Month: February 2011

• MI-Sen: Peter Hoekstra, having just started as a “senior adviser” at Dickstein Shapiro, let Politico know that, despite all appearances associated with his new job, he hasn’t ruled out a 2012 Senate bid, saying he’s keeping his options open. (I know that on my first day on the job, I like to loudly tell everybody that I may not be working there much longer. Really helps you get off on the right foot with your boss.)

• MT-Sen: Jon Tester wasted no time in going after newly-announced Denny Rehberg, drawing connections between Rehberg and Michele Bachmann (and her proposed $4.5 billion in VA cuts). Bachmann will be a featured speaker at the event on Saturday where Rehberg formally announces. Tester raised $128K in Q4 with $562K, a decent amount for the small state of Montana but not much different from Rehberg’s $553K war chest.

• TX-Sen: You might remember talk from a couple years ago where ESPN analyst Craig James was interested in running for what was then expected to be a Senate special election to replace a resigning Kay Bailey Hutchison. That faded into the mists of time, but here’s the first statement of interest I’ve seen from him since the race re-opened up thanks to her retirement. It comes up in the context of him saying that, yes, he believes people in Lubbock would still vote for him despite his role in getting Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach fired.

• UT-Sen: An interesting piece about Orrin Hatch focuses mostly on how he’s trying to avoid the fate of Bob Bennett by reaching out and engaging the local tea party crowd as much as possible; a local ‘bagger comments that Hatch shouldn’t expect their endorsement but his efforts will really limit the outrage that seemed to overwhelm Bennett. (Hatch also has an interesting selling point to offer them: if he’s defeated but the GOP takes the Senate, that puts Olympia Snowe in charge of Finance.) Buried in the story is a provocative comment from Bennett’s vanquisher, Mike Lee, who only says that he’ll “fully support” the GOP nominee without saying anything about backing Hatch.

• AK-AL, NY-13: Here are two House races where the potential challenger has the financial advantage, according to new Q4 numbers. One is the possible GOP primary for Alaska’s at-large seat, where Joe Miller has $825K left in the bank, thanks to money he didn’t get a chance to spend on his legal defense, whereas Don Young has $170K CoH. (Miller, of course, hasn’t said anything specific about a race against Young in 2012, but he and Young have publicly traded some barbs.) The other is NY-13, where surprise Republican victor Michael Grimm actually finds himself in debt, with a net minus-$36K while Democratic ex-Rep. Mike McMahon, who seems to be laying groundwork for a rematch, has $17K CoH leftover.

• IN-05, IN-06: Roll Call looks at the slowly-developing race to replace Mike Pence in the 6th. Most (if not all) the action is on the GOP side so far, with former Wayne Co. Sheriff Matt Strittmatter the only one with a campaign account open so far (which contains $39K). Other GOPers include 1990s-era ex. Rep. David McIntosh, Henry County Council president Nate LaMar, ’10 Senate primary loser Don Bates, and ’10 IN-05 primary loser Luke Messer… but it sounds like Messer, who almost beat the unloved Dan Burton, may be running in the 5th again, seeing as how Roll Call got Burton’s office to confirm that Burton (frequent subject of retirement speculation) plans to run for re-election. One other wrinkle: Republican redistricting efforts to redden Joe Donnelly’s IN-02 may wind up making IN-06 less Republican, so that might encourage Dems to at least consider playing in the 6th.

• MT-AL: With Montana’s at-large House seat suddenly looking like it’s on track to be an open seat, we may actually get some decent Democratic candidates in the race. It’s occasionally been a competitive seat, currently at R+7, though not really hotly contested since the last time it was open, in 2000. Democratic State Rep. Franke Wilmer of Bozeman is already floating her name for the race. (If she won, she’d be the first woman in the seat since the legendary Jeannette Rankin.)

• SD-AL: Now this is interesting: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (haven’t heard anything about a rematch, but this might perk up her ears) is actually leading a hypothetical rematch by one point (46-45) against new Republican Rep. Kristi Noem, according to PPP. PPP points out that she lost by three in 2010, so that small shift is consistent with the small nationwide bump upwards for the Dems over the last month or two. Herseth Sandlin’s favorables are 55/36, compared with Noem’s 38/35 approvals. Over on the Senate side, Tim Johnson (who isn’t up until 2014) is at 47/41 approval.

• LA-AG: We’ve seen a couple dozen legislative party-switchers from the Democrats to the Republicans in southern states in the last few months, in the wake of several states’ chambers finally completing their realignment all the way down to the state level, but nobody at a statewide level doing so… until now. Louisiana AG Buddy Caldwell, facing a potentially tough general election, plans to switch to Republican status. (I’d invoke the cautionary specter of Parker Griffith, but Louisiana uses a jungle primary so switching to a potentially tough primary instead may not be the kiss of death.) Since Caldwell was already the only Democratic AG who had joined the multi-state lawsuit against healthcare reform, his “Democrat” status was pretty negligible at this point.

• MA-St. House: This may be one of the largest constituencies where I’ve seen a race end in a tie (although I’m sure someone in the comments can come up with a historic example of an even bigger race that tied). The November election in Massachusetts’s 6th Worcester district in the state House was just declared a tie by a superior court judge, and (rather than flipping a coin, drawing lots, or sending them to Thunderdome) a do-over special election was ordered. Democratic incumbent Geraldo Alicea and GOPer Peter Durant both got 6,587 votes. No date has been set yet, but we’ll all be on pins and needles that night, seeing as how Dems control that chamber by only a 128-31 margin.

• CA-Referenda: A statewide special election is planned for some point in June, as Jerry Brown seeks a public mandate for extending increases in three different taxes (and he seems to think he has a better shot getting this through a public vote than the legislature). This is likely to be an entirely vote-by-mail affair, presaging a potential California shift in the direction of its west coast brethren. Somewhat counterintuitively (since vote-by-mail is usually considered to boost Dems), though, observers think this might skew the election toward older, whiter voters, as mail delivery is “unreliable in spots” (?!?) in heavily-minority Los Angeles County and voters there still tend to rely heavily on polling places. On the plus side, though, a recent PPIC poll found more support for extending the taxes among the 55+ set (56 yes/38 no) than among the entire population (where there was 50 yes/48 no support). Have the most seriously tax-hating seniors all fled to Arizona?

• Fundraising: The Fix has a bunch more Senate fundraising numbers to report, building on the numbers we gave you yesterday. For the Dems, Bob Casey Jr. seems to be fully engaged with his race, pulling in $621K in Q4 for $1.3 million CoH, while the publicity surrounding FiliBernie seems to have been a big cash cow for Bernie Sanders, who raised $485K for $536K CoH. Bob Menendez raised $237K for $2.4 million CoH, while freshly-elected Joe Manchin seemed to take a breather from fundraising, raising only $18K for $377K. Among not just vulnerable Republicans but basically everybody else in the Senate, Scott Brown is still the unstoppable money machine, in terms of both cash raised and CoH: $734K raised for $7.2 million CoH. Richard Lugar raised $173K for $2.35 million CoH, while Olympia Snowe raised $79K for $1.2 million CoH.

• Census: We’re still waiting for this week’s released of detailed 2010 data for Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia, but the Census Bureau is letting us know that next week they’ll be out with four more: Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, and Maryland.

• WATN?: Rod Grams somehow managed to be one of the least memorable Senators of my lifetime who managed to serve a full term (surprisingly swept in in Minnesota in 1994, easily turned out in 2000), and now he’s working a job that seems befitting his anonymity. He’s working as a Hill staffer, and not even on the Senate side: he’s the new chief of staff to new MN-08 Rep. Chip Cravaack. (Recall that Cravaack did what Grams couldn’t do in 2006: knock off Jim Oberstar, in what was a strange comeback attempt by Grams.)

After seeing a lot of people predict that Ben Nelson and Scott Brown will lose because of their states’ respective presidential voting patterns, I was reminded of a section of one of my political science textbooks from last semester. In Chapter 6 of The Politics of Congressional Elections, the author, Gary Jacobson, details the events leading up to each set of congressional elections from 1980 to 2006 as well as the overall results. One thing I found particularly interesting at the time was that the percentage of Senate seats won by the party of the presidential candidate that also won that state has been on the rise over the past decade. Here are the relevant passages from page 218-219 of the book:

The same trend toward greater consistency in voting for president and U.S. representative in 2004 (Figure 6-3) appeared in Senate elections as well, resulting in a four-seat addition to the Republicans’ Senate majority. . . The Democrat’s main problem was again structural. They had to compete with the more-efficient distribution of Republican voters. Although Gore had won the national vote in 2000, Bush carried thirty of the fifty states, including twenty-two of the thirty-four states with Senate contests in 2004. Democrats had to defend ten seats in states Bush had won, including five left open by retirements, all in the South, where support for Democrats has been eroding for several decades. Meanwhile, Republicans were defending only three seats in states won by Gore. . . Seven of the eight Senate seats that changed party hands in 2004 went to the party that won the state in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections; Salazar’s victory was the lone exception. . . More generally, twenty-seven of the thirty-four Senate contests were won by the party whose presidential candidate won the state’s electoral votes, tying 1964 for the highest level of congruence in president-Senate election results in the past half century. When the 2004 winners were added to the continuing Senate membership, fully 75 percent of Senators represented states where their party’s candidate won the most recent presidential election, the highest proportion in at least fifty years.

So what does this mean for the parties going into 2012. More below the fold.

In 2012, Democrats have 23 Senate seats up for election. These are listed below and the states in bold were won by McCain in 2008.

Democratic-Held Senate Seats

California

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Hawaii

Maryland

Michigan

Minnesota

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Dakota

Ohio

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin

In contrast, Republicans only have 10 seats up in 2012. These are listed below and the states in bold were won by Obama in 2008.

Republican-Held Senate Seats

Arizona

Indiana

Maine

Massachusetts

Mississippi

Nevada

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Wyoming

So right away you can see that each party holds Senate seats that would tend to go to the opposite party given normal conditions. Republicans should win Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and West Virginia while Democrats should pick-up Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada. That works out to +1 R even after removing West Virginia and Indiana which are not likely to flip unless something dramatic happens such as Lugar losing to a Tea Party challenger in the primary. Maine is harder to judge, though I predict Snowe would win if she survives a primary challenge, bumping Republicans to +2.

One problem with this analysis is that it is based on the results of the 2008 elections because I can’t see the future and tell you who will win each state in 2012. Some speculation is possible though based on the results from 2008 and recent polls. The only Republican-held seat won by McCain that Obama has a realistic chance of winning is Arizona which he lost by 8.5%. Arguments can be made for Texas or maybe Tennessee but that’s unlikely barring a Regan vs. Mondale type wave. Obama also has a chance at winning Missouri (lost by 0.13%), Montana (lost by 2.38%), and North Dakota (lost by 8.65%) which would increase the chances of holding these Democratic Senate seats.

The Republican presidential candidate could win states with Democratic-held seats in Virginia (lost by 6.3%), Florida (lost by 2.81%) and Ohio (lost by 4.58%). Other states that seem less likely to flip right now but could depending on the environment include Pennsylvania (lost by 10.31%) and Michigan (lost by 16.44%). States that McCain lost last time but may be won by the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 include Indiana (lost by 1.03%) and possibly Nevada (lost by 12.49%). Winning back these states would increase the chance that Republican incumbents could hold their seats.

So where does all of this leave us? Here are three scenarios.

1. Obama wins all of his 2008 states and most Senate seats go with the presidential winner that state – R+1 or 2

Democrats pickup Massachusetts and Nevada, possibly Maine, and fail to pickup Indiana.

Republicans pickup Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota and fail to pickup West Virginia.

2. Obama improves on his 2008 map and most Senate seats go with the presidential winner in that state – D+2 or 3

Democrats pickup 4 or 5 of Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada.

Republicans pickup Nebraska and North Dakota and fail to pickup West Virginia.

3. Obama does worse than his 2008 map and most Senate seats go wi the presidential winner in that state – R+2 to 8

Democrats pickup 0 to 2 of Massachusetts and Nevada and fail to pick up Maine.

Republicans pickup 4 to 8 of Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Senate Democrats’ best chance at keeping their majority involves Obama expanding the playing field and it appears this is the plan after Charlotte was chosen to be the site of the DNC. With the continued polarization of electorate, it may not be possible for vulnerable senators like Tester, McCaskill, Webb, and Brown to localize the election in hopes of drawing crossover support. This could certainly help their chances but the trends over the last decade indicate that their electoral survival depends heavily on the President.

Public Policy Polling (1/26-27, Nebraska voters, no trendlines):

Ben Nelson (D-inc): 39

Jon Bruning (R): 50

Undecided: 11

Ben Nelson (D-inc): 42

Deb Fischer (R): 35

Undecided: 22

Ben Nelson (D-inc): 42

Pat Flynn (R): 33

Undecided: 24

Ben Nelson (D-inc): 41

Don Stenberg (R): 45

Undecided: 14

(MoE: ±3.1%)

In case you were wondering maybe PPP would find significantly better results for Ben Nelson than the couple of Republican pollsters who’ve looked at the race did — maybe there was an inkling of hope there based on Barack Obama’s better-than-expected performance there in the presidential portion of their poll — guess again. PPP finds pretty similar numbers as Magellan did in December (Magellan gave GOP AG Jon Bruning a 14-pt lead and state Treasurer Don Stenberg a 6-point lead). Nelson does beat some weaker opponents, teabagging businessman Pat Flynn (the only announced candidate besides Bruning) and state Sen. Deb Fischer, but that seems mostly name rec-driven, with Nelson still in the low 40s.

Nelson’s down to a 39/50 approval (which compares to Bruning’s 42/26 favorables), which is parsed out to 26/64 among Republicans, 47/43 among indies, and even a not-so-good 58/33 among Dems, for many of whom he’s probably too conservative. Given the Republican registration advantage in Nebraska, it looks like Nelson just isn’t getting the crossover votes he got the last few times he ran that helped him win; exit polls in 2006 gave him 42% of the Republican vote then (although it’s worth noting that was against weak opposition in the form of Pete Ricketts) but he’s getting 16-17% support now. Increased polarization over the last few years (and his role at the very core of the polarizing health care reform debate, with the unsatisfying-to-anybody-except-himself “Cornhusker Kickback”) is making Nelson look pretty anachronistic, at this point.

• MI-Sen: This looks like a tea leaf that Peter Hoekstra isn’t a likely Senate candidate for 2012: he’s joining big DC law/lobby firm Dickstein Shapiro, a popular destination for outgoing Congresspeople and certainly not the usual route for someone who wants to keep in touch with the little people back home. (Current “senior advisors” there include Dennis Hastert, Tim Hutchinson, and Albert Wynn.)

• MN-Sen: Norm Coleman comes right out and says it explicitly: he’s not going to run against Amy Klobuchar in 2012 (although he didn’t rule out eventual other runs). Not that anyone rational was expecting it, but now we can check that box.

• NV-Sen: Cue up some doomy soundtrack music for John Ensign: despite his having dodged the DOJ, the Senate Ethics Committee has decided to plow ahead on its inquiry of him, just in time for the cycle where he’s up for re-election. Today a special counsel in l’affaire Ensign was announced.

• NY-Sen: Going up against Kirsten Gillibrand in 2012 (in the wake of her cresting 60% in the down year of 2010) seems like an unenviable task for any Republican, and the duties might fall to former Lt. Gov. turned health insurance industry astroturfer Betsy McCaughey. Speaking before a confab for New York’s Conservative Party, when asked about the race, she said she’s “considering it.”

• WA-Gov: We can’t officially shut the door on a highly-unusual run for a third term by Chris Gregoire until she actually says “no” herself, but state Dem party chair Dwight Pelz is publicly saying that he’s looking ahead to electing a new governor in 2012. Don’t expect Gregoire to say anything until the end of the legislative session, though.

• WV-Gov: Get out your calendars and your red pen, because it looks like things are getting switched around yet again in West Virginia. The state House passed a bill authorizing the upcoming elections (including a primary, which wasn’t considered a done deal because of the cost involved), but they’ve moved the dates around again. Now the primary date is May 14 (instead of June 20), and the general special election date is Sept. 13 (instead of Oct. 4). Of course, that’s only the House version, so the state Senate could monkey around with it even more. Meanwhile, one Republican candidate is already exiting the field: state party chair Mike Stuart, who probably saw the writing on the wall given his 1% showing in PPP’s sample of the primary. A few more GOPers that we haven’t mentioned before are thinking about getting in to replace him, though: state House minority leader Tim Armstead, and state Del. Mitch Carmichael.

• CT-05: This is a bit of a surprise, and ought to create a wide-open Republican field in the open seat race created by Chris Murphy’s quest for a Senate seat. State Sen. Sam Caligiuri, who made a competitive race of it in 2010, says he won’t run again in 2012.

• MT-AL: As Denny Rehberg-related rumors got ramped up over the last few days, there’s been a corresponding rise in rumors that Steve Daines (the Republican businessman who lost the 2008 Lt. Gov. race and announced a Senate bid in November) might bail out of the Senate race and drop down to the now-open House race instead. That would be a bit of a turnaround for Daines, who had already consolidated some backing from right-wing orgs for a possible tea-flavored primary rumble, but the House is a path of much less resistance for him. No confirmation from Daines today, but as of yesterday he sounded open to the idea.

• State legislatures: This article about how state legislature constituencies are getting too populous for legislators to maintain effective old-school communications with their voters is most noteworthy for its neat interactive graphic. You can compare the legislator-to-constituent ratio for each state (unsurprisingly, California and Texas are the worst, while North Dakota and New Hampshire are the best).

• Fundraising: We have fundraising numbers from 2010 Q4 for five different Senate Dems up in 2012, and we’ll start with the weakest link: Dan Akaka, who has $66K CoH. (Not that that should presage retirement or even encourage Linda Lingle, as he doesn’t really fundraise outside the cycles where he’s up for re-election; he had $83K at this point six years ago.) Next up: Jim Webb, who has $444K CoH but raised only $12K last quarter, a number that by itself screams retirement… but as we know, Webb marches to his own drummer and could turn that around quickly. Ben Nelson is also in camped out in the land of the mediocre (and of the potential retirees), raising only $81K, though he has a more robust $1.4 million CoH.

Jeff Bingaman, on the other hand, seems to be heading for another term, albeit in slightly lukewarm fashion, raising $216K last quarter; he has $511K CoH. Debbie Stabenow is looking pretty aggressive, by contrast: she raised $537K and has more than $2 million CoH. One Republican to report on, as well: Orrin Hatch, likely to face a serious primary, raised $400K and is sitting on $2.5 million CoH (compared with Jason Chaffetz’s $140K CoH).

• Redistricting: Here’s more on the growing worries from plugged-in Republicans that they don’t have the money in place to effectively fight the legal battles associated with redistricting. The sense is that they’re victims of their own success: they spent so much money on winning state legislatures last year that they didn’t leave any leftovers budgeted for the aftermath.

Public Policy Polling (1/20-23, North Carolina voters, 11/19-21/2010 in parentheses):

Bev Perdue (D-inc): 40 (37)

Pat McCrory (R): 47 (49)

Undecided: 14 (14)

(MoE: ±4.1%)

This North Carolina gubernatorial poll from PPP was unremarkable enough that it got buried under a pile of other stuff last week, but with the news that the Democratic National Convention for 2012 will be held in Charlotte, it’s worth a look. It still shows incumbent Dem Bev Perdue (whose 2008 victory over Pat McCrory was pretty unconvincing, probably owing her limping across the finish line to Barack Obama strongly contesting the state and driving minority and youth turnout) trailing McCrory in a rematch, but not as badly. The previous poll was right before the Nov. election, which is one more data point (along with, say, rebounding approval numbers for both parties) that the move to divided government took a fair amount of pressure off the Dems in general, by virtue of them not being the only ones left holding the bag anymore.

At any rate, while the Charlotte decision makes it clear that North Carolina is at the top of the Dems’ pivot-point considerations for 2012, what effect it has for the downballot races is unclear (and bear in mind that NC doesn’t have a Senate race that year, so the gubernatorial race is the main game in town after the presidency): does this help Perdue by giving a ground-game boost to her bid? Or does it hurt her by nationalizing the race? (The same questions could be asked of Missouri, where St. Louis was the losing contender. Does that conversely hurt Claire McCaskill, with Missouri clearly lower on the Dems’ leverage priority list this year, or help her by giving her a little breathing room from the national party?)

There was a diary that (inaccurately) listed the number of seats each state would get per the “Wyoming rule”, which was deleted, presumably due to its in accuracies.

This got me thinking about the whole issue of uneven representation and why the Wyoming rule is not a very good solution to the problem.

Under the current reapportionment scheme, the rep from Montana represents 994,416 people, while a rep from Rhode Island would represent 527,623 people, which is a ratio of 1.88.  The “Wyoming Rule” would mandate that the house districts be set at the size of the smallest state (ie. Wyoming) to correct this inequity. This would increase the size of the house to 544.

However the inequity doesn’t go away, just shrinks slightly. Alaska still has 721,523 people per rep, while South Dakota has 409,880, a ratio of 1.76.  By adding over 100 new members to the house, you only drop the ratio by 0.12.

What would by a “fair” maximum inequity? 1.5? 1.3? 1.1?  Those would require 843, 1392, and 3265 representatives respectively.

So in conclusion, the Wyoming rule does not work, and the other only fix would be to have a huge house or to amend the constitution to allow house districts to cross state lines.

The source for this is a modified version of this perl script:

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/…

If you want to see my modifications, let me know and I’ll post them in comments.

Here are the number of seats under the “Wyoming rule”:

AL-8,AK-1,AZ-11,AR-5,CA-66,CO-9,CT-6,DE-2,FL-33,GA-17,HI-2,ID-3,IL-23,IN-11,IA-5,KS-5,KY-8,LA-8,ME-2,MD-10,MA-12,MI-18,MN-9,MS-5,MO-11,MT-2,NE-3,NV-5,NH-2,NJ-16,NM-4,NY-34,NC-17,ND-1,OH-20,OK-7,OR-7,PA-22,RI-2,SC-8,SD-2,TN-11,TX-45,UT-5,VT-1,VA-14,WA-12,WV-3,WI-10,WY-1

With 843 seats, the most underrepresented state would be South Dakota, and the most overrepresented state would be Wyoming, both with 2 seats, for a ratio of 1.44.

With 1392 seats, the most underrepresented state would be Alaska and again Wyoming would be most overrepresented, each with 3 seats, for a ratio of 1.27.

With 3265 seats, the most underrepresented state would be Hawai’i, with 14 seats, and the most overrepresented state would be Vermont, with 7 seats, for a ratio of 1.08.

If true, this is going to be a titanic clash:

Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) will announce Saturday he is challenging Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.).

“It’s happening Saturday,” said a knowledgeable Montana GOP political operative. “He’s running. There is a lot of support and enthusiasm back home, and Denny knows he can win.”

And some internal polling, including a weird three-way matchup:

The operative offered some internal Rehberg polling numbers showing the Montana Republican in a statistical tie with Tester in a prospective 2012 matchup.

The Opinion Diagnostics survey of 400 likely Montana voters showed 49 percent backing Rehberg compared with 43 percent for Tester and 8 percent undecided. In a three-way matchup featuring Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer running as an independent, Rehberg led 44 percent to Tester’s 28 percent and Schweitzer’s 18 percent. Eleven percent were undecided.

The poll, conducted Jan. 5, has a margin of error of 4.65 percent.

SSP is on the verge of publishing our senate race ratings, and internally, we’d already agreed that MT-Sen was a Tossup prior to this announcement. This news confirms our view that this race will definitely start life as a Tossup.

This is a part of a series of posts analyzing the 2010 midterm elections. This post will discuss the 2010 Florida gubernatorial election, which Republican candidate Rick Scott won in an extremely close contest.

Florida’s Gubernatorial Election

On November 2010, Democrat Alex Sink faced an extremely flawed Republican opponent: multimillionaire Rick Scott, a businessman accused of heading the biggest fraud in Medicare history.

Ms. Sink still lost, running in a Republican leaning state in a very Republican environment. Here is what happened:

More below.

This constitutes a classic map of a close race in Florida. Ms. Sink wins the counties that she needs to win in the I-4 central corridor. For a Democrat, she performs relatively strongly in conservative northern Florida.

Turn-Out

What kills Ms. Sink, however, is Democratic turn-out.

To gain some perspective on this, let’s compare Ms. Sink’s performance with that of President Barack Obama’s:

Note that the circles depicted here are not equivalent. In 2008 8.4 million people voted; in 2010 only 5.3 million did. So the absolute margins of 2008 – regardless of whether Mr. Obama won or lost the county – are much bigger.

Nevertheless, one can see that Mr. Obama gets quite a bit more mileage out of the counties he wins than Ms. Sink does. This is especially true along the Democratic, minority-heavy strongholds of Orlando and South Florida.

In 2008 these places composed a greater share of the Florida electorate than they did in 2010; minority and Democratic turn-out fell disproportionately in the mid-term. In 2008 Orlando and South Florida (i.e. Broward, Miami-Dade, Orange, and Palm Beach counties) composed 31.6% of the electorate; in 2010 they composed 29.2% of the electorate. This does not seem like much, but it makes a difference when the margin of victory is 1.2%.

On a county-by-county basis, Mr. Scott’s margin would be cut from 61,550 to 15,226 in the 2008 electorate, even if his share of each county’s vote does not change (only the number of voters in each county does). I suspect that if you adjust this on a precinct level – if you give each precinct the same number of voters it had in 2008, without changing the percent of the vote Ms. Sink and Mr. Scott got in that precinct – Ms. Sink would have won outright.

Turn-Out

There is one part of Florida, however, in which Ms. Sink did much better than Mr. Obama. It’s hard see this in the previous maps, due to the low population of this region. Here is a better illustration:

As the map indicates, Northern Florida moved quite strongly towards Ms. Sink, although not strongly enough to offset her losses elsewhere.

There are a variety of explanations for why this might be. The rural, poor, Southern voters there might have been turned off a wealthy businessman as a Republican candidate. Ms. Sink might have overperformed amongst Republicans.

It is also true that Mr. Obama did quite poorly amongst these voters, losing many of these counties by 40+ margins. Partly this had to do with his status as a big-city Chicago liberal. Mostly, however, Mr. Obama did poorly because he was black.

Half a century ago northern Florida was the most Democratic part of the state, back in the days of the Solid South. Since then the Democratic Party has moved away from these voters (see: John Kerry, Barack Obama); it gets progressively harder each election for a Democrat to win them, although some still do. Ms. Sink’s improvement over Mr. Obama, then, might have been the last gasp of a dying breed: white Dixie Democrats.

Conclusions

In the dying days of Florida’s gubernatorial campaign, Democratic candidate Alex Sink was accused of cheating during the gubernatorial debate. The scandal broke during the final days of the campaign, derailing a crucial time for any campaign. Pundits will point to the scandal as responsible for the 1.2% margin by which Ms. Sink lost.

Yet it may have been another event, seemingly unrelated, that truly undid Ms. Sink. During the campaign’s final days, Independent Charlie Crist – running for Florida’s Senate seat – mounted a concerted effort to get Democrat Kendrick  Meek to drop-out. The coverage dominated national news, blackened the image of both participants, and demoralized Democrats everywhere in Florida.

It may have also led to Ms. Sink’s defeat. In many ways the candidate did what she had to do – she won the right places and improved on Mr. Obama in the most Republican part of Florida. I remember looking at her northern Florida numbers on election day and feeling somewhat optimistic about her chances. With the vote in at 50%, Ms. Sink stood behind by 5% – but the Democratic Gold Coast hadn’t started reporting. She could close things once the Democratic strongholds Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties came in.

But Ms. Sink never did fully close the gap. Democratic turn-out killed Ms. Sink, as it did with many others in 2010.

–Inoljt

P.S. Here is a table I created, some of whose information is used in this post.

Republican Margin: Change   from 2008 to 2010	2010 County Percent of Vote	2008 County Percent of Vote	Change in Turn-Out	Sink Under 2008 Electorate	County
0.11%	1.38%	1.50%	-0.12%	-26919	Alachua
-29.35%	0.15%	0.13%	0.02%	3091	Baker
-2.73%	1.03%	0.97%	0.06%	30805	Bay
-17.09%	0.15%	0.14%	0.01%	2706	Bradford
2.87%	3.66%	3.43%	0.23%	38254	Brevard
3.50%	7.83%	8.74%	-0.90%	-229201	Broward
-32.24%	0.08%	0.07%	0.01%	504	Calhoun
6.87%	1.11%	1.02%	0.09%	12047	Charlotte
-0.81%	1.02%	0.91%	0.11%	11629	Citrus
0.12%	1.19%	1.13%	0.06%	40617	Clay
10.14%	1.92%	1.69%	0.23%	46331	Collier
-12.40%	0.35%	0.34%	0.02%	6001	Columbia
-1.01%	0.13%	0.12%	0.01%	1146	Desoto
-30.47%	0.10%	0.09%	0.01%	1047	Dixie
3.81%	4.88%	4.95%	-0.07%	23793	Duval
-0.78%	1.79%	1.84%	-0.05%	28636	Escambia
11.39%	0.62%	0.59%	0.04%	4833	Flagler
-28.01%	0.08%	0.07%	0.00%	-10	Franklin
-7.45%	0.31%	0.27%	0.04%	-10451	Gadsden
-18.49%	0.10%	0.09%	0.01%	2214	Gilchrist
-0.63%	0.05%	0.05%	0.00%	832	Glades
-15.77%	0.09%	0.09%	0.01%	1693	Gulf
-13.24%	0.07%	0.07%	0.01%	75	Hamilton
-5.83%	0.10%	0.09%	0.01%	1761	Hardee
5.24%	0.12%	0.13%	-0.01%	1354	Hendry
4.90%	1.09%	1.05%	0.04%	7458	Hernando
2.20%	0.56%	0.53%	0.02%	9074	Highlands
3.79%	5.93%	6.12%	-0.19%	-17133	Hillsborough
-24.68%	0.11%	0.10%	0.01%	3460	Holmes
6.92%	0.88%	0.84%	0.04%	15364	Indian River
-24.48%	0.28%	0.26%	0.02%	754	Jackson
-14.85%	0.12%	0.09%	0.02%	-1476	Jefferson
-43.33%	0.05%	0.04%	0.01%	574	Lafayette
2.61%	1.90%	1.75%	0.15%	23697	Lake
11.33%	3.39%	3.21%	0.19%	58504	Lee
-11.04%	1.86%	1.77%	0.09%	-52485	Leon
-5.68%	0.24%	0.22%	0.01%	3976	Levy
-45.26%	0.04%	0.04%	0.00%	-43	Liberty
-10.71%	0.12%	0.11%	0.01%	-680	Madison
5.42%	1.98%	1.81%	0.17%	18952	Manatee
2.02%	2.13%	1.93%	0.20%	22073	Marion
2.07%	1.01%	0.93%	0.08%	12257	Martin
1.82%	9.11%	10.28%	-1.17%	-123556	Miami-Dade
5.01%	0.49%	0.48%	0.01%	48	Monroe
-4.23%	0.50%	0.46%	0.04%	15161	Nassau
0.69%	1.14%	1.14%	0.00%	43580	Okaloosa
-5.99%	0.15%	0.15%	0.00%	1684	Okeechobee
7.48%	5.07%	5.50%	-0.43%	-51546	Orange
13.29%	1.00%	1.20%	-0.20%	-6459	Osceola
4.16%	7.15%	7.03%	0.12%	-110658	Palm Beach
4.88%	2.55%	2.56%	-0.01%	18217	Pasco
2.55%	5.66%	5.53%	0.13%	-26374	Pinellas
4.83%	2.99%	2.92%	0.07%	26880	Polk
0.37%	0.40%	0.40%	0.00%	6523	Putnam
-3.26%	0.93%	0.91%	0.02%	34011	Santa Rosa
4.40%	2.71%	2.47%	0.24%	9360	Sarasota
4.00%	2.46%	2.45%	0.01%	13996	Seminole
-1.39%	1.40%	1.26%	0.13%	31952	St. Johns
7.18%	1.41%	1.44%	-0.03%	-5928	St. Lucie
1.21%	0.78%	0.58%	0.20%	13803	Sumter
-13.75%	0.25%	0.21%	0.04%	5189	Suwannee
-17.01%	0.12%	0.11%	0.01%	2058	Taylor
-46.53%	0.07%	0.06%	0.00%	169	Union
7.74%	2.94%	2.91%	0.03%	5093	Volusia
-21.92%	0.21%	0.17%	0.03%	415	Wakulla
-5.00%	0.35%	0.32%	0.03%	11029	Walton
-16.60%	0.15%	0.13%	0.02%	3462	Washington
3.97%	100.00%	100.00%	0.00%	15226	Total