Month: April 2011

Senate:

• AZ-Sen: So what the heck happened with Trent Franks? The Arizona Guardian is reporting that the Republican Congressman had been promising people jobs on his pending Senate campaign, and that his people had even gone so far as to ensure proper media risers were available at the hotel where Franks was supposed to make his big announcement. Yet it all vanished in a heartbeat when Franks unexpectedly pulled the plug. Says the Guardian: “The good thing is, there’s still another year-and-a-half to get the full story before the 2012 elections.” Also, in case you haven’t seen it yet, Dave Catanese penned a piece explaining the backstory on how he got burned by Franks’ consultant. It just adds to all the weirdness.

• FL-Sen: Tucked inside that Quinnipiac poll which showed tough numbers for Obama was this nugget:

Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who like Obama is on the 2012 ballot, is in better shape, with a 47-26 percent approval rating, a 43-39 percent lead over an unidentified Republican and voters saying 43-35 percent that he deserves another term in the Senate.

• MI-Sen (PDF): A week or so ago, Republican-affiliated pollster Market Research Group offered some better-than-everyone-else approval ratings for Gov. Rick Snyder. Apparently, they also polled the Senate race at the same time, pitting Dem Debbie Stabenow against Some Dude Randy Hekman. Amusingly, the polling memo says the Senator has a “slim” 11-point lead over Hekman, 45-34. But the real problem is the sample, which is 26 R, 26 D, 43 I – in other words, nothing like reality.

MRG also polled a hypothetical state Supreme Court matchup between incumbent Supreme Court Justice Brian Zahra and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, which had Zahra up 38-33. (Moving from the statehouse to the high court is not unheard of in Michigan.) Speaking of Granholm, she was supposedly under consideration to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Board but says she withdrew her name (and likes Elizabeth Warren for the job). It sounds like Granholm is keeping pretty busy, and the article notes she’s teaching at UC Berkeley, so perhaps she’s enjoying the weather out in Cali a bit more than back home. But Granholm is a former state AG and was even supposedly a possible Supreme Court pick, so perhaps a judicial run is plausible.

• PA-Sen: Sam Rohrer, the teabaggy ex-state Rep. who got pounded by Tom Corbett in the PA-Gov GOP primary last year, says he’s “50-50” on running against Bob Casey this cycle. Rohrer has the perfect pedigree: He runs the Pennsylvania chapter of the malevolent David Koch front group Americans for Prosperity.

• VA-Sen: Passed along without comment:

NBC 4’s reporter-anchor Craig Melvin is a tall African-American. Which apparently led to this exchange with former Sen. George Allen, according to Melvin’s Twitter account Tuesday night:

“For the 2nd time in 5 months, fmr. gov. and sen candidate George Allen asks me,”what position did you play?” I did not a play a sport.”

Actually, I changed my mind. If you still don’t think George Allen is a racist fuck, read this coda from ThinkProgress writer Lee Feng. And no, Allen didn’t apologize – he offered a classic bullshit “I’m sorry if I offended you” response. That’s bullshit.

Anyhow, Roanoke College released a poll of the race, showing Allen leading Tim Kaine by 45-32 – a rather different picture than what we saw from PPP. However, the WaPo ran an above-the-item update warning readers to be “cautious” about this survey because “[r]esults were adjusted only for gender, and the resulting sample is not representative of Virginia’s racial composition, its age structure or regional population densities.” It also looks like the horserace question was asked after about a bajillion issue-related questions (PDF), some of them kind of weird.

Finally, in Some Dude news… some other Some Dude (an African-American minister named Earl Jackson) decided to get into the GOP primary, a race with a lot of Some Dudes already in it.

Gubernatorial:

• GA-Gov: PPP did a re-do poll in Georgia, too, and found Dem ex-Gov. Roy Barnes would edge actual Gov. Nathan Deal by a single point today, 46-45. Tom says that this isn’t a case of voter disgust with Deal (he has pretty meh ratings, not downright radioactive ones like Scott Walker), but rather a clear sign of last year’s enthusiasm gap that will forever haunt us. There’s also a smorgasbord of other Peach State odds-and-ends at the link.

• KY-Gov: Gov. Steve Beshear (D) is out with his first radio ads of the campaign, touting his small-town roots, a week after his likely Republican opponent, David Williams, also went up on radio. Unlike Beshear, Williams faces a primary on May 17th, so he’s also going up on cable TV with a new ad you can watch here. NWOTSOTB for any of these.

• MS-Gov: Turns out PPP did in fact test the Republican gubernatorial primary in Mississippi. Click through if you really, really care. (Hint: You won’t.)

• UT-Gov: State Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, a teabagger fave to challenge immigration apostate Gary Herbert for the governor’s mansion, says on Facebook that he has “no plans or intentions to run.” (Yes, it would be more awesome if his name were Stephen Sandstorm.)

• WV-Gov: In case you weren’t sure where all the players in the Democratic primary field stand on the ideology spectrum (something we’ll be rectifying with a more in-depth post shortly), this is a helpful guidepost: Acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin was endorsed by the WV Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber also endorsed the only two legit Republicans running, Betty Ireland and Bill Maloney.

House:

• CA-26, CA-06: Assemblyman Anthony Portantino is getting some high-profile fundraising help: Steve Israel is coming out to Pacific Palisades this weekend for a breakfast event. The same piece also notes that Assemblyman Jared Huffman raised $120K for a federal account in Q1; Huffman is interested in 73-year-old Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s seat, if she retires. Woolsey apparently will decide whether to seek another term by June.

• FL-25: Idiot.

• IL-08: I’m not exactly broken up by this news: Ex-Rep. Melissa Bean, whose race was the closest in the nation last year (she lost by 290 votes to a real piece of work), says she won’t run again. She’s now CEO of something called the Executives Club of Chicago, which doesn’t really give off a man-of-the-people vibe, now does it?

• MI-09: If there’s one guy repeatedly written off as a redistricting victim who I’d really love to see find a way to survive, it’s Rep. Gary Peters. Despite what must have been an exhausting last several years raising money, the Michigan Dem wasted no time getting right back into the game, pulling in over $400K in Q1. He has half a mil on hand.

• NM-01: This Roll Call piece (also linked below in a redistricting item) mentions a few Dem names we hadn’t discussed here before: state Rep. Al Park, Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver, and Bernalillo County Commissioner Michelle Lujan Grisham, who lost the 2008 primary for this seat.

• NY-13: Ex-Rep. Mike McMahon will join the “government relations” (i.e., lobbying) group at a mid-sized NYC law firm. He’s apparently being brought on as “counsel” status, rather than as a partner, so this could just be a way-station to allow him to pay the bills as he weighs a re-match… but of course, he risks getting hit with the lobbyist taint.

• PA-17: Activist Sheila Dow-Ford confirms the rumors that she’s considering another run against Rep. Tim Holden, against whom she took 35% in the Democratic primary last year. Holden could get a bluer district when all is said and done, so a challenge from the left is a real possibility – but as Dow-Ford herself notes, others are interested, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some bigger-name candidates got in if the seat became markedly more Dem.

• UT-02: Huh – I can’t exactly accuse the Salt Lake Tribune of burying the lede, since they put this in the second graf, but Rep. Jim Matheson says he’s waiting to see what the new district lines look like before deciding whether to run again, or instead if he’ll seek statewide office. A statewide run doesn’t seem like a particularly appealing escape hatch, but both Gov. Gary Herbert (see item above) and Sen. Orrin Hatch could wind up damaged by teabaggers, so you never know. A couple of other statewide offices Matheson could see (Treasurer, Auditor) are up as well.

Also, Some Dude Chuck Williams, an Air Force vet who lost a couple of GOP primaries for Congress… in California… says he plans to challenge Matheson for his House seat, and that he’ll run regardless of where the lines get drawn.

• VA-11: Via FEC Kenobi, Some Dude Christopher Perkins just filed as a Republican to challenge Gerry Connolly. That’s a pretty un-Google-able name, so I can’t tell you much about him… though I do know his home is worth $743,130!

• WV-01: Freshman Rep. David McKinley (R), who won a close race last year, says he’s raised over half a mil in the first quarter. Note, though, that he still has $670K in campaign debt from last cycle.

Other Races:

• Allegheny Co. Exec.: PoliticsPA, via Municipoll, has a race out on the Allegheny, PA County Executive’s race. I’m gonna admit straight off the bat that I don’t know the players here, but click through for details.

• IN-SoS: So a judge allowed a Dem challenge to SoS Charlie White’s eligibility to serve in office to proceed, but really, you just need to read Bob Bobson’s summary of where things stand – and where things will head now. (Bob’s been doing an awesome job of staying on top of this oftentimes-complicated story, so pay attention to him.)

• Champaign, IL Mayor: Here’s a nice little election result that we otherwise missed: The avowedly teabagging mayor of Champaign, Illinois was narrowly defeated by a political newcomer on Tuesday night, the first time, in fact, that he’d ever been opposed in 12 years in office. I’m a little surprised that the university town of Champaign would have elected such a wingnut in the first place, but this is still good news.

• Specials: Johnny Longtorso:

Democrat Kevin Johnson won a 5-point victory over Republican Sonny Sanders in South Carolina’s HD-64.

[On whether this seat was supposedly a Dem stronghold:]

I took another look at it; it’s almost all of a county that Obama got around 56% in along with one or two precincts of an adjacent county, and it’s about 50/50 white/black, so black turnout may have been low. So he just did a few points worse than Obama’s numbers in 2008.

• Wisconsin Recall: Dems filed over 22,000 signatures to recall state Sen. Randy Hopper yesterday. Republicans claim they are close to filing petitions for Sen. Robert Wirch, one of the more endangered Dems on the list.

Remainders:

• WATN?: Ethan Hastert, son of ex-Speaker Denny the Hutt and victim of a genuinely impressive teabagger-fueled anybody-but-Ethan movement to deny him the GOP nomination in IL-14 last year, has managed to win elective office this year. He earned a council seat in the village of Elburn, IL, which has a population that is actually a few thousand smaller than my census tract. Don’t call it a comeback!

Redistricting Roundup:

• Arkansas: Total impasse: The state House rejected the state Senate’s congressional redistricting plan, complementing the Senate’s recent rejection of the House plan. Some procedural maneuvers may be used to try to get things moving forward again, which lawmakers are probably eager to do, since the legislative session was scheduled to end over a week ago.

• California: Look, it’s basically impossible to find a law firm that knows anything about redistricting which has never had any prior political involvement. So I don’t understand why it’s coming as a surprise that Gibson Dunn, the firm hired by the redistricting commission, has a political fund and has used it to make donations. Oh wait, I think I do – it’s because most (but by no means all) of those donations were made to Democrats, so the GOP is continuing its plan to do everything it can to “discredit” the entire process. It’s especially silly, because the firm specifically tasked one Dem attorney and one Republican attorney to lead the effort… but then again, the GOP is especially silly.

• Louisiana: Nathan Gonzales has a good piece untangling the wreck that is Louisiana redistricting, and offering some insight into the behind-the-scenes process. I strongly encourage you to click through the link for the full flavor. (As an inducement, there’s a bowl full of cat food inside.) Apparently, a compromise plan is in the works, but Nathan says that if an agreement isn’t reached by next week, the lege will have to wait until next year to finish its work. (They can’t call a special session?) Anyhow, like I say, read the whole thing.

• New Mexico: Though legislators won’t hold a special session on redistricting until the fall, apparently a plan is brewing among Democrats to excise GOP-leaning Torrance County from the 1st CD. The problem, though, is that while Dems control the lege, Gov. Susana Martinez is, of course, a Republican – a very similar situation to the last round of map-drawing in 2001, which eventually ended up in court.

• Texas: You can play with various Texas map proposals at the link.

• Virginia: Two Virginia items. First, the House of Delegates approved the Republican gerrymander for that body, though most Democrats were actually stupid enough to vote in favor of the plan. (Hasn’t anyone ever heard of a symbolic protest vote to at least signal to your supporters that you know you’re getting the shaft, even if it’s for the greater good?) Second, a (the?) congressional plan was released, and it’s potentially not as bad as it could be. Have a look-see.

This is an attempt to draw new Florida districts based on the initiative they just passed prohibiting gerrymandering. There are three majority-Hispanic, one majority-black, and one plurality-black district all in the state’s south end, but beyond that the lines are just geography. I tried to keep counties and metropolitan areas together, and to a lesser extent cities. This map is what I think a neutral Iowa-type commission might come up with, but in practice I think the new map is likely to end up more like Michigan in that the districts will be fairly clean but more subtly drawn to favor Republicans.  

Anyway, for the districts w = Anglo, b = black, h = Hispanic, a = Asian. O = Obama, M = McCain. Numbers are voting age pop.

State map:

Miami closeup:

FL1 (blue): 77.5w-12.5b-4.6h-2.7a. Deep red. Jeff Miller (current FL1) lives here.

FL2 (green): 68.6w-23.0b-4.8h-2.8a. Should still be likely R. Steve Southerland (current FL2) lives here.

FL3 (purple): 59.2w-27.6b-7.0h-4.2a. This is nothing like the current FL3, which is plurality-black but not remotely compact. This proposed FL3 is about 1 point more black than Duval county as a whole, which is about R+4. This new version is maybe R+2 or R+3 (lean R). Corrine Brown (current FL3) probably lives here but would be too liberal to win this version.

FL4 (red): 75.9w-14.9b-5.4h-2.1a. Also deep red, not too far off the current FL4. Ander Crenshaw (current FL4) probably doesn’t live here but could run here.

FL5 (yellow): 73.8w-13.4b-8.5h-2.8a. This would be a competitive district as it includes the college town of Gainesville. It’s basically Levy (M12-O7), Alachua (O73-M47), Marion (M90-O71), and Putnam (M19-O13). Collectively that’s roughly M168-O164 or about R+4. Cliff Stearns (current FL6) lives here but could potentially lose this to a blue dog.

FL6 (teal): 79.3w-8.9b-8.7h-1.8a. Has St Johns (M69-O36), Flagler (O25-M24), and most of Volusia (O127-M113). Resembles the current FL7 whose rep John Mica does not live here. Probably likely R.

FL7 (gray): 65.2w-8.5b-20.9h-3.7a. Orlando area district with Seminole (M105-O99) and generally whiter parts of Orange (O272-M186). Lean R? Mica and Dan Webster (current FL8) both live here, and Sandy Adams (current FL24) probably does too.

FL8 (blue-gray): 43.7w-25.0b-23.3h-5.4a. Western Orange. The whole county is D+6 and this end has more minorities so it’s probably likely D to safe D. Even Alan Grayson could hold this.

FL9 (toothpaste blue): 77.1w-7.5b-10.7h-3.0a. Southern Volusia, eastern Orange, and most of Brevard (M157-O127). Should be lean R to likely R. Adams could probably run here as it overlaps with most of her current district. Bill Posey (current FL15) also lives here.

FL10 (pink): 83.4w-6.2b-7.8h-1.3a. Four very red counties containing much of the current FL5. There isn’t going to be any free for all here, because Richard Nugent has a stranglehold on this district. Safe R.

FL11 (pea soup green): 84.9w-3.3b-8.5h-2.1a. Pasco (M110-O102) and north Pinellas (O244-M207). Lean R?  Gus Bilirakis (current FL9) lives here.

FL12 (light blue): 77.6w-10.6b-7.1h-3.1a. South Pinellas, mostly St Pete. Lean D? The county is D+0 to D+1 and this is probably the more liberal end of it. I think Bill Young (current FL10) lives here.

FL13 (pink-gray): 52.3w-16.8b-25.4h-3.6a. Mostly Tampa, lots of overlap with current deep-blue FL11 whose rep Kathy Castor probably lives here. Lean D to Likely D?

FL14 (olive): 67.3w-10.7b-17.8h-2.7a. East Pinellas, north Manatee. No incumbent. Lean R to likely R?

FL15 (orange): 59.1w-12.0b-25.3h-2.0a. Maybe 2/3 of Polk (M129-O114) and Osceola (O59-M39). Toss up? Dennis Ross (current FL12) lives here.

FL16 (garden hose green): 72.5w-8.2b-16.6h-1.5a. This spacious hinterland district had to take a chunk of the coast because there weren’t quite enough people in the interior counties. No incumbent. McCain won all of these counties. Likely R to safe R.

FL17 (indigo): 85.1w-3.7b-8.9h-1.2a. Most of Sarasota, Charlotte, north Lee. Likely R? Connie Mack (current FL14) appears to live just outside.

FL18 (yellow): 74.8w-10.8b-11.7h-1.4a. South Brevard, Indian River (M40-O30), St Lucie (O67-M52), Martin (M44-O33), a little bit of northeast Palm Beach. Lean R to likely R? I think Tom Rooney (current FL16) lives in the little bit.

FL19 (money green): 64.1w-11.2b-20.9h-2.4a. Mostly the less-black parts of north Palm Beach, and  takes a contorted shape in order to make FL23 plurality-black. Probably lean D to likely D. The whole county is D+8, although the bluest parts are in FL23. Apparently no incumbent. Lois Frankel, who plans to run against West, probably lives here.

FL20 (pale pink): 70.5w-6.6b-20.7h-1.3a. Collier, much of Lee, a bit of Miami-Dade. Safe R. Mack lives here.

FL21 (red-brown): 72.2w-9.7b-13.6h-2.8a. South Palm Beach, north Broward. Ted Deutch (current FL19) lives here. Likely D to safe D?

FL22 (sky blue): 58.8w-9.1b-27.2h-3.2a. Much of southern and eastern Broward, which is D+14 overall. Probably safe D. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (current FL20) lives here, and probably Allen West (current FL22) also does. That would be entertaining, although it wouldn’t be close.

FL23 (light blue-green): 32.0w-46.0b-17.6h-2.3a. This plurality-black district would probably produce a black rep so I would guess it would be VRA compliant. It looks compact, but it’s really a big cluster in the middle of Palm Beach, another big cluster in the middle of Broward, and the smaller Pahokee and Belle Glade areas on lake Okeechobee connected together by lots and lots of empty space. No incumbent either, unless West lives here. Safe D.

FL24 (purple): 28.8w-4.9b-63.6h-1.8a. After you carve out a majority-black district, what’s left of Dade will necessarily be majority-Hispanic. This overlaps with much of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s current FL18. Lean R?

FL25 (raw hamburger): 12.1w-52.6b-31.0h-2.4a. You can carve out a nice majority-black district that looks sort of like a mini-Florida from interior north Dade and the south end of Broward. Frederica Wilson (current FL17) and Alcee Hastings (current FL23) both live here. Safe D.

FL26 (gray): 6.1w-2.1b-90.6h-1.0a. Ninety percent! Seems to overlap with much of Mario Diaz-Balart’s current FL21. Lean R?

FL27 (sea foam green): 22.7w-11.1b-63.1h-1.9a. This overlaps with much of David Rivera’s current FL25 which is R+5, but loses a piece of Collier county that is 9% black and 43% Hispanic (the rest of the county is just 3% black and 11% Hispanic) so it probably isn’t anywhere near the county’s overall PVI of R+15. Probably still lean R to likely R if its new areas in Dade county aren’t much different from its old ones.

If my estimates of these districts are correct, this map is 18-8-1 considering only the partisan lean of the districts, but about half of the “red” districts would be competitive whereas the only really competitive “blue” district is probably FL12 in St. Pete. In practice I think this map would be in the range of 17R-10D to 15R-12D in most years. The current map has just 5 districts with a PVI of +4 or less one way or the other. I think this map would have considerably more, which should make for the more competitive elections the voters said they wanted this past November.

Thoughts? I don’t know this state well at all and would appreciate any pointers about these proposed districts.  

This map creates two Democratic districts with a PVI of at least D+10 and two Republican districts with a PVI of at least R+30, which would be the two most Republican in the country.

The districts are contiguous, even when they don’t really look like it, including a narrow strip along the gulf shoreline for the fourth district.

As always I crunched the actual precinct data to produce these maps. However in this case, to my horror, I could have saved a week of transcribing scanned county records and just maximised the minority districts since they produce almost exactly the same map. Nevertheless at least this way we have precise voting totals for each district.

1st(Blue): 63.2% Obama 37.8W 57.3B

2nd(Green): 66.2% Obama 36.1W 59.1B

3rd(Dark Magenta): 22.4% Obama 79.6W 16.0B

4th(Red): 22.3% Obama 78.8W 15.1B

With Wisconsin in the news so much lately, I wanted to see how voting patterns have shifted.  Here we are.  Special thanks to californianintexas’s blog for PVI info!

This was Wisconsin in 1968.  The labor-heavy northwest (Sean Duffy’s district) was heavily blue, particularly compared to today.  Milwaukee and Madison, “Fake Wisconsin” were blue as well, although the inner suburbs seem to be even more conservative back then.  Kenosha was quite blue as well (was labor strong there too?)  Sheboygan and Manitowoc along Lake Michigan were once union strongholds as well.  The farming country of Southern Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Suburbs, and the Northeast (Green Bay, Fond du Lac, Appleton) were conservative, as were some sparsely populated northern counties

This was Wisconsin in 1984.  The Northwest shifted even more strongly to the Democrats, even as labor began to decline.  Some of this shift can probably be attributed to Walter Mondale being from neighboring Minnesota and much of this area being in a Minnesota media market. Some of the rural North became more Democratic too, while in farming country, we can see the beginning of a leftward shift that still exists today (Ron Kind’s district, basically).  Racine and Milwaukee both got bluer as well.  

This was Wisconsin in 2000, another sixteen-year shift.  Milwaukee’s suburbs shifted back to the right. The central northwest counties lost union workers and went GOP.  However, the Minnesota border and Wisconsin Iron Range counties stayed with Democrats.  A huge shift occurred along the river, in the Southwest.  This still exists today.  The counties near Madison all became more Democratic.  In a reverse of Ohio’s Democratic strength, Wisconsin’s is West and South, not East and South.  

Please give feedback.

You know the drill. Disclaimer: I have never even been to WA and pretty much know nothing about the state, so feel free to criticize (it should be a learning experience).

I went for 6-4 because my guess is that the commission which redistricts WA will shore up every incumbent and add a new Dem seat while avoiding really ugly gerrymanders. Although I have seen maps that add a new Dem seat in the Olympia/Tacoma area, I chose to add one in the Seattle suburbs.

Also, I guess I somehow missed a precinct which somehow has 0 residents but 4 voters, but we’ll ignore that. All incumbents have been kept in their districts, and the greatest population deviation is 379 people.

WA-03 Incumbent: Jaime Herrera, R-Camas

Old: 53-47 Rossi

New: 56-44 Rossi

Description: Withdraws from Democratic-leaning Pacific and Thurston counties and moves east, making Herrera safer. It’s possible that McCain may have won this now, or at least only lost it narrowly.

WA-04 Incumbent: Doc Hastings, R-Pasco

Old: 64-36 Rossi

New: 64-36 Rossi

Description: Loses its northwestern part and moves east, swallowing up Walla Walla, Lewiston, and Pullman. Remains a safe R district mostly based in Yakima and the Tri-Cities.

WA-05 Incumbent: Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane

Old: 59-41 Rossi

New: 59-41 Rossi

Description: Loses SE portion and gains some area in the west, making it somewhat more rectangular. Eats a few precincts of Wenatchee in Chelan County for population reasons. Still Spokane-based and Safe R.

WA-01 OPEN

Old: 56-44 Murray

New: 56-44 Murray

Description: Essentially the same, although goes a bit further north and east. Unfortunately, douchebag Brian Baird still lives here, but this district is sure to elect a Democrat no matter what.

WA-02 Incumbent: Rick Larsen, D-Lake Stevens

Old: 51-49 Murray

New: 52-48 Murray

This district shrinks considerably, pulling entirely out of King and much of Snohomish. Gains some liberal suburbs from the 1st, but not much. Nevertheless, that, combined with the shedding of conservative territory, moves the needle towards Team Blue a bit. If Larsen could survive 2010, he’s probably fine.

WA-07 Incumbent: Jim McDermott, D-Seattle

Old: 81-19 Murray

New: 81-19 Murray

Not much change here, may have gotten very very very slightly more Democratic. Seattle, Vashon Island, and a small piece of Seattle’s southern suburbs.

WA-09 Incumbent: Adam Smith, D-Tacoma

Old: 53-47 Murray

New: 56-44 Murray

Smith will like this district. He drops his moderately Democratic portion of Thurston County for very Democratic portion of Tacoma that was in the 6th before. With all of Tacoma and some of the southern King suburbs, Smith would have won easily even in 2010.

WA-10 OPEN

Old: N/A

New: 54-46 Murray

This is the new district, anchored in the eastern suburbs of Seattle. It contains Suzan DelBene’s home of Medina, so she could probably get elected to Congress. 54-46 Murray is a pretty solid Democratic margin (probably around 60% Obama), so as long as DelBene is the #1 Democratic vote-getter in the primary she should win the general easily. However, State Sen. Rodney Tom, who briefly challenged Darcy Burner in the 2008 primary, lives in Medina here too, so he could give DelBene trouble.

WA-06 Incumbent: Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton

Old: 53-47 Murray

New: 53-47 Murray

Dicks drops his heavily D portion of Tacoma but gains Pacific County and heavily D Olympia in exchange. Basically a wash.

WA-08 Incumbent: Dave Reichert, R-Auburn

Old: 51-49 Rossi

New: 55-45 Rossi

So I was a bit uncomfortable with pulling this into Chelan and Kittitas counties, but even if there were a way to avoid that, I think this district would still swing a bit towards the Republicans, since the new 10th takes a lot of the liberal Seattle suburbs off this district’s hands. This district only contains part of Auburn but I am pretty sure it contains Reichert’s home. It also contains Carnation, home to Darcy Burner, but this district is far too Republican for her to win.

Don’t get too comfortable with Tuesday’s results, because now they’ve changed thanks to another discrepancy between one county’s results and the AP’s. Of course, don’t get comfortable with the new numbers either, as more changes are likely as recanvassing occurs and the inevitable recounting and litigation begins!

A tally compiled by The Associated Press Wednesday and used by news organizations statewide, including the Journal Sentinel, indicated Kloppenburg was leading the race by 204 votes. Figures on Winnebago County’s website are now different from those collected by the AP.

Winnebago County’s numbers say Prosser received 20,701 votes to Kloppenburg’s 18,887. The AP has 19,991 for Prosser to Kloppenburg’s 18,421.

The new numbers would give Prosser 244 more votes, or a 40-vote lead statewide….

The latest numbers for Winnebago County are not official.

The news service is working to reach the Winnebago County clerk, but the clerk is participating in the canvass of the vote and has not returned a message.

UPDATE: High drama! More lead changes! In the last couple hours, Prosser added to his lead further with new numbers in Waukesha County. But now Talking Points Memo is reporting that Kloppenburg has added votes in a number of rural counties, enough to draw about even. Suffice it to say we have no idea who’s going to win this thing.

Late Update: Prosser has reportedly picked up another 200 votes from the correction of a clerical error in New Berlin, located in the Republican stronghold of Waukesha County in the Milwaukee suburbs….

Late Late Update: TPM has just confirmed with the local clerk’s offices that Kloppenburg has gained some net votes in some other counties: +113 in Grant County, +30 in Iowa County, and +91 in Portage County. She has also gained +24 in Vernon County.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Now there’s word of a much bigger discrepancy out there in Waukesha County that would favor Prosser. Nothing official yet, though:

Reports that Waukesha missed entire city (!) of Brookfield in counting Tuesday vote. Could be 7K vote gain for Prosser.

UPDATE #4: Waukesha is indeed adding about 14,000 votes, adding about 7,000 to Prosser’s margin.

Madison – In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold is set to release new vote totals giving 7,500 votes in the state Supreme Court race back toward Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor.

Suffolk (4/3-5, likely voters, no trendlines)

Deval Patrick (D): 37

Scott Brown (R-inc): 52

Undecided: 11

Mike Capuano (D): 26

Scott Brown (R-inc): 52

Undecided: 19

Tim Murray (D): 23

Scott Brown (R-inc): 51

Undecided: 22

Joe Kennedy (D): 40

Scott Brown (R-inc): 45

Undecided: 13

Setti Warren (D): 9

Scott Brown (R-inc): 52

Undecided: 32

Ed Markey (D): 26

Scott Brown (R-inc): 53

Undecided: 19

Vicki Kennedy (D): 30

Scott Brown (R-inc): 52

Undecided: 16

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Here’s one more splash of cold water for anyone who thinks that Massachusetts, what with its dark blue hue, will be an easy Senate pickup in 2012. Local pollster Suffolk (who correctly predicted that Brown would win by 4 in the Jan. 2011 special election) find him leading by mostly large margins, ranging anywhere from 5 (against former Rep. Joe Kennedy, who hasn’t expressed any interest in the race) to 43 (against currently unknown Newton mayor Setti Warren, who seems like the likeliest of these seven to actually run).

They aren’t the first pollster to find these kinds of numbers lately, although these are the worst of the batch; for comparison’s sake, PPP found Brown leading MA-08 Rep. Mike Capuano by 16 in December, while WNEC in March gave him a 13-point lead. (Today’s poll has Capuano, the only Dem sampled in all three polls, down by 26.) That WNEC poll raised some eyebrows for its sample composition (34 D, 12 R, and 47 I, compared with 2008 exit poll numbers of 43 D, 17 R, 40 I), and today’s Suffolk poll is in that same territory, with a breakdown of 37 D, 12 R, 48 I.

If there’s good news to be found here, it’s that the Democrats tested (with the exceptions of Gov. Deval Patrick, and the Kennedys, all of whom have said they won’t run) are pretty poorly known, and their share of the vote is only likely to go up once somebody’s actually in the race and making the case in the local media against Brown’s mostly party-line voting record. In the meantime, though, through personal charisma (he has 58/22 favorables) and skill at building his brand as a moderate through frequent ritual invocations of his independence (based on the 56/24 ‘yes’ response to the question of whether he has kept his promise to be an independent voice), Brown’s starting in unexpectedly strong position. Add in the more-appealing possibility of another open seat in 2013 (if, as some expect, John Kerry resigns to become the next Secretary of State), and it’s no wonder the DSCC is having recruitment problems with this seat.

Yesterday, Scott Walker blamed David Prosser’s apparent loss on Madison and, to a lesser extent, Milwaukee. He said that he was confident that the recall elections would be okay for his party because, in his words, “Those Senate recall elections both on the Democrat and Republican side are not being held in Madison and not being held in Milwaukee. They’re being held in other parts of the state”. This is pretty disingenuous; the elections aren’t being held in Waukesha, either, and Kloppenburg carried 30 counties in addition to Dane county (Madison) and Milwaukee county. But let’s indulge Walker’s fantasy for a moment. Imagine that Wisconsin were to split into two separate states. Dane and Milwaukee counties form the new Democratic People’s Republic of Fake Wisconsin, or just Fake Wisconsin for short (don’t forget to buy the official state underwear). The rest of the state then forms the state of Real Wisconsin (like Real Virginia, only with more cheese). There might be legal issues arising from having a state that is composed of two non-contiguous parts, but technically I don’t think that the constitution requires states to be composed of contiguous territory. Leaving aside the legal issues, though, it turns out this proposal might not be as good for the GOP as Scott Walker thinks it would be.

In the 2008 election, Obama still would have gotten 52.5% of the vote in Real Wisconsin. He would also have carried the state of Fake Wisconsin with 70.3%. The Fake Wisconsin secession would have added two electoral votes to Obama’s total, as Fake Wisconsin would have two electoral votes in addition to the two it would steal from Real Wisconsin. In 2004, taking out Milwaukee and Dane only leaves Kerry with 45.6% of the vote in Real Wisconsin. But Kerry would have carried Fake Wisconsin with 63.9% of the vote. Kerry would have lost Real Wisconsin’s six eight electoral votes but kept Fake Wisconsin’s four, leaving him down a total of two. Under this scenario, if Kerry had won Ohio he still would have become President. These two elections give Real Wisconsin a Cook PVI of approximately R+2, or in other words the same as Virginia or Florida. Even without Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin is still basically a swing state. Fake Wisconsin, on the other hand, would have a PVI of D+17, or four points more Democratic than Vermont, currently the most Democratic state in the union.

Not only would the secession of Dane and Milwaukee not benefit the GOP in presidential elections, it would decidedly hurt them  in the senate. Fake Wisconsin would now have two senators in addition to the two senators from Real Wisconsin. It’s basically guaranteed that Fake Wisconsin’s senators would be Democrats (probably Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, as both of them live within the boundaries of the new state), while Real Wisconsin could easily elect one or two Democratic senators as well. Ron Johnson lives in Real Wisconsin, so he would remain a senator, at least until 2016. But the other senate seat of Real Wisconsin would be open, and one of the strongest potential Democratic senate candidates, Rep Ron Kind, would have a good chance of winning it in 2012. The best the GOP could hope to do is break even among senators from the former Badger State, and likely the Democrats would come out with one or two more senators.

Of course, the biggest reason that splitting Milwaukee and Dane from Wisconsin wouldn’t be good for Walker is that Walker would be a resident of Fake Wisconsin. Even back in the days when he could win an election for county executive in Milwaukee, Walker still probably couldn’t win the governorship of Fake Wisconsin, as governor’s elections are more partisan than county executive elections, not to mention the fact that he would have to deal with Dane county as well. I suppose Walker could move to the suburban counties and run for the governorship of Real Wisconsin. Maybe he could make sure that his house remained an enclave of Real Wisconsin, or change the laws so that anyone named Scott Walker doesn’t have to be a resident of Real Wisconsin to be governor. This is his dream world, after all.

All things considered, it seems that the secession of Fake Wisconsin from Real Wisconsin would probably be a good thing for Democrats. This idea may be the one thing Scott Walker and I agree on.