Get yer polls, bets, numbers & pretty graphs! Elections 2008

Portents: Democrats Pick Up Illinois 14

U.S. House - District 14 - Special General
Illinois - 548 of 568 Precincts Reporting - 96%
Bill Foster (D) 49,488 52% (Winner)
Jim Oberweis (R) 44,888 48%

The DCCC is spinning this as the first evidence that 2008 will be a banner year for Democratic pick-ups in the House and further evidence that Republicans are losing their grips on exurban districts in the Midwest.

Democrat Bill Foster was by no means an ideal candidate, and Republican Jim Oberweis ran a dastardly campaign. But the dynamics of the district in the far western suburbs of Chicago should have favored even a poorly-campaigning Republican, and yet... Note that Barack Obama taped an ad for Foster and John McCain campaigned for Oberweis. Republicans spent millions to hold the seat.

A senior Republican official tonight called the loss a "disaster." [..]

Dems Take Old Hastert Seat

The AP has called the race in the Illinois 14th for Democrat Bill Foster. With more than 96% of precincts reporting, Foster has a 52-48 lead over big-spending GOP candidate Jim Oberweis.

Think Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) is having fun yet as chairman of the NRCC?

Since taking over the NRCC after the 2006 midterms, he's struggled to compete with the DCCC financially, faced an ugly embezzlement scandal within the NRCC, and now lost the seat held by the last Republican Speaker of the House.

As I hinted at the other day, this race recalls Hastert's fall from power, the Mark Foley scandal and the general debacle of the last GOP Congress. In some ways it's the coda to the 2006 elections. But on the other hand, you've got a Democrat winning in a special election in a Republican district against a well-funded opponent untainted by scandal. So last hurrah of 2006 -- or prelude to 2008?

By the way, we'll do this all over again in November. Foster has won the right to fill the seat for the remainder of Hastert's term, when he'll face Oberweiss again. Both men have already won their parties' nominations for the general election. [..]

IL-14: How Bad Is it for the GOP?

The election to fill former Speaker Denny Hastert's vacant seat is today.

As we reported this week, the race for what has been a normally safe Republican seat is going so badly for the GOP that the National Republican Congressional Committee -- which is already struggling to keep up financially with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- has been forced to spend more than $1 million to keep the seat in the R column.

The race is so tight that the NRCC yesterday emailed congressional staff on the Hill asking them to send any of their spare interns over to the RNC to do phone-banking for the GOP candidate, The Hill reports. [..]

Interesting!

I remember Oberweis -- I voted against him before I moved. He (or his family) owned a local dairy that made (er, harvested?) really good milk and delivered, too (glass bottles and everything), but he was a dork.

The Caucus
March 8, 2008

On Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing talk radio host, was triumphant. Well, as triumphant as someone who claims "we're already screwed" can be. Elsewhere, supporters of Senator Barack Obama were writing and calling other forums, including The Caucus, asking about the effect of Mr. Limbaugh's decree to listeners on the results in Texas and Ohio.

Though hardly admirers of Senator John McCain, Mr. Limbaugh and other conservative talk show hosts are even less enthusiastic about a Democrat in the White House. So they asked Republicans to vote in the Democratic primaries (Texas's primaries were open, and in Ohio, voters could change their registration at the polls) for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Limbaugh explained his plan to listeners on Monday, the day before the primary:

The strategy is to continue the chaos in this party. Look, there's a reason for this. Our side isn't going to do this. Obama needs to be bloodied up. Look, half the country already hates Hillary. That's good. But nobody hates Obama yet. Hillary is going to be the one to have to bloody him up politically because our side isn't going to do it. Mark my words. It's about winning, folks!

"We're already screwed: Vote Hillary!" his Web site proclaims.

On Wednesday's show, after Mrs. Clinton won in Texas and Ohio, Mr. Limbaugh proclaimed victory. However, there is little to suggest that he successfully drove enough Republicans to vote strategically to impact the outcome.

"There's just not a lot of evidence, when you start looking at the data, that there's a lot of this sort of behavior in presidential primaries," said Michael McDonald, an associate professor at George Mason University who studies voter turnout.

Mr. Obama actually won among Texas Republicans, who made up nearly twice as much of the voters in the Democratic primary as they did in 2004, at 9 percent, and 53 percent of them went for Mr. Obama, according to voter surveys by Edison/Mitofsky. In Ohio, where Republicans participated at similarly increased rates in the Democratic contest, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama both received 49 percent of the G.O.P. vote.

Mrs. Clinton won the Ohio primary 54.3 percent to Mr. Obama's 44 percent, and she took the Texas vote with 50.9 percent to 47.4 percent.
The Republican vote was "definitely not determinative of whether or not Clinton won those states," said Professor McDonald. He added that the effect of Republican voters could have added "maybe a percentage point or two" to Mrs. Clinton's total.

Of the states with open or semi-open primaries, Mr. Obama has generally won among Republicans handily. Only in Alabama, on Feb. 5, did Mrs. Clinton win among Republicans, who made up 5 percent of the voters, by a margin of 52 to 45 percent - but Mr. Obama won the primary there overall. Ultimately, Mr. Obama's success with Republicans tends to correlate with his fortunes among other groups.

The voter polls do not give many clues about voters' motivation, so it is difficult to determine exactly why Republicans voted for either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama. Even though, by March 4, the Republican presidential race was all but decided, there were down-ballot races in both Ohio and Texas, giving Republicans other reasons to vote in their own primaries. [..]

Look, half the country already hates Hillary. That's good. But nobody hates Obama yet.

All Victories Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

[The] maps from SurveyUSA don't really give you the full picture. While Ezra notes the final electoral college margins are similar, the margin-of victory in individual states is not. Here's a better look:





Chris Bowers notes that Barack Obama clearly has both a larger base and more potential swing states. To get to 270, Obama simply needs to defend New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, while picking up Ohio, Florida, or two more medium-sized states like Iowa and Virginia. Hillary Clinton has to play defense in the same places, but she also has to spend time and energy defending the Northwest and the Upper Midwest in a way that Barack Obama does not. Her only real pickup opportunities are Ohio, Florida, West Virginia, Arkansas, Iowa, and Missouri. Obama has Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Texas. Okay, even I don't believe he has a shot at all of those states, but he has a much better chance there than Clinton does in Mississippi or Kentucky or Oklahoma.

In addition, in the states with the ten most competitive Senate races, Obama does better than Clinton in eight of them; only Kentucky and Louisiana are better for Clinton (and, seriously, if Mary Landrieu can't win 25% of the white vote in Louisiana, she's got bigger problems). There's also the third tier of Senate races, in places like North Carolina, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota (that's a defense), Texas, and Idaho, where Obama does better in four of five and ties Clinton in the fifth. Should Rick Noriega or Scott Kleeb catch lightning in a bottle, it would be better to have Obama at the top of the ticket. Put Tom Daschle or Ed Rendell as VP and he'll be unstoppable.

At the moment, Barack Obama is the better general election nominee. Period. Full stop. He will have to spend less time defending blue states. He's competitive in a larger number of red states. And he's more competitive in states that have Senate elections. Barack Obama: because this is the year to bust the map wide open.

The Barack Obama Shift





This map shows the "Krugman Number

Hillary won everywhere except for the big cities of Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnatti, true. (Including Toledo, Akron, and all the countryside.)

Moreover, now that I look at the data in more detail, it turns out that it wasn the Northeast that Hillary did the very best in, but the South and Southeast. The parts of the state that border Kentucky and West-Virginia. No surprise, really, I suppose. (Kentucky is polling as one of the most Hillary-friendly/Obama-unfriendly states in the union, at least in terms of how both candidates match up against McCain. Little polling is available for West-Virginia, but as one of the poorest states in the union with a culturally distinctly conservative outlook, it should be Hillary central in a race versus Obama).

In the counties bordering Indiana she scored much more modest wins, on the other hand.

Here's a map (improvised in Photoshop) showing how large a lead Hillary had by county:





Light blue means she got 50-60% of the vote. One shade darker means she got 60-70% of the vote - which basically already comes down to a thumpin 2:1 victory over Obama. Dark blue means she got 70-80%, meaning a 3:1 win. And in those two counties in the very South that are very dark blue, she actually got 80-81% of the vote.

<snipped>

Hillary's Scotch-Irish advantage

March 06, 2008

Patrick Ottenhoff has a smart note on my post yesterday noting Hillary's strength in Southeast Ohio along the West Virginia line.

Clinton, Ottenhoff notes, has done well in Appalachian counties in Virginia and Tennessee, too.

I'd actually take it a step further.

She seems to perform very well in historically Scotch-Irish areas. And, no, that is not just a euphemism for white folks. For explanations of who these people are, consult Rick Bragg and Jim Webb.

Then take a look at a county-by-county map of the results in Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama.

Her success tends to mirror the population centers of those of Scotch-Irish ancestry who settled in the more mountainous parts of the east and south.

Yes, they tend to be the whitest part of each state, too. But Obama's success in rural Wisconsin underscores that he can appeal to the right sort of blue-collar white voter (say, those in the Upper Midwest with Scandinavian roots).

But Clinton's strength in the highlands is undeniable. Which is why she'll do well in Pennsylvania on April 22 and then very well in West Virginia and Kentucky on May 13. And in between, she'll probably win every county in North Carolina west of Winston-Salem and Charlotte (except possibly in Buncombe, home to bohemian Asheville).

The one thing 2008 has shown is that one election in one state does not prove a trend. In fact, there has been no national trend this entire election season. The presidential election is evidence of that. The Democratic candidates are trading election victories from week to week and the nomination could hinge on a few news cycles. The one message coming out of 2008 so far is that what happens today is not a bellwether of what happens this fall.

For the past week Clinton and Obama had been neck and neck in national Democratic support, but preferences have now returned to where they stood in late February when Gallup Poll Daily tracking found Obama consistently ahead by a 5- to 8-point margin.

This comeback for Obama started prior to his victory in the Wyoming caucuses on Saturday, March 8, thus blunting Clinton's winning streak coming off of the March 4 primaries. Obama has led Clinton on each of the individual days included in today's three-day rolling average, from March 7-9. -- Lydia Saad

A staggering 16,000-plus Republicans in Cuyahoga County switched parties when they voted in last week's primary.

That includes 931 in Rocky River, 1,027 in Westlake and 1,142 in Strongsville. More than a third of the Republicans in Solon and Bay Village switched. Pepper Pike had the most dramatic change: just under half its Republicans became Democrats. And some of those who changed - it's difficult to say how many - could be in trouble with the law.

At least one member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections wants to investigate some Republicans who may have crossed party lines only to influence which Democrat would face presumed Republican nominee John McCain in November.

Those who crossed lines were supposed to sign a pledge card vowing allegiance to their new party.

In Cuyahoga County, dozens and dozens of Republicans scribbled addendums onto their pledges as new Democrats:

"For one day only."

"I don't believe in abortion."

A Plain Dealer review of thousands of records showed few of those who switched were challenged by poll workers.

Sandy McNair, a Democratic member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said Friday that the manipulation of the system was troublesome.

"It's something that concerns me, that I think needs to be looked at further," McNair said. "This is not a structural thing by the Republican Party. If it's a problem at all, it's on an individual level."

Lying on the pledge is a felony, punishable by six to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Nimh,

Thought you'd be interested in this since it could skew your charts a bit.

I saw these two graphs next to each other and they demonstrate one thing very clearly: If you're a candidate, you really want Pollster.com to decide orange is your color.

From here

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/10/124713/858/367/473573

Cyclo, does that worst case scenario include Michigan and Florida?