CA Q&A w/ EW

A commenter to my post below asks a couple of sharp questions, and, easily flattered, I can't resist answering.

What indications are there, if any, of who will win the mail-in ballots on Tuesday? The CW is that Hillary's position in CA is stronger than it seems, because almost a quarter of the state has already voted through early absentee balloting and has thus "missed out" on the Obama surge. But as the incredibly brilliant and good-looking anonymous source in this New Republic post points out:

[I]t’s important to remember that the absentee vote in California is far older and whiter – but with fewer professionals making more than $100k – than the election-day voter.

In other words, it matches up with the demographics of Hillary’s existing support almost perfectly. Those early absentee voters would have been in Hillary’s camp regardless of any Obama surge; absentee voting just lets them mail in the foregone result sooner.

I suspect that the people who are left – younger, non-white, and professional voters – are all Obama people, and so her lead isn’t quite as invincible as it seems.

Do these new polls take into account the mail-ins? If so, how reliably do they do that? Some do -- namely by asking, "Have you already voted, and if so, for who?" But they don't always break out the results into cross-tabs. Field Poll doesn't give that info, for instance -- though this Survey USA poll does, which is where the "Hillary leads in early voting" meme comes from.

Now that California finally matters in nominating a Democratic candidate, do you think Californians will decide to be like Iowa, buck the Clinton machine, and go with the inspirational underdog (Obama)? This is very interesting. I tend to think there's two Dem electorates in California. First, there's the "machine" electorate of hard-core committed Democrats, the ones who, say, turned out for Phil Angelides in the 2006 gubernatorial primary despite the near-universal consensus he'd make a terrible general-election candidate. These voters are Clinton die-hards, and nothing will change their mind.

But there's also the share of Democrats who, say, voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2006 general election (almost 25%, if I remember correctly), who despise the dysfunctional (but Democratic) state legislature, who tend to be more upscale professionals -- economically moderate, but socially liberal. They're the Obama people.

The race will likely turn on which group comes out in force. Will the committed party activists make enough phone-bank-calls, bake enough cookies, and twist enough arms to get the Clinton bloc out to the polls? Or will the yuppies in Westwood, Novato, and La Jolla find the time to put down their Pinot and their blackberries and trudge to the voting booth to vote for liberal-love Obama? Hard to say.

Bradley effect? Are these California polls infected by the supposed phenomenon? I don't think so. In general, Californians are more tolerant, benevolent, and honest than other Americans. (Cue the awards music.)

I think it's in keeping with a vital aspect of this state's ethos to reject dynasty and vote for a new face. Anyway, do you think that anti-monarchical/dynastic tendencies are at all on the minds of democratic voters and independents? I think there's definitely that under-current in the California Democratic electorate...but unfortunately, Obama has NOT really focused on it in this race (partly b/c of limited resources). If he had infinite time and infinite money, he could have run a Google-touring, Hollywood-ad-producing, Internet-driven, insurgency-mounting, anti-incumbent type of campaign...really gone after the Clintons as being the dot-com boom to his Web 2.0, the Gladiator to his Crash, the Gray Davis to his Gavin Newsom, the Boalt Hall to his Berkeley Law, the Mission to his SOMA, the HHK to his AJO, the Heller to his Orrick, the old to his new....but he didn't really do that. His campaign has been more conventional and hasn't really pushed the anti-dynasty theme. But maybe he didn't need to. We'll know on Tuesday.