Monday, November 4, 2024

A few numbers and vote totals to know about and keep in mind for Wisconsin's results tomorrow night

I wanted to throw in a few variables to look for as Wisconsin's election returns come in tomorrow night. The first is to remind you about where Wisconsin's votes come from. A little over 50% of the state's votes come from 10 counties.

1. Milwaukee County
2. The WOW Counties near next to Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington)
3. The BOW Counties in northeast Wisconsin (Brown, Outagamie, and Winnebago)
4. Dane County
5. Racine and Kenosha Counties

The other 62 counties in the state account for slightly less than 50% of the votes. I also separate the suburbs of Milwaukee County from the City of Milwaukee, due to the large numbers of votes in Milwaukee County, and because of the different vote patterns in then City vs the burbs.

You can see that over time, the City of Milwaukee has gone from more than 9% of the state's voter turnout in the 2008 and 2012 elections (when Barack Obama was the Democratic nominee) to as little as 6.67% of the statewide vote in the 2022 elections. That's generally been replaced by a higher share from the WOW Counties, and Dane County. A dozen years ago, that would be something that might benefit Republicans statewide, as Democrats pulled around 70% of the votes from Dane County, and GOPs tended to draw around 70% of the votes in the WOW Counties.

But that hasn't been true after the rise of Donald Trump. On the Dem side, Dane County has not only accounted for a larger share of votes, but even more of those votes go to Democrats. Barack Obama got 71% of Dane County's votes in 2012, but Tony Evers got more than 78.5% of Dane's votes in 2022. In addition, the City of Milwaukee has stayed overwhelmingly Dem, and the rest of Milwaukee County has gone from a 50-50 split to nearly 60% voting for Dems.

On the flip side, the GOP advantage in the WOW Counties has shrunk to just over 60-40. And while Dems lost a lot from Obama's 2012 totals in the BOW Counties in 2016, they've gained most of that back, and have gotten over 45% of the vote in those 3 counties in every close statewide race since then.

So I would say that holding the GOP under 60% in the WOW Counties and Dems getting at least 46-47% in the BOW Counties would make Kamala Harris and Tammy Baldwin major favorites to win statewide.

With these gains in vote share in Dane County and lesser margins in those 6 larger GOP-leaning counties in the state happening, how haven't Dems continued to get comfortable 7-point wins like Obama got in 2012? Because Trump/GOPs have gained votes in the rest of the state. In 2012, Obama actually beat Romney for total votes in the other 62 counties in the state, but Trump dominated these places in 2016 to sneak out a win of less than 1%, and even though Joe Biden won back a bit of that in 2020, both he and Tony Evers didn't come close to Obama's numbers even as they were winning statewide. And Mandela Barnes fell short in 2022 because he couldn't get 42% of the vote outstate.

It's hard to believe in the Trump era, but there used be a Blue Wall for Democrats within the state in Western Wisconsin, and particularly Southwest Wisconsin. Look at how many counties in the western half of the state are blue in this map, indicating that they voted for Barack Obama in 2012.

Now compare to Joe Biden’s results in 2020.

It would be a very good sign for Dems if we see more of those counties in the western side of the state turn blue. Not only for Harris and Baldwin, but also for Rebecca Cooke’s chances against Small-D Van Orden in the 3rd Congressional District, and for several state Assembly and Senate seats that are up for grabs in that area.

Even with the dropoff, there are some larger-population counties on that “rest of Wisconsin” list that still consistently vote for Democrats. For example, Evers pulled in the neighborhood of 58% in Eau Claire, La Crosse and Rock counties in 2022, between 57 and 58% in the 3 main counties that border Lake Superior, and 53.5% in Stevens Point-centered Portage County. Any erosion there is going to be hard to make up elsewhere, but if Harris and/or Baldwin is winning 60% in those places, that spells “statewide blowout” for Dems, and a likely flip for the State Assembly.

On the other side, there are sizable red counties that also seem to give strong indicators of how things are going. Marathon, Manitowoc, Sheboygan, Chippewa, and Wood Counties all had Ron Johnson get 60% or more of their votes in 2022, but GOP governor candidate Tim Michels didn’t reach 60% in any of those counties, and often was around 57-58%. Not getting blown out in red, mid-size counties would seem to be an important item for statewide Dems, and also for Assembly candidates in new toss-up districts in Sheboygan, Wausau, and the Chippewa Valley.

Lastly, I think the totals in Racine and Kenosha are worth watching. Obama won both of those counties in 2012, but Clinton, Biden, Mandela Barnes, and even Evers have lost both of them since then. Harris and Baldwin don’t necessarily need to win either of these counties, but getting the Dem share back to 48% or more would be a big help.

There are plenty of other ways to break it down, but I think using the metrics of both vote total and "% of Dem vs GOP" are ways to understand how the election is shaping up. And it very well may be the case that by tracking these things, you'll know who's going to win in Wisconsin even before Milwaukee and other "central count" locations complete counting absentee ballots late tomorrow night.
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Sunday, November 3, 2024

Wild weather, strikes lead to a flat Oct jobs report. But nothing to get too worried about.

Right before Election Day, we got one last US jobs report. And it was the lowest we've seen since Donald Trump was president.

(Actually unemployment went from 4.05% to 4.145%, but as you'll see, a lot of that is weather-related).

OH GOD, IT'S RECESSION ON THE HORIZON, AND..... no, it's not. To me, all it does is return us back to a flattening of job growth that we've seen for much of the last year. We're still growing, but definitely acting like an economy that's maxed out at just over 4% unemployment.

As the Washington Post's Heather Long alludes to, let's remember that these surveys were done in the 2nd week of October, when significant weather and labor situations were going on.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton likely reduced employment last month by about 70,000 in the Southeast, Oxford Economics estimated. Goldman Sachs expected a smaller impact of 40,000 to 50,000 jobs. Hurricane Helene hit Florida's Gulf Coast on Sept. 26, well before the Labor Department conducted its jobs survey, the agency noted, but Milton struck during the week of the survey....

Meanwhile, an ongoing Boeing strike – along with smaller walkouts at Textron, an aerospace parts maker, and Hilton Hotels – likely suppressed payrolls by about 40,000, according to research firm Nomura.

All told, the storms and strikes probably shaved job gains by about 100,000, forecasters estimated.

There’s little doubt the hurricanes and strikes affected the paltry jobs tally. About 512,000 people said they were unable to work because of weather, compared to a historical average of 32,000, said economist Bradley Saunders of Capital Economics. And just 47% of companies surveyed responded, a 33-year low.
So there is a lot to shake out in November's job report, both in how growth "recovers" as people return to work after the strikes and the hurricane zone, and in the revisions that may occur as more companies report their data.

However, even as the 40,000 strikers return to work, let's not leave out that manufacturing employment has been in decline for over a year. That's especially true if we account for the benchamrked job numbers, which is something else that points to a need for the Federal Reserve to continue lowering interest rates in their meeting this week, and for the near future.

No, the paltry job numbers of October are more a fluke than any sign of an economic downturn, and indeed, we've seen unemployment claims fall back in the weeks since then to 5-month lows. But it's also not something to completely blow off, and it counteracts the thoughts that September's strong numbers may have portended another economic boom.

It's just solid growth, as you might expect from an economy with 4.1% unemployment, and I'll take that trajectory at this point.
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Friday, November 1, 2024

If you believe MU Law Poll, the race in close in Wis. But it doesn't seem like 2024's reality

As we get into the last week of this election cycle and numerous polls are thrown into the atmosphere, and our media uncritically reports those numbers to come up with the "state of play", this article from Vanderbilt University political scientist Josh Clinton rang true to me. He notes that "poll results depend on pollster choices as much as voters’ decisions."

We need to remember that pollsters don't just take every response and produce a number, but also take demographic data and create an electorate that they think will match who casts the votes. And that is something that is harder than ever when fewer people pick up phone calls from weird numbers. One example that Josh Clinton uses is how pollsters guess as to how partisan the electorate is.
For partisanship, pollsters often rely on benchmarks such as the Pew Research Center’s National Public Opinion Research Sample, which suggests that the country is evenly split – 33% Democrat, 32% Republican, and 35% independent – or Gallup’s tracking survey, which suggests that 28% are Democrats, 31% are Republicans and 41% are independents. If I adjust the raw data by both the demographics of the 2020 electorate and these party identification benchmarks, Harris’ margin is greatly reduced relative to the raw data and demographics alone:

By the way, right after Clinton wrote this article, Gallup gave an update on its tracking survey, and it now says 32% Dem, 29% Republican, and 37% Independent. Needless to say, if a poll's makeup went from R+3 to D+3, it would likely result in a 5-6 point swing in the polls. But I bet most pollsters haven't made a change like that to their models this week.

Clinton also mentions that pollsters need to decide how likely it is that someone will vote, and how much should an enthusiasm gap play into that analysis.
This poll asked respondents to rate their likelihood of voting on a 1-10 scale, where 1 means they definitely will not vote and 10 means they definitely will. Here is what happens if I weight the sample so that each respondent counts “more” if they reported a higher number on that scale.

First, because Democrats are slightly more enthusiastic than Republicans who are themselves slightly more enthusiastic than independents in this data, adding the likely voter weight moves the margin ever so slightly towards Harris:

Pollsters also need to look at age and gender, especially in an election like this one, where there is likely to be a wide variation between various demographic groups. A similar choice needs to be made about new voters, both in identifying if they are registered voters, and in adding in how much of the electorate should be those voters.

Which takes us to this week's Marquette Law School Poll of Wisconsin, the alleged "gold standard" for this state. I made a wistful prediction about what they'd say an hour before the poll came out.

Oh, but I was wrong. MU slanted their poll even harder toward the GOP.

Yet IN THE SAME POLL, they had this response.

So Democrats have more enthusiasm than Republicans in Wisconsin, and the Democrats got more enthusiastic from September's poll, while Republicans did not. Yet the MU Law Poll's electorate got MORE Republican from the already-off R+3 in September? How does that work?

The reason I am angry at this is that it is a conscious choice by Charles Franklin and company to make the electorate more Republican. Likewise, the gender breakdown of the poll is 50.1% women, 49.9% men. And indeed in 2020, the gender breakdown in adjusted exit polls was 50-50 in Wisconsin (while being 52-48 nationwide, which is...interesting), and that seems to be where a R +5 assumption could come from for the state's electorate. But in 2022 (after the GOP's election denials on January 6th and after the Dobbs decision outlawed abortion in Wisconsin), the exit polls had a Wisconsin electorate that was 53-47 women, and dead even between Democrats and Republicans.

It makes you wonder why Marquette decided to revert to these 2020 numbers and ignore what happened 2 years ago, or ignore anything that's happened since then. There's a 33-point gender gap for the presidential race in the Marquette Poll between men and women (Trump +15 with men, Harris +18 with women). If we even split the difference between 2020 and 2022, and made it 51.5-48.5 women, that would add 1 point to Harris' lead. If we made the electorate R +2.5 instead of R+5, that adds 2 points to Harris' lead. And we'd have a race that would be a 3-4 point lead for Harris instead of 1, which would not make the race seem like a toss-up to the press.

Which leads to this excellent article from earlier this month by Denny Carter in the Bad Faith Times, where he reminds us to "watch the game", and not the polls or the pundits.
Peel your eyes away from the computer screen showing a two-point swing toward Trump among men in Michigan with some college education who were born under a full moon between October and December and you might encounter a different reality – one in which one candidate is behaving like the favorite and the other is thrashing around like me when I get a calf cramp in the middle of the night.

One candidate, after securing and firing up the base with some of the best campaigning of my lifetime, seems to have pivoted toward undecided voters and possibly some Republicans who are so repulsed by Trump and his open embrace of fascism that they might consider the unthinkable: Casting a vote for a Democrat (I don’t love Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney but I can report the normies love the shit out of it). We get snippets of data showing a big old chunk of voters in swing states say they support Trump’s policies but can’t stand his demeanor, and are therefore undecided or wasting their vote on a third-party candidate.....

We have one candidate selling gold watches and cryptocurrency and sneakers and shit I’m sure I haven’t even seen in a last-ditch effort to squeeze the grift dry, to drain his frothing congregation of every last dime before the whole thing collapses on itself. The other candidate is doing her job as vice president while hustling to create a Coalition of Normies that can deliver the final blow to this particular form of the fascist menace.

One candidate has packed stadiums full of cheering throngs; the other is conducting a gaslighting campaign about his sparse rallies, saying the people filing out of the venue in the middle of the rally aren't actually leaving the rally. But they are, because they are Americans, and they're bored in Season Nine of this fascist clown show.

Which of these candidates seems to be in command? Don’t ask the computer. Be honest with yourself about what you see. Watch the damn game.
RIGHT. Go look at the crowds at the dueling rallies in Milwaukee tonight, look at how the candidates are acting, and that might tell you more than the absurd amount of polls that have been published about this race.

PS - Now we have confirmation from the New York Times' Nate ("I'm a Polling Expert, Because That's the Job Description") Cohn that many organizations are intentionally suppressing great polls for Kamala Harris, and for a very lame reason.

OH REALLY? So we see the outliers that help Trump, but we don't see the outliers in favor of Harris? Well then we're making our predictions on incomplete data, aren't we?

Let's not pretend it's in the bag, and a lot of work is left to do (after all, Dems need to win by 4-5 statewide in Wisconsin to flip the State Assembly, and Rebecca Cooke needs to beat Small-D Van Orden). But I have a suspicion that things are better than the toss-up that the polls and the pundits would indicate.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2024

US economy kept clicking along in Q3. Why screw this up?

We got another update on how the economy was doing ahead of next week’s election. This shouldn't surprise you if you've paid any attention at all or touched grass in recent weeks, but things are going really well in America.

Oh? Let’s look into the report and get more on that.
The increase in real GDP primarily reflected increases in consumer spending, exports, and federal government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

The increase in consumer spending reflected increases in both goods and services. Within goods, the leading contributors were other nondurable goods (led by prescription drugs) and motor vehicles and parts. Within services, the leading contributors were health care (led by outpatient services) as well as food services and accommodations. The increase in exports primarily reflected an increase in goods (led by capital goods, excluding automotive). The increase in federal government spending was led by defense spending. The increase in imports primarily reflected an increase in goods (led by capital goods, excluding automotive).
Personal consumption accounted for 2.46% of the increase in GDP, the most that it added to the economy since Q1 2023, and second most since Q4 2021.

See those increases in exports and imports over the last year? Think "Tariff Man" is going to keep that trend going?

If you take out government spending and inventories, the underlying GDP grew by more than 2.1%, which is the fastest growth by that metric for 2024, and the second-fastest growth in 18 months.

Incomes also kept rising in Q3 for Americans.
Current-dollar personal income increased $221.3 billion in the third quarter, compared with an increase of $315.7 billion in the second quarter. The increase primarily reflected an increase in compensation. Disposable personal income increased $166.0 billion, or 3.1 percent, in the third quarter, compared with an increase of $260.4 billion, or 5.0 percent, in the second quarter. Real disposable personal income increased 1.6 percent, compared with an increase of 2.4 percent.
And inflation? Well under control.
The price index for gross domestic purchases increased 1.8 percent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 2.4 percent in the second quarter (table 4). The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index increased 1.5 percent, compared with an increase of 2.5 percent. Excluding food and energy prices, the PCE price index increased 2.2 percent, compared with an increase of 2.8 percent.
Given that the Federal Reserve keeps telling us that the PCE index is what they look at the most on the inflation front, that 1.5% reading should allow the Feds to keep cutting rates next week and in the near future.

Look, I know that TrumpWorld is trying to portray an alternate reality where the US economy is depressed and wracked with inflation. But in the Real America, it’s clear that things continue to thrive under Biden-Harris, with inflation continuing to stay under control, and individuals making more money and being fine with spending it.

And yet the (allegedly) richest man on Earth is telling us that this shouldn’t continue, and that everyday Americans should cut back?

I’ve got a better idea, Elmo. Let’s try to keep the good times rolling for Real Americans that work jobs and pay bills, and any economic or taxing pain that needs to be inflicted will fall on billionaires like you to bring our budget further into balance. Maybe this would encourage you and your fellow oligarchs to invest in products and employees instead of throwing your tax cut windfalls at equally corrupt politicians.

Don’t screw this up, America. We got a good thing going with Dem economic policies today.
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Monday, October 28, 2024

In 23, Wisconsin gains big from ILL, a bit from the Upper Midwest, and more Sconnies headed South

I noticed that the US Census Bureau recently released its state-to-state migration report for 2023, and I figured I'd take a look at who was coming and going from our state last year.

Not surprisingly, Wisconsin has the largest number of movers (both coming and going) with two states that border us - Minnesota and Illinois. Wisconsin had nearly 27,000 Illinois residents move to our state and slightly more than 14,000 Sconnies headed south to ILL - a net gain of just over 12,800. Our "trade" of residents with Minnesota was more balanced, a little over 17,000 coming east from Minn to Wis last year, and just over 15,400 coming west over the Saint Croix.

But the third-largest state that Wisconsinites moved to and got people from wasn't nearby at all - it was Florida. And the other highest-mover states to/from Wisconsin are a combination of nearby places in the Upper Midwest, several other warm-weather states in the South and West, and we are getting quite a few people from California.

Expanding out into all 50 states, Wisconsin had a sizable gain of nearly 115,000 people from the rest of the country in 2023, and only had just over 100,000 move out. That's a nice reversal from the first half of the 2010s, when we were often losing out on net migration.

It's a good overall trend, and one that can reduce the limitations of growth that we seemed to be bumping up against a couple of years ago. And gaining from all 4 states that border us (including the lower-population state of Iowa) is a good indicator that we likely doing something right.
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Saturday, October 26, 2024

Multi-unit home construction down, but more homes of all sorts available now

One headwind in an otherwise strong US economy has been higher interest rates in 2024 and the industries that are being held back as a result. And that's clear when you look at the lack of new projects in home construction.
Housing starts, another name for new home construction, slipped 0.5% in September on falling multifamily starts. Single-family starts moved higher. All regions besides the Northeast reported fewer starts overall.

Single-family starts rose 2.7% in September after August starts were revised up to one million. Starts have trended above one million for eight of the last 11 months. Builders pivoted back to single-family construction in late 2023 after a slump that began in late 2022, but continue to hit the one million-unit speed limit. Larger builders have been able to offer mortgage rate buydowns and other incentives to help sidelined buyers. According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), about 62% of builders were offering sales incentives in October, up slightly from September.

Mortgage rates have not fallen as much as potential buyers had hoped this month, but they have remained below 7% since June. Falling mortgage rates have motivated more refinancing activity rather than new home purchases. Some potential buyers are still holding out with the expectation that rates will go lower. However, the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage ticked back up to 6.4% in mid-October; refinancing activity slumped on the news.

Starts for multifamily (five units or more) buildings dropped 4.5% in September, which translated to a 15.7% annual drop. As more multifamily units are completed, builders are holding back from starting new projects. Multifamily units under construction have fallen from a record high of one million back in 2023 to 825K in September. The current completion rate is the highest since the early 1970s, but the pipeline is drying up. All the supply coming on line is helping alleviate rental costs in many markets, but the reprieve will be short-lived because the number of building permits issued is falling.
The difference between the high number of completions and units currently under construction is stark over the last 12 months, especially in the multi-family complexes of 5 or more units. Completions have been in an uptrend in America, up 14.6% from September 2023 to September 2024. Interestingly, much of that growth is in multi-units as well, so what we’re seeing in new single-family home construction is relatively steady.

We also got mixed messages on the sales side, as new residential home sales were reported later this week as reaching its highest levels since May 2023, and the second highest level since early 2022, right before the Federal Reserve began their anti-inflation rate hikes. But the National Association of Realtors reported this week that the rate of existing home sales dropped to their lowest amounts since the COVID shutdowns of early 2020, and down more than 40% from where it was 2 years ago.

I also note the NAR report says that home price increases nationwide have leveled off, and are only 3% year-over-year.

By comparison, Wisconsin’s housing market has continued to see larger price increases – up nearly 6% year-over-year for September 2024. But we also had the lowest amount of September sales in 12 years, indicating that more inventory would be nice, as the Wisconsin Realtors Association says that things are still not in balance between buyers and sellers.
Although both total listings and new listings rose in September indicating a slight improvement in inventory levels, the housing market remained tight. With just 3.8 months of available supply, the existing home market continued to signal a strong seller’s advantage, with supply well below the six-month benchmark that indicates a balanced housing market.
In a positive sign, the WRA says that the 100+ point decline in mortgage interest rates and higher incomes made homes more affordable to Wisconsinites than in September 2023, even with the 6% increase in median prices. And perhaps the drop in interest rates will encourage more homes to be put onto the market, as many homeowners have likely been locked in place with a low-interest mortgage that predates 2022, and no reason to look for another home with higher prices and higher rates.

So with that in mind, the question becomes whether the big increase in home completions is going to boost inventory enough to level off prices, and the lower interest rates also can help free up some availability. But will it be too late to head off a decline in home construction employment that the drop in permits and homes under construction seems to portend? Tough call.

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Thursday, October 24, 2024

It's already WisGOP's Waterloo, and Dane County's growth will boost Harris, Baldwin in 2024.

Recently, I noticed that the Wisconsin Department of Administration released their final estimates of population for Wisconsin communities for 2024. These numbers don't just look at the total population, but also the voting age population (VAP), and with the election looming, I wanted to see what effects population changes might have on the Wisconsin electorate in this presidential election vs the last one.

Overall, the DOA says that the voting age population in Wisconsin has gone up by just over 101,000 people since 2020, or a bit over 1.6%. Not surprisingly, Dane County is leading the way in that growth, with nearly 33,000 more people in its VAP than 4 years ago. The next largest gainer was Waukesha County, with just over 7,000 people, and Brown County, with a gain of slightly more than 5,900.

Then I looked at the results of the 2020 election in each county of Wisconsin, and change both the Dem and GOP vote totals by the same rate as the changes in voting age population. And because heavily-Dem Dane County has grown so much compared to any other county in Wisconsin, it means that solely on the basis of population changes (with nothing else changing), Kamala Harris would do better against Donald Trump than Joe Biden did in 2020.

Overall, these changes in voting age population would turn a 20,600 win for Joe Biden into a win of more than 30,000 for Kamala Harris. And we should set our baselines for Wisconsin counties accordingly when we think about election returns in 2024.

Obviously, many other changes in turnout rates and especially changes in who voters choose will have a larger effect on who ultimately wins our state. But I am telling you that Dane County's continued growth is likely already giving a boost to the chances of Dems Kamala Harris and Tammy Baldwin for November 5, and I think we need to keep that in the back of our heads as the votes come in.

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