I would expect a lot of people to have misunderstood that question. Not sure I’d count it.
Yeah, I misread that.
Here’s the wording of the question, “Do you support or oppose a ban on the ability to obtain an abortion in Pennsylvania?” That is… less than ideal.
We can use the polls from the Alabama special election to help us place this poll into a context.
Polls in the run up were all over the place, with some showing Moore up 9 and some showing Jones up 10, but according to 538 they fell in groups. The polling houses mostly relying on interactive voice responses (“automated scripts”/“robocalls”) showed Moore strongly up and those doing traditional live calling showed it tied to Jones up.
Gravis is an automated script polling approach with some cell phone panel augmentation.
Lots of possible reasons that automated script polling did so poorly in a spacial election context but of the ones he listed the most pertinent might be this:
Relying heavily on models of turnout based on partisan identification developed likely from experience in past midterms may not be the best way to go this time.
But it could be and it is the baseline we have. I’m still betting that the race will be within 2% ether way.
I almost forgot what this thread was about; I asked a mod to add PA March 2018 to the title to clarify.
Anyway, the reason I found it was because I almost started a new thread because Trump has now started flouncing his way into the race:
“We’re going to fill up a stadium”, he said. Let’s see if that happens.
Why might the White House insist, despite what Trump says?
And there’s no subtlety at all to how he thinks people should be grateful for the pittance they’re getting from the GOP tax plan:
So: a stadium rally is promised; let’s see if that happens and let’s see if Saccone wins with Trump’s help.
It would be another ominous sign for the GOP if they were to lose this race. They’re not just losing the middle ground; they’re starting to lose districts and races they’ve had in the bag for years.
What’s interesting to me is, if you actually look at what the Republicans have done since Trump got elected, they’re actually delivering the goods for their base of voters. They passed tax cuts for the wealthy. Whether we want to accept it or not, they’ve actually wounded Obamacare pretty badly even without a straight repeal. They’ve put a hard-line conservative on the bench and they’re starting to fill vacancies in the judiciary with other hard-liners. They’re delivering, and yet they’re in obvious peril now. It seems that the most likely explanation is that they’re losing the very culture war that they have started - at least at the moment. More and more people just don’t like Republicans and can’t wait to vote them out.
The period right now reminds me in a lot of ways of the mood before the 1994 Republican landslide. Those who participated in that election just didn’t like the Clintons and what they also perceived as in-your-face liberalism of Democrats, and they made damn sure they got out to make that clear. I sense that this could be going in the other direction.
Their actual positions are losing long-term, not just at the moment. Their only hope on that front is to shift to the left on social positions, most likely with a new batch of Gen-X and older Millenial candidates who don’t care too much about classic race-baiting and homophobic arguments and stick to the “lol librul tears” and “omg mexican rapist” memes on the social front while delivering low taxes to get the votes.
The feedback loop makes this almost impossible for them. The “we hate everybody who doesn’t look and talk like us” crowd dominates GOP primaries in most of the country. And this November, whatever the size of the Dem wave, the House GOP delegation is going to, more than ever, represent rural areas, smaller cities and towns, and the very outer suburbs/exurbs of the big cities. Same thing is likely to be true of state legislatures around the country, too. You have a party that’s unable to break away from its Trumpian constituency now, and will be even further into that bind ten months from now. They’ll be more overtly racist, xenophobic, hateful and intolerant on account of that, and the negative feedback loop will continue. It’s hard to see where it stops.
I really do think that IF the Dems, once they get power, actually start delivering positive results in a big way, we’ll be more likely to see the Republican party shrink to the point where the Dems can essentially turn themselves into a two-party system, where the party formally or informally breaks into a centrist wing/party and a liberal wing/party, and essentially squeezes the GOP out of the action.
It’s a big IF, though. Short run, they’ll have to get rid of the filibuster so they can accomplish good stuff - a higher minimum wage, a easier-to-use universal health care system, improved labor rights, voting rights, easily affordable college, etc. If they’ve got the guts to do that, they’re gonna be cooking with gas. If they let a GOP Congressional minority handcuff them, then it’ll be back to the same old cycle.
Top line:
Conor Lamb … 38%
Rick Saccone … 41
(VOL) Undecided … 21
Also of relevance:
Conor Lamb: positive 19; negative 10; neutral 16; never heard of 55
Rick Saccone: positive 28; negative 17; neutral 20; never heard of 35
Methodology traditional live calling: “The survey was conducted January 18-19, 2018 consisting of 384 random district voters using landline and cell phones. The margin of error is + 5 percentage points” Focus seemed more on train service than on the special election.
So a live calling poll now has it a statistical dead heat with more having as yet never heard of Lamb than having any opinion of him at all, positive, negative, or neutral.
Not sure how deep the polling is going to be for this one but so far it is indeed following the Alabama script with robocall strong R and live call essentially tied. Big difference is the lack of recognition of Lamb at all. How will that play out?
Some interesting stuff:
And in an interesting twist, a Paul Ryan-aligned PAC is trying to use Conor Lamb’s support for gun rights against him.
The election is March 13. Trump will be in town supporting Saccone on March 10. It’ll be interesting to see which way that moves the needle - if there’s still support for Trump himself it may help but that doesn’t look like a sure thing at all given previous contests, and having Trump in the local news just before the election will likely drive more people to the polls on both sides. It could ultimately prove a windfall for Lamb, ironically, if the visit gives him more name recognition due to news coverage and gets the anti-Trump voters out in larger numbers.
New Emerson poll that was in the field March 1-3.
In reaction to this poll’s release the related PredictIt market now has Lamb as the favorite.
I think that is a bit of an overreaction to one poll, but when data is sparse that is bound to happen.
I’ll also add that ‘Republican Yes’ in the market I linked to above is a crazy bargain at $0.45. With Trump’s PA trip and steel tariff stuff that may play well in the area, I’m pretty sure this market has another flip in it before election day. Mind you, I’m not predicting a Saccone win. I’m just saying ‘Republican Yes’ is likely to swing the other way in the next week or so.
They may be trying to measure momentum, too.
Still, it’s a good indicator for Lamb eight days prior to E-Day. Are they doing early voting in the district and if so, is there any info on that?
Pennsylvania does not have any early voting, I believe.
No early voting in PA.
It’ll be interesting to see if the recent redistricting impacts the race. It seems like the district became a little more democratic-leaning, but ironically, Lamb is no longer a resident and will have to move if he wants to keep the seat in 2020 (if he wins of course, which is still not a given). Saccone and his right wing attack dogs did a lot of early negative campaigning earlier in the cycle, but the Dems have been pouring money into this race lately.
Trump’s tariff tiff plays wellwith many Blue collar voters in that district. Lamb and Saccone both support protectionism in this case but still Trump taking some action that is perceived by the voters there as protecting their jobs may blunt some of the regional working class buyers’ regret on Trump and thus on Saccone who positions himself as strongly attached to him.
If this wasn’t Trump we are talking about I’d think it might be intentional to support Saccone in this race and to be walked back later … but he’s not wily enough for that.
How does PA redistricting play here? I assume that the winner of this special election would have to enter a race in one of the newly a configured districts (assuming SW PA has been redrawn significantly similar to SE and Central PA). I live in central PA and I know redistricting is messing with some R reps’ plans.
If Lamb wins, he’ll have to move into the district by November as his current home was re-districted out of it.
Sounds like the GOP is sweating. Politico: Republicans trash their candidate in Pa. special election
That being said…
Yes, there is an election for the new, non-gerrymandered and thus less GOP-advantaged, district 18 in November. Currently neither Lamb nor Saccone apparently live in what will be PA-18 and whatever the result each may decide to run in different districts in November. Lamb in the newly drawn PA-17, considered more favorable for a Democrat, and Saccone in PA-14, now even more safely R than it had been. Not sure what then happens to Cartwright (D) who represents current PA-17 and where he lives relative to the new lines. Maybe a contested primary on short notice?
If Lamb runs in PA-17 in November anyone with any ideas of who would step up to run in the reconfigured PA-18?
GOP national has spent a lot for something that really now is only about optics. Even assuming Saccone squeaks by not so sure the optics play well.
For what it’s worth I believe there is no requirement for a Congressman to live in the district he represents, only within that state.