Author: DavidNYC

Markos has gotten his hands on the so-called GOP “Death List”. All it really is is a list of race ratings, but the “Washington Whispers” blog hyped it well by highlighting the most pessimistic Republican assessments.

As it happens, the five-tier heirarchy used in this list maps perfectly on to the same rating system we use here at SSP. This is what it would look like if you took the GOP chart (available in full below the fold) and whipped it up SSP-style:

I don’t have to run down all my disagreements with the list – that’s what this is for. But I will make one observation: The GOP is light – they are missing a lot of races. SSP has over 100 races on our House list – this one has just 75. Now, most of our additional races are fairly marginal, but by no means all of them. And in an election like this, you ignore races at your peril.

I’m glad to see the GOP acting so carelessly.

P.S. There’s also a Senate chart, which you can check out on the last page of the document.

What an asshole:

Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.) has conceded that he did tell a North Carolina crowd that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God,” even though he initially denied making such a statement.

Now he says he didn’t mean it that way and he was just trying to rev up a campaign rally.

“I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way. I actually was trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible, so this is definitely not what I intended,” Hayes said in a statement for Politico.

The comments were first reported by the New York Observer. When Politico linked to the Observer story on Monday evening, Hayes’ spokeswoman Amanda Little called and denied the report. Observer reporter Jason Horowitz told Politico he stood firmly behind the story. Politico left the quote in The Crypt blog but added the Hayes denial.

On Tuesday, two more reporters and two other witnesses confirmed the quote, but Little continued to deny it, calling the story “irresponsible journalism.” Little said she had just as many sources who would deny it, including Hayes’ staff and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who spoke before Hayes.

Needless to say, Patrick McHenry is a scuzzbucket, too.

Huh. So this pretty critical piece of information seems to have escaped a lot of people’s attention – including, I must admit, mine:

One possible scenario, which seems somewhat likely based on poll data, is that Chambliss wins a slight plurality, but not the 50% plus one required for a majority.

If Chambliss and Martin go into a run-off, the race will likely garner national attention and financial resources from national Democratic and Republican parties.

Andre in Atlanta explains the backstory:

After Wyche Fowler was defeated by Paul Coverdell in 1992, the Democratic-led Georgia General Assembly changed lowered the threshold for electoral victory to a plurality rather than a majority.  In 2005, the Republican-led General Assembly changed it back to a majority, 50% plus one, to win.

If necessary, a runoff would be held on Dec. 2nd, so props if you knew all this. Anyhow, with Libertarian candidate Allan Buckley in the race, a runoff is a definite possibility – Buckley’s been pulling about 5% according to the Pollster composites. What’s more, Georgia’s own Bob Barr at the, uh, top of the ticket on the Libertarian line, so that could draw in even more Lib votes.

The real question is whether a runoff would be a boon to us. On the one hand, you would no longer have Obama at the top of the ticket. On the other hand, you’d have the entire resources of what ought to be a pretty energized Democratic Party at the ready. Of course, the GOP thought the same thing in Louisiana in 2002 when they tried to eliminate Mary Landrieu. They had the hubris to call it “Operation Icing on the Cake” – but all they got was a pie in the face.

I’m very curious to hear what Swing Staters think about the likelihood of a runoff, and to whose benefit (if anyone’s) one would redound.

September fundraising numbers for the four party committees:

Note that these figures do not include recent loans obtained by the DCCC ($15 million) and the NRCC ($8 million). I would expect their Senate counterparts to take out loans as well.

While we don’t yet know the details of the NRSC and the DSCC’s spending this month, the DCCC has made about $19.6 million worth of independent expenditures so far in October according to our IE tracker. By contrast, the NRCC has only spent about $6 million on IEs so far in October.

Below is our final SSP Cash Power Index chart for the quarter, which looks at Senate races (both open seats and those with incumbents running for re-election). Our 1Q cash power chart is here, and our 2Q chart is here.

Once again, the same caveats apply: Many campaigns made final spending decisions before the filing deadline, so cash-on-hand figures may look artificially “low” in some cases. In other words, just looking at the final Cash Power Rankings often won’t give you a complete picture of where things stand. That’s why it’s important to consult our 3Q Senate fundraising chart in concert with this listing. Third-party expenditures are also, of course, important indicators of a race’s competitiveness.

Note that Jim Gilmore has refused to release his fundraising totals to the media (and his FEC reports are not online yet), hence our resort to mathematical symbols. But we’re pretty confident Mark Warner will retain the number one slot regardless, as he has all year.

University of Connecticut for the Hearst Newspapers (10/8-15, likely voters, no trendlines):

Jim Himes (D): 44

Chris Shays (R-inc): 44

Other: 2

Undecided: 10

(MoE: ±4.4%)

As DemFromCT says, 44 is an ugly, ugly place for an incumbent to be – especially when Barack Obama is leading John McCain by a 54-34 margin.

The chart below (a companion to this one) shows the SSP Cash Power Index for open House seats. (Our 2Q chart is here.) The same caveats apply:

Many campaigns made final spending decisions before the filing deadline, so cash-on-hand figures may look artificially “low” in some cases. In other words, just looking at the final Cash Power Rankings often won’t give you a complete picture of where things stand. That’s why it’s important to consult our 3Q House fundraising chart in concert with this listing.

This list also does not take into account third-party independent expenditures (you can find that information here) or 527 “electioneering” expenditures (available here), which are another important measure of a race’s competitiveness.

Note: Gary Trauner and Paul Carmouche are listed with multiple prior rankings due to multi-way GOP primaries.

P.S. I think you can see why we moved NY-13 to Safe D, huh?

* We did not include MO-09 in our 2Q chart because of large primaries on both sides. Had we included Baker-Leutkemeyer with their CoH at the time, Baker would have ranked 17th at 99%.

What perfect timing – on the same day SSP celebrated its fifth birthday, we also welcomed our five millionth visitor! Five years ago, I certainly never imagined passing a milestone anything like this. Here’s to five million more!

Once again, we are proud to present the SSP Cash Power Index – a metric designed to measure cash-on-hand competitiveness. We divide a challenger’s cash-on-hand by the size of the incumbent’s war chest to gauge the financial gap between candidates.

There’s one very important caveat with this list, which makes it different from those we published after the first and second quarters: Many campaigns made final spending decisions before the filing deadline, so cash-on-hand figures may look artificially “low” in some cases. In other words, just looking at the final Cash Power Rankings often won’t give you a complete picture of where things stand. That’s why it’s important to consult our 3Q House fundraising chart in concert with this listing.

This list also does not take into account third-party independent expenditures (you can find that information here) or 527 “electioneering” expenditures (available here), which are another important measure of a race’s competitiveness. We also plan to release indices for open seats and for Senate races shortly.

It’s hard to believe, but today is the Swing State Project’s fifth birthday. I started the site all those years ago to focus (as you’d expect) on the swing states in the 2004 presidential election. At the time, we were in the midst of Primary Wars I (only then, of course, it was just the Great Primary War), but I was very eager to discuss the real fight that lay ahead – how we were gonna beat George Bush.

It was in that spirit that I created SSP, truly as a “project” for all those interested in educating themselves about the presidential battleground. I count myself among that number – I was largely a neophyte. Sadly, the 2004 election didn’t turn out the way we wanted, but I learned a great deal along that journey nonetheless, and I think a lot of readers did as well.

After the election, I imagined I would shutter the site, but Tim Tagaris convinced me to keep it running and to shift the focus to downballot races. We left the site’s name unchanged (leading to much confusion in subsequent years), but focused like a laser on House, Senate and gubernatorial races. The site really found its voice at that time, particularly in the run-up to the OH-02 special election in August of 2005. I certainly felt like I found my blogospheric calling, and it’s a niche I’ve truly grown to love.

Along the way, many people have been vitally important to this site’s success. Tim of course was the inspiration and main force behind SSP’s transformation into its present form. It goes without saying that James L.’s tremendous hard work, brilliant writing, and wicked sense of humor sustain this site every day. And undoubtedly I’m very grateful to Trent and Crisitunity for joining the team and devoting their time and effort to make this site so excellent.

But most importantly, I have to thank you, the readers. You truly have turned this into more than just a site but a flourishing community of intelligent, inquisitive, and committed Democrats always eager to learn more – and to keep each other on our toes. When people ask me for advice about starting up a new blog, I always say, “Write for yourself – don’t expect an audience.” But the fact is, there is nothing like the feedback and validation that a thriving community can provide. You guys make it all worthwhile.

So please join me in wishing the Swing State Project a very happy fifth birthday, and to many more to come. To victory in November!