Month: May 2010

SurveyUSA (5/21-23, likely and actual voters, 5/6-9 in parens):

Meg Whitman (R): 54 (39)

Steve Poizner (R): 27 (37)

Others (R): 10 (7)

Undecided: 9 (14)

(MoE: ±4%)

This is a pretty dramatic gyration for SurveyUSA here, who previously showed a significant tightening of the GOP gubernatorial race just a couple of weeks ago. Keep in mind that two other very recent polls (from Research 2000 and the Public Policy Institute of California) both showed Whitman up on Poizner by only 10 points or less. Among those voters who have already cast their ballots (17% of the sample), Whitman leads Poizner by 55-32.

Senate numbers:

Tom Campbell (R): 23 (35)

Carly Fiorina (R): 46 (24)

Chuck DeVore (R): 14 (15)

Tim Kalemkarian (R): 4 (3)

Undecided: 11 (23)

(MoE: ±4%)

Again, this dramatically different than every other poll we’ve seen, with R2K giving Campbell a 37-22 edge on Fiorina and PPIC also giving Fiorina an edge on Campbell, but only by 25-23. Either this one is a huge outlier, or SUSA is seeing something pretty dramatic that other pollsters have missed. Among those who have already voted, SUSA finds that Fiorina holds a 44-30 lead over Campbell.

In other news, Barbara Boxer has announced that her campaign has raised $2 million since the start of April, bringing her cash-on-hand up to $9.6 million.

As promised, I would make maps of primary election results. I started with the three big contests on May 4th – the Democratic Senate contests in North Carolina and Ohio, and the GOP Senate contest in Indiana.

This diary is a bit lengthy with all the images, so most of them will go over the flip!

But a taste first (Green is Marshall, Orange is Cunningham, and Purple is Lewis):

As you can see, Marshall did well in most parts of the state, with the notable exceptions being the Piedmont Triad, which went strongly for Cunningham. Lewis won four counties, Durham and three others located in GK Butterfield’s majority-black district.

More over the flip…

More North Carolina:

Marshall, Cunningham, and Lewis’ performances statewide:

Of course, as we all know, Marshall only got 36%, less than the 40% needed and the race is going to a runoff. Here is Marshall’s performance against the 40% threshold. A red circle indicates a loss of votes against the threshold for Marshall, a green circle indicates a gain. As you can see, those are some mighty big red circles in Forsyth and Guilford Counties of the Triad, accompanied by sizable circles in Durham and Charlotte.

However, I’d still call Marshall the favorite heading into the runoff: Looking at her performance directly against Cunningham, we get the following. Cal ran up the margins in a few counties, but a large part of Marshall falling short of 40% is Lewis’ strong draw on the African American vote.

O-H. I-O..(Hey, I can spell Ohio by myself! No love for the Buckeyes here…)

Ohio is a story of regions: Brunner did exceptionally well in the far Northwest, Metro Cincinnati, and the Ohio River counties. Fisher did admirably almost everywhere else, even taking Brunner’s home county of Franklin. (Brunner in green, Fisher in orange.)

While you might be tempted to think this looks relatively evenly matched, Fisher cleaned up in his base area in the Northeast. There are two ways to visualize this:

Brunner did very well in the counties she won, but the juggernaut of votes that is Cuyahoga County can’t be underestimated in a Democratic contest:

Finally, Ohio’s next door neighbor: Indiana.

Dan Coats hobbled to a 40% victory over two people who split the anti-establishment, and it shows. (Coats in orange, Hostettler in green, Stutzman in purple). IN-03 (Souder’s open district where Stutzman might run) and IN-08 (Hostettler’s former district) are highlighted.

John Hostettler might have been bounced from the Bloody Eighth by a margin of 61-39 in 2006, but GOP primary voters in the district still seem to like him: Hoss’ support is VERY regionalized, doing the best in the southwestern corner and dropping off as you progress northeast. Stutzman seemed to have two stronger areas: a stronghold in the 3rd CD, and a belt across the center of the state including Marion County and Columbus.

Coats, again, I think got the benefit of a divided field, something you can easily tell when you compare Coats v. Hoss+Stutz (Green being Coats, Red being the aggregate of Hostettler and Stutzman), as well as the customary pie chart map:

Next edition of the SSP atlas: May 18th.

Univ. of Washington (5/3-23, registered voters):

Patty Murray (D-inc): 44

Dino Rossi (R): 40

Undecided: 12

(MoE: ±2.8%)

A new poll from the University of Washington shows a fairly close contest in the hypothetical race between Patty Murray and Dino Rossi, although within the general range that non-SurveyUSA pollsters have pegged it. Interestingly, they actually find “Generic Republican” overperforming Rossi a bit (there, Murray wins 42-39), despite the way that Rossi has performed much better against Murray in other polls compared with the little-known Don Bentons and Clint Didiers of the world. Murray’s approval is 51/34, pretty strong by today’s I-hate-everybody-but-especially-incumbents standards.

There are a few other interesting tidbits in here, such as a 42-37 generic ballot advantage for Dems in the state legislature, and 58-30 support for I-1077 (which would create an income tax for high earners). Maybe this, plus Measures 66/67 in Oregon and Prop 100 in Arizona, may at some point kill the “it’s an anti-tax year!” meme.

The race may not stay hypothetical for much longer, though. The AP is reporting that anonymous GOP sources are saying that Rossi is getting ready to announce, perhaps as soon as Wednesday. His own spokesperson wouldn’t confirm, but said he’d have a statement in midweek. Politico reports that he’s hired not quite a manager, but at least a prominent consultant: former Enron lobbyist Pat Shortridge. Seems like a good time to remind everyone that no one (with the exception of Frank Lautenberg under unusual circumstances) in more than a decade has won a Senate race getting in this late, especially when starting from essentially $0 in the cash department.

The DSCC’s preemptive oppo operation got one last hit in over the weekend, announcing that Rossi’s investment group had purchased foreclosed property in Seattle. In and of itself, charges of buying a foreclosed building are kind of weak sauce. But this follows quickly on claims from the GOP, in defense of Rossi’s appearance at a how-to-buy-foreclosures seminar, that “Dino has had no involvement with foreclosure investments throughout his real estate career.” Ooops.

• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln is retooling her ad message quite a bit, now that it’s come crashing home to her that she actually has to suck up to that annoying Democratic base for a few weeks in order to win her runoff in two weeks. Her new ad features lots of Obama footage, and highlights her support of the stimulus package and… well, “support of” might be overstating it, so her vote for HCR. Compare that with her old ad saying “I don’t answer to my party. I answer to Arkansas.”

• IL-Sen: Jesse Jackson Jr. seems to be up to some serious no-good in the Illinois Senate primary, although the reason isn’t clear. He’s withheld his endorsement from Alexi Giannoulias so far, and now is going so far as to talk up his respect for Mark Kirk (they serve on Appropriations together) and float the idea of endorsing him. Is he using his endorsement as a bargaining chip to get some squeaky-wheel-greasing (like Jackson’s pet airport project – recall that he didn’t endorse 1998 IL-Gov nominee Glenn Poshard over that very issue), or is he war-gaming his own run against a first-term Kirk in 2016?

• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B (pdf): Siena is out with a slew of New York data today. They find Kirsten Gillibrand in good position in the Senate race against three second-tier opponents; she beats Bruce Blakeman 51-24, Joe DioGuardi 51-25, and David Malpass 53-22. In the GOP primary, DioGuardi is at 15, Blakeman at 8, and Malpass at 4. I guess they want to be thorough, because they also took a rather in-depth look at the usually neglected NY-Sen-_A_. Charles Schumer beats Nassau Co. Controller George Maragos 65-22, Jay Townsend 63-24, Gary Berntsen 64-23, and Jim Staudenraus 65-21. Political consultant Townsend leads the primary at 10, followed by Maragos at 5, with some dudes Bertnsen and Staudenraus at 3 and 1. They even poll Schumer’s primary, wherein he beats Randy Credico 78-11.

• AK-Gov: DRM Market Research (not working for any particular candidate) polled the two primaries in the Alaska gubernatorial race (which aren’t until August), finding, as expected, GOP incumbent Sean Parnell and Dem Ethan Berkowitz with big leads. Parnell is at 59, with 9 for former state House speaker Ralph Samuels and 7 for Bill Walker. Berkowitz is at 48, with 17 for state Sen. Hollis French and 8 for Bob Poe. Diane Benson, who ran for the House in 2006 and 2008, is running for Lt. Governor this time, and leads the Dem primary there.

• AL-Gov: Ron Sparks is out with some details from an internal poll with one week left to go before the primary, needing to push back not only against an Artur Davis internal but today’s R2K poll. For some reason, there aren’t specific toplines, but Sparks is touting a one-point lead over Davis. The poll also sees Davis polling at only 43% among African-Americans.

• NY-Gov (pdf): Siena has gubernatorial numbers, too. Believe it or not, Andrew Cuomo is winning. He beats Rick Lazio 66-24, Steve Levy 65-22, and Carl Paladino 65-22. In the GOP primary, Lazio is at 29, Carl Paladino at 16, and Steve Levy at 14. How bad do you think state party chair Ed Cox is feeling that his hand-picked Killer-App party-swapper isn’t even polling ahead of a bestiality-email-forwarding teabagger? Well, Cox’s performance here and the Senate races has been so miserable that the latest local conspiracy theory is that Cox is throwing in the towel on the Senate race so that his son, Chris Cox, can have an unimpeded run against Kirsten Gillibrand in 2012. (Of course, the cart is a few miles down the road ahead of the horse; there’s no guarantee Cox Jr. can even make it out of the GOP primary in NY-01, let alone past Tim Bishop.)

• OK-Gov: I don’t know if Mary Fallin is feeling any heat here, but nevertheless, she put out an internal poll taken for her by Cole, Hargrave, Snodgrass & Associates. She leads both Dems, Lt. Gov. Jari Askins and AG Drew Edmondson by an identical 52-30 margin. (UPDATE: The Fallin campaign writes in to say this wasn’t an internal, but CHS acting on its own.)

• OR-Gov: Chris Dudley airballed his first salvo of the general election against John Kitzhaber. Dudley accused Kitzhaber of having tried to put the state in debt by borrowing to balance the state’s budget during the 2001 recession. Ooops… Kitzhaber did the exact opposite, as he fought against doing so, against legislators of both parties. (Ted Kulongoski eventually signed off on the idea in 2003, after Kitz was out of office.)

• PA-Gov: Maybe one of his younger, hipper staffers warned him that he was heavy-handedly barking up the wrong tree, as AG and GOP nominee Tom Corbett did a 180, pulling his Twitter subpoena to try and ascertain the identities of several anonymous critics.

• SC-Gov: Well, as is usually the case, the most salacious political news of the day is also the biggest. A South Carolina blogger, Will Folks, who used to be on Nikki Haley’s payroll is now claiming that he and Haley had an affair (prior to Folks’s marriage, but after Haley’s). Folks, believe it or not, is supporting Haley, but apparently wanted to get this out there as other candidates have been pushing oppo research on this to reporters. Haley had had some recent momentum, with a big ad buy on her behalf from the Mark Sanford camp and a corresponding lead in the most recent Rasmussen poll of the primary.

• TX-Gov: This is an internet poll by British pollster YouGov, so, well, have your salt and vinegar shakers handy. Working on behalf of the Texas Tribune and the Univ. of Texas, they find incumbent GOPer Rick Perry with a lead over Dem Bill White 44-35 (and similar-sized leads for the Republicans for all the other statewide offices downballot).

• Polltopia: Here’s some more hard evidence that pollsters are increasingly missing the boat by not polling cellphone users. A new Centers for Disease Control survey finds that nearly a quarter of the adult population is simply being missed by many pollsters (especially autodialers like Rasmussen and SurveyUSA, given limitations on auto-dialing cellphones). The CDC also hints at how cellphone-only adults are not just more urban, more poor, less white, younger, and more Internet-savvy, but also less “domestic” and more “bohemian,” which Nate Silver thinks indicates a different set of political beliefs, too. Given the statistically significant difference between Pew’s generic congressional ballots that include and exclude cellphone users, the cellphone effect seems to be skewing polls away from Dems this cycle — the real question is, are those cellphone-only users at all likely to show up in November?

• Demographics: Josh Goodman has another interesting piece in his redistricting preview series of population changes in big states, this time in Illinois. He finds the greatest population growth in the suburban collar counties of Illinois, also the most politically competitive part of the state these days. While these all trended sharply in the Democratic direction in 2008, the question is whether that trend hold without the Obama favorite-son effect this year.

Man, I love this fool:

In a kickoff speech for his campaign in January, Ward used language that closely followed Obama’s 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, and a conservative Idaho blog spliced together the two sets of remarks to show their similarities, accusing Ward of cribbing from Obama’s remarks.

Here’s what Obama said in 2004: “As we stand at the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices and meet the challenges that face us. If you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, then I have no doubt the people will rise up in November and this country will reclaim its promise and out of this long political darkness, a brighter day will come.”

And here’s what Ward said in January: “As we stand on the crossroads of history, I know we can make the right choice and meet the challenges that lay before us. If you feel the same urgency and the same passion that I do, then I have no doubt that our voices will be heard in November. And our country will reclaim its promise and out of this darkness, a better day is on the horizon.”

Ward’s campaign dismissed the video, and spokesman Mike Tracy told POLITICO: “This is just more of the same from folks who are afraid that Vaughn’s the frontrunner.”

So let’s recap all the struggles that Vaughn Ward, the NRCC’s preferred choice in tomorrow’s Republican primary, has inflicted upon himself in recent weeks. First, Ward hopped aboard the repeal the 17th amendment train, apparently arguing that voters shouldn’t have the right to elect their Senators. Next, the Idaho and Virginia Democratic Parties coordinated to tag-team Ward with the revelations that he served as an intern for then-Idaho state Rep. Jim Hansen, a Democrat, in the early ’90s… and that his name was listed as a volunteer in former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine’s database. Ward’s campaign was also busted by the local press for attempting to pass off a six month-old press release as news. When called on it, his campaign manager deflected the accusation, saying that it was a mistake caused by him not knowing how to properly operate his new Mac. And, most recently, Ward was heard at a Republican debate referring to Puerto Rico as a “country“; when called on it, Ward reveled in his ignorance, defiantly telling his Puerto Rican opponent, state Rep. Raul Labrador, that he didn’t “care what it is.” (Sadly, in the modern-day Republican Party, this last one may not really qualify as a “gaffe”, as it’s just the sort of cultural dismissiveness that conservatives lap up with glee.)

All that said, I’m sure that movement conservatives can’t be pleased to discover that Ward’s been cribbing notes from the reincarnation of Karl Marx, Barack Obama. (And, for those keeping score, this isn’t the first time Ward’s been busted for plagiarism: He was forced to do damage control after it was revealed that his campaign website’s issues sections was a copy and paste job from other Republican candidate websites.) Perhaps the most amusing thing about all this is that, back in December, former ID-01 Democratic candidate Larry Grant referred to Labrador as a “Bill Sali Republican“. As it turns out, though, Ward has done the best job of earning the title of Bill Sali 2.0.

It’s entirely possible that Ward, who has a huge financial edge on Labrador and recently benefited from a campaign appearance with Sarah Palin, may find that his endless series of gaffes will cost him the Republican nomination tomorrow. Three major Idaho papers all endorsed Labrador over the weekend, with one calling Ward “unendorseable” and “untrustworthy”. Ward led a poll conducted earlier in May by 34-16, but a new Mason-Dixon poll for the Idaho Statesman suggests that Ward has made this race a tossup all on his own doing (5/17-19):

Vaughn Ward (R): 31

Raul Labrador (R): 28

Harley Brown (R): 4

Undecided: 37

(MoE: ±3.9%)

The party conventions were held in Colorado and Connecticut over the weekend. In Colorado, on the Senate side, things played out pretty much as expected. For the Dems, Andrew Romanoff won the convention over appointed incumbent Michael Bennet. The 60-40 margin, though, wasn’t a dominant performance; it saw him gain only a small amount of ground among party insiders since the precinct-level caucuses, and it enables Bennet to qualify for the ballot without having to collect signatures.

For the GOP, Weld Co. DA and Tea Party fave Ken Buck won 77% (with 15% for some dude Clive Tidwell), certainly a dominant performance, but that’s largely because ex-LG Jane Norton and ex-state Sen. Tom Wiens, lacking the necessary activist backing, put no effort into contesting the convention. Perhaps the most consequential thing that happened wasn’t until today, when Wiens, who’d been expected to forge ahead with collecting signatures to get on the ballot, pulled a sudden about-face today and dropped out of the race. In another blow to the Norton campaign, Wiens threw his backing to Buck.

The real surprise in Colorado came on the gubernatorial side, where teabagging businessman Dan Maes wound up claiming the top spot over ex-Rep. Scott McInnis, the expected frontrunner. Maes won 49.3-48.9, so McInnis is on the ballot, but this to shake up his projected air of inevitability. On the Dem side, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper had no real opposition en route to the nomination. Further down the ballot, the GOP settled things in CO-03 and CO-04. State Rep. Cory Gardner is the nominee in the 4th, as he pulled in 61%; neither opponent, Dean Madere or Tom Lucero, broke 30% and do not plan to petition onto the ballot. In the 3rd, both state Rep. Scott Tipton and attorney Bob McConnell will be on the primary ballot; they tied at 45%.

In the Nutmeg State, the Democratic Senate nomination turned out to be drama-free despite Richard Blumenthal’s self-inflicted wounds this week. Opponent Merrick Alpert dropped out midway through the process and endorsed Blumenthal, who was then nominated by acclaim. Nevertheless, Blumenthal went further than his press conference in offering a mea culpa over the weekend, following some prodding from fellow Dems, actually saying “I am sorry” in an e-mailed statement. Blumenthal also sent around his own internal poll from GQR, which was taken on the 19th and 20th, shortly after the “in Vietnam” story broke and before the air started to leak out of the NYT piece. It had him beating Linda McMahon 55-40, quite a difference from the Rasmussen poll from the same time period.

In the GOP Senate derby, ex-Rep. Rob Simmons was given the edge by most observers, thanks to his long local political career. Well, the convention participants were wowed by Linda McMahon’s money instead, as well as her ability to pull the wool over the New York Times’ eyes; they went for McMahon 52-45 (with the balance to Peter Schiff). Despite earlier allusions to dropping out if he didn’t win the convention, Simmons now promises to fight on to the primary, which is generating rumbles of concern from party insiders.

The Governor’s race had feisty battles on both sides, won by ex-Stamford mayor Dan Malloy over Ned Lamont on the Dem side, and ex-Ambassador Tom Foley over Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele for the GOP. Despite losing nearly 2-to-1 at the convo, Lamont leads in polls of actual voters and, with a lot of wealth at his disposal, plans to fight on in the primary. On the GOP side, Foley won with about 50% but Fedele and businessman Oz Griebel both cleared the 15% hurdle for the primary; it was the end of the line, though, for long-ago ex-Rep. Larry DeNardis.

Finally, a few GOP House fields in Connecticut got a little more clarity. In the 5th, both state Sen. Sam Caliguri and ex-state military affairs director Justin Bernier made the primary ballot, although Caliguri’s 67% puts him in the driver’s seat. In the 4th, state Sen. Dan Debicella nearly monopolized the vote; Thom Hermann, Rick Torres, and Rob Merkle all plan to seek signatures to qualify. And in the 2nd, former TV news anchor Janet Peckinpaugh, as well as Doug Dubitsky and Daria Novak, all cleared the 15% mark to get on the ballot.

I thought this might be a fun little distraction from the normal give and take on poll results and political shenanigans this site usually deals with. All of us on SSP are political junkies by definition, and I decided it might be a fun exercise to list my favorite sites for Horse Race analysis.

A couple of points: When I say Horse Race, I am not taking into account policy analysis, or anything else that is not related to elections and campaigns. I care only about how well the site in question covers the day-in and day-out of candidates, poll numbers and campaigns in general. I don’t care about bias, as long as that bias doesn’t interfere to much with the actual analysis. So, keep this in mind when you look at my top 10. I base this ranking on three criteria, which I call HRR or HR squared, if you prefer:

Honesty If the site has a bias, is it still up front with its partisans when a polling result is bad? Does it try to hide or downplay situations which might hurt the candidates the hardcore readers of the site would tend to support?

Reliability Is the site reliable in terms of what it tells you? Or, through carelessness or bias, does it not give you the whole picture when it comes to a specific election?  

Realism Is the site realistic in terms of what a specific polling or election result means or will mean, or when they look at the state of the race in general? Or does it try to spin the result to comfort readers of the site?

Obviously, my number one site would be Swing State, but since I’m writing this diary on the site it seemed prudent to leave it out of consideration. But I truly think it’s the best, and it’s the only one I post on.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the rankings:

The 10 Best Horse Race Sites:

1). Five-Thirty Eight (Nate Silver). Nate has been a game changer since he started his own blog a couple of years ago. Consistently the best analysis on the web, backed by the zeal of a true statistician. His fellow commentators are pretty good as well, although I occasionally have qualms about Tom Schaller (who I think sometime phones it in). But Silver himself is the real attraction here, and in a class by himself.

2). Post Politics (Chris Cillizza) The Post has some halfway decent commentators in Dan Balz and (with some major qualifications) Dana Milbank, but Cillizza is the real attraction here. He’s not always right, but he’s always interesting to read, and more than often right on target in his analysis. Bonus points for fun things like his Friday rankings, which make his commentary go down smoothly. Minus points for his commentators, which used to be very amusing in how off-topic they could get, although things are a bit better lately.  

3). Real Clear Politics A right-of-center compilation blog that usually has something for everybody, and some good original commentary (if occasionally too Rassmussen believing) from Jay Cost and the Real Clear Politics Blog. Probably the most comprehensive site for politics on the web. Bonus points for their daily Best Of the Blogs, which guides you to a lot of stuff you might not otherwise look at.

4). Politico (esp. Ben Smith and Josh Kraushaar) Let the hate posts begin. About a month ago I read someone on SSP post that Politico posts nothing but right wing talking points. Interesting, because just a couple of weeks before, I had read on a conservative blog how Politico was nothing but a left wing hack job. Here’s the truth: Politico is biased toward gossip and conflict and gets lead astray by its sources on both sides of the aisle. But it’s second only to Real Clear Politics in terms of the breadth of its political information, Ben Smith is a terrific commentator, Josh Kraushaar’s 2010 area gives you almost all the information you need on the races that matter this year, and Mike Allen is the first thing the White House reads every day. “Nuff said.

5). The Rothenberg Political Report Rothenberg is probably the best individual political commentator on the web, and although he can be wrong, he’s always pretty insightful. Demerits for most of his stuff being subscriber only, but what he actually posts on his blog for the public is worth reading.

6). National Journal/Charlie Cook Most of National Journal’s best work is subscriber only, as is true of their occasional contributor Charlie Cook. Cook has also been a tad too pessimistic about the Democrats for my tastes this cycle, although that may be changing with PA-12. But Cook’s weekly column is usually worth a read, if only to give you the state of Beltway wisdom in its purest form, and National Journal occasionally lets good things out from behind its firewall for the public to see.

7). Daily Kos (Kos/Steve Singiser) I know, this blog is descended from Kos, so of course it’s going to be on here. But here’s the scoop: while Kos pugnacious progressivism leads him to make some very wrong predictions (e.g. his guarantee that John Corzine was going to win the New Jersey’s governor race), when he’s on, he’s very on and very prescient. He was one of the first to predict Charlie Crist would never get the nomination for Senate on the Republican side, back in the days when the likes of Cillizza were predicting Crist’s money advantage would prevail. Steve Singiser, Kos’ other main political guy, writes well about specific races, but his real strength is his take on the weekly state of the nation poll, which is both spin-free and always worth reading.

8). National Review/Jim Geraghty – The Campaign Spot Geraghty certainly prints his share of right wing talking points (and is the source for some of them) and like Real Clear Politics has a tendency to believe every Rassmussen polll, but if you can look past that he is often very insightful and unpredictable: he doesn’t neccesarily tell his readers what they want to hear. He also is very well connected among Republican professional political types, giving their sometimes brutally honest perspectives on the races. And if you want to see what the worst nightmare could look like for this fall, don’t forget to check out his analysis of 90 Dem held seats and how the Republicans could theoretically win them.

9). Pollster.com The most comprehensive site for polling information. Mark Blumenthal and team rival Nate Silver in their ability to go deep in analysing what the polls actually mean.

10). CQ Politics/Taegan Goddard CQ Politics is a comprehensive, if uninspired site for political news and opinion. The true reason to go there is Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, a listing of the political happenings of the day with pithy, often snarky and always readable thoughts on what it might all mean.

And the 5 sites you can avoid

Washington Examiner (Michael Barone) This pains me to say it, because Barone is one of the most storied political guys around: the man behind the seminal Almanac of American Politics. Too bad his commentary these days seems to be picked up mostly from RNC talking points when its not just repeating the same thing you can find in half a dozen other places.

Huffington Post The most popular political site, Huff Po has apparently made a decision not to invest much in election coverage, probably because no celebrity wants to write about it.

Red State Okay, so I’m a hypocrite – of course I go to Red State, for two reasons. First to find out who the tea party is backing these days, and secondly to take in Erik Erickson’s unintentionally hilarious writings and rantings. My recent favorite: when he announced that Carly Fiorna had to get out of the race for Cal Senate in favor of wingnut Chuck DeVore, despite reprinting a poll in the same column in which Fiorna was winning and DeVore was a far away third. Priceless. The rest of the commentary on Red State is a toxic stew of angry prose and right wing propaganda and not worth anyone’s time.

Talking Points MemoTPM is one of my favorite sites to go to for Josh Marshall’s always excellent take on the day’s news and the great reporting on various political (mostly Republican) scandals. That said, I find the horse race writing (contained mostly in the TPMDC part of the site) pretty uninspired. I think Josh and his team need to kick it up a notch.

The Atlantic/Marc Ambinder Ambinder is one of the most respected members of the political commentariat. So why does his writing leave me “meh”? Too much of the “on the one hand, on the other,” type of prose. Of the rest of the team, Chris Goode is, well, good, and Josh Green is a rising star but its not a must-read the way it should be, and does not measure up to the great Atlantic bloggers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates.  

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (5/17-19, likely voters, no trendlines):

Democratic Primary:

Artur Davis (D): 41

Ron Sparks (D): 33

Other: 8

Undecided: 11

^{(MoE: ±5%)}

Republican Primary:

Bradley Byrne (R): 29

Roy Moore (R): 23

Tim James (R): 17

Robert Bentley (R): 9

Bill Johnson (R): 3

Other: 2

Undecided: 17

^{(MoE: ±5%)}

In my role as Daily Kos contributing editor, I asked Markos to poll this race because of a string of stories (as well as rumors of polls) claiming that Rep. Artur Davis was suffering in his primary against Ag. Comm’r Ron Sparks due to his vote against healthcare reform. Of course, since this is our first poll here, it’s hard to tell if there’s any truth to this narrative without trendlines. On the one hand, perhaps not – Davis does, after all, have an eight-point lead. On the other hand, that doesn’t seem so imposing, given that Davis has outspent Sparks by a large margin. In any event, the numbers are not too far off from a recent Davis internal, which had him up 46-33. Sparks hasn’t released any of his own polls.

As for the GOP race, crazy Ten Commandments judge Roy Moore could make this interesting. If no candidate gets 50% on June 1st, there will be a run-off on July 13th. As you’ll see below, Dems perform best against Moore, who is currently vying for the top spot with ex-state Sen. Bradley Byrne. Tim James, son of former governor Fob and notorious for his recent “This is Alabama – we speak English” is also in contention. The internal polling has been all over the map here, with James claiming the lead in one of his own surveys.

General Election:

Artur Davis (D): 31

Bradley Byrne (R): 48

Other: 7

Undecided: 14

Artur Davis (D): 38

Roy Moore (R): 43

Other: 9

Undecided: 10

Artur Davis (D): 37

Tim James (R): 45

Other: 8

Undecided: 10

Ron Sparks (D): 34

Bradley Byrne (R): 45

Other: 9

Undecided: 12

Ron Sparks (D): 40

Roy Moore (R): 41

Other: 12

Undecided: 7

Ron Sparks (D): 38

Tim James (R): 44

Other: 19

Undecided: 8

^{(MoE: ±4%)}

The numbers look pretty bad for Dems – but it’s Alabama in a very difficult year, so you can’t say any of this is unexpected. I do think there is something disturbing about these results, though. Sparks and Davis have almost identical statewide favorables – 42-38 and 44-40 respectively. Why, then, does Davis perform consistently worse across the board against all Republicans? Though Davis is African American, he and Sparks do equally well among blacks in head-to-heads with Republicans. But Sparks does consistently better among whites. In any event, Dems should still be rooting for a Roy Moore primary win.

R2K also looked at the sleepy Senate race:

Democratic Primary:

William Barnes (D): 39

Simone De Moore(D): 11

Other: 3

Undecided: 47

^{(MoE: ±5%)}

Republican Primary:

Richard Shelby (R-inc): 64

Clint Moser (R): 14

Undecided: 23

^{(MoE: ±5%)}

General Election:

William Barnes (D): 33

Richard Shelby (R-inc): 57

Other: 3

Undecided: 7

Simone De Moore(D): 27

Richard Shelby (R-inc): 62

Other: 3

Undecided: 8

^{(MoE: ±4%)}

Since we were already in the field, we were curious to know if Sen. Richard Shelby’s teabagging opponent was getting any traction. Answer: no. In fact, Shelby’s the only candidate among these four to have even filed an FEC report – and the 76-year-old Shelby has an amazing $17 million on hand.

Roxanne Conlin, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, begins television advertising across Iowa this week. I’m not able to embed the commercial, but click here to watch. The Conlin campaign released this transcript:

“I’m Roxanne Conlin. Taking on the special interests has been the cause of my life. Like taking on the big banks to help family farms at risk of foreclosure. I took on corrupt politicians and corporations who violated the public trust. I’m running for U.S. Senate to take this fight to Washington. Fight for relief on Main Street, not more bailouts for Wall Street. Because the special interests have had their turn. Now, it’s our turn. I’m Roxanne Conlin and I approved this message.”

I noticed a small omission from that transcript: in the commercial, Conlin says, “As a prosecutor I took on corrupt politicians…” That’s important, because many Iowans may not remember that she served as U.S. attorney for Iowa’s southern district from 1977 to 1981.

This ad is a shorter version of the introductory video Conlin’s campaign released last fall, which I discussed here. It’s a fairly basic message for Iowans who haven’t heard of Conlin, and it makes sense for her to raise her profile just before the June 8 primary. Though this ad doesn’t mention five-term Republican incumbent Chuck Grassley, it starts building the case Conlin will make later in the campaign: Grassley has stood up for special interests throughout his career. I believe Grassley voted for the financial reform bill last week in order to undercut the narrative Conlin will build against him. You don’t normally see Grassley voting with most Democrats and a handful of New England Republicans.

Iowa’s primary election takes place on June 8. Two other Democrats are challenging Grassley: Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen. Most people expect Conlin to win the primary easily. She began the race with more name recognition and has campaigned in all 99 counties since the start of the year. Conlin has already raised more money than all of Grassley’s previous challengers combined. She out-raised Grassley in the first quarter and had about $1 million cash on hand as of March 31, while the Krause and Fiegen campaigns had less than $1,000 on hand between them.

Late last week Conlin called on Grassley to denounce Kentucky Republican Rand Paul’s comments about civil rights. Paul suggested that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate. Without mentioning Paul’s name, Grassley’s spokesperson told Iowa Independent,

Sen. Grassley’s position is that if a place is open for business it should be open for everyone.  You may know that Grassley was a co-sponsor of the 1982 and 2006 reauthorizations of the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 companion to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  He was in the middle of the agreement reached on the 1982 legislation. Grassley also supported the 1991 extension of the Civil Rights Act.  That was the last major amendment to the Civil Rights Act.  It was broadened in 1972, after its passage in 1964.

Grassley is wise to put some distance between himself and Paul’s views. As Assistant Iowa Attorney General in the 1970s, Conlin prosecuted the first cases under our state’s civil rights law.

Since so much has recently happened in Indiana, I thought I’d give my impressions of where we’re at now.  I certainly look forward to the input of the several other Hoosier members here, Democrat and Republican.

Now, take what I’m saying here with a grain of salt, in that a year ago I predicted a boring, “nothing to see here” 2010 political year in Indiana.  Guess I kind-of missed the mark there, but in my defense, no one else saw: Evan Bayh’s retirement, Steve Buyer’s wife’s illness, or Mark Souder’s inability to keep it in his pants.  So, where do I think we stand now?

Several Congressional districts will still be more-or less uncontested: IN-01 (despite Peter Visclosky being a bit shady), IN-04 (congrats to all-but-Congressman elect Rokita), IN-05 (Danny Burton is SO EFFIN’ LUCKY he got multiple challengers), IN-06 (as much as I dislike Mike Pence’s politics, I wish he was on our side, as he’s a damn good politician), and IN-07 (Andre has settled in nicely as my Congressman).

Now to a few Congressional races where we can say a bit more about:

Indiana 02 — Joe Donnelley is all but safe, but in this district, you have to keep an eye on it in a Republican year.  It boggles my mind that the GOP hasn’t found a better candidate to go against him, last cycle or this one.  Let’s just say this about his opponent — they don’t call her Wacky Jacky because she sells quality pre-owned vehicles at low, low prices!  Just think of how far out there you must be to be called Wacky in Indiana!

Indiana 03 — This is on the radar screen, but barely.  As we’ve talked about since the Souder fall from grace last week, Dr. Hayhurst is a great candidate, I think he’ll be willing to put some of his substantial money into the race like he did in 2006, there could be a bloody battle to be the GOP candidate — but the district is so solidly Republican, it’s tough even in a good year.

Indiana 08 and 09 — I would probably see both of these as toss-ups right now.  Baron Hill has proven himself a tenacious campaigner in a tough district, but can he turn out the Bloomington vote in an off-year election?  Trent Van Haaften is a good choice for our candidate in the 8th, but he’s not well known yet.  The Republicans BARELY chose more “establishment” candidates instead of a couple of certified flippin’ loons, so we’re going to have to see how these two races play themselves out.

The Senate Race:

Don’t believe the Rasmussen cook-the-books polls on this one.  I actually feel pretty good about an Ellsworth-Coats match-up.  Coats stumbled to an underwhelming primary victory, and I have a feeling he very well may have lost to Marlin Stutzman if this thing had gone on a few weeks more.  He’s 67 years old and looks every day of it, while Ellsworth is young, attractive, and much more engaging.

If this is a close race, the Ellsworth/Coats map might look very different than the Obama/McCain map of 2008.  I expect Ellsworth to do much better than Obama in southern Indiana, especially in the district he represented.  Where I’m not sure he’ll have as much appeal is in the cherry-red Indianapolis suburbs (where Obama getting in the upper 30s was essential to his statewide win).  It might come down to whether a conservative Democrat from Evansville can motivate the Democratic base in Marion County and the Region.

One other note about Brad Ellsworth, and how conservative he is.  Some people here have expressed concern about his social views.  I largely share those concerns.  He’s far from an ideal candidate.  However, unlike many other social conservatives, I don’t think he’s going to use abortion or gay marriage to hold up other important things.  He’s Roman Catholic (and to my knowledge, would be the first Catholic to win major statewide office in Indiana in a long time, perhaps ever) — and I think while his views are sincerely held, I don’t see him as using them to veto everything ala a fervent Protestant fundamentalist.  And remember, he did vote for HCR.

One other thing that I haven’t followed closely enough to really comment on in detail — I think it is going to be difficult for us to hold the Indiana General Assembly this fall.  It is 52-48 right now, and there have been a couple of Democratic retirements in marginal districts, plus the national climate — this gives the GOP more pick-up opportunities, but we’ll see.  This is important, as with the Indiana Senate and Gov. in Republican hands, the House has put the breaks on a lot of stuff.  Next to Governor Daniels, the most powerful elected official in Indiana is House Speaker Pat Bauer.  While no one loves him (he’s kind-of a smarmy old-time pol), he’s been a very effective speaker for our side.  For example, he’s more-or-less single handedly responsible for an anti-gay marriage referendum going to the voters — not out of a committment to gay rights, but wanting to protect his members from having to vote on it.