Yesterday I walked over to the Capital Hilton to take in the first of two sessions (this second was this morning) of the Democratic National Committee's Rules & Bylaws Committee. Jeff Berman--Obama's 2008 delegate guru and a lawyer-expert on election rules who is one of 30 members of the RBC--told me he didn't think much of substance would happen at the RBC's meetings this weekend in Washington to review the rules for the 2012 presidential nomination process, and he was right. Although the RBC had 20 sections of rules to approve, they spent almost 15 minutes arguing about a two-word change to one subsection of Rule 1. I can say with confidence that this has to be the least exciting part of a presidential campaign cycle.
In any case, last year the Democratic Change Commission--the ad hoc group, of which Berman is also member, tasked with reviewing the nominating rules procedures--made several key recommendations, including pushing back the primary calendar and making clear the penalties and appeals process for state parties that violate the calendar. So the big news Friday may have actually came during the opening remarks from RBC co-chair James Roosevelt, Jr., who explained the significance of the recent news that the Republican National Committee--which normally sets its rules for its next presidential cycle at the previous national convention--for the first time has conducted a mid-cycle review of its own procedures and calendar for the 2012 presidential nomination.
Basically, the two parties seem to be on the cusp of achieving alignment on two calendar-related issues. First, both parties clearly want to push the so-called "pre-primary window" for the approved, early states to after February 1, instead of January 1. Second, because the RNC's ad hoc delegate selection committee has recommended designating Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina as the four states that would be allowed to conduct primaries/caucuses in the February, pre-primary window, the two parties could very well have the same four contests in the same four states on identical dates during February 2012.
This confluence of calendars is potentially good news for the parties, their candidates and the media, all of whom could converge on the same states at the same time of the primary year. In 2012, barring some unforeseen development, there's not going to be a contest for the Democratic nomination. But if Obama wins re-election, and presuming Joe Biden doesn't run, 2016 could become the second cycle in about 60 years--and, along with 2008, the second cycle out of three--in which no incumbent president or vice president is seeking his party's nomination.
Because Democrats had to respond to the 2008 Hillary Clinton/Obama delegate controversies, including the dramas in Florida and Michigan, and because Republicans agree the primary season was running too close to the winter holidays, the next few cycles could produce greater bipartisan uniformity in the presidential selection calendar. (The GOP is also likely to require proportional assignment of delegates for any state that holds its primary or caucus before April 2012, but I will wait to talk about the implications of that once the GOP's new rules are set in stone.)
Bottom line: 2012 is shaping up to be a nice trial run for the two parties to re-organize, streamline and coordinate their presidential nomination processes. So far as I know, the RNC is not drafting rules, as the Democrats have, to encourage states to join together in regional or sub-regional primaries by assigning states that do so extra delegate weight. And we have to wait to see if state Democratic parties respond to these incentives in 2012. But the short story for the moment is that in 2012 there will be more sanity and cross-party uniformity in the scheduling of presidential nomination contests.
5.22.2010
Apartheid was Helped by a Twisted Election System
@ 10:30 AM
From 538's Dan Berman
Over the last few weeks there has been an understandable focus on downsides to a plurality electoral system, such as whether they are biased. In the context of the United Kingdom, most of the focus has been on how the system has underrepresented the Liberal Democrats and benefited Labour. Central in these discussions was that the system might produce an “incorrect result”, namely one in which the largest party in seats was not the one that had received the most votes, and several political figures went so far as to warn of potential “social unrest” if such an outcome occurred.
The loser of the popular vote winning an election is far from unheard of in democracies, whether in the United States Presidential election in 2000, or the UK’s own general election in 1974. Even AV, or preferential voting did not prevent it from occurring in Australia in 1998. But each of these elections was close, and in subsequent years, the losing party eventually returned to power. As such, any distortion was an offense to fairness, but not a threat to the system.
There have, however, been cases where such biases have been more pernicious. Where the bias of the electoral system was so systematic that it eventually undermined the(albeit) limited legitimacy of the system in regards to its own voters, and eventually led dissenters to opt out of the political system entirely. A particularly prominent case is that of Apartheid South Africa, where a system of Apartheid was introduced despite the repeatedly demonstrated opposition of a majority of the white electorate.
While its racially exclusionary practices, which limited the franchise to white voters(as well as a limited number of mixed race ones between 1936 and 1958) the defenders of South Africa took great pride in arguing that the nation possessed a system that was highly democratic and representative of its voters, the “freest in Africa”. And on paper it was, with a constitution remarkably similar to Australia or Canada. Nevertheless, the election results that brought in Apartheid indicated that the system did an extremely poor job of representing the opinion even of its limited constituency. This fact becomes apparent by a simple examination of the results of the most important election to take place in South Africa prior to 1994, namely the 1948 elections that saw the National Party defeat the ruling United Party on a platform of imposing “Apartheid”.
By 1948, South African politics had been for four decades dominated by veterans of the Anglo-Boer wars, with three defeated Boer generals serving as Prime Minister, namely Louis Botha, Jan Smuts, and JBM Hertzog. Botha and Smuts formed the South Africa party which was an alliance between moderate Afrikaners and English voters. Opposed to it was the National party headed by Hertzog which appealed more to poorer Afrikaners and some poorer English voters.
During the depression, the two parties formed a coalition, which survived until the outbreak of war in 1939, which South Africa entered by a cabinet vote decided by a margin of one. The hard Afrikaner core of the National Party broke off from the ruling “United Party”. Highly sectarian (it did not field a single English candidate in 1948) it was considered to have little chance of winning in 1948 against the government which had just won the war.
The United Party however, like other Western governing parties that had ruled during the second world war, had many things going against it, including a serious recession, and concerns that it was out of ideas for the country’s future.
Compared to this, the National Party offered the promise of ending English dominance of the civil service and the economy as well ending the competition that African laborers moving to the urban areas posed to poor Afrikaner workers. When the votes were counted the United Party had won a large popular vote victory, 547,437 (50.9%) for the United Party to 443,278 (41.2%) for the National Party. But when the seats were declared, the National party and its allies had won 79, compared to 71 for the United Party and its allies.
The National Party had taken advantages of one of the quirks of the South African system. The first was that seats were allowed to deviate from the population quota by a margin of 15% in either direction in order to accommodate local boundaries and to limit their geographical size. While an average of around 7200 votes were cast per constituency, the National Party only won 2 seats where more than 7200 votes were cast. The United Party by contrast won more than half its seats in districts where over 8000 votes were cast.
Secondly, the National Party had the advantage of being an ethnic party in a country in which the ethnic balance favored them. Afrikaners, to whom they focused their appeal, made up 57% of the population, and were furthermore, better distributed for electoral purposes, making up the majority in 98 out of 150 seats. The redistricting that followed the Nationalist victory in 1948 only increased this discrepancy by adding six seats for Namibia, which was annexed in violation of UN resolutions calling for its independence.
Therefore, the results in the next two elections were even more disproportionate. In 1953, the opposition had united into the United Front, and had high hopes of victory, and with the unified support the South African business community and economic elite, they outspent the National party by nearly 4-1. Nevertheless, when the votes were counted the pattern of 1948 was repeated, only to an even greater extent than in 1948. In Cape Town the United Front won 73%; in Cape Elizabeth 65%. But in the rest of Cape Province, the National Party won 57% of the vote, and 29 out of 33 seats. The pattern was repeated nationwide. By 1958, the Opposition had all but given up serious hope of winning despite the fact that the results indicated that they still held the support of a majority of the electorate.
Following 1958, turnout began to drop rapidly as English voters and moderate Afrikaners increasingly made their peace with a National Party that looked unbeatable, while Liberals looked to emigration in preference to a futile political fight. Ironically therefore, the National Party’s dominance of the electoral system likely did as much to undermine Apartheid as sanctions.
The greatest threat to the system was always naked demographics, and by giving no option to young whites for political change, it drove many of South Africa’s best and brightest towards emigration. By the 1970s it was not just English speakers who were leaving the country, but also young Afrikaners who wanted an opportunity to escape an Afrikaans-only educational system that the National party seemed determined to force them into.
By the end of the 1970s, the white population was actually falling by nearly 20,000 a year, a pace that would more than double by the beginnings of the 1980s. While the electoral system may have made it increasingly difficult for South Africans to oust the National government with their votes, it in many cases led them to vote against its system of Apartheid with their feet.
---
This article was authored by research assistant Dan Berman. Please send comments or suggestions to sexton538@gmail.com
Over the last few weeks there has been an understandable focus on downsides to a plurality electoral system, such as whether they are biased. In the context of the United Kingdom, most of the focus has been on how the system has underrepresented the Liberal Democrats and benefited Labour. Central in these discussions was that the system might produce an “incorrect result”, namely one in which the largest party in seats was not the one that had received the most votes, and several political figures went so far as to warn of potential “social unrest” if such an outcome occurred.
The loser of the popular vote winning an election is far from unheard of in democracies, whether in the United States Presidential election in 2000, or the UK’s own general election in 1974. Even AV, or preferential voting did not prevent it from occurring in Australia in 1998. But each of these elections was close, and in subsequent years, the losing party eventually returned to power. As such, any distortion was an offense to fairness, but not a threat to the system.
There have, however, been cases where such biases have been more pernicious. Where the bias of the electoral system was so systematic that it eventually undermined the(albeit) limited legitimacy of the system in regards to its own voters, and eventually led dissenters to opt out of the political system entirely. A particularly prominent case is that of Apartheid South Africa, where a system of Apartheid was introduced despite the repeatedly demonstrated opposition of a majority of the white electorate.
While its racially exclusionary practices, which limited the franchise to white voters(as well as a limited number of mixed race ones between 1936 and 1958) the defenders of South Africa took great pride in arguing that the nation possessed a system that was highly democratic and representative of its voters, the “freest in Africa”. And on paper it was, with a constitution remarkably similar to Australia or Canada. Nevertheless, the election results that brought in Apartheid indicated that the system did an extremely poor job of representing the opinion even of its limited constituency. This fact becomes apparent by a simple examination of the results of the most important election to take place in South Africa prior to 1994, namely the 1948 elections that saw the National Party defeat the ruling United Party on a platform of imposing “Apartheid”.
By 1948, South African politics had been for four decades dominated by veterans of the Anglo-Boer wars, with three defeated Boer generals serving as Prime Minister, namely Louis Botha, Jan Smuts, and JBM Hertzog. Botha and Smuts formed the South Africa party which was an alliance between moderate Afrikaners and English voters. Opposed to it was the National party headed by Hertzog which appealed more to poorer Afrikaners and some poorer English voters.
During the depression, the two parties formed a coalition, which survived until the outbreak of war in 1939, which South Africa entered by a cabinet vote decided by a margin of one. The hard Afrikaner core of the National Party broke off from the ruling “United Party”. Highly sectarian (it did not field a single English candidate in 1948) it was considered to have little chance of winning in 1948 against the government which had just won the war.
The United Party however, like other Western governing parties that had ruled during the second world war, had many things going against it, including a serious recession, and concerns that it was out of ideas for the country’s future.
Compared to this, the National Party offered the promise of ending English dominance of the civil service and the economy as well ending the competition that African laborers moving to the urban areas posed to poor Afrikaner workers. When the votes were counted the United Party had won a large popular vote victory, 547,437 (50.9%) for the United Party to 443,278 (41.2%) for the National Party. But when the seats were declared, the National party and its allies had won 79, compared to 71 for the United Party and its allies.
The National Party had taken advantages of one of the quirks of the South African system. The first was that seats were allowed to deviate from the population quota by a margin of 15% in either direction in order to accommodate local boundaries and to limit their geographical size. While an average of around 7200 votes were cast per constituency, the National Party only won 2 seats where more than 7200 votes were cast. The United Party by contrast won more than half its seats in districts where over 8000 votes were cast.
Secondly, the National Party had the advantage of being an ethnic party in a country in which the ethnic balance favored them. Afrikaners, to whom they focused their appeal, made up 57% of the population, and were furthermore, better distributed for electoral purposes, making up the majority in 98 out of 150 seats. The redistricting that followed the Nationalist victory in 1948 only increased this discrepancy by adding six seats for Namibia, which was annexed in violation of UN resolutions calling for its independence.
Therefore, the results in the next two elections were even more disproportionate. In 1953, the opposition had united into the United Front, and had high hopes of victory, and with the unified support the South African business community and economic elite, they outspent the National party by nearly 4-1. Nevertheless, when the votes were counted the pattern of 1948 was repeated, only to an even greater extent than in 1948. In Cape Town the United Front won 73%; in Cape Elizabeth 65%. But in the rest of Cape Province, the National Party won 57% of the vote, and 29 out of 33 seats. The pattern was repeated nationwide. By 1958, the Opposition had all but given up serious hope of winning despite the fact that the results indicated that they still held the support of a majority of the electorate.
Following 1958, turnout began to drop rapidly as English voters and moderate Afrikaners increasingly made their peace with a National Party that looked unbeatable, while Liberals looked to emigration in preference to a futile political fight. Ironically therefore, the National Party’s dominance of the electoral system likely did as much to undermine Apartheid as sanctions.
The greatest threat to the system was always naked demographics, and by giving no option to young whites for political change, it drove many of South Africa’s best and brightest towards emigration. By the 1970s it was not just English speakers who were leaving the country, but also young Afrikaners who wanted an opportunity to escape an Afrikaans-only educational system that the National party seemed determined to force them into.
By the end of the 1970s, the white population was actually falling by nearly 20,000 a year, a pace that would more than double by the beginnings of the 1980s. While the electoral system may have made it increasingly difficult for South Africans to oust the National government with their votes, it in many cases led them to vote against its system of Apartheid with their feet.
---
This article was authored by research assistant Dan Berman. Please send comments or suggestions to sexton538@gmail.com
5.21.2010
Gingrich Sounds Amped to Run
@ 4:21 PM
On Monday, I interviewed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich by phone as he was walking around Manhattan between scheduled events. As agreed upon in advance with his publicist, half of our 20 minutes would be dedicated to general questions regarding the current political and electoral situation, including his potential 2012 candidacy, and the other half would be a discussion of his new book, To Save America. Below is the transcript of the first half.
As regular 538 readers know, I'm bullish on the former Speaker's chances to win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, and think he could be formidable in the general election if nominated. I won't repeat my reasons here, but I will return to this question of his potential 2012 candidacy after the end of the second part of this two-part interview, which will be published this coming Monday.
Fivethirtyeight.com: As early as right after Obama’s election you sort of hinted to Sean Hannity that would very much consider running for president in 2012. So I guess I would ask you to give us a status update on where your thinking is about a candidacy for the presidency.
Newt Gingrich: Calista and I will make a global decision probably in February or March. We are methodically trying to think through what we’re going to do. We run four small companies and we have a lot of other activities. So we’re taking steps so that if we do decide to run everything will be in order.
And I have to say that the failure of the Obama Administration in practical, real terms—jobs, terrorism and other issues—and the radicalism of the Obama Administration, I think make both me and Calista more inclined to say, “Yea, looking at it in the context of what is our duty as citizens, how do we live that out?”
538: Let’s assume you did run, for the sake of argument. Because you have to keep a platform in simple terms these days, what might be your three or four talking points if you run?
NG: This actually fits very directly into why I wrote To Save America, because I think the three key questions we have to discuss in the next three years are: What kind of people are we, what do we have to do to compete with China and India successfully, and what threatens us and what do we have to do to be safe? And I think those three things are the core, big decision points that America’s faced with that we all have to have the courage to talk though.
These two elections—2010 and 2012—are different from any elections in modern election history. This is much more like 1800 or 1828 or 1860 or 1932 in that it is a moment of fundamentally redefining America. And we clearly have a very left-wing, secular-socialist machine trying to create an America fundamentally different than anything which we have historically been as a country.
And I think the real referendum of 2010 and 2012 is, Is that really where you want to go and do you really think it will work? And I think on both of those test questions this administration is going to lose badly.
538: Conversely, let’s assume you decide not to run or you run but fail to win the nomination. Is there a particular candidate among the commonly expected field of contenders—and I’d love you to name only one, but if you have to identify two or three—who you…[Gingrich could see where I was going and cut me off here]
NG: I have many friends who have been very successful as governors, for example, whether it’s Tim Pawlenty or Haley Barbour or Bobby Jindal or Mitch Daniel or Rick Perry. At the same time I think the most interesting governor in America today is Chris Christie. What he’s doing in New Jersey is just historic.
And then there are other folks I admire a great deal. John Thune, who I worked with both in the House and in his role as a senator, I think is a very attractive person. So I think there are a number of folks out there who are going to offer new ideas and new approaches. And frankly, if John Kasich wins and if Meg [Whitman] wins in California, I think you could easily see people of that caliber; when you’re governor of Ohio or California, you suddenly become a potential candidate also. So I think we’ll have a number of smart and very capable people.
And part of the reason I wrote To Save America was to begin to outline a fundamental argument. Two-thirds of the book is a series of proposed solutions so that we both have an ability to distinguish ourselves from the Left and we have an ability to say to the country, “Here’s what we would do that would be right, not just what they’re doing that’s wrong.”
538: It’s interesting you mention that because the GOP has lost the national popular vote in four of past five presidential elections, and in 2004 Bush won by about 2.5 points. You talk about your hero Ronald Reagan, and even George H.W. Bush, they put pretty good numbers in the Eighties. What’s it going to take for Republicans to win a national election in a way they really haven’t been able to do now for almost 20 years?
NG: Well, a couple things. And I say this having been very active in the 1980, 1984 and 1988 [presidential] campaigns, and then of course in 1994 with the Contract With America. I believe, first of all, you have to pick large issues that create a clear choice so people see that there’s a real difference. This is what Reagan meant in February of 1975 at CPAC when he said we need to have bold colors, not pale pastels. And I think this is very, very important at a time when the media is largely on the Left you have to be consciously aware of the danger that they're always going to be trying to distort whatever you’re doing. So we need very big choices.
Second, I think you have to have somebody who’s articulate and coherent who’s capable of waging an education campaign. You start off in any kind of debate in a country dominated by a left-wing media, you always start out with the Left trying to define the issue against you and then you have to work your way back to what the real issue is. And I think the more articulate, and the clearer and more certain our candidate is the better off we’re going to be in terms of winning in 2012.
Third, you have to be prepared to take the argument everywhere. You cannot write off anywhere. I think it’s very significant that Chris Christine did better in urban areas in New Jersey than any Republican in a generation--carried counties no Republican has carried in a generation. I think it’s very significant that Bob McDonnell had over 40 meetings with Asian Americans, and over 100 meetings with Hispanic Americans, and ran a statewide ad about an African American entrepreneur. He ran a campaign that reached out to everybody—on very conservative principles, but nonetheless reached out to everybody and the end result was that he got 59 percent of the vote, the most by any Republican candidate for governor in Virginia history.
So, I'm an optimist that with the right approach and the right enthusiasm and the right dedication, we can be competitive almost anywhere.
538: OK, let’s turn the 2010 midterms. Nobody on the planet knows more about how to construct a winning Republican congressional message and majority than you. I would like to ask you to compare the political environment right now with how you recall it with six months leading up to 1994 cycle, and things about it are similar and what things are different?
NG: Well I think the Republicans are not as strong today as they were in 1994 because we had the legacy of Reagan still. And I think people just generally thought that we were in better shape than they are right now.
On the other hand, the Democrats are in dramatically worse shape right now. This is the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. The president, to my surprise the other day, tried to make the case that going from 9.7 to 9.9 percent unemployment was actually good, that that was positive news. I don’t know how good an orator he thinks he is, but I don’t think you can talk your way into that one for most Americans.
And so, from my perspective I think that they're going to be going into an election where people are paying attention because the economy is so bad, where they’re going to get very bad marks for having run up a huge decifit, and where the average American is paying attention because of the economy. And what they’re seeing out there is a very radical administration that they don’t like. And I think it's that combination that is so dangerous for the Democrats.
I go all over the country making speeches and I am just amazed at the degree of agreement that we're getting almost everywhere that these guys are not acceptable, and that they are literally not representing the kind of future for America that we want.
538: Hey, there's a new poll out this week that indicates that maybe the Republican momentum the last six months has tailed off a little bit, that maybe the Democrats are coming back a little bit. Is it possible the Republicans, say around the time of the Scott Brown victory, peaked a little too early this cycle?
NG: I don't think you can cleverly calculate things like this. History is bigger than you are. Politics and governing are much more like sailing than they are like operating a powerboat. You're at the whim of tides and of winds and of things that are so much bigger than you. You've got to take advantage every morning as best you can.
I personally don't believe there's any great bounce back for Democrats right now. I haven't seen anything that indicates that they're doing dramatically better. I think that, if anything, they temporary lull in the economic problems because we borrowed and spent well over a trillion dollars in a very short time and when you do that you're bound to have some side effects. But I think it's also clear to most Americans that that's not sustainable.
We'll have a little better sense of this tomorrow after we see what happens in Pennsylvania and Satruday in Hawai'i. But if we in fact pick up both of those seats, I think it will be pretty hard to make the case that Democrats are having a good year.
538: I want to ask you a couple questions about the Republican Party and the conservative base in the wake of Obama's victory in 2008. You took a lot of criticism for not coming out immediately for [US House NY23 conservative candidate] Doug Hoffman. Do you regret that decision, Looking back, do you regret not backing him?
NG: I don’t care about how it affected me. Look, I've been around a long time. I have a deep, passionate commitment to party building, and as a general rule I try to endorse and support the local nominee. What I was told at the time was that [Republican nominee Dede] Scozzafava had won the support of the local parties and that she was their choice. And therefore I did what I've done since 1960, when I was a volunteer in high school for the Nixon-Lodge campaign, and that was a pattern that helped build the George Republican Party and helped build a national majority.
It turns out that I was being misinformed. She was much more radical. Once you got into her record it was clear she was much too radical. She was the one candidate that Mike Long and the conservatives said they would not support. And the national movement came together in a very decisive way and defeated her. I promptly did everything I could to help Doug Hoffman, and I think Doug would tell you that I've been helpful to him right through the last weekend of the campaign, and I've been helpful to him since then.
Everywhere I go with American Solutions we meet with tea party leaders. And I think there's a general understanding of what happened and how and why. And I think if you've been active as long as I have, and you're willing to be as aggressive and risk-taking I have, you're going to have a bad day occasionally.
538: Speaking of tea partiers, do you think they're for the Republican Party. I assume so, but are there any potential complications that movement causes?
NG: I think the tea party movement is good for America. The tea party movement is creating an arena for an entire new generation of activists who would never have become active Republicans and who are motivated by citizenship and by a genuine, deep desire to do something postiive.
Everywhere we go with American Solutions through our town hall meetings we spend time with tea party leaders. We had 55 Louisiana tea party leaders at a meeting in New Orleans, to give you an example. My experience is that they are remarkably serious and sincere people. They are thoughtful. Many of them are studying the Constitution and taking very seriously what's happening to their country.
I also believe that in 2012, unless the Republicans do something really foolish, that the tea party people will be in the fight in a coalition to beat Obama. The real test for Republicans will be if we win in 2012 and fail to deliver. I think at that point you'd see some movement toward a third party. But I believe in 2012 virtually everybody who does not want a secular-socialist future is going to be unified behind beating Obama.
NOTE: At this point I asked Gingrich what "something foolish" might be, but the Speaker had to put me on hold a few minutes to take a call from one of his daughters. When he came back I asked the question again and he answered it, but foolishly I forgot for a minute or so to turn my tape recorder back on. From my notes I can safely report that he said he was talking about the party nominating somebody "totally unacceptable" to the tea partiers or the conservative base. I asked him if he had any particular candidates in mind that met that definition, but he said he did not or at least did not name anyone. I used the moment to ask him about two potential presidential candidates he failed to mention in the long parade of possible GOP contenders he listed earlier in the interview: Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.
Recollecting from my typed notes and memory as best I can, Gingrich said he was supportive of Palin's selection as vice presidential running mate in 2008 and recommended to the McCain campaign that they select her. He said some nice things about Paul but noted that his support tends to top out "around 8 or 9 percent." I do not want to imply to readers, and do not infer from Gingrich's tone or words, that he is less enamored with the idea of Palin or Paul as the 2012 nominee, or at least compared to the other names he mentioned. It may very well be that in the earlier answer he simply forgot to discuss them, but leave it to the readers to make what they wish of that omission.
As regular 538 readers know, I'm bullish on the former Speaker's chances to win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, and think he could be formidable in the general election if nominated. I won't repeat my reasons here, but I will return to this question of his potential 2012 candidacy after the end of the second part of this two-part interview, which will be published this coming Monday.
Fivethirtyeight.com: As early as right after Obama’s election you sort of hinted to Sean Hannity that would very much consider running for president in 2012. So I guess I would ask you to give us a status update on where your thinking is about a candidacy for the presidency.
Newt Gingrich: Calista and I will make a global decision probably in February or March. We are methodically trying to think through what we’re going to do. We run four small companies and we have a lot of other activities. So we’re taking steps so that if we do decide to run everything will be in order.
And I have to say that the failure of the Obama Administration in practical, real terms—jobs, terrorism and other issues—and the radicalism of the Obama Administration, I think make both me and Calista more inclined to say, “Yea, looking at it in the context of what is our duty as citizens, how do we live that out?”
538: Let’s assume you did run, for the sake of argument. Because you have to keep a platform in simple terms these days, what might be your three or four talking points if you run?
NG: This actually fits very directly into why I wrote To Save America, because I think the three key questions we have to discuss in the next three years are: What kind of people are we, what do we have to do to compete with China and India successfully, and what threatens us and what do we have to do to be safe? And I think those three things are the core, big decision points that America’s faced with that we all have to have the courage to talk though.
These two elections—2010 and 2012—are different from any elections in modern election history. This is much more like 1800 or 1828 or 1860 or 1932 in that it is a moment of fundamentally redefining America. And we clearly have a very left-wing, secular-socialist machine trying to create an America fundamentally different than anything which we have historically been as a country.
And I think the real referendum of 2010 and 2012 is, Is that really where you want to go and do you really think it will work? And I think on both of those test questions this administration is going to lose badly.
538: Conversely, let’s assume you decide not to run or you run but fail to win the nomination. Is there a particular candidate among the commonly expected field of contenders—and I’d love you to name only one, but if you have to identify two or three—who you…[Gingrich could see where I was going and cut me off here]
NG: I have many friends who have been very successful as governors, for example, whether it’s Tim Pawlenty or Haley Barbour or Bobby Jindal or Mitch Daniel or Rick Perry. At the same time I think the most interesting governor in America today is Chris Christie. What he’s doing in New Jersey is just historic.
And then there are other folks I admire a great deal. John Thune, who I worked with both in the House and in his role as a senator, I think is a very attractive person. So I think there are a number of folks out there who are going to offer new ideas and new approaches. And frankly, if John Kasich wins and if Meg [Whitman] wins in California, I think you could easily see people of that caliber; when you’re governor of Ohio or California, you suddenly become a potential candidate also. So I think we’ll have a number of smart and very capable people.
And part of the reason I wrote To Save America was to begin to outline a fundamental argument. Two-thirds of the book is a series of proposed solutions so that we both have an ability to distinguish ourselves from the Left and we have an ability to say to the country, “Here’s what we would do that would be right, not just what they’re doing that’s wrong.”
538: It’s interesting you mention that because the GOP has lost the national popular vote in four of past five presidential elections, and in 2004 Bush won by about 2.5 points. You talk about your hero Ronald Reagan, and even George H.W. Bush, they put pretty good numbers in the Eighties. What’s it going to take for Republicans to win a national election in a way they really haven’t been able to do now for almost 20 years?
NG: Well, a couple things. And I say this having been very active in the 1980, 1984 and 1988 [presidential] campaigns, and then of course in 1994 with the Contract With America. I believe, first of all, you have to pick large issues that create a clear choice so people see that there’s a real difference. This is what Reagan meant in February of 1975 at CPAC when he said we need to have bold colors, not pale pastels. And I think this is very, very important at a time when the media is largely on the Left you have to be consciously aware of the danger that they're always going to be trying to distort whatever you’re doing. So we need very big choices.
Second, I think you have to have somebody who’s articulate and coherent who’s capable of waging an education campaign. You start off in any kind of debate in a country dominated by a left-wing media, you always start out with the Left trying to define the issue against you and then you have to work your way back to what the real issue is. And I think the more articulate, and the clearer and more certain our candidate is the better off we’re going to be in terms of winning in 2012.
Third, you have to be prepared to take the argument everywhere. You cannot write off anywhere. I think it’s very significant that Chris Christine did better in urban areas in New Jersey than any Republican in a generation--carried counties no Republican has carried in a generation. I think it’s very significant that Bob McDonnell had over 40 meetings with Asian Americans, and over 100 meetings with Hispanic Americans, and ran a statewide ad about an African American entrepreneur. He ran a campaign that reached out to everybody—on very conservative principles, but nonetheless reached out to everybody and the end result was that he got 59 percent of the vote, the most by any Republican candidate for governor in Virginia history.
So, I'm an optimist that with the right approach and the right enthusiasm and the right dedication, we can be competitive almost anywhere.
538: OK, let’s turn the 2010 midterms. Nobody on the planet knows more about how to construct a winning Republican congressional message and majority than you. I would like to ask you to compare the political environment right now with how you recall it with six months leading up to 1994 cycle, and things about it are similar and what things are different?
NG: Well I think the Republicans are not as strong today as they were in 1994 because we had the legacy of Reagan still. And I think people just generally thought that we were in better shape than they are right now.
On the other hand, the Democrats are in dramatically worse shape right now. This is the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. The president, to my surprise the other day, tried to make the case that going from 9.7 to 9.9 percent unemployment was actually good, that that was positive news. I don’t know how good an orator he thinks he is, but I don’t think you can talk your way into that one for most Americans.
And so, from my perspective I think that they're going to be going into an election where people are paying attention because the economy is so bad, where they’re going to get very bad marks for having run up a huge decifit, and where the average American is paying attention because of the economy. And what they’re seeing out there is a very radical administration that they don’t like. And I think it's that combination that is so dangerous for the Democrats.
I go all over the country making speeches and I am just amazed at the degree of agreement that we're getting almost everywhere that these guys are not acceptable, and that they are literally not representing the kind of future for America that we want.
538: Hey, there's a new poll out this week that indicates that maybe the Republican momentum the last six months has tailed off a little bit, that maybe the Democrats are coming back a little bit. Is it possible the Republicans, say around the time of the Scott Brown victory, peaked a little too early this cycle?
NG: I don't think you can cleverly calculate things like this. History is bigger than you are. Politics and governing are much more like sailing than they are like operating a powerboat. You're at the whim of tides and of winds and of things that are so much bigger than you. You've got to take advantage every morning as best you can.
I personally don't believe there's any great bounce back for Democrats right now. I haven't seen anything that indicates that they're doing dramatically better. I think that, if anything, they temporary lull in the economic problems because we borrowed and spent well over a trillion dollars in a very short time and when you do that you're bound to have some side effects. But I think it's also clear to most Americans that that's not sustainable.
We'll have a little better sense of this tomorrow after we see what happens in Pennsylvania and Satruday in Hawai'i. But if we in fact pick up both of those seats, I think it will be pretty hard to make the case that Democrats are having a good year.
538: I want to ask you a couple questions about the Republican Party and the conservative base in the wake of Obama's victory in 2008. You took a lot of criticism for not coming out immediately for [US House NY23 conservative candidate] Doug Hoffman. Do you regret that decision, Looking back, do you regret not backing him?
NG: I don’t care about how it affected me. Look, I've been around a long time. I have a deep, passionate commitment to party building, and as a general rule I try to endorse and support the local nominee. What I was told at the time was that [Republican nominee Dede] Scozzafava had won the support of the local parties and that she was their choice. And therefore I did what I've done since 1960, when I was a volunteer in high school for the Nixon-Lodge campaign, and that was a pattern that helped build the George Republican Party and helped build a national majority.
It turns out that I was being misinformed. She was much more radical. Once you got into her record it was clear she was much too radical. She was the one candidate that Mike Long and the conservatives said they would not support. And the national movement came together in a very decisive way and defeated her. I promptly did everything I could to help Doug Hoffman, and I think Doug would tell you that I've been helpful to him right through the last weekend of the campaign, and I've been helpful to him since then.
Everywhere I go with American Solutions we meet with tea party leaders. And I think there's a general understanding of what happened and how and why. And I think if you've been active as long as I have, and you're willing to be as aggressive and risk-taking I have, you're going to have a bad day occasionally.
538: Speaking of tea partiers, do you think they're for the Republican Party. I assume so, but are there any potential complications that movement causes?
NG: I think the tea party movement is good for America. The tea party movement is creating an arena for an entire new generation of activists who would never have become active Republicans and who are motivated by citizenship and by a genuine, deep desire to do something postiive.
Everywhere we go with American Solutions through our town hall meetings we spend time with tea party leaders. We had 55 Louisiana tea party leaders at a meeting in New Orleans, to give you an example. My experience is that they are remarkably serious and sincere people. They are thoughtful. Many of them are studying the Constitution and taking very seriously what's happening to their country.
I also believe that in 2012, unless the Republicans do something really foolish, that the tea party people will be in the fight in a coalition to beat Obama. The real test for Republicans will be if we win in 2012 and fail to deliver. I think at that point you'd see some movement toward a third party. But I believe in 2012 virtually everybody who does not want a secular-socialist future is going to be unified behind beating Obama.
NOTE: At this point I asked Gingrich what "something foolish" might be, but the Speaker had to put me on hold a few minutes to take a call from one of his daughters. When he came back I asked the question again and he answered it, but foolishly I forgot for a minute or so to turn my tape recorder back on. From my notes I can safely report that he said he was talking about the party nominating somebody "totally unacceptable" to the tea partiers or the conservative base. I asked him if he had any particular candidates in mind that met that definition, but he said he did not or at least did not name anyone. I used the moment to ask him about two potential presidential candidates he failed to mention in the long parade of possible GOP contenders he listed earlier in the interview: Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.
Recollecting from my typed notes and memory as best I can, Gingrich said he was supportive of Palin's selection as vice presidential running mate in 2008 and recommended to the McCain campaign that they select her. He said some nice things about Paul but noted that his support tends to top out "around 8 or 9 percent." I do not want to imply to readers, and do not infer from Gingrich's tone or words, that he is less enamored with the idea of Palin or Paul as the 2012 nominee, or at least compared to the other names he mentioned. It may very well be that in the earlier answer he simply forgot to discuss them, but leave it to the readers to make what they wish of that omission.
5.20.2010
In the Shadow of Meg & Steve & Jerry: Update on the California Senate Race
@ 5:05 PM
My earlier post today on the new PPIC poll of the California governor's race didn't get into the survey's other major findings of national import, on the U.S. Senate race. And that's no accident. The vast cost and controversy associated with the Whitman/Poizner battle--not to mention the struggle that the winner will have with Jerry Brown in the general election--have largely overshadowed a Senate campaign that has Republicans hoping they can pull off an unlikely win over Barbara Boxer in a very blue state. But it's a big race in its own right, and the new PPIC poll shows the GOP primary tightening up into a potential three-way barnburner.
Boxer has certainly looked uncharacteristically vulnerable this year, with job approval ratings in the 40s in most recent polls. And she's also struggled in head-to-head match-ups with Republican candidates Tom Campbell and Carly Fiorina, being statistically tied with both in March polls from PPIC and Field. Democrats have been particularly worried about Campbell, one of those rare Republican politicians who is both pro-choice and pro-gay-marriage.
Campbell has also led most of the primary polls, with Fiorina running a close second and DeVore--a self-styled hard-core conservative whose been endorsed by Jim DeMint, Tea Party Express, and RedState's Erick Erickson--well back in third.
But now PPIC shows Fiorina slightly ahead of Campbell--25-23--with DeVore doubling his support from the last PPIC poll and closing in on the front-runners with 16%. The timing of this trend, if it's accurate, is crucial: Mail-in voting began in California this Monday, and roughly half the primary vote, or even more, could be cast by mail. Moreover, Campbell seems to be struggling financially. Last weekend he announced a major cutback in TV advertising for the rest of the campaign, arguing that the Whitman-Poizner buyout of ad time made Senate ads futile anyway. This mean Fiorina will have the airwaves to herself in the Senate race. Although her self-funding is puny by Whitman-Poizner standards, she has loaned her campaign $3.6 million.
So it appears the former H-P exec is fighting something of a two-front war, seeking to pass Campbell and hold off DeVore. On the latter front, she's benefitted from recent endorsements by right-to-life groups and by Sarah Palin.
Meanwhile, however, PPIC shows Boxer regaining the lead over all her GOP rivals; she leads Campbell 46-40, Fiorina 48-39, and DeVore 50-39. The poll also gave Boxer her highest approval rating--50%--in any survey this year.
All in all, it looks like a close if overshadowed primary that any of the three candidates could win, and a tough slog to November for both nominees.
One interesting sidenote that could be significant: of the the major candidates for Senate or Governor this year, DeVore is the only one from Southern California. (Technically, Campbell recently moved to Orange County to teach at Chapman University, but he represented Silicon Valley in Congress).
Boxer has certainly looked uncharacteristically vulnerable this year, with job approval ratings in the 40s in most recent polls. And she's also struggled in head-to-head match-ups with Republican candidates Tom Campbell and Carly Fiorina, being statistically tied with both in March polls from PPIC and Field. Democrats have been particularly worried about Campbell, one of those rare Republican politicians who is both pro-choice and pro-gay-marriage.
Campbell has also led most of the primary polls, with Fiorina running a close second and DeVore--a self-styled hard-core conservative whose been endorsed by Jim DeMint, Tea Party Express, and RedState's Erick Erickson--well back in third.
But now PPIC shows Fiorina slightly ahead of Campbell--25-23--with DeVore doubling his support from the last PPIC poll and closing in on the front-runners with 16%. The timing of this trend, if it's accurate, is crucial: Mail-in voting began in California this Monday, and roughly half the primary vote, or even more, could be cast by mail. Moreover, Campbell seems to be struggling financially. Last weekend he announced a major cutback in TV advertising for the rest of the campaign, arguing that the Whitman-Poizner buyout of ad time made Senate ads futile anyway. This mean Fiorina will have the airwaves to herself in the Senate race. Although her self-funding is puny by Whitman-Poizner standards, she has loaned her campaign $3.6 million.
So it appears the former H-P exec is fighting something of a two-front war, seeking to pass Campbell and hold off DeVore. On the latter front, she's benefitted from recent endorsements by right-to-life groups and by Sarah Palin.
Meanwhile, however, PPIC shows Boxer regaining the lead over all her GOP rivals; she leads Campbell 46-40, Fiorina 48-39, and DeVore 50-39. The poll also gave Boxer her highest approval rating--50%--in any survey this year.
All in all, it looks like a close if overshadowed primary that any of the three candidates could win, and a tough slog to November for both nominees.
One interesting sidenote that could be significant: of the the major candidates for Senate or Governor this year, DeVore is the only one from Southern California. (Technically, Campbell recently moved to Orange County to teach at Chapman University, but he represented Silicon Valley in Congress).
Homework Assignment
@ 2:17 PM
I almost never post "naked" links without some value-add, but go read Mark Blumenthal's critique of the DFA / Reserach 2000 poll in Arkansas.
I don't know whether they were trying to produce a biased poll or just didn't know any better. But my guess is the former, because someone who knew how not to produce a biased poll would be more subtle than this if they were.
I don't know whether they were trying to produce a biased poll or just didn't know any better. But my guess is the former, because someone who knew how not to produce a biased poll would be more subtle than this if they were.
Paulapollooza
@ 12:23 PM
I don't quite know what to make of the new Rasmussen poll showing Rand Paul 25 (!) points ahead of fellow primary winner Jack Conway in Kentucky.
Paul has had a bad 24 hours in the Beltway media environment. Do I think that has any relevance whatsoever for Kentucky, a state which is culturally about as far removed from the Beltway as you can get? No, not really; it may even be a contrarian indicator. Nor is it unusual to see candidates get bounces after primary victories, although they often prove to be fleeting.
But. Rasmussen had shown a particularly large house effect in this race. Whereas the Pollster.com trendline of all non-Rasmussen polls had shown Paul ahead by just 1 point, Rasmussen's trendline had him up by 15, even prior to this poll being released.
There are two reasons why this might be the case. First, Rasmussen relies pretty heavily on weighting by party identification. It's a necessary evil if you poll like Rasmussen does, which means flash polls that are literally in the field for just 3-4 hours over the course of a single evening, with no callbacks, no cellphones, and no respondent selection. That probably works fine in many states, where party identification does a reliable job of predicting the vote. But it might not work so well in Kentucky, where you have a lot of registered Democrats who often vote Republican in federal elections. If you're getting a non-representative sample of Democrats in your poll for any reason, you could get pretty tripped up.
Second, one of the candidates in this race, Rand Paul, generates unusual enthusiasm from certain types of voters, and it may be that these are the sorts of voters who are more inclined to answer a pollster's phone calls. We've discussed before how Rasmussen's polling seems to be especially favorable to tea-party-type candidates. The makeup of the Tea Party is somewhat amorphous and therefore it may be hard to correct for self-selection bias by means of ordinary demographic weighting.
Finally, if either or both of these problems are impacting Rasmussen's polling in the state, they're liable to be compounded in a poll conducted less than 24 hours after a primary that received an incredible amount of national media attention. If the Rand Paul people are somewhat more fired up (i.e. self-selecting) than usual on a normal day, they're going to have been really fired up yesterday.
We've criticized Rasmussen quite a bit this year. To be fair to those guys, they poll so dang often that they necessarily make for a convenient target; release 20 polls a week, and you're necessarily going to have one or two outliers.
At the same time, there are things that Rasmussen could do to quell the criticism from here and other quarters. For one thing, they could engage in a more earnest dialog about their methodology. For instance, they've said that their use of a likely voter model is the reason for their house effect, but a more careful examination reveals that it doesn't suffice to explain the discrepancy.
And, as Markos Moulitsas pointed out yesterday, Rasmussen has engaged in a strange disappearing act this year when it was actually time to put their necks on the line and poll races close to election day. Last week, they gave us polls on thrilling contests such as the Kansas gubernatorial race and the Idaho senate race, and revealed to us that 51 percent of Americans think that the United States is the "last, best hope for mankind". But the only poll we got of an actual, flesh-and-blood election was in Pennsylvania, and it was nearly two weeks out of date by the time that Tuesday came around. They ignored the primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky. They also ignored the special election in PA-12, although they've never done much polling of individual Congressional Districts before, probably because there's no reliable way to establish party weighting targets when you go that micro.
None of which tells us anything about Kentucky per se. But it's always good to get a second (and ideally at least a third) opinion about a race before coming to any conclusion about it. That's probably more true when Rasmussen is the first man in than with most other pollsters.
Paul has had a bad 24 hours in the Beltway media environment. Do I think that has any relevance whatsoever for Kentucky, a state which is culturally about as far removed from the Beltway as you can get? No, not really; it may even be a contrarian indicator. Nor is it unusual to see candidates get bounces after primary victories, although they often prove to be fleeting.
But. Rasmussen had shown a particularly large house effect in this race. Whereas the Pollster.com trendline of all non-Rasmussen polls had shown Paul ahead by just 1 point, Rasmussen's trendline had him up by 15, even prior to this poll being released.
There are two reasons why this might be the case. First, Rasmussen relies pretty heavily on weighting by party identification. It's a necessary evil if you poll like Rasmussen does, which means flash polls that are literally in the field for just 3-4 hours over the course of a single evening, with no callbacks, no cellphones, and no respondent selection. That probably works fine in many states, where party identification does a reliable job of predicting the vote. But it might not work so well in Kentucky, where you have a lot of registered Democrats who often vote Republican in federal elections. If you're getting a non-representative sample of Democrats in your poll for any reason, you could get pretty tripped up.
Second, one of the candidates in this race, Rand Paul, generates unusual enthusiasm from certain types of voters, and it may be that these are the sorts of voters who are more inclined to answer a pollster's phone calls. We've discussed before how Rasmussen's polling seems to be especially favorable to tea-party-type candidates. The makeup of the Tea Party is somewhat amorphous and therefore it may be hard to correct for self-selection bias by means of ordinary demographic weighting.
Finally, if either or both of these problems are impacting Rasmussen's polling in the state, they're liable to be compounded in a poll conducted less than 24 hours after a primary that received an incredible amount of national media attention. If the Rand Paul people are somewhat more fired up (i.e. self-selecting) than usual on a normal day, they're going to have been really fired up yesterday.
We've criticized Rasmussen quite a bit this year. To be fair to those guys, they poll so dang often that they necessarily make for a convenient target; release 20 polls a week, and you're necessarily going to have one or two outliers.
At the same time, there are things that Rasmussen could do to quell the criticism from here and other quarters. For one thing, they could engage in a more earnest dialog about their methodology. For instance, they've said that their use of a likely voter model is the reason for their house effect, but a more careful examination reveals that it doesn't suffice to explain the discrepancy.
And, as Markos Moulitsas pointed out yesterday, Rasmussen has engaged in a strange disappearing act this year when it was actually time to put their necks on the line and poll races close to election day. Last week, they gave us polls on thrilling contests such as the Kansas gubernatorial race and the Idaho senate race, and revealed to us that 51 percent of Americans think that the United States is the "last, best hope for mankind". But the only poll we got of an actual, flesh-and-blood election was in Pennsylvania, and it was nearly two weeks out of date by the time that Tuesday came around. They ignored the primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky. They also ignored the special election in PA-12, although they've never done much polling of individual Congressional Districts before, probably because there's no reliable way to establish party weighting targets when you go that micro.
None of which tells us anything about Kentucky per se. But it's always good to get a second (and ideally at least a third) opinion about a race before coming to any conclusion about it. That's probably more true when Rasmussen is the first man in than with most other pollsters.
The Whitman-Poizner Slugfest Gets Serious
@ 10:16 AM
When a SUSA poll came out earlier this month showing that California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman had suddenly lost nearly all of a once-enormous lead over Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, it was a bit hard to believe. But now the respected Public Policy Institute of California has released a new survey confirming a Poizner surge, and it looks like the increasingly negative and incredibly expensive slugfest between the two has become a real contest.
The title of PPIC's press release says it all: "Stunning Drop in Whitman's Support Transforms GOP Race For Governor." The last PPIC poll in March had eMeg leading Poizner by a 61-11 margin, and she appeared to be in the process of burying him once and for all in an avalanche of attack ads. Now her lead is down to nine points, at 38-29, and perhaps reflecting the highly negative tone of the contest, the undecided vote has gone up from 25% in March to 31% now.
What's happened to Whitman's lead? Well, for one thing, Poizner, who's tried to position himself as the "true conservative" in the race, has been fighting back with his own very deep-pocketed ad campaign (total spending so far: Whitman, $68 million, Poizner $24 million. Yikes!). And he seems to have struck paydirt with attacks on Whitman's highly lucrative association with Goldman Sachs (she made many millions while on the firm's board through a controversial procedure called "spinning" that smacks of insider trading). Indeed, the California Democratic Party chipped in with its own ad savaging Whitman on this score.
In addition, Poizner's taken advantage of the spotlight on immigration created by the Arizona furor, and has been pounding Whitman for refusing to endorse the Arizona law (all three GOP candidates in the U.S. Senate race have joined Poizner in supporting Arizona's action). Most recently, he's run an effective ad blasting the former eBay CEO for failing to vote for 28 years. It's all adding up. And Whitman's own most recent ad, a very defensive number that dwells heavily on her determination to fight illegal immigration and her dislike of Barbara Boxer, seems to show that Poizner has drawn blood.
You probably have to live in California to understand just how massive a presence the Whitman-Poizner battle has assumed on the airwaves, and how negative and personal it's become, with both candidates hurling attacks and rather hilariously calling each other "liberal." As veteran Democratic operative Bill Carrick recently joked at the political news site Calbuzz: “I’ve had the alarming revelation that we have two dangerous left-wingers running in the Republican primary for governor.... I can barely sleep at night.”
Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Jerry Brown is waiting in the wings and raising money. And in every recent poll, he's moved ahead of both Republican candidates in general election trial heats. PPIC shows him leading Whitman 42-37 (and Poizner 45-32), after trailing her 39-44 in its March survey. It's unclear whether the recent GOP preoccupation with immigration is having an impact on the Latino vote, though everyone remembers the fallout that afflicted California Republicans the last time this issue dominated their message (in 1994, when Pete Wilson campaigned on Proposition 187, winning the battle but losing the war). Whitman is definitely walking a tightrope on that issue, calling most recently for National Guard troops to patrol the border (not exactly legal, but it sounds good), and running a radio ad in which her campaign chairman--yes, Pete Wilson himself--vouches for her toughness on immigration.
With less than three weeks to go before the June 8 primary, it's unclear whether Poizner can catch Whitman, whose pockets may be a bit deeper (she's pledged to spend as much as $150 million of her personal fortune to win the governorship). But the bigger question may be about the political condition of the ultimate nominee after this primary. And if it's Whitman, you do have to wonder if there's a point where over-exposure through months and months of saturation television ads (which she began during the Winter Olympics) begins to take a toll among weary viewers. When watching this campaign, it's hard to avoid thinking of Al Checchi, the 1998 Democratic gubernatorial candidate who broke every spending record on negative ads that eventually backfired. It's a scenario that Meg Whitman is in danger of repeating.
The title of PPIC's press release says it all: "Stunning Drop in Whitman's Support Transforms GOP Race For Governor." The last PPIC poll in March had eMeg leading Poizner by a 61-11 margin, and she appeared to be in the process of burying him once and for all in an avalanche of attack ads. Now her lead is down to nine points, at 38-29, and perhaps reflecting the highly negative tone of the contest, the undecided vote has gone up from 25% in March to 31% now.
What's happened to Whitman's lead? Well, for one thing, Poizner, who's tried to position himself as the "true conservative" in the race, has been fighting back with his own very deep-pocketed ad campaign (total spending so far: Whitman, $68 million, Poizner $24 million. Yikes!). And he seems to have struck paydirt with attacks on Whitman's highly lucrative association with Goldman Sachs (she made many millions while on the firm's board through a controversial procedure called "spinning" that smacks of insider trading). Indeed, the California Democratic Party chipped in with its own ad savaging Whitman on this score.
In addition, Poizner's taken advantage of the spotlight on immigration created by the Arizona furor, and has been pounding Whitman for refusing to endorse the Arizona law (all three GOP candidates in the U.S. Senate race have joined Poizner in supporting Arizona's action). Most recently, he's run an effective ad blasting the former eBay CEO for failing to vote for 28 years. It's all adding up. And Whitman's own most recent ad, a very defensive number that dwells heavily on her determination to fight illegal immigration and her dislike of Barbara Boxer, seems to show that Poizner has drawn blood.
You probably have to live in California to understand just how massive a presence the Whitman-Poizner battle has assumed on the airwaves, and how negative and personal it's become, with both candidates hurling attacks and rather hilariously calling each other "liberal." As veteran Democratic operative Bill Carrick recently joked at the political news site Calbuzz: “I’ve had the alarming revelation that we have two dangerous left-wingers running in the Republican primary for governor.... I can barely sleep at night.”
Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Jerry Brown is waiting in the wings and raising money. And in every recent poll, he's moved ahead of both Republican candidates in general election trial heats. PPIC shows him leading Whitman 42-37 (and Poizner 45-32), after trailing her 39-44 in its March survey. It's unclear whether the recent GOP preoccupation with immigration is having an impact on the Latino vote, though everyone remembers the fallout that afflicted California Republicans the last time this issue dominated their message (in 1994, when Pete Wilson campaigned on Proposition 187, winning the battle but losing the war). Whitman is definitely walking a tightrope on that issue, calling most recently for National Guard troops to patrol the border (not exactly legal, but it sounds good), and running a radio ad in which her campaign chairman--yes, Pete Wilson himself--vouches for her toughness on immigration.
With less than three weeks to go before the June 8 primary, it's unclear whether Poizner can catch Whitman, whose pockets may be a bit deeper (she's pledged to spend as much as $150 million of her personal fortune to win the governorship). But the bigger question may be about the political condition of the ultimate nominee after this primary. And if it's Whitman, you do have to wonder if there's a point where over-exposure through months and months of saturation television ads (which she began during the Winter Olympics) begins to take a toll among weary viewers. When watching this campaign, it's hard to avoid thinking of Al Checchi, the 1998 Democratic gubernatorial candidate who broke every spending record on negative ads that eventually backfired. It's a scenario that Meg Whitman is in danger of repeating.
5.19.2010
Soft Landing for Blumenthal?
@ 7:00 PM
When a report surfaced on Monday night that Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's Attorney General and the Democrats' presumed nominee for the U.S. Senate race there, may have misled the public about his service in Vietnam, I (like many others) had a very unsympathetic reaction.* But there are two events that have come to light since Monday that create some additional ambiguity around Blumenthal's statements and probably lessen their political impact.
The first is the circulation of a longer-form version of the recording that the accompanied the New York Times' story. In the video, several minutes before referring to his service "in Vietnam", Blumenthal refers to his service "during the Vietnam Era". That would arguably support Blumenthal's assertion that he merely "misspoke", rather than deliberately exaggerated his record. (The long-form video, by the way, wasn't really "discovered" by anyone; it was hiding in plain sight on the website of GOP candidate Linda McMahon, where it had been since at least Monday.)
The second was the inexplicable decision by the McMahon campaign to brag about the story, saying that their multi-million dollar opposition research project had uncovered it, and that they'd tipped off the Times. I am not a media critic, and so am not going to comment on the journalistic ethics of this, other than to say that it would be anything but unusual for a newspaper to investigate a tip provided to them by a interested party, and the question ought not to be where the tip came from, but what the newspaper did with it. Rather, the implications are more political: they tend to frame the story more in terms of the usual banalities of negative campaigning, and less in terms of the underlying veracity of the accusation itself.
By no means is Blumenthal off the hook. The Times uncovered at least three additional examples (some first-hand and others second-hand) in which he appeared to have exaggerated his service record, and we can expect that there will be a "race" among local and national media to search for others. It's also clear (as the original Times story reported) that Blumenthal has spoken more properly about his service record on several other occasions; in general, his misrepresentations seem to come when he's speaking to veterans' groups, and his more qualified statements when speaking to broader audiences.
Nevertheless, the optics of the situation have improved for Blumenthal to the point that it's unclear whether he'll sacrifice the entirety of the 20-something point lead that he enjoyed previously. A Rasmussen poll today showed Blumenthal losing about 10 points against each of his GOP rivals, but Rasmussen (as has been typical for them this cycle) had the race significantly closer to begin with than have other pollsters. The poll also showed a significant rise in the number of voters who had a negative opinion of Linda McMahon. Although Rasmussen has shown McMahon closer to Blumenthal than rival GOPer (and Vietnam veteran) Rob Simmons, other polls have shown the opposite, and McMahon has both significantly less experience and significantly more baggage than he does.
For the time being, I would probably describe the race as somewhere between lean and likely Democrat, shading toward the former if Simmons is the nominee, and the latter if it's McMahon. But we're simply going to have to wait for more polling. Connecticut's nominating convention is on Friday, indeed, and the DSCC would be committing malpractice not to have polling out in the field themselves. As I described on Monday, it may be that Blumenthal is still a favorite in this race, but that any of several other prospective nominees would be safer.
___
* By no means do I claim to write without a personal viewpoint and this story, for reasons that aren't worth getting into, really struck my funny bone. But I'm gradually coming around more and more to the view that FiveThirtyEight, even as a "blog", ought to err on the side adopting a more strictly journalistic tone. The first couple of paragraphs of Monday's piece slanted more than they needed to toward opinion, especially for a story that was still developing.
The first is the circulation of a longer-form version of the recording that the accompanied the New York Times' story. In the video, several minutes before referring to his service "in Vietnam", Blumenthal refers to his service "during the Vietnam Era". That would arguably support Blumenthal's assertion that he merely "misspoke", rather than deliberately exaggerated his record. (The long-form video, by the way, wasn't really "discovered" by anyone; it was hiding in plain sight on the website of GOP candidate Linda McMahon, where it had been since at least Monday.)
The second was the inexplicable decision by the McMahon campaign to brag about the story, saying that their multi-million dollar opposition research project had uncovered it, and that they'd tipped off the Times. I am not a media critic, and so am not going to comment on the journalistic ethics of this, other than to say that it would be anything but unusual for a newspaper to investigate a tip provided to them by a interested party, and the question ought not to be where the tip came from, but what the newspaper did with it. Rather, the implications are more political: they tend to frame the story more in terms of the usual banalities of negative campaigning, and less in terms of the underlying veracity of the accusation itself.
By no means is Blumenthal off the hook. The Times uncovered at least three additional examples (some first-hand and others second-hand) in which he appeared to have exaggerated his service record, and we can expect that there will be a "race" among local and national media to search for others. It's also clear (as the original Times story reported) that Blumenthal has spoken more properly about his service record on several other occasions; in general, his misrepresentations seem to come when he's speaking to veterans' groups, and his more qualified statements when speaking to broader audiences.
Nevertheless, the optics of the situation have improved for Blumenthal to the point that it's unclear whether he'll sacrifice the entirety of the 20-something point lead that he enjoyed previously. A Rasmussen poll today showed Blumenthal losing about 10 points against each of his GOP rivals, but Rasmussen (as has been typical for them this cycle) had the race significantly closer to begin with than have other pollsters. The poll also showed a significant rise in the number of voters who had a negative opinion of Linda McMahon. Although Rasmussen has shown McMahon closer to Blumenthal than rival GOPer (and Vietnam veteran) Rob Simmons, other polls have shown the opposite, and McMahon has both significantly less experience and significantly more baggage than he does.
For the time being, I would probably describe the race as somewhere between lean and likely Democrat, shading toward the former if Simmons is the nominee, and the latter if it's McMahon. But we're simply going to have to wait for more polling. Connecticut's nominating convention is on Friday, indeed, and the DSCC would be committing malpractice not to have polling out in the field themselves. As I described on Monday, it may be that Blumenthal is still a favorite in this race, but that any of several other prospective nominees would be safer.
___
* By no means do I claim to write without a personal viewpoint and this story, for reasons that aren't worth getting into, really struck my funny bone. But I'm gradually coming around more and more to the view that FiveThirtyEight, even as a "blog", ought to err on the side adopting a more strictly journalistic tone. The first couple of paragraphs of Monday's piece slanted more than they needed to toward opinion, especially for a story that was still developing.
Move Right and Win? We'll Soon See
@ 5:00 PM
While I agree with Nate's explosion of some of the cliches we are hearing about yesterday's primaries, I do think there's an aspect of the results that could use a little more scrutiny. By nominating Rand Paul and Pat Toomey for Senate contests in states with large Democratic registration advantages, Republicans are setting up a very interesting test of the counter-intuitive but madly popular (in GOP circles) hypothesis that the Party's shift to a more ideologically rigorous conservative posture is exactly what it needs to do to build a majority.
After all, Paul and Toomey are strongly and indelibly identified with two major forces that have been pushing the GOP in a more conservative direction: the former with the Tea Party Movement, the latter with the older but still formidable Club for Growth (which has worked in tandem with the Tea Folk in Republican primaries around the country). Both men are rock stars among conservative activists. And neither is likely to execute some sort of "move to the middle" short of impending electoral catastrophe.
With respect to Rand Paul, the candidate himself made that abundantly clear in his primary victory statement last night, as noted in this report from Kate Zernike of the New York Times:
Paul went on to warn that massive budget cuts (without, of course, any tax increases) would be necessary to balance the federal budget, which he says should happen immediately. There's every indication that he means what he says. Aside from the fact that he's already on record favoring the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and elimination of all "pork" (presumably including public works investments, which are very important in Kentucky), the fiscal math he's committed to will expose him during every day of the general election campaign to the plausible argument that he favors cuts in wildly popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, and/or the kind of major defense spending cuts that no successful statewide Republican candidate in recent decades has ever supported.
By continuing in this politically perilous direction, Paul is not only keeping faith with the Tea Party Movement, but also reflecting its (and the conservative movement's) deep conviction that the GOP, even as it wages total war on Barack Obama and his agenda, is full of dangerously moderate squishes. I noted in my preview of the Kentucky primary a PPP analysis suggesting that Paul's lead over Trey Grayson was almost entirely attributable to the one-third of self-indentified Republicans who believe their party is "too liberal." While Paul's refreshingly frank radicalism played well in a closed GOP primary, it's not clear that his low single-digit lead in the polls over Jack Conway will survive extended scrutiny of his ideology.
Meanwhile, Pat Toomey is a career conservative activist running in a state that is not nearly as conservative as Kentucky, and without the benefit of a rematch with a worn-out party-switching incumbent. His Club for Growth is responsible for putting the muscle behind Grover Norquist's remarkably successful campaign in recent years to force virtually every Republican politician in America to eternally foreswear any kind of tax increase, but like other conservatives, he is now forced to foreswear the "deficits don't matter" mantra of supply-side economics and demand radical reductions in deficits and debt.
While Toomey did alarm a few old allies by supporting Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination last year, any theoretical "move to the middle" will run up against his own record, not only at the Club for Growth but in Congress. And as Harry Enten of pollster.com demonstrated last week in a thorough review of Toomey's House voting record, he's made Rick Santorum look like a RINO:
Now if the "move right to win" hypothesis is correct, then the conservative radicalism of Paul and Toomey shouldn't be a problem. Indeed, many conservatives appear to believe that the relative unpopularity of the Republican "brand" has everything to do with "RINOs" and nothing to do with conservative ideology. But for all its popularity in conservative (and in a mirror phenomenon, some progressive) activist circles, the evidence for the "move right and win" hypothesis has always been spotty at best. Yes, during the period of the Great Ideological Sorting Out of the two parties from the 1970s through the 1990s, it made abundant sense for Deep South Republicans and New England Democrats to run relatively ideological campaigns in order to attract, respectively, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans (along with independents with clearer ideological than partisan identities). And yes, more ideological campaigns do help energize strong partisans. And finally, yes, "the center" has shrunk in recent years, not just among politicians but among voters.
But no manner of "clarity" or "energy" can compensate for the potential loss of voters that could well be associated with a full-throated conservative ideological agenda that goes beyond saying "No!" to unpopular Democratic initiatives and attacks on "the status quo" and "Washington" and frankly explains the very unpopular steps necessary to balance the budget without tax increases, or what conservative economic policies, from free trade to deregulation of "the private sector" to elimination of taxes on capital, would actually mean for people of modest means. (And that's not even mentioning conservative social policies, which are no more widely popular now than they were in 2008.) Moreover, a more stridently ideological posture by Republicans could arguably play into the hands of Democrats who are frantically trying to make the next two election cycles revolve around a "two futures" choice between two very different agendas rather than a referendum on Democratic governance.
So the Kentucky and Pennsylvania Senate campaigns will merit close watching. And if the "move right and win" strategy doesn't work in the current environment, so incredibly favorable to Republicans, it should probably be consigned right back to the dusty shelf of cranky "hidden majority" theories from whence it emerged.
After all, Paul and Toomey are strongly and indelibly identified with two major forces that have been pushing the GOP in a more conservative direction: the former with the Tea Party Movement, the latter with the older but still formidable Club for Growth (which has worked in tandem with the Tea Folk in Republican primaries around the country). Both men are rock stars among conservative activists. And neither is likely to execute some sort of "move to the middle" short of impending electoral catastrophe.
With respect to Rand Paul, the candidate himself made that abundantly clear in his primary victory statement last night, as noted in this report from Kate Zernike of the New York Times:
Rand Paul made clear in his remarks that the celebration at the Bowling Green Country Club was a Tea Party party. He declared himself a proud member of the movement, credited it for his victory, and dismissed speculation that he would have to abandon it to appeal to more moderate voters in the general election....
“People are already saying now you need to weave and dodge, now you need to switch, now you need to give up your conservative message, you need to become a moderate, you need to give up the Tea Party, you need to distance yourself,” he said, to which the crowd yelled NO!
Paul went on to warn that massive budget cuts (without, of course, any tax increases) would be necessary to balance the federal budget, which he says should happen immediately. There's every indication that he means what he says. Aside from the fact that he's already on record favoring the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and elimination of all "pork" (presumably including public works investments, which are very important in Kentucky), the fiscal math he's committed to will expose him during every day of the general election campaign to the plausible argument that he favors cuts in wildly popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, and/or the kind of major defense spending cuts that no successful statewide Republican candidate in recent decades has ever supported.
By continuing in this politically perilous direction, Paul is not only keeping faith with the Tea Party Movement, but also reflecting its (and the conservative movement's) deep conviction that the GOP, even as it wages total war on Barack Obama and his agenda, is full of dangerously moderate squishes. I noted in my preview of the Kentucky primary a PPP analysis suggesting that Paul's lead over Trey Grayson was almost entirely attributable to the one-third of self-indentified Republicans who believe their party is "too liberal." While Paul's refreshingly frank radicalism played well in a closed GOP primary, it's not clear that his low single-digit lead in the polls over Jack Conway will survive extended scrutiny of his ideology.
Meanwhile, Pat Toomey is a career conservative activist running in a state that is not nearly as conservative as Kentucky, and without the benefit of a rematch with a worn-out party-switching incumbent. His Club for Growth is responsible for putting the muscle behind Grover Norquist's remarkably successful campaign in recent years to force virtually every Republican politician in America to eternally foreswear any kind of tax increase, but like other conservatives, he is now forced to foreswear the "deficits don't matter" mantra of supply-side economics and demand radical reductions in deficits and debt.
While Toomey did alarm a few old allies by supporting Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination last year, any theoretical "move to the middle" will run up against his own record, not only at the Club for Growth but in Congress. And as Harry Enten of pollster.com demonstrated last week in a thorough review of Toomey's House voting record, he's made Rick Santorum look like a RINO:
Toomey ranked more conservative than 97.9% of all United States legislators since 1995. He had a more conservative voting record than J.D Hayworth, Jim DeMint, and was about as conservative as Jesse Helms. Only Tom Coburn and Tom Tancredo scored further to the right.
Now if the "move right to win" hypothesis is correct, then the conservative radicalism of Paul and Toomey shouldn't be a problem. Indeed, many conservatives appear to believe that the relative unpopularity of the Republican "brand" has everything to do with "RINOs" and nothing to do with conservative ideology. But for all its popularity in conservative (and in a mirror phenomenon, some progressive) activist circles, the evidence for the "move right and win" hypothesis has always been spotty at best. Yes, during the period of the Great Ideological Sorting Out of the two parties from the 1970s through the 1990s, it made abundant sense for Deep South Republicans and New England Democrats to run relatively ideological campaigns in order to attract, respectively, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans (along with independents with clearer ideological than partisan identities). And yes, more ideological campaigns do help energize strong partisans. And finally, yes, "the center" has shrunk in recent years, not just among politicians but among voters.
But no manner of "clarity" or "energy" can compensate for the potential loss of voters that could well be associated with a full-throated conservative ideological agenda that goes beyond saying "No!" to unpopular Democratic initiatives and attacks on "the status quo" and "Washington" and frankly explains the very unpopular steps necessary to balance the budget without tax increases, or what conservative economic policies, from free trade to deregulation of "the private sector" to elimination of taxes on capital, would actually mean for people of modest means. (And that's not even mentioning conservative social policies, which are no more widely popular now than they were in 2008.) Moreover, a more stridently ideological posture by Republicans could arguably play into the hands of Democrats who are frantically trying to make the next two election cycles revolve around a "two futures" choice between two very different agendas rather than a referendum on Democratic governance.
So the Kentucky and Pennsylvania Senate campaigns will merit close watching. And if the "move right and win" strategy doesn't work in the current environment, so incredibly favorable to Republicans, it should probably be consigned right back to the dusty shelf of cranky "hidden majority" theories from whence it emerged.
Does Critz Victory Mean That Much?
@ 11:01 AM
Herewith, a quick wrap-up and some observations from Mark Critz' victory over Republican Tim Burns in the PA-12 special election contest to fill the seat vacated by Democrat John Murtha:
First, the big story--if perhaps overstated or extrapolated too widely--is that Critz' victory is likely to change the Washington conventional wisdom on just how big the expected Republican gains in November will be. Actually, that may already be the case: When Marc Ambinder says so--and I respect Marc very much--it more or less becomes the Washington conventional wisdom. (More on this below; stay tuned.)
Second, not only did Critz win, but his 10-point margin was bigger than recent polls had projected.
Third, Critz' win makes for seven straight Democratic victories in House special elections--although that string may soon come to an end in Hawai'i.
Fourth, as I mentioned in yesterday's preview piece, this is the only district won by both John Kerry in 2004 and John McCain in 2008. So, at first blush, the Critz win would seem to suggest a stalled Republican counter-trend. But I have to believe some of the difference between 2004 and 2008 is a function downballot of John Murtha's problems between those two presidential cycles, and remember: Although Critz outperformed the polls he still underperformed an embattled Murtha's share from less than two years ago.
Fifth, as the chart above shows (99% of counties reporting), Critz won by a smaller margin than Murtha's previous two victories in large part because he did worse in the district's two biggest counties, Cambria and Westmoreland--though he outperformed Murtha in Fayette and a couple of smaller counties.#
Sixth, total two-party turnout of more than 131,000 was just under half the 268,000 who turned out in 2008--though, of course, this was a special election and I wouldn't leap to the conclusion yet that this indicates low excitement or intensity.#
Seventh, Critz' win gives Democrats a 255-177 margin in the House, with three vacancies. For the sake of argument, assume the GOP fills all three, for 180 seats total. That would give Speaker Pelosi a 75-seat majority, meaning that the GOP's magic number to flip the House in November would be 38.
Now, on the first and last points and the question of how generalizable this lone House special election result is, I realize Cook Political Report's David Wasserman thinks that flipping the House is very possible (subscr. req'd), and Intrade buyers also believe the proposition is only a little worse than 50/50 (though price for GOP majority 2010 dropped today). But I'm starting to think--as I suggested in a post two weeks ago here at 538 (and many readers in their comments are also saying)--that the GOP's House majority dreams are looking dimmer and dimmer. Witness this new AP-GfK poll out three days ago; also, see Paul Waldman's latest American Prospect column on this subject, which is definitely worth a read.
Nevertheless, I advise against generalizing too much about this victory. Although I think matters are better for Democrats than they were three or six months ago, there are still 5+ months to go.
#N.B.: There was a third-party candidate, Libertarian Demo Agoris, in last night's contest, but for table simplicity I left out his votes (2.3 percent overall) in order to compare simple, two-party shares for 2010 with the 2008 and 2006 results.
First, the big story--if perhaps overstated or extrapolated too widely--is that Critz' victory is likely to change the Washington conventional wisdom on just how big the expected Republican gains in November will be. Actually, that may already be the case: When Marc Ambinder says so--and I respect Marc very much--it more or less becomes the Washington conventional wisdom. (More on this below; stay tuned.)
Second, not only did Critz win, but his 10-point margin was bigger than recent polls had projected.
Third, Critz' win makes for seven straight Democratic victories in House special elections--although that string may soon come to an end in Hawai'i.Fourth, as I mentioned in yesterday's preview piece, this is the only district won by both John Kerry in 2004 and John McCain in 2008. So, at first blush, the Critz win would seem to suggest a stalled Republican counter-trend. But I have to believe some of the difference between 2004 and 2008 is a function downballot of John Murtha's problems between those two presidential cycles, and remember: Although Critz outperformed the polls he still underperformed an embattled Murtha's share from less than two years ago.
Fifth, as the chart above shows (99% of counties reporting), Critz won by a smaller margin than Murtha's previous two victories in large part because he did worse in the district's two biggest counties, Cambria and Westmoreland--though he outperformed Murtha in Fayette and a couple of smaller counties.#
Sixth, total two-party turnout of more than 131,000 was just under half the 268,000 who turned out in 2008--though, of course, this was a special election and I wouldn't leap to the conclusion yet that this indicates low excitement or intensity.#
Seventh, Critz' win gives Democrats a 255-177 margin in the House, with three vacancies. For the sake of argument, assume the GOP fills all three, for 180 seats total. That would give Speaker Pelosi a 75-seat majority, meaning that the GOP's magic number to flip the House in November would be 38.
Now, on the first and last points and the question of how generalizable this lone House special election result is, I realize Cook Political Report's David Wasserman thinks that flipping the House is very possible (subscr. req'd), and Intrade buyers also believe the proposition is only a little worse than 50/50 (though price for GOP majority 2010 dropped today). But I'm starting to think--as I suggested in a post two weeks ago here at 538 (and many readers in their comments are also saying)--that the GOP's House majority dreams are looking dimmer and dimmer. Witness this new AP-GfK poll out three days ago; also, see Paul Waldman's latest American Prospect column on this subject, which is definitely worth a read.
Nevertheless, I advise against generalizing too much about this victory. Although I think matters are better for Democrats than they were three or six months ago, there are still 5+ months to go.
#N.B.: There was a third-party candidate, Libertarian Demo Agoris, in last night's contest, but for table simplicity I left out his votes (2.3 percent overall) in order to compare simple, two-party shares for 2010 with the 2008 and 2006 results.
What Tuesday Really Meant
@ 1:48 AM
There were five races that we were tracking closely over the course of the evening -- and I've already seen analysts drawing flimsy conclusions from each of them.
Pennsylvania -- Democratic Senate primary
The results: Joe Sestak defeats Arlen Specter, 54-46.
The conventional wisdom: This was a stunning repudiation of the Democratic establishment.
The reality: Certainly, Specter had the support of a lot of Very Important People, including the President, many unions, and the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But in many cases, it seemed perfunctory. The White House elected not to send either Barack Obama or Joe Biden to the state in the closing days. The unions were nominally supporting Specter, but were concentrating their cash in Arkansas and elsewhere. As Sestak began to emerge as the superior general election candidate, their support grew even more tepid. This was an important win, and the netroots progressives who championed Sestak's campaign deserve all the credit in the world. But something can be dramatic without being especially surprising. Joe Sestak is a mainline, lunchpail Democrat who defeated a very unpopular Republican-turned-Democrat who ran an awful campaign and who Pennsylvania Democrats weren't used to punching their ticket for. No huge shock there.
Kentucky -- Republican Senate primary
The results: Rand Paul defeats Trey Grayson, 59-35.
The conventional wisdom: This was a stunning repudiation of the Republican establishment.
The reality: Because of Paul's impressive 24-point margin of victory, almost any explanation you might proffer probably contains some element of truth. But for all his libertarian and tea-party dressing, Paul in fact ran on a fairly conventional, conservative platform. He's pro-life, anti-gay marriage, anti-immigration ... there are only the faintest hints of libertarianism here. This was probably a good thing for him because Kentucky, which has traditionally been socially conservative but economically moderate, is pretty much kitty-corner to the libertarian side of the political quadrant. This was actually very clever, in a lot of ways -- Paul's last name (and decision to affiliate himself with the tea party) gained him national attention and fundraising and earned media, but to people in Kentucky, he ought to have been a very comfortable choice who was somewhat more fresh-faced than his rival. The branded product beat the generic one.
Paul might have some trouble in general election, especially after somewhat underwhelming turnout in the primary (Democratic turnout was actually 60 percent higher, although Democrats enjoy a substantial registration advantage in Kentucky). But that's more because of his inexperience and standoffishness and less because of his platform.
Kentucky -- Democratic Senate primary
The results: Jack Conway defeats Daniel Mongiardo, 44-43.
The conventional wisdom: What? The Democrats had a primary too?
The reality: Yes, they did -- and it was the closest race of the night, with Conway taking an early lead from a substantial advantage in Louisville and Lexington but Mongiardo, who was stronger in rural areas, nearly closing the gap by the end of the night. Conway had polled somewhat better in general election matchups so this is a result most national Democrats will be pleased with -- although the way that Attorney Generals have been going lately, maybe he'll prove to be a bit jinxed.
Arkansas -- Democratic Senate primary
The results: Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter head to overtime. Lincoln has 45 percent of votes counted so far tonight, and Halter 43 percent, but a majority was required to avoid a run-off.
The conventional wisdom: Lincoln spent too much time hanging out in the middle of the road and got run over.
The reality: There are parallels between what Rand Paul accomplished in Kentucky and what Bill Halter did in Arkansas. As I mentioned earlier, Kentucky is not a particularly good state for real libertarians. Likewise, Arkansas is not an especially good state for netroots progressives, who are mostly white, liberal, and college-educated, whereas the state's Democratic primary electorate is 61 percent non-college, 64 percent non-liberal, and contains a fair number of black voters.
Halter endeared himself to national progressives and to unions with his vocal support of the public option, giving him money, momentum and media attention. But to Arkansasans, he was a relatively familiar face (as the sitting Lieutenant Governor) who ran a relatively non-ideological campaign, railing against corruption, bailouts, and wishy-washiness, as challengers of all political persuasions are doing. Halter came out against cap-and-trade, on the other hand, and tried his best to avoid taking a position on contentious social issues.
Certainly this is a rough environment for moderates, but Lincoln made matters worse by drawing unnecessary attention to herself on health care, and by picking the wrong issues to moderate upon: yes on TARP, no on the public option is a set of positions that very few rank-and-file Democrats (or voters of any kind) will share. And she was a very incumbent-y incumbent in an environment where incumbents are not popular.
Of course, we should not yet be speaking about her in the past tense; Lincoln could still win the run-off. But I suspect that the presumably superior enthusiasm of Halter's voters will pay off for him in three weeks. Turnout was actually not bad in Arkansas -- in fact, it slightly exceeded turnout in the 2008 Presidential primary -- but I don't know if Blanche Lincoln is the sort of person for whom people are going to get up off the couch to vote for twice in one month.
Pennsylvania 12th Congressional District -- Special election
The results: Mark Critz (D) defeats Tim Burns (R), 53-45.
The conventional wisdom: A big, clutch win for Democrats.
The reality: Neither outcome would have been surprising here. The polling showed a toss-up, and the district (with a PVI of R+1) is close to the national median. There's a lot of variance in open-seat elections for the House; even in an environment like 2008, Democrats would have had about a 30 percent chance of losing this seat, and even in one as relatively poor for them as 2004, they would have had about a 40 percent chance of winning it.
Still, the 8-point margin of victory was surprising. As I wrote yesterday morning: "It's really only if one of the candidates wins by middle-to-high single digits ... that [PA-12] might tell us something", and Critz met that threshold.
Republicans have some decent excuses; they may have been harmed by the fact that there was a contentious Democratic Senate primary occurring at the same time, for instance, and the DCCC seems to have a peculiar knack for winning special elections. The Democratic candidate ran against his party's health care bill! But make no mistake: there are garbage cans being kicked, and consultants being sworn at, at NRCC headquarters right now. And the Republicans may need to engage in some self-reflection about whether nationalizing the race will be the optimal strategy in each of 50 distinct states and 435 distinct Congressional Districts.
Pennsylvania -- Democratic Senate primary
The results: Joe Sestak defeats Arlen Specter, 54-46.
The conventional wisdom: This was a stunning repudiation of the Democratic establishment.
The reality: Certainly, Specter had the support of a lot of Very Important People, including the President, many unions, and the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But in many cases, it seemed perfunctory. The White House elected not to send either Barack Obama or Joe Biden to the state in the closing days. The unions were nominally supporting Specter, but were concentrating their cash in Arkansas and elsewhere. As Sestak began to emerge as the superior general election candidate, their support grew even more tepid. This was an important win, and the netroots progressives who championed Sestak's campaign deserve all the credit in the world. But something can be dramatic without being especially surprising. Joe Sestak is a mainline, lunchpail Democrat who defeated a very unpopular Republican-turned-Democrat who ran an awful campaign and who Pennsylvania Democrats weren't used to punching their ticket for. No huge shock there.
Kentucky -- Republican Senate primary
The results: Rand Paul defeats Trey Grayson, 59-35.
The conventional wisdom: This was a stunning repudiation of the Republican establishment.
The reality: Because of Paul's impressive 24-point margin of victory, almost any explanation you might proffer probably contains some element of truth. But for all his libertarian and tea-party dressing, Paul in fact ran on a fairly conventional, conservative platform. He's pro-life, anti-gay marriage, anti-immigration ... there are only the faintest hints of libertarianism here. This was probably a good thing for him because Kentucky, which has traditionally been socially conservative but economically moderate, is pretty much kitty-corner to the libertarian side of the political quadrant. This was actually very clever, in a lot of ways -- Paul's last name (and decision to affiliate himself with the tea party) gained him national attention and fundraising and earned media, but to people in Kentucky, he ought to have been a very comfortable choice who was somewhat more fresh-faced than his rival. The branded product beat the generic one.
Paul might have some trouble in general election, especially after somewhat underwhelming turnout in the primary (Democratic turnout was actually 60 percent higher, although Democrats enjoy a substantial registration advantage in Kentucky). But that's more because of his inexperience and standoffishness and less because of his platform.
Kentucky -- Democratic Senate primary
The results: Jack Conway defeats Daniel Mongiardo, 44-43.
The conventional wisdom: What? The Democrats had a primary too?
The reality: Yes, they did -- and it was the closest race of the night, with Conway taking an early lead from a substantial advantage in Louisville and Lexington but Mongiardo, who was stronger in rural areas, nearly closing the gap by the end of the night. Conway had polled somewhat better in general election matchups so this is a result most national Democrats will be pleased with -- although the way that Attorney Generals have been going lately, maybe he'll prove to be a bit jinxed.
Arkansas -- Democratic Senate primary
The results: Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter head to overtime. Lincoln has 45 percent of votes counted so far tonight, and Halter 43 percent, but a majority was required to avoid a run-off.
The conventional wisdom: Lincoln spent too much time hanging out in the middle of the road and got run over.
The reality: There are parallels between what Rand Paul accomplished in Kentucky and what Bill Halter did in Arkansas. As I mentioned earlier, Kentucky is not a particularly good state for real libertarians. Likewise, Arkansas is not an especially good state for netroots progressives, who are mostly white, liberal, and college-educated, whereas the state's Democratic primary electorate is 61 percent non-college, 64 percent non-liberal, and contains a fair number of black voters.
Halter endeared himself to national progressives and to unions with his vocal support of the public option, giving him money, momentum and media attention. But to Arkansasans, he was a relatively familiar face (as the sitting Lieutenant Governor) who ran a relatively non-ideological campaign, railing against corruption, bailouts, and wishy-washiness, as challengers of all political persuasions are doing. Halter came out against cap-and-trade, on the other hand, and tried his best to avoid taking a position on contentious social issues.
Certainly this is a rough environment for moderates, but Lincoln made matters worse by drawing unnecessary attention to herself on health care, and by picking the wrong issues to moderate upon: yes on TARP, no on the public option is a set of positions that very few rank-and-file Democrats (or voters of any kind) will share. And she was a very incumbent-y incumbent in an environment where incumbents are not popular.
Of course, we should not yet be speaking about her in the past tense; Lincoln could still win the run-off. But I suspect that the presumably superior enthusiasm of Halter's voters will pay off for him in three weeks. Turnout was actually not bad in Arkansas -- in fact, it slightly exceeded turnout in the 2008 Presidential primary -- but I don't know if Blanche Lincoln is the sort of person for whom people are going to get up off the couch to vote for twice in one month.
Pennsylvania 12th Congressional District -- Special election
The results: Mark Critz (D) defeats Tim Burns (R), 53-45.
The conventional wisdom: A big, clutch win for Democrats.
The reality: Neither outcome would have been surprising here. The polling showed a toss-up, and the district (with a PVI of R+1) is close to the national median. There's a lot of variance in open-seat elections for the House; even in an environment like 2008, Democrats would have had about a 30 percent chance of losing this seat, and even in one as relatively poor for them as 2004, they would have had about a 40 percent chance of winning it.
Still, the 8-point margin of victory was surprising. As I wrote yesterday morning: "It's really only if one of the candidates wins by middle-to-high single digits ... that [PA-12] might tell us something", and Critz met that threshold.
Republicans have some decent excuses; they may have been harmed by the fact that there was a contentious Democratic Senate primary occurring at the same time, for instance, and the DCCC seems to have a peculiar knack for winning special elections. The Democratic candidate ran against his party's health care bill! But make no mistake: there are garbage cans being kicked, and consultants being sworn at, at NRCC headquarters right now. And the Republicans may need to engage in some self-reflection about whether nationalizing the race will be the optimal strategy in each of 50 distinct states and 435 distinct Congressional Districts.
5.18.2010
Late Evening Election Night Thread (5/18/10)
@ 9:36 PM
11:42 PM [Ed] There was a primary in Oregon today, though it didn't get much attention Back East. As expected, former Gov. John Kitzhaber easily defeated former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury for the Democratic gubernatorial bid, and also as expected, his Republican opponent will be former Portland Trail Blazer Chris Dudley, who beat back a challenge from conservative activist Allen Alley.
11:29 PM [Ed] As the Arkansas votes continue to roll in, it's increasingly obvious that Lincoln failed to do as well as she needed in her old CD. In county after county, she won with 50-55%--not enough to compensate for a generally poor performance in southern Arkansas. In early returns, she's actually leading in Pulaski with a majority, but even a win there would be too little, too late. It will be interesting to unravel the racial voting data in the days between now and the runoff.
11:15 PM [Ed] AP's projecting that Blanche Lincoln will be forced into a runoff with Bill Halter in Arkansas. With nearly half the precincts reporting, she's still stuck at 44%.
11:03 PM [Ed] In the Arkansas GOP Senate primary, it's looking good for John Boozman, who's at 50% with most of his "base" vote in heavily Republican NW Arkansas still out. Moreover, in the smattering of returns from his CD, he's winning overwhelmingly, with two-thirds or more in most counties.
10:52 PM [Ed] With nearly a third of precincts reporting, Lincoln's lead continues to slip; she's now down to 44%, with Pulaski County still out. I don't know if this is significant, but Halter carried Cross County in the heart of Blanche's old House district. Perhaps he's doing as well with African-American voters--a real key to this primary--as he hoped.
10:45 PM [Ed] Burns has conceded to Critz in PA-12. This is a big hold for Democrats, folks.
10:37 PM [Ed] A scatter-shot of counties, mostly from southern Arkansas, have come in with Halter running near or ahead of Lincoln, and her lead is now down to 45-41, with Morrison still at 14%. Lincoln is narrowly leading Saline County in central Arkansas. She's also carrying Jefferson County (Pine Bluff) with almost exactly 50%.
10:30 PM [Tom] Critz' lead still at 10 (54/44) with a quarter of the precincts still out in PA-12.
10:24 PM [Tom] With 74% of the precincts counted, Critz is up by 10 points in PA-12. It looks good for him.
10:20 PM [Ed] AP has called the PA Senate primary for Sestak. So "anti-incumbency night" lives on for the moment.
10:16 PM [Ed] With about 11% of the precincts reporting in Arkansas(but mostly rural and small-town boxes), Blanche Lincoln is sitting at 49%. Only a handful of her "base" counties in NW Arkansas have reported; there's also nothing in from Halter's base in Pulaski (Little Rock). On the Republican side, John Boozman's at 53%, with virtually none of his home CD counties reporting.
10:09 PM [Ed] Sure enough, Bullitt came in pretty strong for Conway, and AP has called the race for him.
9:59 PM [Ed]Getting back to KY, Conway's lead is now down to under 6,000 votes. But nearly half the remaining precincts are from Bullitt County, a suburb of Louisville, where Conway should do well. So it looks good for him.
9:45 PM [Ed] The early returns in Arkansas are mostly from the southern part of the state, and as Nate noted, the striking thing is that "minor" conservative candidate DC Morrison is in double digits everywhere. With Lincoln's base region of northwest Arkansas just beginning to report, she's at 48%. Halter's base in central Arkansas is still out.
11:29 PM [Ed] As the Arkansas votes continue to roll in, it's increasingly obvious that Lincoln failed to do as well as she needed in her old CD. In county after county, she won with 50-55%--not enough to compensate for a generally poor performance in southern Arkansas. In early returns, she's actually leading in Pulaski with a majority, but even a win there would be too little, too late. It will be interesting to unravel the racial voting data in the days between now and the runoff.
11:15 PM [Ed] AP's projecting that Blanche Lincoln will be forced into a runoff with Bill Halter in Arkansas. With nearly half the precincts reporting, she's still stuck at 44%.
11:03 PM [Ed] In the Arkansas GOP Senate primary, it's looking good for John Boozman, who's at 50% with most of his "base" vote in heavily Republican NW Arkansas still out. Moreover, in the smattering of returns from his CD, he's winning overwhelmingly, with two-thirds or more in most counties.
10:52 PM [Ed] With nearly a third of precincts reporting, Lincoln's lead continues to slip; she's now down to 44%, with Pulaski County still out. I don't know if this is significant, but Halter carried Cross County in the heart of Blanche's old House district. Perhaps he's doing as well with African-American voters--a real key to this primary--as he hoped.
10:45 PM [Ed] Burns has conceded to Critz in PA-12. This is a big hold for Democrats, folks.
10:37 PM [Ed] A scatter-shot of counties, mostly from southern Arkansas, have come in with Halter running near or ahead of Lincoln, and her lead is now down to 45-41, with Morrison still at 14%. Lincoln is narrowly leading Saline County in central Arkansas. She's also carrying Jefferson County (Pine Bluff) with almost exactly 50%.
10:30 PM [Tom] Critz' lead still at 10 (54/44) with a quarter of the precincts still out in PA-12.
10:24 PM [Tom] With 74% of the precincts counted, Critz is up by 10 points in PA-12. It looks good for him.
10:20 PM [Ed] AP has called the PA Senate primary for Sestak. So "anti-incumbency night" lives on for the moment.
10:16 PM [Ed] With about 11% of the precincts reporting in Arkansas(but mostly rural and small-town boxes), Blanche Lincoln is sitting at 49%. Only a handful of her "base" counties in NW Arkansas have reported; there's also nothing in from Halter's base in Pulaski (Little Rock). On the Republican side, John Boozman's at 53%, with virtually none of his home CD counties reporting.
10:09 PM [Ed] Sure enough, Bullitt came in pretty strong for Conway, and AP has called the race for him.
9:59 PM [Ed]Getting back to KY, Conway's lead is now down to under 6,000 votes. But nearly half the remaining precincts are from Bullitt County, a suburb of Louisville, where Conway should do well. So it looks good for him.
9:45 PM [Ed] The early returns in Arkansas are mostly from the southern part of the state, and as Nate noted, the striking thing is that "minor" conservative candidate DC Morrison is in double digits everywhere. With Lincoln's base region of northwest Arkansas just beginning to report, she's at 48%. Halter's base in central Arkansas is still out.
Election Night Homethread (5/18/10)
@ 5:48 PM
9:45 PM [Nate]. Sestak officially takes the lead. And 2/3 of Philly has been counted. How can Specter win? He probably can't.
9:44 PM [Nate]. The Democrat Critz leads big -- 58 to 39 -- in PA-12 special election so far.
9:40 PM. Dave Wasserman tweets: Cook Report doesnt call elections, but if we did, I'd have enough data to call #PASEN Dem nod for Joe Sestak
9:37 PM [Daniel]. I may take back some of my earlier remarks about Sestak. If he is actually winning Delaware county, then Specter probably does have serious problems. The real problem with drawing conclusions at this point is that most of the results we have so far are not representative in the Philly suburbs, so we are seeing massive swings between each set of precincts. That said, the shrinking Specter margin in Philly, and the low turnout there looks to be a problem for the incumbent.
This is what gives me pause before pointing people to look at Tim Holden, who seems to be having something of a challenge in his primary, and Mary Beth Buchanan, the former US Attorney and NRCC recruit for PA 4, who seems to be losing badly. Tom Marino, another former US Attorney is having trouble in the 10th, though he is now leading by about 4 points.
9:36 PM [Nate]. In KY, keep in mind that there are still a few Lexington and Louisville precincts to report. Those are a bit of an insurance policy for Conway.
9:32 PM [Nate]. Sestak and Specter are basically tied and Philly is OVER-represented so far; this bodes well for Sestak.
9:28 PM [Nate]. We'll be transitioning to a new thread in a few moments here. I have to leave for a TV hit (MSNBC) shortly so Ed will be captaining the ship for a bit.
9:26 PM [Nate]. Daniel, I somewhat disagree on Pittsburgh. Specter got the mayor's endorsement there, and it's a big union town. If Sestak's winning by only 4 percent there, seems about par for the course.
9:23 PM [Nate]. Our completely unsophisticated model still thinks Conway is more likely than not to hold on. Swing State Project's slightly-less-unsophisticated one thinks so also.
9:15 PM [Ed]. All those early Arky returns are from the 4th CD in southern Arkansas (plus Yell County just outside it). This is not Morrison's home area; he's from Jonesboro up in northeast Arkansas. We'll have to see if he's doing anything like this well in more populous counties, but I agree, it looks like big trouble for Lincoln.
9:13 PM [Ed]. Back in KY, Mongiardo has pulled to within 13,000 votes of Conway, and is really doing well in WKy. Looks like he'll have a plurality of nearly 1500 votes in Graves County just south of Paducah.
9:13 PM [Daniel]. I think Sestak is in serious trouble. He is only winning Pittsburgh by 4% which is nowhere near enough to counteract being destroyed elseware, especially in Philly. And as proof Philly is not his problem, Onorato has easily pulled ahead despite losing there.
9:09 PM [Nate]. Mongiardo needs to win by about a ~17% margin among the remaining precincts to make up his deficit to Conway.
8:53 PM [Daniel Berman]. I think you are seeing evidence of this in the unknown candidates who are winning 13% in the Democratic primary. Despite most of them being to the left, i suspect they are none-of-the-above votes, and I would not be shocked if a lot of them do not vote Democratic in November. Watch Morrison's voters for the same thing in Arkansas.
8:50 PM [Thomas Dollar]. Dan, that registration gap is interesting. KY, of course, is a conservative state that votes Republican in national elections. If many of those conservative voters are "legacy" registered Dems, then you have a much more insular Republican primary pool, and one that's more amenable to an unorthodox candidate like Rand Paul. I wonder what would have happened in an open primary, or if those conservative voters were voting in the Paul-Grayson race.
8:48 PM [Ed]. With just over half the precincts reporting from McCracken County (Paducah), Mongiardo's winning 57-32, and should take a plurality of over 1,000 votes out of that county.
8:46 PM [Nate]. In very early returns in Arkansas, Morrison has 18% of the vote. If he's that high, a runoff is very likely.
8:44 PM [Dan Berman]. Just an interesting point, the 60% or so by which Democratic turnout is exceeding Republican turnout in Kentucky is almost exactly the margin by which Democratic registration exceeds Republican registration(1.6 million to a bit over 1 million).
8:43 PM [Thomas Dollar]. I've never thought the Tea Party was anything more a new name for various factions of disgruntled conservatives. With Rand Paul's big win, the Tea Party may get redefined as being Paulites. Gold standard, abolish the Fed, pre-(Teddy) Roosevelt era Federal government--stuff that should make the Rick Santellis of the world a bit nervous. How does Mitch McConnell spin this one?
8:42 PM [Nate]. Specter has jumped out to an early lead, but almost all of that vote is from Philadelphia.
8:37 PM [Nate]. Although there's very little Louisville/Lexington vote left, Mongiardo is going to have to pick up the pace a bit in rural counties if he wants to overtake Conway. Right now, our crude extrap-o-jection shows Conway winning 47.1 to 43.3.
8:35 PM [Ed]. From scattered early returns, it's appears that every mile you go west of Bowling Green takes you further into Mongiardo Country. But it's unclear whether the Dr.'s margins there will be enough to overcome Conway's urban onslaught.
8:30 PM [Nate]. Polls closed in Arkansas.
8:11 PM [Nate]. Democratic turnout is about 60 percent higher so far.
8:09 PM [Ed]: Very early returns from WKY:
Warren County (Bowling Green): Conway up 53-35.
Graves County (Mayfield): Mongiardo up 54-36.
7:56 PM [Nate]. Our super-simple extrapolation now shows Conway projected to win 45.9-41.9. Margin of error is definitely too large to come to any conclusions.
7:55 PM [Ed]. Still nothing in from Western KY, which was supposedly a real battleground.
7:54 PM [Nate]. AP calls it for Paul (about 1/2 hour after we did.)
7:48 PM [Nate]. Conway's numbers are holding up better in other rural areas than they were in the Eastern portion of the state. The crude projection method I describe a moment ago now shows him winning 44.8%-42.7%.
7:47 PM [Ed]. Well over half the precincts in Jefferson County (Louisville) are now in, and Conway's leading 60-27, while Paul's leading 60-37.
7:43 PM [Nate]. By the same method, I get Paul winning 56-38.
7:38 PM [Nate]. Based on a crude extrapolation of the vote in from Fayette County (Lexington), Jefferson County (Louisville), and "rest of state" so far, I show final results of Mongiardo 214,701 (43.7%), Conway 214,075 (43.6%). It might be very close!
7:24 PM [Nate]. Dem turnout is almost 50 percent higher so far in Kentucky.
7:21 PM [Nate]. Howard Fineman on MSNBC a moment ago: "If Democrats lose [PA-12], they'll lose the House." I'd love to take the parlays on {Democrats lose PA-12; win House} and {Democrats win PA-12; lose House}.
7:20 PM [Nate]. Conway has now opened up a 7-point lead, but urban areas are now over-represented, so still too early to say where we're headed.
7:18 PM [Nate]. We are getting some very early results in from Louisville now. Conway leads 57-26 there so far; Paul leads 52-41.
7:13 PM [Nate]. How certain does one have to be to "call" an election? 99%? 99.9%? 99.99%? Well, I'm that certain that Rand Paul is going to win. So we're "calling"
this one for him.
7:08 PM [Nate]. Indeed, Daniel, SurveyUSA had Conway winning Louisville 56-25.
7:06 PM [Daniel Berman]. You know, for all the hits Kentucky gets for being backwards, Trey Greyson has one hell of a good SOS site. Makes me feel a bit bad about what looks to be happening tonight.
Anyway, early numbers look good for Conway. He is winning Lexington comfortably and Dr. Dan is not cleaning up in Appalachia.
7:01 PM [Ed]. The majority of the raw vote listed on the SoS site is from Fayette County, where Paul's up 62-34 and Conway's up 52-36.
6:57 PM [Nate]. Although it's early, this looks very safe for Paul if he's leading by 12 points in the Eastern portion of the state.
6:48 PM [Ed]. Still too few counties from the 5th reporting to reach any real conclusions; about half the reporting counties are from central KY.
6:45 PM [Nate]. So far, Democratic turnout is a notch (35 percent) higher in Kentucky. But D's have a big registration edge in Kentucky and it has closed primaries, so not hugely surprising.
6:39 PM [Nate]. Just a trickle of results in from Fayette County -- Lexington -- so far. Conway leads the Donkeys there 52-36, Paul leads the Elephants 60-37.
6:37 PM [Ed]. I'd say the thing to look for early is whether Paul is winning in Eastern KY's 5th CD, which was the only CD where Grayson was winning in the final Magellen poll. That's Hal Rogers' district (he strongly supported Grayson), and a mountain GOP area that's relative moderate on economic issues, thanks to TVA.
This CD is also Mongiardo's base.
If Paul's winning in the 5th, it could be a statewide blowout.
If Mongiardo's losing the 5th, he's in deep trouble.
6:32 PM [Nate]. To the extent there are any results in from Kentucky so far, they're from the Southeastern portion of the state which is supposed to be comparatively more favorable for Mongiardo and Grayson.
6:22 PM [Nate]. With about 1% of the vote in, Rand Paul leads Grayson 49-45 and Mongiardo leads Conway 50-39.
6:07 PM [Nate]. The Democratic primary in Kentucky has been strangely ignored; we have Conway doing a couple of points better against Paul than Mongiardo, so it's not without consequence.
6:04 PM [Nate]. Bear in mind that there aren't likely to be any exit polls tonight, so there won't likely be any early "calls" of races.
5:58 PM [Nate]. I saw Blumenthal's prepared remarks today but haven't seen the Q&A. Bottom line: it was the sort of event that will play well to those who were sympathetic toward him in the first place, but won't erase doubts among those who weren't. The Democrats would be committing malpractice not to be polling the living daylights out of Connecticut and seeing what impact the scandal has had.
5:50 PM [Nate]. Polls close in most of Kentucky in about 10 minutes. We'll be here all night to cover the Bluegrass State and rest of the races; you may also want to follow our twitter feed.
9:44 PM [Nate]. The Democrat Critz leads big -- 58 to 39 -- in PA-12 special election so far.
9:40 PM. Dave Wasserman tweets: Cook Report doesnt call elections, but if we did, I'd have enough data to call #PASEN Dem nod for Joe Sestak
9:37 PM [Daniel]. I may take back some of my earlier remarks about Sestak. If he is actually winning Delaware county, then Specter probably does have serious problems. The real problem with drawing conclusions at this point is that most of the results we have so far are not representative in the Philly suburbs, so we are seeing massive swings between each set of precincts. That said, the shrinking Specter margin in Philly, and the low turnout there looks to be a problem for the incumbent.
This is what gives me pause before pointing people to look at Tim Holden, who seems to be having something of a challenge in his primary, and Mary Beth Buchanan, the former US Attorney and NRCC recruit for PA 4, who seems to be losing badly. Tom Marino, another former US Attorney is having trouble in the 10th, though he is now leading by about 4 points.
9:36 PM [Nate]. In KY, keep in mind that there are still a few Lexington and Louisville precincts to report. Those are a bit of an insurance policy for Conway.
9:32 PM [Nate]. Sestak and Specter are basically tied and Philly is OVER-represented so far; this bodes well for Sestak.
9:28 PM [Nate]. We'll be transitioning to a new thread in a few moments here. I have to leave for a TV hit (MSNBC) shortly so Ed will be captaining the ship for a bit.
9:26 PM [Nate]. Daniel, I somewhat disagree on Pittsburgh. Specter got the mayor's endorsement there, and it's a big union town. If Sestak's winning by only 4 percent there, seems about par for the course.
9:23 PM [Nate]. Our completely unsophisticated model still thinks Conway is more likely than not to hold on. Swing State Project's slightly-less-unsophisticated one thinks so also.
9:15 PM [Ed]. All those early Arky returns are from the 4th CD in southern Arkansas (plus Yell County just outside it). This is not Morrison's home area; he's from Jonesboro up in northeast Arkansas. We'll have to see if he's doing anything like this well in more populous counties, but I agree, it looks like big trouble for Lincoln.
9:13 PM [Ed]. Back in KY, Mongiardo has pulled to within 13,000 votes of Conway, and is really doing well in WKy. Looks like he'll have a plurality of nearly 1500 votes in Graves County just south of Paducah.
9:13 PM [Daniel]. I think Sestak is in serious trouble. He is only winning Pittsburgh by 4% which is nowhere near enough to counteract being destroyed elseware, especially in Philly. And as proof Philly is not his problem, Onorato has easily pulled ahead despite losing there.
9:09 PM [Nate]. Mongiardo needs to win by about a ~17% margin among the remaining precincts to make up his deficit to Conway.
8:53 PM [Daniel Berman]. I think you are seeing evidence of this in the unknown candidates who are winning 13% in the Democratic primary. Despite most of them being to the left, i suspect they are none-of-the-above votes, and I would not be shocked if a lot of them do not vote Democratic in November. Watch Morrison's voters for the same thing in Arkansas.
8:50 PM [Thomas Dollar]. Dan, that registration gap is interesting. KY, of course, is a conservative state that votes Republican in national elections. If many of those conservative voters are "legacy" registered Dems, then you have a much more insular Republican primary pool, and one that's more amenable to an unorthodox candidate like Rand Paul. I wonder what would have happened in an open primary, or if those conservative voters were voting in the Paul-Grayson race.
8:48 PM [Ed]. With just over half the precincts reporting from McCracken County (Paducah), Mongiardo's winning 57-32, and should take a plurality of over 1,000 votes out of that county.
8:46 PM [Nate]. In very early returns in Arkansas, Morrison has 18% of the vote. If he's that high, a runoff is very likely.
8:44 PM [Dan Berman]. Just an interesting point, the 60% or so by which Democratic turnout is exceeding Republican turnout in Kentucky is almost exactly the margin by which Democratic registration exceeds Republican registration(1.6 million to a bit over 1 million).
8:43 PM [Thomas Dollar]. I've never thought the Tea Party was anything more a new name for various factions of disgruntled conservatives. With Rand Paul's big win, the Tea Party may get redefined as being Paulites. Gold standard, abolish the Fed, pre-(Teddy) Roosevelt era Federal government--stuff that should make the Rick Santellis of the world a bit nervous. How does Mitch McConnell spin this one?
8:42 PM [Nate]. Specter has jumped out to an early lead, but almost all of that vote is from Philadelphia.
8:37 PM [Nate]. Although there's very little Louisville/Lexington vote left, Mongiardo is going to have to pick up the pace a bit in rural counties if he wants to overtake Conway. Right now, our crude extrap-o-jection shows Conway winning 47.1 to 43.3.
8:35 PM [Ed]. From scattered early returns, it's appears that every mile you go west of Bowling Green takes you further into Mongiardo Country. But it's unclear whether the Dr.'s margins there will be enough to overcome Conway's urban onslaught.
8:30 PM [Nate]. Polls closed in Arkansas.
8:11 PM [Nate]. Democratic turnout is about 60 percent higher so far.
8:09 PM [Ed]: Very early returns from WKY:
Warren County (Bowling Green): Conway up 53-35.
Graves County (Mayfield): Mongiardo up 54-36.
7:56 PM [Nate]. Our super-simple extrapolation now shows Conway projected to win 45.9-41.9. Margin of error is definitely too large to come to any conclusions.
7:55 PM [Ed]. Still nothing in from Western KY, which was supposedly a real battleground.
7:54 PM [Nate]. AP calls it for Paul (about 1/2 hour after we did.)
7:48 PM [Nate]. Conway's numbers are holding up better in other rural areas than they were in the Eastern portion of the state. The crude projection method I describe a moment ago now shows him winning 44.8%-42.7%.
7:47 PM [Ed]. Well over half the precincts in Jefferson County (Louisville) are now in, and Conway's leading 60-27, while Paul's leading 60-37.
7:43 PM [Nate]. By the same method, I get Paul winning 56-38.
7:38 PM [Nate]. Based on a crude extrapolation of the vote in from Fayette County (Lexington), Jefferson County (Louisville), and "rest of state" so far, I show final results of Mongiardo 214,701 (43.7%), Conway 214,075 (43.6%). It might be very close!
7:24 PM [Nate]. Dem turnout is almost 50 percent higher so far in Kentucky.
7:21 PM [Nate]. Howard Fineman on MSNBC a moment ago: "If Democrats lose [PA-12], they'll lose the House." I'd love to take the parlays on {Democrats lose PA-12; win House} and {Democrats win PA-12; lose House}.
7:20 PM [Nate]. Conway has now opened up a 7-point lead, but urban areas are now over-represented, so still too early to say where we're headed.
7:18 PM [Nate]. We are getting some very early results in from Louisville now. Conway leads 57-26 there so far; Paul leads 52-41.
7:13 PM [Nate]. How certain does one have to be to "call" an election? 99%? 99.9%? 99.99%? Well, I'm that certain that Rand Paul is going to win. So we're "calling"
this one for him.7:08 PM [Nate]. Indeed, Daniel, SurveyUSA had Conway winning Louisville 56-25.
7:06 PM [Daniel Berman]. You know, for all the hits Kentucky gets for being backwards, Trey Greyson has one hell of a good SOS site. Makes me feel a bit bad about what looks to be happening tonight.
Anyway, early numbers look good for Conway. He is winning Lexington comfortably and Dr. Dan is not cleaning up in Appalachia.
7:01 PM [Ed]. The majority of the raw vote listed on the SoS site is from Fayette County, where Paul's up 62-34 and Conway's up 52-36.
6:57 PM [Nate]. Although it's early, this looks very safe for Paul if he's leading by 12 points in the Eastern portion of the state.
6:48 PM [Ed]. Still too few counties from the 5th reporting to reach any real conclusions; about half the reporting counties are from central KY.
6:45 PM [Nate]. So far, Democratic turnout is a notch (35 percent) higher in Kentucky. But D's have a big registration edge in Kentucky and it has closed primaries, so not hugely surprising.
6:39 PM [Nate]. Just a trickle of results in from Fayette County -- Lexington -- so far. Conway leads the Donkeys there 52-36, Paul leads the Elephants 60-37.
6:37 PM [Ed]. I'd say the thing to look for early is whether Paul is winning in Eastern KY's 5th CD, which was the only CD where Grayson was winning in the final Magellen poll. That's Hal Rogers' district (he strongly supported Grayson), and a mountain GOP area that's relative moderate on economic issues, thanks to TVA.
This CD is also Mongiardo's base.
If Paul's winning in the 5th, it could be a statewide blowout.
If Mongiardo's losing the 5th, he's in deep trouble.
6:32 PM [Nate]. To the extent there are any results in from Kentucky so far, they're from the Southeastern portion of the state which is supposed to be comparatively more favorable for Mongiardo and Grayson.
6:22 PM [Nate]. With about 1% of the vote in, Rand Paul leads Grayson 49-45 and Mongiardo leads Conway 50-39.
6:07 PM [Nate]. The Democratic primary in Kentucky has been strangely ignored; we have Conway doing a couple of points better against Paul than Mongiardo, so it's not without consequence.
6:04 PM [Nate]. Bear in mind that there aren't likely to be any exit polls tonight, so there won't likely be any early "calls" of races.
5:58 PM [Nate]. I saw Blumenthal's prepared remarks today but haven't seen the Q&A. Bottom line: it was the sort of event that will play well to those who were sympathetic toward him in the first place, but won't erase doubts among those who weren't. The Democrats would be committing malpractice not to be polling the living daylights out of Connecticut and seeing what impact the scandal has had.
5:50 PM [Nate]. Polls close in most of Kentucky in about 10 minutes. We'll be here all night to cover the Bluegrass State and rest of the races; you may also want to follow our twitter feed.
Kentucky Senate Preview
@ 10:40 AM
Most of the national attention paid to Kentucky's U.S. Senate primary today has focused on the Republican contest, thanks to the quasi-celebrity status of Rand Paul and the drama of his challenge to the hand-picked candidate of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But with all signs pointing to an easy Paul victory over Secretary of State Trey Grayson, the real drama will likely be on the Democratic side, as Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo and Attorney General Jack Conway face off in what could be a very close race determined by turnout patterns and late momentum.
Anything other than a Rand Paul romp to victory tonight would be a major upset. Grayson has not led Paul in any public poll (other than one released by his own campaign) since last fall, and the most recent surveys, by PPP and the Republican firm Magellen Strategies, have both shown undecided voters breaking overwhelmingly for Paul. PPP has Paul up 52/34, and Magellen shows him up 55/30. Paul's only area of weakness, according to Magellen, is in the 5th congressional district, the "mountain Republican" area of eastern Kentucky where ideological conservatism, particularly as expressed in Paul's hostility to federal programs benefitting Kentucky, has never been very strong. But Grayson's likely margin in the 5th can't offset landslide Paul wins in much of the rest of the state.
Media interpretations of the Republican Senate primary will be interesting. Given Paul's parentage and quasi-libertarian views, the results will likely be taken as further evidence of an anti-incumbent, "insurgent" mood fed by unhappy independent voters. But a couple of cautionary notes on that meme: Kentucky has a closed primary system with a very early cutoff date for registration changes, so independents are quite literally not going to be a factor in Paul's win or in the Democratic results, for that matter. Furthermore, there's no incumbent in the race, and the actual incumbent, Jim Bunning, has endorsed Paul. And while Grayson's impending loss is indeed humuliating for Mitch McConnell, it's not at all clear the contest is some sort of referendum on his leadership. According to the latest PPP survey, Paul voters want McConnell to remain in his leadership post by a 58/22 margin.
In fact, PPP suggests that what's feeding the Paul surge is a segment of self-conscious Republican voters who want their party to move ideologically to the right. According to PPP's Tom Jensen:
Paul's status as the candidate of "movement conservative" Republicans rather than tea-party independents or self-conscious libertarians, is buttressed by the endorsements he received from Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint and (in a reversal of an earlier Grayson endorsement) James Dobson.
In any event, you should take some of the hype you will hear tonight about Rand Paul's "insurgency" with a grain of salt.
Meanwhile, the contest to choose a Democratic opponent for Paul is looking to be a very close race. Mongiardo, who nearly defeated Bunning six years ago, has been the better known candidate throughout the race, and has led Conway in most polls, though the undecided vote has also been relatively high. Conway has had a significant but not overwhelming financial edge, and seems to have some momentum; a late SUSA poll has the race dead even, but there remains a significant undecided vote. PPP's final poll at the beginning of May, which showed Mongiardo up 37/26, also showed 27% undecided.
While Conway was recently endorsed by MoveOn, and has attracted general support from netroots progressives, the race has not revolved much around ideology. Conway has said he would have voted for health reform in the Senate, while Mongiardo opposed the bill for "not going far enough." Both candidates oppose cap-and-trade, as you might expect in a coal-producing state. But generally, as the Cook Political Report's Jennifer Duffy put it:
Geography could be a big factor in the outcome. Mongiardo is from Eastern Kentucky, and is expected to do well there, while Conway is expected to win by a considerable margin in the Louisville area. Western Kentucky, which is up for grabs, could be crucial.
We won't have to wait very long before finding out the results; Kentucky's polls close at 6:00 p.m. local time, with the state divided between the eastern and central time zones.
Anything other than a Rand Paul romp to victory tonight would be a major upset. Grayson has not led Paul in any public poll (other than one released by his own campaign) since last fall, and the most recent surveys, by PPP and the Republican firm Magellen Strategies, have both shown undecided voters breaking overwhelmingly for Paul. PPP has Paul up 52/34, and Magellen shows him up 55/30. Paul's only area of weakness, according to Magellen, is in the 5th congressional district, the "mountain Republican" area of eastern Kentucky where ideological conservatism, particularly as expressed in Paul's hostility to federal programs benefitting Kentucky, has never been very strong. But Grayson's likely margin in the 5th can't offset landslide Paul wins in much of the rest of the state.
Media interpretations of the Republican Senate primary will be interesting. Given Paul's parentage and quasi-libertarian views, the results will likely be taken as further evidence of an anti-incumbent, "insurgent" mood fed by unhappy independent voters. But a couple of cautionary notes on that meme: Kentucky has a closed primary system with a very early cutoff date for registration changes, so independents are quite literally not going to be a factor in Paul's win or in the Democratic results, for that matter. Furthermore, there's no incumbent in the race, and the actual incumbent, Jim Bunning, has endorsed Paul. And while Grayson's impending loss is indeed humuliating for Mitch McConnell, it's not at all clear the contest is some sort of referendum on his leadership. According to the latest PPP survey, Paul voters want McConnell to remain in his leadership post by a 58/22 margin.
In fact, PPP suggests that what's feeding the Paul surge is a segment of self-conscious Republican voters who want their party to move ideologically to the right. According to PPP's Tom Jensen:
32% of likely primary voters think the party is too liberal and Paul has a 71-21 advantage with them that accounts for almost his entire polling lead. With the other 68% of voters who don't think the party is too liberal Paul is ahead only 45-41.
Paul's status as the candidate of "movement conservative" Republicans rather than tea-party independents or self-conscious libertarians, is buttressed by the endorsements he received from Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint and (in a reversal of an earlier Grayson endorsement) James Dobson.
In any event, you should take some of the hype you will hear tonight about Rand Paul's "insurgency" with a grain of salt.
Meanwhile, the contest to choose a Democratic opponent for Paul is looking to be a very close race. Mongiardo, who nearly defeated Bunning six years ago, has been the better known candidate throughout the race, and has led Conway in most polls, though the undecided vote has also been relatively high. Conway has had a significant but not overwhelming financial edge, and seems to have some momentum; a late SUSA poll has the race dead even, but there remains a significant undecided vote. PPP's final poll at the beginning of May, which showed Mongiardo up 37/26, also showed 27% undecided.
While Conway was recently endorsed by MoveOn, and has attracted general support from netroots progressives, the race has not revolved much around ideology. Conway has said he would have voted for health reform in the Senate, while Mongiardo opposed the bill for "not going far enough." Both candidates oppose cap-and-trade, as you might expect in a coal-producing state. But generally, as the Cook Political Report's Jennifer Duffy put it:
It would be hard to accuse the Democratic frontrunners, Attorney General Jack Conway and Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, of beating issues to death in their race for the nomination. Instead, they have battled on travel expenses and charges of eating crème brulee and drinking bottled water on the taxpayers’ dime. They have also taken aim at each other’s ethics. Even the NCAA men’s basketball tournament became a point of contention, albeit briefly.
Geography could be a big factor in the outcome. Mongiardo is from Eastern Kentucky, and is expected to do well there, while Conway is expected to win by a considerable margin in the Louisville area. Western Kentucky, which is up for grabs, could be crucial.
We won't have to wait very long before finding out the results; Kentucky's polls close at 6:00 p.m. local time, with the state divided between the eastern and central time zones.
Benchmarking PA-12
@ 6:55 AM
Tom had our preview of the PA-12 special election yesterday, but just a quick statistical accompaniment to that.
Here is a chart showing the Democatic share of the two-way vote (that is, excluding third parties) in all open seat (non-incumbent) House races in the 2006 and 2008 cycles. As you can see, the trend is generally fairly linear with respect to PVI:
In a district like PA-12, which has Partisan Voting Index of R+1, we'd have expected the Democrat to win by a margin of about 54-46 if conditions were the same as in 2006 and 2008. These, of course, were very good cycles for Democrats.
Here is the same information for 2004, which was a good cycle for Republicans.
Under 2004 conditions, we'd have expected the seat to go to Republicans by a margin of 52.5-47.5.
Now, this doesn't really tell us very much. As you can see from the graphs, there's quite a lot of variance around the regression lines, even if the overall trend is fairy linear. That is to say, the contingencies of individual candidates and districts matter a lot -- and this is especially so in special elections.
But if the Republican Tim Burns were to win by about 5 points, that would give us one indication that the cycle was shaping up to be more like 2004, from which the Republicans emerged with 232 House seats. And if Democrat Mark Critz were to win by, say, 8 points, that would give us one indication that the cycle was shaping up to be more like 2006 or 2008.
Of course, most people expect this November's election to wind up somewhere in between 2004 and 2006/08. And most people expect tonight's race in PA-12 to feature a very close outcome. The only point I'd emphasize is that, from a forecasting standpoint, a Crtiz win by 50.1-49.9 is essentially no different than a Burns win by the same margin. Even under 2006/08 conditions, a Democrat would have about a 30 percent chance of losing this seat, and even under 2004 conditions, he'd still have about a 40 percent chance of winning it. It's really only if one of the candidates wins by middle-to-high single digits (or more) that it might tell us something, and then not necessarily very much.
Here is a chart showing the Democatic share of the two-way vote (that is, excluding third parties) in all open seat (non-incumbent) House races in the 2006 and 2008 cycles. As you can see, the trend is generally fairly linear with respect to PVI:
In a district like PA-12, which has Partisan Voting Index of R+1, we'd have expected the Democrat to win by a margin of about 54-46 if conditions were the same as in 2006 and 2008. These, of course, were very good cycles for Democrats.
Here is the same information for 2004, which was a good cycle for Republicans.
Under 2004 conditions, we'd have expected the seat to go to Republicans by a margin of 52.5-47.5.
Now, this doesn't really tell us very much. As you can see from the graphs, there's quite a lot of variance around the regression lines, even if the overall trend is fairy linear. That is to say, the contingencies of individual candidates and districts matter a lot -- and this is especially so in special elections.
But if the Republican Tim Burns were to win by about 5 points, that would give us one indication that the cycle was shaping up to be more like 2004, from which the Republicans emerged with 232 House seats. And if Democrat Mark Critz were to win by, say, 8 points, that would give us one indication that the cycle was shaping up to be more like 2006 or 2008.
Of course, most people expect this November's election to wind up somewhere in between 2004 and 2006/08. And most people expect tonight's race in PA-12 to feature a very close outcome. The only point I'd emphasize is that, from a forecasting standpoint, a Crtiz win by 50.1-49.9 is essentially no different than a Burns win by the same margin. Even under 2006/08 conditions, a Democrat would have about a 30 percent chance of losing this seat, and even under 2004 conditions, he'd still have about a 40 percent chance of winning it. It's really only if one of the candidates wins by middle-to-high single digits (or more) that it might tell us something, and then not necessarily very much.
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