Month: May 2010

So, the PA-12 special election is tomorrow, occurring in the Kerry-McCain district. Ironically, despite the failure of the Pennsylvania dummymander (the GOP having lost the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, AND 10th since the 2002 remap and 2004 readjustment), this is yet another district where the GOP’s intentions fell significantly short.

It’s no secret that the 12th is quite the gerrymander, winding its way from Greene and Fayette County in the Southwest, through Washington County, with an arm through Somerset County, a large section of Johnstown and Cambria County (site of John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport, no less), another arm to pick up the college town of Indiana, three distinct sections of Allegheny and Westmoreland counties each (!!), and part of Armstrong County.

The 12th, however, is somewhat ancestrally Democratic – this was Joe Hoeffel’s 4th best district in 2004, and turned out strong for Bob Casey. If you average the four federal statewide races since 2004 (Kerry v. Bush, Hoeffel v. Specter, Casey v. Santorum, and Obama v. McCain), the district’s returned on average a Democratic performance of 51.3% to 46.2%.

We can visualize this as follows (click on images for larger versions):

The Democratic strength is concentrated in the southern bulb around Washington and along the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh, as well as in Johnstown. Of course, connecting the two areas does require passing through some significantly Republican areas.

At risk of falling victim to the “Republican Heartland” fallacy, playing around with my new GIS toys, we can pull some NYT-style map goodness, with graduated circles:

In this map, the sheer Democratic dominance of Johnstown and the Monongahela River towns becomes even more evident.

So what does this all mean for tomorrow? Critz needs to do well in Murtha’s old base in Cambria County, and hopefully stanch some of the Democratic bleeding in the southwestern half of the district.

As with Martha Coakley and Scott Brown, I also made an election-night model to predict results as they come in last night. It uses the similar uniform-swing assumptions (as compared to the 2004-2008 Democratic average) and accounts for possible variation within a given jurisdiction (this is necessary since counties here are much larger than towns in Massachusetts). I’m still fine-tuning the specifics, but expect that online sometime tomorrow afternoon!

This is the first part of three posts analyzing the congressional districts President Barack Obama underperformed in.

Congressional Districts

By most accounts, Senator Barack Obama dominated the 2008 presidential  election. He won an electoral landslide, winning Republican-leaning states such as Indiana and North Carolina which his campaign targeted. Compared to 2004, the nation shifted almost ten points more Democratic.

Mr. Obama improved from Senator John Kerry’s performance almost everywhere. More than 90% of congressional districts voted more Democratic than in 2004. Yet this means that at least several dozen congressional districts were more friendly to Mr. Kerry than the Illinois Senator. I have mapped these districts below:

More below.

(Click here for a much better view of the map).

There is a clear pattern here: Republican-shifting congressional districts are found along a diagonal line stretching from Louisiana and Oklahoma to southeastern Pennsylvania, roughly along the Appalachian mountains. This is not exactly startling news; ever since the primaries, Mr. Obama’s weakness in these regions has been well-noted. The five states that shifted Republican from 2004 – Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia – are all located here.

The exceptions to this pattern, however, constitute items of considerable interest. Some of these have fairly simple explanations. Arizona’s 1st district voted more Republican, for instance, mainly because Arizona was Senator John McCain’s home state.

Other districts, however, go against commonly-held political wisdom. Take LA-2: a black-majority, inner-city district located in New Orleans (represented, ironically, by Republican congressman Joseph Cao). While LA-2 strongly supported Mr. Obama, black depopulation in the aftermath of Katrina made this support less than that in 2004.

Another example can be found in the northeast:

Republicans do better in five Massachusetts districts and one New York district.

This movement stands in contrast to the narrative of Democratic dominance in the northeast. Most in the beltway have ignored this trend, or dismissed it as simply the loss of Mr. Kerry’s home-state advantage. Whether this is true or not, there is quite a lot of interesting stuff to be said on these districts. The next post will be devoted solely to exploring this pattern.

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Politically speaking, I’m not sure it gets much worse than this:

At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it – Afghanistan or Iraq – we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records. …

In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he enlisted in the Marine Reserve, landing a coveted spot in a unit in Washington, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. The unit conducted part-time drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.

Wow. We need to draft Chris Murphy into this race immediately.

UPDATE: The Dem statewide convention is this weekend. Conceivably delegates could nominate someone other than Blumenthal. If someone else wants to get on the primary ballot via petition, they need to file 7,500 signatures by June 8th (PDF).

LATE UPDATE (5/21): Upon further reflection, it looks like we seriously jumped the gun here, thanks to what turned out to be a very misleading story by the New York Times. I’ve edited the headline to reflect this.

Quinnipiac (5/12-16, likely voters, 5/5-10 in parens):

Joe Sestak (D): 42 (42)

Arlen Specter (D-inc): 41 (44)

Undecided: 16 (14)

Dan Onorato (D): 39 (38)

Anthony Williams (D): 11 (10)

Jack Wagner (D): 10 (11)

Joe Hoeffel (D): 9 (9)

Undecided: 31 (32)

^{(MoE: ±3.2%)}

Quinnipiac gets in what looks like the last word in the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary, and their last poll is their first poll to have Joe Sestak leading Arlen Specter (which puts them in line with almost every other poll from the last week). You know what I’d kill for, though? Some regional breakdowns in the crosstabs. Quinnipiac and R2K have both put those up in their general election samples, but in the Dem primary, bupkus… meaning we’re going into Tuesday night with very little sense of what baselines are needed in different corners of the states. The Specter/Sestak matchup doesn’t seem to break down along conventional left/right dichotomies, or even along the class and education-based Obama/Clinton divisions that we saw in the 2008 primary.

Muhlenberg College for Allentown Morning Call (pdf) (5/12-15, likely voters, 5/11-14 in parentheses):

Arlen Specter (D-inc): 44 (44)

Joe Sestak (D): 44 (43)

Undecided: 11 (12)

Dan Onorato (D): 39 (38)

Anthony Williams (D): 15 (14)

Jack Wagner (D): 10 (11)

Joe Hoeffel (D): 9 (10)

Undecided: 26 (26)

^{(MoE: ±5%)}

Although we mentioned it in this morning’s digest, for good measure, here’s the final Muhlenberg tracker. You don’t get any closer than this: Specter and Sestak are tied, after Specter having pulled slightly ahead over the weekend. Somehow I think the incumbent rule (which has taken a beating in the last decade… just ask President Kerry) may hold true in this particular race, with Sestak likely to get the majority of the undecideds. (Also, Dan Onorato is looking pretty much like a lock in the governor’s primary. Wondering who the heck he is? Josh Goodman has a good profile.)

I’m not the only person suspecting that, as reports are everywhere today that the White House is bracing for a Specter loss, and that they’ve passed on giving Specter any more aid over the closing few days out of fear of squandering political capital. The local political establishment is also starting to walk back their tales of doom associated with Sestak winning (silly in the first place, seeing how he’s polling better than Specter in the general); Ed Rendell, for instance, said that, contrary to state party chair T.J. Rooney’s contentions, a Sestak win wouldn’t be “cataclysmic.”

Weather forecasts for Pennsylvania tomorrow predict rain. You may have your own theories about what, if anything, that means, but Taegan Goddard sees it as a plus for Joe Sestak, as rain is likely to dampen turnout and move it more toward only the more enthusastic voters.

• AR-Sen: The White House hasn’t given up on trying to put Blanche Lincoln over the top tomorrow; they’re out with a new Barack Obama robocall on her behalf, saying she’s “standing on the side of workers.” Greg Sargent’s head is busy exploding from all the logical disconnect, since Lincoln’s main argument is that Bill Halter’s union support is an indication of how he’s a tool of Beltway liberals.

• AZ-Sen: I know, I know, people pick up and move on from jobs all the time, and you shouldn’t read too much into it. But when your campaign manager and deputy campaign manager depart on the same day, in the middle of a dogfight against an insurgent primary opponent, it’s going to always send up red flags. John McCain’s camp maintains they weren’t fired but are moving over to the national GOP’s fundraising operations.

• CA-Sen: This isn’t a good time for Tom Campbell to be cutting back on advertising, with the June 8 GOP primary fast approaching and Carly Fiorina still within striking distance and pitching in a few million dollars of her own. He’s cutting back on TV ad buys for the campaign’s final two weeks (although certainly not going dark) and will be focusing on direct mail instead. This could mean he’s running low on money, feeling confident enough in the primary to start marshaling general election resources… or both.

• IL-Sen: I don’t know if it’s much of a sign of strength to release an internal poll that shows you tied, but it seems like the Alexi Giannoulias camp is eager to push back on the meme that he’s somehow been fatally wounded by the Broadway Bank saga. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner finds Giannoulias and Mark Kirk tied at 44-44. For comparison purposes, they also let it be known that their previous (unreleased) poll, immediately after the Feds’ seizure of the bank in late April, had Giannoulias in much worse shape, down 43-37, so it’s possible the worst of the damage has passed as the story slips down the memory hole.

• KY-Sen: Wow, turns out not only Democrats get to whine about Fox News’ selective treatment of the news. Trey Grayson is getting in on the act, griping about Rand Paul’s constant presence on the network and the softball questions he gets thrown. That’d be fine if he were, y’know, not trying to win the GOP primary, where questioning the almighty Fox is an act of heresy. (Ironically, at the same time Grayson was having his press conference to level the charges, Rand Paul was busy appearing on Fox.)

• CA-Gov: In the Fix endorsement hierarchy, this probably slots in as “12) The “Oh shit, do I have to accept this endorsement?” Endorsement.” Meg Whitman just got Dick Cheney’s endorsement, fittingly in an op-ed in the Orange County Register. Meanwhile, a new poll from M4 Strategies (on behalf of the Small Business Action Committee) finds Whitman in better shape than the last few polls have: they say she leads Steve Poizner 49-32.

• CT-Gov: Yet another pre-convention dropout, as the minor candidates jump out of the way. This time it was on the Republican side, as Danbury mayor Mark Boughton plans to pull the plug on his campaign and sign on as Lt. Governor Michael Fedele’s running mate.

• NM-Gov: The Albuquerque Journal polled the Republican gubernatorial primary, which, like many other primaries, has moved into “fast-approaching” territory (on June 1). They find a two-way duel at the top, between former state party chair Allen Weh and Dona Ana County DA Susana Martinez. Weh leads 31-30, while Pete Domenici Jr. has discovered that you’ve gotta have something more than name rec as a reason to run; he’s lagging at 10. Martinez was also the latest female politician to get the endorsement of Sarah Palin this week, so we’ll have to see if that gives her some momentum to break away.

• NV-Gov: Mason-Dixon, for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, also looked at the Republican gubernatorial primary in their most recent poll. (Recall they released the surprising results of Sue Lowden 30, Sharron Angle 25, Danny Tarkanian 22, John Chachas 3, and Chad Christensen 2 in the Senate primary last week.) They find, to no one’s surprise, that Jim Gibbons’ time is about done. Brian Sandoval leads the incumbent Gibbons, 45-27, with Mike Montandon clocking in at 6.

• OR-Gov: One more Republican gubernatorial primary, and this one actually is a surprise: while most pollsters (especially SurveyUSA) have given Chris Dudley a significant edge in Oregon, Eugene-based Lindholm says that Allen Alley is narrowly in the lead. Alley is ahead of Dudley 29-26, John Lim is at 10, and Bill Sizemore is at 4. One caveat: I’ve never heard of Lindholm before today, although they do maintain they aren’t working for any of the candidates in the race. At any rate, maybe there’s some potential for a surprise tomorrow.

• NY-13: Here’s some interesting cat fud in the primary in the 13th, where GOP state Sen. Andrew Lanza was seen going after GOP candidate Michael Grimm over campaigning at a Memorial Day event. Lanza had been associated with running for the seat himself, and says he’ll back ex-Rep. Vito Fossella in case the odd rumors about a comeback come true.

• NY-24: After refusing to commit to his re-election bid back in April after getting pressed from all sides on his HCR conduct, Dem Rep. Mike Arcuri announced today that he will indeed be seeking a third term. (J)

• OR-05: After some earlier suspicions that moderate state Rep. Scott Bruun, the NRCC’s preferred recruit, might not even get past teabagging businessman Fred Thompson (no, not the Fred Thompson), SurveyUSA polled the GOP primary and found that Bruun is very likely to prevail. Bruun leads Thompson 46-25, including 52-30 among the “already voted.”

• WV-01: Political scientist Boris Shor has attracted some good notices, at 538 and similar places, for his work on extrapolating DW-Nominate-type scores into the state legislatures. Looking at Mike Oliverio’s votes in the West Virginia state Senate (where he’s about as conservative as the average WV Senate Republican), Shor projects Oliverio as the most conservative Democratic member of the House, more so than even Walt Minnick.

• CfG: Speaking of Walt Minnick, he was one of only three Democrats to get the seal of good housekeeping from the Club for Growth. Minnick, Gene Taylor, and Bobby Bright all managed to break 50% on the CfG’s scoring system; in fact, Bright got up to 64% positive.

• Polltopia: PPP wants your input on where to poll next: California, Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina, or Washington? PPP’s Tom Jensen is also teasing that another NRSC-backed candidate is in some trouble, in a poll to be released tomorrow. Don’t leave us hanging, Tom!

Kendrick Meek has been the squeaky clean one so far in the Florida Senate race, even as Marco Rubio got his halo tarnished by the RPOF’s credit card scandal. That’s changed a bit with revelations over the weekend:

As U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek championed a proposed biopharmaceutical complex for Liberty City in 2003, his Miami chief of staff received $13,000 from the project’s developer to help the aide buy a house, newly released police records show.

The developer, Dennis Stackhouse, is now awaiting trial, accused of stealing nearly $1 million from the failed Poinciana Park project that was supposed to revitalize the blighted Liberty City community. Nothing was ever built.

The police records show that Stackhouse engaged in an elaborate campaign to curry favor with Meek as the builder sought the congressman’s help in obtaining federal funding for the project. In addition to helping the aide’s house purchase, Stackhouse hired Meek’s mother, former U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, paying her $90,000 in consulting fees and paying for a Cadillac Escalade for her to drive.

Meek twice sought congressional earmarks to benefit the project but has insisted that was unrelated to his mother’s work for the developer.

Billionaire primary challenger Jeff Greene, who just got into the Democratic primary a few weeks ago, quickly seized on this in order to get some traction in the race, calling for a House Ethics investigation. The Meek camp quickly fired back, trying to turn the subject back to Greene’s pioneering (and disastrous) use of credit default swaps.

It’s unclear how big a deal this will wind up being for Meek, who’s been struggling to find his footing after Charlie Crist’s switch to an independent bid (as seen in the polls, today’s Rasmussen being a prime example). With Crist repositioned and sounding many Democratic-sounding notes now, a number of potential backers are sounding ambivalent… or outright gone, in the case of Democratic state Rep. Joseph Abruzzo, who’s made clear he’s backing Crist. The link also lists a number of other Dems on the Gold Coast who are publicly displaying their ambivalence or worse; a key example is former Rep. Robert Wexler CoS Eric Johnson, who’s now about to start working on Crist’s campaign. (Wexler himself has yet to endorse Meek, for that matter.)

Of course, not everything’s a bed of roses for Crist these days. Crist is still drawing a lot of heat for his decision not to refund campaign contributions to Republican donors, and was heckled loudly about it at the opening of his new Tampa campaign headquarters.

AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln refuses to say whether she’d want Barack Obama to campaign with her – and for once, I can’t blame her for being wishy-washy. She still managed to get in a dig at “the far left” in an interview with The Hill, which should really help her consolidate the base if she wins the primary. And graciously, she said that she wouldn’t run as an independent if she were to lose the primary – which is good to know, since she only filed as a Dem. Meanwhile, the SEIU just threw down another $330K on TV ads and phonebanking to support Bill Halter.

DE-Sen: A good get for the Democrat: The Delaware State Education Association, a big teacher’s union, has switched their endorsement from GOPer Mike Castle to Chris Coons. Though the DSEA has supported Castle in the past, they cited unhappiness over his votes against the stimulus (which had a lot of education money) and healthcare reform. Meanwhile, Castle secured his party’s nomination with 70% of the vote at the GOP convention, but teabagger Christine O’Donnell pledged to fight on through the primary.

IN-Sen: Not that anyone expected otherwise, but Dem Rep. Brad Ellsworth was officially nominated by the state party, over joke candidate Bob Kern.

KY-Sen: A shadowy 527 organized by Lexington, Ky. “media specialist” Tim Isaac is running ads linking Rand Paul to absolutely batshit fucking insane radio host Alex Jones. (Paul appeared on the show a few times and kissed Jones’s ass.) Probably too little, too late – and in this case, Isaac’s refusal to announce the size of the buy is pretty glaring, since it seems like a blatant attempt to play local media. On the flipside, Paul said on Friday that he’s pulling his attack ads from the air – which, given how little time there is before election day, again seems like a way to gin up some press coverage. I guess that’s politics.

PA-Sen: An ugly late hit from Arlen Specter, which he prays doesn’t make it back east: He’s running web ads attacking Joe Sestak for his “F” rating from the NRA. Sestak doesn’t have much time to raise hell about this, but this is obviously not a winning issue for Specter in Philly. Anyhow, Tuesday should be a barn-burner, with Specter and Sestak now tied at 44 apiece (with 11% undecided) in Muhlenberg’s final tracking poll. (Kudos to Muhlenberg, btw, for what turned out to be a genius marketing move in providing this tracker.)

UT-Sen: Game on? Orrin Hatch is vowing to run for re-election in 2012, when, as the world is engulfed in flames foretold by a Mayan end-times prophecy, he’ll be a spry 78. Will Jason Chaffetz seize the day, or let opportunity pass him by a second time? I also have to wonder if nervous incumbents will try to change the law regarding convention nominations before the next cycle rolls around, lest they become Bob Bennett Vol. II.

AL-Gov: Ron Sparks, as expected, just scored the endorsement of the Alabama Democratic Conference, the state’s old black political organization. This means that he, and not African American primary opponent Artur Davis, has secured the backing of all four of Alabama’s major black political groups. Pushing back against this unusual narrative, Davis announced endorsements from two fellow members of Congress: Jesse Jackson, Jr. and John Lewis, neither of whom represent Alabama (though Lewis was born there). Not sure this really helps Davis’s “D.C.” image.

CA-Gov: Steve Poizner, who has been making late headway in the polls, is finally airing some broadcast TV ads in the Bay Area, painting Meg Whitman as an apostate to the conservative movement. If I were a mouth-breather, I’d vote for him. As ever, no word on the size of the buy, but given how rich Poizner is, I’d guess it’s substantial.

FL-Gov: Lawton Chiles III, son of the late governor of the same name, apparently wants to challenge Alex Sink in the gubernatorial primary this year, according to people close to him. The filing deadline for state races is not until June 18th, though even if he gets in right now, Chiles would have a major financial gap to make up with Sink. Maybe the young he-coon thinks he got some walk in him?

NV-Gov: Man, this is just an absolutely brutal profile of GOP Gov. Jim Gibbons, who regularly disappeared Mark Sanford-like during the meltdown of 2008, when his state needed leadership most. Just read it.

AL-07: EMILY’s List made a small independent expenditure (sub-$30K) for mailers and phonebanking on behalf of Terri Sewell. Someone from EMILY really needs to explain why they endorsed Wall Street attorney Sewell over the well-known progressive (and equally pro-choice) Shelia Smoot.

CA-19: God bless KFSN-TV! Without them, we wouldn’t have yet another poll of the fascinating CA-19 primaries. Even the pollster notes: “Compared to identical SurveyUSA polls released one and two months ago, the contest is unchanged.” I guess the good news is that Dick Pombo looks slated to lose.

DE-AL: As expected, wealthy heiress Michele Rollins won the GOP’s nomination for Delaware’s at-large House seat, though it took her two rounds of balloting at the state convention. However, opponent Glen Urquhart has pledged to stay in through the primary.

FL-22: Your liberal media: A local TV reporter, Angela Sachitano, has been covering the FL-22 race for WPTV… and has also been serving as an informal media advisor to whacked-out Republican Allen West. Her employer, of course, is saying there’s no harm done, and that they’ve taken unspecified “appropriate action.” Typical liberals!

HI-01: Sue Lowden would be proud: Charles Djou is busy spending time with his chickens, so he can count them before they hatch. Said Djou to Sean Miller of The Hill: “This election is pretty much over.” Djou was later seen hanging out with a bunch of lazy grasshoppers who were scoffing at hard-working ants preparing for winter. You’ve also got to wonder why he’s spending $88K on TV ads attacking (for the first time) Ed Case if this thing is “over.”

ID-01: Hoo boy this is good! Republican Vaughn Ward, the supposed establishment favorite in the race, has fired his campaign manager just a week-and-a-half before the primary. (Though CQ’s Greg Giroux tweets that Ward is now supposedly saying his CM quit.) Read the Politico’s piece for a full account Ward’s long string of failures – it’s like he’s been touched by the ghost of Bill Sali.

Still, Ward might yet win. An independent poll last week from Greg Smith & Associates showed Ward leading Raul Labrador in the primary, 34-16, but with 50% undecided. The general election numbers (PDF) are really weird, though – Smith tested Rep. Walt Minnick “jungle-style” against both Labrador and Ward together. Yeah, Idaho doesn’t do their elections that way, so I don’t get the choice, but in any event, Minnick was at 50% with both Republicans combining for 20%.

MA-05: Rep. Niki Tsongas, in a diary on Blue Mass Group, says that her quote in the NYT last week has been “misinterpreted” and that she “will always welcome President Obama to Massachusetts and the Fifth District.” Good.

PA-06: Doug Pike sure must enjoy being in the apology business. For the zillionth time this campaign, he’s had to walk something back. In this case, it’s a misleading mailer he sent out claiming he’d been awarded a “100% pro-choice rating” by NARAL. Not so fast, says the group – we haven’t endorsed anyone in this race. Egg, face, repeat.

PA-12: A Pittsburgh TV station yanked a Democratic ad attacking Tim Burns for supporting a national sales tax instead of income taxes. A conservative victory over rascally Dems? Not quite – the station, WPGH, is owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, who you might remember from 2004, when they forced their member stations to air a “documentary” swiftboating John Kerry just two weeks before election day.

Undeterred, the DCCC just chipped in another $40K for ads. Also, we mentioned the SEIU’s big ad buy here last week – click this link if you want to see the ad itself.

SC-02: A sign of life from Dem Rob Miller’s otherwise somnolent campaign? Miller has a poll out from Anzalone-Liszt showing Rep. Joe Wilson up 49-34. That might not seem like much to brag about, but Miller’s making hay of the fact that he only has 34% name ID, and says that Wilson’s incumbency is hurting him.

VT-AL: Retired 71-year-old businessman John Mitchell says he’s joining the GOP field to take on Rep. Peter Welch. He joins conservative radio show host Paul Beaudry and businessman Keith Stern. It looks like none of these Republicans have yet raised a dime.

British Elections: I don’t know about you, but the political spectrum across the pond always felt like Anarchy in the UK to me. Fortunately, SSP’s EnglishLefty surfs to the rescue with a detailed explanation of the fault lines between the Labour Party (which just got turfed) and the Liberal Democrats (who’ve joined a coalition with the Tories). The ensuing comments are enlightening as well.

While the range of competitive House districts has narrowed considerably, I am still including all 8 Obama-Republican districts to watch their trends. I also added state legislative seats that are open this year in which the incumbent is not term-limited.

Cross-posted at Calitics and Democracy for California.

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
CA-03	Dan Lungren	38.41%	39.15%	R+0.74	O+0.5
CA-24	Elton Gallegly	35.72%	41.46%	R+5.74	O+2.8
CA-25	Buck McKeon	37.39%	39.42%	R+2.03	O+1.1
CA-26	David Dreier	35.55%	40.13%	R+4.58	O+4.0
CA-44	Ken Calvert	34.33%	42.75%	R+8.42	O+0.9
CA-45	Mary Bono Mack	37.76%	41.55%	R+3.79	O+4.6
CA-48	John Campbell	29.25%	44.44%	R+15.19	O+0.7
CA-50	Brian Bilbray	31.49%	40.23%	R+8.74	O+4.2

Competitive and/or open state legislature districts are over the flip…

Our current numbers in the Senate are 25 Democrats/14 Republicans/1 Vacant, with winning 2 GOP-held seats necessary for 2/3; and in the Assembly 49 Democrats/29 Republicans/1 Independent (who is term-limited)/1 Vacant (Dem seat which will be filled before Election Day), with winning 3 GOP-held seats necessary for 2/3. Incumbents running for reelection are italicized.

SENATE

Republicans (6)

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
SD-04	Sam Aanestad	32.57%	43.77%	R+12.20	M+11.8
SD-12	Jeff Denham	49.85%	31.47%	D+18.38	O+17.6
SD-14	Dave Cogdill	34.06%	46.91%	R+12.85	M+13.2
SD-15	Vacant	40.78%	34.50%	D+6.28	O+20.3
SD-18	Roy Ashburn	31.63%	47.31%	R+15.68	M+23.1
SD-36	Dennis Hollingsworth	29.03%	45.81%	R+16.78	M+14.2

Democrats (6)

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
SD-02	Pat Wiggins	49.76%	24.40%	D+15.36	O+39.9
SD-16	Dean Florez	50.63%	31.84%	D+18.79	O+19.5
SD-22	Gilbert Cedillo	58.58%	14.61%	D+43.97	O+58.7
SD-24	Gloria Romero	53.17%	21.13%	D+32.04	O+41.3
SD-34	Lou Correa	44.25%	32.73%	D+11.52	O+16.8
SD-40	Denise Ducheny	46.63%	28.91%	D+17.72	O+25.7

ASSEMBLY

Republicans (19)

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
AD-03	Dan Logue	34.34%	39.78%	R+5.44	M+1.6
AD-05	Roger Niello	38.81%	38.30%	D+0.51	O+4.2
AD-25	Tom Berryhill	37.51%	41.42%	R+3.91	M+7.9
AD-26	Bill Berryhill	42.71%	38.57%	D+4.14	O+4.4
AD-30	Danny Gilmore	45.87%	36.18%	D+9.69	O+3.9
AD-32	Jean Fuller	31.06%	48.95%	R+17.89	M+26.7
AD-33	Sam Blakeslee	35.70%	40.74%	R+5.04	O+1.4
AD-36	Steve Knight	38.95%	39.07%	R+0.12	O+0.8
AD-37	Audra Strickland	35.81%	40.97%	R+5.16	O+3.7
AD-38	Cameron Smyth	36.77%	39.51%	R+2.74	O+4.9
AD-59	Anthony Adams	34.63%	42.93%	R+8.30	M+4.8
AD-63	Bill Emmerson	37.87%	40.10%	R+2.23	O+4.1
AD-64	Brian Nestande	35.68%	42.24%	R+5.56	O+1.8
AD-65	Paul Cook	36.62%	41.44%	R+4.82	M+4.1
AD-68	Van Tran	32.67%	40.91%	R+8.24	M+2.9
AD-70	Chuck DeVore	30.02%	42.99%	R+12.97	O+3.9
AD-74	Martin Garrick	30.98%	41.60%	R+10.62	O+2.2
AD-75	Nathan Fletcher	30.87%	39.84%	R+8.97	O+4.1
AD-77	Joel Anderson	30.92%	43.75%	R+12.83	M+13.0

Democrats (19)

District	Incumbent	DEM	GOP	Margin	2008 Result
AD-07	Noreen Evans	52.75%	23.42%	D+29.33	O+43.3
AD-09	Dave Jones	55.94%	19.80%	D+36.14	O+49.0
AD-10	Alyson Huber	39.97%	39.03%	D+0.94	O+4.0
AD-11	Tom Torlakson	53.91%	21.78%	D+32.13	O+41.2
AD-15	Joan Buchanan	40.65%	35.65%	D+5.00	O+16.9
AD-20	Alberto Torrico	48.63%	19.89%	D+28.74	O+42.3
AD-21	Ira Ruskin	47.55%	26.25%	D+21.30	O+45.8
AD-23	Joe Coto	51.34%	18.69%	D+32.65	O+44.4
AD-28	Anna Caballero	55.39%	23.31%	D+32.08	O+38.3
AD-31	Juan Arambula	50.88%	32.08%	D+18.80	O+26.1
AD-35	Pedro Nava	47.79%	27.96%	D+19.83	O+35.6
AD-45	Kevin de León	58.83%	12.84%	D+45.99	O+63.6
AD-47	Karen Bass	64.73%	11.20%	D+53.53	O+71.9
AD-50	Hector De La Torre	61.48%	16.40%	D+45.08	O+55.9
AD-57	Ed Hernandez	51.14%	25.19%	D+25.95	O+34.4
AD-76	Lori Saldaña	42.24%	26.81%	D+15.43	O+34.4
AD-78	Martin Block	43.52%	30.78%	D+12.74	O+21.8
AD-79	Mary Salas	48.47%	23.91%	D+24.56	O+31.6
AD-80	Manuel Perez	45.41%	35.39%	D+10.02	O+20.7

Public Policy Polling (5/15-16, likely voters, 5/1-2 in parens):

Rand Paul (R): 52 (46)

Trey Grayson (R): 34 (28)

Undecided: 7 (21)

Other: 7 (4)

(MoE: ±3.0%)

Stick a fork in ‘im? Either we’re the subject of the biggest case of respondent hornswaggling in polling history, or Rand Paul should win this one in a walk. Let’s take a moment to reflect on just how formidable Grayson seemed when he first started “exploring” this race, and when he started threatening to primary incumbent Sen. Jim Bunning out of existence. Little did he — or anyone else, really — suspect that the Alex Jones-brown-nosing, never-before-elected son of Libertarian fetishist icon Ron Paul would knock off the star player of the Kentucky Republican Party’s bench in a primary. That’s an accomplishment for the ages.

Sadly, PPP chose not to spend its finite resources on the Democratic primary. That’s a real shame, considering that that’s actually looking like a real race after several recent polls have shown state AG Jack Conway closing in on Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo. But, we don’t have to wait too much longer until the final poll of this race — the one with the 0.0% margin of error — is released.

Public Policy Polling (5/15-16, likely voters, 4/17-18 in parens):

Mark Critz (D): 47 (41)

Tim Burns (R): 48 (44)

Undecided: 6 (15)

(MoE: ±3.4%)

More, from Jensen:

If Burns does pull out the victory on Tuesday night it will be more because of a continuing gap in interest between Democratic and Republican voters in the off year election than anything else. Critz is actually winning over more McCain voters (14%) than Burns is Obama voters (12%). This race is not an example of people who voted for Obama who are now unhappy with him and voting Republican. But those planning to vote on Tuesday report having voted for John McCain by 5 points in 2008, compared to his actual 1 point victory in the district. And among voters who say they’re ‘very excited’ to vote in this election, Burns has a 60-38 lead.

In contrast, two other recent polls have given Critz a slight lead. It looks like we’re heading for a photo finish here, sports fans.

Bonus finding: Sestak leads Specter by 44-35 among Democratic primary voters in the 12th District.