Author: DCCyclone

Tonight I am coming to grips with what I think is the emerging reality of what we face on November 2nd, and it’s a little uglier than what I previously envisioned.

First, the House:  I posted my diary using a rudimentary Cook-based model to “predict” a net loss of 49 seats.  Until tonight I have spent the last month in rising hope that maybe we could buck the tide just enough to keep the House by the skin of our teeth.  But further readings and taking a step back and considering the state of whatever House race polling we have, I am now surrendering once again my hope of keeping the House.  I’d hit a bottom on Labor Day weekend with all the rock-bottom generic ballot numbers that popped up around then.  But then September gave us more positive information, and things started to look better.  But going through StephenCLE’s diary tonight left me resigned.  He pegs our net losses in the mid-30s, and I count several more losses that he sees still ending up our way.  I now think also our pickups, to offset GOP gains, will be limited to the Big 4 of beating Cao and Djou and taking DE-AL and IL-10.  I don’t completely write off the possibility of one or two upsets somewhere by Garcia or Bera or Goyle or someone else, but the odds are long at this point, I think.  Garcia is our best bet, I still give him a 50-50 shot, but I suspect the bad economy tips the scale against us.  That Sink has fallen behind Scott, and Rubio has taken firm command of the Senate race, both hurt him.  All this is to say that while I have been saying the odds of a GOP takeover are “just” 55-60%, I now push those odds all the way up to 80%.

Now, the Senate:  this is where depression is kicking in more heavily tonight.  I’ve conceded for awhile 2 separate tiers of 3 seats each.  Tier I is ND, AR, and IN.  Tier II is CO, WI, and PA.  But I now am counting a couple Tier III seats, WV and IL, as losses.  Even in IL, Obama’s job approval has slipped to mere mortal levels.  Yes I see Brady has gained ground and Alexi is still in a legitimate pure tossup and it’s a Democratic state and the Chicago machine still can come through.  I don’t write off IL, nor do I write off Manchin’s chances of turning around WV.  And PPP today gave us hope in CO.  But all that said, if I have to make bottom-line predictions, I now have to call all these seats losses in a very strong anti-Democratic wave.  If we’re really going to lose more than 40 House seats, then it’s likely the Senate seats, too, will be on the higher side of what’s realistically possible rather than the lower side.  So I’m now seeing a loss of 8 Senate seats, with no takeovers.

My one Senate wildcard:  I now think our best chance of a takeover is actually AK.  The major party candidates are little-known, it’s a late-developing race, and it’s a complicated 3-way where voter preference can change quickly and unpredictably.  That contrasts to ALL other races where we’re fighting for our lives; in all other hardly-fought races, there has been a lot of heavy campaigning by both sides for a long time, and voters are pretty familiar with the candidates and just not likely to shift our way in just the last month absent some unexpected external event driving them.

It’s going to be a tough night, and I don’t write off the possibility that things could be better than this.  But I’m bracing emotionally for a depressing night.  The only positive takeaways I forsee is that still barely holding the Senate and controlling the floor is worth A LOT and nothing I take for granted, and that Obama’s reelection chances really will be enhanced by voters having gotten their pound of flesh and finally settling down.  There’s something to be said for the argument that if we hang on to both the House and Senate, we’re still tagged with all the blame for whatever follows, and voters will feel they weren’t heard by our retaining our majorities and might take it out on us even more strongly in 2012.

There really is an emerging Democratic majority, but it’s emerging slowly.  I think a lot of us let 2008 mislead us because Obama effectively accelerated, through the power of his own persona, a process of changing the electorate that otherwise would happen naturally only much more slowly.  The 2008 electorate was what we’d see in 2016 or 2020 if it wasn’t for Obama.  We might see no growth in Democratic-favoring demographic groups in the electorate in 2016, as Obama is succeeded probably (not necessarily but the odds support this) by a white male as the Democratic Presidential nominee.  For this year, we’re going to see any natural uptick in Democratic-favoring turnout from demographic change over the past 4 years offset, and perhaps more than offset, by depressed turnout from the unfavorable environment and lack of urgency among key voters.

I’m very interested in all of your thoughts on this subject.

I’m not one who’s provided a race-by-race breakdown to predict the House elections.  But I finally decided to come up with my own rudimentary model, with Charlie Cook’s ratings as a guide.

My model relies on Cook’s late September ratings in 2008 and 2006, both wave elections, and compares them to the most recent Cook ratings now.  Relying on late September ensures an apples-to-apples comparison.

The hardest races to forecast are the disfavored party’s tossups and “lean” races in an anti-majority party wave.  Those are the races that decide whether the House flips.

What I found is interesting, and discouraging for us.

Cook’s 2006 ratings in late September had 18 GOP-held tossups and 16 GOP-held “lean R” seats.  Of those, 10 from each category flipped.  Also flipping were 6 of 19 “likely R” GOP-held seats, as well as 2 GOP-held open seats Cook already had flipping in late September.  And 2 “safe” seats from Cook’s late September ratings flipped, those being Boyda over Ryun in Kansas and Altmire over Hart in PA-04.  NO Dem-held seats flipped, and indeed in late September Cook had all Dem-held seats as lean, likely, or safe, with NO tossups.

Cook’s 2008 ratings in late September had 19 GOP-held tossups and 14 GOP-held “lean R” seats.  Of those, 13 tossups and 6 leans flipped.  None of 20 “likely R” seats flipped this time, nor did any safe seats.  Meanwhile, Dems had more vulnerable seats this time in Cook’s late September ratings, and 2 of 10 Dem-held tossups flipped as did the lean D seat of Tim Mahoney due to his late-breaking sex scandal, and in a runoff the safe D seat of Bill Jefferson due to his being a crook.  Also flipping but excluded from my consideration was Don Cazayoux’s seat, which I exclude because he won it as a Dem pick-up in a special election earlier in the year before losing it in November, and that makes it awkward to include in any count discussing 2008 gains or losses.  I note, too, that

Here’s the interesting thing per Cook’s late September ratings:  the total number of seats the Rs lost from Cook’s tossup and lean R columns almost perfectly matched the number of R-held seats in Cook’s tossup column.  In 2006, Cook listed 18 GOP-held tossups, and the GOP lost 20 seats total from the tossup and lean R columns.  In 2008, Cook listed 19 GOP-held tossups, and the GOP lost exactly the same number total from the tossup and lean R columns.

The difference in 2008 was that no likely R seats flipped, compared to 6 in 2006.  The reason for this is obvious:  the likely R seats in 2006 were much lower-hanging fruit than the 2008 likely R seats, since the remaining Republcan-held seats were much more conservative and safer after the Dems already had made big gains one cycle earlier.

Applying the same princples to 2008, Cook in late September had 43 Dem-held seats as tossups, and 31 as lean D.  If the election follows the same pattern as the previous 2 waves, we should lose 43 seats total from those 2 categories.  We also should lose all the Dem-held seats that Cook counts as lean R or likely R, and that’s 10 more.  That’s a gross gain of 53 for the bad guys.  But there are 4 GOP-held seats we should pick up by everyone’s predictions, seats that Cook lists as lean D or tossups, and that knocks down the net GOP gain to 49.

That would give the Republicans a 228-207 majority.  And sadly it’s a very reasonable prediction that lines up perfectly with ALL the published predictions out there.

Here’s where I think we either can have some confidence or where we’re deluding ourselves, election day determining which it is:  when I look at Cook’s “lean D” seats, it’s just really hard to see hardly any of them flipping.  My “feeling” is that we hold almost all of them.  And even on our tossups, I did a quick count and found 25 I’ll say are gone.  That adds up to total losses of 15 fewer than my rudimentary model would predict, and of course it means we hold the House with 222 seats for the good guys.

The optimistic seat-by-seat breakdown is essentially what conspiracy and StephenCLE and others are engaging in with their own breakdowns posted in occasional diaries here.

And I can see exactly how they get there.

But sadly history shows that a lot more tossups and leans flip in a wave, and that’s where we might find out we’re deluding ourselves.

I just hope our candidates and party committees continue hammering the opposing candidates and getting voters to reject enough of them to keep us at 218 on election night.  But I just don’t feel good about it.

Charlie Crist is running as an independent!  And he’s going to tank!  But his running as a 3rd wheel helps Meek win a 3-way!

So the CW seems to go, at least on our side.

But, alas, I fear the numbers so far are telling a different story.

Polls right before and after Crist formally flipped to indy all said the same thing:  Crist leads a 3-way.  But don’t worry, Crist will tank.  Even a couple of the pollsters themselves, whose own polls showed Crist surging, said forget it, he’s at his high water mark.

But, really, is he?

What no one seems to say or think, that I think and now say out loud, is no one predicted a polling BOUNCE for Crist upon his making the switch.  People saw polls beforehand showing him competitive, but it’s clear his switch didn’t leave him merely “competitive” but shot him into the lead.

Did anyone really expect that?  No one said so, at least, which makes me conclude no one expected it.

And lo and behold, that polling bounce comes from indies and Democrats, not from any Republicans.  And it’s coming almost entirely at Meek’s expense, not Rubio’s.

So, alas, I’m left to conclude we seriously risk HI-01 The Sequal, with Charlie Crist starring as Ed Case, Kendrick Meek as Colleen Hanabusa, and Marco Rubio as our villain, Charles Djou.

Even if Crist slides, that still leaves Meek behind Rubio, which is where he’s consistently been in all polling.

We’re all enjoying this 3-way as campaign junkies, myself included.  And I always hoped and at times thought a 3-way gives Meek a better shot at victory than a one-on-one in an anti-Democratic environment.

But Meek needs a dramatic shift that includes more than just Crist fading if we’re going to take this seat.  And I fear that come election night, even the final weeks leading up to it, we might be regretting not having had a one-on-one here.

Last night the House passed by a 220-115 vote the big health care reform bill.  And 2 Democrats’ votes demonstrate the short-sightedness of some of the people here who complain about “centrists” and “moderates” and “Blue Dogs” in open-seat House races.

Bill Owens of NY-23, who just beat Doug Hoffman days ago, was pilloried by a few liberals here and elsewhere as too conservative.  He was against the public option, he was too this, he was not enough that, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Well, a week before the election when he was running tight-as-a-tick in a purple district, he came out in the middle of the last campaign debate in favor of the House health care bill.  He reiterated support right after he was sworn in.  And last night he voted yes.

Meanwhile, Scott Murphy, as I recall, received only open hearts and minds on this blog earlier this year as he tried to pull off an upset win in a district similar to Owens’ NY-23, as he ran tying himself to Obama.

Well, last night Murphy voted NO on Obama’s biggest signature legislative effort.

This isn’t a diary to bash Murphy.  Far from it.  I have no regrets about having wanted Murphy to win that special election, and I still want him to hold the seat next November.

My point is that when it comes to open-seat races and Democratic challengers to Rethug incumbents, supporting the Democrat always is the best bet.  It’s foolish game-playing to hope a moderate Republican wins and somehow votes with us as much as an allegedly Blue Dog Democrat would have.

And it’s even more foolish to hope someone like Doug Hoffman wins.  Thanks to Owens’ victory, not only did we get a critical vote for health care, we defanged the hard right.  And we did so without discouraging them at all from attacking the likes of Charlie Crist and Mark Kirk in Republican primaries next year–they’re encouraged enough from having knocked out Scozzafava.  We got the best of every world.

And President Obama and Chief of Staff Emanuel deserve credit for the setup that allowed this to happen.  It proved a critical victory in the post-election narrative after we lost with a hopeless incumbent in NJ and a terrible candidate in VA.

The moral of the story is support Democrats in elections, because in the long run that’s what helps us the most.  There are exceptions, there are Liebermans out there who need to be primaried and, if they survive, maybe in extraordinary circumstances have support withheld in the general and allow a Republican to win; I easily can picture scenarios, even if very rare, when the long-term and even short-term for the party is better with that outcome.  But rare is the operative term for that kind of scenario.  By and large, supporting the Democrat gets us a lot closer to where we want to be in the House and Senate chambers.

The poll is here.  The 2-way topline is 54-38.  The 3-way was 51-34-13.

Most importantly, TAKE THE RESULTS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT.

PPP is a good outfit and could be right.

But they’ve had their stinkers, too, just like every pollster does.

Their sample size for this poll is HUGE.  But it was huge for their PA-Dem Presidential primary, and they were a bad outlier in wrongly calling it a dead heat.

This is a harder race to poll because it’s a special with nothing else on the ballot in much of the district except for scattered local races.  PPP makes turnout assumptions that may or may not be right in saying Republicans are energized and Democrats aren’t planning to vote.  That might turn out to be right, but a special election is a very different animal from a general or even a primary.

I ultimately take this poll as one plausible scenario.  If it was a regularly scheduled midterm, I’d take it very seriously.  But a lot more turnout for an election like this is orchestrated, and less of it organic, than a regularly scheduled general election.

I’m not accepting PPP is right, but I’m accepting they could be right.

Well, both PPP and Rasmussen have released brand new NJ-Gov polls, with identical results, both bad for Corzine.

The takeaway is that it appears the Christie/Republican attacks on Daggett are working, and strangely somehow are turning the model into one where Daggett hurts Corzine more than Christie.

PPP released its poll this morning and shows Christie up 42-38, with Daggett at 14.  PPP explains that Daggett voters now are saying Corzine, rather than Christie, is their 2nd choice, by a 44-32 margin.  That’s a reversal of before.  Strangely this doesn’t come from Daggett lcsing ground and Christie gaining; rather, Daggett is actually holding steady in his own support.  So the crosstab results could just be statistical noise, with subsamples having very high margins of error.

But Rasmussen suggests there is more than just noise going on.  Rasmussen continued its dishonesty in its latest NJ-Gov poll, but this time with a twist:  the real topline looks better for Christie than the published one.  The real topline with “initial preferences” shows the same result as PPP, at 42-38, with Daggett at 14.  Their published topline is Christie up 46-43, with Daggett at 7–actually a narrower Christie lead than the real topline.  Rasmussen cooks its numbers as a rule this year, but their close-to-election numbers boomerang back to the norm of other pollsters…they pretty much have no choice to maintain their reputation.

Two polls, two identical results, two both showing a flip in which side is bleeding to Daggett.

PPP explicitly suggests that Christie’s attacks on Daggett are doing the trick.  I didn’t think tying Daggett to Corzine would be effective, especially when the attack narrative started so late, barely a month out.

I hope these polls are wrong and it really remains a dead heat.  I’m aware of the Suffolk poll from a few days ago showing Corzine up by a big margin, but that poll was flawed and has “outlier” written all over it.

I really hope Corzine can pull this out, because we’ve reached the point where his defeat would look worse than it should have, given the latest expectations that his comeback was near-complete.

I thought even before the primary that a Deeds win would get us a nice post-primary bump in general election trial heat polling, and that bump is happening a little faster than I imagined!  More below the jump.

Rasmussen has Deeds up 47-41 on the strength of Democratic unity.  McDonnell has the edge among independents, but only with a 43-36 plurality as but 16% of them are undecided.  Only 4% of Dems are undecided with Deeds picking up 89%, and Repugs have 11% undecided with 9% going to Deeds.

Another key demographic is that Deeds trails 49-36 among white voters with 12% undecided and 3% saying they’ll vote for “some other candidate,” although almost all of that 3% will end up choosing between the 2 so that the true undecided whites are 15%.  In Virginia about 40% of the white vote means a Democratic victory in a Governor’s race, so Deeds sitting at 36% with another 15% still persuadable puts him in a great position for victory.

Yes, yes, it’s early, and anything can happen, so this poll isn’t to be relied on too strongly……I’m a campaigns junkie and I know all that.

But the fact is this poll does mean something, that this race is winnable, and McDonnell no longer can be called “the frontrunner” as he was legitimately called in the pre-primary stretch.

It’s a toss-up at worst for us.

I voted for Deeds in the primary thinking he was the only one of the 3 who could beat McDonnell, and today that seems more true than ever.

Creigh’s top responsibilities for the next few weeks need to be fundraising and outreach to minority voters, especially blacks but also Hispanics and Asians.  I hope he raises the cash he needs this time, as he failed to do 4 years ago vs. McDonnell in the A.G. race.

I love reading nonpartisan Marc Ambinder’s blog, as he’s very often good for insider tidbits on my favorite hobby of campaigns and elections.

But one little thing he passed off as merely incidental today is anything but……

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I love reading nonpartisan Marc Ambinder’s blog, as he’s very often good for insider tidbits on my favorite hobby of campaigns and elections.

But one little thing he passed off as merely incidental today is anything but……

Ambinder posted a lengthy scribe today about the “meaning” of Chambliss’ victory over Jim Martin in the 2008 GA-Sen runoff.

Key text, at the very very very end:

“But… more Republican retirements are expected, including at least two in blue states (Chuck Grassley of Iowa and George Voinovich of Ohio.)”

WOAH!  Don’t you dare try to pass that off as an aside, Marc!  🙂

Seriously, I don’t think Ambinder realizes this is not any kind of “common knowledge” or “open secret” in the world of political junkies, and I speak as one in Greater D.C. even though I’m far from an “insider.”

If a bunch of insiders “expect” Voinovich and Grassley to hang it up, that’s news to me and to almost every blog I read.  In Grassley’s case, yes, the 77-year old 5-term Senator is the speculation of retirement, but naked speculation is all I’ve read or heard.  And I’d read or heard nothing about Voinovich retiring.

If these seats are open, then my home state of Iowa is a “should” win for us, with Dems having the much deeper bench these days, but Ohio could be much more competitive.  Iowa is a state where I’d love to see Vilsack vs. Latham, in which case we very easily could pick up both the Senate seat and IA-04.  Ohio is just a more ideologically conservative state than Iowa, and one that I think still has a very slight red tilt.  Ultimately recruitment in Ohio is much more wide open on both sides.

But make no mistake, in either state a retirement only helps us pick up the Senate seat.