Some more interesting analysis that relates to the 50-State Strategy

Soon after finishing our posts on Sen. Obama's 50-State Strategy, we came across a post on one of our favorite blogs, Fivethirtyeight.com, which makes a somewhat similar analysis, albeit in a much more scientific manner.

For those unfamiliar with the site, I recommend that you go to it and immediately bookmark it. It was started during this election season by Nate Silver, a brilliant statistician whose work on, of all things, baseball statistics is nationally recognized. Without getting too much into Silver and his site, Newsweek has done excellent profiles of him here and here.

Silver has created a "Return on Investment Index" map. The map ranks the states according to a formula which ranks the states according to which provide the best return on investment for a presidential candidate. Without attempting to butcher Silver's careful methodology, the post is here.

What Silver ultimately provides is the following list of states which would provide the best return on a candidate's investment versus the nation at as a whole:

(1) New Mexico
(2) Ohio
(3) Iowa
(4) Colorado
(5) New Hampshire
(6) Pennsylvania
(7) Michigan
(8) Oregon
(9) Indiana
(10) North Dakota
(11) Virginia
(12) Nevada
(13) Delaware
(14) Montana
(15) Wisconsin

This is a fascinating list. What does it mean? Let's take Silver's own description:

"This calculation produces a ratio, whose value is meaningless in the abstract, but which can be compared to the ratio in the country as a whole (in other words, we're taking the ratio of the ratios). The ratio figures, for instance, that a dollar spent in Pennsylvania is about 3.5 times more likely to influence the outcome of the election than one spent in the nation as a whole. This is what we call the 'Return on Investment Index'…. The top state is New Mexico, which produces an ROI almost 6 times higher than the nation at large. Why New Mexico? We project it to be very close to the median of the electorate. Right now, we are predicting a 2.7-point victory for Barack Obama in New Mexico, versus a 3.7-point victory in the national popular vote. Strictly speaking, the states that deserve the most attention are not those that are closest at any given moment, but rather those that are closest to the national average."

What these rankings show, therefore, are those states where either Obama's or McCain's dollars would be best used in terms of being most efficiently spent towards to goal of reaching voters in those states. So, a state a like New Mexico is high because of its likely closeness and the fact that it offers one electoral vote per a smaller number of voters than several other states, such as Pennsylvania or Ohio.

Silver complimented his post with a follow-up post that looked at the cost and reach of media markets in many of the key swing states, with the goal of assessing the markets where a campaign's dollars could be used most efficiently in terms of reaching a particular state's voters both in terms of cost while considering those markets which "bleed" into other states (and thus ads will reach voters in other states candidate may not be as interested in appealing to).

If you have a chance, take a look at Silver's fascinating and brilliant work. Obviously, while his own analyses are similar to those posted here (and are unquestionably more scientific), they address slightly different areas. The postings here are interested not in both campaigns' perspectives, but Obama's alone and how it relates to his 50-State Strategy. Furthermore, we have looked at media markets too, but expanded the calculus by looking at not just how a state effort could benefit Obama's quest for the White House, but also how his campaign could impact down-ballot races. Silver's tremendous posts do not do this. For the purposes of looking closely at the scope and potential of the 50-State Strategy, it is important to closely consider down-ballot races as well as Obama's own electoral interests.

It would be interesting if Silver could incorporate a separate factor into his analysis which accounts for House and Senate races that could be impacted by Obama. This would presumably be very difficult; indeed, how would you quantify these races? Are winnable Senate seats more valuable than House seats? What about seats in red states which may not be available again for years versus Republican-controlled seats in blue states which will always be winnable for Democrats? Would a seat get a higher score because it is a cheaper media market, say WY-AL or AK-Sen, than if it were based around or included a big city like VA-11 or TX-Sen? Would you weigh and score House and Senate races differently based on their Cook PVI scores? Could House seats be included since most of them lack released polling at this point?

While we are looking at Silver's work, let's scrutinize his rankings a bit. Most of them make complete sense. New Mexico, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire and Colorado, to name a few, are all among the very key swing states that will determine which candidates wins 270 electoral votes. States like North Dakota and Montana are interesting additions, but they too are logical considering the same reasons we have examined: they have cheap media markets and despite having just three electoral apiece, their tiny overall populations make broadcasting appeals to individual voters valuable according to Silver's own electoral vote-to-state population analysis.

It is interesting that Virginia appears lower than a state like Indiana, but again this is merely according to Silver's own model guidelines. It does not mean that Obama should spend less money in Virginia than Indiana, but merely that either candidate could potentially spend his money more efficicently in Indiana given its population and the size and scope of its media markets, among other relevant factors. For our own less scientific analysis here, Virginia is clearly a better state for Obama, particularly because we are not yet full believers that Indiana is plausibly winnable for the Democrat, while Virginia looks like a toss-up right now.