From CNN.com:
Obama picked up an endorsement from California superdelegate Crystal Strait…
“Barack Obama has shown a real commitment to young voters in his campaign, and in response, young people have overwhelmingly voted and caucused for Obama,” Strait said in a written statement.
“We know that if a young person votes three times in a row for a party, they become a party voter for life. We know that because of high youth turnout in 2004 and 2006, 2008 is the third and critical election for young voters. And that’s why I know I want to pledge my delegate vote to Barack Obama,” she said.
5 Comments
Do we really know that?
No we don’t but I know for a fact that that many of these so called Superdelegates are lacking in the intelligence department. My first election I voted for Clinton. I then voted for him again and Gore in 2000. That’s three presidential elections for democrats. I didn’t vote for Kerry (nor Bush) and if by some miracle Hillary ends up on the ticket - there is no way I am voting Democrat. Party’s change. And so do people.
I am curious what the evidence for it would be. I do know that I have voted Democrat in three consecutive elections and will continue to do so; however, I did not realize when I pulled the Democrat lever for the third time back in the day I was propelling myself forward on this trajectory.
I’m not convinced that Crystal Strait is making her comments based on a statistical analysis of panel data on voting patterns. Nonetheless, my a priori guess would that the trajectory she describes is accurate. Of course, people and parties both change, but I suspect that each additional Democratic (or Republican) vote increases the likelihood that an individual will vote that way again. And, I would imagine that after three Dem presidential votes, the likelihood of switching teams is fairly low.
We’ll just have to wait for Crystal to get back to us with the results from her multi-level models.
it’s not quite as stupid as it sounds since cognitive dissonance theory provides a plausible mechanism of how the “three ballots and you’re in” thing might work as in this theory behavior cements a commitment to beliefs.
of course it’s also easy to imagine a model where the three ballots thing is spurious — certainly I’d want to see how strong the pattern is once you drop groups like blacks and mormons who consistently go for one party or the other.