Swing State Project

Research & Polling for the Albuquerque Journal (8/23-27):

Martin Heinrich (D-inc): 47

Jon Barela (R): 41

Undecided: 12

(MoE: ±5%)

The good news is: Heinrich is in the lead, unlike his performance in that nasty SUSA poll from a month ago. The bad news is that this is a real race, and one that Democrats cannot afford to take for granted. After pasting the extremely hyped Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White by 11 points in 2008, few thought that Heinrich would be in trouble this cycle against a lesser-known foe. But you can’t ignore the numbers — this is what some would call “striking distance”.

Barela beats Heinrich among independents by 51-45 and takes 33% of the Hispanic vote. Unlike SurveyUSA, though, the unimaginatively-named Research & Polling finds Heinrich up on Barela by 20 points among 18-to-34 year-olds. If you recall, SUSA had Barela running ahead by three points among that demographic.

Meanwhile, we also have some pretty amazing NM-02 numbers:

Harry Teague (D-inc): 45

Steve Pearce (R): 42

Undecided: 13

(MoE: ±5%)

I say “amazing” because the general vibes I’ve been getting from from this race haven’t been particularly strong for Teague. Teague trailed Pearce by two points in a PPP poll back in February, but the national (and local) mood has not improved since then. Teague did release an internal poll claiming a one-point lead on Pearce back in April (up from a 10-point Pearce lead a year ago), but we haven’t seen any additional polls until now.

Perhaps one factor moving the numbers for Teague is the $325K ad buy against Pearce by the Defenders of Wildlife. (The New Mexico Independent has their latest ad, if you’d like to watch it.) The fact that Teague is apparently hanging in there while so many frosh Dems are struggling to tread water is pretty remarkable.

FL-Sen: Charlie Crist is still refusing to say whether he’ll caucus with the Dems or the GOP if he wins, a position which looks increasingly untenable as we get down to crunchtime.

LA-Sen: It looks like TPM got tipped to an interesting story: David Vitter’s campaign has been sending letters to Louisiana newspaper editors pressuring them about their coverage of Brent Furer, the former Vitter aide responsible for women’s issues – who also attacked his girlfriend with a knife. TPM’s characterization is that Vitter is “trying to intimidate newspapers into giving Furer what he considers fair coverage.”

MO-Sen: The DSCC, which has reserved $4 million in ad time in Missouri, is out with its first ad of the race, attacking Roy Blunt.

NV-Sen: For a while it looked like Harry Reid might get the NRA’s endorsement, but it turns out that the group won’t be backing him this cycle (though they aren’t getting behind Sharron Angle, either).

CO-Gov: LOL – Tom Tancredo picked a running mate, a former state representative named Pat Miller who served a single term twenty years ago. She sounds just as batshit as he is. I’d love to know why her tenure in the state lege was so illustrious.

CT-Gov: A nice bump for Dan Malloy: He just collected $6 million in public financing for his gubernatorial run, the most anyone’s been awarded in Connecticut history. But Republican Tom Foley is ultra-rich – he’s already given his campaign $3 million, and as the CT Mirror puts it:

Foley, who owns a 100-foot yacht, an airplane and a waterfront Greenwich estate, laughed and stammered when asked how could much he afford to spend.

“Well, I, …,” Foley began, then he paused and said, “Could I afford to match him? Yeah.”

NH-Gov: Dem Gov. John Lynch has reported raising $1.3 million to date (though that includes a half-million dollar personal loan), and has $750K on hand. His Republican opponent, John Stephen, has raised just under a million bucks and has $800K left.

OH-Gov: God, if John Kasich loses, it’ll be for two reasons: First, Ted Strickland has run a good campaign. Second, he has Chronic Acute Goofball Disease, an incurable condition which causes you to do shit like… propose a regulatory overhaul plan that is basically identical to one your opponent already enacted two years ago. Kasich even ganked the name, dubbing his plan “Common Sense Initiative Ohio” (CSI Ohio – does that even make sense?), while Teddy Ballgame’s was “Common Sense Business Regulation Executive Order.”

TX-Gov: Wow, what a horror: Nearly all of Harris County, TX’s voting machines were destroyed in a fire, and the cause is still unknown. Election officials are putting on a brave face, but this is obviously a major nightmare for this fall’s elections. What’s more (and this is why we’re filing it under “TX-Gov”), Harris County is home to Houston, the largest city in Texas and, of course, where Dem nominee Bill White served as mayor for eight years. Not good.

AR-03: I’m not sure whether to laugh or to cry. A Talk Business Research/Hendrix College poll has Republican Steve Womack up 55-31 against Dem David Whitaker in this ultra-red district, the most Republican (by far) in Arkansas. Why am I going schizo? Well, these numbers are very similar to Talk Business’s surveys of AR-01 and AR-02, districts where we’re supposed to have a much better chance this fall (or at least the 1st CD). So either AR-01 is as bad as AR-03, or one of these polls is wrong. I’m not betting on good news for us.

GA-12: Regina Thomas’s secret plan to run as a write-in, despite Georgia law pretty clearly barring that option, has been thwarted. She won’t be eligible this November in any way, shape, or form – and she’s also refusing to endorse the Dem primary winner, Rep. John Barrow.

MO-08: Dem Tommy Sowers is up with his first negative ad of the season, once again touting his “combat bible,” and attacking Rep. Jo Ann Emerson as a bailout supporter. (There’s also a gratuitous shot of him firing a gun at the end.) The campaign says it will spend “at least $100,000 to air the spot on broadcast and cable stations throughout” the district. More interestingly, though, is the fact that Emerson is also out with a negative spot – not something you’d expect would be necessary given the lopsided polling, the super-red nature of the district, and the fact that it’s 2010. NWOTSOTB. You can find links to both ads at the link.

NE-02: Dem Tom White unveiled his first ad, which is “set to air on broadcast and cable channels in the Omaha area” this week. (NWOTSOTB though.)

OH-01: Dem Rep. Steve Driehaus is up with his first ad, a spot which attempts to draw distinctions between his record and that of former Rep. Steve Chabot, who is making a comeback bid. Interestingly (and I think this is a wise move), Driehaus is making the argument that his vote for the stimulus was a vote for tax cuts – which in fact it was. The ad really strikes me as lacking any emotional punch, though. NWOTSOTB, though the ad (which you can view here) is reportedly airing on “Cincinnati’s four local affiliates and cable.”

VA-02: Maybe it sounds like rapprochement to you, but to me, it sounds like “Either your brains or your signature will be on this pledge.” Teabaggers in Virginia’s second CD, long hostile to Republican nominee Scott Rigell, have compelled him to sign a seven-part pledge endorsing several of their favorite platforms – but even so, they aren’t endorsing Rigell in return. Still, one teabag leader seems to finally be playing realpolitik, claiming she wants to isolate indie Kenny Golden, so maybe a right-wing split will be averted here (sadly).

DCCC: Not sure how much Politico (as is their wont) is over-reading Chris Van Hollen’s remarks, but they make it sound like CVH is threatening to cut off under-performing Democratic candidates if they don’t get their acts together. Nothing like some threats of triage to get the troops motivated, huh?

Research & Polling Inc. for the Albuquerque Journal (8/23-27, no trend lines):

Diane Denish (D): 39

Susana Martinez (R): 45

Undecided: 16

(MoE: ±3%)

Woof. Martinez wins a fifth of Democrats (including a quarter of Hispanic Democrats), 38% of independents (vs. 32% for Denish), and edges Denish among women by 42-41.

While Lt. Gov. Diane Denish looked like a solid player for the Democratic bench in New Mexico, Martinez’s cross-over appeal, Democratic disengagement, and the lingering baggage of Bill Richardson’s unpopularity are making this race a much tougher prospect for Democrats than was conceived a year ago.

Note: It’s unclear from the Journal’s article if this poll was of likely or registered voters. For Denish’s sake, let’s hope they were using an LV model…

Public Policy Polling (8/27-28, likely voters, no trend lines):

Scott McAdams (D): 39

Joe Miller (R): 47

Undecided: 14

Scott McAdams (D): 22

Joe Miller (R): 38

Lisa Murkowski (L-inc): 34

Undecided: 6

Scott McAdams (D): 28

Lisa Murkowski (R-inc): 60

Undecided: 12

(MoE: ±2.7%)

Folks, we have ourselves a race here! In a head-to-head matchup against Miller, McAdams trails Miller by only 8 points — that’s about the best poll we’ve seen for a Alaska Democrat this cycle. McAdams holds 81% of Democrats (to Miller’s 73% of Republicans) and splits independents down the middle with Miller at 42% apiece. And that’s before most Alaskans are acquainted with McAdams! Joe Miller has a favorable rating that’s already underwater at 36-52, while McAdams is at 23-24, with 53% claiming “not sure”.

The poll also solidifies that this race would be dead in the water with Murkowski as the Republican nominee. Murkowski has stronger favorables among liberals than she does conservatives, and has a higher approval rating among Dems (52-41) than Republicans (47-47). In a three-way race as a Libertarian, Murkowski would take a plurality of independents (38%), a significant chunk of Democrats (28%) and nearly a third of Republicans (32%). As Tom Jensen notes, Democrats should actually be hoping that Murkowski does not pull the Libertarian trigger, as her supporters align behind McAdams by a 47-23 margin in a two-way race against Miller.

Of course, the dynamics of three-way races are always unpredictable, and as we’re seeing in Florida right now with Charlie Crist’s difficulties, they can present difficult needles to thread for the outsider candidate. However, for the time being, it would appear that Democrats should be hoping that Murkowski loses the final count — and that this stays as a two-way race.

A few posters asked me for the basis of my prediction that the Republicans would probably gain between 40 and 60 seats.  While I lean closer to a number in the low 40s, I break down every seat that I could consider possibly at play in this environment based on the following factors:

1) Open Seat or Not

2) Seat that has been held by a Republican since 2003, but flipped to the Democrats since 2003

3) Seats that are represented by a Democrat, but voted for Bush and/or McCain

Here is how I break down the race per seat.  I have this in a chart, but have had problems uploading it to the site.  To view it in chart form click here.

Safe Democratic:  

AR-4

CA-47

CT-02

IA-1

IA-2

ME-1

MA-6

MS-4

MO-3

NM-03

NY-27

OH-6

OK-2

OR-1

PA-17

TX-27

UT-2

VA-11

WA-9

WV-03

Likely Democratic: 

CA-18

CA-20

CO-3

CT-4

CT-5

FL-22

GA-2

GA-12

ID-1

IL-8

IL-17

KY-3

MA-5

MI-9

MN-1

NJ-12

NY-1

NY-25

NC-2

NC-7

NC-11

OH-13

OR-5

PA-4

PA-10

PA-12

RI-1

WA-2

WI-3

Lean Democratic:

AL-2

AZ-1

AZ-5

CO-7

DE-AL

GA-8

IN-2

IA-3

KY-6

LA-2

MA-10

MO-4

NJ-3

NM-1

NY-13

NY-19

NY-23

NC-8

OH-18

SC-5

TN-4

TX-23

VA-9

WI-8

Tossup:

AZ-8

CA-11

HI-1

IL-10

IL-14

IN-9

MI-7

NY-1

NY-20

OH-16

PA-3

PA-8

SD-AL

TX-17

VA-5

WV-1

WI-7

Lean Republican:

AR-1

CO-4

FL-2

FL-8

FL-24

IL-11

IN-8

KS-3

MD-1

MI-1

MS-1

NV-3

NH-1

NH-2

NM-2

NY-24

NY-29

ND-AL

OH-1

OH-15

PA-7

PA-11

TN-8

VA-2

WA-3

Likely Republican:

AL-5

AZ-3

AR-2

CA-3

FL-25

LA-3

PA-15

TN-6

WA-8

Safe Republican:

CA-44

CA-45

FL-12

KS-4

MI-3

MN-6

NE-2

OH-12

PA-6

 

11:32pm: One final update to play us out: The AP has indeed called a runoff for LA-03 (R). Jeff Landry must be gnashing his teeth at his 49.6% haul. Hunt Downer will probably have a hell of a time turning things around, having taken just 36.1%, and since I’d have to guess Kristian Magar is much more likely to endorse Landry. Still, this is probably good news for Dem Ravi Sangisetty in this long-shot race, since the runoff won’t take place until October 2nd! Anyhow, that ends the show.

11:07pm: Only a single precinct remains, and it doesn’t look like it’ll be enough to bump Landry from 49.6% back up to 50. Runoff time!

10:50pm: Just three precincts are outstanding in LA-03, and Jeff Landry has fallen below the runoff line — to 49.6% of the vote. One precinct is left in Landry-friendly Jefferson, and another in Lafourche, which split its votes fairly evenly between Landry and Downer.

10:40pm: The AP also calls LA-02 for Cedric Richmond, and over in LA-03, I may have spoke too soon. There are still 10 Downer-friendly precincts left, all in Terrebonne Parish, in the remaining 14.

10:34pm: We’re up to 96% done in LA-03, and Landry is holding steady at 50.3%. Looks like Hunt Downer is finished.

10:30pm: Things are tiiiight in LA-03, where Jeff Landry must hold the line at 50.2% (with 82% reporting) in order to avoid a runoff.

10:26pm: As noted in the comments, WWL-TV has called LA-02 for Cedric Richmond. With 21% in, Richmond has 63% of the vote. I’ll keep an eye on that one for a little longer, though.

10:14pm: We’re up to 11% of precincts in LA-02, and Richmond’s rolling with a 63-16 lead over LaFonta.

10:11pm: Chalie Melancon has won the Dem Senate nod in Louisiana. The AP has called the race for him, with 67% of the vote.

10:04pm: Landry now has a 52-33 lead on Downer with 43% in.

10:00pm: The AP has called the GOP Senate nod for David Vitter.

9:45pm: What a Downer! Landry now has a 51-37 lead on Downer with about 10% in.

9:43pm: Richmond’s now up to a 63-19 lead on LaFonta with 9% in. This is good news for Dems so far.

9:38pm: In LA-02, which is, from my perspective, the race with the most at stake tonight for Team Blue, Richmond now leads LaFonta by 58-20 with 6% of precincts reporting.

9:34pm: With six precincts reporting in the 3rd, Landry leads Downer by 48-44. Ultrabagger Kristian Magar has 9%. Whether or not this one goes to a runoff could be a close call.

9:30pm: Thanks to GOPVoter in the comments, we have some actual LA-02 results (neither the AP nor the SoS are reporting anything there so far). With 4% of precincts reporting, Cedric Richmond leads Juan LaFonta by 56-22, a few points above the runoff threshold.

9:19pm: Chet Traylor has surged all the way up to 8%, vastly exceeding expectations. In the 3rd, Landry has a 52%-38% lead on Downer, but we’re only looking at a couple hundred votes there so far.

9:08pm: With one precinct reporting (check out the LA SoS site), Melancon has 71% and Diaper Dave is at 92%. In the 3rd, Landry leads Downer by 3 votes.

9:02pm: Polls have now closed in Louisiana. This thing is about to go off.

8:51pm: It’s time to send this race to a farm upstate. The AP has called the GOP Senate nod for ’06 loser John Raese. He’s winning with 72% of the vote — a nearly equal share (in terms of %, not raw vote total) to Manchin’s 73%.

8:31pm: You don’t need money. You don’t need fame. You may not even need a credit card to ride the Ken Hechler train, but that’s a one-way express to nowhere. The AP calls the Dem Senate nod for Gov. Joe “The Manchine” Manchin. No call yet for the Republicans, even though Raese is cruising with nearly 70% of the vote.

8:11pm: I’m smelling an upset brewing. With almost 1% of precincts in, Hechler is hot on Manchin’s heels at 73-19.

7:55pm: And we’re off! A batch of early votes from Marion County are in, and Joe Manchin leads Ken Hechler by 83-10. (Stunner.) For the GOP, John Raese leads Mac Warner by 63-17.

Polls are now closed in West Virginia, where fireworks are about to go off as Joe Manchin faces off against the formidable 95 year-old Ken Hechler for the special Democratic Senate primary. Polls in Louisiana will close at 9pm Eastern.

---

RESULTS:

• Louisiana: Associated Press | Geaux Vote | Politico
• West Virginia: Associated Press | Politico

Saturday night is alright for hot congressional primary action. Polls close in West Virginia at 7:30pm Eastern, and Louisiana at 9pm.

LA-Sen (R): The race that never was. After being teased with the tantalizing prospect of cat fud for, well, years, David Vitter just never drew a Republican challenger of any substance despite his “serious sins”. The best he got was ex-state supreme court justice Chet Traylor, who has yet to break 5% in the polls. I believe that Crisitunity summed this race up pretty well earlier in the week:

Former state supreme court justice Chet Traylor’s late-breaking bid against Vitter was very interesting for the first few days, but at this point we might as well just close the book on it: his fundraising never materialized, his “family values” turned out to be as suspect as Vitter’s, and somehow he manages to be upside-down on favorables among GOP voters.

It’d probably be something of a minor accomplishment if Traylor could crack double digits tonight.

LA-02 (D): This Democratic primary — originally thought to be essentially to be the offer of a free House seat, although accidental GOP incumbent Joe Cao released an internal that suggests otherwise — was supposed to attract every ambitious New Orleans politician around. In the end, though, it really only attracted two of note: state Reps. Cedric Richmond and Juan LaFonta. The establishment, both local and in DC, also quickly got behind Richmond (who finished third in the 2008 primary that Bill Jefferson eventually won). The DCCC added him but not LaFonta to Red to Blue, and both Mitch and Mary Landrieu recently endorsed him. The lone internal poll of the primary made public gave Richmond a 53-13 edge over LaFonta, outside the runoff zone. (There are some minor candidates present, so a runoff is possible.) (C)

LA-03 (R): Three GOPers are in the race for this Cajun Country seat left behind by Dem Charlie Melancon: former Houma State Rep. (and Democrat until 2000) Hunt Downer, attorney Jeff Landry, and engineer Kristian Magar. Downer is the establishment pick, but we saw on Tuesday how far that may or may not get you in the GOP these days. The tea-stained Landry and Magar have both been hitting Downer, whose history as a Democrat might just come back to bite him. Landry’s outspent Downer ($297k to $282k) and has the CoH advantage as well ($234k to $126k). This race will head to a runoff should no one clear 50%; a mano-a-mano matchup against either ‘bagger may be more difficult for Downer to handle. (JMD)

WV-Sen (D/R): If Gov. Joe Manchin doesn’t win the Democratic primary for the race to fill the late Sen. Robert Byrd’s senate seat, we might have transitioned into an alternate universe. Manchin’s “main” opponent is Ken Hechler, “a 95-year-old former congressmen who represented West Virginia between 1959 and 1976 and also served in the Truman administration.” That means Hechler is actually older than Byrd was at the time of his death! Manchin’s already raised $1.2 million. No one else is even remotely close.

On the GOP side, richie rich John Raese is expected to win the nod against an even more uninspiring field. Raese has self-funded half a million bucks so far, and again, everyone else is scrounging for couch change. (Note that Raese spent more than $2 million of his own money running against Byrd in 2006, only to pull just 34% of the vote.) (D)

• FL-Sen: Well, so much for the secret ballot. The Palm Beach Post deduced that Jeff Greene voted for himself… inasmuch as his vote was the only vote for himself in his entire precinct. It was a 2-to-1 vote (literally… Kendrick Meek got 2). Even his wife didn’t vote for him, although that’s because she isn’t registered to vote in the county. (Marco Rubio got 26 votes in the same precinct.) Meanwhile, Charlie Crist seems to have lost some of his footing after a convincing Meek victory in the Dem primary; he flip-flopped on health care reform in the space of one day, saying in a TV interview that he would have voted for health care reform, then, after the Rubio camp started flagging that, saying later in the day that he actually wouldn’t have voted for it. I get that he wants to appeal to both Dems and moderate GOPers, but he has to be less transparent than that.

• IL-Sen: Bad news for Alexi Giannoulias: the Constitution Party slate just got struck from the ballot, so Randy Stufflebeam won’t be there to siphon right-wing votes from Mark Kirk. Libertarian candidate Mark Labno will be on the ballot, though, as a Kirk alternative (as will Green LeAlan Jones).

• IN-Sen: This is sort of pushing the outer limit of when it’s a good idea to release an internal, but it looks like the Brad Ellsworth camp needed to let people know that he’s still in this race. His own poll, via Garin Hart Yang, finds him trailing Dan Coats 49-38. The race is closer among those who actually know Ellsworth, but his six-week-long ad buy is about to end, so his name rec problems may persist.

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway is joining Elaine Marshall on the Alan Simpson-pile-on, seconding calls for the firing of Simpson from the Social Security commission in the wake of his “milk cow” comments. Meanwhile, Rand Paul has apparently brushed up on his elementary math skills recently, as he’s now backtracking on previous pledges to erase the nation’s federal budget deficit in one year.

• MO-Sen, MO-04: Although this poll from Missouri State University (on behalf of TV station KY3) looks good for Robin Carnahan, it’s got some methodological issues that we just aren’t comfortable with. It was taken over the period of Aug. 7-22, is of registered (not likely) voters, and it also wound up with a sample that was 63% female, although they say they weighted for various demographic factors. At any rate, it shows the race a dead heat, with Roy Blunt leading Robin Carnahan 49-48. It also took looks at three House races in the Show Me State, although with MoEs in the 7% ballpark. In the 4th, Ike Skelton has a 47-35 lead over Vicki Hartzler. Two GOP-held seats look to be pretty uneventful: in the open 7th, Billy Long leads Scott Eckersley 51-23, and in the 8th, Jo Ann Emerson leads fundraising maven Tommy Sowers 64-17.

• WI-Sen: Seems like it was just this morning we were discussing the second instance of Ron Johnson’s flagrant hypocrisy when it comes to railing against government involvement in the market, except when it comes to government aid for his own business… and now we’re up to a third instance before the day’s even out. On Wednesday it came out that in 1985 he’d gotten $2.5 million in government loans to expand his plastics business, and now it’s come out that in 1983, two years earlier, he’d gotten a separate $1.5 million loan for a $4 mil total.

• NM-Gov: The DGA is out with a new ad against Susana Martinez in the gubernatorial race, hitting her for $350K in bonuses handed out in her prosecutor’s office. NWOTSOTB, but we’re told it’s a statewide saturation buy.

• VT-Gov: The final count from the SoS office in the Dem gubernatorial primary seemed to get finished ahead of schedule, as numbers today gave Peter Shumlin a 197-vote win over Doug Racine. Racine said that he would go ahead and request a recount; state law provides for a taxpayer-funded recount for a candidate trailing by less than 2% (seems like a pretty generous recount policy compared with most states). In keeping with the primary’s very civil tone, both candidates continued to praise each other and say they understood the recount choices.

• CO-07: Republican pollster Magellan (which put out an internal for Scott Tipton in CO-03 last week) is out with a poll in the 7th as well now, although this appears to be on their own, not as an internal for Ryan Frazier. At any rate, their poll gives a 40-39 lead to Republican Frazier, over incumbent Dem Ed Perlmutter. (10% opt for “some other candidate.”)

• MS-04: Thanks to Haley Barbour, the previously low-dollar campaign of state Rep. Steven Palazzo just kicked into higher gear (or into gear, period). Barbour held a fundraiser for Palazzo that raised $177K, which will help his uphill campaign against Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor.

• SC-05: Another POS poll in the 5th on behalf of GOP state Sen. Mick Mulvaney has him making up ground on Rep. John Spratt; the two are now tied at 46-46. Spratt led by 2 in a previous POS poll in May. Spratt retorted to CQ that in his own polling he was ahead with “breathing room,” but declined to provide specific numbers.

• Ads: Other ads for your consideration today include not one but two new ads from Roy Barnes, going negative against Nathan Deal (on the ethics issue, but also general Washington-bashing). In OH-Gov, Ted Strickland is also out with a double-shot of ads, hitting John Kasich for his free-trading past. Chet Edwards is out with an anti-Bill Flores ad in TX-17 accusing Flores of lying about having voted for GOPer Rob Curnock in 2008 (he didn’t vote at all that day), while the Club for Growth is out with a PA-Sen ad that calls Joe Sestak “liberal” several hundred times in the space of 30 seconds.

• Rasmussen:

• AZ-Sen: Rodney Glassman (D) 31%, John McCain (R-inc) 53%

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 36%, Rick Scott (R) 41%, Bud Chiles (I) 8%

• NM-Gov: Diane Denish (D) 43%, Susana Martinez (R) 48%

• SC-Gov: Vincent Sheheen (D) 36%, Nikki Haley (R) 52%

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 44%, Scott Walker (R) 47%

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 44%, Mark Neumann (R) 48%

By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

In the 2008 presidential election, 65.3% of eligible blacks voted – a voting rate about equal to the 66.1% of eligible whites who voted.

This is actually quite amazing. Indeed, in demographic terms this should not be happening.

The reason why below.

Here is why. Voter participation is affected by many categories. Age, for instance, is one factor. Young people, busy with their lives and politically less involved, have historically low voting rates. The elderly, on the other hand, vote in high numbers. Immigrants are also less likely to vote – thus the immigrant-heavy Hispanic and Asian communities have quite low voting rates, as the chart above indicates.

These two specific factors affect blacks and whites about equally. Others, however, hit blacks harder. As a whole, the black electorate is much poorer than the white electorate, and poor people are less likely to vote in the United States. In the 1988 presidential election, voter turn-out amongst the bottom fifth of Americans was 36.4%. Amongst the top fifth of Americans it was 63.1%. Education levels have a positive correlation with turn-out – and education attainment is lower amongst blacks than whites. More blacks also live in the South, where turn-out has been historically lower than the national mean. Finally, there are millions of blacks disenfranchised as ex-felons.

Demographically, therefore, blacks should be voting less than whites – and yet they are not.

This has startling implications. It means that a black person is far more likely to vote than a white person of similar circumstances. Indeed, according to the Census “the odds of voting in 2008 were about twice as high for blacks,” than whites once age, region, sex, income and educational attainment were factored in.

In other words, a black plumber was twice as likely to vote as a white plumber, a black lawyer twice as likely to vote as a white one. It is only because lawyers are more likely to vote than plumbers – and because the ratio of poor plumbers to rich lawyers is higher amongst blacks than whites – that voting participation is equal amongst blacks and whites.

This phenomenon is not just limited to 2008. In 2004 black voters in the South composed 17.9% of the overall Southern electorate, equal to their share of eligible voters. Consider that Southern blacks are poorer, less educated, and more likely to be in jail than Southern whites – yet still vote at the same rates as Southern whites. This means that a 30-year-old black male making $60,000 was much more likely to vote than his white counterpart.

So the next time that a political pundit talks about low black turn-out, don’t believe it. Person to person, man to man, blacks vote more often than any other race.

In case you’ve lost your pulse, we’ve been all over the short-circuiting, wingnuts gone wild Alaska Senate race this week. A recap of our latest coverage:

• Roundup #1: Libertarians may cut a deal, Begich backs McAdams, and more.
• Jeffmd’s projection: SSP Labs guru jeffmd busts out the slide rule, abacus, yardstick, and junior chemistry set to forecast that the outstanding ballots may not actually help Murkowski at all.
• Roundup #2: The vote count schedule, the Libertarian wish list, and McAdams on the stump.
• Staying Classy: Joe Miller puts up a tasteless tweet and then deletes it – but not before Team SSP busts his balls.
• Cat Fud: In case you didn’t see, check out the Murkowski campaign’s furious response to Miller’s tweet. Goddamn, this is the kind of Fancy Feast that is fit for human consumption!