Swing State Project

Quinnipiac (3/26-31, registered voters, 3/3-3/8 in parens):

Chris Dodd (D-inc): 34 (42)

Rob Simmons (R): 50 (43)

Undecided: 12 (12)

Chris Dodd (D-inc): 37 (47)

Sam Caligiuri (R): 41 (34)

Undecided: 17 (16)

Chris Dodd (D-inc): 35

Tom Foley (R): 43

Undecided: 16

(MoE: ±2.9%)

Quinnipiac finds that Nutmeggers are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. In the wake of Dodd’s admission that he inserted the language that allowed bonus payments to be made to AIG executives, Dodd’s already poor favorability rating has taken a brutal hit: he currently is sitting on a 58% unfavorable rating, and his re-elect/dump score is a chilling 35-59. A full 54% of voters consider Dodd untrustworthy, and 39% place “a lot” of blame on Dodd for the bonusgate fiasco, while another 35% place “some” blame on the Senator. (That’s a higher share of blame than is placed on George W. Bush, who receives scorn from 59% of CT voters for the AIG payments.) Still, the fact that a five-term incumbent like Dodd is losing to a pair of no-name generic GOPers with name recognition in the teens is fairly jarring.

The results from this poll differ fairly sharply from the first post-AIG poll done by R2K in the immediate aftermath of the revelations; in that survey, Dodd held a 45-40 lead over Simmons, and was over 50 against Caligiuri and non-candidate Larry Kudlow. We’ll probably want to see another poll before we start asking Dodd to walk the plank (as the DSCC is refusing to do publicly at this stage), but I’m sure we won’t be facing a shortage of polls from this race over the coming months.

More discussion on this poll is already underway in andgarden’s diary.

Read and worry:

Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd trails former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, a possible Republican challenger, 50 – 34 percent in the 2010 Senate race, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today, as voters disapprove 58 – 33 percent of the job the Democratic incumbent is doing, his lowest approval rating ever.

Dodd doesn’t even beat Sam Caligiuri, who leads him 41/37 in this poll.

Dodd is a Senator that I like very much, and I would have to say that he was often my favorite Presidential candidate last year, but I think these numbers suggest that it’s time for him to hang up his hat, sadly. The CT public actually blames him for the AIG bonuses, apparently, which they are quite angry about.  

Ohio is, in reality, a knife edge “purple” state. Voters here (as opposed to bloggers) are kitchen table Democrats (econ issues) but drift rightward on social issues and are extremely susceptible to crafty framing on wedge issues.

The world had to endure the last four years of hell because 118,000 Ohio voters put The Shrub back in office for two reasons. One was Tom Noe’s ill gotten booty (and it WAS MUCH more than what has been revealed) that he pumped into the GOP here and because they came out to vote for The Hate Amendment.

Recently, we have seen press speculation about Rep. Tim Ryan already working on running for Lt. Gov. with Ted Strickland and eventually becoming Gov.

Of course, there’s a back story. Let’s call it “Ted’s Grand Plan.”

Class, let’s review…

The Ohio House in the General Assembly is barely in Dem control but the Senate is an absolute disaster on every level and completely hopeless. We currently control the STATE redistricting board by one vote. If we lose either AG or SoS, (or the Ohio House) control would flip.

Richard Cordray would have been my choice for the US Senate but he agreed to Ted’s request to move into the state AG spot to replace the disgraced Marc Dann. (Thus eliminating one strong contender for the US Senate) Good move in terms of better government. He’ll do a great job.

You’ve gotta remember that Gov. Ted is all in for Lee Fisher as Senator, so with Cordray settled in at AG, that’s one less obstacle for Fisher.

Ryan was the other obstacle. So, Ted offers him the title of governor heir apparent. (Which is, in fact. all this discussion really means.) Ryan (and Ted) are taking the very long view.

Ryan’s current US House is District is one of four obscenely gerrymandered Dem “quarantine” districts that the GOP created at nearly 70% (or more!) Democratic turnout. This was to confine Dem voters to as few districts as possible in order to create as many GOP majority Districts as they could.

The strongly Dem districts are held by Marcy Kaptur, Dennis the Menace, Ryan and Marcia Fudge (formerly held by the late Tubbs-Jones) The latter district is the only one that will survive as such an overwhelmingly Dem district –on the grounds of minority representation.

Ohio will lose two House seats after the current census. Marcy, Dennis and Ryan’s districts will all have to lose some measure of Democratic majority in order to create more Dem majority districts, which cannot be done with these three districts running far too Democratic.

Which is what makes the specter of a Cafaro candidacy so nauseating. If that District becomes even vaguely competitive, she’ll blow it.

[Ed. Note: I would mention that that OH-14 is one of the most closely divided US House Districts to be represented by a GOPer. I say: “blow that sucker right off of the map!” Just eliminate it altogether.]

So here’s the plan: We control the Ohio redistricting process and threaten the GOP with… well… exactly what they did to us. And THAT is our leverage when, during US reapportionment, the Ohio House produces a Dem majority map and the Ohio Senate produces another one of their obscenities.

So had it not been for Judge Brunner’s decision to run for the US Senate, Ted had his plan all worked out. But now, if we lose control of Ohio SoS, the wheels completely come off. That’s why there is already a big hubub over who will run for SoS. Now the buzz is for Franklin County Commissioner Marilyn Brown. (Judge Brunner is supporting her, but I bet Ted was consulted.)

But if you look at the big picture, you can see why people are making these kinds of announcements which seem so far removed from when anything will actually happen.

OK, I’m going back to the real world now..

Chris Van Hollen announced today at a press conference that no House Dem freshman turned down help from the DCCC’s Frontline program. Last cycle, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01) initially spurned Frontline but later had the sense to change her mind, which is why she’s still in Congress. Meanwhile, the only member who strong-armed the DCCC until the bitter end apparently learned her lesson the very, very hard way:

Van Hollen also said [former KS-02 Rep. Nancy] Boyda left him a regretful voicemail that she told him to play for any other vulnerable member toying with the idea of skipping out on Frontline.

“All of our new members have learned from the mistakes of two in the former class who did not participate,” Van Hollen said. “Nancy Boyda has been very clear about the fact that she made a mistake.

“It’s a great message, because she clearly felt that not participating was a good part of the reason she failed.”

Good, at least, that she is putting herself out there as a cautionary tale for others. The DCCC is quite skilled at incumbent protection. It’ll be long time before anyone forgets that.

Hot on the heels of Jim Folsom’s announcement that he’ll run for another term as Lt. Gov., term-limited Ag Comm’r Ron Sparks looks like he’ll be running for the open governor’s seat:

State Agriculture and Industries Commissioner Ron Sparks said Wednesday he plans to hold a series of press conferences that will conclude in Fort Payne on Friday to announce his campaign plans for 2010. …

Sparks indicated Wednesday afternoon his plans are to run against Congressman Artur Davis for governor. Davis is the only Democrat who has declared a run for the top state seat so far.

“I will not run against Jim Folsom,” said Sparks, who would not elaborate on his statement.

Assuming Sparks does take the plunge (as looks likely), this sets up what could be a very contentious primary with Rep. Artur Davis. One of the reasons Sparks sat out a race against Sen. Jeff Sessions last cycle was to avoid precisely this kind of internecine battle – state Sen. Vivian Figures insisted on making what turned out to be a rather quixotic run. So I’m not sure why he’d want to get into the mix now, especially with a much more formidable opponent.

Sparks lives in AL-03, and as a several folks have suggested, it could be fertile territory for another Democratic challenge. But seeing as Sparks is holding four different press conferences around the state to announce his next move, that’s not in the cards.

Another topic in the slicing and dicing of our newly compiled presidential-election-by-congressional-district data: where are the split districts? In other words, which districts won by Obama have Republican representatives, and which districts won by McCain have Democratic representatives? (CQ already beat me to the punch on this particular question, but to give it a new spin, I’m arranging them in order of the districts’ three-way margin, which gives at least some relative sense of vulnerability.)

District	Republican	Obama Margin	District	Democrat	McCain Margin
LA-02	Cao	49.3	MS-04	Taylor	35.5
DE-AL	Castle	25.0	TX-17	C. Edwards	35.2
IL-10	Kirk	22.8	OK-02	Boren	31.2
PA-06	Gerlach	16.6	TN-04	L. Davis	29.8
WA-08	Reichert	14.8	AL-02	Bright	27.4
IL-06	Roskam	13.2	ID-01	Minnick	26.6
PA-15	Dent	12.4	TN-06	Gordon	25.3
IL-13	Biggert	9.6	LA-03	Melancon	24.0
MI-06	Upton	9.5	MS-01	Childers	23.5
NJ-02	Lo Biondo	9.3	AL-05	Griffith	22.9
MI-11	McCotter	9.2	MO-04	Skelton	22.7
IL-16	Manzullo	8.5	AR-01	Berry	20.3
IA-04	Latham	7.5	VA-09	Boucher	19.1
OH-12	Tiberi	7.5	AR-04	Ross	18.8
MI-08	Rogers	6.9	MD-01	Kratovil	18.5
VA-10	Wolf	6.8	UT-02	Matheson	18.1
MN-03	Paulsen	6.4	WV-01	Mollohan	15.3
NY-23	McHugh	5.2	WV-03	Rahall	13.5
CA-45	Bono Mack	4.6	GA-08	Marshall	13.4
CA-50	Bilbray	4.2	TN-08	Tanner	13.3
FL-10	Young	4.1	KY-06	Chandler	12.2
CA-26	Dreier	4.1	PA-04	Altmire	10.5
WI-01	Ryan	3.9	AZ-01	Kirkpatrick	10.2
NJ-07	Lance	3.5	AR-02	Snyder	9.9
CA-24	Gallegly	2.8	FL-02	Boyd	9.7
FL-18	Ros-Lehtinen	2.3	ND-AL	Pomeroy	8.6
MI-04	Camp	1.9	SD-AL	Herseth	8.4
VA-04	Forbes	1.5	PA-10	Carney	8.3
NE-02	Terry	1.2	SC-05	Spratt	7.2
WI-06	Petri	1.2	OH-18	Space	6.7
CA-25	McKeon	1.1	AZ-08	Giffords	5.9
CA-44	Calvert	0.9	NC-11	Shuler	5.6
CA-48	Campbell	0.7	NC-07	McIntyre	5.6
CA-03	Lungren	0.5	AZ-05	Mitchell	4.5
—	—	—	IN-08	Ellsworth	3.9
—	—	—	MN-07	C. Peterson	2.7
—	—	—	OH-06	C. Wilson	2.7
—	—	—	OH-16	Boccieri	2.6
—	—	—	CO-03	Salazar	2.5
—	—	—	PA-17	Holden	2.5
—	—	—	VA-05	Perriello	2.3
—	—	—	NY-29	Massa	2.2
—	—	—	FL-24	Kosmas	2.0
—	—	—	NY-13	McMahon	1.8
—	—	—	IN-09	Hill	1.8
—	—	—	NM-02	Teague	1.3
—	—	—	CO-04	Markey	0.9
—	—	—	PA-12	Murtha	0.4
—	—	—	PA-03	Dahlkemper	0.006

There’s a definite tilt in the playing field that happened with 2008, compared with 2004: there are 34 Obama/R districts and 49 McCain/D districts. In the aftermath of the 2004 election, there were 18 Kerry/R districts and 41 Bush/D districts. The numbers have moved not only because Obama picked up a number of suburban districts that previously resided in the R+5 area (especially in places like California and Michigan), but also because of some inroads we’ve made at getting Blue Dogs elected in districts that were dark red in both 2004 and 2008. (Remember how the disparity in Kerry/R and Bush/D districts was part of the “permanent Republican majority?” They were going to slowly pick off all those Bush/D districts while, of course, we picked off nothing and the presidential bar didn’t move, either.)

I don’t want to cause your eyes to fall out by printing the whole 2004 list, so here’s the top 10 in each category (worth seeing if only to see what a swath we’ve cut through the moderate Republicans in the last four years):

District	Republican	Kerry Margin	District	Democrat	Bush Margin
IA-02	Leach	11.5	TX-17	C. Edwards	39.7
CT-02	Simmons	9.7	MS-04	Taylor	37.2
DE-AL	Castle	7.6	UT-02	Matheson	34.7
IA-01	Nussle	6.5	MO-04	Skelton	29.0
PA-07	Weldon	6.1	ND-AL	Pomeroy	27.4
CT-04	Shays	6.1	SD-AL	Herseth	21.5
IL-10	Kirk	5.5	AL-05	Cramer	20.3
NH-02	Bass	5.0	VA-09	Boucher	20.2
FL-22	Shaw	4.9	TN-06	Gordon	20.0
PA-08	Fitzpatrick	3.4	OK-02	Boren	18.8

Quoting today’s politics1.com report:

CONNECTICUT. State Senator Sam Caligiuri (R) has entered the race against US Senator Chris Dodd (D) next year. He joins former Congressman Rob Simmons and anti-tax activist Peter Schiff in the GOP contest.

Well, this is something of a surprise:

Twelve-year Attorney General Thurbert Baker will enter the 2010 race for governor, a move that could make the Democratic side of the contest every bit as complicated as the Republican one.

Jeff DiSantis, acting as a spokesman for Baker, said the attorney general has prepared the paperwork necessary to start raising money, and will file official notice shortly after the Legislature adjourns.

“This is not a contingent discussion. This is not based on whoever else is running,” DiSantis said. “It doesn’t need to be couched.”

Baker, an African-American, won more votes than anyone else on the Democratic ticket in 2006, his last statewide election.

His intention is to run a tough-on-crime campaign. More details to come.

Baker has won re-election by impressive margins in the past, and his candidacy would immediately be taken seriously on both sides of the fence. For the Democrats, former Gov. Roy Barnes has been sounding frisky lately, and House Minority Leader DuBose Porter has expressed interest, as well.

(Hat-tip: TheUnknown285)

Hot off the wire:

Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom Jr. today said he would seek re-election as lieutenant governor in 2010 and will not run for the Democratic nomination for governor.

“I want to continue to serve in a position of influence at this critical time,” Folsom said. “I will seek re-election as lieutenant governor.”

Folsom was expected by many to make a bid for Governor — including Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, who himself was expected to announce his candidacy for Folsom’s Lt. Governor job this Friday. Since a Sparks-Folsom primary would be inconceivable, will Sparks change gears and run in a primary against Artur Davis for Governor? That would be a pretty tough fight for Sparks (and I’m sure he knows it), so who knows where he’ll end up in 2010.

Huh. I never thought I’d write a post quite like this, but here we are. It’s the day after election day, and Scott Murphy’s narrow lead has now shrunk to just 25 votes (according to the AP). Thousands of absentee ballots are outstanding, and no one is quite sure how they’ll come down (though some Dems are hazarding a few guesses).

So we go back to the drawing board. The old predictions get cast out the window. What say you now? Share your prognostications in comments, and be sure to vote in the poll (click here or check below the fold). If you make a new prediction, tell us – exactly how many votes will the winner win by?