Obama’s Fairfax County Margin

My very cautious estimate of Obama’s margin of victory in Fairfax County is 67,538. My optimistic estimate is that the margin will be 117,884. I detail how I came to each of those numbers below. But I guess I’ll split the baby. I predict that Barack Obama wins Fairfax County by a margin of 92,711 votes.

There are 657,393 registered voters in Fairfax County which I am going to round off to 660,000 in order to account for the yield from the frenzied last days of voter registration leading up to the October 6th deadline. And assuming a turnout of 87% (high but not totally unrealistic given that in 1992 arguably the last truly competitive presidential campaign in Virginia the state saw an 84.5% turnout) – 574,200 people will vote in Fairfax County.

Cautious Estimate: Even without getting into the tricky analysis of the recent demographic shifts which favor the Democrats I have a very conservative projection of Obama’s Fairfax County margin of victory. I arrived at the projection by merely allocating the portion of the above projected vote total that voted in 2004 exactly as it was allocated in 2004 – Kerry voters to Obama and Bush voters to McCain ( an incredibly conservative estimate from Obama’s perspective given the aforementioned demographic shifts and dysfunctional state of the local Republican party) and then allocating the additional vote by 65% to Obama and 35% to McCain to vaguely reflect the demographic identity of the newest registrants (again conservative from Obama’s standpoint given the thorough superiority of Obama’s ground game in Fairfax County).

245,671 – Kerry vote
+ 73,334 – 65% of new voters
————————-
319,005 Obama votes

211,980 – Bush vote
+ 39,487 – 35% of new voters
————————-
251,467 McCain votes

Optimistic Estimate: This analysis is much more simplistic. Instead of trying to disaggregate newer and older voters from limited data I have just used the past two statewide election results – 2006 U.S. Senate and 2005 Governor – and averaged the Republican and Democratic percentile performance in Fairfax County among those two years and applied that to my turnout projections.

59.525% x 574,200 = 341,793 Obama votes

38.995% x 574,200 = 223,909 McCain votes

McCain Has No Message

I wrote this as a comment on NLS- it ended up being so long I figured I’d throw it up on my blog too.

McCain has no message. Once the bounce wears off and the focus is recentered, people will have a clear choice. This is the first time in 12 years that we have had the message and the GOP looks hapless shifting around every other week.

In 2000, Bush won on the message – “peace & prosperity minus the blue dress.”  And Gore shifted every other week between wedding himself to Clinton or not. The whole campaign became about whether he was running on Clinton’s legacy or running from his moral misdeeds. Finally in the last couple weeks he settled down and moved away from all the non-incumbent “People vs. the Powerful” messaging and used the message – “Keep the prosperity going” closing the gap, even winning the popular vote. If he had run on that message the whole way he probably would have won Florida.

In 2004, Bush won on the message – “he will keep you safe/you can’t trust Kerry.” Kerry meanwhile tried to run a whole campaign of biography. His message was almost non-existent. The convention was essentially one big masterbatory waste of time. One speaker after another talking about John Kerry the hero.

Now in 2008- Barack Obama is going to win on the message – “change.”  Initially, John McCain had it in his mind to run a race similar to the one Bush won with in 2004. He spent the last several years transitioning to a fierce supporter of the double down Bush Iraq strategy and shifted his positions to the right to win the GOP primary. His message- “I will keep you safe/You can’t trust Obama.” But in the last couple weeks, for whatever reason, he decided that strategy wouldn’t win. My guess is that it was a combination of factors. First, his polling must have showed him he couldn’t consolidate his base. Second, the GOP has prob. gone back to the “scare” tactic well one too many times. It likely wasn’t peeling off enough independents. However, it’s questionable whether he allowed enough time to see if the message would work.

Instead, McCain made the foolish gamble of trying to pull a combination of Gore and Kerry’s strategy. He is running essentially as an incumbent (which I’m sure my Republican friends will try to argue away) because he is from that party, he has the same positions on the issues, and he has been in Washington much much longer. Not to mention the quotes from the primary praising and tying himself to Bush and the many photos of them together. Yet, as an incumbent he is running on his version of Gore’s “People vs. the Powerful” – “reform/change/etc.”

And he’s pulling from Kerry by wrapping this so much in biography. The convention reminded me a lot of Kerry’s from ‘04- complete with a charismatic speech from a newcomer which doesn’t fundamentally further the presidential candidates’ chances. This aspect reveals perhaps the biggest flaw in the McCain strategy. McCain’s campaign is all about him. Of course you have to weave in your personal story to your message as a sort of proof or credibility. But McCain is resting it all on bio. So much that he has eschewed talking about issues to a large extent.

Elections are not about the candidates, they’re about the voters. I have a feeling they’re going to teach John McCain that lesson on November 4th.

Putative Registries & Adoption

Finally back from a long hiatus.

NLS has posted a glib and typically outrageous note indicting Tim Kaine for a policy for which NLS clearly has no understanding.  What’s worse, his follows on an equally uninformed column by the generally well-respected Marc Fisher. So I felt compelled to explain how important Virginia’s “Putative Father Registry” is and how non-controversial it would be to anyone who truly understood it.

To begin, a Putative Father Registry simply is a voluntary registry to a confidential database where an unmarried man may claim to be the father of a child. Nobody is required to register. The registry simply prevents the child from being adopted without a proper hearing on the issue of paternity. However, the registry is not the only means by which the man may claim paternity and prevent an adoption. The normal mechanisms for establishing paternity are still available. The only thing the registry does is put the burden on a father to make their own effort to assert their rights. Most of us can agree that we shouldn’t expect anything less from someone who expects to rear a child.

The central focus of our law in Virginia, as well as pretty much every jurisdiction of the United States, as it concerns children – whether the issue is adoption, foster parents, custody, visitation, or any other issue – is the Best Interests of the Child. Our society has made the clear choice that, ultimately, the desires or interests of parents are inferior to the interest of an innocent, defenseless child. And understanding this core standard is key to understanding the value and necessity of the Putative Father Registry.

Prior to the enactment of such registries (in Virginia and the majority of the remaining jurisdictions in the United States) adoption authorities were burdened by the task of tracking down putative fathers who might be long gone with little or no information with which to track them down. Turning our Department of Social Services and courts into investigative units was not only absurd due to its impracticality, it was an unfair punishment to the children.

This system essentially left these children caught in a bureaucratic limbo every time a father was not present to give his blessing for an adoption. And since single mothers are often the parents in the position of placing a child for adoption, this reality has ensnared and tripped up many children from achieving their right to live in a stable, loving home.

Finally, the previous system diverted resources that could have been trained on finding great homes for children. And the indirect consequence of a resource-starved adoption processing system is that delays discouraged potential parents from undergoing what looks like an overwhelming ordeal adding stress to what is already an emotional rollercoaster for parents pursuing an adoption.

I hope this diatribe is helpful information to anybody confused by the irresponsible ranting of NLS and Mr. Fisher.