A Rush To Judgement About The Rush Effect

In order to at least even begin to answer the question in the affirmative, wouldn't we have a good sense of the percentage of Republicans who normally vote in competitive Democratic primaries after the Republican has won...across states and across cycles?

We don't have that data.

Dave Wiegel notices that before the Rush crusade began, fewer Republicans voted in the Democratic primary in Wisconsin than they did after, when a higher percentage voted in Texas. The correlation-not-causation conflation notwithstanding, Wisconsin is very different from Texas!

It's also not implausible that a certain percentage of Reagan Democrats-turned-Republicans support Clinton; what's the gender breakdown? If it's more female than male, perhaps we may want to revise or least append the theory that El Rushbo is driving turnout. (B. Smith notices that Limbaugh doesn't take credit for Mississippi.)

Comments

For all his talk about bringing people together people are starting to figure out that Obama is so far to the left its astounding.

The Clintons hug the center. Republicans don't agree with them but its the devil you know.

I really don't think we should give Limbaugh credit for anything or else we'd be talking about Mitt Romney in november.

Posted by Jesse | March 12, 2008 4:35 PM

There is no point waiting for data that simply doesn't exist, and the natural experiment Marc is describing hasn't happened.

The bottomline is that this theory will be extremely difficult to confirm or disprove, since it is about why people are voting--unless perhaps someone adds a relevant question to an exit poll, and enough people are honest (stranger things have happened).

Posted by DTM | March 12, 2008 4:43 PM

In a general sense the discussion of the "Rush Effect" is not about whether Rush himself motivated these GOPers to vote strategically.
It's about whether loyal GOPers voting in the dem primary and who aren't considering voting dem in the general are affecting the Dem primary in a significant and non-idealogical way.
When a full 11.5% of the total electorate said Hillary is not trustworthy but they voted for her vs. 2% doing the same for Obama, as well as 13% of the electorate being strongly favorable toward McCain and breaking 70-25 for Hillary, it becomes hard to pretend it's not significant.

Posted by taricha | March 12, 2008 9:04 PM

taricha: exactly, in the exit polls the Republicans who vote for Obama tend to say he's trustworthy, good commander in chief, don't like McCain, etc. etc. The Republicans who voted for Clinton (25% of Clinton's vote in Miss) tended to think that Hillary was untrustworthy, they would not be happy with her as nominee and tended to like McCain.

Posted by Bosh | March 13, 2008 2:14 AM

Anecdotal evidence from a Dallas resident, for what it's worth: Two Republican friends of mine voted for Obama in the Democratic primary; they're very unlikely to vote for him in the general (although they have no love for McCain, they're likely to vote anti-abortion and anti-gay) but they expect the Democratic nominee to be our next president and consider Obama the lesser of two evils.
Another Republican friend went to vote and saw some of his conservative friends standing in line. "You voting for McCain or Huckabee?" he asked. "We're voting for Hillary-- we can beat *her*!"
A fourth Republican friend got a call from a far-right friend of his inviting him to come along with them when they went to caucus for Hilary that evening "like Rush has been saying." Tom said no thanks; as he told me later "I'll happily vote against your guys in November, but messing with the other party like that-- that's bulls--t!"

Posted by Dave Pooser | March 13, 2008 4:06 AM

In this deeply Republican, largely rural (and prosperous) Texas county, a surprisingly large number of Republicans have expressed genuine support for Obama, have voted for him in the primary though most (as Dave Pooser at 4:06 writes) will probably not vote for him over McCain. Some of them may have been the same people who stood up to cheer Howard Dean in 2004 -- they liked him. Our county chair reports that he has spoken with some Republicans who are switching parties because of Obama, have been horrified by Bush. Probably not many. Rush Limbaugh, who's got a regular audience here, has the kind of followers who actually make a big deal out of crossing over and voting for Hillary. Another Dem, an election judge, described a group of hearties making a big deal out of doing Rush's bidding -- much as Dave Pooser describes.

I don't think it's possible (or smart) to underestimate the sheer dislike for Hillary Clinton in both repeat both parties. Arrogance, untrustworthiness, and incivility are words often used to describe her -- as they have been used here about Bush (and worse!)

At our caucuses, though, I didn't see anything to suggest either Republican crossovers or anything more noticeable than one slightly scary, well-dressed and determined Hillary supporter (f)-- a newcomer to this area --looking daggers at the pro-Obama people. Otherwise, it was friendly, rural, everyone-knows-everyone chaos, probably too chaotic and lengthy a process for any but the most tenacious Democrats!

But the perfectly legal, typically loud-mouth and sleazy Limbaugh effect looks very real indeed here among the kind of people who think Washington is out to get 'em. Don't dismiss it!

Posted by PW | March 13, 2008 8:03 AM