Month: November 2008

The Kitchens Group (11/18-19, likely voters, 11/6-7 in parens):

Paul Carmouche (D): 48 (45)

John Fleming (R): 37 (35)

Undecided: 13 (16)

(MoE: ±4.0%)

That’s a fair spot better than the last two polls we’ve seen of this race. Interestingly, Kitchens pegs the African-American vote at a conservative 22% (this district is 33% black), meaning they estimate that the ‘Mouche is doing much better with whites than either SUSA or Public Opinion Strategies say he is. This one will probably go down to the wire.

The full polling memo and details are available below the fold.

Minnesota Public Radio has some great images of contested ballots currently being contested in the MN-Sen recount. Here are a few:

Anyhow, you can click through the link to register your opinion as to how each of these ballots should be counted (if at all). Pretty fascinating stuff.

No one likes Blago, but Blago doesn’t seem to care. So who will run against him in the 2010 Democratic primary? And who should run against him?

And speaking of Blagojevich, soon he will appoint a replacement for Barack Obama in the United States Senate. A lot depends on who exactly he selects, of course, but do you see any notable Republicans taking a stab at the seat in 2010? Mark Kirk, perhaps?

Franken has just gained about 41 votes from the original margin of 215! as the Recount continues on!

By day’s end, with about 18 percent of the vote recounted, Coleman continued to lead Franken — but by only 174 votes, notably narrower than the unofficial gap of 215 votes at which the recount had begun. Franken’s gain owed much to a swing of 23 votes in the Democratic stronghold of St. Louis County — the result of faintly marked ballots and older optical scanners that failed to read the marks.

http://www.startribune.com/pol…

If this trend continues will have a new senator in no time!

Let’s just say that I hope Obama finds someone else:

Barack Obama’s choice for secretary of Agriculture could take one Democrat from the 20-seat pickup the party gained by way of the recent elections. (Three House races have yet to be called and two seats in Louisiana will be filled on Dec. 6.)

According to reports, Obama is considering Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) for the USDA post. His transition team declined to comment on Cabinet speculation.

Should either of these seats open up, they would both be tough holds for Democrats, but Herseth’s in particular would be even harder. Obama did improve on past Democratic performances considerably in South Dakota, losing the state by 8 points (compared to Kerry’s 22-point loss here in 2004), but the Dem bench in South Dakota, by my estimation, is pretty thin. However, The Hill notes that state Senate Minority Leader Scott Heidepriem might be the Dems’ best bet in such a scenario.

Minnesota’s 7th District is also a pretty conservative area, although one with a stronger Democratic tradition. Kerry lost this CD by a 55-43 whipping in 2004, but McCain only won the district by a 50-47 margin earlier this month. If a popular state legislator with conservative creds in the mold of Peterson could be tapped, Democrats might be able to hold onto this seat, but it will undoubtedly be an expensive battle.

While I’m not automatically opposed to Obama tapping Congress for his Cabinet needs, I don’t think Obama should run the risk of giving the Republicans something to crow about with a special election victory in either of these seats. Surely another qualified candidate can be found for this job.

UPDATE (David): So I’ve done a little back-of-the-envelope math and I think the new PVI for MN-07 will be about R+8 (old PVI: R+6), while SD-AL will become R+11 (old PVI: R+10). This may seem counter-intuitive, given that Obama performed far better in both districts than Kerry & Gore did.

But given how the PVI formula works, Kerry’s 2004 performance in the district now gets compared to Obama’s 2008 nationwide results. Therefore, Obama’s strong national showing can make lagging districts – even those where we did better than in 2004 – look redder by comparison.

That said, the fact that we lost South Dakota by 8 points rather than 22 is a reason to cheer, even if the PVI now looks worse. But I still wouldn’t look forward to a special election here, no sir.

CNN is reporting the following:

Barack Obama’s top choice for secretary of homeland security is Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, multiple sources say

If Napolitano does indeed accept this job, that both removes her from contention for a 2010 Senate race, and also would move up Republican Jan Brewer, Arizona’s Secretary of State, into the Governor’s mansion. Brewer is already mentioned as a likely candidate for Governor in 2010, so this would obviously give her a big leg up for the entire field.

(Hat-tip: sulthernao)

UPDATE (David): Politico is saying it’s a done deal. This is lame.

After the Paul Carmouche campaign released a poll last week showing the Caddo Parish DA leading Republican John Fleming by 10 points in this open seat race, two new polls have been released tonight showing Fleming with a slight lead. Let’s check ’em out.

SurveyUSA for Roll Call (11/17-18, likely voters):

Paul Carmouche (D): 45

John Fleming (R): 47

(MoE: ±3.9%)

Public Opinion Strategies for John Fleming (11/17-18, likely voters):

Paul Carmouche (D): 42

John Fleming (R): 43

(MoE: ±4.9%)

There are a lot of unknowns about turnout here, particularly concerning the African-American turnout for this December 6th election. While the district is 33% black, SUSA pegs the black vote at 27% for this special election, and the POS poll split the difference at 30%. The Kitchens Group poll for Carmouche, interestingly, conservatively projected the black turnout to be 24%.

The DCCC is investing considerably in this race, having spent $448,000 on Carmouche’s behalf as of this afternoon, while the NRCC has dropped $279,000, most of which has been spent on media buys. However, the DCCC is also spending cash on field operations, which is something they employed successfully in other special elections this year (IN-07, LA-06, and MS-01). Just to give you a sense of the track record of the DCCC’s field program, they made significant independent expenditures for boots on the ground in seven races this fall (AL-02, AL-05, CT-04, LA-06, MD-01, MS-01 and NC-08) and won six of them. Of course, the one race of that batch that we did happen to lose was also in Louisiana, but other factors contributed to Don Cazayoux’s demise there that won’t be in play against Carmouche.

The latest:

http://ww2.startribune.com/new…

With 13% of precincts reporting, and 8% of the vote recounted, Norm Coleman is now ahead by 195 votes–a net gain of 20 for Al Franken.  Norm Coleman’s camp is challenging more ballots: 105 vs. 89 from Franken’s camp.

Note that challenged ballots are set aside and not included in the recount totals.

Somewhat encouraging, don’t you think?

GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, who will turn 77 in 2010, is getting a bit long in the tooth. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him retire rather than seek another term. If he does, who do you like to run for his seat? Despite Iowa’s bright shade of blue in recent years, I’m not sure that we’d be able to recruit anyone of note without a vacancy here.

And while were at it, are there any Republicans with a deathwish who want to take on Governor Chet Culver? 5th CD Rep. Steve King, perhaps?

(From the diaries – promoted by DavidNYC)

Update (11/22): Inspired by this post, kite took a look at Senator-Elect Jeanne Shaheen’s numbers in the first district.  Turns out Carol Shea-Porter got higher vote totals than Shaheen in 52 out of 79 NH-01 towns. End Update



Carol Shea-Porter delivered a memorable line on election night, directly addressing the “fluke” meme we on Blue Hampshire have been pushing against for two years:

“How did that happen? It must have been a fluke. You didn’t mean to elect me to Congress,” she said to her exuberant supporters. “Well, the voters have spoken, and it turns out you did mean to send me to Congress.”

I’ve been spending the some time looking at two cycles worth of election returns in the Granite State (chiefly from these two sources at the SoS).  This is some of what I’ve found, with the reader caveat that I’m not a statistician or political scientist – just curious enough about Carol’s second win to poke my head under the hood to see what I can see about its nature.

My starting point was this: Shea-Porter reached a little over 51% of the vote in 2006, and a little under 52% this year. On the surface, it looked like not much had changed.

(more below the fold…)

But the devil is in the details.  This was a general election, not a mid-term. Carol had to earn the support of a whole lot more voters this time around – 176,461 now compared to 100,691 in ’06, to be exact. Moreover, there was a libertarian candidate in the race this cycle who, while not competitive to win, garnered enough of a vote percentage easily to turn this close race into plurality win instead of a majority one if it were truly a toss-up. Yet Congresswoman Shea-Porter actually gained a higher majority this time than the last, albeit narrowly, while Jeb Bradley fell a full three points down from 49% in ’06 to 46% two weeks ago.

So, what changed in two years?  First off, let’s have some fun and take a look at the towns and wards that switched winners from ’06 to ’08.  The mighty Jeb flipped two whole towns – Hart’s Location (29 votes cast) and Freedom (less than 900 votes cast).

The Congresswoman, on the other hand, flipped the following 2006 Bradley wins to her corner:

Barnstead

Laconia Ward 2

Laconia Ward 3

Laconia Ward 4 (was a tie in 2006)

Manchester Ward 6

Manchester Ward 8

Milton

North Hampton

(over 1000 total votes cast for each)

By far the most impressive swings from Jeb to Carol in terms of percentage points were in the voter-rich wards of Laconia and Manchester, as you will see below.

After the flips, I figured the best way to gauge the major shifts in the race would be to calculate all the town and ward percentages for Shea-Porter for both 2006 and 2008, subtract the former from the latter, and then take a look at those areas that were either a three percent or above gain or loss for her. I chose three as the cutoff number, figuring that anything less than that would be harder to argue against statistical noise, even in a well populated town.

First, the towns and wards where Carol Shea-Porter lost 3 or more percentage points from her 2006 totals, plus the added data of the ’08 vote percentage for her, and the sum of the total votes cast in 2008. I included that last figure so the percentages would have more context – big swings either way in sparsely populated rural towns, e.g., are likely  to be less meaningful as an indicator of anything than the same swings in the larger city wards. Finally, the color of “’08 CSP %” indicates who won that town or ward (blue for Shea-Porter, red for Bradley):

Town/Ward	’08 CSP %	’06-’08 +/-% Diff.	Total Votes Cast
South Hampton	50.00%	-12.58%	502
Hart’s Location*	44.83%	-9.72%	29
Effingham	50.00%	-5.14%	818
Deerfield	44.37%	-5.13%	2542
Portsmouth Wd.2	73.19%	-4.89%	502
Eaton	61.07%	-4.83%	280
Tamworth	55.65%	-4.77%	1567
Northwood	49.76%	-4.49%	2339
Albany	57.82%	-3.63%	422
Ossipee	45.04%	-3.41%	2136
Portsmouth Wd.5	69.02%	-3.39%	2877
Brentwood	45.71%	-3.03%	2179

* Flipped to Bradley in 2008.

Next, the towns and wards where Carol Shea-Porter exceeded her 2006 totals by three percent or more:

Town/Ward	’08 CSP %	’06-’08 +/-% Diff.	Total Votes Cast
Laconia Wd.2*	56.39%	+8.82%	1213
Manchester Wd.11	59.26%	+7.27%	2776
Somersworth Wd.1	61.04%	+6.61%	1286
Laconia Wd.3*	52.88%	+6.33%	1163
Laconia Wd.4*	55.32%	+5.32%	1184
Manchester Wd.9	56.51%	+4.46%	3911
Manchester Wd.3	62.68%	+4.22%	2886
Manchester Wd.8*	50.07%	+4.10%	4729
Manchester Wd.7	56.12%	+3.96%	3571
Somersworth Wd.5	65.01%	+3.85%	761
Manchester Wd.4	57.89%	+3.64%	3173
Rochester Wd.6	60.90%	+3.64%	1949
Manchester Wd.10	54.90%	+3.54%	3905
Center Harbor	46.87%	+3.27%	719
Milton*	52.45%	+3.13%	2227

* Flipped to Shea-Porter in 2008.

So, what broad observations can we come to based on the differences between the 2006 and 2008 Bradley – Shea-Porter races?

* Jeb’s successes were small in number, and unstrategic.  Looking at the first chart, you can throw away right off the bat the Portsmouth wards, Eaton, and Albany. They went from big landslides and wins for Carol to slightly less so. Moreover, a fair number of the others are sparsely populated and therefore less critical toward winning elections.

* Bradely, nonetheless, did score some areas that, if I were part of Team CSP, I would want to target for her next race: Effingham, Deerfield, Tamworth, Northwood, Ossipee, and Brentwood.

* The lion’s share of the larger gains made by Carol Shea-Porter from 2006 to 2008, whether resulting by design or not, were exactly where you would most want to have them to build a healthy win margin.  A look at voter-dense Manchester says it all.  Carol gained in eleven out of twelve of Manchester’s wards, in seven of them significantly so, and even stole two from Jeb’s 2006 totals. Wow!

* I don’t know what’s in Milton’s water but I want some of it.

* The breakout surprise of all this data? Without a doubt – Laconia.  Three flipped wards, and major gains made all around. Whoa! Could this have anything to do with Shea-Porter’s campaign manager, Pia Carusone, having once been an area organizer in Laconia for the Dean campaign?

* Look at the total votes cast in the second table.  Carol won a greater share of support from more densely populated areas of the state.  That is an enviable position to be in for someone who was supposed to be in the fight of her life.  In fact, I’ll go one further.  These kinds of ward to ward vote gains in voter rich zones, and in the less blue of the two districts, make me wonder whether Carol might be in one of the strongest structural positions of our incredible field of Democrats to run for even higher office.

Adding: please add what you know on the ground in your community that will help flesh out further how these numbers played out town by town.  I also plan at a later date to overlay these numbers with Obama’s and Shaheen’s to see what that might tell us too.