Why Obama should be rooting for Perry

One of the nice things about living in Texas is that you get the chance to vote in so many elections.  I'm not quite sure, but I think you may get the chance to weigh in on more political offices than in any other state.  Apart from the "standard" offices you can vote on anywhere, there's also the comptroller of public accounts, the land commissioner, the agriculture commissioner, three railroad commissioners, nine justices of the supreme court...the list goes on.  And those are just the statewide offices.  Then there is a lengthy list of state officials chosen by district.  Finally there is a motley assortment of local elected officials from county commissioners to constables to members of the city council.

Maybe that's too many elections.  But I'll set aside that question for today.  What interests me is that all that voting provides a source of data that a lot of other states lack.  In particular, you can gauge how much of a candidate's success is due to his or her own personal characteristics as opposed to mere party affiliation.

It will not be news to my readers that there has been a recent boom in "Rick Perry for President."  It was, however, a surprise to me when that boom first developed.  I was under the impression that governors who were serious presidential candidates needed to be popular in their home states, and Perry didn't quite seem to qualify.  Rather than relying on my own subjective judgment to support the point, I will present some hard numbers.  My source is the official list of election returns maintained by the Texas Secretary of State. A link to the numbers in more convenient form is here.

Let's start with the 1998 election.  George W. Bush was then running for re-election as governor, while Perry was running for lieutenant governor.  Chart #1 shows the fraction of the vote received by each statewide Republican candidate in a race contested by both major parties. Perry and Bush are highlighted.

First of all, as you can see, the Republicans enjoyed a statewide sweep--as they have consistently done for well over a decade. More importantly for present purposes, you can see that Bush himself really ran away with it. He received 68.2% of the vote. Clearly, he managed to appeal not only to partisan Republicans but also to independents and even to voters who usually went Democratic.

Perry, by contrast, was down at the far low end of the Republican slate. He just barely squeaked by with 50.0% of the vote. (Though it should be noted that in most of these races a third-party candidate received one or two percent of the vote.)

After Perry succeeded Bush in the governor's office, he ran for governor in his own right for the first time in 2002. Chart #2 shows the results.

You can see that Perry did better this time compared to the rest of the slate, but still not especially well--certainly nowhere near Bush's 1998 performance. All in all, Perry was about in the middle of the pack; he got 57.8%, falling along with 8 of the 16 candidates into a narrow zone from 56.0% through 58.0%. Out of the remaining 8 candidates, 5 were below that zone and 3 above. For purposes of comparison, it should also be remembered that 2002 was a strongly Republican year while 1998 was mildly Democratic. Had Perry not benefited from a national Republican trend, his performance would have been even less impressive.

Moving on to 2006, we arrive at a year that actually was strongly Democratic. Running for re-election, Perry attracted not one but two strong independent opponents. He eventually accomplished the unusual feat of being re-elected with only 39.0% of the vote. I won't present a graph since the presence of independent opponents makes comparisons difficult. Still, no fewer than 61.0% of the state's voters voted against him. Had Perry faced a united opposition and a strong Democratic candidate, I believe he almost certainly would have been defeated.

Finally let us look at 2010, when Perry ran for re-election another time.

We now see that things look far worse for Perry. Not only does he trail the rest of the Republican pack, but he is a real outlier. He is no longer in the middle zone at all, but well below that zone. And this, again, in a Republican year.

In short, Rick Perry is far from a proven vote-getter. He is, if anything, a proven vote-repeller. He has been about as unsuccessful as a politician can possibly be in attracting support from independents and ticket-splitters while still holding statewide office. The voters in his home state, the ones who know him best, have never given him more than the support they give to an average Republican candidate. And as time has gone by they have given him even less than that.

Nor is it likely that the Republican primary season will succeed in broadening Perry's appeal. If his behavior so far is any indication, he has very little interest in even attempting to reach out to independents at this point. If he does win the nomination, he will have just a few months to achieve what so far he has never managed to do over the course of a lengthy political career.

Political predictions are always risky, but I am betting that even a dismal national economy won't allow him to pull it off. I am further betting that Republicans will eventually notice the sort of facts I am pointing out, and decline to nominate him. According to Nate Silver, Republican "elites" already have serious doubts about Perry's electability that seem not to have trickled down to ordinary primary voters yet. There's still time for that to happen. But if you're Barack Obama, you should be hoping the Perry boom continues.