News & discussion on house and senate races

Well, heres an interesting list:

Obama, Snowe and Conrad Are Top U.S. Senators

Here, I've beautified it so that its easier to see how the Democrats and Republicans rank, and where the could-be Presidential candidates for '08 stand:

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/2523/senatorsjuly2006ux6.gif

So:

- of the 10 Senators most approved of by their constituents, 7 are Democrats, and only 3 Republicans -- and of those three, two are what conservatives like to call RINO's, Republicans In Name Only.

- of the 10 Senators least approved of by their constituents, 7 are Republicans, and only 3 Democrats.

- in fact, of the bottom-ranking 25 Senators, just 8 are Democrats, and 17 are Republicans.

George Allen, John Kerry and Bill Frist, all mentioned as Presidential hopefuls, are each less popular among their own constituents than the average US Senator.

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Quote:

Democrats: Hope for the House, and good news on the Senate
Joe Conanson has the rundown today on a new NPR poll that suggests Democrats have reason to feel bullish about their chances of taking back the House of Representatives in November. As pollster Stan Greenberg says, the results of a survey taken in the 50 most competitive House districts "suggest that in the real world where the campaigns are fighting it out for votes, Democrats are in a very strong position to hold virtually all their seats, while the Republicans could readily lose most of theirs."

"Clearly," Greenberg says, "the probability of a Democratic takeover in November is rising, and is more likely than not."

He's talking about the House of Representatives, where Democrats need to pick up 15 seats to take control from the GOP. But what about the Senate? Democrats need to pick up six seats there, and conventional wisdom says that that's going to be a tougher row to hoe.

That's almost certainly right, but a new poll -- a collection of polls, actually -- from SurveyUSA (posted above by Nimh) provides some reason for hope. SurveyUSA measured the state-by-state approval ratings of every sitting U.S. senator. Among the 10 senators with the lowest net approval ratings are four Republicans -- but no Democrats -- who are running for reelection this year. The flailing four: Montana's Conrad Burns; the bottom-of-the-barrel senator with an upside down 37-57 approval rating, Rick Santorum; Mike DeWine and Lincoln Chafee. Among the 10 highest-rated senators, there's only one who finds himself in a competitive race this year, and he's a Democrat: Ben Nelson enjoys a 68-27 percent approval rating in Nebraska, which looks awfully good compared to the president's 45-54 numbers there.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/

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A pedestrian story about the primaries in one upstate NY House district, with a particularly cheesy opening para, but - there's a bunch of interesting things in here:

Quote:

Singer John Hall targets N.Y. GOP lawmaker

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Borrowing from Blatham's source - Oh, what lovely folks they are..

But hopefully it will bring the Democrat in the race another step closer to an unlikely victory in Montana.

Quote:

Conrad Burns is on fire

Maybe Montana Sen. Conrad Burns missed this week's Harris poll, the one in which Americans say they hold firefighters in higher regard than members of any other professions. And maybe this story from the Billings Gazette helps explains why Americans hold members of Congress like Burns in such relatively low regard.

On a trip home to Montana over the weekend, Burns apparently heard complaints from some local ranchers about the way the U.S. Forest Service handled a 92,000-acre wildfire near Worden, Mont. So what did Burns do about it? He apparently contacted the Forest Service in Washington, but he also took it upon himself to berate a group of tired firefighters from Virginia he happened to meet at the Billings airport on his way home.

According to a report from a state official, Burns approached the firefighters and told them they had "done a poor job" fighting Montana's Bundy Railroad fire and "should have listened to the ranchers" who were telling them what to do. The state official said that the "toughest part" of the confrontation came when "the senator was critical of a firefighter sitting across from us in the gate area. I offered to the senator that our firefighters make around $8 to $12 an hour and time-and-a-half for overtime. He seemed a bit surprised that it wasn't higher."

Burns makes $165,200 per year as a U.S. senator. Or at least he does for now. The Jack Abramoff-scarred Republican trails Democratic challenger Jon Tester by a margin of 50 to 43 percent in the latest Rasmussen poll.

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To hypothetically win the Senate back, the Democrats might have to unseat Virginia's George Allen.

Chances of that seem rather remote, despite a high-profile challenger.

What's worse, Allen has, for now, an ample lead in the state despite Bush's numbers being in the cellar there too.

Quote:

Poll: Sen. Allen leading in Virginia

Yahoo! News
Sun Jul 30

[Incumbent] Republican Sen. George Allen has a 16-point lead over Democratic challenger Jim Webb, [a former Republican who was President Reagan's Navy secretary,] in the latest independent statewide poll, published Sunday, but a fifth of the electorate is still undecided. [..]

Allen, one of Bush's most reliable Senate allies, is preparing a 2008 presidential bid. Last year, Allen voted in support of the White House more than 95 percent of the time.

Forty-eight percent backed Allen and 32 percent supported Webb in the Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. survey of registered voters likely to vote in the Nov. 7 election. [..]

Bush's job-approval rating is low even in Virginia, [..] the poll found. Forty-three percent rated Bush's performance as good or excellent while 56 percent judged it fair or poor. [..]

Bush's low popularity is a drag on Allen, conceded Allen's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams. [..]

Allen, 54, led Webb in every region of the state except its Washington, D.C., suburbs [..]

"The bottom line is that Allen is consistently under 50 percent and that has got to hurt, being that he is a known entity in the state," said Webb spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd.

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Re Allen vs Webb in Virginia, nimh:
Mr Webb is the underdog. No doubt about that. But he did only recently win the Dem primary. He has 3 months to get some name recognition going in the rest of VA other than in the DC area where he is a known entity.
A couple points of interest in this race: Mr Allen is, as noted, very closely allied with Mr Bush most of the time. Virginia is (narrowly, perhaps) a Repub state. But they, the traditional Repubs, are drifting towards the middle faster than in some other states. Iraq is becoming an issue, both in lives lost and dollars spent. The economy is tenuous. And the traditional conservative causes: abortion, gun-rights, gay-rights, anti-flag-burning things are not quite the motivators as they used to be.
This race is, I think, going to turn out to be a bit of a referendum on Mr Bush. It will be interesting to see how often Mr Allen brings in Mr Bush to campaign for him.
As for Mr Webb, he needs to connect with folks from the rest of the state. And he needs to get the Dem party working hard for him. Former Gov Mark Warner, who is looking at a US Presidential run in 2008; former Gov Doug Wilder (our first black Gov) and above all, the young Dem activists.
I have Mr Allen with more like a 4 point lead in a very unscientific poll.

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Interesting, realjohnboy! Yes, I guess at this stage part of the polls is still mostly just an indication of name recognition, and Webb's numbers will go up as he gets around more.. but actually win? Well, one can always hope!

How does he lie with the established Dems anyway - I mean, I know he's a "newbie" in the party kinda, and there was a competitive primary - will Warner and Wilder go all out for him, or will there be reserve?

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I reckon most Dems in Virginia have no problem with Mr Webb being the candidate. He was a moderate Repub and now he is a moderate Dem. We don't have a large number of liberal Dems in VA; certainly not enough to have any impact (disclosure: I am one of them) so the liberals will vote for Mr Webb just to get rid of Mr Allen.
The problem is with how hard the Dems will fight for this. Mr Warner doesn't want to back a loser. He, in my mind, should have been the candidate against Mr Allen, but he has bigger ambitions. And Mr Wilder is an enigma. He was a very popular Gov who should have gone on to other things, but he kind of faded away. Politics and civil rights. He was positioned to make an impact. But he disappeared. Whether he got tired of it, or whether there was a skeleton in the closet (rumor), I don't know.

Finally. folks, we have about 3 months to go before the Nov elections. Nimh has been keeping this teapot simmering. Please tell us what you know about the campaigns in your parts of the country.

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Interesting, interesting. That reminds me - I was writing another post for this thread, this afternoon. Kinda goes away from the individual races and back to the overall picture again. Here it is:

Blatham wrote:

Quote:
what about the Senate? Democrats need to pick up six seats there, and conventional wisdom says that that's going to be a tougher row to hoe.

That's almost certainly right, but a new poll -- a collection of polls, actually -- from SurveyUSA (posted above by Nimh) provides some reason for hope. SurveyUSA measured the state-by-state approval ratings of every sitting U.S. senator. Among the 10 senators with the lowest net approval ratings are four Republicans -- but no Democrats -- who are running for reelection this year. The flailing four: Montana's Conrad Burns; the bottom-of-the-barrel senator with an upside down 37-57 approval rating, Rick Santorum; Mike DeWine and Lincoln Chafee.

It's definitely encouraging that the top of the Senate popularity table is overwhelmingly Democrat with a few "RINO"s mixed in, and that the bottom of the table is dominated by Republicans. I'm sceptical about the chances that this provides hope for regaining a Senate majority though.

Six seats are needed after all. That means that all the above-mentioned four need to be toppled. That alone is not so simple.

Pennsylvania's Santorum seems the easiest pick. Santorum's challenger Robert Casey is between 10 and 20 points ahead in the polls, has a fair bit of money on hand (8 million against Santorum's 14 million) and, hey, Kerry won here. This is the only race of the four that the NYT currently ranks as "leaning Democrat".

(The NYT rankings are here: 2006 Election Guide - Senate, House and Governors' Races. That's a great gizmo there, and I'll get back to it in a separate post. Lots and lots of info there - I got most of the info in this post from there too).

Burns' approval ratings, meanwhile, are down in the drain, for sure, and opinion polls currently have his Democratic challenger Jon Tester up by a bit. But it is Montana - and Burns has 6-7 times as much money at hand. The NYT ranks this race as a "toss-up".

Chafee has a precarious, but not disastrous approval rating, but seems as vulnerable as Burns, running neck and neck with his challenger Sheldon Whitehouse in the polls and actually behind in the "money race". (NYT has this race a toss-up as well.)

DeWine however seems a hard one to topple still. His approval rating (45/45) also is precarious but not yet disastrous. He has almost three times more money than his opponent (5.6 million against 2.1). And in some polls in recent months he still had up to a 10 points lead. NYT has this race still "leaning Republican".

And thats just four. Apart from not losing any of its own seats, the Democrats would then need another two.

The NYT ranks four more races as merely "leaning Republican" - uphill contests all. These, however, include Virginia's George Allen, and he still seems safe enough (see above).

They also include Arizona, and judging on the data (Republican incumbent Jon Kyl is 15 points ahead in the polls, has 7.6 million$ against Pedersen's 4.0 mil, and won the seat in a wipeout last time - plus, Bush won the state by over 10% in '04) I cant really figure out why its even ranked as anything less than "safe republican".

That leaves just two others, both of whom the Dems would thus need to win: the one against Jim Talent in Missouri and the open race for Bill Frist's seat in Tennessee.

But Talent, though in the lower ranges of popularity, isn't in crisis zone with a 49% approval rating. He was, its true, 6 points behind in a recent poll. But he already has 7.6 million$ on hand, almost three times as much as Democratic challenger McCaskill.

As for Tennessee, we dont even know who'll be the Republican contender to succeed Frist there - just that the Democrat is Harold Ford. But Frist won with a 33% margin last time, and Bush won by 14% here in '04. And according to this Zogby poll, even in the midst of Republican intrafighting, all three of the Republican contenders are equal or slightly ahead of Ford.

Finally, Bernard (yes I'm really quoting Bernard) did bring an article in the Obama thread that reminded us that, in another (semi-)Southern state, Doug Wilder did become the first black governor - but got 10% less in the actual vote than the polls had predicted, a divergence explained as "racial slippage". That seems a credible enough part-explanation to me, and might well affect Ford too (though perhaps to a lesser extent because of his family's tradtional state-wide prominence?).

All in all - I can see the Dems winning anything between 1 and 4 Senate seats - but six? Considering all the above, that still seems a big stretch, even with the Survey USA approval numbers in hand..

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realjohnboy wrote:

Nimh has been keeping this [thread] simmering.

Simmering? I'm afraid I may have OD'd it Razz

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I thought I'd pace my posts a bit, so as to give others as well as rjb the chance to interject and not wholly flush the thread with my stuff.. didnt work.. anyhow, this was the other post that I wrote yesterday still. Fascinating stuff, I found:

------------------------

I mentioned NYT rankings. Only just found these this weekend. Oh my!! A political nerd's walhalla. Look here:
2006 Election Guide - Senate, House and Governors' Races.

Maps, maps, maps. First you get the overview of how the NYT ranks the various Senate, House and Governors' races this November. Interesting. But you can do far more than that, too.

First of all, with the '04 maps we were swapping about on the "If you were a bookie" thread in mind, there's the nicety that for the Senate or Governor's race, you can choose whether to view a map shaped by "geography" or by "population" (buttons to the east of South Carolina) - depending on whether you consider people or square miles more important. (For the House, the "population" setting is standard).

Then, the menu on the right gives you the opportunity to get an immediate overview of where the open races are, or where the Dems or Reps last time had a narrow, proper or ample margin of victory. Or where the close races are.

Politics and US demographics

But what's more: you can also immediately get an overview of where the poor or rich districts are. And when it comes to House races, also which ones are urban and rural. Or which ones are majority black, Hispanic or white.

Plus, you can mix and match. Thump a few check boxes, for example, and you'll get only the poor, white, rural Democratic House districts. And yes, there are still some, as it turns out. In fact, of the 8 districts listed as poor, white and rural, five are still Democrat. You can also see how they are at risk though: of the five, two had gone for Bush in the presidentials in both 2000 and 2004 - and three had switched from Dem to Bush just in '04. The take-over is still under way.

Mixing and matching, for example, shows that the poorest districts in the country are primarily those eight white, rural communities, all in the South or Appalacheans, and eight urban and sub- or semi-urban Hispanic communities in NY, California and Texas. There's a smaller smatterling of (semi-)rural black communities in the South - but only three black, urban districts (in Philly, New Orleans and central Florida). Whereas that is still, I think, the kind of place your average European will conjure up when he thinks of poverty in the US. The face of the US poor are a far match from the movie prototype.

Meanwhile, the richest districts include almost, though not quite, as many safe Democratic (39) as safe Republican (46) seats.

Another interesting mix/match experiment on where the rich and poor of the US live is to go to the Senate page. There you can not only select on median income, but also on poverty rate. Which makes it possible to discover which states are the most egalitarian-minded - and in which states the contrast between rich and poor is starkest.

I.e.: states that have a low or average median income, and yet a low poverty rate, are relatively egalitarian: people dont have much, but they've spread it fairly (or evenly) enough. There's four of those: America's only social-democratic oriented state, Vermont - and Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming out west. A state with a high or average median income, and yet a high poverty rate, on the other hand, showcases starker contrasts: and that's Texas.

The Republican map

There's other things that show up on the map. For example re the vulnerable Republican House seats.

Select all seats that are currently Republican. 194 of 'em are listed as safe to hold. 25 are merely leaning Republican this time, and 12 are ranked toss-ups. The 37 leaning and toss-up seats are thus a small minority - 5 out of 6 Republican seats are safe. But they are strongly concentrated. 14 of 'em are in the northeast - counting from Pennsylvania and New Jersey up. Which is where there are fewest Republicans already.

The effect is this. Imagine the Democrats score a 1994-type sweeping victory, and win all the seats that are currently ranked leaning Republican or tossup. In that case, the number of Republican House Reps from NY and New England would be reduced from 14 to just 5. Throw in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and their number would drop from 42 to 18. Still fewer than there'd be Republican House Reps left from Texas alone (20).

This would have a paradoxical impact. The larger the Democratic sweep (if any) this November, the more the message would be, you'd expect: people dont like what the Republican Party has turned into. Turn it back! But it's exactly those remaining old-fashioned, moderate Northeastern Republicans who'd be able to take the lead in doing so, who would be wiped out in such a sweep - unlike their evangelical counterparts in the South or Midwest. So - generalising - the more the message of defeat would resound, the fewer Republicans would be left who'd be amenable to hearing it. It would be up to the libertarian streak of Western Republicans to take it up.

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Pennsylvania Republicans...as green as the driven snow

Quote:

Republicans Sponsor Green Candidate in PA Senate Race
By Paul Kiel - August 1, 2006, 3:31 PM
It's worse than we knew. Is the Green Party candidacy in the race for Rick Santorum's seat a wholly Republican sponsored affair?

As reported today by the AP and the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Green Party managed to get their candidate Carl Romanelli on the ballot with a costly petition drive, which was mostly funded by contributors who had also given to Rick Santorum's campaign. The party raised $66,000 for the effort, all of which they spent on a private company to collect signatures. TPMmuckraker was able to establish that at least $55,000 of that came from conservatives.

Virginia Davis, Santorum's spokeswoman, told the Inquirer that their office had encouraged the contributions. Why? Because a challenge from the left is seen as a liability for the Dem candidate, Bob Casey.

The $66,000 came from twenty donors, in contributions ranging from $1,000 to $5,000. None of the donors have a history of giving to the Green Party.

The Inquirer reported that $40,000 came from donors who either had given to Santorum's campaign or lived at the same address as a Santorum supporter. But even more than that came from Republicans. That raises the question whether any of the $66,000 - which comprises the total sum collected by both the local Green Party and Romanelli (with the exception of his $30 contribution) this election cycle - came from actual supporters of the Green Party.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001247.php

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Rep Tom Delay (Repub-Tx) won his primary election. Then, as yall know, he got caught up in the Abramoff affair. He annouced that he was going to quit the House and move from Texas to (gasp) Virginia. The Repubs in TX wanted to replace him on the ballot for the Nov election with someone else. No, said the Dems. They won today as a three-judge panel ruled that Delay must remain on the ballot. There are a couple of more appeal opportunities available to the Repubs, but time is running short.

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It's looking really bad for the Republicans this Fall.............

[size=7](Read to the end)[/size]

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realjohnboy wrote:

Rep Tom Delay (Repub-Tx) won his primary election. Then, as yall know, he got caught up in the Abramoff affair. He annouced that he was going to quit the House and move from Texas to (gasp) Virginia. The Repubs in TX wanted to replace him on the ballot for the Nov election with someone else. No, said the Dems. They won today as a three-judge panel ruled that Delay must remain on the ballot. There are a couple of more appeal opportunities available to the Repubs, but time is running short.

If the appeal is turned down, he'll probably win. Sugar Land is a very Republican district and I can't imagine a Dem winning there.

BTW, all 3 of those judges are Democrats. Two appointed by Clinton and one by Dubya's dad.

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SierraSong wrote:

If the appeal is turned down, he'll probably win. Sugar Land is a very Republican district and I can't imagine a Dem winning there.

Oh, really? Then how come the last time DeLay ran there, with no scandals coming out and at the height of his power, he only got 55% of the vote?

Considering the general election trends this year, with all polls showing people leaning Democratic, and DeLay's personal situation, that seat is absolutely vulnerable.

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kelticwizard wrote:

SierraSong wrote:
If the appeal is turned down, he'll probably win. Sugar Land is a very Republican district and I can't imagine a Dem winning there.

Oh, really? Then how come the last time DeLay ran there, with no scandals coming out and at the height of his power, he only got 55% of the vote?

I've heard two reasons. One - voter-malaise for Delay since he's represented the district for over 20 years. Two - the district being redrawn (by him) in 2003 to include more of Harris County, the Clearlake area (NASA) and part of Galveston County (very Democratic).

kelticwizard wrote:

Considering the general election trends this year, with all polls showing people leaning Democratic, and DeLay's personal situation, that seat is absolutely vulnerable.

Yeah, the polls. So, where's President Kerry? Laughing

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The polls did not show that Kerry was going to win. It showed a nip and tuck race throughout the summer, with Bush being slightly ahead more often.

The popular vote margin was 2%, so the polls were pretty accurate on that score.

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SierraSong wrote:

I've heard two reasons. One - voter-malaise for Delay since he's represented the district for over 20 years.

They did not have to turn out for DeLay. 2004 was presidential election year with your own former governor heading the ballot. All they had to do was pull the lever for DeLay while they were in there voting for Bush.

SierraSong wrote:

Two - the district being redrawn (by him) in 2003 to include more of Harris County, the Clearlake area (NASA) and part of Galveston County (very Democratic).

Probably true. And those parts of other counties are still part of his election district, which combined with the general Democratic trend this year, plus "Mug Shot" DeLay's own problems, means the seat is vulnerable.

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His 'problems' were well known prior to this year's primary and all I can tell you is that my neighborhood as well as many others in his district were a virtual sea of Delay yardsigns.

We'll have to wait until November to know for sure, but I'm thinking that despite what the polls show, he'll get a percentage of 'sympathy' votes - especially on this latest shenanigan of the Dems in insisting his name remain on the ballot.

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