SurveyUSA for KING-TV (8/21-22, likely voters)
Denny Heck (D): 41
Jaime Herrera (R): 54
Undecided: 5
(MoE: ±4.2%)
If there was ever a good indication that the Washington Top 2 primary is a good indicator of future performance, take a look at this SurveyUSA poll of WA-03. In last week’s primary, the Democratic candidates (Denny Heck + Cheryl Crist) got 42% and the Republican candidates got 54%. Those votes seem to have flowed unimpeded to the nominees, Heck and Jaime Herrera, with Herrera leading Heck 54-41.
Looking at the crosstabs, the sample is very top-heavy with oldsters (62% are 50+, and 68% report incomes of $50K or more). Not that it matters: the support for Herrera is pretty consistent across all age groups (54% or 55% in all four groups), though. With Herrera already over 50%, Heck is either going to have to change some minds quickly, or else hope (like a lot of other Dems) that the universe of likely voters gets bigger (and younger) than it is now.
As far as I’m concerned, we’ve lost this seat.
The young people (and people in general) most likely to vote Democratic in this region don’t live this this district. They’ve all moved across the river to Portland, where it’s fair to say that Blumenauer really doesn’t need them to win. And most of them don’t vote, because they’re too busy being fucking hipsters.
Throw in the fact that a lot of uber-rich people in Oregon have registered to vote in Vancouver to get out of paying the Measure 68/69 tax (the same way rich Massachusetts tax dodgers have streamed across the border into New Hampshire and call it their primary residence for tax purposes despite still maintaining a primary residence in MA), and you’ve got a LV sample that’s way more Republican than usual, and royally “going Galt”.
Anti-tax crazy turnout will also be high because of I-1098.
Also it was a stupid idea to put Lewis County (aka Crazytown west) into this district at all. It should be in WA-04. Another idiotic compromise from the Washington redistricting committee, the same people who brought you “two polarized demographics that should never have been drawn together in the first place”, aka WA-08.
Republicans went 2 of 7 defending open seats in 2008 that President Obama simultaneously carried (MN-03 and NJ-07 were the holds, OH-15, IL-11, NM-01, NY-25 and VA-11 the D gains.) In other words, even if you have a good candidate like Heck, defending an open swingish seat in a bad environment is really hard. If I were at the DCCC I would focus more on saving incumbents than trying to hold down seats like these.
the WA primary result aggregates are often mirrored in the GE results (w/ perhaps a very slightly more Dem. result — on average — in Nov.) …
nevertheless, I’m hoping against the odds that this year will be somehow different … afterall, the polling CAN change dramatically sometimes:
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/st…
I think the DCCC and a lot of donors would help themselves a lot if they’d admit seats like this are gonna swing Republican this year. It is just too hard to retain seats like this in a bad cycle. Better to put forth recources to progressive incumbants in tough districts than waste money on this.
The biennial and quadrennial debate between those described as idealists vs. those who consider themselves far more practical about our political system is happening again, maybe with more ferocity than ever before. From tea partiers to disillusioned democrats, whether one should vote for the forecasted winner, despite their sometimes considerable liabilities, in order to further the power of a particular party, is weighing heavy on many peoples minds.
Denny Heck, the winning Democratic candidate in the 3rd District Primary, scored 32% or 44,700 votes, out of 139,000 votes cast. When adding the Republican vote totals (R candidates- 73,700) and comparing it to the votes cast for Democrats (Heck and Crist -60,700) it is clear that candidate Heck has clearly not resonated with voters in the 3rd District. If Mr. Heck wants to win this tough race, he needs to inspire the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He has not done that to date, as evidenced by Cheryl Crist’s strong showing (30% of Denny’s vote with 3% of Denny’s money.
A good start could be to say he would vote only to bring our troops home, and spend not one cent for continued foreign wars.
The Heck and D partisan spinmeisters will say that the primary vote totals are likely to be weighted towards the Republicans while more Democrats will “show up” at the general. While they are probably correct, to a point, to attribute Heck’s poor performance to that alone is to risk misunderstanding the results and contribute to his already well known elitism, detachment and arrogance.
Heck simply offered no reason to vote for him other than:1) he is NOT a Republican, and 2) he has made substantial money in the private sector so he MUST know what is best for the 3rd District. His literature is vacuous, his stump speech void of anything even close to specifics and his advertisements tell us “The Big Banks are Bad and We Need to Give Congress Heck to Set Them Straight”.
His coronation strategy for election is not only repugnant to the democratic process and offensive to voters; it is also, as evidenced by Tuesday night, a LOSING strategy. Let’s be honest, the voters often pay too little attention and are not fully educated about the choices they are asked to make to decide who represents us. This time however, the results indicate that they are fully aware that Heck is asking us to hire him and giving as his reason that he is not the “other guys”. The voters said Tuesday “I don’t think so”.
There are those who consider themselves motivated by what is “practical” and rail against the “idealists” when they argue that any Democrat is better than any Republican, and even further that because the Congress could possibly become controlled by the Republicans this election we should do everything we can to elect Democrats. This is not an unreasonable argument and one which deserves airing. It’s proponents, however, wield it like a cudgel and accept no responsibility for the implications of that strategy, which by the way is exactly how the system has been working – or not. It is exactly this truly negligent carrying out of our citizenship responsibilities and the (semi)annual “holding of the nose” when voting that has reduced public trust and confidence in the government (the bane of a true progressives existence) . It has both gotten the electoral system where it is today and also serves to perpetuate the vacuous candidacies like Heck’s. While I would never vote for the rightwing and small minded Herrera, I no longer accept the argument that I then must vote for the Hack Heck.
Those of us in the 3rd District can’t control what happens in North Carolina, Mississippi, or even Connecticut. We can and should vote for he person we think will do the best job representing them. Those who are concerned about our body politic and would like to feel good about someone they vote for then consider sending the message to Denny Heck that if he really wants to serve the public and not just win the office, he has to show voters the respect they deserve and tell them where he actually stands on issues, what he would do about certain crises and how he would lead.