November 2010 – Page 10 – Swing State Project

Trends in Maryland Pt. 1

So yeah, everyone on here likes to talk about how the West Coast and New England formed our firewall last week, but I don’t see too much mention of Maryland – we do exist, and we do kick some major ass. Therefore, I’ve decided that I’m going to write a few diaries about political trends in Maryland, past and present. There isn’t really a plan to this, I just want to provide some good info that maybe fellow SSPers can use.

The topic today is trends in the Maryland State Legislature, 1974-2010. Maryland’s current system involves 47 legislative district, each of which elects 1 Senator and 3 Delegates. The 3 delegates can be elected together, or can be elected in 1 or 2 member subdistricts. There are really no guidelines for the creation of subdistricts, so they really just represent another opportunity to gerrymander.

The current system came about in the early 1970s when Maryland’s old way of apportioning delegates was thrown out in court. Maryland has had 4 legislative maps and 10 elections under this plan.

In the first election (1974), the Democrats won close to 90% in both chambers. This made me wonder whether Maryland had ever been controlled by Republicans, so I checked the Maryland Manual. In fact, it had – back in the late 1800s the Republicans briefly held a supermajority in the legislature, as crazy as that sounds. Back then, Western Maryland was very Republican, Central Maryland (including Baltimore City) was a swing region, and the Eastern Shore and Southern MD were mostly Democratic.

I’d wager that the current era of Dem dominance came about as a result of the New Deal (and has only faced minor changes over the decades). Interestingly, back in the 70s when the Republicans had 10% of the legislature, some of that 10% came from Montgomery County, while the Dems held almost the entire Eastern Shore and even held seats in Carroll County, north Baltimore County, and north Harford County.

Here are the figures.

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From these graphs, one can see that the Maryland Democratic Party really skated by until the 1990s, when their share of the seats dropped from 90% to 70%. This is still enough to coast by on, but it is somewhat less impressive. The two major loss years for the MD Democratic party were 1990 and 1994; 1994 in particular was a disaster, since we almost lost the governorship.

Compared to 1994’s loss of 16 seats in the GA, or even 1990’s loss of 8 seats, this year’s loss of 6 seats, 4 of which were open seats, really does not look bad at all.

In the State Senate we actually picked up 2 seats, which not only makes Maryland one of the few states where we picked up state legislative seats, but also bring the MD Dem Party to its largest # of seats in the State Senate since 1990. Indeed, Maryland is a very unique state politically, where even conservative Dems can still survive.

Oh, one more thing: Baltimore City started with 11 seats back in the 70s and now only has 6 (soon to be 5.5), but this doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on the toplines – as many of these seats have gone to MoCo and PG.

So yeah, I think I’ll write my next diary as an analysis of Dem losses in MD in 2010 and an appraisal of Dem strength as it stands. Let me know what you think of this diary and if there’s anything Maryland-related in particular that you’d like to see in the future.

CA-20: Costa Declares Victory

Another Dem save:

Democratic incumbent Jim Costa declared victory late Wednesday afternoon in his hotly contested race against Republican Andy Vidak in the 20th Congressional District.

“This has been a hard-fought campaign,” Costa told reporters outside his campaign headquarters in downtown Fresno. “But it appears now that it’s over.”

Costa spoke after Fresno County released new results from thousands of absentee and provisional ballots that had not been counted on election night.

Those results wiped out Vidak’s 145-vote lead and vaulted Costa into a 1,200 vote lead in the 20th district.

Thousands of ballots remain to be counted in Fresno and Kern counties, but those are Costa strongholds.

Mapping the exit polls II – Republicans, conservatives and Tea Partiers, oh my!

Continuing to gratify my curiosity about what the exit poll data looks like when mapped, I was looking at what they said about the number of voters who approve of the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, respectively.

Nationally, as I noted in the previous diary, 42% of the voters expressed a favorable opinion of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, the same question wasn't exactly asked about the Tea Party. Instead, the exit poll asked voters: Do you support or oppose the Tea Party movement? A total of 40% responded that they somewhat or strongly supported it. Very close to the number of people who thought favorably of the GOP. But are they necessarily the same people?

Just to throw in a couple more layers:

According to the exit poll, no less than 41% of the voters identified themselves as conservative. This is, as DCCyclone commented on the previous diary, an upset: in the past, self-described moderates always outnumbered conservatives, but this time conservatives formed the largest group.
Only 36%, on the other hand, identified themselves as Republican, when asked "No Matter How You Voted Today, Do You Usually Think Of Yourself As A Democrat / Republican / Independent?".

I compiled these data, state by state, in this Google Docs spreadsheet.

42%, 40%, 41%, 36% – these numbers are all quite similar. The biggest similarity, however, is between Tea Party supporters and conservative self-identifiers. Taken state by state, the difference between these two values by state was an average of just 2.6%. By comparison, the difference between any other pair of these four values ranged between 4% and 9%.

So how do the maps compare?

Somewhat or strongly support the Tea Party movement

Considers oneself, on most political matters, a conservative

Again, I used the Google Charts Wizard to create the maps, and they're really plain, and annoyingly, I didn't figure out how to include legends. Or titles. If someone knows how to tweak the URL to include them, or has a easy mapping tool to suggest, thank you.

In lieu of a legend, though: all these maps are set to the same scale, and basically, bright green stands for 25%; yellow for 37.5%; and bright red for 50%.

Top and bottom of the hit lists are roughly the same. Texas is the reddest state of all (ex aequo with Arkansas when it comes to conservatives). Indiana and Arizona are up next when it comes to Tea Party states, with South Carolina and Arkansas coming next, while it's roughly the other way round for the number of conservatives. Vermont and Hawaii dangle at the greenest end (or bluest, really), with far fewer Tea Party supporters than anywhere else.

Tea Party – the mild appearance of the conservative movement?

However much some Tea Party cheerleaders like to describe it as a fiercely independent movement with people from all kinds of backgrounds, it is striking how closely the number of people who support the Tea Party hews to the share that identifies itself as conservative. In 20 out of 26 exit poll states, the difference between the two numbers is no more than 3%. The only exceptions are NY, CT, DE and PA, where Tea Party support is 4-6 points higher than conservative self-identification, and SC, AR and LA, where conservative identification is 5-8 points higher than Tea Party support.

That suggests an interesting regional pattern. Unlike you'd maybe expect, the 'Tea Party' label apparently elicits less resistance in some of the liberal states, and less passion in some of the conservative states, than the label 'conservative' itself. I associate the Tea Party movement with irrational rage, myself, but this suggests that, if anything, it functions as a somewhat milder rebranding of conservatism – like "progressive" being substituted for "liberal"?

Tea Party support – only marginally dependent on individual candidates?

You'd expect the presence of local Tea Party champions running heated Senate campaigns to have an impact on how many people support the Tea Party movement, but it doesn't necessarily seem so. Rand Paul, Ayotte, Rubio, Johnson, Buck, Angle and McDonnell ran in very different states, but the level of Tea Party support in their states in all of them was a fairly consistent 35-43%. Neither does there seem to be much pattern in how Tea Party support in those states compares with sympathy for the GOP or conservative self-identification.

In WI, NH and KY, the homestates of Johnson, Ayotte and Paul, Tea Party support badly lagged GOP favorability (map below). But in Ken Buck's Colorado, it was GOP favorability that lagged, and in the homestates of McDonnell and Angle, the posterboys of Tea Party failure, the numbers pretty much aligned.

Compare Tea Party support with conservative self-identification and the dice roll differently. In Nevada, conservatives outnumbered Tea Partiers. But before you count that as a sign of Angle's weakness, the number of Tea Party supporters in Delaware, O'Donnel's home state, clearly outnumbered the number of conservatives.

In short, it's possible that these candidates collectively dragged down the numbers of Tea Party supporters, conservatives as well as GOP sympathizers, but they don't seem to have particularly affected the Tea Party's standing in particular. Or at least any such effect is drowned out by more structural factors determining conservative and GOP affinities.

More maps:

Favorable opinion of the Republican Party

Usually thinks of oneself as a Republican

There's a striking difference between this pair of maps, but it's a pretty obvious one: there's a big gulf between expressing a favorable opinion of the GOP and actually thinking of oneself as a Republican.

The difference is by far the biggest in Arkansas and New Hampshire, presumably for very different reasons. (New Hampshire has a big tradition of voters identifying as Independents, while Arkansas still presumably has many Dixie Democrats. Or at least former Dixie Dems who've started considering themselves Independents but aren't quite ready to embrace the GOP, even if they've come to have a favorable opinion of it.) In Arkansas, 51% of the voters thought favorably of the GOP, but only 29% identified themselves as Republican. In New Hampshire, that was 48% and 30%. And in no less than 11 of the 21 states where both questions were asked, 9-12% more people expressed a favorable opinion of the GOP than identified themselves as a Republican. Theoretically, I suppose, could you see those states as possible "growth areas" for the GOP?

California, Oregon and Pennsylvania form an interesting contrast. While more Pennsylvanians identified themselves as Republican (37%) than did Oregonians (27%) and Californians (30%), Republican appeal in all three states is basically limited purely to those actively identifying themselves as such. In each state, there's just 3-4% voters who doesn't identify as Republican but could, judging on their favorable opinion of the party, soon start to.

Republican self-identification vs the other maps

When you look at the map of the GOP's favorability rating, while the absolute values are clearly lower than in the maps further above on conservatives and Tea Party supporters, there's at least a striking similarity in the relative order of things. No matter whether you look at the most conservative, Republican or Tea Party-friendly states, among those on which exit polls were published, Arkansas, Texas and South-Carolina are in the top 5. Among the states where all three questions were asked, California is always in the bottom 3, and Oregon and Delaware are in the bottom 5.*

The map showing Republican self-identification, on the other hand, doesn't quite match up. Most strikingly, Arkansas is only the shared 19th most Republican state. Considering that there are almost double as many conservatives as there are Republicans in the state, about a third of the Democrats and Independents in Arkansas must describe themselves as conservative. The same must have held true in other Southern states not long ago, but judging on the numbers for South-Carolina, Louisiana and even Missouri, many more conservatives there have already just started identifying themselves as Republican too.

Tea Party support vs Republican favorability

While the national difference between Republican favorability and Tea Party support was small, there are only a few exit poll states where Tea Party support was higher than GOP favorability. They were Oregon (36% vs 30%), Colorado (41% vs 38%), Washington (37% vs 35%), and two states where the difference was just one point (California and Ohio). The West Coast seems to like the Tea Party better than the GOP – though it doesn't seem to particularly like either. Next up in line are Arizona, where GOP favorability was just 1 point higher than Tea Party support, and Nevada, Pennsylvania and Delaware, where it was 2 points higher. Still a lot of Western states in this list.

There was a larger number of exit poll states where Republican favorability was the higher value, and here the difference was sometimes large. In South Carolina, GOP favorability was ten points higher than Tea Party support (53% vs 43%), though both numbers were above-average. In Iowa (45% vs 36%) and Wisconsin (46% vs 37%) it was nine points higher; in Arkansas (51% vs 43%) it was eight.

I was quickly tempted to say something about the Upper Midwest and the South being less specifically Tea Party-friendly than the West, or something, but that's wrong of course. The Tea Party movement is more popular in Arkansas and South-Carolina than in CO, NV, WA, OR or CA. It's just that the difference between the values for the GOP and the Tea Party are most in the GOP's favour in SC, AR, IA and WI, and in the TP's favour in WA, OR and CO.

Basically, it seems that much like was the case with the "conservative" vs the "Tea Party" labels, the Republican Party brand, perhaps surprisingly, is somewhat more polarizing than that of the Tea Party movement. The standard deviation for the state-by-state GOP favorability numbers is 6.3 and that for conservative self-identification is 7.1; whereas for Tea Party support it's a somewhat smaller 5.3.

(For the Democratic Party's favorability ratings, meanwhile, it's just 4.4, suggesting that the party's support is more evenly spread across state than the GOP's. Part of that is surely due to Dem-voting minorities in otherwise red states, but either way it can't be strategically advantageous, can it, when it comes to winning Senate seats and Electoral Votes for the Presidency? It means that more votes get 'lost' in hopeless states, though I suppose it also means that fewer excess votes are wasted in safe states.)

————

* OK, cheating just the smallest bit: on the conservative share of the electorate, Oregon is shared 5th/6th/7th lowest.

A Regional Party Limited to the South: The Democrats in the 1920s, Part 2

This is the second part of three posts analyzing the Democratic Party’s struggles during the 1920s, when it lost three consecutive presidential elections by landslide margins. This will focus upon the 1920 and 1924 presidential election, when white ethnic immigrants abandoned the Democratic Party.

The last part can be found here.

The 1920 Presidential Election

The Democratic Party of the early twentieth century was composed of two bases (both of which no longer vote Democratic). These were Southern whites and immigrant, often Catholic, whites from places such as Ireland and Italy. Southern whites voted Democratic due to the memory of the Civil War and could be reliably whipped up with race-baiting appeals. Immigrant ethnic whites, on the other hand, saw the Democratic Party as a vehicle of defense against the dominant, Republican-voting WASP majority in the Northeast and Midwest.

The two groups had precious little in common, save distrust of the dominant Republican Party. One of the constituencies would often only lukewarmly support the national Democratic candidate (this was usually the immigrant camp, because without Southern whites the Democratic Party was nothing).

In 1920, ethnic whites walked out of the Democratic Party.

More below.

The city machines at Tammany Hall and others did not just fail to fully back Democratic candidate James M. Cox; they outright refused to support him.

This was entirely the fault of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. The previous year, Mr. Wilson had delicately stated that:

…there is an organized propaganda against the League of Nations and against the treaty proceeding from exactly the same sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threatened this country here and there with disloyalty, and I want to say — I cannot say too often — any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.

If I can catch any man with a hyphen in this great contest I will know that I have got an enemy of the Republic.

The political stupidity of this quote cannot be overstated. The “man with a hyphen” was not just a politically influential constituency; in states like New York, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin he was the Democratic Party.

This, along with Mr. Wilson making the 1920 election a referendum on his extremely unpopular League of Nations, led to the result in the map above.

Democratic candidate James M. Cox lost everywhere outside the Solid South. He got barely one-fourth of the vote in New York City, less than one-fourth in Chicago, less than one-fifth in Detroit, and so on throughout all the great non-Southern cities. In the “hyphen-heavy” states of Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, Mr. Cox failed to break the 20% mark. Even in the Solid South, Republicans broke 30% of the vote – for the first time since 1908, when disenfranchisement of blacks was complete.

All in all, Democratic candidate James M. Cox lost by 26.2% – the greatest defeat in the popular vote, ever.

The 1924 Presidential Election

In 1924, the Democratic Party nominated a man with the distinction of being more conservative than the Republican.

Little known John W. Davis was not just a social conservative who endorsed segregation – that was true for all Southern Democrats at the time – but also an economic conservative. Mr. Davis believed in small government, states rights, and would go on to oppose President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Mr. Davis was nominated as a compromise candidate after one of the longest and nastiest Democratic conventions in history – a bitter fight with immigrant whites from big cities against Southern and Western rural whites. By the time the convention had ended, it was clear that Democrats didn’t stand a chance of winning the 1924 presidential election. After Mr. Davis’s nomination, ethnic whites walked out once again.

In 1924, Democrats lost big again. They lost by more than Walter Mondale against Ronald Reagan. They lost by more than Herbert Hoover against FDR. All in all, the Democratic candidate lost by the second greatest popular margin in American history, right after 1920.

Mr. Davis won between one-fourth and one-third of the votes. Southern whites stayed loyal; indeed, he did a quite bit better than Mr. Cox in 1920 in the Solid South.

White ethnics did not. In 1920 white immigrants had sat out the election. This time they voted for ~~Governor~~ Senator Robert La Follette, who was the only liberal candidate in the race. Mr. La Follette did better than the Democratic candidate in a dozen states.

Everybody else voted for Republican candidate Calvin Coolidge. Mr. Davis lost almost every single non-Southern city, including all five boroughs of New York (the last time a Democratic presidential candidate would lose New York). In Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco the Democratic candidate got less than 10% of the vote.

All in all, Mr. Davis failed to break 30% in more than half the states:

In the aftermath of this election – a second disastrous election in a row for Democrats – it was clear that a change in strategy was needed. For two elections in a row, Democrats had won Southern whites and nobody else.

In 1928, therefore, the Democratic Party nominated the candidate of the white ethnics to run for president. This time it was the turn of the Southern whites to walk out.

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

SSP Daily Digest: 11/10

• AK-Sen: The big news out of Alaska is that Joe Miller is now suing to disenfranchise bad spellers. It’s probably his only path to victory, forcing the state to adhere to a strict absolutely-spelled-correctly standard for “Lisa Murkowski” instead of a looser standard of analyzing voter intent. Miller’s lawyer is asking a federal judge for a hearing this afternoon, seeing as how the state is planning to begin the process of checking and counting the 92,000 write-in ballots cast. Miller did get a leg up from the absentee count (of 27,000 additional ballots) issued yesterday, though. Murkowski went into yesterday leading by 13,439 votes (a 7% spread) and came out leading by 11,333 (a 5% spread). That’s not the end of the absentee and early-vote count, either; another 12,000 remain to be counted, on top of all the write-in analysis.

• MA-Sen: I wonder just what the heck Marty Meehan is planning to do with his millions of dollars ($4.5 mil — compare that with likely candidate Mike Capuano’s $91K CoH!) in cash on hand, currently getting moldy in some bank vault. The ex-Rep. and current university president deferred on yet another Senate run, saying he won’t challenge Scott Brown in 2012. At any rate, even with the most-loaded potential challenger out (short of Some Millionaire showing up and swamping the race with self-funding), the Beltway CW still is still treating Scott Brown as the most endangered GOPer for 2012, and that seems to have gotten amplified with the generally-strong top-to-bottom performance of Dems last week in the Bay State, suggesting that the Senate special election may have operated in its own little unusual vacuum.

• ME-Sen: Turnabout’s fair play, I guess. With the DC press trying to drum up some drama out of (possibly non-existent) GOP overtures to get Joe Manchin and Ben Nelson to switch parties, now there’s word from, uh, somebody about Dem outreach to Olympia Snowe to get her to switch (and avoid a likely teabagging in a 2012 GOP primary).

• MT-Sen: We mentioned businessman and losing 2008 Lt. Gov. candidate Steve Daines yesterday as a potential challenger to Jon Tester, and it looks like he’s already moving full speed ahead. He’ll be announcing his bid this Saturday.

• NE-Sen: Right on cue, here’s the first Republican-sponsored poll of the 2012 cycle showing Ben Nelson in deep shit. The poll, commissioned by the state Republican party from Voter/Consumer Research, finds Nelson trailing the one announced candidate, AG Jon Bruning, by a 50-35 margin. (He also trails Generic R 42-32, and Gov. Dave Heineman 59-31, although Heineman has already said he’s not running.) Interestingly, he’s still above water on his approvals, which are 50/41… but it’s a red enough state that that may not be enough to save him.

• NV-Sen: PPP is turning its attention to 2012 already, and its first poll is a juicy place to start: the GOP primary in Nevada. This is something of a surprise, at least upending the conventional wisdom: John Ensign has significant leads over both his highest-profile potential primary opponents. He beats Rep. Dean Heller 45-37, and Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki 55-27. Those leads may not hold up across a campaign, though, as Ensign has much higher name rec than either opponent. He’s at 64/23 (remember, this is only Republicans in the sample, who, if David Vitter is any indication, are firm believers in the principle of IOKIYAR), while Heller is at 56/8 and Krolicki is at 45/9.

• RI-Sen: The names are also floating up for potential Republican challengers to Sheldon Whitehouse, with so-so approvals but not considered terribly vulnerable in his blue-state perch. State GOP chair Giovanni Cicione is publicly weighing a bid (although he’s also saying that he’s pushing outgoing Gov. Don Carcieri to make a bid, though he doesn’t sound interested). Two other possibilities mentioned in the article include Warwick mayor Scott Avedisian and Cranston mayor Allen Fung.

• WV-Sen: This whole thing is getting a little too meta for me: with the perception out there of having gotten publicly burned on their attempts to get Joe Manchin to switch parties, now NRSC spokespersons are trying to say that the whole rumors of the outreach (which may or may not have actually happened) originated with the Manchin camp, so that he can bolster his bipartisan credentials. I can’t decide whether the two camps are truly playing 3-D chess with each other or it’s just devolved into high school mean-girls behavior at this point.

• CA-11, CA-20: Jerry McNerney keeps adding to his lead, making this one looking likely to get called soon. He’s now up by 2,269 votes after a batch came in from blue Alameda County. We don’t have any specific new numbers to report for you further south in the 20th, but the long-awaited dump of Fresno County ballots (where Jim Costa has led by a significant margin over Andy Vidak) is scheduled for later today, which is expected to push Costa into the lead (Vidak currently leads by only 145 right now, thanks to his home base of Kings County).

• FL-22: Allen West’s hiring of a controversial talk show host as his chief of staff (payback for her constant boosterism of his campaign) is not only great fodder for the sheer litany of terrible things she’s said (click the link for more), but it also may run into ethical and even FCC problems if she keeps her other job as radio host. The counsel for the House Committee on Standards of Ethical Conduct said the situation is “potentially problematic” because of conflicts of interest, and a different expert says it may also pave the way for demands for equal time on the air for whoever West’s 2012 opponent is.

• PA-11: You may remember Corey O’Brien, the Lackawanna County Commissioner who lost the Dem primary in the 11th to Paul Kanjorski back in May. With the elderly Kanjorski not likely to try for a rematch, O’Brien looks to be in the driver’s seat with regards to the Dem nomination for 2012 to go up against Lou Barletta in this D+4 district (though that’s subject to the redistricting pen, of course). The buzz is he’s a near-definite candidate, although he might face a primary bout with Scranton mayor (and, briefly, gubernatorial candidate) Chris Doherty.

• DCCC: In case you didn’t know, lawyers get really expensive really fast. One of Chris Van Hollen’s last acts as DCCC head is to send out a fundraising blast to donors, trying to round up $100K to cover potential recount activity in (according to him) nine different races.

• House: Nate Silver’s new piece matches what I’ve seen a lot of in the comments (and my own perceptions, as well): the idea that 2012 should be a year of happy hunting for Dems in the House (although, especially with redistricting giving a boost to the GOP, a heavy lift to get back into the majority). The balance of mismatched seats has switched dramatically: now there are 12 Dems in seats that Obama lost (down from 50), and 55 GOPers in seats that Obama won (up from 28). Even if that’s old news to you, the array of graphs is worth checking out.

• IA-St. Sen.: It looks like things have been finalized in Iowa, and the state Senate is at least one closely-decided legislative chamber that we pulled out of the fire. Democrat Tod Bowman’s 71-vote victory in SD-13 gives the Dems 26-24 control over the body. (One other outstanding race, where the GOPer is narrowly leading, could also break for the Dems.) That leaves the Oregon state Senate as the chamber that’s still probably the biggest question mark.

• Chicago mayor: We’ve been meaning for a while now to do a comprehensive who’s-in-who’s-out post about the mayoral race in Chicago, but here’s a potentially big name that deserves immediate mention… if only because he’s in the House, and if there’s one thing SSP is all about at this point in the cycle, it’s the Open Seat Watch. Rep. Danny Davis of IL-07 on Chicago’s West Side (who’d previously flirted with and decided against a bid for Cook Co. Executive) is now expressing interest in the race, saying he’s “ready to run.” In a boost to his prospects, a coalition of black religious and community leaders that had previously supported ex-Sen. Carol Mosely Braun for the job has reversed course, and is now backing Davis.

Redistricting 2010: Who Controls What

Sourced partially from StateVote from the National Conference of State Legislatures (PDF). Note that “seats” refers to “projected seats after 2010”.

A few notes:

Arizona: Uses a bipartisan commission.
California: Will be done by commission following passage of Prop 20.
Florida: Amendment 6 mandates compactness and community of interest standards.
Georgia: Underwent mid-decade redistricting under GOP control.
Iowa: Uses a nonpartisan commission, but the legislature has veto power.
New Jersey: Uses a bipartisan commission with a 11th wild card member.
New York: Control of the State Senate remains uncertain, with three seats still in the balance.
North Carolina: Governor Bev Perdue does not have veto power, meaning the GOP controls the entire process.
Oregon: Control of the State Senate remains uncertain, with two seats still in the balance.
Texas: Underwent mid-decade redistricting under GOP control.
Washington: Uses a bipartisan commission. Control of the State Senate remains uncertain, with three seats still in the balance.

Notably, we’re not that screwed. Control of the FLOHPA (+MI) set of swing states remains under the GOP trifecta, just as it was in 2000.

Redistricting Roundup: 11/10

Redistricting will undoubtedly be a top – if not the top – topic around here over the next year or so. To get your engines started, here are a few early items from around the nation:

Indiana: Gov. Mitch Daniels released his list of legislative priorities for 2011, and it looks like he’s trying to burnish his bi-(or non-)partisan cred with this plank:

“Indiana must have a fair redistricting based on geographic and community of interest lines – not politics. And I’ll only sign one that meets that test.”

Daniels’ commitment will be seriously tested on this part of his platform, seeing as the GOP now controls both houses of the state lege (in addition to the governor’s mansion, of course). Incoming House speaker Brian Bosma also claims he’s a supporter of such reforms. We shall see.

Alabama: Meanwhile, down in Alabama, Republicans also control the trifecta – and seeing as it’s their first time, they’re licking their chops. As the Birmingham News puts it:

The likely result is a new congressional map that protects all six Republican congressmen and keeps intact the majority black district home to the only Democrat, according to U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Saks.

Here’s one stab at such a map. Can you do better?

Illinois: The upper hand is on the other foot in Illinois, one of the few redistricting bright spots for Dems. With Team Blue in charge of the trifecta here – and the Prairie State on track to lose a seat in reapportionment – the only question is which Republican freshman will get tossed in the woodchipper. Sadly, we have quite a few to pick from: Randy Hultgren, Adam Kinzinger, Bobby Schilling, Jim Walsh, and Bob Dold! But it’ll still be satisfying to see one of these guys get axed. (And if we’re really lucky, two of `em will get tossed into a single district together.)

New Jersey: For whatever reason, New Jersey chooses to be a freak state, holding its state-level elections in odd-numbered years. This is good news for horserace bloggers, but probably a pain in the ass for the folks in charge of drawing state lege district lines. They have to produce a map by Feb. 1 – which is barely a month after the Census Bureau will releases its state-level population data, and a month or so before they release redistricting-level data. In any event, I suggest you read the linked story, which details how Dems succeeded in getting a very favorable map ten years ago – circumstances which are unlikely to obtain this time around.

Dave’s Redistricting App: I realize there are quite a few new SSP members these days, so it’s possible not everyone is familiar with the awesome (and free!) Dave’s Redistricting App. It does exactly what it sounds like it ought to do – you can draw and re-draw maps to your heart’s content. The eponymous Dave often stops by in comments and with diaries of his own, in case you ever have questions. He’s also always looking for assistance in compiling partisan data for the app, so if you want to help improve the program, please click the link to find out how!

SSP Daily Digest: 11/9

• FL-Sen: It seems like the “permanent campaign” is pretty much the new normal these days, as everybody’s already talking about who’s gonna run in 2012. In Florida, the list of potential GOP challengers to Bill Nelson is deep even if Jeb Bush doesn’t follow through on an unlikely bid. Appointed (and soon to be ex-)Sen. George LeMieux seems to be ramping up for a bid, although he might suffer for his Charlie Crist ties. Other GOPers mentioned include Rep. Connie Mack IV, state House majority leader Adam Hasner, state Senate president Mike Haridopolos, and newly-elected Rep. Daniel Webster.

• MA-Sen: As for the Dem field in Massachusetts, one prominent potential candidate is staying mum for now. Boston mayor Tom Menino welcomes the attention but is “focused on being mayor.”

• MT-Sen: And then there’s Montana, where freshman Jon Tester is probably one of the most vulnerable Senate Dems. At-large GOP Rep. Denny Rehberg is usually the first name you hear mentioned in that context, but he seems to be in no hurry to decide. Two other GOPers are making moves, though: businessman and losing 2008 Lt. Gov. nominee Steve Daines, and Neil Livingstone, CEO of a “crisis management firm” and frequent anti-terrorism talking head, are both actively looking at the race.

• WV-Sen, NE-Sen: It looks like Joe Manchin’s spokesperson’s denial yesterday of any interest in switching parties wasn’t vehement enough, because Manchin had to reiterate that, no, he isn’t considering it; in addition, Senate GOP spokespersons said those conversations alleged by Fox News apparently never even took place. The same situation applies in Nebraska, where Ben Nelson says that not only is he not interested in switching but that no one has reached out to him to do so. Encouragingly, at least from a rhetorical standpoint, Nelson also says “the party hasn’t left me.”

• MS-Gov: With two well-liked former Reps. idling around wondering what to do next year (Gene Taylor and Travis Childers), you’d think the Dems might actually be able to field a competitive candidate for Mississippi next year. According to at least one local pundit, a Childers comeback doesn’t seem likely (more interested in state party chair), while Taylor seems to have running for something in mind but potentially just his old seat again in ’12.

• OH-Gov: Here’s a good post-mortem on Ted Strickland from Jonathan Chait, which suggests that Strickland managed to keep things close (despite the rest of the wipeout in Ohio) because a solid campaign that focused on just the right amount of populism. He ran well ahead of national Dems on average among groups like seniors and persons with high school educations.

• FL-22: Is Allen West the Bizarro World version of Alan Grayson? He’s an ideological mismatch with his Florida district that leans the wrong way away from his party let alone his own amped-up version of its message, he has no built-in self-censor like most politicians, and he was elected more so by nationwide online supporters than the locals. And now he’s hiring from his own echo chamber, turning for his Chief of Staff not a Capitol Hill pro but the conservative talk show host who helped bolster his campaign. Joyce Kaufman is the one who said on her show this summer that “if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”

• NY-23: Doug Hoffman is truly the gift that keeps on giving. The election’s over, and he’s still giving. He now says he didn’t mean to send out a statement that he put out last week post-election, calling local Republican bosses the real “spoilers in this race.” (Hoffman, of course, pulled in 6% of the vote last week, saving Bill Owens yet again.)

• NY-25: Trailing slightly with the absentee-counting process looming, Dan Maffei (like Tim Bishop in NY-01) is requesting a hand count of ballots (the electronic voting machines generate a paper trail). A judge also ruled that both camps may inspect the list of 11,000 absentee ballot requests, a prelim to each camp developing the list of which ballots they want to challenge.

• DCCC: It’s sounding more and more like Rep. Steve Israel will be on tap to head the DCCC for the 2012 cycle. He was one of the three key deputies at the DCCC last year (along with Joe Crowley, who seems to be edging away from the job, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who seems interested too but not in as strong a position with the Pelosi-led core of leadership).

• House: Here’s an interesting piece of trivia: only eight (8) House Dems did better, percentage-wise in 2010 than they did in 2008. Most are from safe urban districts (most notably Nancy Pelosi herself, despite the seven figures the right-roots raised for her opponent), although Jim Himes and Chellie Pingree were in competitive races and managed to gain ground.

• Polltopia: PPP puts together a helpful table of approval ratings on the various Senators up for re-election in 2012. It corresponds pretty closely with the general conventional wisdom about who’s vulnerable: Joe Lieberman is in worst shape at 33/54, followed by Claire McCaskill and Debbie Stabenow (who actually are in slightly worse condition than John Ensign, though his problems go well beyond his approvals). Interestingly, the best-liked Senator statewide (Olympia Snowe at 56/34) may also be one of the most vulnerable, not in a general but to a teabagging in the GOP primary.

Thoughts from Netroots CA, 2010 Election

(Also at Nevada Progressive, and I have photos from Netroots CA at my Twitpic!)

OK, so I’ve had more time to process what happened. And I had a chance to talk with my old Cali friends at Netroots California last Saturday. And I came out surprisingly hopeful about our future.

While we did have some rough losses in Nevada, overall the picture here was much brighter than the rest of the country. Come on, all the incumbent statewide elected Democrats are reelected while Harry Reid won by over 5.6%! Reid outperformed almost all the public polls. What happened? How come “The Great Red Tide” that destroyed many Dems in many states east of The Rockies was barely a ripple here?

Basically, it comes down to what Harry Reid and Nevada Democrats did right. They invested in getting out the vote. They made our progressive message clear and concise AND accessible to regular voters. And they reached out to minority communities and actually IMPROVED Latin@ turnout over 2006 AND 2008!

It really comes down to this. Even in “wave elections”, “the wave” doesn’t have to be a monstrous tsunami. Good campaigns still matter. Good field still matters. And good messaging still matters. Harry Reid made all this happen and more.

Ralston explained this on Sunday.

The Reid organization’s Terminator-like single-mindedness, relentlessness and discipline turned preparation into the most satisfying victory of Reid’s career, a resurrection unthinkable most of the year by the Beltway cognoscenti. Combined with an Angle campaign that was thoroughly unprepared for the post-primary onslaught – think of a Little League batter facing Roy Halladay – that by the time the GOP nominee brought in some D.C. pros, the damage was insurmountable.

Interestingly, a similar dynamic appeared in California last Tuesday. More Latin@ voters turned out than ever before. And while Jerry Brown’s campaign (for CA Governor) didn’t exactly “strike while the iron was hot” on delivering his message or attacking Meg Whitman’s record, California unions did. And they delivered, big time!

And Barbara Boxer followed a very similar strategy to Reid’s in defining Carly Fiorina early as quite the unacceptable choice, delivering a progressive message in a practical way to attract voters (Hint: Make it real. Make it tangible. Make it about one’s pocketbook/wallet/purse.), and turning out Dem voters like crazy.

Again, it comes down to whether Democrats can field good candidates, deliver a good message, and turn out as many allied voters as possible. It worked in California and Nevada… But because the national Democratic groups failed in these categories and many other state parties were in turmoil, that’s why the results were so bad elsewhere.

Why didn’t other Senate candidates try to turn health care reform and good climate policy into winning arguments? Why didn’t other state parties invest more in good GOTV infrastructure? Why didn’t the DCCC and DSCC take a closer look at the winning arguments being made by Reid and Boxer?

That’s the challenge moving forward. President Obama needs to rethink his messaging. Democrats need to work harder on showing how good progressive policy means more and better jobs. And Democrats nationally need to look at places like Nevada and California to learn how to rebuild good, strong GOTV infrastructure. And if Obama can turn his numbers around and offer a strong and appealing progressive message that reveals the crap the GOP is truly offering and explains how to truly get our nation back on track, he can win handily again and Democrats can soon retake the House and keep the Senate.

It really comes down to that. Oh, and I had a great time in SF… 😉

But I’m hoping we have an even better time back in Vegas this weekend!

Over-Time 2.0

Recounts: The Hill reports that the DCCC has sent staffers to assist with recount efforts in California, Illinois, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina and Washington state. One state is notably not on the list, and I think that says a lot: Texas. Check out our TX-27 item below for more.

AK-Sen: Here’s the schedule: Absentee ballots (30,500) will start getting counted today. Tomorrow, write-ins (83K) will be talled. And provisional ballots (12,000) will be opened on Friday. Joe Miller needs to find a way to disqualify over 13,000 write-ins to have a shot (as things stand now) – or pray that people wrote in someone other than Lisa Murkowski. Interestingly, the NRSC is still backing Miller’s play, with Big John Cornyn and Jim “Crème” DeMenthe both sending fundraising emails on his behalf to help with recount efforts. Meanwhile, for her part, Murkowski has brought in notorious GOP hatchet man Ben Ginsburg. You may remember Ginsburg from such recounts as “Florida 2000: The Brooks Brothers Riot” and “Dickface Norm Coleman’s Dickfaced Adventure: The Whinening.” A little late-breaking cat fud!

MN-Gov: Though he trails Dem Mark Dayton by more than 8,700 votes, Tom Emmer (through his lawyer) says he won’t forego a recount. Cynical (i.e., sensible) observers imagine that Emmer will pursue even a hopeless recount just to give GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty some more time in office. With the state lege having just flipped to the Republicans, this would give the right-wing wrecking crew some unfettered time at the controls. The incoming state House Speaker, Kurt Zellers, says that even if this scenario came to pass, the Republicans would not “rush to ram something right through.” Of course, you trust him, right?

CA-11: Dem Rep. Jerry McNerney’s lead over David Harmer has now climbed to 804 votes. A judge also rejected GOP demands that the elections chief for Contra Costa County allow observers to “compare signatures on vote-by-mail ballots with voter affidavit signatures on file in the office.” (The Contra Costa portion of the 10th CD went for Obama 56-43.)

CA-20: Republican Andy Vidak has seen his lead shrivel to just 145 votes… but it’s Dem Rep. Jim Costa who is in the driver’s seat. Huge numbers of ballots remain to be counted in Fresno County (perhaps 50 to 70K), and the Fresno part of this district went for Obama by a two-to-one ratio. Hard to see how Vidak hangs on.

IL-08: Though she picked up 188 votes last week, Rep. Melissa Bean (D) still trails Jim Walsh by 350. According to the AP, “hundreds of provisional and absentee ballots are still being counted in Cook, McHenry and Lake counties,” but the count won’t be finalized any sooner than Nov. 16th, the deadline for absentees to arrive. Provisional ballots will get counted after that date. In related barf-inducing news, unnamed sources (aka “buzz,” according to Politico) are supposedly floating Bean’s name to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Board if she doesn’t pull this one out. Gack!

KY-06: Andy Barr is down 649 votes to Rep. Ben Chandler (D), but he won’t concede until after a recanvass (scheduled for Nov. 12th) is complete. Barr vaguely sounded like he might be interested in a rematch, saying “”the cause will continue… and you can count on me whether I’m in Congress, a citizen, or a candidate for Congress.”

NC-02: A lot of roundups keep forgetting this race, but Dem Rep. Bob Etheridge has not conceded to Renee Ellmers – and in fact, he’s already filed a request for a recount. As long as the margin stays under 1% (as it is now), Etheridge is automatically entitled to have the votes tallied a second time. Even so, the gap right now is quite wide – 1,646 votes – but it seems like Dems are pinning their hopes on more errors like the one on election night, where Samson County failed to report votes from three of four early voting sites. Once these were added to the tally, Etheridge gained 453 votes. Still, he’s got a long way to go.

NY-01: Dem Rep. Tim Bishop’s lawyers are apparently headed to court today, seeking a full hand recount of all the ballots cast in this race. (And he’s raising money for the cause, too.) As you will recall, Bishop had a 3,400-vote lead on election night, but somehow that has since swung all the way to a 383-vote advantange for Randy Altschuler. New York finally moved to a modern, scantron-type ballot system this year; problems with the transition are being blamed for all kinds of issues. As for absentees, Hotline says: “There are approximately 10,000 absentee ballots still to be counted; 4,200 from voters of parties that endorsed Altschuler and 3,900 from voters of parties that endorsed Bishop.”

NY-25: Dem Rep. Dan Maffei trails Ann Marie Buerkle by 659 votes, but the AP says that “more than 7,000 absentee and other ballots remain outstanding and most won’t be counted until Nov. 15.” Also note that military and overseas ballots have until Nov. 24th to come in, which could be a factor if the race tightens. However, an analysis in AuburnPub.com suggests that if the absentees follow the same pattern as votes cast on election day, Buerkle’s lead will actually increase a bit.

TX-27: Dem Rep. Solomon Ortiz is gearing up to request a recount, but this one looks pretty hopeless. There are fewer votes remaining to be counted (and this includes provisionals, which are subject to getting tossed) than separate Ortiz from Blake Farenthold. Oritz is alleging irregularities at the polls, but local officials haven’t heard any such reports.

VA-11: As we mentioned yesterday, Republican Keith Fimian is conceding the race to Rep. Gerry Connolly.

WA-02: As we mentioned yesterday, the AP has called the race for Dem Rep. Rick Larsen over John Koster.