Month: October 2010

SurveyUSA for KING-TV (9/26-28, likely voters, 8/31-9/2 in parentheses):

Rick Larsen (D-inc): 50 (46)

John Koster (R): 47 (50)

Undecided: 3 (4)

(MoE: ±4.2%)

SurveyUSA for KING-TV (9/27-29, likely voters, 8/31-9/2 in parentheses:

Suzan DelBene (D): 45 (41)

Dave Reichert (R-inc): 52 (54)

Undecided: 4 (5)

(MoE: ±4.2%)

SurveyUSA looks at the 2nd and 8th again (where one month ago, shortly post-primary, they found Rick Larsen losing narrowly to GOP challenger John Koster and Dave Reichert with a big lead over Dem challenger Suzan DelBene. This time, the results are considerably better, with 6-7 points worth of movement to the Dems in both races: Larsen now leads (only by 3 points, but hitting the 50% mark), while more surprisingly, DelBene is probably out of reach ultimately but has pulled within single digits of Reichert — who is avoiding debates, isn’t getting his usual cover from the Seattle Times, and generally seems to be trying to run out the clock on this race.

It wouldn’t be a SurveyUSA poll of Washington without a huge pile of millennial conservatives, and in the 2nd, the 18-34 year olds are breaking 59-37 for Koster (while Larsen leads 55-43 among the 65+ set, up from only a 2-pt lead in that demographic last time, which seems to be primarily responsible for the flip in positions). In the 8th, the age crosstabs aren’t that weird; instead, DelBene is making huge inroads among self-described moderates (turning a 4-pt deficit last time into a 57-40 lead now), and has also pulled into a lead among women.

With Arnold Schwarzenegger retiring, Democrats thought they would have a great shot at picking up California’s Governorship. Then, they ran into problems. Jerry Brown who is the Attorney General and former Governor decided to run. He has material to attack and he knocked other candidates out of the primary who would have won the general election more easily like Antonio Villaraigosa. Then Meg Whitman, former CEO of ebay from Silicon Valley decided to run and brought all her money with her. The worst part is that this is a Republican year, putting the national mood against Democrats. Now Jerry Brown is running a tight race with Meg Whitman but since California is so Democratic, Whitman’s $119 million in ads have only been able to tie the race. Jerry Brown is finally campaigning and after a strong debate performance, he is leading by around 5 points. Also, the housekeeper scandal will hurt Whitman. The issue though is that Meg Whitman though can just write herself another check so she can buy the election instead of winning it. Whitman may be able to stifle the housekeeper story and if she does, it can still be a close race.  This is why I created the baselines for the race. I factored in Presidential results from 2008 and Attorney General results from 2006.

The baselines are predictions for county percentages if the race is tied. The baselines show Brown doing well in the Bay Area but getting crushed in the Central Valley. He also carries two of three bellwether counties. He wins Lake and San Benito counties but loses Santa Barbara County. He also does poorly in Southern California except for LA County which he wins by 16 points. Also, I have the vote totals for each county below too. I had the turnout levels be 65% of 2008. I did not take into account the fact that some parts of the state might have 55% turnout of 2008 or 75%. For Jerry Brown to win, he will have to either increase turnout in the Bay Area or increase his vote percentage there. Okay, here are the baselines and a few links:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/q… clearer map of California

http://uselectionatlas.org/RES… 2008 results

http://www.sos.ca.gov/election… 2006 Attorney General results

Regional Breakdowns

Bay Area:

1:08am: Finally — 100% in. The final result was 28% for Dardenne, 24% for Fayard. Glad to see that a Dem was able to make it out of this jungly mess!

11:12pm: 3,115 precincts are now in, and Dardenne’s lead has softened to 28-24 over Fayard.

10:56pm: The needle’s sitting at 2,809 precincts, and Dardenne enjoys a 29-24 lead over Fayard.

10:42pm: 2,530 precincts are now in, and it’s a 29-23 lead for Dardenne over Fayard. So far, so good!

10:33pm: We’re now up to 2,032 precincts reporting (just over half of the vote), and it’s a 30-23 Dardenne-Fayard race. (Fayard also has a 9000-vote cushion over Kershaw now.)

10:28pm: And in the Lt. Governor’s race, we’re up to 1,560 precincts reporting. Dardenne’s at 31% while Fayard inched up to 23%. She’s got 6000 votes worth of padding over Sammy Kershaw.

10:27pm: It’s done. The AP has called the LA-03 GOP nomination for Jeff Landry, who is beating Hunt Downer in a blowout. With that, the House field is set for November.

10:18pm: Finally, some big movement. With 1,023 of 3,877 precincts reporting, Dardenne sits in first with 33%, followed by Fayard at 22% and Kershaw 3000 votes behind at 20%. In LA-03, with just under half of the vote in, Landry is leading Downer by 68-32. Stick a fork in that one…

10:00pm: We’re up to 321 precincts, and Fayard has inched up to second place, with 22% to Kershaw’s 19%.

9:54pm: 258 precincts now in, and it’s 36% Dardenne, 20% Kershaw, and 19% Fayard. In LA-03, Landry is romping with a 68-32 lead.

9:48pm: The SoS has now emerged as the most up-to-date source, and they have Dardenne at 36%, with Kershaw and Fayard tied at 19% with 71 precincts reporting. In the LA-03 runoff, Landry leads Downer by 64-36 with 16 precincts reporting.

9:37pm: WWLTV is now up to 52 precincts: their tab for the Lt. Governor’s race is 34% Dardenne, 22% for Sammy Kershaw, and 18% for Dem Caroline Fayard.

9:29pm: The LA SoS also has some early numbers (absentees?) from the 3rd. Landry is eating Downer’s lunch, with a 74-26 lead.

9:20pm: Some action from the Lt. Governor’s race: With 16 precincts reporting, Dem Caroline Fayard leads with 33% to Jay Dardenne’s 30%. Kevin Davis and Roger Villere, a pair of Republicans, trail with 22 and 15%, respectively.

This is it. The last primary night of the year. Polls have now closed in Louisiana, where there are two races to keep an eye on tonight: the GOP primary run-off between Hunt Downer and Jeff Landry in the 3rd District, and the open primary for the Lt. Governor’s office. We’ll be using this thread to follow the results.

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RESULTS: LA-03 SoS | LA-Lt. Gov SoS | Associated Press | WWLTV (Lt.-Gov)

This is the first part of two posts analyzing New York’s recent Republican primary. It will focus upon the upstate-downstate divide revealed by the primary. The next part can be found here.

The 2010 Republican Gubernatorial Primary

On September 14^th 2010 the Republican Party held its primary in New York. In the gubernatorial primary, party favorite Rick Lazio was defeated by the Tea Party Candidate: businessman Carl Paladino. Mr. Paladino won a comprehensive victory, with 62% of the vote to Mr. Lazio’s 38%.

In the long run, this primary does not matter much – if at all. By next month the primary will all but be forgotten by even the most politically intense folk. Most Americans probably weren’t even aware that there was a primary in the first place.

Yet, whatever its long-term importance, the primary constitutes a valuable tool for exploring New York’s electoral geography. Mr. Paladino’s victory revealed two interesting facts of New York politics. This post will explore the first one.

The Upstate-Downstate Divide

Picture the state of New York, and most Americans will think of a certain city. This fact has long frustrated the many folks who live in upstate New York – which contains more than seven or eight million people, depending on how one defines upstate.

New York state politics have thus been dominated by the divide between upstate and downstate. Upstate generally votes Republican on a local level; downstate votes heavily Democratic. The divide is also apparent in the battle over whether resources are to be spent upstate or in New York City.

On the presidential level, this pattern is relatively hard to discern:

A look at upstate New York in the 2008 presidential election shows President Barack Obama dominating. While downstate New York casts an extremely Democratic ballot,  upstate New York also votes for the blue side.

Indeed, Democrats have actually won upstate New York for the past five elections. This table indicates how New York has voted in several recent elections:

Only in 1988 does Governor Mike Dukakis lose the upstate vote, and even then Mr. Dukakis does fairly respectably. (Note: This table includes suburban Westchester and Rockland County as part of upstate; an alternative definition may not do so). Thus, it is somewhat difficult to find a difference between upstate and downstate New York when looking at presidential elections.

This was not the case with New York’s Republican gubernatorial primary. Here is a map of the results:

This is a tremendous regional divide. Upstate New York votes overwhelmingly for Mr. Paladino, while downstate gives Mr. Lazio a strong vote, despite his overall poor performance. Indeed, in Erie County (Buffalo) Mr. Paladino actually got 93% of the vote. On the other hand, Long Island Suffolk County gave his opponent two-thirds of its support.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Paladino’s home is located in Buffalo, while Mr. Lazio represented a congressional district in central Long Island. Mr. Lazio was also born in Suffolk County. His long history with downstate New York led to considerable discontent upstate, and constituted one factor behind its landslide rejection of Mr. Lazio.

There is one final thing that must be noted, however. While Mr. Paladino definitely looks like a winner under the map above, the 3:2 split may look strange to seasoned observers of New York politics. Mr. Lazio, after all, is winning both New York City and its suburbs. Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens are supporting him by double-digits – while he is running very strongly in Long Island.

Democrats have won New York with similar maps. Here is one such map:

As it turns out, Mr. Lazio would have indeed done a bit better under general election circumstances. That is, if Mr. Lazio had won the same percent of the vote in each county in the 2008 presidential election, he would have gained 40% of the vote. This is not an enormous change, but in a close election it means the difference between victory and defeat.

This seeming contradiction lies at the heart of another interesting truth that New York’s Republican primary revealed: namely, that Republicans do not exist in New York City. The next post will explore this strange phenomenon.

SurveyUSA (9/28-29, likely voters, 1/12-14 in parens):

Steve Driehaus (D-inc): 41 (39)

Steve Chabot (R): 53 (56)

Jim Berns (L): 3

Rich Stevenson (G): 1

Undecided: 2 (5)

(MoE: ±4.1%)

Not much movement for Driehaus here since January’s brutal SUSA poll conducted for Firedoglake. The big reason for Driehaus’ predicament? African-American voters just don’t appear to be enthused — SUSA pegs the black vote at just 16% of the electorate, down from 28% in their 2008 polling.

Counter-intuitively, though, SUSA’s sub-sample of voters who say that they’ve already cast their ballots in Ohio’s early voting process (which began on Tuesday) shows Driehaus with a 53-45 lead over Chabot. Of course, it’s a tiny sample (just 6% of the broader sample), but that’s not the result you’d expect given the great weight of evidence that suggests that Democrats are facing a steep enthusiasm gap. Might Driehaus be experiencing more success in getting his supporters out to the polls early?

(Hat-tip: silver spring)

UPDATE: Check out this cool map from the 2000 U.S. Census of the largest ethnic group by county.

• CT-Sen: This might get swallowed up by Linda McMahon’s minimum wage comments, which are still dominating the coverage of this particular race, but here’s a new instance of McMahon getting tripped up by those annoying little facts. At a tea party rally in April, she fended off a question about lobbyists, saying “I have not spent lobbying dollars in Washington.” Disclosures show that WWE, between 2001 and 2008, spent $680K on lobbying expenses, including $340K in 2007-2008 during the period when Congress was investigating use of steroids in sports.

• DE-Sen: When asked about his plans for the Delaware race, John Cornyn (after having gotten goaded into giving Christine O’Donnell $42K post-primary) has returned to sounding disinterested: “We will be supporting Christine O’Donnell as appropriate if that race is competitive. Right now it looks like it is not as competitive as other places around the country.” (Counting down to another blast of anti-NRSC teabagger fury in 3… 2…) Meanwhile, travel back in time (for the future of mankind) to 2002, and check out this great photo of O’Donnell and friends (which ought to further alarm some of her more conservative supporters worried about her witchcraft past… did it involve bat-head biting too?). Is O’Donnell just Paranoid, or is she really riding the Crazy Train?

• AR-Gov: Here’s a poll from the one (count ’em, 1) gubernatorial race in the country where the incumbent Democrat is more or less safe. Hendrix College, on behalf of Talk Business, finds Mike Beebe leading Republican Jim Keet 49-35. That’s a bit of an improvement from their previous poll in July, where Beebe led 50-41.

• CA-Gov: Realizing that she’s on the wrong end of written evidence, Meg Whitman’s trying out a new tactic: blaming her husband (the soap-opera-named Dr. Griff Harsh). Whitman denied knowing about the letter, but now says she “suspects” that the handwriting on the letter regarding her housekeeper’s Social Security number is his. Meanwhile, here’s a link to that Spanish-language TV ad on the housekeeper issue that we mentioned yesterday, as part of the SEIU’s huge cash infusion to this race.

• FL-Gov: With a number of public polls this week showing Rick Scott having moved back into the lead, Alex Sink is leaking an internal poll. She’s leading, although by a much smaller margin than the Mason-Dixon poll from just last week that had her up 7. Instead, she’s up by only 1, 45-44, in the poll taken over Sept. 23-29 (no word on who the pollster is).

• IN-Gov: Retiring Sen. Evan Bayh, of the eight-digit war chest, just gave $500K to the Indiana Democratic Party (after having given $1 million earlier in the year). Presumably that’s to help with the three tight House races there, but many are interpreting it as a sign of goodwill oriented toward bolstering his shot at taking back over as Governor in 2012.

• MA-Gov: I’ll just quote DavidNYC on this: “I hope they sell sacks in XXXL size for Tim Cahill to put his sad into.” How craptacular is your campaign when not just your campaign manager but then your actual running mate bails on you and endorses your opponent? That’s what happened to indie candidate Tim Cahill, whose Lt. Gov. running mate, Republican state Rep. Paul Loscocco, announced that he’s leaving the ticket and backing Charlie Baker instead, perhaps realizing that Cahill’s presence is the main thing keeping Baker from a shot at winning. (Also recall that Loscocco had originally wanted to be Baker’s running mate but got snubbed for that, and accepted Cahill’s offer as something of a fallback.) Cahill, pretty much friendless at this point, just announced in a press conference that he’s staying in the race, though.

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo got an unusual endorsement today, from the always-unpredictable world of Staten Island politics. The Conservative borough president, James Molinaro, threw his backing to Cuomo. (Molinaro is a key ally of Michael Bloomberg. Don’t confuse him with ex-Rep. and county Conservative party chair Guy Molinari, who’s the real power behind the throne on Staten Island.) Also, the war between Carl Paladino (last seen going ballistic on the venerable Fred Dicker) and the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post seems to be intensifying, if the latest opus from editor-in-chief Col Allen is any indication (note the intentional use of plural form!). If you’re a Republican in New York and you’ve lost the Post, well, you’ve lost.

Mr. Caputo should check his facts before making charges against Post personnel. In addition, Mr. Paladino should not be surprised by the media’s interest in his families…

• OH-13: Now this is seems like it has some game-changing potential here: Tom Ganley, the moneybags car dealer who’s turned the Dem-leaning 13th into a real race, just got sued for sexual assault by a former enthusiastic supporter who says she met him at a Tea Party rally and tried to volunteer for his campaign. Ganley, she says, wanted her to volunteer for some rather different duties:

While she waited in Ganley’s office, the suit says, he made sexually suggestive comments and invited her to join him and his friends at a condominium he owns in Strongsville. Ganley gave her a $100 bill and told her to buy some lingerie and high-heeled shoes, according to the lawsuit.

Ganley told her he wanted her to dominate her, parade her on a leash and have sex with her in front of his “play friends,” the suit says. It accuses him of grabbing her from behind, wrapping his arms around her, kissing her and, despite her resistance, reaching into her pants.

Naturally, the Ganley camp is calling the suit “extortion” and politically motivated.

• PA-07: Now that primary season is over, we’ve pretty much stopped reporting on union endorsements, as they shouldn’t come as any surprise at this point… except when they endorse the Republican. That’s what happened in the 7th, though, as the United Aerospace Workers local gave its backing to Pat Meehan. (They’re a major presence in the district, given the large Boeing helicopter plant near the Philly airport.)

• Enthusiasm gap: PPP hasn’t been putting out very encouraging numbers lately, but they do offer some cause for optimism that may or may not pan out: with Republican unity pretty much maxed out, the enthusiasm gap can’t do anything but shrink. They point out that there are many more Democratic undecideds than Republican ones right now. They show that’s especially profound in the Illinois races (and that late coming-home may be what’s propelling Pat Quinn all of a sudden), and, although it’s not on their chart, I’d guess also in Pennsylvania, where the Dem undecideds have always been strangely high and we may be seeing some gap-closing beginning too.

• Money: If you’ve noticed that there’s a crapload of independent expenditures coming from billionaire-funded 527s and 501(c)(3)s in the last month, pretty much wiping out whatever cash advantage the Democratic congressional committees had over the GOP committees, you’re not alone in that realization. Bloomberg calculates that independent organizations have outspent the parties combined in trying to buy shape the election: $33 million from folks like American Crossroads and the Chamber of Commerce, compared with $20 million from all of the party committees.

• SSP TV:

• AK-Sen: Lisa Murkowski works fast to turn Joe Miller’s ill-advised drapes-measuring tweets against him, with a new radio ad

• IL-Sen: Here’s another ad with cute babies, this time from Mark Kirk, but this time not about abortion but how DEBT WILL CRUSH US ALL!!1!

• NH-Gov: Wow, the RGA must suddenly sense they have an opportunity here, and they have an ad up hitting John Lynch on spending

• TX-Gov: Rick Perry can’t coast to re-election this time and he’s up with another ad, this time hitting Bill White on one of his perceived strengths (emergency management during Hurricane Rita)

• FL-08: The NRCC hits back against Alan Grayson for his “Taliban Dan” ad against Dan Webster, calling Grayson “a national embarrassment”

• IL-10: The DCCC does a half-and-half ad, touting Dan Seals’ business background and hitting Bob Dold! on pro-life and tea party connections

• Rasmussen:

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 41%, Rick Scott (R) 46%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 40%, Pat Toomey (R) 49%

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 44%, Scott Walker (R) 50%

Scott McAdams’ latest ad, entitled “Tie Rack”:

Another bright, clever ad from McAdams, which is also noteworthy for its effort to claim the Ted Stevens mantle for himself.

I’m not one who’s provided a race-by-race breakdown to predict the House elections.  But I finally decided to come up with my own rudimentary model, with Charlie Cook’s ratings as a guide.

My model relies on Cook’s late September ratings in 2008 and 2006, both wave elections, and compares them to the most recent Cook ratings now.  Relying on late September ensures an apples-to-apples comparison.

The hardest races to forecast are the disfavored party’s tossups and “lean” races in an anti-majority party wave.  Those are the races that decide whether the House flips.

What I found is interesting, and discouraging for us.

Cook’s 2006 ratings in late September had 18 GOP-held tossups and 16 GOP-held “lean R” seats.  Of those, 10 from each category flipped.  Also flipping were 6 of 19 “likely R” GOP-held seats, as well as 2 GOP-held open seats Cook already had flipping in late September.  And 2 “safe” seats from Cook’s late September ratings flipped, those being Boyda over Ryun in Kansas and Altmire over Hart in PA-04.  NO Dem-held seats flipped, and indeed in late September Cook had all Dem-held seats as lean, likely, or safe, with NO tossups.

Cook’s 2008 ratings in late September had 19 GOP-held tossups and 14 GOP-held “lean R” seats.  Of those, 13 tossups and 6 leans flipped.  None of 20 “likely R” seats flipped this time, nor did any safe seats.  Meanwhile, Dems had more vulnerable seats this time in Cook’s late September ratings, and 2 of 10 Dem-held tossups flipped as did the lean D seat of Tim Mahoney due to his late-breaking sex scandal, and in a runoff the safe D seat of Bill Jefferson due to his being a crook.  Also flipping but excluded from my consideration was Don Cazayoux’s seat, which I exclude because he won it as a Dem pick-up in a special election earlier in the year before losing it in November, and that makes it awkward to include in any count discussing 2008 gains or losses.  I note, too, that

Here’s the interesting thing per Cook’s late September ratings:  the total number of seats the Rs lost from Cook’s tossup and lean R columns almost perfectly matched the number of R-held seats in Cook’s tossup column.  In 2006, Cook listed 18 GOP-held tossups, and the GOP lost 20 seats total from the tossup and lean R columns.  In 2008, Cook listed 19 GOP-held tossups, and the GOP lost exactly the same number total from the tossup and lean R columns.

The difference in 2008 was that no likely R seats flipped, compared to 6 in 2006.  The reason for this is obvious:  the likely R seats in 2006 were much lower-hanging fruit than the 2008 likely R seats, since the remaining Republcan-held seats were much more conservative and safer after the Dems already had made big gains one cycle earlier.

Applying the same princples to 2008, Cook in late September had 43 Dem-held seats as tossups, and 31 as lean D.  If the election follows the same pattern as the previous 2 waves, we should lose 43 seats total from those 2 categories.  We also should lose all the Dem-held seats that Cook counts as lean R or likely R, and that’s 10 more.  That’s a gross gain of 53 for the bad guys.  But there are 4 GOP-held seats we should pick up by everyone’s predictions, seats that Cook lists as lean D or tossups, and that knocks down the net GOP gain to 49.

That would give the Republicans a 228-207 majority.  And sadly it’s a very reasonable prediction that lines up perfectly with ALL the published predictions out there.

Here’s where I think we either can have some confidence or where we’re deluding ourselves, election day determining which it is:  when I look at Cook’s “lean D” seats, it’s just really hard to see hardly any of them flipping.  My “feeling” is that we hold almost all of them.  And even on our tossups, I did a quick count and found 25 I’ll say are gone.  That adds up to total losses of 15 fewer than my rudimentary model would predict, and of course it means we hold the House with 222 seats for the good guys.

The optimistic seat-by-seat breakdown is essentially what conspiracy and StephenCLE and others are engaging in with their own breakdowns posted in occasional diaries here.

And I can see exactly how they get there.

But sadly history shows that a lot more tossups and leans flip in a wave, and that’s where we might find out we’re deluding ourselves.

I just hope our candidates and party committees continue hammering the opposing candidates and getting voters to reject enough of them to keep us at 218 on election night.  But I just don’t feel good about it.

Quinnipiac (9/23-28, likely voters, 8/11-16 (using RVs and including Bud Chiles) in parentheses):

Alex Sink (D): 43 (33)

Rick Scott (R): 49 (29)

Undecided: 7 (20)

(MoE: ±2.9%)

Quinnipiac (9/23-28, likely voters, 8/11-16 (using RVs) in parentheses):

Kendrick Meek (D): 18 (16)

Marco Rubio (R): 46 (32)

Charlie Crist (I): 33 (39)

Undecided: 3 (10)

(MoE: ±2.9%)

If, even half a week ago, you’d told me that we’d be talking about losing the Florida gubernatorial race and winning the Illinois gubernatorial race… but, well, that’s one more chapter in the very game-of-whack-a-mole nature of this turbulent cycle. But Quinnipiac is the latest pollster to see that Alex Sink’s advantage in the Florida governor’s race has dissipated. My best guess is that Sink gained some traction while Rick Scott was letting his money take a brief respite on the advertising front, and now that he’s back he’s starting to control the tempo again. And it certainly helps him (since his ads are mostly anti-Obama and about nationalizing the race) that in Quinnipiac’s sample, Barack Obama’s approval is a strangely low 40/56. (Bear in mind that this is Quinnipiac’s first LV-based sample of this race, and the effect of their switch to LVs has been particularly dramatic compared with other pollsters, as seen in New York, Connecticut, Ohio… well, most of the state’s where they’re active, really.)

Oh, by the way, there’s also that Senate race, which for most of the cycle was one of the nation’s most exciting but now, uh, isn’t. Maybe the most interesting number here is that Charlie Crist still has very positive approvals as Governor: 51/43 (and Qpac’s write-up asks if Crist is “kicking himself for giving up his day job”). However, 48% of Qpac’s sample is “angry” at the federal government, and 68% of them are going for Marco Rubio… Crist’s measured finger-in-the-wind stances aren’t the kind of red meat they’re craving.