The other day, I made an unpatriotic claim on Twitter. "I would be fine if Team USA failed to advance from the first round," I wrote. "Most boring team in the #WBC if you ask me."
I didn't get much pushback to this obviously outrageous claim, which must mean I didn't make it strongly enough. (It certainly couldn't have anything to do with the fact that I'm still in the triple digits in Twitter followers.) This can only be remedied with a full blog post on the topic. And that topic is, "I have literally gone through the rosters of all 16 World Baseball Classic teams, and without exception, the USA is the least interesting team in the tournament."
To me, the World Baseball Classic is fun because it showcases talent from all around the world—much of which is often not on display to the American fan. As the WBC proves, there are major-league-caliber players who don't play in the major leagues. Shinnosuke Abe hit two home runs this morning to lead Team Japan to the top seed in its pool. A squat catcher and onetime Nippon Professional Baseball MVP, he would be a beast on any continent. And while they have been eliminated from the tourney, it's hard not to daydream about which players from Team Cuba will be playing in the major leagues in a few years, as 2009 Team Cuba headliners Yoenis Céspedes and Aroldis Chapman now are. (Personally, I couldn't stop seeing ace Ismel Jiménez in a Red Sox uniform.)
Certainly, the exotic is erotic, but there are also plenty of parochial fans who just care about the Blue Jays or Padres. For them, the WBC offers the random European countries that often serve as showcases for minor-league systems. I've particularly enjoyed watching the Netherlands in this year's event, featuring the exploits of Red Sox phenom Xander Bogaerts and the Orioles' Jonathan Schoop. (Soon enough, even the casual baseball fan won't have to look up how to spell those two names.) Most fans get to glimpse their team's future in action only a few times a year, in September and during the rare televised spring training game. The WBC does them one better by giving these prospects a starring role.
After watching these players, how can you turn the dial over to Team USA, which is full of good-but-not-great players whom we're going to get to see 162 times this summer and whom we've seen hundreds of times in the past? David Wright is nice and all, but he's a bit overexposed in that New York media market. The bullpen is full of the anonymous cast of characters that comprise most teams' setup corps: Jeremy Affeldt, Luke Gregerson, Mitchell Boggs. I mean no disrespect to these players—they are fun to watch in the major leagues when the stakes are higher, and they are more skilled at baseball than most others—but they're so familiar. In a nutshell, they're not why we watch the WBC. They bring no value added.
I admit you could have this same complaint about the Dominican or Venezuelan rosters, and I do, to some extent. But what makes them merely "meh" rather than flat-out dull is that at least they are truly national all-star teams. Indeed, for many Latin-American countries, the WBC is a serious matter, and success in baseball is a major part of national pride. This brings almost all their major-league stars out of the woodwork and into WBC camp. In contrast, only one of the top five Americans in bWAR in 2012 (Ryan Braun) is on Team USA. But there are also so many eligible American major-leaguers that Team USA will never have to dip into its minor-league talent pool, despite the exciting possibilities that that presents. The result is a roster with only a handful of America's many possible superstars supported by a bunch of average or replacement-level players. In other words, the result is not an all-star team, nor a team of scrappy underdogs. It's exactly the talent distribution of a typical, but random and faceless, major-league team. If I wanted to watch that, I would just tune into a spring training game featuring my major-league team. Again, there is absolutely no value added to watching the WBC for Americans used to MLB.
It also doesn't help Team USA's appeal that they seem to be the one team uninterested in winning the WBC. Joe Torre has been criticized for not putting his heart—or the full talent of his roster—into his managing. And while I'm not as militant about WBC draft dodgers as some, their reluctance did set the tone very early for Team USA—that these were more akin to exhibition games than to the World Cup. Whether it's passion for their recently deceased leader or the promise of freedom from military service, it's clear that the Latin-American and Asian teams bring more of a sense of urgency and all-out-ness to their play. Heck, even for the European minor-league collectives, there's a thirst that comes from wanting to prove themselves against rosters stacked with major leaguers; these teams are at least fun to root for because we all love an upset.
Oddly enough for a country that is often seen as fanatically patriotic, when it comes to baseball, our love for country may never eclipse our regional loyalties to the local nine. Perhaps that's appropriate in a country that sometimes places its faith more in corporations than in its own government, and in a country as sectionally polarized as we are now. But more likely it's just that, to Americans, the WBC isn't yet a prestigious, or even very competitive, event. It has had two championship games, as opposed to MLB's 108 World Series. As long as that's true, the WBC will primarily be about scouting, gawking, and enjoying baseball for baseball's sake. That means looking beyond the faces we have grown accustomed to.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
Go Ahead, Say "Sequester"
What do you call something automatic, self-inflicted, and worth $85 billion in cuts to the US government and economy?
To millions of people, the answer is "the sequester." But grammar wags on Twitter and elsewhere insist the real answer is "sequestration." The former, they claim, is incorrect grammar and a fine example of DC jargon.
I'm a grammar wag too, but this is amateur hour by most of my compatriots, who often love nothing more than to tell the ignorant public they're misusing a word or misconstructing a sentence. There is actually nothing wrong with using "the sequester" to describe the automatic spending cuts that went into effect last Friday, and it's particularly brazen to claim otherwise, given that their usage of "sequestration" is as artificial as the back-formation of "sequester."
The best-known meaning of "sequestration" is the act of being sequestered (i.e., hidden away), but the political use derives (as do so many of the people in politics) from the legal sphere. In a legal dispute, when two parties cannot agree on something, some valuable assets of theirs are taken away by the court as a kind of collateral; this action is called "sequestration." That's certainly a fitting way to describe our current congressional stalemate—but also apparently one in 1985, when the idea of budget sequestration was first instituted. Specifically, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act of 1985 provided that, if Congress authorized more spending appropriations than it provided for in its annual budget, then a series of automatic cuts would take place to balance them out.
That bill in 1985 marked only the first use of the word "sequestration" in politics, and this usage is not yet recognized by mainstream dictionaries such as the Oxford English, Merriam-Webster, or (my favorite) American Heritage. The usage that self-appointed grammar purists are disingenuously defending is made up—and only 28 years old to boot.
By definition, then, it's also government jargon, which is exactly the charge being leveled at "the sequester." If anything, "sequester" is actually more legitimate—it was invented and popularized by the general public, while "sequestration" was invented and promoted by legislation wonks. The first rule, after all, that grammarians must get used to is that usage drives grammar, not the other way around. Elites don't dictate the rules; the people who actually speak and use the language en masse do. A language is only correct insofar as people understand it. As we stand today, "the sequester" seems to be much more popular than "sequestration"; it's used five times more often on Twitter. Maybe people are attracted to the fact that it's shorter, easier to spell, and easier to say than "sequestration"—sounds like a sensible evolution of language to me. As long as we're making up terms, why don't we make one up for this particular fiscal fight that actually rolls off the tongue?
Many people's problem seems to be that "sequester" is used as a noun but supposed to be a verb. This is a silly objection. Verbs become nouns all the time, and nouns like "move" and "invite" likewise make language easier to use. No one objects to them today the way that "ask" and "get" are pilloried, but only because their use over time has cemented them as part of the lexicon. It's also hypocritical that elites get all worked up about corporate and government misuses of words, but they give a free pass and even praise to poets and playwrights who commit the same "crime." I am thinking specifically of Act III, Scene 4 of William Shakespeare's Othello, which declares, "this hand of yours requires / A sequester from liberty, fasting and prayer." Shakespeare frequently made up words—countless of which I bet are fixtures of your vocabulary—to fit his metrical patterns, and on line 40 he uses "sequester" as a one-for-one substitute for "sequestration." "Sequester" critics, please redirect your rant to the Bard.
To complain about "sequester" is to be selective and inconsistent in your application of the rules of language. At its worst, it smacks of self-righteous armchair grammarians looking to pick a petty fight. Those who take the time, however, to actually consider how language works cannot deny that both variations have their problems and yet both are still perfectly acceptable to use. Like the sequester itself, the grammatical backlash against its epithet is simply a manufactured crisis.
To millions of people, the answer is "the sequester." But grammar wags on Twitter and elsewhere insist the real answer is "sequestration." The former, they claim, is incorrect grammar and a fine example of DC jargon.
I'm a grammar wag too, but this is amateur hour by most of my compatriots, who often love nothing more than to tell the ignorant public they're misusing a word or misconstructing a sentence. There is actually nothing wrong with using "the sequester" to describe the automatic spending cuts that went into effect last Friday, and it's particularly brazen to claim otherwise, given that their usage of "sequestration" is as artificial as the back-formation of "sequester."
The best-known meaning of "sequestration" is the act of being sequestered (i.e., hidden away), but the political use derives (as do so many of the people in politics) from the legal sphere. In a legal dispute, when two parties cannot agree on something, some valuable assets of theirs are taken away by the court as a kind of collateral; this action is called "sequestration." That's certainly a fitting way to describe our current congressional stalemate—but also apparently one in 1985, when the idea of budget sequestration was first instituted. Specifically, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act of 1985 provided that, if Congress authorized more spending appropriations than it provided for in its annual budget, then a series of automatic cuts would take place to balance them out.
That bill in 1985 marked only the first use of the word "sequestration" in politics, and this usage is not yet recognized by mainstream dictionaries such as the Oxford English, Merriam-Webster, or (my favorite) American Heritage. The usage that self-appointed grammar purists are disingenuously defending is made up—and only 28 years old to boot.
By definition, then, it's also government jargon, which is exactly the charge being leveled at "the sequester." If anything, "sequester" is actually more legitimate—it was invented and popularized by the general public, while "sequestration" was invented and promoted by legislation wonks. The first rule, after all, that grammarians must get used to is that usage drives grammar, not the other way around. Elites don't dictate the rules; the people who actually speak and use the language en masse do. A language is only correct insofar as people understand it. As we stand today, "the sequester" seems to be much more popular than "sequestration"; it's used five times more often on Twitter. Maybe people are attracted to the fact that it's shorter, easier to spell, and easier to say than "sequestration"—sounds like a sensible evolution of language to me. As long as we're making up terms, why don't we make one up for this particular fiscal fight that actually rolls off the tongue?
Many people's problem seems to be that "sequester" is used as a noun but supposed to be a verb. This is a silly objection. Verbs become nouns all the time, and nouns like "move" and "invite" likewise make language easier to use. No one objects to them today the way that "ask" and "get" are pilloried, but only because their use over time has cemented them as part of the lexicon. It's also hypocritical that elites get all worked up about corporate and government misuses of words, but they give a free pass and even praise to poets and playwrights who commit the same "crime." I am thinking specifically of Act III, Scene 4 of William Shakespeare's Othello, which declares, "this hand of yours requires / A sequester from liberty, fasting and prayer." Shakespeare frequently made up words—countless of which I bet are fixtures of your vocabulary—to fit his metrical patterns, and on line 40 he uses "sequester" as a one-for-one substitute for "sequestration." "Sequester" critics, please redirect your rant to the Bard.
To complain about "sequester" is to be selective and inconsistent in your application of the rules of language. At its worst, it smacks of self-righteous armchair grammarians looking to pick a petty fight. Those who take the time, however, to actually consider how language works cannot deny that both variations have their problems and yet both are still perfectly acceptable to use. Like the sequester itself, the grammatical backlash against its epithet is simply a manufactured crisis.
Monday, February 25, 2013
What You Need to Know Before the #IL02 Special Election
Even in regular election years, individual House races rarely get much attention—so you know you're getting down into the depths of obscurity when you're dealing with a special House election. On February 26, the voters of the new Illinois Second Congressional District will choose their next US representative, succeeding Jesse Jackson Jr., who resigned due to mental illness and a now-exploding ethics investigation. True, February 26 is just a primary, but in this heavily Democratic district (a Cook PVI of D+27), the winner of Tuesday's Democratic primary is guaranteed a coronation on the general-election date of April 9.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there are no less than 15 Democrats running for this seat that hasn't been open since 1995. That's daunting for election watchers like us who want to know what's going on and who's likely to win. Thankfully, Baseballot is here to grant you a crash course before you tune in on Tuesday.
I know the Illinois Second about as well as you can without being a local; my mother grew up there, and I visited family there frequently while growing up. The first thing to know is that it's an extremely diverse district, both geographically and demographically. IL-02's northern border sits on East 53rd St. in urban Chicago—Hyde Park, to be precise, President's Obama's home neighborhood (although he just narrowly avoids being in the district and the awkward questioning that would surely come with it). A small, well-to-do neighborhood for professors at the nearby University of Chicago, mostly white Hyde Park quickly gives way to the poor, almost completely African-American South Side. Despite physically taking up only the northern tip of the district, the South Side constitutes a hefty chunk of its vote share; Chicago accounted for 26% of the total votes cast for Congress in this district in 2012 (76,506 out of 297,712 total).
As you drive south on I-94 past Lake Calumet, you cross the Chicago city limits into the core suburbs of the Illinois Second. Cities like Calumet City, Dolton, Harvey, and South Holland are also majority African-American, though unlike the virtually homogenous South Side, they retain some of the white voters who were their traditional residents a generation or two ago. Currently, the dividing line is I-80/I-294, which crosses I-94 about 15 miles south of where we began in Hyde Park. The change is evident immediately to a southbound driver: suburban commerce, strip malls, and densely packed cookie-cutter homes give way to forests, wide-open spaces, and, yes, cornfields. Most communities south of I-80/I-294, such as Homewood and Lansing, remain white enclaves. By the time you hit Will County just south of Chicago Heights, you've driven past 52% (154,284 of 297,712 votes cast in the 2012 congressional race) of the district's voters since crossing over from Chicago. Roughly half of that suburban vote share is in the mostly black northern suburbs, roughly half is in the mostly white southern suburbs, but all of it is solidly Democratic.
In stark contrast, Will County, from Steger and Crete all the way down to Peotone and Beecher, is rural, white, and Republican. Only 8% of the district's vote resides here, despite a land area as big as all the turf we had covered to the north. Another 20 miles south, through Kankakee County, and the district finally comes to an end—the low population density and farmland sharply different than where we began. Anchored by the relatively large city of Kankakee, Kankakee County accounts for a larger 15% of the district by 2012 vote share, but it votes even more reliably with the GOP. Kankakee's sizable black population (about 11,000 strong) accounts for virtually every Democratic vote cast down here. Overall, the Illinois Second is 29.6% white, 55.3% black, and 12.8% Latino.
The stage is set; next, meet the cast of characters—though certainly not all of them. Eleven of the 15 Democratic candidates are pretty clearly hopeless. The main two names to remember are former State Representative Robin Kelly and former Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, the undisputed frontrunners. Thought to be a dark horse by some is Alderman Anthony Beale, although in this blogger's opinion, a win by him would be a real shocker. Pulling up the rear of the viable candidates but managing to separate himself from the riffraff is former Congressman Mel Reynolds, who actually preceded Jackson in this seat but had to resign himself due to charges of statutory rape. (Two other potentially potent candidates, State Senator Napoleon Harris and State Senator Toi Hutchinson, have dropped out in recent weeks.)
In this majority-black district, the only white name of the six above is Halvorson; a roughly proportional two of them (Beale and Reynolds) are from Chicago city proper. Halvorson is from idyllic Crete, part of Will County. Kelly is from Matteson, one of the few mainly black communities south of I-80/I-294. Kelly is also the best-financed candidate; she raised $200,000 by December 31, unfortunately the most recent figure we'll have before the election. Before dropping out, Hutchinson has raised the second most at $135,000; interestingly, Halvorson had raised only about as much as Beale ($50,000). Reynolds hasn't even raised enough to trigger an FEC report.
It is on December 31 that our play begins. At the start of the new year, Halvorson had real reason to be confident, despite those low fundraising totals: in a jumbled, yet-to-be-defined field, she had the name recognition and thus the advantage. The old (pre-redistricting) congresswoman for the southern half of the Illinois Second before losing in the Republican wave of 2010, Halvorson also benefited from a split in the black vote between Kelly, Hutchinson, Beale, and the other black candidates in the race.
Polling at the time bore this out. Both the Kelly campaign and the Hutchinson campaign released internal polls in early January:
Bear in mind that each campaign's poll is probably biased by five or so points in their candidate's favor, but a clear picture of the race emerges: Hutchinson and Kelly, with their fundraising advantages, were poised to strike. Kelly's poll also showed her with leads among African-American women and suburban African-Americans; in such a black district, that indicated she had more room to grow. Importantly, Kelly's poll also showed one more thing: a deep dislike within the district for the National Rifle Association.
Alongside typical bread-and-butter topics like seniors or the construction of a third airport for Chicagoland in Peotone, one issue that quickly took hold in this heavily urban district was gun control. Especially after the high-profile shooting of a 15-year-old Chicagoan who had performed at President Obama's inauguration, Kelly emphasized that her "F" rating from the NRA made her the best candidate to stop gun violence in the district. Kelly also didn't miss a chance to point out that her two main rivals, Halvorson and Hutchinson, both had received "A" grades from the organization. Halvorson also didn't do herself any favors by continuing to oppose the assault-weapons ban—although Hutchinson quickly saw the error of her ways and distanced herself from the NRA.
By February 1, the momentum in the race was clearly Kelly's. First, Napoleon Harris dropped out, endorsing Kelly and helping to consolidate some of the African-American vote. Then Kelly scored her real coup—an endorsement and $2.1 million from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun super PAC. Then again, you probably knew that already, since Bloomberg's involvement nationalized the special election around the issue of gun control and made that the defining issue of the campaign for good.
Courtesy of Mayor Bloomberg, commercials lambasting Halvorson and Hutchinson have been airing nonstop in Chicago since early February, and they took their toll. The Kelly campaign released another internal poll, conducted February 4–5 of 400 likely voters, that flaunted her new frontrunner status:
The poll also showed that Kelly was now the preferred candidate of African-American voters overall and anti-gun voters overall. As the dialogue in the campaign and debates continued to center on gun control, Kelly looked unstoppable. The current was so strong that even one of the supposed frontrunners saw no path to victory; on February 17, just nine days before Election Day, Hutchinson dropped out of the race and endorsed Kelly. Word was that internal Hutchinson polls had found Kelly with an insurmountable double-digit lead over the field.
Critics cried foul, as they saw a last-minute backroom deal to anoint a single black candidate and tell the African-American community to get behind her en masse. However, Hutchinson hails from—and represents in the State Senate—the southern part of the district, and her strongest base of support proved to be the (predominantly white) voters in this area. To Kelly's chagrin, there is good reason to think Hutchinson's voters were predisposed to switch to Halvorson, not Kelly, after her withdrawal. (In fact, Hutchinson was once Halvorson's chief of staff and now represents Halvorson's old State Senate district.)
What's more, in recent days, Kelly has experienced the backlash typical of a frontrunner. Halvorson and others have been trying to paint Bloomberg's involvement as a liability, urging voters not to let the election "get bought" by outside forces. On Thursday, news also broke that Kelly was facing an ethics probe over timesheet abuse while working for the Illinois treasurer's office. Since this news became public, Kelly has not and will not participate in any more debates—no doubt hoping to freeze the race as is, but also avoiding tough questions about the probe.
Oddly, that last hyperlink references a We Ask America poll taken recently in the district, but that poll exists nowhere else on the internet. Therefore, the most recent snapshot of the race is also the only public poll taken in the race to my knowledge. Taken February 17–19 (before the ethics news), it shows a tightening race: its 500 participants gave Halvorson 21% to Kelly's 17%—a statistical tie.
Tomorrow, as the cliché goes, the only poll that matters takes place: Election Day. It certainly looks like a nailbiter, as Halvorson seems to be getting a second wind at exactly the right time. Still, it's worth paying attention to the raw numbers—specifically, how Halvorson's support is pretty static (between 21% and 25% in almost every poll). To put it bluntly, this is her ceiling: the number of likely white voters in the Democratic primary.
Like any election, the result will come down to turnout. For Halvorson to win, that means turning out white voters; for Kelly to win, it means consolidating the support of enough black voters to break the 21–25% threshold. A real X-factor in Tuesday's turnout, however, will be a snowstorm expected to buffet the region tomorrow with heavy winds and three to five inches of snow. Turnout for special elections is already extremely low, making them unpredictable as is; this storm could push turnout into the single digits.
Whom will that help? My money is on Kelly, as her support comes mainly from the black voters who live in more densely packed areas. Simply put, polling places in urban and dense suburban areas are closer and easier to get to than those in the rural areas where Halvorson is drawing her support. Just because of Halvorson supporters' reliance on their cars and driving longer distances to vote, I expect that she'll be hurt the most by the weather. My final prediction: Kelly by six.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there are no less than 15 Democrats running for this seat that hasn't been open since 1995. That's daunting for election watchers like us who want to know what's going on and who's likely to win. Thankfully, Baseballot is here to grant you a crash course before you tune in on Tuesday.
I know the Illinois Second about as well as you can without being a local; my mother grew up there, and I visited family there frequently while growing up. The first thing to know is that it's an extremely diverse district, both geographically and demographically. IL-02's northern border sits on East 53rd St. in urban Chicago—Hyde Park, to be precise, President's Obama's home neighborhood (although he just narrowly avoids being in the district and the awkward questioning that would surely come with it). A small, well-to-do neighborhood for professors at the nearby University of Chicago, mostly white Hyde Park quickly gives way to the poor, almost completely African-American South Side. Despite physically taking up only the northern tip of the district, the South Side constitutes a hefty chunk of its vote share; Chicago accounted for 26% of the total votes cast for Congress in this district in 2012 (76,506 out of 297,712 total).
As you drive south on I-94 past Lake Calumet, you cross the Chicago city limits into the core suburbs of the Illinois Second. Cities like Calumet City, Dolton, Harvey, and South Holland are also majority African-American, though unlike the virtually homogenous South Side, they retain some of the white voters who were their traditional residents a generation or two ago. Currently, the dividing line is I-80/I-294, which crosses I-94 about 15 miles south of where we began in Hyde Park. The change is evident immediately to a southbound driver: suburban commerce, strip malls, and densely packed cookie-cutter homes give way to forests, wide-open spaces, and, yes, cornfields. Most communities south of I-80/I-294, such as Homewood and Lansing, remain white enclaves. By the time you hit Will County just south of Chicago Heights, you've driven past 52% (154,284 of 297,712 votes cast in the 2012 congressional race) of the district's voters since crossing over from Chicago. Roughly half of that suburban vote share is in the mostly black northern suburbs, roughly half is in the mostly white southern suburbs, but all of it is solidly Democratic.
In stark contrast, Will County, from Steger and Crete all the way down to Peotone and Beecher, is rural, white, and Republican. Only 8% of the district's vote resides here, despite a land area as big as all the turf we had covered to the north. Another 20 miles south, through Kankakee County, and the district finally comes to an end—the low population density and farmland sharply different than where we began. Anchored by the relatively large city of Kankakee, Kankakee County accounts for a larger 15% of the district by 2012 vote share, but it votes even more reliably with the GOP. Kankakee's sizable black population (about 11,000 strong) accounts for virtually every Democratic vote cast down here. Overall, the Illinois Second is 29.6% white, 55.3% black, and 12.8% Latino.
The stage is set; next, meet the cast of characters—though certainly not all of them. Eleven of the 15 Democratic candidates are pretty clearly hopeless. The main two names to remember are former State Representative Robin Kelly and former Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, the undisputed frontrunners. Thought to be a dark horse by some is Alderman Anthony Beale, although in this blogger's opinion, a win by him would be a real shocker. Pulling up the rear of the viable candidates but managing to separate himself from the riffraff is former Congressman Mel Reynolds, who actually preceded Jackson in this seat but had to resign himself due to charges of statutory rape. (Two other potentially potent candidates, State Senator Napoleon Harris and State Senator Toi Hutchinson, have dropped out in recent weeks.)
In this majority-black district, the only white name of the six above is Halvorson; a roughly proportional two of them (Beale and Reynolds) are from Chicago city proper. Halvorson is from idyllic Crete, part of Will County. Kelly is from Matteson, one of the few mainly black communities south of I-80/I-294. Kelly is also the best-financed candidate; she raised $200,000 by December 31, unfortunately the most recent figure we'll have before the election. Before dropping out, Hutchinson has raised the second most at $135,000; interestingly, Halvorson had raised only about as much as Beale ($50,000). Reynolds hasn't even raised enough to trigger an FEC report.
It is on December 31 that our play begins. At the start of the new year, Halvorson had real reason to be confident, despite those low fundraising totals: in a jumbled, yet-to-be-defined field, she had the name recognition and thus the advantage. The old (pre-redistricting) congresswoman for the southern half of the Illinois Second before losing in the Republican wave of 2010, Halvorson also benefited from a split in the black vote between Kelly, Hutchinson, Beale, and the other black candidates in the race.
Polling at the time bore this out. Both the Kelly campaign and the Hutchinson campaign released internal polls in early January:
| Kelly poll | Hutchinson poll | |
|---|---|---|
| Debbie Halvorson | 25% | 16% |
| Toi Hutchinson | 16% | 12% |
| Robin Kelly | 15% | 8% |
| Anthony Beale | 10% | 5% |
| Napoleon Harris | 9% | 7% |
| Mel Reynolds | 8% | 7% |
| Conducted | Jan. 3–7 | Jan. 8–10 |
| Sample | 500 LV | 400 LV |
Bear in mind that each campaign's poll is probably biased by five or so points in their candidate's favor, but a clear picture of the race emerges: Hutchinson and Kelly, with their fundraising advantages, were poised to strike. Kelly's poll also showed her with leads among African-American women and suburban African-Americans; in such a black district, that indicated she had more room to grow. Importantly, Kelly's poll also showed one more thing: a deep dislike within the district for the National Rifle Association.
Alongside typical bread-and-butter topics like seniors or the construction of a third airport for Chicagoland in Peotone, one issue that quickly took hold in this heavily urban district was gun control. Especially after the high-profile shooting of a 15-year-old Chicagoan who had performed at President Obama's inauguration, Kelly emphasized that her "F" rating from the NRA made her the best candidate to stop gun violence in the district. Kelly also didn't miss a chance to point out that her two main rivals, Halvorson and Hutchinson, both had received "A" grades from the organization. Halvorson also didn't do herself any favors by continuing to oppose the assault-weapons ban—although Hutchinson quickly saw the error of her ways and distanced herself from the NRA.
By February 1, the momentum in the race was clearly Kelly's. First, Napoleon Harris dropped out, endorsing Kelly and helping to consolidate some of the African-American vote. Then Kelly scored her real coup—an endorsement and $2.1 million from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun super PAC. Then again, you probably knew that already, since Bloomberg's involvement nationalized the special election around the issue of gun control and made that the defining issue of the campaign for good.
Courtesy of Mayor Bloomberg, commercials lambasting Halvorson and Hutchinson have been airing nonstop in Chicago since early February, and they took their toll. The Kelly campaign released another internal poll, conducted February 4–5 of 400 likely voters, that flaunted her new frontrunner status:
| Vote Share | Change from Jan. | |
|---|---|---|
| Robin Kelly | 26% | +11% |
| Debbie Halvorson | 22% | –3% |
| Toi Hutchinson | 20% | +4% |
| Anthony Beale | 10% | None |
| Mel Reynolds | 5% | –3% |
The poll also showed that Kelly was now the preferred candidate of African-American voters overall and anti-gun voters overall. As the dialogue in the campaign and debates continued to center on gun control, Kelly looked unstoppable. The current was so strong that even one of the supposed frontrunners saw no path to victory; on February 17, just nine days before Election Day, Hutchinson dropped out of the race and endorsed Kelly. Word was that internal Hutchinson polls had found Kelly with an insurmountable double-digit lead over the field.
Critics cried foul, as they saw a last-minute backroom deal to anoint a single black candidate and tell the African-American community to get behind her en masse. However, Hutchinson hails from—and represents in the State Senate—the southern part of the district, and her strongest base of support proved to be the (predominantly white) voters in this area. To Kelly's chagrin, there is good reason to think Hutchinson's voters were predisposed to switch to Halvorson, not Kelly, after her withdrawal. (In fact, Hutchinson was once Halvorson's chief of staff and now represents Halvorson's old State Senate district.)
What's more, in recent days, Kelly has experienced the backlash typical of a frontrunner. Halvorson and others have been trying to paint Bloomberg's involvement as a liability, urging voters not to let the election "get bought" by outside forces. On Thursday, news also broke that Kelly was facing an ethics probe over timesheet abuse while working for the Illinois treasurer's office. Since this news became public, Kelly has not and will not participate in any more debates—no doubt hoping to freeze the race as is, but also avoiding tough questions about the probe.
Oddly, that last hyperlink references a We Ask America poll taken recently in the district, but that poll exists nowhere else on the internet. Therefore, the most recent snapshot of the race is also the only public poll taken in the race to my knowledge. Taken February 17–19 (before the ethics news), it shows a tightening race: its 500 participants gave Halvorson 21% to Kelly's 17%—a statistical tie.
Tomorrow, as the cliché goes, the only poll that matters takes place: Election Day. It certainly looks like a nailbiter, as Halvorson seems to be getting a second wind at exactly the right time. Still, it's worth paying attention to the raw numbers—specifically, how Halvorson's support is pretty static (between 21% and 25% in almost every poll). To put it bluntly, this is her ceiling: the number of likely white voters in the Democratic primary.
Like any election, the result will come down to turnout. For Halvorson to win, that means turning out white voters; for Kelly to win, it means consolidating the support of enough black voters to break the 21–25% threshold. A real X-factor in Tuesday's turnout, however, will be a snowstorm expected to buffet the region tomorrow with heavy winds and three to five inches of snow. Turnout for special elections is already extremely low, making them unpredictable as is; this storm could push turnout into the single digits.
Whom will that help? My money is on Kelly, as her support comes mainly from the black voters who live in more densely packed areas. Simply put, polling places in urban and dense suburban areas are closer and easier to get to than those in the rural areas where Halvorson is drawing her support. Just because of Halvorson supporters' reliance on their cars and driving longer distances to vote, I expect that she'll be hurt the most by the weather. My final prediction: Kelly by six.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Oscar Categories Ripest for an Upset
We have a highly unusual Oscar season on our hands. To start, the Best Picture frontrunner—the Iranian-hostage thriller Argo—doesn't make any sense. Argo is looking to become the first movie since Driving Miss Daisy (1989) to win Best Picture without even being nominated for Best Director. Stranger still, Argo could become the first film since Grand Hotel in 1932 to win only one Oscar—the one for Best Picture.
Indeed, it is an award season without much precedent. Last year, in my Academy Awards analysis that ended up getting every single category wrong, I tried to match up which categories track well with which other categories in terms of both wins and nominations. As Argo implies, that approach is pretty much out the window this year. Based on the other trick that Oscar prognosticators use—precursor awards like the Golden Globes and SAG Awards—a modest favorite has been identified in almost every category, but because of the lack of any historical support for many of the nominees, there is a sense that many of these favorites could be subject to upsets. (Or, after all this uncertainty, they could also all just win. That would be a bit of an anti-climax, though.)
So, this year, I figured I would take a look back at recent Oscar history and examine the circumstances that usually surround Oscar upsets—in essence, to see whether we can predict the unpredictable. Indeed, literally every single year, there is at least one category where the widely acknowledged favorite falls flat on its face.
According to my analysis of the past 10 Oscar ceremonies and pundit coverage thereof, the category that has ruined the most Oscar pools is Best Cinematography. A whopping six out of 10 times (in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, and 2011), the conventional wisdom has been wrong about this award—so much so that you might actually be better served betting against this year's favorite, Life of Pi. Interestingly, most of these upsets may be explained by an aversion to two specific cinematographers: Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubezki. Between them, Deakins and Lubezki share 15 Oscar nominations without a single win, despite being heavily favored to take home the gold in 2005 (Lubezki, Children of Men), 2007 (Deakins, No Country for Old Men), 2010 (Deakins, True Grit), and 2011 (Lubezki, Tree of Life). Deakins is nominated again this year for lighting the brilliantly shot Skyfall, but that film is seen as a distant second in the race. Furthermore, Life of Pi is shot in 3D, which has done well in this category recently (Avatar, Hugo). Although these are typically famous last words in this category, I don't expect an upset here.
Next, Best Original Song has produced four upsets in the same time frame, though none since 2006. In 2002, Eminem's "Lose Yourself" beat Bono's "The Hands That Built America"; in 2004, "Al Otro Lado del Río" triumphed amid a murky field of superstars; in 2005, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" capitalized on a vote split between "In the Deep" and "Travelin' Thru"; and in 2006, "I Need To Wake Up" beat a triad of Dreamgirls melodies. What these upsets teach us is that the Academy isn't afraid to honor random films in this category; none of those films was nominated in more than one other category. It also demonstrates a perhaps surprising proclivity for hip hop. Neither of those criteria is particularly helpful in predicting this year's winner, but it's worth noting that Skyfall, the strong frontrunner here, has four other nominations this year. If Adele somehow loses for that title song (which I doubt), perhaps Ted's "Everybody Needs a Best Friend" best fits the upset bill?
Best Adapted Screenplay also has a 40% rate of surprises. The most recent came in 2009, when Precious upset Up in the Air; before that, you saw three straight surprises in 2002, 2003, and 2004. The common thread here may be that Adapted Screenplay can be more like Original Screenplay than it's given credit for. Often, the award for Best Original Screenplay goes to the year's funky, scrappy, original film as a sort of consolation prize—the Academy seems to be saying, "Well done. You deserve something, but you're not mainstream enough to be Best Picture." (Think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Juno, and Midnight in Paris.) In Best Original Screenplay, this attitude is usually foreseen by pundits, so it never turns out to be an upset. But in Best Adapted Screenplay, pundits continually choose one of the top two Best Picture contenders—yet this is wrong almost half the time. Sideways in 2004 (a comedy that fits the Original Screenplay profile perfectly) and 2002's The Pianist (which turned out to be beloved by the Academy, winning three major awards) stole this Oscar away from the eventual Best Picture winner, also nominated in the category. This year, Argo—and secondarily Lincoln—are the Best Picture favorites and thus the favorites to win Best Adapted Screenplay. However, recent history suggests that there's a coin flip's chance that the statue will go to comedy Silver Linings Playbook. There is a strong contingent of voters that love it, as evidenced by its eight nominations, and Argo and Lincoln could split the vote. Silver Linings also won this same award at the BAFTAs last weekend, a major precursor indication.
Four categories experienced upsets in three of the past 10 years: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, and Best Editing. Given its reputation for upsets, it will actually probably surprise many close Oscar watchers that Best Foreign Language Film is, at best, the fourth-most volatile category. It has this reputation thanks to an unusual voting requirement that winnows the voting pool to a much more select few than in most categories—making it more unpredictable. Another category that has used the same system over the past 10 years (although this year it is opening voting to the entire Academy membership), Best Documentary Feature, also had only two upsets during that time. While there have been high-profile losses in Best Foreign Language Film before (The White Ribbon in 2009; Waltz with Bashir in 2008; Pan's Labyrinth in 2006), they're just not that much more common than in "normal" categories. Therefore, I fully expect Amour and especially, with the Documentary democratization, Searching for Sugar Man to conquer their respective categories.
The other three three-fers aren't particularly noteworthy, as we are getting into the zone where categories aren't particularly unique (or prolific) in their upset tendencies—it's just random variation and luck of the draw. In Best Sound Editing, two of the three times when the winner came as a shock (2007 and 2009), it was when pundits were predicting a split with Best Sound Mixing—but instead the same film won both awards. This shouldn't be surprising, since the Academy as a whole tends to be pretty ignorant about the sound categories, especially the difference between mixing and editing. Upsets can therefore occur when they confuse the two and just mark the same film on their ballot twice. This year, Les Misérables is leading the field in Sound Mixing, but that's no help for predicting Sound Editing—Les Misérables isn't nominated there!
It is also worth a mention that Academy voters seem to dislike Alexandre Desplat, whose two regal go-arounds as the frontrunner for Best Original Score (The King's Speech and The Queen) both saw him go home empty-handed; he was beaten by more experimental fare (The Social Network and Babel, respectively) both times. Desplat is nominated this year for Argo, so don't count on a win here for the Affleck film; the haunting Life of Pi is the favorite anyway.
As for Best Editing, action films tend to win this category overall, and two-thirds of the upsets were indeed action films (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in 2011 and The Departed in 2006). However, the other third was The Aviator defeating the more action-y Million Dollar Baby in 2004. With the action-packed Argo the frontrunner in this category as well, it seems safe, unless Zero Dark Thirty can knock it off its perch.
All other categories (excepting the shorts, for which not enough information was available to analyze) have had only one or two upsets over the years—a pretty normal tally, since pundits can't be right all the time. (An interesting footnote is that, technically, there has not been an upset victory in Best Costume Design for the past 10 years. However, all you have to do is go back to last year, when the race was too close to call, to see the limitations of this stat; there can't be an upset if there is no favorite!)
When we get to this level, perhaps we're better served looking at the circumstances when an upset has occurred rather than the categories it has occurred in. One easily discernible pattern is when a candidate garners a last-minute surge in support. Therefore, it can be instructive to see who appears to be gaining momentum in the last days before the ceremony; if someone goes from a long-shot to a dark horse in the last week, they may peak at just the right time and end up taking home the prize. (It's the exact same phenomenon as last year's Iowa caucuses, when Rick Santorum entered the final weekend surging, but still behind, in the polls but ended up winning the state by 34 votes.) The classic example of this comes from the 2005 awards, when Crash was perceived to have pulled into a tie with Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture; it ultimately triumphed, of course. It's also thought that Eddie Murphy's extremely salient role in Norbit turned off Academy voters so much that they turned around and gave his 2006 Best Supporting Actor trophy (for Dreamgirls; it would have been well deserved) to Little Miss Sunshine's Alan Arkin. And, going back farther, Russell Crowe's boorish behavior probably created a backlash that caused the heavy 2001 Best Actor favorite to succumb to Denzel Washington. Unfortunately, however, these trends are much harder to identify in the technical categories, which are seldom subject to such trackable, day-by-day gossip.
Surprises also often happen when a category is a total tossup, allowing a third candidate to take advantage of the opening created by so many split voters (again, you're probably familiar with this from politics). This happened most memorably at the 2002 ceremony, when an undercurrent of support for The Pianist was able to break through in the Best Actor category (split down the middle between Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson) and Best Director category (Rob Marshall and Martin Scorsese). Likewise, controversial director Tim Burton may never have enough mainstream support to win a majority of Oscar votes, but a big enough chunk of the Academy loves him that he has been able to capitalize when the mainstream vote has been split. In 2007, his Sweeney Todd snuck in between co-favorites Atonement and There Will Be Blood for Best Art Direction, and Alice in Wonderland pulled off the same trick, in the same category, in 2010 (victimizing Inception and The King's Speech). The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the most recent beneficiary, snagging a Best Editing award last year despite 12-to-1 odds (!). As you may recall, that was one of the categories I analyzed in last year's piece, where I found it to be a two-way race between The Artist and Hugo.
Indeed, it is an award season without much precedent. Last year, in my Academy Awards analysis that ended up getting every single category wrong, I tried to match up which categories track well with which other categories in terms of both wins and nominations. As Argo implies, that approach is pretty much out the window this year. Based on the other trick that Oscar prognosticators use—precursor awards like the Golden Globes and SAG Awards—a modest favorite has been identified in almost every category, but because of the lack of any historical support for many of the nominees, there is a sense that many of these favorites could be subject to upsets. (Or, after all this uncertainty, they could also all just win. That would be a bit of an anti-climax, though.)
So, this year, I figured I would take a look back at recent Oscar history and examine the circumstances that usually surround Oscar upsets—in essence, to see whether we can predict the unpredictable. Indeed, literally every single year, there is at least one category where the widely acknowledged favorite falls flat on its face.
According to my analysis of the past 10 Oscar ceremonies and pundit coverage thereof, the category that has ruined the most Oscar pools is Best Cinematography. A whopping six out of 10 times (in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, and 2011), the conventional wisdom has been wrong about this award—so much so that you might actually be better served betting against this year's favorite, Life of Pi. Interestingly, most of these upsets may be explained by an aversion to two specific cinematographers: Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubezki. Between them, Deakins and Lubezki share 15 Oscar nominations without a single win, despite being heavily favored to take home the gold in 2005 (Lubezki, Children of Men), 2007 (Deakins, No Country for Old Men), 2010 (Deakins, True Grit), and 2011 (Lubezki, Tree of Life). Deakins is nominated again this year for lighting the brilliantly shot Skyfall, but that film is seen as a distant second in the race. Furthermore, Life of Pi is shot in 3D, which has done well in this category recently (Avatar, Hugo). Although these are typically famous last words in this category, I don't expect an upset here.
Next, Best Original Song has produced four upsets in the same time frame, though none since 2006. In 2002, Eminem's "Lose Yourself" beat Bono's "The Hands That Built America"; in 2004, "Al Otro Lado del Río" triumphed amid a murky field of superstars; in 2005, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" capitalized on a vote split between "In the Deep" and "Travelin' Thru"; and in 2006, "I Need To Wake Up" beat a triad of Dreamgirls melodies. What these upsets teach us is that the Academy isn't afraid to honor random films in this category; none of those films was nominated in more than one other category. It also demonstrates a perhaps surprising proclivity for hip hop. Neither of those criteria is particularly helpful in predicting this year's winner, but it's worth noting that Skyfall, the strong frontrunner here, has four other nominations this year. If Adele somehow loses for that title song (which I doubt), perhaps Ted's "Everybody Needs a Best Friend" best fits the upset bill?
Best Adapted Screenplay also has a 40% rate of surprises. The most recent came in 2009, when Precious upset Up in the Air; before that, you saw three straight surprises in 2002, 2003, and 2004. The common thread here may be that Adapted Screenplay can be more like Original Screenplay than it's given credit for. Often, the award for Best Original Screenplay goes to the year's funky, scrappy, original film as a sort of consolation prize—the Academy seems to be saying, "Well done. You deserve something, but you're not mainstream enough to be Best Picture." (Think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Juno, and Midnight in Paris.) In Best Original Screenplay, this attitude is usually foreseen by pundits, so it never turns out to be an upset. But in Best Adapted Screenplay, pundits continually choose one of the top two Best Picture contenders—yet this is wrong almost half the time. Sideways in 2004 (a comedy that fits the Original Screenplay profile perfectly) and 2002's The Pianist (which turned out to be beloved by the Academy, winning three major awards) stole this Oscar away from the eventual Best Picture winner, also nominated in the category. This year, Argo—and secondarily Lincoln—are the Best Picture favorites and thus the favorites to win Best Adapted Screenplay. However, recent history suggests that there's a coin flip's chance that the statue will go to comedy Silver Linings Playbook. There is a strong contingent of voters that love it, as evidenced by its eight nominations, and Argo and Lincoln could split the vote. Silver Linings also won this same award at the BAFTAs last weekend, a major precursor indication.
Four categories experienced upsets in three of the past 10 years: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, and Best Editing. Given its reputation for upsets, it will actually probably surprise many close Oscar watchers that Best Foreign Language Film is, at best, the fourth-most volatile category. It has this reputation thanks to an unusual voting requirement that winnows the voting pool to a much more select few than in most categories—making it more unpredictable. Another category that has used the same system over the past 10 years (although this year it is opening voting to the entire Academy membership), Best Documentary Feature, also had only two upsets during that time. While there have been high-profile losses in Best Foreign Language Film before (The White Ribbon in 2009; Waltz with Bashir in 2008; Pan's Labyrinth in 2006), they're just not that much more common than in "normal" categories. Therefore, I fully expect Amour and especially, with the Documentary democratization, Searching for Sugar Man to conquer their respective categories.
The other three three-fers aren't particularly noteworthy, as we are getting into the zone where categories aren't particularly unique (or prolific) in their upset tendencies—it's just random variation and luck of the draw. In Best Sound Editing, two of the three times when the winner came as a shock (2007 and 2009), it was when pundits were predicting a split with Best Sound Mixing—but instead the same film won both awards. This shouldn't be surprising, since the Academy as a whole tends to be pretty ignorant about the sound categories, especially the difference between mixing and editing. Upsets can therefore occur when they confuse the two and just mark the same film on their ballot twice. This year, Les Misérables is leading the field in Sound Mixing, but that's no help for predicting Sound Editing—Les Misérables isn't nominated there!
It is also worth a mention that Academy voters seem to dislike Alexandre Desplat, whose two regal go-arounds as the frontrunner for Best Original Score (The King's Speech and The Queen) both saw him go home empty-handed; he was beaten by more experimental fare (The Social Network and Babel, respectively) both times. Desplat is nominated this year for Argo, so don't count on a win here for the Affleck film; the haunting Life of Pi is the favorite anyway.
As for Best Editing, action films tend to win this category overall, and two-thirds of the upsets were indeed action films (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in 2011 and The Departed in 2006). However, the other third was The Aviator defeating the more action-y Million Dollar Baby in 2004. With the action-packed Argo the frontrunner in this category as well, it seems safe, unless Zero Dark Thirty can knock it off its perch.
All other categories (excepting the shorts, for which not enough information was available to analyze) have had only one or two upsets over the years—a pretty normal tally, since pundits can't be right all the time. (An interesting footnote is that, technically, there has not been an upset victory in Best Costume Design for the past 10 years. However, all you have to do is go back to last year, when the race was too close to call, to see the limitations of this stat; there can't be an upset if there is no favorite!)
When we get to this level, perhaps we're better served looking at the circumstances when an upset has occurred rather than the categories it has occurred in. One easily discernible pattern is when a candidate garners a last-minute surge in support. Therefore, it can be instructive to see who appears to be gaining momentum in the last days before the ceremony; if someone goes from a long-shot to a dark horse in the last week, they may peak at just the right time and end up taking home the prize. (It's the exact same phenomenon as last year's Iowa caucuses, when Rick Santorum entered the final weekend surging, but still behind, in the polls but ended up winning the state by 34 votes.) The classic example of this comes from the 2005 awards, when Crash was perceived to have pulled into a tie with Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture; it ultimately triumphed, of course. It's also thought that Eddie Murphy's extremely salient role in Norbit turned off Academy voters so much that they turned around and gave his 2006 Best Supporting Actor trophy (for Dreamgirls; it would have been well deserved) to Little Miss Sunshine's Alan Arkin. And, going back farther, Russell Crowe's boorish behavior probably created a backlash that caused the heavy 2001 Best Actor favorite to succumb to Denzel Washington. Unfortunately, however, these trends are much harder to identify in the technical categories, which are seldom subject to such trackable, day-by-day gossip.
Surprises also often happen when a category is a total tossup, allowing a third candidate to take advantage of the opening created by so many split voters (again, you're probably familiar with this from politics). This happened most memorably at the 2002 ceremony, when an undercurrent of support for The Pianist was able to break through in the Best Actor category (split down the middle between Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson) and Best Director category (Rob Marshall and Martin Scorsese). Likewise, controversial director Tim Burton may never have enough mainstream support to win a majority of Oscar votes, but a big enough chunk of the Academy loves him that he has been able to capitalize when the mainstream vote has been split. In 2007, his Sweeney Todd snuck in between co-favorites Atonement and There Will Be Blood for Best Art Direction, and Alice in Wonderland pulled off the same trick, in the same category, in 2010 (victimizing Inception and The King's Speech). The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the most recent beneficiary, snagging a Best Editing award last year despite 12-to-1 odds (!). As you may recall, that was one of the categories I analyzed in last year's piece, where I found it to be a two-way race between The Artist and Hugo.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
State of the State Schedule 2013
Imagine my surprise this week when I hear that I've already missed a few State of the State addresses. Like the president's State of the Union, States of the State are important policy messages from most states' governors to a joint session of their legislatures—so I wanted to pay close attention to them this year. (It is true, after all, that most policy that affects people is made in state capitals—especially with the US Congress in the state it's in.) Ergo, although it's a little late for some of the addresses, I compiled the list below of all 2013 State of the State addresses, and I figured I'd make it public.
This list will be updated throughout the month as new dates are announced; also, once an address has been given, I'll link to the text of the remarks.
Alabama: February 5 at 6:30pm CT
Alaska: January 16 at 7pm AKT
Arizona: January 14 at 1:45pm MT
Arkansas: January 15 at 10:30am CT
California: January 24 at 9am PT
Colorado: January 10 at 11am MT
Connecticut: January 9 at noon ET
Delaware: January 17 at 7:30pm ET
Florida: March 5 at 11am ET
Georgia: January 17 at 11am ET
Hawaii: January 22 at 10am HAT
Idaho: January 7 at 1pm MT
Illinois: February 6 at noon CT
Indiana: January 22 at 7pm ET
Iowa: January 15 at 10am CT
Kansas: January 15 at 6:30pm CT
Kentucky: February 6 at 7pm ET
Louisiana: April 8 at 1pm CT
Maine: February 5 at 7pm ET
Maryland: January 30 at noon ET
Massachusetts: January 16 at 7:30pm ET
Michigan: January 16 at 7pm ET
Minnesota: February 6 at 7pm CT
Mississippi: January 22 at 5pm CT
Missouri: January 28 at 7pm CT
Montana: January 30 at 7pm MT
Nebraska: January 15 at 10am CT
Nevada: January 16 at 6pm PT
New Hampshire: February 14 at 10am ET
New Jersey: January 8 at 2pm ET
New Mexico: January 15 at 1pm MT
New York: January 9 at 1:30pm ET
North Carolina: February 18 at 7pm
North Dakota: January 8 at 1:30pm CT
Ohio: February 19 at 6:30pm ET
Oklahoma: February 4 at noon CT
Oregon: January 14 at 11am PT
Pennsylvania: February 5 at 11:30am ET
Rhode Island: January 16 at 7pm ET
South Carolina: January 16 at 7pm ET
South Dakota: January 8 at 1pm CT
Tennessee: January 28 at 6pm CT
Texas: January 29 at 11am CT
Utah: January 30 at 6:30pm MT
Vermont: January 10 at 2pm ET
Virginia: January 9 at 7pm ET
Washington: January 15 at 11:30am PT
West Virginia: February 13 at 7pm ET
Wisconsin: January 15 at 7pm CT
Wyoming: January 9 at 10am MT
National: February 12 at 9pm ET
This list will be updated throughout the month as new dates are announced; also, once an address has been given, I'll link to the text of the remarks.
Alabama: February 5 at 6:30pm CT
Alaska: January 16 at 7pm AKT
Arizona: January 14 at 1:45pm MT
Arkansas: January 15 at 10:30am CT
California: January 24 at 9am PT
Colorado: January 10 at 11am MT
Connecticut: January 9 at noon ET
Delaware: January 17 at 7:30pm ET
Florida: March 5 at 11am ET
Georgia: January 17 at 11am ET
Hawaii: January 22 at 10am HAT
Idaho: January 7 at 1pm MT
Illinois: February 6 at noon CT
Indiana: January 22 at 7pm ET
Iowa: January 15 at 10am CT
Kansas: January 15 at 6:30pm CT
Kentucky: February 6 at 7pm ET
Louisiana: April 8 at 1pm CT
Maine: February 5 at 7pm ET
Maryland: January 30 at noon ET
Massachusetts: January 16 at 7:30pm ET
Michigan: January 16 at 7pm ET
Minnesota: February 6 at 7pm CT
Mississippi: January 22 at 5pm CT
Missouri: January 28 at 7pm CT
Montana: January 30 at 7pm MT
Nebraska: January 15 at 10am CT
Nevada: January 16 at 6pm PT
New Hampshire: February 14 at 10am ET
New Jersey: January 8 at 2pm ET
New Mexico: January 15 at 1pm MT
New York: January 9 at 1:30pm ET
North Carolina: February 18 at 7pm
North Dakota: January 8 at 1:30pm CT
Ohio: February 19 at 6:30pm ET
Oklahoma: February 4 at noon CT
Oregon: January 14 at 11am PT
Pennsylvania: February 5 at 11:30am ET
Rhode Island: January 16 at 7pm ET
South Carolina: January 16 at 7pm ET
South Dakota: January 8 at 1pm CT
Tennessee: January 28 at 6pm CT
Texas: January 29 at 11am CT
Utah: January 30 at 6:30pm MT
Vermont: January 10 at 2pm ET
Virginia: January 9 at 7pm ET
Washington: January 15 at 11:30am PT
West Virginia: February 13 at 7pm ET
Wisconsin: January 15 at 7pm CT
Wyoming: January 9 at 10am MT
National: February 12 at 9pm ET
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Will Craig Biggio Make the Hall of Fame After All?
When I last assessed the Hall of Fame vote four days ago, I concluded the piece by applying the average error of past Hall of Fame "exit polls" to the current exit polls to arrive at an estimate for their final vote totals tomorrow. This method yielded some good insights, such as the fact that Jack Morris and Lee Smith will almost certainly overperform their polls, while Tim Raines will almost certainly underperform them. But it also told us precious little about other players—namely, the ones for whom it is their first year on the ballot. This was a particularly frustrating shortcoming because the player who is currently on the cusp of induction according to exit polls—Craig Biggio, with 70% of the vote so far—is also on the ballot for the first time.
I felt that I couldn't apply an adjustment to Biggio's exit polls because we're not sure what type of voter is likely to vote for him. He could overperform his polls, in the event that he gets wide support from the old-school contingent that tends not to publish their ballot early (and thus that is most likely to be underrepresented in the exit polls). He could also underperform, as similar infielders like Barry Larkin and Roberto Alomar have done in the past couple years.
Then I read Nate Silver's column today with his own Hall of Fame vote analysis. In it, Nate looked at @leokitty's compilation of all published Hall of Fame ballots to see which players' support lined up with which other players' support. Nate specifically looked at the behavior of the pro–Barry Bonds bloc in an attempt to decipher the impact that the steroids scandal will have on this year's electorate, but his method can also be used to see who else Biggio voters are more or less likely to vote for.
As mentioned above, my previous research indicated that certain players consistently over- and underperform their exit polls. If we find, using Nate's method of analysis, that Biggio voters also tend to be Raines voters, or Morris voters, or Smith voters, then we can make an educated guess that Biggio will over- or underperform his exit polls by comparable margins.
As of this writing, 50 out of 65 pro-Morris voters were also voting for Biggio—that's 76.9%. The 46 anti-Morris voters gave 28 votes to Biggio: 60.9%. Thus, Biggio appeals more to the pro-Morris crowd than to Morris's detractors, by a 16-point margin.
Of 36 pro-Smith voters, 28 were also voting for Biggio (77.8%); meanwhile, 50 of the 75 non-Smith voters also voted for Biggio (66.7%). So Biggio is also more popular among Lee Smith fans, though the difference is smaller (11.1 points).
And 54 out of 70 pro-Raines voters were also voting for Biggio (77.1%). That leaves 41 anti-Raines voters, 24 of whom included Biggio on their ballot (58.5%). That's the biggest difference yet: 18.6 points.
As should be obvious from the above, if pro-Morris (76.9%), pro-Smith (77.8%), or pro-Raines (77.1%) voters were the only voters, Biggio would be in the Hall of Fame. It is their opponents who are also dragging Biggio down.
Thus, if the exit polls are undersampling Morris and Smith proponents (as they almost certainly are), then Biggio could be in for a boost. On the other hand, if exit polls are undersampling Raines opponents (as they almost certainly are), that could undo a lot of that boost.
In other words, Biggio is not conclusively a favorite of either the old-school crowd or the new sabermetrics- and statistics-oriented crowd. He seems to be a favorite of both—just not enough of a favorite to break that 75% threshold.
I felt that I couldn't apply an adjustment to Biggio's exit polls because we're not sure what type of voter is likely to vote for him. He could overperform his polls, in the event that he gets wide support from the old-school contingent that tends not to publish their ballot early (and thus that is most likely to be underrepresented in the exit polls). He could also underperform, as similar infielders like Barry Larkin and Roberto Alomar have done in the past couple years.
Then I read Nate Silver's column today with his own Hall of Fame vote analysis. In it, Nate looked at @leokitty's compilation of all published Hall of Fame ballots to see which players' support lined up with which other players' support. Nate specifically looked at the behavior of the pro–Barry Bonds bloc in an attempt to decipher the impact that the steroids scandal will have on this year's electorate, but his method can also be used to see who else Biggio voters are more or less likely to vote for.
As mentioned above, my previous research indicated that certain players consistently over- and underperform their exit polls. If we find, using Nate's method of analysis, that Biggio voters also tend to be Raines voters, or Morris voters, or Smith voters, then we can make an educated guess that Biggio will over- or underperform his exit polls by comparable margins.
As of this writing, 50 out of 65 pro-Morris voters were also voting for Biggio—that's 76.9%. The 46 anti-Morris voters gave 28 votes to Biggio: 60.9%. Thus, Biggio appeals more to the pro-Morris crowd than to Morris's detractors, by a 16-point margin.
Of 36 pro-Smith voters, 28 were also voting for Biggio (77.8%); meanwhile, 50 of the 75 non-Smith voters also voted for Biggio (66.7%). So Biggio is also more popular among Lee Smith fans, though the difference is smaller (11.1 points).
And 54 out of 70 pro-Raines voters were also voting for Biggio (77.1%). That leaves 41 anti-Raines voters, 24 of whom included Biggio on their ballot (58.5%). That's the biggest difference yet: 18.6 points.
As should be obvious from the above, if pro-Morris (76.9%), pro-Smith (77.8%), or pro-Raines (77.1%) voters were the only voters, Biggio would be in the Hall of Fame. It is their opponents who are also dragging Biggio down.
Thus, if the exit polls are undersampling Morris and Smith proponents (as they almost certainly are), then Biggio could be in for a boost. On the other hand, if exit polls are undersampling Raines opponents (as they almost certainly are), that could undo a lot of that boost.
In other words, Biggio is not conclusively a favorite of either the old-school crowd or the new sabermetrics- and statistics-oriented crowd. He seems to be a favorite of both—just not enough of a favorite to break that 75% threshold.
Friday, January 4, 2013
How Accurate are Exit Polls—of the Hall of Fame?
Are you a "big-Hall" person or a "small-Hall" person? How about a "zero-Hall" person? It sounds like that might be the consensus on Wednesday, when at 2pm the 2013 Hall of Fame class will be announced. Yes, the conventional wisdom is now that absolutely no one from an absolutely loaded ballot will lasso the 75% of votes necessary for induction.
This is borne out in Baseball Think Factory's extremely cool exit polling of the Hall of Fame vote. How can you do exit polling on a Hall of Fame election, you ask? Simple—you read the myriad ballot columns that are released at this time of year. As of my writing this post, BBTF had canvassed all 93 ballots that have been unveiled by their voters in a column, out of a likely 570 or so that will be cast (although that hardly seems predictive of this year's total, due to the ridiculously controversial ballot—it could stimulate interest and produce a record-high number of ballots, or so many people could be disgusted or bewildered by their choices that the number takes a substantial hit). According to BBTF's poll, no player has 75% of the vote; Craig Biggio, with 69.9%, comes the closest.
But exit polls, as John Kerry so famously learned, can be wrong. Can we determine how wrong they might be? Not for sure, but we can look at the historical performance of the same types of exit polls.
For the past five years, @leokitty has kept a spreadsheet tallying the percentage of votes each player got in the columns released that year. Here is how the figures compared last year, when the sample size was 114 out of an eventual 573 ballots cast (19.9%):
For the class of 2011, she unearthed 122 votes online out of an eventual 581 (21.0%):
And for the class of 2010, only 92 of an eventual 539 ballots (17.1%) were pre-countable:
Obviously any poll comes with a margin of error. However, there are some players whose vote totals are consistently over- or under-predicted by these surveys, just as political polls tend to undersample minorities and the young. Knowing this can tell us a lot about what we might be able to expect on Wednesday.
Specifically, the broad trend appears to be that the exit polls understate support for "old-school" candidates or candidates whose best case for inclusion is superficial. Such candidates include Lee Smith (with his eye-popping quantity of saves), Don Mattingly (the quintessential "professional hitter"), Larry Walker (looked great, but who doesn't at Coors Field?), and Jack Morris (everyone remembers him for that one dominant World Series start).
Another trend is that the exit polls overstate support for SABR-friendly candidates—or, more precisely, they just really overvalue poor Tim Raines. Interestingly, the polls do not seem biased toward or against any of the steroid-tainted characters.
This paints a picture of an polling sample (self-selected, remember; they are the ones who choose to write columns publishing their ballot for all to see) that is more pro-SABR and, if you'll excuse the editorialization, more forward-thinking than the electorate as a whole. This makes sense—a lot of the old-school voters (their minds calcified in an old way of thinking, like that wins and saves are important statistics) are no longer covering baseball, and thus don't have column space to devote to an explanation of their ballot. Similarly, some of the more closed-minded BBWAA members may not be interesting in sharing their ballot with the world, therefore exposing them to be ripped to shreds in comments sections and on Twitter.
So what does this mean for Wednesday's final vote tally, other than that Tim Raines is going to see yet another big dropoff? In the chart below, I've taken each player's current projected vote share as assessed by BBTF and added an adjustment factor, based on the player's average deviation from the exit-poll results in the past three years. For new candidates on the ballot, I've added no such adjustment factor (they are mostly steroid candidates anyway, and that issue has shown to have little effect on the accuracy of exit polls).
So it does indeed look grim. Even with the adjustments, Biggio remains closest. Can he make it? To be honest, looking at these numbers, I doubt it. He doesn't strike me as an old-school candidate; if anything, he's closer to the subtle greatness of Roberto Alomar and Barry Larkin, who were both overvalued by polls before. (But he is also white, which neither Alomar nor Larkin nor Raines is—could this also be a creeping factor?) Meanwhile, the top candidate likely to benefit from the old-school swing, Jack Morris, simply has too much ground to make up. He's currently polling at 62.4%, and while he is almost certain to get more than that on Wednesday, a 12.6-point bump would be unprecedented. If the old-schoolers directed their love to another, closer candidate—Jeff Bagwell—we'd have a decent shot at an induction, but Bagwell has been on the ballot for two years now and has shown no tendency to deviate from the polls. So all that brings us to the real question:
What if they had a Hall of Fame induction but nobody came?
This is borne out in Baseball Think Factory's extremely cool exit polling of the Hall of Fame vote. How can you do exit polling on a Hall of Fame election, you ask? Simple—you read the myriad ballot columns that are released at this time of year. As of my writing this post, BBTF had canvassed all 93 ballots that have been unveiled by their voters in a column, out of a likely 570 or so that will be cast (although that hardly seems predictive of this year's total, due to the ridiculously controversial ballot—it could stimulate interest and produce a record-high number of ballots, or so many people could be disgusted or bewildered by their choices that the number takes a substantial hit). According to BBTF's poll, no player has 75% of the vote; Craig Biggio, with 69.9%, comes the closest.
But exit polls, as John Kerry so famously learned, can be wrong. Can we determine how wrong they might be? Not for sure, but we can look at the historical performance of the same types of exit polls.
For the past five years, @leokitty has kept a spreadsheet tallying the percentage of votes each player got in the columns released that year. Here is how the figures compared last year, when the sample size was 114 out of an eventual 573 ballots cast (19.9%):
For the class of 2011, she unearthed 122 votes online out of an eventual 581 (21.0%):
And for the class of 2010, only 92 of an eventual 539 ballots (17.1%) were pre-countable:
Obviously any poll comes with a margin of error. However, there are some players whose vote totals are consistently over- or under-predicted by these surveys, just as political polls tend to undersample minorities and the young. Knowing this can tell us a lot about what we might be able to expect on Wednesday.
Specifically, the broad trend appears to be that the exit polls understate support for "old-school" candidates or candidates whose best case for inclusion is superficial. Such candidates include Lee Smith (with his eye-popping quantity of saves), Don Mattingly (the quintessential "professional hitter"), Larry Walker (looked great, but who doesn't at Coors Field?), and Jack Morris (everyone remembers him for that one dominant World Series start).
Another trend is that the exit polls overstate support for SABR-friendly candidates—or, more precisely, they just really overvalue poor Tim Raines. Interestingly, the polls do not seem biased toward or against any of the steroid-tainted characters.
This paints a picture of an polling sample (self-selected, remember; they are the ones who choose to write columns publishing their ballot for all to see) that is more pro-SABR and, if you'll excuse the editorialization, more forward-thinking than the electorate as a whole. This makes sense—a lot of the old-school voters (their minds calcified in an old way of thinking, like that wins and saves are important statistics) are no longer covering baseball, and thus don't have column space to devote to an explanation of their ballot. Similarly, some of the more closed-minded BBWAA members may not be interesting in sharing their ballot with the world, therefore exposing them to be ripped to shreds in comments sections and on Twitter.
So what does this mean for Wednesday's final vote tally, other than that Tim Raines is going to see yet another big dropoff? In the chart below, I've taken each player's current projected vote share as assessed by BBTF and added an adjustment factor, based on the player's average deviation from the exit-poll results in the past three years. For new candidates on the ballot, I've added no such adjustment factor (they are mostly steroid candidates anyway, and that issue has shown to have little effect on the accuracy of exit polls).
So it does indeed look grim. Even with the adjustments, Biggio remains closest. Can he make it? To be honest, looking at these numbers, I doubt it. He doesn't strike me as an old-school candidate; if anything, he's closer to the subtle greatness of Roberto Alomar and Barry Larkin, who were both overvalued by polls before. (But he is also white, which neither Alomar nor Larkin nor Raines is—could this also be a creeping factor?) Meanwhile, the top candidate likely to benefit from the old-school swing, Jack Morris, simply has too much ground to make up. He's currently polling at 62.4%, and while he is almost certain to get more than that on Wednesday, a 12.6-point bump would be unprecedented. If the old-schoolers directed their love to another, closer candidate—Jeff Bagwell—we'd have a decent shot at an induction, but Bagwell has been on the ballot for two years now and has shown no tendency to deviate from the polls. So all that brings us to the real question:
What if they had a Hall of Fame induction but nobody came?
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