McDonnell Lead Holds In Mason-Dixon Virginia Poll

Republican candidate Bob McDonnellA Mason-Dixon poll reported today in our local newsrag shows Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell maintaining a strong lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds. Poll Shows McDonnell With  Double-Digit Lead Over Deeds. The poll results have McDonnell up by 12 points, with only 6 per cent of voters undecided.  These numbers are almost exactly the same as the aggregate of eight earlier polls analyzed in Friday's report, Virginia Election -- A Hammer And Tongs Finish. 

Oh, He Probably Shouldn't Have Said That -- In a related story carried by the Associated Press, Virginia Senator Jim Webb is reported as saying that the nation "is watching to see whether Democrats can win the governor's race and other statewide offices." Oops! This is contrary to the Democratic Party line, which minimizes the importance of the Virginia election.  Maybe Senator Webb didn't get the memo.

Winning Your Own Neighborhood -- It is extremely difficult to win an election if you can't carry your neighborhood, and it looks like Creigh Deeds is about to be shellacked in his own bailiwick.  Deeds hails from the Shenandoah Valley area but the Mason-Dixon poll shows this to be McDonnell's strongest region, by a margin of 67% to 29%. If you recall the 2000 Presidential election -- and who doesn't? -- you know that Democrats blame their ticket's loss on the Florida vote count and/or the Supreme Court decision in Bush versus Gore.  But the fact is that Al Gore couldn't carry his own neighborhood, that is, the state of Tennessee.  Regardless of the Florida outcome, if Gore had won his home state he would have been elected President in 2000.  So it seems likely to go with Deeds, as his home folks prepare to vote for McDonnell.  True, Deeds may poll slightly ahead in McDonnell's native ground, Fairfax County, but McDonnell is well ahead in his present home area of Hampton Roads.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Virginia Election — Mason-Dixon Poll Corroborates Republican Lead

Virginia Election -- A Hammer and Tongs Finish

Obama’s Belated Virginia Effort Running Against The Tide

Virginia Polls Confirm Big Lead For Conservatives

In Virginia, Dems Dis Deeds As Republicans Roll

Virginia Election -- A Hammer and Tongs Finish

As Virginia's off-year election nears the finish, there is less and less doubt about the outcome of the statewide races.  The Republican ticket has jumped out to a huge lead in the final week of the contest, leading the Democratic Party candidates by about 12 points.  What is remarkable about this contest is the hammer-and-tongs finishing push by the Republicans, who are campaigning "with tremendous energy or effort."  There will be attempts to minimize the outcome, of course, but this election may signify the return of the Republican killer instinct -- the will to win overcoming the internecine bickering that has marked the GOP's poor performances in recent years.

As of this writing, the polling data indicate a substantial conservative margin among likely voters.  The reports for the week of October 21-28:

Poll                        Date    Sample     (R)     (D)   Margin 
Rasmussen Rpts     10/28   1000 LV    54      41    McDonnell +13
Daily Kos/R2000   10/28    600 LV    54      44    McDonnell +10
Suffolk U.              10/28    400 LV    54      40    McDonnell +14
Roanoke Coll.        10/27    569 LV    53      36    McDonnell +17
SurveyUSA            10/26    502 LV    58      41    McDonnell +17
PublicPolicy            10/26    729 LV    55      40    McDonnell +15
Wash. Post             10/25   1206 LV   55      44    McDonnell +11
VCU                      10/25    625 LV    54      36    McDonnell +18

Although the Democratic ticket was polling as close as 7 points in the previous week, every poll released this week has put the Republicans up by 10 points or better.  The results given above are stated for the McDonnell-Deeds contest for governor but the races for lieutenant governor and attorney general follow suit.

The eight individual polls display a range of results from +10 to +18 points and some of them have relatively small sample sizes.  Differences in methodology and political orientation may make for a certain degree of variation in results. Nonetheless, the aggregate of all eight polls covers 5,631 likely voters and individual differences to some extent cancel out when the numbers are aggregated.  The weighted average margin for the Republicans is +12 points, more than double the reported undecideds. 

Typically, an election narrows in the closing days, and this one may.  But there is not much room to play with for the Democrats; even if they win all of the undecideds, they're still down by 7 points. 

There are several significant trends reflected in the data.  While Democrats who intend to vote strongly support the Democratic candidates, relatively fewer Democrats intend to go to the polls.  Republicans strongly favor their candidates and are more likely to vote.  But the biggest factor is independent voters, who are likely to vote Republican by a margin of almost 2 to 1. This represents a strong turnaround from the 2008 Presidential election.

None of the Republican candidates can be described as "charismatic," or even "exciting." Or, frankly, all that interesting. They are essentially standard-issue GOP suits more likely to be thought of as "reliable" and "conservative." But they are politically savvy and have campaigned well, making the Virginia election a referendum of sorts on both state and national economic issues.  In that regard, the Virginia results may be significant for the 2010 mid-term elections.

Personally, I favor the Republican candidates, but without much enthusiasm.  There is no candidate in the statewide races with a strong libertarian orientation and there is no third-party alternative on the ballot.  As usual, it is a lesser-of-two-evils choice. The special Congressional election in New York's 23rd District is far more interesting because the third-party candidate may do better than make a good showing -- he is in a good position to win.

Mercatus Center Ranks States By Freedom

Normally I hesitate to inflict scholarly papers on others, but a recent release by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University appealed to my libertarian sensibilities. Freedom in the 50 States analyzes and ranks the states by factors indicative of economic and personal freedom, and the results are enlightening.

The authors of the study use four factors to generate state-by-state rankings: fiscal policy, regulatory policy, economic freedom, and personal freedom. These scales are combined to produce an overall ranking. Here are the top ten (most free) and bottom ten states, according to the study - - with some colors I have added:

Table V: Overall Freedom Ranking
State Overall Freedom
1. New Hampshire 0.432
2. Colorado 0.421
3. South Dakota 0.392
4. Idaho 0.356
5. Texas 0.346
6. Missouri 0.320
7. Tennessee 0.284
8. Arizona 0.279
9. Virginia 0.275
10. North Dakota 0.268

41. Connecticut -0.225
42. Illinois -0.238
43. Massachusetts -0.242
44. Washington -0.275
45. Hawaii -0.304
46. Maryland -0.405
47. California -0.413
48. Rhode Island -0.430
49. New Jersey -0.457
50. New York -0.784

If you hadn't already guessed, the colors came from a recent "Red State - Blue State" map; dark blues are reliably Democratic, light blues are usually Democratic, light reds are usually Republican, and dark reds are reliably Republican. (No purple "swing" states were in the top or the bottom ten.)

Measured by the conventional, two-dimensional view of American politics, the top ten (most free) are a mix of dark Red States and light Red States with one light Blue State. The bottom ten are all dark Blues. Also note that the bottom ten include a high proportion of the states which are currently suffering severe economic distress - - like California, which is so broke it cannot pay its bills, and New York, which is trying to raise every tax in sight.

The authors reach some conclusions with interesting implications for those who (like me) have a strong libertarian streak:

Although we hope we have demonstrated that some states provide freer environments than others, it would be inappropriate to infer that some states enjoy a “libertarian streak,” while others suffer from a “statist mentality.” Other research has shown that state politics, like federal politics in the United States, plays out largely on a single left-right ideological dimension defined by sociocultural attitudes toward equality, authority, and tradition. The libertarian position simply does not show up in the data as a live political alternative. Indeed, one might well argue that throughout history, human freedom has emerged not because political leaders have consciously sought it, but as a consequence of balancing forces (church and state, king and nobles, and institutional forms) that happen to check the arbitrary exercise of power in particular times and places. Why then do some states protect individual liberty more thoroughly than others if not because of a libertarian ideology? In our index conservative states have generally done better than liberal states, but moderately conservative states have done best of all. Previous research has shown that, as of 2006, Alabama and Mississippi were the most conservative states in the country, while New York and New Jersey were the most liberal. In our index Alabama and Mississippi fall in the middle, while New York and New Jersey are at the bottom. The problem is that the cultural values of liberal governments seem on balance to require more regulation of individual behavior than do the cultural values of conservative governments. While liberal states are freer than conservative states on marijuana and same-sex partnership policies, when it comes to gun owners, home schoolers, motorists, or smokers, liberal states are nanny states, while conservative states are more tolerant. We should not attribute this relative freedom in conservative states to any philosophical respect for freedom inherent in contemporary political conservatism, but simply to the fact that the conservative position in the culture wars tends to require less regulation. However, extremely conservative governments do not appear to afford any more freedom overall than do moderate, centrist governments.

From a libertarian perspective, it seems that we need to deliberately inject a second dimension into American politics - - the libertarian-statist dimension, which is too often lost in the one-dimensional arguments between liberals and conservatives.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Freedom and Failure, State-by-State

Abstract of the study

Powerline Blog piece

Testimony of a Cancer Survivor

I am a ten-year survivor of two kinds of cancer. I am alive because I had health insurance which permitted me to obtain excellent medical care. But if the Clinton "universal," government-mandated health care plan had been enacted in the 1990s, the odds are great that I would now be dead. If the Obama health care plan is enacted, no matter how prettied-up and carefully-worded it may be, then the nation will pay dearly and people like me will die prematurely.

Because I have spent so much time in clinics and waiting rooms and medical facilities, I know that Canadians who can afford to are coming to the United States for medical care, especially for cancer. Many Canadian medical facilities are outmoded; tests are often delayed; treatments are often denied. With cancer, delay can mean the difference between arresting a colony of mutagenic cells in time or having to deal with incurable metastasized cancer. Time is of the essence; so the affluent and the wealthy come here, where health care is not rationed.

The chemotherapy drugs which saved my life in 2007 were not available in Canada. The death rate from colorectal cancer in Canada is 25 per cent higher than in the United States. The reason for the discrepancy is that Canada has "universal," government-run health care, and the United States does not.

Is our health care system "broken?" Hardly. We have the best medical centers, the best equipment, and the best diagnostic testing that money can buy. Top-notch doctors come here from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Philippines, and other countries. The United States is the world leader in medical innovation:

"Ultimately, lost or constrained innovation impacts public health. Access to new drugs, for instance, is far superior for American consumers than European ones. For cancer patients, access to new drugs is crucial: a report by the Swedish Karolinska Institute, published in the Annals of Oncology, found that "The United States has been the country of first launch for close to half of the oncology drugs brought to the market in the past 11 years." The authors of the report observe that "Nearly half of the observed improvement in the 2–year cancer survival rate between 1992 and 2000 at 50 US cancer centers could be attributed to the use of new cancer drugs," evidence that America's embrace of new medicines translates into saved human lives.

"The evidence is unmistakable: Europe's pharmaceutical industry is in the midst of a long and steady decline, and Europe's bio–tech industry is lagging significantly behind its American counterpart. What is also clear—but far more controversial—is that by adopting certain aspects of the American R&D system, Europeans could regain their innovative and competitive edge."

Science Pioneer Cautions Europe on Declining Medical Innovation

"But one argument against universal health insurance isn't so easy to dismiss: the argument about innovation and the cutting edge of medical care. . . . In a universal coverage system, the government would seek to limit spending by forcing down payments to doctors and pharmaceutical companies, while scrutinizing treatments for cost-effectiveness. This, in turn, would lead to both less innovation and less access to the innovation that already exists. And the public would end up losing out, because, as Tyler Cowen wrote last year in The New York Times, 'the American health care system, high expenditures and all, is driving innovation for the entire world.'"

The New Republic, Creative Destruction.

Is our health care system "unfair?" Of course it is. "Life is unfair" - - President John F. Kennedy. But the Canadian health care system is also unfair -- more so, because it denies health care to some of those persons who pay the taxes to subsidize the system. Is it selfish to say that those with more money should be able to buy better health care? Of course it is -- but self-interest is the best measure of value in a free society and because of the money paid and contributed by so many of us self-interested types, American health care is better for everyone.

Do I wish that every child in America had access to quality health care? Of course I do. But not at the cost of damaging or destroying the system we have now. Most children have health insurance of some kind now. Our health care system has an exemplary record of treating children who have cancer. In the year I was born, childhood cancer was fatal within five years in more than 95 per cent of the cases; the survival rate now exceeds 75 percent!

"Childhood cancers showed some of the largest improvements in cancer survival during the past 20 years, with an absolute survival rate increase of 20 percent in boys and 13 percent in girls. The current five-year survival rate of over 75 percent confirms substantial progress made since the early 1960s, when childhood cancers were nearly always fatal." National Cancer Institute, "Annual Report to the Nation Finds Cancer Incidence and Death Rates on the Decline: Survival Rates Show Significant Improvement."

"Universal," government-run health care will inevitably condemn some of those children to early death.

"Universal," government-run health care will inevitably condemn many adults like me to early death.

In both cases, the question is not "whether," but "who."

It is likely that cancer will eventually kill me. Because cancer treatment is physically punishing and has long-lasting side effects, both physical and emotional, the day may come when I decide that I have had enough. But that should be my choice; I should not be left to die because medical care is rationed. I am not a "victim" of cancer; I am a cancer survivor who doesn't want to become a victim of bureaucracy.

This is my testimony. Thank you for reading.

Hitler's Calculation and the Sorry State of American Politics

Caution: political-party purists may be miffed by this article; but I call 'em like I see 'em. On the other hand, by the time you finish reading, you'll know what a "politigopoly" is.

Adolf Hitler was a poor student of mathematics, but he got the hang of it sufficiently to figure how to take over the German government. A "majority," Hitler reasoned, consisted of 51 per cent of the votes necessary to control 51 per cent of the seats in the legislature - - 26 per cent of those voting, in other words. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans now find themselves victims of the same political calculation.

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