Month: November 2008

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

One of the big question marks in Georgia’s ongoing U.S. Senate campaign is how much President-elect Barack Obama will get involved.

Democrat Jim Martin desperately wants Obama to come here to boost Martin’s campaign against Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who has already secured a promise from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to visit the state on Chambliss’ behalf.

Obama, however, had not responded to Martin’s overtures as of Sunday. And with the president-elect’s weekend calls for an end to partisan rancor after the Nov. 4 election, his involvement in Georgia’s bitter partisan brawl of a Senate race appeared anything but certain.

“Our campaign has talked to their campaign,” said Martin spokeswoman Kate Hansen. “And that it as far as it has gone. We would be honored to have him. We know his operation is incredibly busy right now.”

I hope this state of affairs changes soon. There is precedent for getting involved: President-elect Bill Clinton came down to GA to campaign for Wyche Fowler in his run-off against Paul Coverdell in 1992. I wouldn’t necessarily expect Obama to go that far, but even a single blast to his e-mail list could make a huge difference. So could a TV ad. It appears he may have sent some staffers to help Martin, but I think he can do more.

I can understand the Obama team wanting the election to be over, as far as they are concerned,  so that they can focus on governing. And I’m sure they don’t want to get into a potentially stature-diminishing proxy fight with John McCain (who is coming to the state for Chambliss). But I think that any such direct confrontation is easily avoided.

We’re going to have plenty of legislative fights which come down to a single vote in the Senate – and we’ll win a lot more of them with Jim Martin on our side.

At Intrade right now, Al Franken is at 57.5 and Mark Begich is at 66.8.

While the trading volumes aren’t that high, it appears the bettors think they have a really good chance win when the counting is finally completed.  Nate Silver rates a Franken a “slight favorite” to win the recount (Franken is 206 votes behind).

So can we net another Senate seat?

When we last checked in with the shocking result in California’s 44th District, Democrat Bill Hedrick was trailing GOP scuzzbucket Rep. Ken Calvert by 4600 votes. The margin has since grown to about 5900 votes. Here’s an update from Bill Hedrick communications director Lori Vandermeir:

Here’s where we stand:  They began counting ballots today in Riverside County so we should have some sort of indication when those numbers are released as to how we’re trending.

The end of last week only OC ballots was being counted which of course didn’t help our numbers – we’re down in that portion of the district (but OC accounts for only 20% of the district and we’re up in Riverside which accounts for 80%).

At this point, only VBM ballots are being counted (those that came in late but were postmarked correctly or those that were dropped off at the polls on election day).

As long as we trend the way we believe we will (maintaining a 4%-5% lead in Riverside County) we should be fine going into the provisional ballot count which should trend highly in our favor.  That process doesn’t begin for another week or two.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE (David): Another dispatch from Lori:

The good news is we’ve been told by the Orange County Registrar that they are now done counting the VBM ballots and we’ve held steady at 37% (which is 14% above Democratic registration – an amazing feat considering that county didn’t really know our candidate before this race).  The bad news is that the OC number today knocked us down a few more thousand overall.

I think I’ve already mentioned to you that our district spans both Orange County and Riverside.  80% of the district is in Riverside (where we’ve been winning) while 20% is in south Orange County (where we’re losing).

While Orange County is now complete, there are still over 50,000 VBM ballots to count in Riverside and we are very sure those will continue to trend in our favor (as they have all along) so the gap should narrow on both Wednesday and Friday (when that county continues counting).

In addition, there are still tens of thousands of provisional ballots which we know will trend our way.  Our campaign received hundreds of calls on election day from solid Democrats complaining that they had been issued provisional ballots even though they had voted in June at the exact same location so we feel safe in saying that we believe the majority of provisional ballots will lean Democratic.

This is what things look like in Orange and Riverside  (the county websites appear to be more up-to-date than the CA SoS):

At current rates, Hedrick would only net about 1,500 votes in Riverside if there are 50K left to count, as Lori suggests. However, unlike some counties in CA, Orange and Riverside don’t appear to break out VBM vs. election day stats, so there’s no way to know just yet if perhaps Hedrick did better in the early vote thanks to heightened Dem enthusiasm.

And no matter what, there are all the provisionals, which always tend to favor Dems – and we don’t have an exact count on those yet. Hedrick is facing difficult odds here, but my fingers are crossed.

The Kitchens Group for Paul Carmouche (11/6-7, likely voters):

Paul Carmouche (D): 45

John Fleming (R): 35

(MoE: ±4.0%)

Here it is — the first publicly-released poll of this race. Lots of undecideds here, but Carmouche begins the race with an edge, retaining a 53-16 favorable rating.

A strong field operation will be crucial in this race, as both sides expect that turnout will be poor. We can also expect a fierce air war here — Fleming is a wealthy physician and businessman, and surely he’ll be ponying up more of his own dough in the coming weeks. The NRCC also needs something to crow about, so they’ve reserved $330K in air time on Fleming’s behalf. No word yet on how heavy the DCCC plans to spend here, but they’ve already dropped $77,000 against Fleming over the weekend.

General election: 12/6.

The poll’s press release is available below the fold.

During each weekday this month, we’ll be posting a new open thread for every state featuring a senatorial or gubernatorial contest, and asking for your thoughts on who should run.

Alaska will feature two statewide contests of note — the gubernatorial race featuring Sarah Palin, and the Senate contest featuring incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski.

So whom do you like for challengers to these seats? As David said the first time we did this, don’t be afraid to think creatively:

Don’t limit yourself to politicians. Businesspeople, community leaders, activists – even athletes or celebrities (think Heath Shuler or Al Franken) – are all fair game. Even seemingly outlandish suggestions are welcome. Would you have ever predicted that the guitarist from Orleans would now be a Congressman-elect?

Have at it. Alabama to come tomorrow.

CNN:

Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman filed papers Monday forming an exploratory committee to run for Virginia governor.

Terry McAuliffe was widely expected to make his decision after Election Day. The former Democratic National Committee chairman will now do a 60 day listening tour of the state.

Woof. Should he run, McAuliffe will square off against state Sen. Creigh Deeds and state Delegate Brian Moran.

From the Washington Post:

After bringing at least two dozen new Democrats to the House in Tuesday’s elections, Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D) has agreed to try to duplicate that achievement in 2010 as chair of the caucus’s campaign arm. He also will take on an added role, coordinating policy decisions between the House and President-elect Barack Obama’s administration.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) will formally announce Van Hollen’s expanded portfolio today, according to informed party sources.

I’m pleased. While I didn’t completely agree with all of the spending decisions this fall out of the DCCC’s independent expenditure arm this fall, of the responsibilities that CVH did have direct influence over — namely, fundraising and candidate recruitment — he did quite well. And considering that two of the alternatives for this gig are Debbie Wasserman Schultz (someone who dragged her heels on supporting Democratic challengers in South Florida) and Artur Davis (someone who violently kneecapped a fellow Alabama Dem in a hotly-contested race), another term with Van Hollen is a relief.

The easiest thing for CVH to do would be to go out on a high note, having netted 24 seats this year (including the special election wins and counting VA-05 as a pickup). 2010 will undoubtedly feature a good deal of defense, so having a strong chair capable of recruiting good challengers for viable targets and open seats is crucial.

(Hat-tip: MyDD)

Yesterday, I asked you to help Democrats Jim Martin and Mark Begich via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page as the Georgia Senate race heads toward a run-off against Shameless Saxby Chambliss and the Alaska Senate race heads toward a protracted vote count and possible legal battle against convicted felon Ted Stevens.

You responded with hundreds of dollars and we are so close to our goal on the Expand the Map! ActBlue page – please help Martin and Begich meet the goal this weekend:

Democrat	Current	Goal	Difference
Jim Martin	$3,385 $3,900	$4,000	$615 just $100
Mark Begich	$5,553 $5,820	$6,000	$447 just $180

Please make a contribution today via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page and help Jim Martin and Mark Begich eject Saxby Chambliss and Ted Stevens from the U.S. Senate.

Last week I wrote about a new crowdsourcing project we’re undertaking here at SSP: compiling presidential voting results by congressional district. Here’s a quick status report:

• We’ve figured out ways to calculated pres-by-CD for a little over half the states. See this spreadsheet, which anyone can edit.

• However, there are many states where we don’t have a planned method for calculating the numbers. If you have thoughts about how to figure out those states, please add them (and any links you have to official or soon-to-be-official results).

• Separately, if you’ve started doing work on some actual numbers, I strongly encourage you to share that work in separate Google spreadsheets. I’ve added a new column on the right in the “mothership” spreadsheet called “Calculations.” Please post URLs to any other spreadsheets you’ve created to crunch the data.

And if you have any other ideas for this project, please share them here in comments. Thanks!

UPDATE: Here’s a very simple example of what I mean by “showing your work.” The CT SoS very kindly makes raw presidential vote totals by CD available – you can see them in this PDF. I’ve uploaded a Google spreadsheet into which I’ve imported those numbers from the PDF, then did some super-simple math to calculate the percentages in each district.

Even if you’re working with something more complicated like counties or precincts, you can and should create something similar to my CT sheet. That way, everyone can see what data you’re using and verify that things look right.

UPDATE 2: Thanks to an awesome find by statsgeek, I put together a spreadsheet for MN as well. There are two tabs – “Formatted Data” is just a pretty condensed version of the raw data, which you can see in all its glory in the second tab. The state of MN actually made this extremely easy, going so far as to calculate the percentages each candidate got. It was just a matter of parsing the file properly and digging out the right numbers.