Swing State Project

Polls have now closed in Massachusetts, as Martha Coakley and Scott Brown square off to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate. In the primary, we got our first nibble of results fifteen minutes after polls closed, so hopefully we won’t be waiting too long for the first trickle of numbers to come in tonight.

RESULTS: Boston Globe | Associated Press | The Boston Channel | WBZTV

RESOURCES: Town benchmarks (Wasserman’s chart) | Jeff’s projection model

9:33PM: (Crisitunity): Coakley missed most of her baselines:

Agawam 35/64 (should’ve been 41/57 under 2008 model)

Andover 41/58 (should’ve been 44/55)

Braintree 37/62 (should’ve been 38/60)

Fall River 57/41 (should’ve been 61/38)

Needham 52/47 (should’ve been 54/45)

New Bedford 59/39 (should’ve been 62/37)

Springfield 61/37 (should’ve been 65/34)

Wellesley 50/50 (should’ve been 53/46)

Westfield 36/62 (should’ve been 41/57)

Fitchburg was 40/59, almost exactly how Suffolk pegged it. (Should’ve been 48/50, the biggest underperformance I’ve seen.)

But we beat the spread in Belmont:  59/40 (should’ve been 57/41)

and Quincy was right on: 46/53 (should’ve been 46/52)

9:23PM: The Associated Press has called this one for Big Brown. Say hello to your newest Senator from Massachusetts: Republican Scott Brown!

9:23PM: Coakley has conceded, according to Cillizza.

9:20PM: With two-thirds of the vote in, Jeff’s model has nudged up to somewhere between 47.7 and 47.94% for Coakley.

9:13PM: 1405 precincts are now in, and Brown is holding firm at 53-46. I don’t see how Coakley wins this, but look on the bright side, Democrats: at least they’ll be a special election for Scott Brown’s Senate seat! Democrats only have a 34-5 margin of control in that body!

9:04PM: 1298 precincts in, and Brown leads by almost 90,000 votes. (53-46) Coakley’s on pace to end up somewhere between 47.6-47.8%.

9:03PM: Using the Jeff model, Coakley is on pace to 47.5% (’08) or 47.85% (’96). Not looking so hot.

8:58PM: 980 precincts are in, and Brown leads by 52-47.

8:55PM: 875 precincts are now in, and Brown is up 53-46. Wasserman tweeted earlier that he thinks that Scott Brown has won.

8:54PM: Sorry folks — we’re getting utterly slammed with traffic tonight and the site is experiencing some server issues.

8:51PM: 738 precincts are in, and Brown leads 52-47.

8:40PM: We’re up to 445 precincts now, and Brown is holding onto his 53-46 lead (or a 33,000 vote gap).

8:35PM: 283 precincts in, and Brown still leads by 53-46 (or about 18,000 votes).

8:32PM: 243 precincts in, and Brown’s up to 53-46.

8:29PM: Jeff: Under his 2008 model, Coakley is projected to win 49.2% of the vote based on the returns so far. But using the 1996 model, she’s projected to win 52.5%. Still a nailbiter.

8:27PM: 143 precincts in, and Brown leads 51-48.

8:22PM: 116 (of 2168) precincts are now in, and Brown leads by 52-47.

8:20PM: From Jeff: “Coakley’s underperforming the baseline by just a little bit. Model sez 48.7% Coakley by 2008; 49.8% Coakley by 1996.” Of course, we know that the model is not perfect, but this is looking pretty tight so far.

8:18PM: 36 precincts are now in, and Brown has a 10-point lead.

8:14PM: The AP has a few numbers in from 12 precincts, where Scott Brown leads by 54-45.

8:10PM: Rasmussen just released some details on their e-night poll. Among those who decided in the last few days, Coakley has a 47-41 advantage. Among those who made up their mind over a month ago, Coakley has a “big advantage”. I guess this race hinges on just how well Brown is going among those who made up their mind within the past month, but not within the past few days.

Polls close in Massachusetts tonight at 8PM Eastern. As usual, we’ll be liveblogging the race until the bitter end. By the time we’re done, you’ll be left with stems and seeds.

Let’s use this thread to take care of the pre-game chatter.

• Benchmarks: If you haven’t yet seen Crisitunity’s town-by-town benchmarks for the absolute bare minimum that Martha Coakley needs in order to win, get your fine self over to that thread. It’ll definitely be something worth keeping in your pocket as you follow the returns tonight. Blue Mass Group has a list of key benchmarks to watch for, and David Wasserman has an expansive spreadsheet available.
• Jeff’s take: SSP data guru jeffmd offers his projection model for the race.
  

• Turnout: The Boston Globe has a list of poll-watcher reports by town. Greg Sargent (my former boss at Talking Points Memo), has some hard turnout numbers from Boston indicating that the city appears to be juiced-up about the race.
  

• 1994, redux?: A former Ted Kennedy aide sees parallels between the race between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley, and the ’94 Senate race between Kennedy and Mitt Romney. The aide’s math suggests that Coakley will win.
• Fingerpointing: However, you know things are tense when Democrats are already getting a head start on the blame game. Oy.
• Polling: Rasmussen will be out with a new poll as soon as the results start to trickle in. And if you’re looking for exit polls, there are none to report. However, the cumbersomely-named Women’s Voices. Women Vote has commissioned an exit poll by Lake Partners Research and American Viewpoint. Those results won’t be available for dissection until tomorrow morning, though.

I’m curious about the effect of the contested primary on Democratic voter attitudes in the Massachusetts 2010 Senate race.  

To investigate this, I would like to compare the performance of each of the candidates in the Democratic 2009 primary for this special election with the voter turnout for the Jan. 19, 2009 Coakley/Brown numbers once they are known.

If anyone has access to such data, it would be nice to use to make this comparison.  For context, I refer to the extremely valuable and timely town benchmarks posted at

http://swingstateproject.com/d…

See what I am getting at?

Believe it or not, the world continues to turn today, even outside Massachusetts…

• Site News: A minor site change: We’ve had to disable HTML on user bio pages (like this one). We apologize if this winds up killing your links or spewing ugly HTML characters in your bio, so you may want to edit yours if so. You can still post links – they just won’t be HTML-ized. The reason we did this is because spammers have been exploiting the bio pages to post links to their own sites. It’s easy for us to catch them when they post comments or diaries, but harder to stop them from creating new accounts. This takes away their incentive. Suck on it, spammer scum! (D)

• NV-Sen: I don’t know what you envision when you see “probe” and “John Ensign” in the same sentence, but this is rich: the FBI is getting involved in the investigation, indicating this may go beyond the Senate Ethics Committee, headed in the direction of a criminal inquiry. The Feds have been contacting former aides about the Hampton affair.

• NY-Sen-B: Ex-Rep. Harold Ford Jr. just seems to be digging his self-inflicted hole deeper, as he runs damage control from the NYT profile that portrayed him as a helicopter-riding, pedicure-getting richie-rich. For his new interview with the Daily News, he insisted that it be limited to his rationale for running, not “issues” (issues, of course, are for the little people). Still, that contrasts with his defense of the pedicure thing, about which he said: “This race isn’t about feet, it’s about issues.” Meanwhile, observers are wondering if Al Sharpton (who has endorsed Kirsten Gillibrand) is telegraphing a potential switch in sides.

• IA-Gov: Ex-Gov. Terry Branstad is out with an internal poll showing him in commanding position in the Republican primary as he seeks to regain his old job, despite the discomfort some social conservatives have with him. Branstad polls at 62%, followed by Bob Vander Plaats lagging at 18%, with Christopher Rants at 4 and Rod Roberts at 2.

• IL-Gov: Next door in Illinois, though, where things don’t seem quite as settled in the Republican primary, three different candidates are citing polls that claim to have them in the lead. State Sen. Kirk Dillard has an internal that has him leading at 22, with state party chair Andy McKenna at 14 and ex-AG Jim Ryan at 10 – which is odd, since the Chicago Tribune’s poll several weeks ago gave Ryan a substantial lead and saw Dillard in fourth place. McKenna also claims to have a poll with him in the lead, although he didn’t even bother giving any details. Dillard seems to be the “moderate” horse in the GOP race, with endorsements from ex-Gov. Jim Edgar, Rep. Judy Biggert, and even the Illinois Education Association (hopefully only as far as the primary goes).

• TX-Gov: Rasmussen is out with fresh polls of the Texas governor’s race, and this time, they’re even doing the general, now that it got competitive, with the entry of Democratic Houston mayor Bill White. As one might expect, both incumbent Rick Perry and GOP primary rival Kay Bailey Hutchison lead White, and KBH overperforms Perry. Hutchison leads White 52-37, while Perry leads 50-40. (In the unlikely event White faces off against Paulist activist Debra Medina, he wins 44-38.) More interestingly, Medina seems to be getting a serious foothold in the GOP primary, which seems like it has the potential to push the Perry/Hutchison battle to a runoff, keeping Perry below 50%. Perry leads Hutchison and Medina 43-33-12.

• MI-Gov, MI-13: The amazingly brief gubernatorial campaign of state Sen. Hansen Clarke ended yesterday, after about one week in existence. It seems like party insiders steered him in a different direction, saying that he’s been offered big financial support if he takes on vulnerable (in a primary) Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick instead, and he says he’s strongly considering that race now. Kilpatrick (mother of embattled former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick) nearly lost a 3-way primary in 2008.

• AZ-03: One aspiring House Republican didn’t wait long to announce her run to fill the recently-vacated seat of Rep. John Shadegg. State Sen. Pamela Gorman announced her campaign.

• MI-07: One more race that hasn’t drawn much scrutiny yet but where it looks like Dems will have to play hard defense is in the 7th. Freshman Rep. Mark Schauer faces a rematch with ex-Rep. Tim Walberg, who is now promoting his own internal poll showing him with 46-37 edge over Schauer. There’s been some establishment skepticism over whether the polarizing Walberg is “electable” enough, which may really be the point of the poll: it also shows attorney Brian Rooney, the supposedly more palatable (but currently less-known) GOPer, trailing Schauer 39-31.

• PA-04: Republicans are banking on former US Attorneys to get them back a few House seats in the Keystone State, and they got one of their desired recruits. Mary Beth Buchanan, one of the chief enforcers among the “loyal Bushies,” has apparently decided that she’ll take on Rep. Jason Altmire in the GOP-leaning 4th in Pittsburgh’s suburbs, and may announce her candidacy later this week.

• WV-01: The NRCC had hoped to put a scare into longtime Democratic incumbent Alan Mollohan, frequently drum-beating his name as a potential retirement. Unfortunately for them, Mollohan has filed his paperwork to seek a 15th term in Congress. (J)

• OH-Lt. Gov: Ted Strickland announced today that he’s tapping ex-Franklin Co. Judge Yvette McGee Brown to be his running mate. Brown is the president of the Center for Child and Family Advocacy, a Columbus organization based at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital. (J)

• Mayors: Another election to keep an eye on is a runoff for Birmingahm’s next mayor. The seat became vacant in October upon the conviction of Larry Langford on corruption charges. Langford and other insiders have endorsed William Bell (who currently holds Langford’s former seat on the county conmission). Naturally, Patrick Cooper is running against Bell on a change platform. The campaign has been full of nasty accusations and innuendo with many glad it’s coming to an end. (T)

• Polltopia: Mark Blumenthal looks at the rapidly reducing cost of polling, and only sees even more of a proliferation of it in the near future as robo-calling gets within the reaches of the masses, even the crazy bloggers. Even Rasmussen is getting into the act, with plans to spin off a new service that will allow anyone to poll on anything for a fee of $600. That leaves Blumenthal wondering how to screen in the future for proper quality and against abuse of time-honored standards.

I’m as freaked out over Massachusetts as anyone – and I might be plenty angry/despondent/confused/hungover tomorrow morning.

But in the meantime, I’ve been working on a crude projection model using, in part, the “baseline” idea that Crisitunity and DavidNYC have made a part of SSP Election Night Tradition.

The model, as inputs, takes partial results from towns that have reported, and outputs a whole slew of numbers comparing the current situation to the “baseline” numbers.

Explanations below the flip.

So here’s the front end of the model:

http://spreadsheets.google.com…

You’ll see a few things:

• How Coakley and Brown are currently doing.
  

• How Obama was doing in 2008 with the same towns and parts of towns reporting.
  

• How a 2008 “baseline” Democrat on target to win by 1 vote would be doing.
  

• How Kerry was doing in 1996 against Bill Weld with the same towns and parts of towns reporting.
  

• How a 1996 “baseline” Democrat would be doing.
  

You’ll also see comparisons between Coakley’s performance and those of Obama, Kerry, and the two “baseline” Democrats.

Perhaps most significantly, you’ll see the “2010 Projection using 2008” line.

The model compares relative turnout between 2010 and 2008, and the relative performances of Coakley and Obama to project results from towns that have not yet reported.

The “2010 Projection using 1996” line does the same, except with 1996 data.

I’m not claiming this model is perfect. In fact, it’s pretty damn bad. I can think of a few glaring weaknesses:

• The fundamental problem of the ‘baseline’ idea: it assumes that every town will swing uniformly.
  

• Disparate turnout: this model compares turnout in aggregate, instead of at the town level. This may lead to an overestimation of turnout in areas with relatively low turnout (compared to 2008 and 1996) and the reverse in areas with relatively high turnout. This may potentially bias the projections in Coakley’s favor.
  

• Assumption of town uniformity: the model assumes that each town votes uniformly the same way, but…Jamaica Plain and Southie are not going to vote the same way, very simply. If a relatively Brown-friendly area of a town reports first, this will bias the projection in his favor. The reverse is true if a Coakley-friendly area reports first.
  

Incidentally, here are the blood and guts of the model: http://spreadsheets.google.com…

Update: In columns AS, AT, BB, and BC, you can see baselines for every town for both 2008 and 1996.

I threw in some junk results to test it, and so far I didn’t detect any coding errors. I don’t pretend that I’m better than the Associated Press – but I just want to have an idea of where we are at each point of the results phase.

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to keep this updated as results stream in tonight.

Lastly, if you live in Massachusetts, are reading this, and you haven’t voted (assuming you’re a citizen, not a convicted felon, etc..), what the hell’s wrong with you?!

Here’s hoping Coakley pulls this off.

The county baselines post has become a game day staple at Swing State Project for advanced elections-returns-watchers, and today’s no different. The basic idea here: find the bare minimum percentage in each major county that’s necessary to get the Democratic candidate over the hump at 50%. (That, of course, is predicated on all the counties moving the same direction as the presidential election the benchmarks are based on, which doesn’t actually happen in real life, but it’s a rough estimate.) As election returns come in, compare the benchmarks to the actual returns to see if we’re on track to win.

There’s one small problem here, which most of you are probably already familiar with: Massachusetts, and the other New England states, don’t report election results by county, but rather by town. With hundreds and hundreds of little towns, that’s a lot of ground to cover, so we’ll just look at the biggest, plus some towns in what seem to be the key areas to watch in this race.

In fact, let’s take a look at the state’s town-by-town map, created by our own DavidNYC (you can click on the map to see a full-size version):

This map is based on the relatively close 1996 Senate election between John Kerry and William Weld (a better choice here, because a map of the 2008 Presidential race would be almost entirely blue, and the 2002 gubernatorial race would be almost entirely red, with Romney winning the vast majority of towns). But it gives the general lay of the land in the state: the Democratic votes are heavily concentrated in Boston and its immediately surrounding cities. (There’s also a lot of low-density blue out in the college towns and arty enclaves of the Berkshires and Pioneer Valley in the west.) The red on the map is mostly rural and low-density too, so the real areas that we’re focused on today are the purplish and pinkish suburban turf to the north, west, and south of Boston.

Rather than just one model, I’m using two different models: one based on the high-turnout, high-Democratic-intensity 2008 presidential election (won by Barack Obama, 62-36), and the low-turnout, low-intensity 2002 gubernatorial election (won by Republican Mitt Romney, 50-45) — more generally, a best-case scenario for Dems and a worst-case scenario for Dems. With turnout projections high but not as high as yesterday (SoS William Galvin is predicting 40%), and weather mediocre, we’re probably looking at something somewhere in between, so consider these the bookends. Nevertheless, after making the necessary adjustments, both models, in most towns, point to very similar benchmarks.

Let’s start with the largest cities in Massachusetts (the ones that provide more than 1% of the state’s votes each). These aren’t really the places to watch, as they’re heavily Democratic (with the sort-of exception of Quincy) and the real question with them is whether turnout is keeping pace proportionately with the rest of the state.

Democratic performance in most of the state, as you can see above, stayed fairly consistent with the rise in the tide from 2002 to 2008. Statewide, Democratic performance went from 45% to 62% (a 17% gain), and, for example, Boston followed that closely, going from 61% to 79% (an 18% gain). Many other towns tracked that, too; for instance, the most conservative parts of the state (like Falmouth and Sandwich on Cape Cod, or the suburbs around Lowell) also moved about 16 to 18% in the Dems’ direction.

The interesting areas are the ones where the movement was much greater — these tend to be the wealthier areas in the state, fancy Middlesex Co. suburbs like Wellesley or North Shore towns in Essex Co., consistent with Obama’s overperformance nationwide among high-income voters — and where the movement was much less — mostly in blue-collar towns of the South Shore, as well as other blue-collar outposts in the state’s west. To me, these seem to be the swingy areas, and the ones most worth watching, especially since the trends may (or may not) continue to accelerate today — upper-middle-class voters may be attracted to Coakley’s technocratic image (especially those in Middlesex Co., where she was DA) or they may revert to liking the fiscal conservatism that they saw in Romney, while blue-collar voters seem likely to respond to Brown’s regular-guy shtick but may also be motivated by their ancestral Democratic loyalties and union or local machine GOTVing.

Let’s start with some well-to-do suburbs west of Boston:

And here are North Shore suburbs. (Lawrence is a little out of place here, as it’s working-class with a large Hispanic population, but it had the same large 02 to 08 shift that its wealthier neighbors did.)

Now turning to the more blue-collar locales where the trend seemed less favorable to Democrats, starting with the South Shore towns. (Looking up to the biggest towns list above, you can see that same trend happened not only in Quincy, but especially in Fall River and New Bedford, which are strongly Democratic but barely moved at all from O’Brien to Obama. In their cases, I’m not sure if that’s indifference to Obama, or particularly strong local machines good at keep turnout consistent.)

And finally, a mix of western mill towns and blue-collar suburbs around Springfield:

Now for the bad news… Suffolk polled several bellwether towns over the weekend, and found that Coakley is polling well below the level she needs to meet the benchmarks, in fact slightly below even Shannon O’Brien levels from 2002. They found a 41/55 race in Fitchburg (see the western mill towns chart), and a 40/57 race in Peabody (see the North Shore chart). I have no idea about the sample size or any of the other innards, but this suggests that for Coakley to pull this out — as has been more broadly evident for several days — the only way is for the pollsters to have been missing large swaths of heretofore unactivated voters who just got transformed into Democratic likely voters in the last few days.

Blue Mass Group has an interesting post that lists some other bellwether towns that you might want to keep an eye on. UPDATE: (And Cook’s Dave Wasserman has made available a Google spreadsheet doing more or less the same thing for every single freakin’ town in the state, albeit only for the 2008 model. Check it out.)

Mason-Dixon for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin/KITV (1/8-12, registered voters):

Neil Abercrombie (D): 43

Duke Aiona (R): 34

Undecided: 23

Mufi Hannemann (D): 41

Duke Aiona (R): 35

Undecided: 24

(MoE: ±3.5%)

I expected Abercrombie to be a bit more formidable than this, although these are by no means bad numbers. Aiona, however, has stockpiled a lot money for this race, and he’s pretty well-liked: his favorable rating is 41-19, quite a bit higher than Abercrombie’s 36-29 and a shade better than Hannemann’s 38-22.

The Democratic primary, too, looks like it will be a very competitive affair:

Neil Abercrombie (D): 37

Mufi Hannemann (D): 34

Undecided: 29

(MoE: ±4.5%)

I wonder if Abercrombie expected to face such a stiff fight — but in any case, I’m sure he’s relieved to be done with all the plane rides to and from DC. SSP currently rates this race as Lean Democratic.

Now, for some good news (and bad news) from the 1st District race to fill Abercrombie’s seat:

Ed Case (D): 37

Colleen Hanabusa (D): 25

Charles Djou (R): 17

Undecided: 21

(MoE: ±5%)

The good news, of course, is that the highly-touted Charles Djou is lagging in third place in a race against not one, but two Democrats (Hawaii has a pretty strange special election situation, where everyone runs against everyone with no runoffs). The bad news, of course, is that the extremely unacceptable Ed Case has the early lead. It’s too bad we can’t see crosstabs, here, because I would love to see how many Republicans and independents Case is taking away from Djou. I’m suspecting that Case is sucking up a lot of oxygen on the right-leaning side of the political equation here.

RaceTracker Wiki: HI-Gov | HI-01

CQ:

In a move that will certainly give hope to Democrats worried about holding on to the seat of retiring Arkansas Rep. Vic Snyder (D), Lt. Gov. Bill Halter acknowledged Monday that he is now seriously considering running in the Little Rock-based 2nd district this fall.

“I have received many telephone calls from Arkansans offering me encouragement and support since Congressman Vic Snyder announced he would not seek re-election,” Halter said in a statement released through a Virginia-based Democratic consultant who has worked on his previous campaigns. “I am grateful, I am listening and I am now seriously considering all options. These considerations center on where to best fight for better jobs and greater opportunities for Arkansans.”

Halter would be a strong recruit, no doubt, but some Democrats would rather see him commit to a primary challenge against Blanche Lincoln. In any case, there are other Democratic names interested in the primary. State Sen. Joyce Elliott is “98 percent” sure she’ll run for the seat. Other names who have signaled interest in the race include state Sen. Shane Broadway (though he says that he’d probably run for Lt. Governor if Halter decides to run for Congress), term-limited state Sen. Tracy Steele, state House Speaker Robbie Wills. Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola, North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Hays, state Senate President Bob Johnson, and state Public Service Commissioner Paul Suskie have also been mentioned as possible candidates. In short, the bench is pretty deep here, and someone of substance is bound to step up (although some choices, like the right-leaning Johnson, would be a little hard to swallow).

Perhaps most interesting is this piece of scuttlebutt:

There is chatter in Democratic circles about possible interest from Wesley Clark as a candidate for retiring Democrat Vic Snyder’s congressional seat. […]

A credible source says that an internal discussion is taking place, and that Clark is giving it serious consideration.

That’d be a pretty remarkable development — there’s no doubt that Clark would have a pretty decent fundraising base in place for a run, and it goes without saying that his bio has some special appeal in a district like this. It’d be a pretty surprising climb-down for a man who ran for President just six years ago, but he hasn’t had any real opportunities to serve in elected or appointed office in the years since, and this is a legitimate opening for him. Clark, for now, can’t be reached for comment.

Update: In the diaries, ARDem runs through a list of potential candidates.

RaceTracker Wiki: AR-02

The AR-02 Democratic primary is shaping up rapidly.  Already, one candidate is on the verge of declaring, a few are openly considering, two appear to be out, and several new names are exploring.  Here’s the run down.

The declared candidate is State Senator Joyce Elliott, a remarkably skilled state legislator, very progressive, and the state’s most prominent and popular African American politician.

The hottest name in Arkansas politics right now, Lt. Gov Bill Halter says he’s weighing his options so he says.

State Senator Shane Broadway, the most respected senator in the state legislature, is out-reportedly planning on running for Lt. Gov if Halter declines to run for reelection.  Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola is also out.

House Speaker Robbie Wills and former AG candidate Paul Suskie are apparently considering, but keeping mum.

No word yet if State Senator Bob Johnson, the most conservative and corrupt Democrat you can imagine, is going to jump in or not.

Several new names are in the mix who I know nothing about, including Carolyn Staley, a minister, Snyder’s Chief of Staff David Boiling, and former state rep. Will Bond.

One big name rumored of late is one that took me and everyone else watching completely by surprise, former general and presidential candidate Wesley Clark is reportedly seriously considering the race.

You can keep up with all the developments at http://www.bluearkansasblog.com