What Determined Democrats' Votes?

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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March 22, 2010

What Determined Democrats' Votes?

Nate Silver takes a look at the factors that may have decided how Democrats voted on the health care reform bill last night. He finds that ideology (and the related subject of abortion) and Obama's vote share in each district were the two most significant factors.

Surprisingly, variables like the percentage of uninsured in a member's district and the campaign contributions from insurance lobbying groups were insignificant.

The lesson: "In retrospect, the vote might not have come at such a high price for Democrats if Obama had invested more political capital in the bill earlier in the process and made more explicit moral appeals for it -- as these were the things that seem to have been most persuasive to Democrats at the end."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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March 22, 2010