Month: December 2008

Al Franken just scored a couple of big wins today at a meeting of the state canvassing board. First, there’s this:

Some good news for Al Franken: The state canvasing board just voted unanimously to compensate for the loss of those 133 missing ballots in Minneapolis by going back to the recorded Election Night vote totals for this precinct, sparing Al the loss of a net 46 votes.

Followed up by this:

The state canvassing board just voted unanimously that absentee ballots that were initially rejected because of clerical errors — and the current estimate from the hearing is that there could be nearly 1,600 of them, based on some extrapolation — should be counted, probably the single biggest issue that the Franken campaign has been hammering ever since this recount began, and which really seemed up in the air going into this hearing.

The board can’t directly order the county officials to do the counting, only making a formal request to go back and count the votes and then submit amended totals. But many counties have already begun or finished the process of sorting the rejected absentees at the board’s request, and board members did castigate any election officials who wouldn’t do so, with some of them even leaving open the option of seeking a court order if necessary.

Because of all that, it seems very likely that the vast majority of these ballots will be counted before this is over — and it could possibly seal the deal for Franken. Pre-election polling showed him winning the overall pool of absentee ballots by a solid margin, so it seems pretty reasonable to assume that the newly-counted votes will break for Al. If that proves to be correct — and if Norm Coleman is unable to stop it through further litigation — Franken will probably pull ahead of Coleman and win the election.

This is a pretty big deal, although it will surely be challenged tooth and nail by Coleman in the courts. But if these votes are indeed counted, Franken’s chances stand to increase significantly.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (12/8-10, likely voters):

Arlen Specter (R-inc): 43

Pat Toomey (R): 28

Undecided: 29

(MoE: ±5%)

Chris Matthews (D): 24

Patrick Murphy (D): 19

Allyson Schwartz (D): 15

Undecided: 42

(MoE: ±5%)

Chris Matthews (D): 28

Patrick Murphy (D): 21

Undecided: 51

Chris Matthews (D): 30

Allyson Schwartz (D): 18

Undecided: 52

Patrick Murphy (D): 23

Allyson Schwartz (D): 20

Undecided: 57

Chris Matthews (D): 44

Arlen Specter (R-inc): 45

(MoE: ±4%)

Patrick Murphy (D): 36

Arlen Specter (R-inc): 48

Allyson Schwartz (D): 35

Arlen Specter (R-inc): 49

Chris Matthews (D): 46

Pat Toomey (R): 35

Patrick Murphy (D): 44

Pat Toomey (R): 36

Allyson Schwartz (D): 42

Pat Toomey (R): 36

Every possible configuration of the 2010 Pennsylvania Senate race you can imagine is here, courtesy of Research 2000 for Daily Kos. Arlen Specter can’t be liking what he’s seeing. Thanks to Rasmussen last week, we already knew that Specter was vulnerable against Chris Matthews (they found Specter up 46-43). R2K finds an even closer race in that configuration, with Reps. Patrick Murphy and Allyson Schwartz trailing Specter by 10+ points but holding him below 50%. (Consider this mostly a measure of name recognition at this point; Matthews has a national platform, but Murphy and Schwartz are little known outside their districts and right now are basically “generic D.”)

But guess who else is holding Specter below 50%? Pat Toomey, who looks to be taking the controls for yet another kamikaze mission by the Club for Growth. If the free-market fundamentalist Toomey wins the primary, the general is effectively over, with even Murphy and Schwartz thumping him in head-to-head matchups.

Considering that Specter won the primary against Toomey in 2004 by only 2 points (with a slightly different-looking Pennsylvania GOP, where many of the remaining moderates hadn’t yet jumped ship), Toomey winning the primary this time is a distinct possibility, given a Republican base with an even purer, less diluted conservatism. Specter pulls in only 43% in the primary matchup, which points to the balancing act he’ll have to negotiate in the next two years: either burnish his RINO credentials and support most of the Obama agenda in order to survive the 2010 general, or join the southern GOP rump’s obstructionist efforts in order to survive the 2010 primary. I believe the technical term for such a situation is “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

According to the Census Bureau, thirty of Florida’s 67 counties are split between multiple Congressional districts. (The remainder are all located entirely within single CDs.) Unfortunately for us, the state of Florida does not publish results by CD, which means that calculating pres-by-CD for FL requires digging down into precinct-level results.

Frustratingly, the Florida Division of elections doesn’t publish that information either. However, there is good news: Florida’s county-level election departments almost universally do. I’ve gone through all thirty split-county websites to try to track down this information. I was successful in all but two counties – let us know if you have any luck with Alachua and Jefferson. (UPDATE: Jefferson County sent me a spreadsheet in response to my email request to them, which you can find here.)

Anyhow, I’ve posted links for every set of precinct data I could find in this new spreadsheet. The linked files are in a variety of formats. Some are nicely parsed Excel or CSV files, some are clean TXT or HTML files, and some are thorny PDFs. (One non-split county, Glades, even posted a handwritten chart!) The most sophisticated sites will give you a choice of formats.

No matter how you slice it (and at the precinct level, you’re slicing it awful thin), there’s a lot of data to work with. Miami-Dade’s file, for instance, is over 2,700 pages. As Crisitunity observed, we’ve picked off most of the low-hanging fruit already, so bigger projects are what remains. But as Crisitunity also noted, with a million nerds pecking away at a million keyboards, we can accomplish just about anything we set our nerdly minds to.

So if you want to start tackling the big prize of Florida, check out the spreadsheet and have at it! And if you have any thoughts or strategies for how best to pursue this project, please share them in comments.

The Seminal has a great scoop:

Last night at the Midwest Academy Awards and 35th Anniversary Celebration in Washington, DC, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown introduced Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky by saying, “We may have a special election in Illinois, and if Jan Schakowsky runs, I’ll support her.”

At the end of her speech, Schakowsky threw her hat in the ring, announcing that she was “passing around a clipboard” for people to sign up to be on an organizing committee for her “Senate race, and a basket for donations will follow right behind.” The audience cheered.

In related news, it looks like GOP Rep. Peter Roskam might be interested as well:

Kirk isn’t the only credible Illinois Republican mulling a Senate bid. A source close to Rep. Peter J. Roskam said the second-term congressman is also “very interested” in running for the Senate seat and wouldn’t automatically defer to Kirk. Roskam has a more conservative voting record than Kirk and has won election to a suburban Chicago seat during two rough election cycles for the GOP.

This is potentially great news. I’d love to see Roskam and Kirk bash each other to bits in a GOP primary. And I think, despite Kirk’s seniority, there’s a good chance Roskam could win by appealing to conservative elements in the Republican Party. Who knows – maybe the Club for Growth would get involved on his behalf.

Jeremiah has more in a diary here.

Dailykos has a diary up on this front-paged here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

Original Article: http://www.theseminal.com/2008…

At the midwest acadamy awards last night:

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown introduced Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky by saying, “We may have a special election in Illinois, and if Jan Schakowsky runs, I’ll support her.”

That wasn’t all to happen:

At the end of her speech, Schakowsky threw her hat in the ring, announcing that she was “passing around a clipboard” for people to sign up to be on an organizing committee for her “Senate race, and a basket for donations will follow right behind.” The audience cheered.

As for Roskam: http://www.politico.com/news/s…

A source close to Rep. Peter J. Roskam said the second-term congressman is also “very interested” in running for the Senate seat and wouldn’t automatically defer to Kirk. Roskam has a more conservative voting record than Kirk and has won election to a suburban Chicago seat during two rough election cycles for the GOP.  

For the sake of comparison, here are the PVI’s for each congressperson, (I’m using the old PVI’s and that may be more useful since Obama will not be on the ballot in 2010 or in a special election)

IL-06 (Roskam) has a PVI of R+3

IL-09 (Schakowsky) has a PVI of D+20

IL-10 (Kirk) has a PVI of D+4

Illinois as a whole has an old PVI of D+9.  

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (12/8-10, likely voters):

Tom Vilsack (D): 44

Chuck Grassley (R-inc): 48

(MoE: ±4%)

The Great Orange Satan continues to test the temperature of 2010’s Senate races, and it gives us a pretty surprising result out of Iowa: Chuck Grassley, the longtime and popular GOP Senator, is surprisingly vulnerable to a challenge from ex-Gov. Tom Vilsack.

In the diaries recently, desmoinesdem nicely laid out the contours of this race, and identified the basic conundrum facing Democrats here:

And that brings me to the paradox in the title of this post. Clearly Grassley’s retirement would give Democrats the best chance (some might say only chance) to win this seat. However, Grassley is more likely to retire if Tom Vilsack or another major-league Democrat jumps in now, instead of waiting a year or longer to see whether the incumbent will decide to step down for some other reason.

Challenging Grassley means embarking on long and exhausting uphill battle. But putting Grassley on notice soon that Democrats will not give him a pass is one of the few things we could do to improve the odds that he will retire.

Polls like this one may give the ‘Sack some encouragement to actually pull the trigger — and possibly precipitate a retirement from Grassley, who will be 77 years old on election day.

From the Denver Post:

U.S. Rep. John Salazar will accept an appointment to the powerful U.S. House Appropriations Committee, signaling that he is not President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for secretary of agriculture.

Salazar’s office confirmed late Wednesday that he would take a seat on the Appropriations Committee, which makes decisions on federal spending in the House.

Two people close to the process, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak, said Salazar’s acceptance of one of the coveted spots on appropriations was a clear indication he was unlikely to end up as head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Eric Wortman, Salazar’s spokesman, said an announcement about the appropriations appointment was scheduled for today. Wortman said the Manassa Democrat still might end up in the Obama administration and stressed that Salazar was not withdrawing from consideration for the agriculture post.

“If Obama made an offer, he would consider it, but he sees this appointment to the Appropriations Committee as part of serving his district,” Wortman said.

ColoradoPols has been hearing inside chatter for several days indicating that Salazar was unlikely to get the Ag gig, and a seat on Appropriations is not a bad consolation prize at all — and it would keep a headache-inducing special election off the table.

GOP Sen. Judd Gregg says that he’ll run again in 2010, although our friends at the indispensable Blue Hampshire aren’t convinced of his sincerity. While Gov. John Lynch would top many lists of “dream candidates” to take on Gregg, this scenario doesn’t seem especially likely. Who else could or should run against Gregg? And in the event of a Gregg retirement, who do you see stepping up for the GOP?  

From Roll Call:

Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.) is considering a bid for governor, his office confirmed Wednesday night. In a statement released to the media following questions about his plans for 2010, Gerlach said he was carefully considering a statewide bid.

“I plan to make a decision in the coming weeks,” Gerlach said. “It is quite possible there may be five or six Republican candidates for Governor running by the time the dust settles. An enthusiastic primary for Governor gives all of us who consider ourselves leaders in the Republican Party an opportunity to prove that we have the ability and new ideas that can best lead the Commonwealth.”

This development is excellent news for Democrats who hope to pick up Gerlach’s Democratic-trending suburban Philly seat. Indeed, Gerlach may already be seeing the writing on the wall: after winning re-election with only 52% of the vote against a candidate that he routinely dismissed as not credible and unqualified, he may be in search of an exit strategy before his district’s changing demographics (and looming redistricting) come back to haunt him. And that’s not to mention what a depressing job it must be to be a foot soldier in the Boehner caucus of 2009.

If this seat comes open, it’ll definitely lean Democratic.

Tomorrow afternoon, Thursday December 11, 2008, we have a specially scheduled Progressive Electorate Blog Talk Radio Show at 4:00 p.m. with Blue Dixie Author Bob Moser .

Bob Moser is an awarding-winning political correspondent who has chronicled Southern politics for nearly two decades. He authored one of my favorite political books in recent memory.

Blue Dixie takes you through a journey of the changing face of American politics. Moser moves us through the political maze, maybe landmine, of the GOP “Southern Strategy” to the inclusive 50 State Strategy of the past few years. Bill Moser uniquely ties together discussions about Southern politics through his observations.

Blue Dixie offers a lot of insight and teaches us some important lessons about politics in the South. Moser writes like a interested political observer rather than an academic scholar or a misinformed journalist. Please join us tomorrow as we talk to Moser about the 2008 election and the changing dynamics of politics.

I will be giving away a copy of Blue Dixie during the show so please tune in. You must be listening to win. Use the icon below to link directly to the show on Thursday afternoon.