quickly implement many new pieces of legislation and have little impediment to crafting new policies, then you should probably vote for Obama.

b) HIGH TENSION - If you believe that "a government that governs best is one that governs least", this result is more likely to occur when the majority in Congress and the President are from opposing parties. If this is your perspective, you should probably vote for McCain.

Election Fact of the Day

Greg Mankiw:

Obama leads in 18 out of the 19 states with the largest recent declines in home prices, whereas McCain leads in 13 out of the 14 states with the largest recent increases in home prices.

Click here to see the data.

Welcome Instapundit readers!

Here are links to my other posts on the election and to the rest of my blog.

Should the Rational Public-Spirited Person Vote?

Eric Posner:

Ilya says yes, drawing on this very interesting article of his. Here is his explanation (inspired by Derek Parfit):

Assume that Uv = the expected utility of voting; Cv = the cost of voting; and D = the expected difference in welfare per person if the voter’s preferred candidate defeats her opponent. Let us further assume that this is a presidential election in a nation with 300 million people; that the voter’s ballot has only a 1 in 100 million chance of being decisive (Riker and Ordeshook 1968); and that the voter values the welfare of his fellow citizens an average of 1000 times less than his own. Thus, we get the following equation:

D*(300 million/1000)/(100 million) – Cv = Uv.

If we assume that Cv is $10 (a reasonable proxy for the cost of voting) and that D is $5000 (this can incorporate monetary equivalents of noneconomic benefits as well as actual income increases), then Uv equals $5, a small but real positive expected utility.

If you care about the well-being of others, even a little bit, you should vote, despite the cost of voting. The reason is that the cost of voting is very low, while the benefit is not as low as you might think. Although your chance of breaking a tie is very low, the benefit from breaking a tie is very high—it’s felt by 300 million people. This multiplier effect offsets, to some extent, the very small chance that your vote will make a difference.

Vernon Smith on Barack Obama

Only economic growth can provide positive change:

I think the answer to Alan Reynolds's excellent question and article ("How's Obama Going to Raise $4.3 Trillion?," op-ed, Oct. 24) is that Barack Obama is not going to raise $4.3 trillion, and he is not going to perform on his rhetoric. He excels as a rhetorician -- common to both the great and the least of past presidents -- but performance cannot run on that fuel. Inevitably, I think his luster will fade even with his most ardent supporters as that reality sets in. We also have seen luster fade time after time with Republican presidents. The rhetoric of a smaller and less invasive government always leads to king-size performance disappointments. This weakness is as central to the reality of our political economy as are its strengths. With all its foibles, its strengths become transparent when you compare it, not with our various idealizations, but with the litter of human experiments in political economy that have delivered far more suffering and murder than human betterment to the citizens of those economies.

Of course it is entirely likely that Mr. Obama will succeed in going for higher business, capital gains and income taxes, but it is an economic illusion to think for a minute that this will benefit the poor. All our wars on poverty have been lost by failing to help the poor help themselves. Higher business taxes, which ultimately can only be paid by individuals anyway, will simply export more economic activity to the world economy. Higher capital gains and income taxes will primarily reduce savings and investment at the expense of greater future productivity, which is at the heart of cross-generational reductions in poverty. A dozen countries, including the third largest economy, already have zero taxes on capital gains, and eight of them score high on the Economic Freedom Index and high in gross domestic product per capita.

I favor making all individual savings and direct investments deductible from income for tax purposes. In that world there would be no need to make any distinction between ordinary income and capital gains. By adding a negative feature to such a net consumption tax, the poor would not only receive redistribution benefit, but have an incentive to save and accumulate capital. Some poor will see this as an opportunity to help themselves.

Vernon L. Smith

(HT Greg Mankiw)

Concerns About An Obama Victory

Ilya Somin:

For what it's worth, I like the idea of a black president, believe that Obama is an admirable person in many ways, and have doubts about McCain's temperament similar to those expressed by George Will. Nonetheless, I fear that the conjunction of an Obama victory, a strongly Democratic Congress, and a major economic crisis will produce a massive and difficult to reverse expansion of government... We know from past history that economic crises are a major opportunity for expansion of government power. Robert Higgs' book Crisis and Leviathan is a good discussion of the basic dynamics. We also know that divided government tends to impede the growth of the state, while united government facilitates it. The combination of united government and a major economic crisis is likely to lead to a great expansion of government, just as it did on several previous occasions such as the 1930s.

(HT Glenn Reynolds)

Sometimes Correlation Is Causation?

Does this mean if McCain gets more popular, the economy will kick back in gear?