Tag: Polls

The latest Rasmussen Iowa poll shows five-term incumbent Senator Chuck Grassley still over 50 percent against all Democratic challengers, but with a smaller lead than he had earlier in the year. Rasmussen surveyed 500 likely Iowa voters on April 29, giving a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.

Survey questions and toplines are here.

Roxanne Conlin is the Democrat who gives Grassley the narrowest lead, 53 percent to 40 percent. Grassley led Conlin 55-36 in Rasmussen’s previous Iowa poll, taken in mid-March. Rasmussen’s summary notes that Grassley “now leads Conlin by only five points among women.”

Many politically active Iowa Democrats believe Conlin can help Governor Chet Culver and our down-ticket candidates if she motivates high turnout among women. I also know many women who plan to volunteer for Conlin’s campaign. She has already held campaign events in all 99 Iowa counties.

Grassley leads Democrat Bob Krause by 57 percent to 31 percent, the same as in Rasmussen’s March poll. He leads Tom Fiegen by 57 percent to 30 percent, a slightly smaller margin than his 57-28 lead in March.

This race is still Grassley’s to lose; Rasmussen finds 63 percent of respondents have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of the incumbent, while only 34 percent have a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion. The corresponding numbers for Conlin are 44 favorable/30 unfavorable.

However, a few stumbles by Grassley could make this race highly competitive in a hurry. At the very least Conlin is going to make it a lot closer than any other Democrat has against Grassley in the last 25 years.

I expect Conlin to have little trouble winning the Democratic primary on June 8. Not only is she the best-known candidate, she out-raised Grassley in the first quarter and had about $1 million cash on hand as of March 31. According to FEC reports, Krause had $352 and Fiegen had $582 on hand at the end of the first quarter.

UPDATE: Rasmussen’s numbers on the governor’s race continue to point to a tough road ahead for Governor Chet Culver. He trails former Governor Terry Branstad 53 percent to 38 percent, little changed from Branstad’s 52-36 lead in Rasmussen’s March poll. Bob Vander Plaats leads Culver 45-41 in the new poll, up from a 42-40 lead in the March poll. Culver is barely ahead of Rod Roberts in the new poll, 43-41, little changed from the 40-38 lead Culver had against Roberts in the previous poll.

It’s not encouraging for an incumbent to be stuck around 40 percent against all challengers. Culver needs to bring up his own numbers and get out there to tell voters about his administration’s successes. For a preview of the case Culver will make with Iowa voters, watch his appearance on Chuck Todd’s MSNBC program last week.

Assuming Branstad will be the Republican nominee, Culver’s campaign will have to take him on aggressively. The race is bound to tighten up, but as long as Branstad is polling above 50 percent the odds are against Culver. Perhaps the governor can needle Branstad and provoke the same kind of response Vander Plaats got during the second Republican debate.

AR-Sen: Former President and governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton cut two radio ads on behalf of Blanche Lincoln. One of them highlights Lincoln’s alleged support for Clinton’s economic agenda back in the 1990s – not an issue likely to resonate, especially in today’s economic climate.

FL-Sen: A Public Opinion Strategies poll for Charlie Crist, taken before he left the GOP primary, had him at 36, Marco Rubio at 28, and Kendrick Meek at 23. A McLaughlin & Associates poll (taken for “the Associated Industries of Florida,” also before the switcheroo) had Crist up as well, 33C-29R-15M. Meanwhile, The Buzz takes a look at which boldfaced names showed up to Crist’s first fundraiser following his political party reassignment surgery.

On the Dem side, zillionaire mortgage-shorting mogul Jeff Greene says he’ll “spend whatever it takes” to win his primary against Rep. Kendrick Meek. That must be music to Joe Trippi’s ears. Greene is unelectable but thanks to his monstrous bankroll, he can do a lot of harm to Democratic chances in this race. Trippi is aiding and abetting this bullshit, and will profit handsomely.

NY-Sen-B: Chris Dodd, in the midst of working on financial regulation reform, says he won’t attend a Wall Street-sponsored fundraiser on behalf of Kirsten Gillibrand in NYC tonight.

UT-Sen: A poignant poll for Bob Bennett: While Republican delegates to the state convention despise him (he’s in third place with just 16%), rank-and-file Republican voters like him much more (first place, 39%). In other states, the GOP would have cause for concern, since a convention process like this is clearly aimed at producing the most conservative candidate imaginable. But in Utah, it probably won’t matter. Though if Bennett gets toppled, I wonder if other nervous establishment officials might consider eliminating the convention and replacing it with an ordinary primary.

MI-Gov: Thank god: Geoffrey Feiger, Jack Kevorkian’s attorney and the Dems’ disastrous 1998 gubernatorial nominee, says he won’t run again. Now all we have to worry about is Andy Dillon.

HI-Gov, HI-01: Hawaii’s legislature unexpectedly passed a civil unions bill on the last day of the session, which now goes to Gov. Linda Lingle (she has until July 6th to decide whether to sign the bill into law or veto it). Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona (R), running to succeed Lingle, wants her to veto it. Ex-Rep. Neil Abercrombie is strongly in favor of the bill (and gay marriage), while his Democratic primary opponent, Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, opposes gay marriage but hasn’t expressed an opinion on the current bill.

This may also have repercussions in the HI-01 race, where state Sen. President Colleen Hanabusa may have pushed the bill through in an attempt to repair relations with the LGBT community after the same bill got scuttled in January. Hanabusa says she doesn’t support gay marriage, though, while Democratic rival Ed Case does. Republican Charles Djou opposes the measure.

FL-05: Unsurprisingly, local Republicans are grumbling about Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite’s filing-deadline handoff to Sherriff Ted Richard Nugent, including state Sen. Mike Fasano, who apparently has had his eye on this seat for some time. You have to wonder if this is the kind of thing which will taint Nugent and make him vulnerable to a primary challenge next cycle. Also among the complainers, interestingly, is state Sen. Paula Dockery, whose current district overlaps with the 5th CD. Dockery’s gotten nowhere in her FL-Gov primary against AG Bill McCollum, so you have to wonder if she isn’t gnashing her teeth about a lost opportunity here.

FL-25: Joe Garcia’s candidacy is a rare bright spot for Dems in this otherwise putrid cycle. Now the DCCC, which lobbied heavily for him to get into the race, has given Garcia their official stamp of approval, adding him to their Red to Blue list once again.

GA-09: Dems never had a chance in the special election in this ruby red district, but you gotta figure it’s almost always better to actually have a Democrat on the ballot rather than not. We had a candidate here, pastor Mike Freeman, but he dropped out a couple of weeks ago. Now, though, he says he’s back in the race, but his website is offline.

IN-08: Democratic state Rep. Trent Van Haaften, running to fill Brad Ellsworth’s open seat, has been talking to local teabaggers to see if they might support him. Yeah, I’m in as much disbelief as you are. But, as is always the case, there’s a lot of hostility between the tea partiers and the establishment, and at least one ‘bagger says they want to “teach the machine a lesson.”

PA-12: Freedom’s Defense Fund, an arm of the incredibly dodgy Base Connect (formerly BMW Direct) has made a $20K “independent” expenditure on behalf of Bill Russell, who is challenging Tim Burns in the GOP primary. (Recall that there’s both a special election and a primary on the same day.) FDF is supposedly distinct from Base Connect, but given that they share the same office (according to TPM), the idea that their expenditures are actually “independent” is a real stretch.

More importantly, the NRCC just threw down another quarter million bucks on behalf of Burns, bringing their total spending on this race to over $725K. The DCCC has yet to respond to this latest blast.

DCCC: The DCCC is about to begin its biennial rite of splitting off its independent expenditure arm. Thanks to stupid federal laws against “co-ordination,” the DCCC staffers who make spending decisions about IEs can’t be in contact with the rest of the D-Trip, because those folks are in contact with individual campaigns. This is senseless. Anyhow, political director Robby Mook will head up the IE arm, and John Lapp (who once ran this shop himself) will serve as a “senior advisor.” Incumbent retention director Jennifer Pihlaja will replace Mook as PD of DCCC proper (and keep her current title).

Ward Research for the Honolulu Advertiser (4/23-28, likely voters):

Charles Djou (R): 36

Ed Case (D): 28

Colleen Hanabusa (D): 22

Undecided: 13

(MoE: ±5.2%)

To recap, this is the third poll we’ve seen of this race over the past month. A “leaked” DCCC internal pegged the race at 32 Djou, 32 Case, 27 Hanabusa, while an R2K poll from two weeks ago have Djou a 32-29 lead over Case, with Hanabusa close behind at 28%.

Since then, the DCCC has poured in nearly $250K on media buys against Djou, but we’ve seen no evidence of their efforts yielding any positive results for Team Blue. Hanabusa herself has opened fire on Case’s right-wing record in a new ad that began airing this weekend. If there’s ever been a perfect storm for a Republican to win this seat in freak circumstances with a bare plurality of the vote, this is it.

(H/T: Hotline On Call)

• AR-Sen: The SEIU is turning their amps up to 11 in a final effort to beat Blanche Lincoln in the Democratic primary. They’re ponying up another $1 million for a new TV ad blitz, focusing on Lincoln’s support for NAFTA, CAFTA, and sundry other free-trade deals.

• FL-Sen: Looks like the “Help wanted” sign is going out at Charlie Crists’s office. As expected, much of his top-tier staff evacuated en masse; he lost communications director Andrea Saul, spokesperson Amanda Hennenberg, and campaign counsel Ben Ginsberg (all Beltway types left over from when Crist was the NRSC’s prize pony, who just headed back to the GOP’s mothership). Also former Crist marionette George LeMieux severed his strings: the seat-warming Senator says he won’t support Crist’s independent bid.

• NV-Sen: Imagine that… a Democrat actually taking to the airwaves to explain the benefits of the broadly-misunderstood (or just plain not-understood-at-all) health care reform bill and not just ceding the discursive arena to right-wing radio and astroturfers? Better late than never, I guess. Harry Reid is forging ahead with that, launching three different new TV ads featuring stories from actual Nevadans actually benefiting from HCR.

• OH-Sen (pdf): There’s one more poll of the Democratic Senate primary in Ohio, from Suffolk this time. They find an even bigger edge for Lee Fisher over Jennifer Brunner than did PPP; in fact, Suffolk has Fisher doubling up on her, 55-27. Voters may be thinking strategically: they also find that respondents feel Fisher has a better chance of beating Rob Portman than does Brunner, by a lop-sided 55-15 margin. Brunner voters report that, if Fisher wins the election, 74% will vote for Fisher and 8% for Portman.

• AZ-Gov: PPP has one more installment in its Arizona sample today: the Republican primary in the gubernatorial race. As other pollsters have found, once-wobbly incumbent Jan Brewer has strengthened her primary position (while destabilized her general election position) by signing off on Arizona’s new racial profiling law. Brewer leads the pack at 38, over fractured opposition led by NRA board member Owen Buz Mills at 19, state Treasurer Dean Martin at 16, and former university regent John Munger at 3. (In PPP’s last poll here, from September, Brewer was losing a head-to-head against Martin 37-26.) PPP also did a fantasy-baseball poll that included Maricopa Co. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who, as he does every four years, has been expressing interest in the race but not moving forward in it. Arpaio wins that version of the primary, taking 33%, with 25 for Brewer, 15 for Martin, 11 for Mills, and 1 for Munger.

• MN-Gov: With the Republican endorsing convention in Minnesota already underway, most media accounts are focusing on Sarah Palin’s last-minute endorsement of state Rep. Tom Emmer, but there’s a more important endorsement at work here in terms of potentially moving some delegates: Norm Coleman is now also backing Emmer and privately making calls to delegates on Emmer’s behalf. The GOPers have already endorsed in some of the downballot races, maybe most notably the Auditor’s race, where they endorsed former Auditor Pat Anderson (who had been running for Governor for a while, until she decided to drop down and try to get her old job back instead).

• UT-Gov: Mason-Dixon, on behalf of the Salt Lake Tribune, took another look at the general election in the Utah governor’s race, which is definitely looking like a heavy lift for Salt Lake County mayor Peter Corroon. The Democrat trails GOP incumbent Gary Herbert 61-30, an even better showing than Herbert’s 55-30 result in January.

• FL-16: Whew. After making some noises about a possible comeback attempt, ex-Rep. Tim Mahoney decided on filing day that he wouldn’t run to get his seat back. He still took a parting shot at Rep. Tom Rooney, saying he’s part of the GOP’s move to the “radical right.” Some Dudes Jim Horn and Ed Tautiva are all the Dems have on the ballot in this R+5 district, unless something changes in the next few hours.

• HI-01: The Republicans continue to very subtly funnel money into the 1st, somewhat mirroring their stealth strategy on how they got similarly-blue MA-Sen off the ground. Rather than the NRCC charging in with both barrels blazing, instead there’s a push for individual House GOP members to contribute directly to Charles Djou; about 40 have done so already.

• IN-02: The National Rifle Association slammed GOP candidate Jackie Walorski. No, that’s not because the right-wing Walorski suddenly had a change of heart on the gun issue; instead, it was because she was claiming the NRA’s endorsement. That was only for her 2008 legislative bid, the NRA said, and she has not been endorsed yet for this year for the different office.

• IN-03: Looks like Rep. Mark Souder isn’t going to be in the House much longer, regardless of how next week’s primary plays out. Brian Howey says Souder has been telling him that he’d already been contemplating retirement in 2012, and the stress of trying to win his unexpectedly-tough primary election has “sealed it” for him.

• PA-04: Here’s a last-minute sign of life for Keith Rothfus, who’d been the leading GOP contender here up until the moment when former US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan announced (although Rothfus beat Buchanan at fundraising last quarter). He got the endorsement today of Glen Meakem, a wealthy businessman and part-time talk radio host who’s something of a behind-the-scenes power in Republican circles in western Pennsylvania and who had briefly considered a Senate bid last year.

• SC-04: Rep. Bob Inglis’s main threat this year is in the GOP primary, not the general, and he launched two different ads reminding voters that he’s actually pretty conservative. One ad touts his NRA endorsement, while the other runs down the litany of things he opposed (health care reform, stimulus, cap-and-trade, auto industry bailout).

• NY-St. Sen.: A long-time Republican stalwart in the New York state Senate is retiring: Dale Volker (in office since 1975). Democrats looking to pad their narrow majority in the Senate may need to look elsewhere, though; this district in the Buffalo suburbs and surrounding rural counties is one of the most conservative in the state, with a 79K-to-65K GOP registration advantage, and won 54-40 by John McCain.

• Arizona: Arizona has been doing all kinds of weird things lately, and here’s one more to add to the list. One of the few states to not have a Lt. Governor (the SoS is 2nd in line of succession, which is how Jan Brewer became Governor), Arizona is planning to have a Lt. Governor… but only because they would eliminate the SoS position and give all those duties to the LG. What’s even weirder is that they’d start doing what Illinois just decided to stop doing because the results were so uniformly terrible: the Governor and LG candidates will run separately in the primary, but be joined together on one ticket via shotgun wedding for the general election. The idea cleared the legislature, but because it’s a constitutional amendment, the idea has to pass a voter referendum before it becomes law.

• Puerto Rico: The House approved allowing Puerto Rico to hold a plebiscite on its grey-area status (the last one was in 1998, where they decided to remain a commonwealth). It’ll be a two-step vote, where the first vote will ask whether it should remain a commonwealth or not. If the answer is “no,” the second vote will ask whether it should become independent, a U.S. state, still remain a commonwealth, or enter some other sovereign-but-connected-to-the-U.S. status. If it voted for statehood, Congress would still have to approve making it a state. Of course, this has to pass the Senate as well before the vote could happen, so it may get kicked down the road for a while.

• OFA: Nathan Gonzales has a thorough look at the Obama campaign’s state directors, and how they’re part of OFA’s pivot to focus on turning out the same voters for the 2010 midterms. Here’s a handy table of what all the directors are up to these days.

• History: Rhodes Cook has an interesting column that’s been getting linked all over the place in the last couple days: a much more apt comparison for what the Democrats are getting themselves this year, rather than 1994, is 1966. The parallels are that the Democrats were facing some inevitable snap-back after overperforming in the 1964 election (winning nearly 2/3s majorities in each chamber), and the GOP quickly got back up off the mat after the Dems pushed the limits in passing a variety of Great Society legislation (most notably Medicare). Of course, the Democrats still took a bath, losing 47 in the House and 3 in the Senate, so it’s still not really something the Democrats should aspire towards.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (4/26-28, likely voters, no trendlines):

Mark Critz (D): 40

Tim Burns (R): 46

Undecided: 14

^{(MoE: ±4%)}

Things are looking tough for Democrats in the race to fill the late Jack Murtha’s House seat, with Research 2000 giving Republican Tim Burns his biggest lead yet. An earlier PPP poll showed him up three points, while interestingly, Burns’s own internal had him back one. Critz’s standing seems to be no fault of his own. He has similar favorables to Burns (44-33 vs. 46-40). The problem is simply that this is a bad district and a bad environment – a toxic combination.

Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district is a socially and culturally conservative place, the kind of area which has steadily been moving away from Democrats for quite some time. While much has been made of the fact that PA-12 was the only CD in the nation to flip from John Kerry to John McCain in 2008, that’s a pretty arbitrary metric. The real story is that it was one of just 35 CDs (out of 435) where Barack Obama got a smaller share of the vote than Kerry did. So while the nation as a whole was voting a whole lot more Democratic, PA-12 took a step in the other direction.

And it shows in two other key poll numbers. Obama’s approval in the district is just 38-55. Just as troubling, only 34% of voters say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports healthcare reform, while 48% are more likely to pull the lever for someone who advocates repeal. This helps explain why Critz has said he would have voted against HCR, but with this kind of headwind, that may not make much of a difference.

Both parties are seriously contesting this race – the DCCC has spent $472K so far, while the much less flush NRCC has matched them with $482K. Dems have also sent Joe Biden into the district to campaign for Critz. The election is a little over two weeks away (May 18), and undoubtedly it will be fought hard until the very end. But if Democrats’ streak winning special elections comes to an end, it may truly be a case of wrong place, wrong time.

SurveyUSA for the Mike Downs Center For Indiana Politics (4/22-26, likely voters):

Dan Coats (R): 36

John Hostettler (R): 24

Marlin Stutzman (R): 18

Don Bates (R): 6

Richard Behney (R): 4

Undecided: 13

(MoE: ±5%)

A conservative split between Hostettler and a surprisingly potent Stutzman seems to be giving Coats a path to victory, even with an underwhelming level of primary support. In the general, though, Coats starts the race off as the GOP’s strongest choice:

Brad Ellsworth (D): 31

Dan Coats (R): 47

Undecided: 22

Brad Ellsworth (D): 32

John Hostettler (R): 45

Undecided: 23

Brad Ellsworth (D): 35

Marlin Stutzman (R): 41

Undecided: 25

(MoE: ±2.8%)

The DSCC managed to produce a clean hit on Coats on what seemed like a daily basis immediately after his entry into this race, and I hope they have a few chestnuts ready to go after the primary is done.

Meanwhile, SUSA also took a look at the IN-03 GOP primary, and the results are not pretty for incumbent Mark Souder:

Mark Souder (R-inc): 35

Bob Thomas (R): 29

Phil Troyer (R): 19

Greg Dickman (R): 2

Undecided: 16

(MoE: ±5%)

Souder, one of the lesser lights of a state delegation dominated by Republican deadwood, has been somewhat notorious over the past two cycles for dramatically under-performing his district’s Republican tilt. It looks like a primary loss is a live possibility at this point, with self-funding auto dealer Bob Thomas nipping on Souder’s corn-encrusted heels. Mark this one down on your calendars as another fun primary to watch.

The full polling memo for the Senate race is available below the fold.

Public Policy Polling (4/23-25, Republican voters):

John McCain (R): 46

J.D. Hayworth (R): 35

Jim Deakin (R): 7

Undecided: 12

(MoE: ±5%)

McCain isn’t in hot shape here, sporting a 44-45 approval rating among primary voters, and losing conservatives to Hayworth by a 46-38 margin. However, the big reason why McCain is in charge, it seems, is that Hayworth is having trouble extending his appeal beyond the righter-than-right clump of the party, attracting a terrible 13-59 approval rating from moderates.

Also, the Behavior Research Center released their general election numbers of this race today, finding McCain up by 46-24 over Democrat Rodney Glassman, and Hayworth ahead of Glassman by 37-30. (Keep in mind the usual caveat with BRC polls, namely that it was conducted over an unusually long two-week period.)

Research 2000 (4/26-28, likely voters, 4/12-14 in parens):

Blanche Lincoln (D-inc): 43 (45)

Bill Halter (D): 35 (33)

Other: 7 (6)

Undecided: 15 (16)

(MoE: ±5%)

Halter has made a bit of an ascent over the past couple of weeks, pulling within single digits of Lincoln for the first time after previously stalling at a gap of 12 points. Pay close attention to that “Other” number, which presumably are the votes that tea-flavored Democrat D.C. Morrison is targeting. If no one wins 50% on May 18th, this sucker is going nuclear to a runoff on June 8th. In that event, this could be a race where time may be on Halter’s side.

And for the general election match-ups:

Blanche Lincoln (D-inc): 42 (43)

John Boozman (R): 52 (50)

Undecided: 6 (7)

Blanche Lincoln (D-inc): 40 (41)

Gilbert Baker (R): 47 (48)

Undecided: 13 (11)

Blanche Lincoln (D-inc): 40 (42)

Kim Hendren (R): 50 (49)

Undecided: 10 (9)

Blanche Lincoln (D-inc): 42 (43)

Curtis Coleman (R): 46 (46)

Undecided: 12 (11)

Bill Halter (D): 42 (41)

John Boozman (R): 47 (48)

Undecided: 11 (11)

Bill Halter (D): 43 (43)

Gilbert Baker (R): 44 (45)

Undecided: 13 (12)

Bill Halter (D): 43 (43)

Kim Hendren (R): 45 (46)

Undecided: 12 (11)

Bill Halter (D): 43 (44)

Curtis Coleman (R): 41 (43)

Undecided: 16 (13)

(MoE: ±4%)

Rasmussen also has some numbers that, while not looking anything quite like this, at least corroborate the idea that Halter is less of a general election liability than Lincoln.

Quinnipiac (4/21-26, likely voters, 3/23-29 in parens):

Lee Fisher (D): 40 (41)

Rob Portman (R): 37 (37)

Undecided: 21 (21)

Jennifer Brunner (D): 40 (38)

Rob Portman (R): 36 (37)

Undecided: 21 (23)

(MoE: ±2.5%)

Ted Strickland (D-inc): 44 (43)

John Kasich (R): 38 (38)

Undecided: 17 (17)

(MoE: ±2.5%)

There’s been very little change in Ohio over the last month according to Quinnipiac; the needle barely budged in the Ted Strickland/John Kasich and Lee Fisher/Rob Portman races. Jennifer Brunner improved her position in the Senate race slightly, but if yesterday’s poll of the Democratic primary is any indication, that’ll be a moot point starting next week.

The most movement seemed to occur in Barack Obama’s approval, down to 45/50 from 47/48. It’s encouraging to see the local Dems slightly overperforming Obama’s so-so ratings, although, if anything, that may have to do with the mismatch between Kasich and Portman’s Wall Street leanings and the economic realities of hard-hit blue-collar Ohio.

AZ-Sen: The Behavior Research Center has a poll out on the AZ-Sen Republican primary, but it was apparently taken over the course of two weeks, which is deeply odd. (This seems to be par for the course for the BRC.) Also, the sample size is just 315. Anyhow, John McCain beats J.D. Hayworth by 54-26, a bigger margin than pretty much any other poll I can recall.

FL-Sen: Richy rich-guy Jeff Greene has the perfect profile for these troubled times, wouldn’t you agree? He made half a billion (with a b) betting on the housing collapse and wants to run in the Dem primary against Kendrick Meek. (He’ll have to make up his mind by Friday.) Also, he’s being advised by none other than Doug Schoen and Joe Trippi. Joe Trippi is a Jedi? More like Jar-Jar.

PA-15: Muhlenberg College for the Allentown Morning Call (4/19-27, likely voters incl. leaners, no trendlines):

Charlie Dent (R-inc): 45

John Callahan (D): 33

Other/undecided: 22

(MoE: ±6%)

Another long survey period and small sample size, but independent polls of House races are rare things. Obama has 55% favorables. Dent is at 53-29, Callahan at 43-13.

Blogosophere: As part of their revamped politics section, the Washington Post says it’s creating a fifty-state blogger network. But get this: They are asking bloggers to provide content to the Post for free. What a crock. Incidentally, the Hartford Courant tried something like this a few years back (in the midst of staff layoffs), but has since pulled the plug.

Census: Five states on the cusp of either losing a seat (CA, NY, TX) or gaining one (AZ, FL) are at risk of losing out because of poor Census response rates. A big part of the problem is the low participation among Latinos. I didn’t know this, but apparently, Clinton halted immigration raids during the 2000 Census, something Obama refused to do. That seems really unwise to me.

DNC: Of the $50 million in plans to spend on the midterms, the DNC says that $20 million will be direct investments in individual races, presumably in the form of independent expenditures.