I agree. I've heard similar conversations with friends and relatives. My mother (who is undecided) was upset that she wasn't here campaigning earlier this week. Bill and Chelsea were no substitute. However, the fact that she finally showed up this weekend has helped with that.

Its not entirely true that there are no early voting sites. Its true that there are no sites that are specifically set up for the sole purpose of early voting, but in WI you can go to the city clerk's office and both register and vote early all the way up until the Friday before an election. They essentially have you fill out an absentee ballot there in the office and the clerk signs it as the witness.

And just to be nitpicky, its the Wisconsin State Journal not the Madison State Journal, because Madison isn't a state. :)

I agree. Keep writing. You know, if you still want to, which I hope you do. :)

I'm all for the Employee Free Choice Act and believe that its true that employers are more likely to intimidate workers during ballot elections rather than through card check.

I just want to point out about something about the data that's used in this study to support this.

Because card check is not mandated by law, employers get to determine whether there will be an election or card check, because they can refuse to recognize card checks. Employers who are more anti-union and more likely to intimidate workers are probably also more likely to refuse to recognize card check results, if only because its another way to intimidate workers and refuse to recognize a union. (I can't think of a reason offhand that the results for union intimidation would change, though there could be one).

This means that the differences in employer intimidation between card check and elections is  somewhat exaggerated in the study. However, it also probably means that the disparity between union and employer intimidation within card check elections is a lower-bound; if the rules were changed to require employers to recognize card check, there would be more employer intimidation in card check elections as more anti-union, pro-worker-intimidation employers would be forced into the card check group.

However, I agree that union and employer intimidation are qualitatively different things (however you phrase it, employers do have power over their workers that other employees don't have), so even if there were no quantitative disparity, a disparity would still exist (but would make arguments a bit more difficult on our side).  
 

Thanks! I aim to please - or at least contribute something useful. :)

Part of the problem as I see it is this:

The Right has worked hard to condition Christians to see every disagreement as an insult to religion. Part of the way that they have done this is by conflating personal religion and religious belief with political positions based on religious belief. We as liberals adhere to a moral standard that places a high value on tolerance of all religious beliefs (or lack thereof). However, political views (rightly) are not accorded the same respect in the political sphere and are subject to spirited debate (or mockery as the case may be).

Tolerance for another's beliefs, as most people understand it, assumes that you won't particularly care about or at the very least will not actively challenge beliefs that run counter to your own. For many Christians, opposition to abortion, homosexuality and a host of other issues is based on religious belief. Because these issues are high profile political issues, this forces them to bring their religious beliefs on these issues into the political sphere. All fine and good.

However, in the political sphere, challenging their positions is fair game and many Christians do not acknowledge this fact. They want their views to remain protected under the guise of religious tolerance. Their views on these issues are supposed to be untouchable because they are based on religious conviction. They don't acknowledge that the rules change once you bring your private religious beliefs into the public political sphere.

The rules of religious tolerance mean that challenging these convictions is a sign of intolerance; therefore they take criticisms of these beliefs and arguments countering them as religious intolerance. Forcing them to defend their beliefs in terms other than religious ones when their beliefs are based on religious terms makes them feel attacked and defensive. They often do in fact feel persecuted, if only because the religious language that they rely on to articulate their beliefs has no meaning or persuasive power against those secularists questioning their political positions.

HOWEVER, what they want is the religious beliefs on which their political views lie to go unquestioned because they are religious beliefs, but they are not willing to extend the same protections to secular beliefs and arguments. They want to privilege their own beliefs because they descend from a "protected" right to religious freedom, even when they are using these beliefs in the "unprotected" political sphere. This is inherently unfair and stacks the deck against secularists (especially atheists) whose beliefs, by virtue of not being directly descended from God, are not protected in the same way.

************** ***

Oh, and Jim Wallis is a self-aggrandizing jerk.

Marital Status is particularly important with regards to political views and you probably should collect this information. For example, the gender gap is much smaller between married men and women than between single men and women.

The most common way of asking about relationship status in the demographic/social sciences is something along the lines of:

What is your marital status?

1. Married

2. Separated (due to marital problems)
   
3. Divorced
   
4. Widowed
   
5. Never Married

In surveys that don't include separate questions about cohabitation, there can be another category above Never Married for "Single, living with unmarried partner".

People have to answer questions about their marital status on surveys all of the time and they get used to being able to answer in specific ways. Marriage is a socially-important institution in the U.S. and there are many people who attach a lot of meaning to their particular status. This is true for religion and race as well. They are intimate parts of the way in which people define themselves and it is frustrating to feel like they are not being represented accurately. And previously married people are considerably different from never married people.

Six categories isn't too bad and it should capture most of the complaints that people made. Many straight people cohabit with their partners; more than half of all couples who eventually marry, cohabit together first. I don't think that its problematic to include this as a category just because it won't only capture LGBT folks. Its the reality.

I live in Madison, WI, Tammy Baldwin's district, and the reason that her percent of the vote went down (slightly) is because the guy who ran against her, Dave Magnum, had virtually no chance of beating her. He had run against her before and lost badly. She barely had to run a campaign at all. It seemed like every other commercial and flier was for the Doyle/Green governor's race, but there was little from either Baldwin or Kohl. Neither faced a credible challenge.

Tammy has a lot of fiercely devoted supporters here in town. If she had faced a credible Republican candidate, they would have worked hard on voter education and turnout and she most likely would have picked up a larger share of the vote. And, of course, the same-sex marriage amendment was on the ballot. That may have contributed as well, though Fair WI, which worked to defeat the amendment worked very hard to get turnout up amongst those who were against the amendment (disproportionately Tammy supporters, since, you know, she's the only out lesbian in Congress), so its unclear what the net effect of that was. It might be the case that her share would have been even lower without the amendment.

I wouldn't worry about her - declining from 63.3-62.8 isn't much of a change. I think Tammy Baldwin will be in Congress as long as she wants to be.

Drinking games are really the only way to make it through a Bush speech. Especially one that is continually interrupted by clapping and cheering, making it interminable.

If you want people to die from alcohol poisoning, then you should probably include "freedom" with bonus drinks for "freedom is on the march" and "victory" with bonus drinks for "plan for victory" and also "stability" and "Democracy". And since the word of the day is apparently "sacrifice" (unless Olbermann's comment already put that to rest), that should probably be there too. And we shouldn't forget "Iran" and "Iraq". And there should be two for "democratically elected government": one drink if its said in reference to Iraq, bonus if said in reference to the U.S. and the current Democratic Congress.

Oh, and on the Domestic front: "private accounts" or whatever they are masking their privatization plan as these days, and of course, "Social Security". And he'll also probably say something about the economy doing well due to his tax cuts, though I'm not sure what the trigger word from that should be.

We always have a few extra things like words he always pronounces wrong, like nuclear. We always put things like "finish your drink" if he actually manages to pronounce them properly. He never does.

This reminds me of the way in which conservatives have also demonized feminism. They are constantly setting up feminist strawmen (women who hate men, sex, whatever) in order to discredit work for gender equality. There is a very common phenomenon known as the "I'm not a feminist, but..." problem that has been discussed within gender studies in which many young women who have grown up with the negative stereotypes of feminism but believe in gender equality refuse to associate themselves with the feminist movement. The same thing has happened with liberalism/leftism. The words "liberal" and "the left" have become so tarnished by people on the right that too many otherwise liberal/leftist people fear to claim the title for themselves.

The way in which feminists have begun to deal with this problem is to loudly claim the title "feminist" for themselves. Their visibility itself helps undermine the stereotypes as most feminists do not hate men or sex or any other random BS thing that conservatives throw out there.

The problem that I see with what Obama is doing is that he offers a liberal/leftist vision, but is afraid to claim the title. He is pulling the "I'm not a liberal, but...". In so doing, he helps perpetuate the stereotype, because  then his obviously liberal/leftist ideas become disassociated from liberalism, but the negative stereotype remains. Its not about whether he is pinning himself somewhere on the "liberalism scale". By refusing to claim the title for himself he is essentially repudiating liberalism itself. When he does so, he legitimizes the idea that liberalism is "icky" and something to maintain distance from. He is not helping us by doing so. And he's probably more likely to do things that undermine liberals in order to prove his distance from the term.

Maybe he doesn't think that that's his job to help reinvigorate liberalism; maybe its not his job. But I personally would prefer someone who is proud of their liberal stands and who will embrace the term. Stereotypes flourish when there is no one real to point to that shows how inaccurate they are. We need candidates who we can point at and say "this is what a liberal looks like". That is the only real way that we will be able to undermine the right's characterizations of us.

leftover pesto, artichoke, olive, and garlic pizza.

mmmm...

Thank you for everything.

I also live in Madison, and while I believe that you would make an outstanding president, I take comfort in the fact that you remain my Senator in Congress.

I'm proud to know that I am represented so well. As long as I live in this state, I will vote for you. No one could replace you if you were to leave us for the White House, and I am somewhat (selfishly) glad that we won't have to try to do so.

Agreed.

I wasn't trying to argue one way or the other about whether we should be targeting Evangelicals. I do believe that there are some who could be persuaded, though most probably not.

My point was simply that the data that is generally presented as evidence that Dems made gains within a particular doesn't necessarily show that and there are other reasons that we could see the same patterns.

What I object to in the media narrative is the notion that you can tell whether Democrats "won over" any Evangelical voters simply by comparing their relative voting patterns from election to election without taking into account differences in turnout within each group. There is a certain level of diversity in voting patterns within each of the demographic groups we identify as being aligned with particular political preferences (e.g., Jews, Evangelicals, 18-24 year olds, married, single, etc.). And those who vote Republican from those groups are probably motivated to go to the polls for different reasons  than those who Democrat.

In previous elections, a certain percent of Evangelicals voted Republican (say 75%) and a certain percent voted Democrat (say 25%). Now, if the turnout increased more among those who were already more inclined to vote Democrat (say, Progressive Evangelicals - they do exist!) compared to those who were already more inclined to vote Republican (say, the American Taliban) or conversely, turnout decreased more among those who were already more inclined to vote Republican compared to those who were already more inclined to vote Democrat, then we would see a pattern in which a higher proportion of Evangelicals voted Democrat.

This does NOT mean that the Dems won anyone over. It just means that a different group of Evangelicals went to the polls than in previous elections. You can't tell the difference between this situation and "winning over" part of a demographic from exit polls without comparing how (or if) individual people voted from election to election. Now if the swings are enormous (which the change in the Evangelical vote this time is not) then you could argue that the swings are unlikely due to changes in turnout within each demographic group, but that does not appear to be the case.

I think that you are confusing "born again", "evangelical", and "fundamentalist". These refer to different things. It seems likely that you are equating evangelical Christians with fundamentalist Christians. They are not the same.

Only about a quarter of the population (maybe a little less/more) are fundamentalist. These groups are more likley to be conservative because they believe that the Bible is literally the word of God and should therefore be interpreted literally.

Not so necessarily with evangelicals. Evangelists focus on the personal acceptance of God and Jesus Christ "as your personal savior" based on a moment of conversion. Evangelism encompasses a wide variety of sects with wildly varying beliefs about Christianity. The one thing that they share is that they are Protestant Christians, rather than Roman Catholic. However, the term evangelic has often been used interchangeably with the term Christian, so it is no surprise that large proportions of Protestants define themselves as Evangelical.