Lieberman has confirmed once again that he’d be back in the Dem fold if he wins. The CT GOP is pushing hard for him, not their own nominee - wouldn’t it be a hoot if he were the winner who put the Dems over the top?
www.electoral-vote.com has a broader base of polls, including Rasmussen, is updated daily, and doesn’t go mealymouthed about that “within the margin of error” crap like most polls do (they show a 50-49 Dem Senate today, Tennessee tied). www.electionprojection.com has different polls but is much more, well, leisurely about updates.
Opinion polls and all that notwithstanding I think the icumbent edge and the Gerrymandering that the Republicans have done, as in Texas, mean that there still is only a slim chance that the Democrats will take back Congress. Maybe the House but even that is no sure thing.
There is the “Yes congress stinks but my guy is the exception.” There is the matter of turnout. Republicans have developed a “turnout machine” that is effective as hell. Democrats seem to rely on a sense of civic duty. Not that many peiople vote in off-year elections and a determined effort to get your people to vote is vital.
So those of you who are fed up with a congress that supinely waves through whatever the president says to do, get the hell to the polls and vote.
I have noticed a very interesting (to me) thing in this election.
I have lived in an exurban county near Cleveland for 23 years. When I first moved here, it was pretty much a Republican stronghold, except for a few Democrats who had been elected before the Reagan Revolution who had not yet been turned out of office. In the ensuing two decades, I have seen every single Democrat (except the Sheriff, against whom the Republicans kept running incompetent boobs) thrown out, to the point where i cannot name a single Democrat for any township, county, state, or federal office (aside from the sheriff) in any nearby district.
However, this year, the Democrat yard signs are everywhere. In the last three weeks, I have seen exactly eight signs for Republican candidates, only three in a person’s yard (the others have been out on the public domain lawns alongside the freeway entrance). On the other hand, Democrat signs line every road on which I drive.
Now this is nothing resembling a scientific poll and it may simply reflect the ability of the Democrats in my county to get signs printed and distributed before the Republicans, but in 20+ years, I have NEVER seen this sort of support for Democrats–especially at every level of government.
Whether this is a unique phenomemon to my neighborhood or something else, I have no idea, but it is more than surprising to see what appears to be a complete reversal of over 20 years of voting trends (as indicated by the unscientific process of noting yard signs).
The Republican turnout machine may not work so well if the response they get is “ah, go molest a page.” The Times published a fascinating poll of Ohio. Only 30% of Republicans vs 55% of Democrats are more enthusiastic about voting in this election than the last one. 41 vs 21% were less excited. Only 27% considered the Republicans better qualified to create jobs vs 54% for the Democrats. Democrats lead Republicans overall for Congressional support 50% - 32%. And Blackwell looks like dead meat - Strickland is ahead 53 - 29%. DeWine is down 48% - 34%.
Nothing would make me happier than that this election be such a blowout that the radicals now controlling the Republican party would disappear never to rise again.
These are all polls and they are encouraging. However I wonder if those Republicans will still not vote after they are telephoned or visited the day before the election by the preacher urging them to vote. Here again, are these polls weighted as to the number of respondents who have a long record of actually voting, or are they merely registered voters or those of voting age? I know that polsters are presumed to be competent but are they?
The polls generally specify whether their universe is registered voters, or whether they’re screening for likely voters. I’ve read in a number of places that this election has made it a lot harder for the pollsters to figure out who to screen for.
Krugman recently drew an analogy between this election and Katrina. The GOP has levees of money for negative ads, their state-of-the-art GOTV operation, gerrymandered districts, and (in many places) control of the electoral machinery (see Blackwell, Kenneth; Harris, Katherine). And the Dems have this flood tide of anti-GOP sentiment. If it tops the levees, we could see 40-50 Dem pickups. If not, they’ll probably still take the House, but by only a slight margin.
A number of Dem strategists (Carville, Stan Greenberg) are urging the party to beg or borrow $5-10M and dump it into the second- and third-tier House pickup opportunities. Take $10M and divide it over the 21st through 60th-best pickup chances, and that’s 250K per race. Chris Bowers of MyDD points out that the 45 unopposed House Dems are sitting on a pile of $26M in campaign cash on hand (and that’s just the House; needless to say, a bunch of Senators have nice war chests too), much of which should go to the fray.
I agree. This is a rare opportunity to take advantage of a tide in public sentiment that the Dems did little to create, but they can harness. The Democratic Party needs to put every dollar it can scrounge up into the game. You don’t want to come away from this election, having not done so, and have a bunch of House seats that you came within a thousand votes of winning, but didn’t.
According to a (Warning: big PDF) recent NPR poll, the Dems have an overall 48-44% advantage in the 38 most vulnerable GOP-held House seats, on a named ballot. (pp. 3,16 of the PDF.) That is, “If the election for United States Congress were being held today, for whom would you vote, [name of Republican candidate] or [name of Democratic candidate]?”
The Dems do have a GOTV effort, but it’s not nearly as sophisticated and thorough as the GOP’s, no question about it.
In fairness, most GOP candidates do not, either, (and it has not yet been established that the candidate actually participated in this nonsense, although the hints are running that direction).
True, but there do seem to have been an abundance of voter-suppression tactics aimed especially at minority voters (who generally vote Dem) in the past few cycles. The most famous is Florida’s purge of ‘felons’ from its voter rolls in 2000, but only slightly less well-known were the shortages of voter machines (and resulting hours-long lines) in inner-city precincts in Ohio in 2004. Various scare letters were floated that year implying that if you were in any trouble with the law, they’d be waiting to nab you at the polls. I’m sure other posters here can remember other techniques.
That is fair, tom, especially since I found a follow-up article on MSNBC’s website that says that the California Republican Party is demanding that the candidate suspected to be behind the mailing step down.
Now the forecast maps are turning bluer by the day. Now I’m thinking the Senate will wind up 51-49 in Democratic hands and the House could go as high as 235-200 in favor of the Dems. I’m not celebrating yet. Elections for Democrats lately have been like the the old Peanuts comics where the Democrats are Charlie Brown, Karl Rove is Lucy, and the election is the football. Every year old Charlie is going to kick that football to the moon and every year Lucy pulls it away at the last second.
Dems might lose Jersey. I’m thinking 50-50 even, counting Lieberman on the Dem side is more likely. House? 230 is stretching it, I think. More like 225-227.
Provided nothing else explodes. It might. We got a few weeks left.
This is not an indictment of the Republican party (they immediately condemned the letters). It may be an indication of the sort of hubris and mentality that the Republican party is attracting these days.
Alec Baldwin is a self-proclaimed wingnut. McCain is a frontrunner for presidential candidate. Don’t get me wrong, I like McCain but he seems to be going the extra mile to appear partisan these days.