Campaign and Election News – Covering Key Races Around the Country
Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?
401 thoughts on “Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?”
has a web ad out with a seal endorsing him. You know because he is running against Dan Seals. (kinda funny, kinda not) But the last 10 sec are pretty cool.
what’s the best case scenario Tuesday night? I’d say losses in the mid to high forties would be ok. I’m expecting losses in the mid fifties to sixty.
tonight, we discuss the Maine Gubernatorial race.
Seeing Eliot Cutler surging, should Mitchell drop out and tell her supporters to vote for Cutler so a teabagger like LePage doesn’t sneak into office?
– Survey USA versus the world
All cycle long Survey USA has been releasing polls showing younger voters going about 2-1 in favor of Republicans. No other pollsters shows anything like this. Either SUSA has discredited itself as a credible pollster going forward, or they will be head and shoulders above all other pollsters for discovering this phenomenon no one else has observed.
– PPP vs early voting turnout
All cycle PPP has been releasing samples that reflect Obama voter turnout to be drastically lower than McCain voter turnout. This Obama no-show rate has been most commonly been between 14-22%, but was as high as 33% in the case of Wisconsin (meaning Obama voter Wisconsin turnout would only be 67% of Mccain voter turnout). Thus far in early voting no state has shown anything like this phenomenon. Iowa even shows (slightly) increased Dem turnout over Reps. The highest discrpency posted here so far, the only significant disparity in fact, is in Pennsylvavia where Rep absentee requests are 4% than Dem ones. If this discrpency is due 100% to Obama voter no shows, that represents a rate of about 8% Obama no-shows… nowhere near the 22% rate PPP was showing for PA polls this summer, and even significantly less than the 12% rate of their most recent PA poll. Unless turnout on election day is completely different than early voting, PPP’s sample have been grossly out of whack all cycle.
(As with SUSA above, if PPP’s samples have been this wrong, their toplines don’t matter as garbage-n/garbage-out. They will have only been right by coincidence, not science.)
– Mainstream Rep write-ins vs wingnuts
If Lisa Murkowski wins by 10%, how will Mike Castle feel for not doing a write-in campaign himself? Even if Murkowski loses but comes within three or four points, will we see similar write-in campaigns in 2012 in states where possibly unelectable wingnuts succeed in knocking off establishment incumbents? Will Olympia Snowe, John Ensign and Orrin Hatch run as write-ins, or as independants? Is the future of the Republican party going to be a series of races where two republicans face one Democrat? (See also Crist and Tancredo results.)
– “Enthusiasm” fetishists versus changing views
In line with PPP’s dubious samples is the crapload of tonnage of punditry that has invested itself in the notion that Republican gains this year will occur largely because Obama voters will stay home (huddled in the fetal position presumably), as opposed to voters going to the polls in a basically “normal” way but with a large number 2008 Obama voters changing to vote for GOP canidates in 2010.
Far and away, this is the most important battle of the 2010 election, because it reflects on what to do in the future. If people are changing their votes because of bad legislation (poor healthcare law, bailout votes), that means Democrats are being rejected because of their choices, not because there are “disheaartened” or unenthusisatic supporters of the laws in the fetal position in their homes. The challenge to BOTH parties in 2012 depends very much on the truth of this phenomenon: are Republicans winning over hearts and minds, or are Democrats merely not turning out. The strategy of both parties should be drastically different depending upon which phenomenon is true (if there are large GOP gains, as opposed to “normal” first term ones).
is the one race that you are watching closely and if it is called your way you will go to bed happy regardless of other results? Also races we have a reasonable shot. Oh and it can’t be from your state. I would say Florida Governor.
by 5pm this evening. Their original goal was 7M in seven days but blew by that, and then they upped it to 10M in seven days. Passing the latest goal with three full days to go yet – they haven’t set a new goal yet.
It’s said that every 14 calls leads to one new vote, so if they could call 14M before Tuesday, that would be equal to turning out 1M voters that would have otherwise sat this election out.
And the ’14 calls = one new vote’ metric could be skewed because in the past hardcore and regular voters were called. This time the focus is on the non-regular voters(ie Presidential election only) and the first time voters from 2008.
Finding and getting out 1M voters that would have sat out might not seem like a lot when 77M voted in the 2006 midterm, but that’s 1.3% of the vote. And these are targeted calls, meaning calls in toss up seats only at this point, not in races decided on either side. So in reality it could be upwards of 3-4% difference in these tight races.
I’m still an eeyore and assuming the worst, but figured I’d pass along some positive vibes for the weekend thread.
can’t believe this is the last open thread of the season. Next week will be analysis maybe reports of a few races that are still too close to call and an outlook of 2012. I can’t wait.
Last day to early vote in Texas. Turnout was brisk, looks like the place I was at was on track to double yesterday’s numbers.
Hold the phone. Kitzhaber leads by seven points, 48-41. The difference? He has a 15-point advantage with cell phone-only voters.
I can tell you right now that Rossi up in Washington is not doing substantially better among cell phone-only LVs than Dudley, and he’s certainly not doing better among women.
Worth noting Kitzhaber beats Dudley among all age groups and holds a 15-point lead with cell phone-only voters and a 4-point lead with voters polled via landline. Also worth noting SUSA was 22 points off of what Elway found in OR-05 just a few days ago.
Measure 75, a.k.a. the Gorge casino, is getting clobbered (to the surprise of no one). Measure 74, establishing a statewide medical marijuana supply system, is trailing by 10 points, 45-35.
b/c I feel it just din’t have to turn out this way. I expected losses, probably in the low teens was way too optimistic, but not high 40s to low 60s. High 20s would have been average, but we did not deserve a repeat of 1994 or worse.
I feel the extra 25-30 seats we lose above the average beyond just the economy has to do with the following factors, in order of magnitude:
(1) Barack Obama: Really nice guy but I’m afraid too clueless and politically tone deaf for the challenges of the modern presidency in a 24 hr rabid news cycle. I used to blame his communcation team but I think the buck really stops with him. Not only is his inexperience showing, he’s over-exposed and makes some really mind boggling political calculations. I think he’ll win re-election still, maybe even narrower than 2008, but I just no longer see him as the transformative political figure that Democrats truly need.
(2) Senate Democrats: How do you let the GOP, a mere 40-41 senators run roughshod over you when you thoroughly beat them in the last election? Does anyone really think that Bush and Senate REpublicans would have sat there while Democrats fillibustered everything and anything? These guys are just not cutthroat enough in beating the opposition. Senate rules do not mean paralysis. What happened to the crop of dynamic senate leaders from the 50s and 60s?
(3) House blue dogs and some mods too: Easily spooked, too risk averse and lacking conviction to move decisively. Pelosi is the most effective Dem house leader we’ve had in over 25 yrs and now she’s gone b/c of the lack of ballsness of men. What a shame, she will truly be missed.
I’m interested in my state level TX races. We may not beat Perry but we are breeding future Dem leaders down here.
calling voters in Orange County for two local D’s, Melissa Fox (just started an hour ago, but took a break) and Esiquio Uballe. Even though i can’t vote until 2012, its so exciting to actually be out there and talking to voters. One older woman i called yesterday said (rough transcript)”My goodness, i’ve never been called by anyone to vote. But your just a young lad who can’t vote and your calling me to vote? I wasn’t going to, but your enthusiasm reminds me of my old days voting for Dukakis when i was a young girl. You brought that energy back into me and i’m going to vote Tuesday. Thank you very much for calling me.”
She’s a Democratic voter, and i managed to convince one of the many “disillusioned dems” to vote. I feel proud.
With Halloween this Sunday, we will probably see some scarily inaccurate polls emerge on Monday. Most young people will be out and about Saturday and Sunday nights, and a lot of parents in their 20s and 30s will be trick-or-treating on Sunday.
Unfortunately, many of the finals polls we get before the election will be out in the field this week. Expect to see a lot of polls emerge Monday morning showing the voter poll to be very old and probably quite conservative. Also expect the MSM/Politico set to be incapable of analyzing the obvious reasons why polls get really ugly for Democrats all of the sudden and breathlessly report that the sky is falling.
granted, they didn’t poll the Independence Party candidate (who has endorsed Cravaack) but by all indications is still on the ballot.
And it’s also RBS (say it out loud), which has a giant credibility gap going against it (remember the Perriello polls)
I just saw a total of 4 ads right now, for Mike Villines (R) Insurance Commissioner, Bill Lockyer and Mimi Walters for Treasuer and Damon Dunn (R) for SoS. I didn’t think Dunn or Walters had the cash to go on TV.
What races do you expect to still not know the (official) winner of this time next week?
Mine:
AK-Sen
WA-Sen
IL-Sen
NV-Sen
Possible recounts in all of these races. It is almost guaranteed that AK (large state, write-ins also take a long time to count)and WA (notorious for slow counting, plus ballots have to be postmarked, not received, by Nov. 2) will last for atleast a week after election day.
Who are people running this year who could unseat Aaron Schock as the youngest member of Congress? To beat Schock, they would need to be born after May 28, 1981. Two that I can think of are Ruth McClung (AZ-07) and Jesse Kelly (AZ-08) who are both 28 years old.
my very first Dan Coats ad I have seen. It was a negative one hitting the usual highlights of stimulus and HCR.
And hold the phone! One of the districts was CO-04. Probably just for upticket benefit? Dunno. It was only $44K.
I got robocalled by Sarah Palin today. The Faith and Freedom Coalition paid for the call–standard conservative GOTV script, didn’t mention any Republican candidates by name.
Our household has two registered Ds, no Rs or independents. Both of us Ds voted three weeks ago.
Why would the wingnuts place a Sarah Palin robocall to a Dem household? I know robocalls are cheap, but in case they hadn’t noticed, Democrats don’t like Palin. She might even inspire a few lazy Democrats to turn out and vote against the Republicans.
moved on to the bargaining phase of grief. As in, I know you are going to take Culver, but please don’t let the Supreme Court judges get voted out, and please don’t let Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller lose to Brenna Findley (Steve King’s longtime chief of staff). The Republican Party of Iowa has put a ton of money into Findley’s campaign, and the American Future Fund is now targeting Miller too. He’s a 28-year incumbent who survived 1994, but I am worried.
Dems = 3677 – 42.2% of total (51.2% of the 2-party vote)
GOP = 3502 – 40.2% of total (48.8% of the 2-party vote)
Holy crap, talk about ending strong! Woot!
or are the DCCC ads generally crappy? I have seen very few that I thought were any good. The one they’re running in IA-02 will probably drive women to vote for Miller-Meeks, not Loebsack (in my opinion):
Cheap shot, much? Belittling a hard-working, accomplished woman just isn’t smart. They would be better off spending nothing in the district.
Loebsack’s final ad is decent, though:
Sestak closes gap in Morning Call’s tracking poll: He now trails 45% to 43%, that’s a 3% gain since last night & 6% over two nights.
County wide results are pretty much in line with EV. In the 3rd CD Dems are under preforming a little bit but not terribly.
Here in Michigan, there are only two realistic scenarios at the moment for the state house races.
In the first scenario, GOP sweeps and holds everything. That means they take the governorship, keep the SoS and AG offices, win both open spots on the state supreme court, hold the senate, and either tie or narrowly take back the house.
The second scenario has the GOP winning the governorship, the AG office, holding one of the two open spots on the supreme court, keeping the senate, and losing taking house. While the Dems win the SoS office, get one supreme court seat, and hold the house.
In other words, the only state-wide races where Dems are competitive are the SoS seat, the supreme court races, and maybe the house. The senate is very likely to look exactly the same as it does today because of how the districts are drawn.
The only other good news are the congressional races, where it’s more likely than not that Dems will hold MI-07 and MI-09 with MI-01 being a complete and utter toss-up at the moment. What will be interesting to watch will be possible smaller margins of victories for the GOP in MI-02, MI-03, and MI-11.
Last batch of ads up here in WA state, with vote by mail here. Still a ton of Rossi/Murray ads, I noticed Murray’s latest ads seem to have a more positive “keep me in my job so I can keep making a difference” sort of tone. Rossi’s ads are still generally negative.
Also, DelBene still on going after Reichert. From her ads, you’d have no idea who was the Democrat in the race.
Also just saw my 1st ad from Smith in WA-9, a general postive ad.
HUGE new record – 10k+ and 41+% more than yesterday, which was the previous record.
from @HotlineJeremy. Haven’t seen these posted here yet.
Not clear to me whether these were obtained via an organized leak or a real leak, but interesting regardless.
MA-10: Perry 45, Keating 43
MO-04: Hartzler 44, Skelton 45
NV-03: Heck 49, Titus 42
HI-01: Djou 51, Hanabusa 45
PA-11: Barletta 47, Kanjorski 45
race is going to be a photo finish. Field Poll says Harris is only down by 1, Cooley leads by 39-38 percent. And most shockingly of all, Harris has pulled into the lead with both independents (34-32%) and LA county itself (43-37%). Guess I wrote off Harris too soon, she could actually pull this out.
And in other news, Newsom still leads Maldonado 43 to 37% and Newsom is pulling in votes because of his looks. Mmm likely Democratic here.
.. and I suppose it doesn’t really tell us anything new, but I wanted to check the pollster.com trendlines to see what are the closest Senate races right this moment, and I thought I might as well share.
Depressingly, WA now seems a lot more close than NV or PA. Also, KY has gotten to be further out of reach than WI (and is relegated to beneath the fold on pollster.com).
Numbers given for both default and more sensitive trendlines. Depressing is that the more sensitive trendline, devised to better pick up on late-breaking trends, is almost everywhere either no better or actually worse for the Dem (notably in PA).
CO: R + 1.0 / + 1.5
IL: R + 1.0 / + 1.6
WA: D + 1.4 / + 1.4
WV: D + 1.7 / + 1.6
NV: R + 3.2 / + 3.1
PA: R + 3.0 / + 4.0
CA: D + 4.5 / + 4.4
AK: I + 6.7 / + 6.3 (over R)
WI: R + 8.1 / + 7.1
KY: R + 7.1 / + 8.3
MO: R + 8.0 / + 8.0
NH: R + 9.5 / + 9.3
CT: D + 9.9 / + 9.6
If all these leads hold, that would make for 51 Dems (including Sanders and Lieberman) vs 49 Reps (incl Murkowski).
Remember, this is one of the only truly respected CA pollsters. Get ready for this…
With just four days to go in the campaign, the widely watched poll shows Boxer leading Fiorina 49 to 41 percent. Another 4 percent of likely voters favor other candidates, and 6 percent are undecided.
It tracks with a half-dozen other new surveys that show Boxer in the lead by three to nine points. A Rasmussen poll Thursday showed Boxer up by three percentage points, while the rest show larger spreads. […]
Most voters have already voted or made up their minds, the Field Poll found.
Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo described Boxer’s lead as “comfortable” and the largest she’s had since similar polls in the spring and summer.
has a web ad out with a seal endorsing him. You know because he is running against Dan Seals. (kinda funny, kinda not) But the last 10 sec are pretty cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
what’s the best case scenario Tuesday night? I’d say losses in the mid to high forties would be ok. I’m expecting losses in the mid fifties to sixty.
tonight, we discuss the Maine Gubernatorial race.
Seeing Eliot Cutler surging, should Mitchell drop out and tell her supporters to vote for Cutler so a teabagger like LePage doesn’t sneak into office?
– Survey USA versus the world
All cycle long Survey USA has been releasing polls showing younger voters going about 2-1 in favor of Republicans. No other pollsters shows anything like this. Either SUSA has discredited itself as a credible pollster going forward, or they will be head and shoulders above all other pollsters for discovering this phenomenon no one else has observed.
– PPP vs early voting turnout
All cycle PPP has been releasing samples that reflect Obama voter turnout to be drastically lower than McCain voter turnout. This Obama no-show rate has been most commonly been between 14-22%, but was as high as 33% in the case of Wisconsin (meaning Obama voter Wisconsin turnout would only be 67% of Mccain voter turnout). Thus far in early voting no state has shown anything like this phenomenon. Iowa even shows (slightly) increased Dem turnout over Reps. The highest discrpency posted here so far, the only significant disparity in fact, is in Pennsylvavia where Rep absentee requests are 4% than Dem ones. If this discrpency is due 100% to Obama voter no shows, that represents a rate of about 8% Obama no-shows… nowhere near the 22% rate PPP was showing for PA polls this summer, and even significantly less than the 12% rate of their most recent PA poll. Unless turnout on election day is completely different than early voting, PPP’s sample have been grossly out of whack all cycle.
(As with SUSA above, if PPP’s samples have been this wrong, their toplines don’t matter as garbage-n/garbage-out. They will have only been right by coincidence, not science.)
– Mainstream Rep write-ins vs wingnuts
If Lisa Murkowski wins by 10%, how will Mike Castle feel for not doing a write-in campaign himself? Even if Murkowski loses but comes within three or four points, will we see similar write-in campaigns in 2012 in states where possibly unelectable wingnuts succeed in knocking off establishment incumbents? Will Olympia Snowe, John Ensign and Orrin Hatch run as write-ins, or as independants? Is the future of the Republican party going to be a series of races where two republicans face one Democrat? (See also Crist and Tancredo results.)
– “Enthusiasm” fetishists versus changing views
In line with PPP’s dubious samples is the crapload of tonnage of punditry that has invested itself in the notion that Republican gains this year will occur largely because Obama voters will stay home (huddled in the fetal position presumably), as opposed to voters going to the polls in a basically “normal” way but with a large number 2008 Obama voters changing to vote for GOP canidates in 2010.
Far and away, this is the most important battle of the 2010 election, because it reflects on what to do in the future. If people are changing their votes because of bad legislation (poor healthcare law, bailout votes), that means Democrats are being rejected because of their choices, not because there are “disheaartened” or unenthusisatic supporters of the laws in the fetal position in their homes. The challenge to BOTH parties in 2012 depends very much on the truth of this phenomenon: are Republicans winning over hearts and minds, or are Democrats merely not turning out. The strategy of both parties should be drastically different depending upon which phenomenon is true (if there are large GOP gains, as opposed to “normal” first term ones).
is the one race that you are watching closely and if it is called your way you will go to bed happy regardless of other results? Also races we have a reasonable shot. Oh and it can’t be from your state. I would say Florida Governor.
by 5pm this evening. Their original goal was 7M in seven days but blew by that, and then they upped it to 10M in seven days. Passing the latest goal with three full days to go yet – they haven’t set a new goal yet.
It’s said that every 14 calls leads to one new vote, so if they could call 14M before Tuesday, that would be equal to turning out 1M voters that would have otherwise sat this election out.
And the ’14 calls = one new vote’ metric could be skewed because in the past hardcore and regular voters were called. This time the focus is on the non-regular voters(ie Presidential election only) and the first time voters from 2008.
Finding and getting out 1M voters that would have sat out might not seem like a lot when 77M voted in the 2006 midterm, but that’s 1.3% of the vote. And these are targeted calls, meaning calls in toss up seats only at this point, not in races decided on either side. So in reality it could be upwards of 3-4% difference in these tight races.
I’m still an eeyore and assuming the worst, but figured I’d pass along some positive vibes for the weekend thread.
can’t believe this is the last open thread of the season. Next week will be analysis maybe reports of a few races that are still too close to call and an outlook of 2012. I can’t wait.
Last day to early vote in Texas. Turnout was brisk, looks like the place I was at was on track to double yesterday’s numbers.
http://www.katu.com/news/local…
http://www.surveyusa.com/clien…
Hold the phone. Kitzhaber leads by seven points, 48-41. The difference? He has a 15-point advantage with cell phone-only voters.
I can tell you right now that Rossi up in Washington is not doing substantially better among cell phone-only LVs than Dudley, and he’s certainly not doing better among women.
Worth noting Kitzhaber beats Dudley among all age groups and holds a 15-point lead with cell phone-only voters and a 4-point lead with voters polled via landline. Also worth noting SUSA was 22 points off of what Elway found in OR-05 just a few days ago.
Measure 75, a.k.a. the Gorge casino, is getting clobbered (to the surprise of no one). Measure 74, establishing a statewide medical marijuana supply system, is trailing by 10 points, 45-35.
b/c I feel it just din’t have to turn out this way. I expected losses, probably in the low teens was way too optimistic, but not high 40s to low 60s. High 20s would have been average, but we did not deserve a repeat of 1994 or worse.
I feel the extra 25-30 seats we lose above the average beyond just the economy has to do with the following factors, in order of magnitude:
(1) Barack Obama: Really nice guy but I’m afraid too clueless and politically tone deaf for the challenges of the modern presidency in a 24 hr rabid news cycle. I used to blame his communcation team but I think the buck really stops with him. Not only is his inexperience showing, he’s over-exposed and makes some really mind boggling political calculations. I think he’ll win re-election still, maybe even narrower than 2008, but I just no longer see him as the transformative political figure that Democrats truly need.
(2) Senate Democrats: How do you let the GOP, a mere 40-41 senators run roughshod over you when you thoroughly beat them in the last election? Does anyone really think that Bush and Senate REpublicans would have sat there while Democrats fillibustered everything and anything? These guys are just not cutthroat enough in beating the opposition. Senate rules do not mean paralysis. What happened to the crop of dynamic senate leaders from the 50s and 60s?
(3) House blue dogs and some mods too: Easily spooked, too risk averse and lacking conviction to move decisively. Pelosi is the most effective Dem house leader we’ve had in over 25 yrs and now she’s gone b/c of the lack of ballsness of men. What a shame, she will truly be missed.
I’m interested in my state level TX races. We may not beat Perry but we are breeding future Dem leaders down here.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/…
I have no words, except for maybe, “Really?”
calling voters in Orange County for two local D’s, Melissa Fox (just started an hour ago, but took a break) and Esiquio Uballe. Even though i can’t vote until 2012, its so exciting to actually be out there and talking to voters. One older woman i called yesterday said (rough transcript)”My goodness, i’ve never been called by anyone to vote. But your just a young lad who can’t vote and your calling me to vote? I wasn’t going to, but your enthusiasm reminds me of my old days voting for Dukakis when i was a young girl. You brought that energy back into me and i’m going to vote Tuesday. Thank you very much for calling me.”
She’s a Democratic voter, and i managed to convince one of the many “disillusioned dems” to vote. I feel proud.
With Halloween this Sunday, we will probably see some scarily inaccurate polls emerge on Monday. Most young people will be out and about Saturday and Sunday nights, and a lot of parents in their 20s and 30s will be trick-or-treating on Sunday.
Unfortunately, many of the finals polls we get before the election will be out in the field this week. Expect to see a lot of polls emerge Monday morning showing the voter poll to be very old and probably quite conservative. Also expect the MSM/Politico set to be incapable of analyzing the obvious reasons why polls get really ugly for Democrats all of the sudden and breathlessly report that the sky is falling.
the kids love the Republicans
granted, they didn’t poll the Independence Party candidate (who has endorsed Cravaack) but by all indications is still on the ballot.
And it’s also RBS (say it out loud), which has a giant credibility gap going against it (remember the Perriello polls)
I just saw a total of 4 ads right now, for Mike Villines (R) Insurance Commissioner, Bill Lockyer and Mimi Walters for Treasuer and Damon Dunn (R) for SoS. I didn’t think Dunn or Walters had the cash to go on TV.
What races do you expect to still not know the (official) winner of this time next week?
Mine:
AK-Sen
WA-Sen
IL-Sen
NV-Sen
Possible recounts in all of these races. It is almost guaranteed that AK (large state, write-ins also take a long time to count)and WA (notorious for slow counting, plus ballots have to be postmarked, not received, by Nov. 2) will last for atleast a week after election day.
Who are people running this year who could unseat Aaron Schock as the youngest member of Congress? To beat Schock, they would need to be born after May 28, 1981. Two that I can think of are Ruth McClung (AZ-07) and Jesse Kelly (AZ-08) who are both 28 years old.
my very first Dan Coats ad I have seen. It was a negative one hitting the usual highlights of stimulus and HCR.
And hold the phone! One of the districts was CO-04. Probably just for upticket benefit? Dunno. It was only $44K.
they also finally made a buy in MS-04 for $149K
more small to significant buys:
NM-01
TN-04
TX-23
VA-11
WI-03
also spending money to produce media in… SC-02?!
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…
maybe just web or radio?
I got robocalled by Sarah Palin today. The Faith and Freedom Coalition paid for the call–standard conservative GOTV script, didn’t mention any Republican candidates by name.
Our household has two registered Ds, no Rs or independents. Both of us Ds voted three weeks ago.
Why would the wingnuts place a Sarah Palin robocall to a Dem household? I know robocalls are cheap, but in case they hadn’t noticed, Democrats don’t like Palin. She might even inspire a few lazy Democrats to turn out and vote against the Republicans.
moved on to the bargaining phase of grief. As in, I know you are going to take Culver, but please don’t let the Supreme Court judges get voted out, and please don’t let Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller lose to Brenna Findley (Steve King’s longtime chief of staff). The Republican Party of Iowa has put a ton of money into Findley’s campaign, and the American Future Fund is now targeting Miller too. He’s a 28-year incumbent who survived 1994, but I am worried.
I’m becoming a little more optimistic about the Supreme Court retention elections, because in my opinion the “no” side made a huge tactical error this past week–they put Steve King at the center of effort to remove the judges, and he cut a radio ad on that which is running statewide. He is just too polarizing–shouldn’t have him be the spokesman for their cause east of I-35.
Dems 3677 (42.2%)
Rep 3502 (40.2%)
Other 1535 (17.62%)
Biggest total turnout day by far.
Holy freaking crap! You gotta see this! Washoe early vote numbers for today (last day of EV) just came out!
http://www.co.washoe.nv.us/vot…
Total = 8714
Dems = 3677 – 42.2% of total (51.2% of the 2-party vote)
GOP = 3502 – 40.2% of total (48.8% of the 2-party vote)
Holy crap, talk about ending strong! Woot!
or are the DCCC ads generally crappy? I have seen very few that I thought were any good. The one they’re running in IA-02 will probably drive women to vote for Miller-Meeks, not Loebsack (in my opinion):
Cheap shot, much? Belittling a hard-working, accomplished woman just isn’t smart. They would be better off spending nothing in the district.
Loebsack’s final ad is decent, though:
Sestak closes gap in Morning Call’s tracking poll: He now trails 45% to 43%, that’s a 3% gain since last night & 6% over two nights.
Corbett leads 50-41.
Source: http://www.mcall.com/news/loca…
http://maristpoll.marist.edu/w…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
I actually think this could’ve been affective if there wasn’t so little time to go.
For those of you who need even more turnout numbers, Clark County now has Absentee Numbers posted by Party and District.
http://redrock.co.clark.nv.us/…
County
Dem 14,595 (47.48%)
Rep 12,230 (39.79%)
Other 3,914 (12.73%)
CD-03
Dem 7,696 (43.06%)
Rep 7,943 (44.44%)
Other 2,233 (12.49%)
County wide results are pretty much in line with EV. In the 3rd CD Dems are under preforming a little bit but not terribly.
Here in Michigan, there are only two realistic scenarios at the moment for the state house races.
In the first scenario, GOP sweeps and holds everything. That means they take the governorship, keep the SoS and AG offices, win both open spots on the state supreme court, hold the senate, and either tie or narrowly take back the house.
The second scenario has the GOP winning the governorship, the AG office, holding one of the two open spots on the supreme court, keeping the senate, and losing taking house. While the Dems win the SoS office, get one supreme court seat, and hold the house.
In other words, the only state-wide races where Dems are competitive are the SoS seat, the supreme court races, and maybe the house. The senate is very likely to look exactly the same as it does today because of how the districts are drawn.
The only other good news are the congressional races, where it’s more likely than not that Dems will hold MI-07 and MI-09 with MI-01 being a complete and utter toss-up at the moment. What will be interesting to watch will be possible smaller margins of victories for the GOP in MI-02, MI-03, and MI-11.
Last batch of ads up here in WA state, with vote by mail here. Still a ton of Rossi/Murray ads, I noticed Murray’s latest ads seem to have a more positive “keep me in my job so I can keep making a difference” sort of tone. Rossi’s ads are still generally negative.
Also, DelBene still on going after Reichert. From her ads, you’d have no idea who was the Democrat in the race.
Also just saw my 1st ad from Smith in WA-9, a general postive ad.
HUGE new record – 10k+ and 41+% more than yesterday, which was the previous record.
http://redrock.co.clark.nv.us/…
from @HotlineJeremy. Haven’t seen these posted here yet.
Not clear to me whether these were obtained via an organized leak or a real leak, but interesting regardless.
MA-10: Perry 45, Keating 43
MO-04: Hartzler 44, Skelton 45
NV-03: Heck 49, Titus 42
HI-01: Djou 51, Hanabusa 45
PA-11: Barletta 47, Kanjorski 45
race is going to be a photo finish. Field Poll says Harris is only down by 1, Cooley leads by 39-38 percent. And most shockingly of all, Harris has pulled into the lead with both independents (34-32%) and LA county itself (43-37%). Guess I wrote off Harris too soon, she could actually pull this out.
And in other news, Newsom still leads Maldonado 43 to 37% and Newsom is pulling in votes because of his looks. Mmm likely Democratic here.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…
Johnson 52-45.
Walker 51-44.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201…
Buck 49 Bennet 45
Hick 47 Tancredo 43
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201…
Murray 49 Rossi 48
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201…
Hodes trails 56-41
Lynch leads 53-44
http://publicpolicypolling.blo…
for most here, per Jon Ralston:
http://twitter.com/ralstonflash
.. and I suppose it doesn’t really tell us anything new, but I wanted to check the pollster.com trendlines to see what are the closest Senate races right this moment, and I thought I might as well share.
Depressingly, WA now seems a lot more close than NV or PA. Also, KY has gotten to be further out of reach than WI (and is relegated to beneath the fold on pollster.com).
Numbers given for both default and more sensitive trendlines. Depressing is that the more sensitive trendline, devised to better pick up on late-breaking trends, is almost everywhere either no better or actually worse for the Dem (notably in PA).
CO: R + 1.0 / + 1.5
IL: R + 1.0 / + 1.6
WA: D + 1.4 / + 1.4
WV: D + 1.7 / + 1.6
NV: R + 3.2 / + 3.1
PA: R + 3.0 / + 4.0
CA: D + 4.5 / + 4.4
AK: I + 6.7 / + 6.3 (over R)
WI: R + 8.1 / + 7.1
KY: R + 7.1 / + 8.3
MO: R + 8.0 / + 8.0
NH: R + 9.5 / + 9.3
CT: D + 9.9 / + 9.6
If all these leads hold, that would make for 51 Dems (including Sanders and Lieberman) vs 49 Reps (incl Murkowski).
Remember, this is one of the only truly respected CA pollsters. Get ready for this…
Wow. That didn’t take long. 😉
can this http://politicalwire.com/archi…
be this be the video for the next “what race are you interested in” thread?
http://www.rasmussenreports.co…
Only slightly more belive his polls!