Author: Crisitunity

Quinnipiac (1/29-2/2, registered voters):

Lee Fisher (D): 42

Rob Portman (R): 27

Jennifer Brunner (D): 38

Rob Portman (R): 28

Lee Fisher (D): 41

Mary Taylor (R): 27

Jennifer Brunner (D): 38

Mary Taylor (R): 26

(MoE: ±2.9%)

Rob Portman (R): 33

Mary Taylor (R): 11

(MoE: ±5.1%)

Lee Fisher (D): 18

Jennifer Brunner (D): 16

Tim Ryan (D): 14

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Quinnipiac polls a whole bunch of different permutations on the Ohio Senate race, including the primary races, and you gotta like what you see here. Lt. Gov Lee Fisher and Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner both lead ex-Rep. and ex-OMB Director Rob Portman by double digits. The only missing element is head-to-heads involving Rep. Tim Ryan, who also seems likely to run (and they do poll him in the primary)… but judging by the similarity between Fisher and Brunner’s numbers, it seems like the candidates are running more as ‘generic D’ and ‘generic R’ right now, and he’d do just as well.

The unknowns are very high even in the general, but they’re catastrophically high in the primary heats, with the majority of the electorate in the “don’t know” camp right now. This is especially the case in the hypothetical GOP primary, where Portman (who has already committed to the race) is tested against the little-known Auditor Mary Taylor. (Taylor hasn’t publicly expressed any interest in the Senate race; discussion of her at this point seems to be limited to online GOP fanboys depressed with the drab Portman and casting about for someone Sarah Palin-esque to give them the twinkles.)

A few weeks ago, PPP tried out Fisher, Brunner, and Ryan against Portman, and Portman won all three of those tests, although not by particularly large margins. So this Q-poll, in and of itself, shouldn’t be taken as a promise of a pickup; this is going to be a hard fought race for the next two years. (H/t Leftist Addiction.)

Say hello to two possible new senators in 2011: Robin Carnahan and Paul Hodes. Both confirmed today that they will be running in 2010, Carnahan in Missouri and Hodes in New Hampshire.

Missouri Sec. of State Carnahan will be running for the seat left open by Kit Bond’s retirement; her opponent won’t be known for a while (there will probably be a competitive GOP primary, with Rep. Roy Blunt, ex-Sen. Jim Talent, and ex-Treasurer Sarah Steelman eyeing the race), but a recent PPP poll shows her ahead of all of them. Her announcement video is here.

Rep. Paul Hodes is running for a seat that may or may not be open; it’s still unclear who Gov. John Lynch will appoint to replace Judd Gregg (who will become Commerce Secretary), although sources point to Gregg’s former chief of staff Bonnie Newman. The Union-Leader reports: “She is not expected to run for a full term in 2010.”

Hodes had already been considering an uphill battle against an incumbent Gregg, but with the Gregg’s departure and the expectation that Newman will serve two years and not run for re-election, it looked like too good an opportunity for Hodes to pass up.

The developments surrounding that surprising appointment by President Obama “has sped up his timeline and he will make a formal announcement within the week,” the source said.

When we at SSP first hatched the idea of compiling some numbers for presidential election results for congressional districts, we were thinking we’d be lucky to get to 60 or maybe 100 districts. After all, we couldn’t track down precinct-level data for hundreds of counties, sort out what precinct goes into what district, and pick apart large metro counties with thousands and thousands of precincts… could we?

Well, with the aid of SSP’s crack cadre of some of the brightest and most tenacious elections geeks out there — in particular the relentless number cruncher jeffmd and master BoE cajoler Democratic Luntz — we’re closing in on completing all 435 districts. With another 54 added to the pile today, we’re near the 90% mark, with only 51 remaining incomplete. If you want to see all district percentages so far, the link is here; you can also check out the diaries where we released the numbers in more detail here, here, and here.

District	Obama #	McCain #	Other #	2008 %	2004 %	2000 %
AL-02	101,923	179,326	1,499	36.1/63.4	33/67	38/61
AL-05	115,773	185,640	3,364	38.0/60.9	39/60	44/54
CO-02	171,988	82,594	4,159	66.5/31.9	58/41	52/43
CO-04	168,637	171,690	6,229	48.7/49.5	41/58	37/57
MA-03	175,538	117,708	5,613	58.7/39.4	59/40	59/35
MA-04	197,306	107,459	5,175	63.7/34.7	65/33	65/29
MO-01	246,451	59,911	2,849	79.7/19.4	75/25	72/26
MO-03	189,730	124,537	4,589	59.5/39.1	57/43	54/43
MO-04	114,401	183,167	4,712	37.9/60.6	35/64	40/58
MO-05	198,259	110,057	3,371	63.6/35.3	59/40	60/37
MO-06	148,997	179,074	5,894	44.6/53.6	42/57	44/53
MO-07	114,752	204,246	5,013	35.4/63.0	32/67	36/62
NJ-03	181,004	162,339	3,828	52.1/46.8	49/51	54/43
NJ-05	152,506	179,781	3,428	45.4/53.6	43/57	45/52
NJ-06	149,400	98,959	2,791	59.5/39.4	57/43	61/35
NJ-07	177,471	165,430	4,016	51.2/47.7	47/53	48/49
NJ-08	165,346	93,734	2,098	63.3/35.9	59/41	60/37
NJ-09	158,933	99,144	2,270	61.1/38.1	59/41	63/34
NJ-10	208,151	30,192	1,048	87.0/12.6	82/18	83/16
NJ-11	154,300	182,604	3,253	45.4/53.7	42/58	43/54
NJ-13	155,012	50,369	1,750	74.8/24.3	69/31	72/25
NY-01	165,805	153,419	3,032	51.5/47.6	49/49	52/44
NY-08	184,682	63,769	2,121	73.7/25.5	72/27	74/18
NY-10	205,929	19,677	608	91.0/8.7	86/13	88/8
NY-11	206,656	20,709	999	90.5/9.1	86/13	83/9
NY-13	108,439	112,491	1,558	48.7/50.6	45/55	52/44
NY-15	226,049	14,954	1,522	93.2/6.2	90/9	87/7
NY-16	158,671	8,437	335	94.8/5.0	89/10	92/5
NY-17	172,479	66,027	1,312	71.9/27.5	67/33	69/27
NY-20	167,827	157,879	5,286	50.7/47.7	46/54	44/51
NY-21	179,322	123,378	5,733	58.1/40.0	55/43	56/39
NY-22	168,598	111,896	4,168	59.2/39.3	54/45	51/42
NY-23	133,367	119,943	4,112	51.8/46.6	47/51	47/49
NY-24	139,832	133,277	4,743	50.3/48.0	47/53	47/48
NY-25	177,780	135,931	5,216	55.7/42.6	50/48	51/45
NY-29	146,698	153,432	3,966	48.2/50.5	42/56	43/53
OH-14	168,381	169,131	5,193	49.1/49.4	47/53	44/52
OK-01	114,446	205,329	0	35.8/64.2	35/65	37/62
OK-02	91,481	174,351	0	34.4/65.6	41/59	47/52
OK-03	78,434	210,104	0	27.2/72.8	28/72	34/65
OK-04	101,418	200,192	0	33.6/66.4	33/67	38/61
OK-05	116,717	170,189	0	40.7/59.3	36/64	38/62
PA-03	143,416	143,433	4,066	49.3/49.3	47/53	47/51
PA-04	149,661	185,052	3,385	44.3/54.7	45/54	46/52
PA-05	123,503	152,946	3,944	44.1/54.6	39/61	38/59
PA-06	207,911	148,231	3,516	57.8/41.2	52/48	49/49
PA-07	186,232	142,944	3,845	55.9/42.9	53/47	51/47
PA-09	98,430	176,023	3,368	35.4/63.4	33/67	34/64
PA-10	131,335	155,437	3,721	45.2/53.5	40/60	41/56
PA-13	188,903	130,699	3,009	58.6/40.5	56/43	56/42
PA-19	142,398	187,857	3,698	42.6/56.3	36/64	36/61
UT-01	103,737	197,457	9,452	33.4/63.6	25/73	27/68
UT-02	138,790	202,534	11,552	39.3/57.4	31/66	31/67
UT-03	85,143	196,039	11,361	29.1/67.0	20/77	24/75

Some points of interest to check out in this batch: look at PA-06, with some of the steepest improvement in all of Pennsylvania. Any question why Jim Gerlach may be planning to cash it in and run for governor in 2010? It might be because his district just shot past PA-07 and PA-08 to become the bluest all-suburban district in the Philly area.

We have data for most of upstate New York (except for Erie County, where Buffalo is), and it’s striking that Obama improved on Kerry at a much greater clip upstate than in the NYC metro area. One thing that might give us some optimism heading into the NY-20 special election is the nearly 6-point improvement, as well as the fact that the Dem candidate actually won the district in the first time since, well, probably Barry Goldwater. But this is pretty typical across upstate NY, as we also flipped NY-23 and NY-24, moved NY-25 from swing to pretty safe D, and almost even won in New York’s reddest district of NY-29. Compare this with, say, the whiter urban districts, like NY-08 or especially NY-13 (Staten Island and white ethnic parts of Brooklyn), where Obama lost narrowly while barely improving on Kerry’s numbers, and thus nearly overtaking NY-29 as New York’s reddest district.

The biggest improvements here, as in previous installments are in the Mountain West. This is plain to see in Colorado, not just in the 2nd (where the improvement over 2000 is gigantic, although that may have to do with the huge Nader effect among Boulder’s granola-munching crowd) but also in the 4th, where Obama lost by less than a point where Gore lost by 20. And although we didn’t come even close in Utah, some of the biggest percentage gains were there. Look for UT-03 to lose its worst-PVI-in-the-nation status, as Obama made up 9 points there on Kerry.

Is there any bad news to report here? Well, we came oh-so-close to flipping OH-14 in Cleveland’s suburbs (fewer than 1,000 votes), while not moving the numbers much there. And we lost ground in AL-05, the Appalachian portion of Alabama, and PA-04, which, like PA-12, is in the collar counties around Pittsburgh where the Rust Belt fades into the Appalachians.

Probably least appetizing are the numbers out of Oklahoma, but even it provides some interesting insights into the changes from the old Democratic coalition to the current Democratic coalition. Most of the state stayed in neutral over the decade, but compare OK-02 (rural NE Oklahoma around Muskogee) vs. OK-05 (Oklahoma City). We’re getting absolutely hammered in the 2nd, a traditionally Yellow Doggish area that Gore almost won. On the other hand, we shot up in the 5th, the most cosmopolitan part of the state.

So what’s left to do? Our main task is, at this point, getting data from counties who have been unresponsive or are charging an arm and a leg for it. If you’re interested in helping out, check out this diary for a primer; here’s our database of elections boards to contact. And, as always, here’s our master crowdsourcing database… although, as you might notice, most of those blanks have been filled in! Thanks to you guys, of course.

One final caveat: these numbers are subject to change slightly, as we refine the data. In fact, in a few days I’ll be posting a list of several dozen updated districts. None of these changes should amount to more than a fraction of a percentage point, but caution is warranted where a fraction of a percent would make a lot of difference in how the district is perceived (for instance, PA-03, where a very small revision could make all the difference in terms of McCain’s 17-vote margin in the district).

You’d think that two cycles of bad defeats would have Republican insiders thinking about how they might start heading toward relevance by trying to scramble back toward the political center they’ve written off (shown here, in the House context, in amazing visual fashion by Nate Silver). Instead, the maniacal orgy of own-eating continues.

Hot on the heels of news of a potential primary challenge to Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson by Rep. Paul Broun (for the crime of voting for the progressive agenda 4% of the time) comes news of behind-the-scene efforts to take out John McCain in 2010. National Review reports that some Arizona insiders, who’ve never tolerated McCain’s occasional mavericky play-acting, see an opening in the wake of McCain’s lackluster presidential run.

But now that he has lost the presidency, there are some Republicans in Arizona who would like to see him lose his Senate office, too. “I’ll do anything I can to support his Republican opponent, whoever that might be,” Rob Haney – who until last week was chairman of the Republican party in Arizona’s District 11 – told me recently. Haney has been a loud and vocal critic of McCain for years, arguing that McCain is “not a conservative in any way, shape, or form.”

Now, there are several caveats. Haney’s preferred candidate is loudmouthed ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth, bounced out of office in 2006 and currently working as a talk radio host. Hayworth claims to be “flattered,” but in his quotes in the article seems to be offering many excuses for why he might not run. Moreover, it’s not clear how much pull Haney has; he just lost his GOP chairmanship to a more moderate candidate. Nevertheless, it’s one more example of the GOP going back to what it does best: when finding yourself at the bottom of a deep hole, keep digging.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (1/26-28, likely voters):

Roland Burris (D-inc): 37

Mark Kirk (R): 30

Roland Burris (D-inc): 38

Peter Roskam (R): 25

Jan Schakowsky (D): 36

Mark Kirk (R): 30

Jan Schakowsky (D): 37

Peter Roskam (R): 25

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 38

Mark Kirk (R): 30

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 38

Peter Roskam (R): 25

(MoE: ±4%)

Roland Burris (D-inc): 26

Jan Schakowsky (D): 12

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 11

Undecided: 51

Mark Kirk (R): 27

Peter Roskam (R): 17

Undecided: 56

(MoE: ±5%)

This poll ought to be a palliative for those people worried that the blowback from Rod Blagojevich’s attempt to sell the Illinois Senate seat (and his subsequent impeachment), and Roland Burris’s enthusiasm to occupy said tainted seat, mean that the Republicans are in prime position to take over the seat in 2010. There are a lot of undecideds, obviously, but even up against the Illinois GOP’s top tier (Reps. Mark Kirk and Peter Roskam), Burris looks to be in the driver’s seat. Considering the terrible optics of accepting Blago’s appointment, Burris’s favorability isn’t that bad; his favorable/unfavorable is 35/35.

In the general, though, Burris fares really no better or worse than any of the other Democrats interested in mounting a primary challenge to him in 2010. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias put up very similar numbers, indicating that Illinoisians are retaining their Dem leanings and are capable of separating Blagojevich’s spate of increasingly appalling actions from the Democratic brand in general. Tellingly, both Kirk and Roskam have negative favorability (37/41 for Kirk and 19/23 for the little-known Roskam), suggesting that voters’ dislike for them may have a lot to do with the “R” after their names.

The Democratic primary also sees the voters in a wait-and-see mode. Burris, on the strength of a month’s worth of media saturation, has an edge. But at only 26%, it can’t be seen as a clear path to victory at this point, especially with Schakowsky probably being labor’s and EMILY’s List’s candidate, and Giannoulias bringing his own powerful connections with him.

Rep. Allen Boyd announced today that he won’t be running for the open Senate seat in Florida in 2010. While Boyd (fairly conservative even by Blue Dog standards) might have been a decent prospect in the general, he may not have been enthused about his prospects for making it out of the primary, where two more liberal Miami-area politicians, Rep. Kendrick Meek and State Sen. Dan Gelber, are already jockeying for position. As a bonus, this means not having to defend an open seat in the Republican-leaning FL-02 in the Panhandle.

On the Republican side of the ledger, Attorney General (and Clinton impeachment manager and two-time Senate loser) Bill McCollum also bowed out today. While he was the front-runner in the GOP field according to last week’s Quinnipiac poll, that may have been based more on name recognition as a frequent statewide candidate (and certainly not on likeability).

Politico reports that it’s still full speed ahead for two other GOPers: former State House Speaker Marco Rubio and Rep. Connie Mack IV, although neither one has formally announced anything. On the Dem side, one other name cropped up yesterday, that hadn’t been mentioned before: Tampa mayor Pam Iorio publicly expressed her interest in the race. She could make things interesting, as the I-4 Corridor becomes more of a locus of Democratic strength in Florida while Meek and Gelber divide the Miami-area vote.

PPP (1/23-25, registered voters):

Michael Bennet (D-inc): 40

John Suthers (R): 34

Michael Bennet (D-inc): 43

Scott McInnis (R): 37

Michael Bennet (D-inc): 48

Tom Tancredo (R): 39

Michael Bennet (D-inc): 41

Bill Owens (R): 44

(MoE: ±3.2%)

The bad news is: few people in Colorado know much of anything about their new senator, Michael Bennet, appointed out of semi-obscurity (he was the Denver schools superintendent) to fill the seat left vacant by Ken Salazar. His favorable/unfavorable rating is 33/21, with a massive 45% not sure.

On the plus side, though, that leaves him plenty of room for growth, and his unknown-ness doesn’t seem to be hampering his prospects for re-election in 2010. Bennet wins three out of four prospective matchups, and the only one he doesn’t win is against popular former governor Bill Owens, who hasn’t given any indication of any intent to run against Bennet. Two of the other matchups are even more irrelevant, as Attorney General John Suthers and ex-Rep. Scott McInnis both took themselves out of the running in the days since the poll was taken. That leaves Bennet vs. Tom Tancredo, which doesn’t look to be much of a contest at this point.

H/t DTM,B!

The time is here. The time is now. Just go. Go. GO! Mitch McConnell doesn’t care how.

For several days now, there has been a drip-drip of (probably well-orchestrated) leaks about how GOP powers, starting at the top with McConnell and NRSC chair John Cornyn, want Jim Bunning to get out of the way to let them run a more vigorous, coherent candidate in the 2010 Kentucky Senate race. This reached a head with Bunning’s unexplained absence last week and then Cornyn’s recent comments, when asked if Bunning or someone else would be the best candidate to run: “I don’t know. I think it’s really up to Senator Bunning.”

Today Bunning fought back against leadership’s “I don’t know” act, in a conference call with Kentucky media. Roll Call reports:

“I had an hourlong meeting with Sen. McConnell in the first week of December in 2008, and we thoroughly discussed my candidacy for the Senate in that hour meeting in my office in Northern Kentucky – and gave him every indication that I was going to run again,” Bunning told reporters on a conference call Tuesday, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. “So he either had a lapse of memory or something when speaking to the Press Club last week when he said that he didn’t know what my intentions were. He knew very well what my intentions were.”

With Bunning only sitting on $175,000 right now, and now seemingly entering into a war of words with the guys charged with saving his butt next year, this race is starting to look pretty promising (as long as Bunning stays in).

Roll Call is reporting that James Tedisco will be the GOP’s nominee in the special election to replace Kirsten Gillibrand in NY-20.

While no official announcement has been made yet, the Republican chairmen of the 10 counties that fall within the 20th district agreed to nominate Tedisco during a meeting Tuesday at state GOP headquarters in Albany.

Tedisco, the current minority leader in New York’s State Assembly, is a long-time player in Albany-area politics, in fact known as “Mr. Schenectady.” Wait… what’s that? Schenectady isn’t in the 20th?

The Democratic nomination is still completely up in the air, and the same Roll Call article comes up with a completely different list of names than we saw a few days ago. With over twenty potential names to choose from (none of which seem particularly top-tier), they’re looking at:

… former TV broadcaster Tracy Egan, venture capitalist Scott Murphy, state AFL-CIO official Suzy Ballantyne, and former New York Rangers goalie Mike Richter.

On to another installment in our House Recruitment series, and, having just done PA-06, we’re off to another district that has been a consistent, painful tease to the Democrats for the last three cycles: WA-08. Despite a D+2 lean, Republican Rep. Dave Reichert has eked out three close victories in a row.

For background on this district, including its demographics and potential other challengers, a good starting place would be the post-mortem I wrote following Darcy Burner’s second loss. Since not much has changed in the last few months, the names I mentioned there are still probably the likeliest ones to make the race: State Sen. Rodney Tom and State Rep. Chris Hurst.

As you may remember, these two guys were both considering jumping into the 2008 primary race against Burner, although only if the other one didn’t. Finally, Tom jumped in, only to hastily jump back out a few weeks later after Burner’s “Burn Bush” fundraiser showed him the futility of trying to compete for fundraising dollars against a united netroots. (He graciously endorsed Burner and was a big help during the campaign.)

While neither of them would be as purely progressive as Burner, they both have pretty solid voting records in the legislature, and would have stronger appeal to voters who were deterred by the ‘experience’ meme regarding Burner. Hurst, in addition, is a tough-guy ex-cop and is from Reichert’s base of rural southern King County, so he’d be able to run straight at Reichert’s strengths. (One downside for both of them: they’d have to give up their seats to run in 2010.)

Other legislators in the district:

*State Senator Fred Jarrett. Like Tom, he’s a former moderate Republican turned center-left Democrat, and unlike Tom, would be in the middle of his term in 2010… however he’s older, and unlike Tom, I haven’t heard of any interest from him regarding the seat.

*State Senator Claudia Kauffman. She is still getting settled in a more marginal seat and doesn’t seem likely to run, although she would be Congress’s first Native American woman if she ran and won.

*State Rep. Ross Hunter. An ex-Microsoftie himself, he was one of the first Dems to pierce the once-Republican stronghold of the Eastside… in fact, he was widely expected to be the 2006 nominee in WA-08 before health problems derailed him and gave Burner the opening for her first shot. He may be feeling up to the task of taking on Reichert in 2010, and if he does it’s possible that Tom would defer to him.

As for Burner herself, I haven’t heard any indication of her future plans; considering that her numbers went down the second time, I wouldn’t expect a third try. One other vaguely Burner-esque figure that comes to mind, although I haven’t heard a peep out of him lately, is Alex Alben, a well-to-do techie (former exec at Starwave and Real Media) who ran as tech’s candidate in the 2004 primary and lost to milquetoast talk radio host Dave Ross; I could see him at least sniffing out the possibility of becoming the netroots’ horse in the race (which he didn’t try to do in 2004). Also, in this district there’s always the possibility that some other Generic Tech Millionaire will emerge from heretofore-unknown territory and swamp the race with money.

Anybody else I might have missed?