Swing State Project

Ugh, please no:

Like @maghabepolitico said, Altschuler spox Rob Ryan is saying recanvass has Altschuler up 392 over Bishop in #ny01. No BOE confirmation.

That’s from the Twitter feed of Newsday reporter Reid Epstein. The pain continues…

UPDATE: Maggie Haberman has more:

There’s over 9,000 absentee ballots to be counted starting next week, but the Republican had been down by 3,400. …

A bit more: Apparently Altschuler’s team asked to have the machine votes impounded this morning. One veteran Long Island watcher writes in that the machines weren’t expected to be recanvassed until next week.

And a breakdown of the absentees:

   * Democrat: 3,563

   * Republican: 3,889

   * Independence: 292

   * Conservative: 240

   * Working Families: 12

   * Blank: 1,753

Additionally, 3,600 absentees have still yet to come in. (All must be postmarked by November 1, and military ballots have until November 24 to arrive at the Board of Election’s office.)

Later Update: Yikes, a Bishop aide is confirming that Altschuler now has the lead.

It’s time we had a little pep talk:

• WV-Gov: I’ve complained at length before about the sheer haziness of West Virginia’s succession laws, and they aren’t going to get any clearer: Joe Manchin, as one of his final acts as Governor, isn’t going to call a special session to clarify. The law is clear that Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin becomes Acting Governor upon Manchin’s resignation (which will probably happen as soon as the election results are certified, as Manchin is able and ready to serve in the lame duck session in place of temp Carte Goodwin), but all it says is that a special election must be held to fill the vacancy, without saying, y’know, when. Legislative counsel have made the best guess that two elections should happen in Nov. 2012 (one special election for the remaining two months of the term, the other regularly scheduled one for the following four years), but that doesn’t have the force of law yet.

• AZ-07: This was one where victory was pretty clear yesterday, but today it’s officially been called for Raul Grijalva. He’s up more than 6,000 now, as friendly Pima County precincts have kept reporting.

• AZ-08: Looking right next door, things are also looking up for Gabby Giffords. She’s up by about 3,000 votes. 30,000 votes remain to be processed in Pima County, although it’s unclear how many of those are in the 7th or in the 8th. The local paper says it’s expected the race will be called in her favor today.

• CA-11: J-Mac looks to be coming back, if today’s news is any indication. Jerry McNerney’s lead over David Harmer has edged up to 568 votes (although potentially that could erode a bit in today’s further counting as there are still some San Joaquin Co. votes outstanding). California doesn’t have an automatic recount provision, but Harmer seems to already be laying groundwork: he’s filed a suit in Contra Costa County saying his team should be able to stop the vote-by-mail signature-verification process in order to challenge signatures.

• KY-06: Ben Chandler is declaring victory, despite Andy Barr’s plans to pursue a recanvass. The final count is Chandler up by 649, although that’s not SoS-certified yet, and the recanvass may change that (although probably not to the extent that Barr could win).

• NV-St. Sen.: 84-year-old long-timer Bill Raggio won’t be the Republican leader in the Nevada state Senate for the first time in ages. He pulled his name from consideration for another stint as minority leader after it was clear that he wasn’t going to win the internal struggle against Mike McGinness. Raggio’s sin? Endorsing Harry Reid over Sharron Angle (who, you might remember, ran and lost to Raggio in a 2008 GOP primary battle in his Reno-area seat).

• Leadership: The big news on Capitol Hill today, of course, is that Nancy Pelosi has made clear that she will seek to become minority leader. One more indication how quickly the daily CW (which had a quick transition to Steny Hoyer penciled in yesterday) can change on a dime. Hoyer is likely to stay in place, so Pelosi will probably only face a minor challenge from Heath Shuler. Only a few other surviving conservadems are publicly opposing Pelosi so far (no surprises: Altmire, Boren, Matheson). Chris Van Hollen, unsurprisingly, is also out as DCCC chair… although it’s hard to tell how much his star has dimmed for future leadership endeavors, as a third term at the DCCC would have been unlikely even if the Dems had salvaged a majority. (There’s plenty of other discussion on this topic, including the GOP leadership ladder and committee chairs, underway over in MassGOP’s diary.) UPDATE: Here’s some last-minute tension: Dems are less one leadership slot, having to drop down to the minority, and it looks like that’s going to be resolved with a battle for minority whip between Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn. That could produce some fireworks.

• Polltopia: Nate Silver went there: his newest post is called “Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate.” His graph of major pollsters’ performance finds Rasmussen both off by the widest average margin, and with the most greatest amount of bias in a particular direction (the Republican direction, natch). (Quinnipiac had the smallest average error, and PPP was the closest to having no bias. He also has kind words for SurveyUSA and YouGov.) PPP’s Tom Jensen also has some interesting divining from Tuesday’s entrails: if you were wondering whether the dropoff was from Obama voters staying home, or Obama voters voting for Republicans this time around, he finds it was almost exactly half-and-half of each.

Just walk away, Renee. You won’t see me follow you back home:

Republican Renee Ellmers, who will likely face a recount in her bid to unseat Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.), appealed for help Thursday from the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The NRCC declined and Ellmers isn’t happy about it.  

The Republican said she asked the committee for help covering the costs related to a looming recount – Ellmers leads Etheridge by some 1,600 votes and earlier this week the incumbent signaled his intention to request a recount.

After elections officials discovered a counting error in one of the state’s counties, the Republican’s lead over Etheridge shrunk. The difference between the two is now less than 1 percent of the vote, enabling Etheridge to ask for a recount.

Now, the Ellmers campaign has always had a notoriously frosty relationship with the NRCC, but since when is that a valid reason to cut a seat loose? What the hell is going on here?

It’s all over but the legal wrangling:

Faced with news that an all-night vote count in Bridgeport has apparently swung the disputed gubernatorial election to Democrat Dannel Malloy, Republican candidate Tom Foley  said Friday he’s lost some confidence in his prospects but won’t concede defeat until he’s certain that the results are accurate.

And he said he’d consider a lawsuit to force a recount if he be believes it’s warranted.

An all-night vote count in Bridgeport went for Malloy, with 17,973 votes to Republican Tom Foley’s 4,099, Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch’s office said Friday morning after local election officials concluded their work. The numbers appear to bring Malloy’s total statewide to 566,351, to Foley’s 560,886, with a difference of 5,465.

The margin appears to be enough to overcome the 8,409-vote lead that Foley held before the Bridgeport votes were counted.

Apparently, a final result will “hopefully” be released later today. I’ll add only this: I certainly hope that the incoming Secretary of State, Denise Merrill, will take a more proactive approach to Bridgeport’s recurring shortage of ballots than Susan Bysiewicz has over the past two cycles.

That was fast:

To no one’s surprise, Attorney General Jon Bruning tossed his hat into the ring for the 2012 U.S. Senate race.

Bruning’s announcement Friday came 19 hours after Gov. Dave Heineman, the state’s leading Republican, announced he would forgo a possible race to unseat U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson, the state’s leading Democrat.

Bruning, at a Capitol rotunda news conference, announced that he had formed an exploratory committee to solicit input from Nebraskans and raise campaign funds for the race. He said he could not envision a scenario in which he would not run.

“I want to run, and I’m ready to run,” the 41-year-old said. “Nebraska needs to replace Ben Nelson.”

Other Republicans considering the race are former AG Don Stenberg (who lost to Nelson by 2% in 2000, and was just elected as state treasurer this week), and, reportedly, ’06 mega-loser Pete Ricketts (!).

What kind of odds do you give the Benator?

Nate’s preliminary analysis of pollsters’ performance is out.  And the headline is what we’ve all known:  Rasmussen is biased.  Up to 2009, Scotty’s bias was held in check to some degree.  Since then, he’s left it all hang out.  And it shows.  The proof is in the pudding.  (And Nate doesn’t even address Rassmussen’s 12 point final generic).

The 105 polls released in Senate and gubernatorial races by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, missed the final margin between the candidates by 5.8 points, a considerably higher figure than that achieved by most other pollsters. Some 13 of its polls missed by 10 or more points, including one in the Hawaii Senate race that missed the final margin between the candidates by 40 points, the largest error ever recorded in a general election in FiveThirtyEight’s database, which includes all polls conducted since 1998.

Moreover, Rasmussen’s polls were quite biased, overestimating the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average. In just 12 cases, Rasmussen’s polls overestimated the margin for the Democrat by 3 or more points. But it did so for the Republican candidate in 55 cases – that is, in more than half of the polls that it issued.

If one focused solely on the final poll issued by Rasmussen Reports or Pulse Opinion Research in each state – rather than including all polls within the three-week interval – it would not have made much difference. Their average error would be 5.7 points rather than 5.8, and their average bias 3.8 points rather than 3.9.

Who did well?  Q, SUSA (in the last three weeks) and, surpisingly, YouGov:

The most accurate surveys were those issued by Quinnipiac University, which missed the final margin between the candidates by 3.3 points, and which showed little overall bias.

The next-best result was from SurveyUSA, which is among the highest-rated firms in FiveThirtyEight’s pollster rankings: it missed the margin between the candidates by 3.5 points, on average.

SurveyUSA also issued polls in a number of U.S. House races, missing the margin between the candidates by an average of 5.2 points. That is a comparatively good score: individual U.S. House races are generally quite difficult to poll, and the typical poll issued by companies other than SurveyUSA had missed the margin between the candidates by an average of 7.3 points.

In some of the house races that it polled, SurveyUSA’s results had been more Republican-leaning than those of other pollsters. But it turned out that it had the right impression in most of those races – anticipating, for instance, that the Democratic incumbent Jim Oberstar could easily lose his race, as he eventually did.

YouGov, which conducts its surveys through Internet panels, also performed fairly well, missing the eventual margin by 3.5 points on average – although it confined its polling to a handful of swing races, in which polling is generally easier because of high levels of voter engagement.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n…

Alot of people have pointed out that House losses in Ohio shouldn’t be a big deal because the GOP has already gerrymandered Ohio to their maximum advantage.

However, what that fails to take into context is that Ohio is about to lose 2 of its 18 seats once the census figures are published, which gives the GOP an opportunity to take a 13-5 House advantage to 13-3. Below are some scenarios that will enable them to accomplish that:

Lost Seat #1: Shore up Jim Renacci, combine Tim Ryan and Betty Sutton.

This scenario seems like the easiest call for the Republicans. Currently Renacci was just elected to OH-16 which contains Stark (Canton/Massillon), Wayne (Wooster), Medina (Cleveland exurbs), and Ashland (rural, very conservative) Counties.

This district was drawn in 2000 to protect GOP moderate stalwart Ralph Regula who lived in the Canton area. Canton & Stark County also happen to be the most Dem friendly parts of the district as currently constructed, voting for both Kerry and Obama in 2004 & 2008. With Renacci’s home in Wadsworth (Medina County), it will be easy for Republicans to combine parts of the current OH-10, 13, 16, 17 & 18 into two districts.

Renacci’s new district will shift north and west, abandoning Stark County in the process by swallowing the Medina & Cuyahoga County portions of OH-13 (these suburbs: Strongsville, North Royalton & Brecksville are the most reliably GOP leaning areas of Dem-heavy Cuyahoga County), the eastern Lorain County portion of 13 (Avon, Avon Lake, North Ridgeville: fast growing GOP suburbs) and the western edge of OH-10 (Bay Village, Rocky River, Westlake). Whatever portions of Wayne & Ashland counties in the southern part of his current district that won’t fit population-wise can be eaten up by Gibbs in present-day OH-18.

That leaves a new Democratic district comprised of Akron, Canton & Youngstown that draws Sutton’s home in Copley (just outside Akron) and Ryan’s home in Niles (just outside Youngstown) into the same district and forces a primary between the two most promising congressional Dems in Ohio. Taking one of these two out will be a major boon to the GOP by eliminating or weakening the strongest challengers to Portman or Kasich in 2014 and 2016.

Lost Seat #2: This is where it gets harder for the GOP to come up with another lost Dem seat. The possibilities in order of likelihood:

1. With Renacci squeezing Kucinich to the west, the Republicans could draw a new minority-majority district in Cleveland by moving Fudge and Kucinich into the same district. This would involve LaTourette scraping off the eastern edge of Fudge’s territory. The new map would basically be the city of Cleveland + inner ring suburbs.

In this situation, Kucinich would likely retire or move to the suburbs to challenge Renacci where he would lose in an R+ district.

2. Split up Columbus 3 ways. Columbus presents a problem for Republicans in the state. It is the area that is experiencing the most population growth in the state, and it is also the area that is trending the strongest towards Democrats.

Currently OH-12 (Tibieri) and OH-15 (Stivers) represent the city by drawing in as much as they can from the sparsely populated surrounding counties. Even here, both districts are perpetually threatened, with Kilroy (D) holding OH-15 for one term before her defeat this year. OH-12 is actually the bluer of the two Columbus districts, but Dems can never seem to recruit the right candidate to beat Tibieri.

To stave off flipping one of these seats permanently to Team Blue, the GOP could find a way to give Gibbs or Turner a slice of the Columbus pie and keep Dem votes divided.

3. The last scenario I could see happening doesn’t get the GOP to 13-3, but could be a prudent strategic move for them in SW Ohio.

By eliminating OH-2 (Schmidt), they could expand Chabot’s district to the east and leave him less vulnerable to a Democratic wave year like 2008. Turner and Johnson (OH-6)would take what was left of Mean Jean’s territory and help shore up their own re-election hopes.

Schmidt’s constant underperformance is likely a drag on RCCC funds as they constantly have to defend the 2nd most Republican seat in Ohio due to the relative unpopularity of Ms. Schmidt.

These are just a few scenarios and I’m sure I’m missing others. Another possibility would be to force Marcy Kaptur and Bob Latta into a showdown, but Kapur’s seat is already so gerrymandered, I’m not sure how you draw in Toledo & the islands without strengthening the Dems.

Any thoughts?

Okay, so, Maryland has the trifecta, and it’s not afraid to use it. Republicans get to carve up some states they control in particularly nasty, ugly ways (I’m not looking forward to seeing how Augusta determines to create a 1-1 split, probably ousting Rep. Michaud in the process; North Carolina will be a veritable bloodbath in redistricting, and New Jersey won’t be much better), so I think Democrats should get to fight back in states like Maryland, Washington, and hopefully New York.

So, without further ado, I present to you a positively wicked 7-1 redistricting proposal for my state of residence.

Let’s start with MD-01. I guess the app decided to plop the “CD01” right where D.C. is, so just to be clear, I’m not advocating Maryland annex the nation’s capital as its new 1st congressional district.

MD-01 is pretty straightforward. I chopped most of the population centers out of Rep. Bartlett’s MD-06, including the swing city of Frederick, and combined it with Rep.-elect Harris’s Eastern Shore district, now with 100% less Anne Arundel County. Back to that in a second.

The important thing about MD-01 is that it’s the Republican district. According to the app, this hypothetical new MD-01 gave Sen. McCain 58% of the vote in 2008, with only 40% for the skinny Illinois senator we now know as President Barack Obama. This MD-01 would not be the safest Republican district in the country, but it’d be pretty safe.

Next up, MD-02. It was roughly at this point that I realized how messed up the current congressional districts of Maryland are. It’s bad enough to include parts of Anne Arundel County in a district with the Eastern Shore, but the way in which Rep. Ruppersberger’s district is drawn would be punishable by death in some countries.

What I decided to do is simplify things without sacrificing, well, let’s call it functionality. I also needed a way to swallow up some populous parts of MD-01, namely most of Baltimore County and parts of Harford County. This MD-02 includes parts of Baltimore City, although less than is currently drawn into the district because it no longer slithers south into Anne Arundel County. I mean, come on, guys.

The tradeoff of consolidating MD-02 with an eye toward siphoning off conservative MD-01 constituents and balancing them with ultra-liberal North Baltimore (the parts of Baltimore City included are a mix of super-white and super-black precincts, because a Democrat is a Democrat and we don’t make bones about it in MD-05) is that the district isn’t quite as solidly Democratic, but it’s hardly a swing district in an average year. Obama won this hypothetical MD-02 with 57% of the vote; McCain scraped up 41%.

And now for MD-03. If the current MD-02’s blatant and bizarre gerrymandered shape merited the death penalty, the lawman would bring back hanging, drawing, and quartering for MD-03. Staunchly liberal Rep. Sarbanes holds court over this district, drawn for the benefit of white dudes just like him, right now.

Because the way MD-03 is drawn right now is just plain stupid and there was still some of Harford County that needed addressing, I decided to run the new MD-03 from a tiny portion of western Cecil County, technically part of the Eastern Shore, into southern Baltimore County, with some spillage into northern Anne Arundel County and a weird little tentacle extending briefly into Howard County. It also includes the lion’s share of Baltimore City. I’ll grant it’s not tons better-looking in my drawing than it is now, but at least I didn’t gerrymander it for the benefit of those poor besotted white Democrats.

My version of MD-03 is DemStrong, having gone 60% for Obama to 38% for McCain in 2008. It’s now 30% black, proportionally almost twice what it is now, but if Sarbanes or some other white Democrat can’t get African Americans to vote for him, that’s his problem.

On to MD-04. I don’t know why this district is drawn so weirdly right now, because I feel like the way I’ve drawn it makes a lot more sense. Oh, I’ve got it: it’s gerrymandered to be majority-black. Rep. Edwards, who is a damn good congresswoman, represents our current version of MD-04.

My version of MD-04 covers about half of Montgomery County, a few conservative precincts in Howard County I didn’t want going elsewhere, and most of northern Prince George’s County. It would become the new home of the University of Maryland, which doesn’t hurt a Democrat’s vote share.

Indeed, this version of MD-04 went for Obama 75-24. That’s dominating. I could probably feed more of Howard County into this district if I wanted to, but I decided to keep things as even as possible between the eight (2000 population for all is between 661,000 and 663,000, by the way).

MD-05 is my district. I switched around some parts of the eastern D.C. suburbs for compactness, although my incarnation of the district now represented by Rep. Hoyer, the House majority leader for not a whole lot longer, still has a weird finger extending into northern Prince George’s County, capturing Greenbelt and a few other mid-sized suburbs.

The majority-black eastern suburbs more than balance out swingy southern Maryland in my drawing of MD-05. This new district would actually be majority-black according to the 2000 Census, which says 51% of its hypothetical constituents are African American.

As you might expect, this MD-05 is heavily Democratic. It would have broken 77-23 for Obama if it had been a district back in 2008; either way, that’s what the voters who would be within its new boundaries did.

MD-06 is fun. It’s a completely different district in its present form, being the domain of arch-conservative Rep. Roscoe Barlett in northern and western Maryland. As mentioned before, I had MD-01 consume most of MD-06, so this new district is more fun.

This MD-06 is not the most fun, but it’s certainly the most all-new, because I basically carved it out of parts of the current MD-01, MD-03, and MD-04. It’s basically almost all of Anne Arundel County plus a good chunk of Prince George’s County, including Bowie, a midpoint city between D.C. and Baltimore.

Ultra-liberal Bowie and somewhat liberal Annapolis serve to balance out conservative Anne Arundel County. Voters in this hypothetical MD-06 broke 57-41 for Obama, which is not so bad when you consider the current version of MD-06 has a PVI of R+13.

Helping mop up is MD-07. Right now, MD-07 is a majority-black district represented by Rep. Cummings and covering most of the black neighborhoods of Baltimore City and Baltimore County, as well as most of Howard County. It had to take a hit, and I apologize for that.

There was a lot of the current MD-06 to split up, and a good portion of it was awarded to this proposed MD-07. It’s basically the current MD-07 with a few neighborhoods in Baltimore City split off and given to MD-02 and MD-03, then a huge swath of Carroll County and about a third of Frederick County absorbed for population balance. It’s a lot bigger, but it’s not abnormal population-wise (still falls within that range I mentioned earlier, at least under the 2000 Census).

Despite expanding to cover so large an area of rural, conservative Carroll County, this MD-07 would remain a Democratic stronghold. It broke 2:1 for Obama in 2008. It’s only 39% black with so much of mostly-white Carroll and Frederick counties added in, but a Democrat should be able to walk away with any election here regardless of race.

Last but not least, MD-08. Currently represented by plucky DCCC chair Rep. Van Hollen, the present version of MD-08 covers most of Montgomery County, in particular the eastern, whiter parts of Maryland’s richest county-level subdivision.

I decided I could put it to better use, so I gave parts of Montgomery County to MD-04 without radically changing the boundaries, and then I expanded up into Frederick County and parts of southern Washington County. This is where the city of Frederick, which broke fairly decisively for Obama in 2008, wound up.

The new MD-08 would have a 2008 voter breakdown almost identical to that of MD-07. 66% of its voters went for Obama; 32% of them went for McCain. It’s only 10% black, because of how predominantly white Frederick County and the parts of Montgomery County is covers are.

So there you have it. It can be done. Let’s hope Annapolis pulls the trigger, because we shouldn’t let the Republicans have all the fun in 2012 redistricting.