MAINSTREAM media pundits may be pushing the gop / tea-bagger win in this election, but then there is this to consider from +AlterNet. Maybe the Democratic GOTV ground game will surprise everyone, or maybe it will all be for naught because with everyone calling for the gop / tea-baggers to take the Senate Democratic voters will just get discouraged and just stay home. I hope not, and we will know by tomorrow night just how much Steven Rosenfeld knows about American politics compared to +FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver.....
The time has come in 2014’s midterm elections to stop looking at
polls and start looking at actual voter turnout figures—from absentee
ballots already mailed in to early in-person voting. Those preliminary
results reveal that many tightly contested U.S. Senate races are far too
close to call.
National outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are predicting that Republicans will emerge with a Senate majority once all the ballots are counted. But one of the nation’s best-respected voter-turnout experts, Michael P. McDonald of the University of Florida, says not so fast—and explains why.
In key states where the national media has reported that Republican Senate candidates have an early lead—such as in Iowa and Colorado—the momentum is now shifting to Democrat voters, McDonald said, in a detailed analysis that essentially said that Republicans have been voting earlier than Democrats but are seeing their numbers eroded by the escalating Democratic turnout.
“The Republican sweep screaming in the headlines is overblown,” he wrote. “Senate control is up for grabs and Democrats have a decent chance to defy the polls. I expect that the election will be so close that we won’t know who won until all ballots are counted and the vote is certified several days following the election, not to mention highly probable run-off elections in Georgia and Louisiana.”
Let’s go through some of the key states and compare what McDonald is adding to the mainstream media analysis, as typified in Associated Press reports.
Iowa
The AP says that both parties have increased their early voting turnout from 2010, with more Republicans voting early than Democrats—21,200 to 8,500. That boosts confidence in the GOP Senate nominee, Joni Ernst. McDonald said that as of last Thursday, there were 367,000 mail-in ballots that had been returned, leaving 111,000 still out there. Iowa also is an Election Day registration state, where people can decide to go vote at the last minute and do so.
“There are two reasons why Iowa may end in overtime,” he said. “First, there are the unreturned mail ballots. The number of outstanding ballots will decrease by Election Day, but there will still likely be thousands of ballots in the mail when the vote is tabulated on election night. If the election margin is within a few thousand votes, the media may not call the election pending the disposition of these ballots.”
In other words, Ernst’s perceived early lead is going to keep shrinking. Whether that enables Democratic Congressman Bruce Braley to win is an open question. But if the margin is under 1,000 votes, you can expect a tough legal fight over qualifying provisional ballots and possibly Election Day registrants.
Colorado
Colorado has a new voting system that the national media doesn’t quite understand. Before this year’s election, the state identified all legal eligible voters and encouraged them to register, and it also sent mail-in ballots to every registered voter. As in Iowa, Republicans have always been more organized than Democrats with getting their absentee ballot voters to mail them in. The AP and other have noted that registered Republicans have an 9-point lead over registered Democrats in returned ballots, concluding that Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is headed to defeat.
Lousiana
The bottom line in Louisiana is that the state’s U.S. Senate race is likely headed for a runoff election in the first week of January, 2015, because there’s a crowded field and nobody is expected to get more than 50 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, in early in-person voting, registered Democrats are turning out in much higher numbers than in previous federal cycles.
“Registered Democrats are up 117 percent compared to 54 percent for Republicans,” McDonald said. “Those Democrats are not just old school Southern Democrats who have yet to change their party registration. African-American turnout is up 196 percent compared to Whites' 64 percent.”
The AP has reported that polls suggest Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu will need a huge African-American turnout to be re-elected, but national pundits often forget that she has twice won Senate elections in runoffs—in 1996 and 2002.
Georgia
Georgia voters don’t register by political party, but the state tracks voting by race. So far, the national media has reported that African-Americans have accounted for about a third of the early votes, which is much higher than the 2010 midterms and the 2012 presidential election. The conventional wisdom is that Democrat Michelle Nunn would need more support from communities of color to capture an open Senate seat over Republican David Perdue, and they point to a Tea Party wave in the state in 2010 and Mitt Romney beating President Obama by almost 8 points two years later.
However, there is a wild card in this race—a Libertarian candidate who is getting a few percentage points in pre-election polls. “The unknown is how much Whiter will the Election Day electorate be? This is the crux of the polling,” McDonald said. “My best guess is that this election goes to a runoff.”
That means there is a second U.S. Senate that might not be settled, in this case, until mid-December when Georgia would hold that special election.
North Carolina
This is a state where Democrats are seen as having gained an advantage in early voting—despite many new voter laws written by Republicans that have made the process more bureaucratic and are seen as barriers to first-time voters. As of last Saturday, 1.15 million residents had cast ballots by early in-person voting or by mail, and the number of registered Democrats was 15.7 percent higher than registered Republicans. That spread is likely to shrink, McDonald said, noting that there’s also a Libertarian in the U.S. Senate race drawing about 4 percent in polls. The bottom line here is the winner might not be known for days.
That’s because apart from in-person voting at Tuesday’s polling places, the state will keep accepting mail-in ballots until Friday, McDonald noted. Also, there are still 35,000 absentee ballots that haven’t arrived, and the state has a history of disqualifying large numbers of provisional ballots—those given to people lacking the required forms of voter ID or who are not listed in poll books.
“In 2010, North Carolina accepted 15,964 and rejected 10,563 provisional ballots,” McDonald wrote. “The number of rejected provisional ballots may be higher since the state no longer allows voters who cast a ballot outside of their home precinct.” In short, he predicts this Senate race will go into “overtime.”
Photo Credit: http://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/
November 3, 2014
|
National outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are predicting that Republicans will emerge with a Senate majority once all the ballots are counted. But one of the nation’s best-respected voter-turnout experts, Michael P. McDonald of the University of Florida, says not so fast—and explains why.
In key states where the national media has reported that Republican Senate candidates have an early lead—such as in Iowa and Colorado—the momentum is now shifting to Democrat voters, McDonald said, in a detailed analysis that essentially said that Republicans have been voting earlier than Democrats but are seeing their numbers eroded by the escalating Democratic turnout.
“The Republican sweep screaming in the headlines is overblown,” he wrote. “Senate control is up for grabs and Democrats have a decent chance to defy the polls. I expect that the election will be so close that we won’t know who won until all ballots are counted and the vote is certified several days following the election, not to mention highly probable run-off elections in Georgia and Louisiana.”
Let’s go through some of the key states and compare what McDonald is adding to the mainstream media analysis, as typified in Associated Press reports.
Iowa
The AP says that both parties have increased their early voting turnout from 2010, with more Republicans voting early than Democrats—21,200 to 8,500. That boosts confidence in the GOP Senate nominee, Joni Ernst. McDonald said that as of last Thursday, there were 367,000 mail-in ballots that had been returned, leaving 111,000 still out there. Iowa also is an Election Day registration state, where people can decide to go vote at the last minute and do so.
“There are two reasons why Iowa may end in overtime,” he said. “First, there are the unreturned mail ballots. The number of outstanding ballots will decrease by Election Day, but there will still likely be thousands of ballots in the mail when the vote is tabulated on election night. If the election margin is within a few thousand votes, the media may not call the election pending the disposition of these ballots.”
In other words, Ernst’s perceived early lead is going to keep shrinking. Whether that enables Democratic Congressman Bruce Braley to win is an open question. But if the margin is under 1,000 votes, you can expect a tough legal fight over qualifying provisional ballots and possibly Election Day registrants.
Colorado
Colorado has a new voting system that the national media doesn’t quite understand. Before this year’s election, the state identified all legal eligible voters and encouraged them to register, and it also sent mail-in ballots to every registered voter. As in Iowa, Republicans have always been more organized than Democrats with getting their absentee ballot voters to mail them in. The AP and other have noted that registered Republicans have an 9-point lead over registered Democrats in returned ballots, concluding that Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is headed to defeat.
McDonald,
again, says not so fast, noting that independent voters—not affiliated
with either party—are only just beginning to mail in their ballots. “It
is common to see unaffiliated voters turn their ballots in later than
party affiliated voters, who tend to be the most committed to their
candidates and thus most comfortable about voting earliest,” he said.
“At the very least, the margin between Democrats and Republicans will
diminish as more unaffiliated voters return ballots.”
Colorado
also is an Election Day registration state, he noted. “Unregistered
people who might take advantage of Election Day registration tend to be
younger, persons of color, poorer, and less educated, i.e., Democrats.”Lousiana
The bottom line in Louisiana is that the state’s U.S. Senate race is likely headed for a runoff election in the first week of January, 2015, because there’s a crowded field and nobody is expected to get more than 50 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, in early in-person voting, registered Democrats are turning out in much higher numbers than in previous federal cycles.
“Registered Democrats are up 117 percent compared to 54 percent for Republicans,” McDonald said. “Those Democrats are not just old school Southern Democrats who have yet to change their party registration. African-American turnout is up 196 percent compared to Whites' 64 percent.”
The AP has reported that polls suggest Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu will need a huge African-American turnout to be re-elected, but national pundits often forget that she has twice won Senate elections in runoffs—in 1996 and 2002.
Georgia
Georgia voters don’t register by political party, but the state tracks voting by race. So far, the national media has reported that African-Americans have accounted for about a third of the early votes, which is much higher than the 2010 midterms and the 2012 presidential election. The conventional wisdom is that Democrat Michelle Nunn would need more support from communities of color to capture an open Senate seat over Republican David Perdue, and they point to a Tea Party wave in the state in 2010 and Mitt Romney beating President Obama by almost 8 points two years later.
However, there is a wild card in this race—a Libertarian candidate who is getting a few percentage points in pre-election polls. “The unknown is how much Whiter will the Election Day electorate be? This is the crux of the polling,” McDonald said. “My best guess is that this election goes to a runoff.”
That means there is a second U.S. Senate that might not be settled, in this case, until mid-December when Georgia would hold that special election.
North Carolina
This is a state where Democrats are seen as having gained an advantage in early voting—despite many new voter laws written by Republicans that have made the process more bureaucratic and are seen as barriers to first-time voters. As of last Saturday, 1.15 million residents had cast ballots by early in-person voting or by mail, and the number of registered Democrats was 15.7 percent higher than registered Republicans. That spread is likely to shrink, McDonald said, noting that there’s also a Libertarian in the U.S. Senate race drawing about 4 percent in polls. The bottom line here is the winner might not be known for days.
That’s because apart from in-person voting at Tuesday’s polling places, the state will keep accepting mail-in ballots until Friday, McDonald noted. Also, there are still 35,000 absentee ballots that haven’t arrived, and the state has a history of disqualifying large numbers of provisional ballots—those given to people lacking the required forms of voter ID or who are not listed in poll books.
“In 2010, North Carolina accepted 15,964 and rejected 10,563 provisional ballots,” McDonald wrote. “The number of rejected provisional ballots may be higher since the state no longer allows voters who cast a ballot outside of their home precinct.” In short, he predicts this Senate race will go into “overtime.”
Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley holds a copy of the
“Dewey Defeats Truman” photo as he speaks to supporters during a
campaign stop Monday in Ottumwa, Iowa.
Charlie Neibergall / AP
Democrats are down to about a 25 percent chance to retain the Senate, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight forecast. A 25 percent chance isn’t nothing. The average National League hitter hit about .250 last year.
But what would a Democratic Senate win look like? Harry Enten and I pondered that question earlier. There are two basic scenarios.
First, Democrats could win in a squeaker. If the races behave more or less independently from one another, Democrats could keep the Senate by narrowly winning a number of states where they are only modest underdogs in the polls.
Alternatively, the Democrats could win in a shocker, with the polls proving to have a systematic bias against them. These things happen, although — as we’ve emphasized repeatedly — the polls have just as often had a systematic bias against Republicans.
We’ll consider the “squeaker” vs. “shocker” distinction in more depth in our final Senate update early Tuesday morning. But there’s another thing that would characterize a Democratic win. It would, very probably, require some electoral chaos.
We’ve talked before about the strong possibility the Senate’s outcome will not be determined on Tuesday or even by later this week. Instead, resolution may require one or more forms of “overtime”: Greg Orman deciding who to caucus with if he wins in Kansas, runoffs in Georgia or Louisiana, a slow vote count in Alaska and possibly one or more recounts.
Even as Republicans have consolidated their overall position in the polls, overtime remains more likely than not. While our model gives Republicans a 75 percent chance of winning, it shows only a 30 to 35 percent chance that a Republican victory would be called by midday Wednesday.
But if Democrats win, it will almost certainly require overtime. We show just a 5 percent chance the election will be called for them on Tuesday or early Wednsday.
Let’s do some arithmetic. (You can follow along on the ‘math’ tab on our Senate interactive.) Democrats need 50 seats. They start with the 34 they’re holding over from the current Senate. In another 11 states, they’re at least 95 percent likely to win according to our model; that gets them to 45.
Let’s also give Democrats North Carolina and New Hampshire, where they’re narrowly ahead in the polls. Democrats aren’t certain to win these, but if they don’t, all of this math won’t matter. These are must-win states for Democrats; in our simulations, they lost the Senate 98 percent of the time they lost New Hampshire and 97 percent of the time they lost North Carolina.
That gets Democrats to 47 seats. They need three more.
Iowa and Colorado are their next best choices if they want to avoid chaos. Although there have been disputes about where the polls stand in those states, the circumstances in Iowa and Colorado are otherwise normal — no runoffs, no major third-party candidates. They’ll be called on Tuesday or early Wednesday morning unless they’re so close as to be in recount territory.
That gets Democrats to 49 seats. They need just one more, and here’s where they run out of good options.
Mark Begich could win in Alaska. But that’s one of our chaos states. In the past two Senate races there, the outcome took 15 days to call. Begich would not only have to win, he’d have to win by a definitive margin — and that’s unlikely.
Kansas? If Orman wins, it’s a chaos state.
Georgia? It’s a chaos state unless one candidate gets past 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff. The Republican David Perdue is close to 50 percent in some polls, and he could easily cross that threshold. But a winning majority in Georgia on Nov. 4 has become a real long shot for Democrat Michelle Nunn. At this point, she’s probably hoping to facilitate a runoff and take her chances later on.
Louisiana? Chaos state. Democratic chances of holding the Senate have become grim enough that they might have to count on Sen. Mary Landrieu to pull through. But Landrieu is even more likely than Nunn to require a runoff; our model now gives Landrieu less than a 2 percent chance of winning an outright majority on Tuesday.
Arkansas? Kentucky? They aren’t chaos states, but the polls have broken against Democrats in both states, and there’s no time left to make up ground. Our forecast gives Sen. Mark Pryor just a 6 percent chance of winning in Arkansas and Alison Lundergan Grimes just a 3 percent chance in Kentucky.
So Democrats are very unlikely to win a “clean” victory on Tuesday or Wednesday. The messier things get and the longer they take to resolve, the better their chances.
Of course, Democrats have benefited from a little chaos before. After the 2008 elections, they gained a 60-seat super majority in the Senate only after Al Franken won a lengthy recount in Minnesota and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched parties. In 2001, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont defected from the GOP and began caucusing with Democrats, giving them majority control.
If Democrats do hold the Senate, it is likely to be very narrowly — probably either 50-50 or 51-49, counting two to three independents and Vice President Biden’s tie breaking vote. But as the Jeffords example proves, a 50-50 or 51-49 majority in the Senate is not so safe: Any party switch or any special election can potentially flip it.
A chaotic Democratic win — or a chaotic Republican one — could beget more chaos later on.
But what would a Democratic Senate win look like? Harry Enten and I pondered that question earlier. There are two basic scenarios.
First, Democrats could win in a squeaker. If the races behave more or less independently from one another, Democrats could keep the Senate by narrowly winning a number of states where they are only modest underdogs in the polls.
Alternatively, the Democrats could win in a shocker, with the polls proving to have a systematic bias against them. These things happen, although — as we’ve emphasized repeatedly — the polls have just as often had a systematic bias against Republicans.
We’ll consider the “squeaker” vs. “shocker” distinction in more depth in our final Senate update early Tuesday morning. But there’s another thing that would characterize a Democratic win. It would, very probably, require some electoral chaos.
We’ve talked before about the strong possibility the Senate’s outcome will not be determined on Tuesday or even by later this week. Instead, resolution may require one or more forms of “overtime”: Greg Orman deciding who to caucus with if he wins in Kansas, runoffs in Georgia or Louisiana, a slow vote count in Alaska and possibly one or more recounts.
Even as Republicans have consolidated their overall position in the polls, overtime remains more likely than not. While our model gives Republicans a 75 percent chance of winning, it shows only a 30 to 35 percent chance that a Republican victory would be called by midday Wednesday.
But if Democrats win, it will almost certainly require overtime. We show just a 5 percent chance the election will be called for them on Tuesday or early Wednsday.
Let’s do some arithmetic. (You can follow along on the ‘math’ tab on our Senate interactive.) Democrats need 50 seats. They start with the 34 they’re holding over from the current Senate. In another 11 states, they’re at least 95 percent likely to win according to our model; that gets them to 45.
Let’s also give Democrats North Carolina and New Hampshire, where they’re narrowly ahead in the polls. Democrats aren’t certain to win these, but if they don’t, all of this math won’t matter. These are must-win states for Democrats; in our simulations, they lost the Senate 98 percent of the time they lost New Hampshire and 97 percent of the time they lost North Carolina.
That gets Democrats to 47 seats. They need three more.
Iowa and Colorado are their next best choices if they want to avoid chaos. Although there have been disputes about where the polls stand in those states, the circumstances in Iowa and Colorado are otherwise normal — no runoffs, no major third-party candidates. They’ll be called on Tuesday or early Wednesday morning unless they’re so close as to be in recount territory.
That gets Democrats to 49 seats. They need just one more, and here’s where they run out of good options.
Mark Begich could win in Alaska. But that’s one of our chaos states. In the past two Senate races there, the outcome took 15 days to call. Begich would not only have to win, he’d have to win by a definitive margin — and that’s unlikely.
Kansas? If Orman wins, it’s a chaos state.
Georgia? It’s a chaos state unless one candidate gets past 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff. The Republican David Perdue is close to 50 percent in some polls, and he could easily cross that threshold. But a winning majority in Georgia on Nov. 4 has become a real long shot for Democrat Michelle Nunn. At this point, she’s probably hoping to facilitate a runoff and take her chances later on.
Louisiana? Chaos state. Democratic chances of holding the Senate have become grim enough that they might have to count on Sen. Mary Landrieu to pull through. But Landrieu is even more likely than Nunn to require a runoff; our model now gives Landrieu less than a 2 percent chance of winning an outright majority on Tuesday.
Arkansas? Kentucky? They aren’t chaos states, but the polls have broken against Democrats in both states, and there’s no time left to make up ground. Our forecast gives Sen. Mark Pryor just a 6 percent chance of winning in Arkansas and Alison Lundergan Grimes just a 3 percent chance in Kentucky.
So Democrats are very unlikely to win a “clean” victory on Tuesday or Wednesday. The messier things get and the longer they take to resolve, the better their chances.
Of course, Democrats have benefited from a little chaos before. After the 2008 elections, they gained a 60-seat super majority in the Senate only after Al Franken won a lengthy recount in Minnesota and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched parties. In 2001, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont defected from the GOP and began caucusing with Democrats, giving them majority control.
If Democrats do hold the Senate, it is likely to be very narrowly — probably either 50-50 or 51-49, counting two to three independents and Vice President Biden’s tie breaking vote. But as the Jeffords example proves, a 50-50 or 51-49 majority in the Senate is not so safe: Any party switch or any special election can potentially flip it.
A chaotic Democratic win — or a chaotic Republican one — could beget more chaos later on.
Nate Silver @natesilver538
Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.One Day Left: The Most Competitive Races For Governor
With the election just a day away, FiveThirtyEight is projecting
Democrats and independents to gain a net of three governorships. But an
unusual number of races are quite competitive; in nine states, the
trailing candidate has at least a 20 percent chance of winning,
according to the FiveThirtyEight forecasts. Five races are 61-39 or
closer — compared to just one such race in our Senate forecast.
Let’s look at some of the closer races. We’ll go by region, from north to south and from east to west. The forecasts are based on polls through Sunday night; we’ll capture any polls released Monday in an update Tuesday.
You might think Cutler’s decision would sink Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s re-election. LePage snuck by four years ago when liberals split their vote between Cutler and Democrat Libby Mitchell. The result has been something of a mismatch: a conservative Republican in blue Maine. The state has elected Republicans before — for years both its senators were Republicans, and one still is — but typically it elects moderates. LePage is much more conservative than Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins, for instance, according to OnTheIssues.org. And LePage has been more unpopular than popular for most of his term.
But Cutler hasn’t dropped out of the race, and not all of his votes will go to Michaud. FiveThirtyEight is estimating that he’ll get half as many votes as he would had he not semi-dropped out. With LePage winning a greater share of Republicans than Michaud is Democrats, Michaud is only a 57 percent favorite.
In Massachusetts, Republican Charlie Baker has an 86 percent chance to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley. Yes, this is the same Coakley who lost to Scott Brown in the special Senate election in 2010. Whether Coakley blew this race is an open question. Her favorable rating — 42 percent favorable vs. 47 percent unfavorable, according to the most recent Western New England University (WNEU) poll — didn’t help.
What cannot be debated is that Massachusetts has a history of electing relatively moderate Republicans as a check on its liberal legislature. Before Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick was elected in 2006, there hadn’t been a Democrat elected governor of Massachusetts since Michael Dukakis in 1986.
Baker has run a fairly good campaign. He has spent a ton of money on television and is well liked by Massachusetts’s voters. In the WNEU survey, Baker’s favorable rating was 52 percent compared to an unfavorable rating of just 27 percent. That’s great for any politician in any state these days.
Next up: Rhode Island, where the picture is a lot less clear. FiveThirtyEight has Democrat Gina Raimondo as a 75 percent favorite because she has led Republican Allan Fung in every poll taken of the race, but there have been very few public polls conducted compared to other competitive races. The last live telephone poll by Brown University had Raimondo ahead 38 percent to 37.4 percent for Fung, with independent Bob Healey at 11.8 percent.
While it would be easy to assume the Democrat can’t lose in Rhode Island given Democrats’ dominance of the state in presidential elections, it’s important to realize how unique Rhode Island’s politics are. It is the least polarized state in the union with plenty of liberal Republicans (think Lincoln Chafee) and conservative Democrats. No Democrat has been elected governor since 1992.
Raimondo is seen as a moderate. She has failed to pull together the Democratic base after a hard-fought primary. She is winning 26 percentage points less of the Democratic base than Fung is winning of the Republican base. Raimondo has also been outspent in the general election. Raimondo is the favorite, but it’s easy seeing either of these candidates winning.
Wrapping up our tour of New England, the Connecticut gubernatorial race is perhaps the closest in the country. FiveThirtyEight has Democratic Gov. Dan Malloy with a 56 percent chance of holding off Republican Tom Foley. It’s nearly a coin flip. In a rematch of the same race four years ago, Foley and Malloy have traded polling leads all campaign. Malloy won in 2010 by just 0.5 percentage points, nearly identical to his 0.6 percentage-point lead right now. Before Malloy, Connecticut, like Massachusetts, hadn’t elected a Democrat governor since 1986.
The reason Malloy is in trouble is simple: the economy. Per Gallup, Connecticut residents rank far below the national average in confidence in the economy — they’re less likely than to think that it’s a good time to get a job and that taxes are at the proper level, and less likely to be satisfied with the state or city they live in. According to a Quinnipiac University poll taken in September, Foley had a double-digit lead on Malloy on the question of who was best to handle jobs and the economy, government spending and taxes.
Will the state’s Democratic lean be enough to drag Malloy across the finish line? We can’t be sure. Foley’s favorable ratings have not been great, but they are much better than Malloy’s. The incumbent has consistently had a higher unfavorable rating than favorable rating.
Quinnipiac has found that voters think neither candidate is trustworthy and that they say Scott doesn’t care about people like them. Scott was able to close an early deficit in the polls by vastly outspending Crist; more than $100 million total has been spent on the race so far. Yet the recent gap in spending between the two sides hasn’t been nearly as pronounced as it was earlier.
Florida voters have to choose one of these guys. FiveThirtyEight thinks Crist is slightly more likely to be that guy; he has a 60 percent chance of winning.
In Michigan, Snyder was elected four years ago as one tough nerd, someone who would provide an economic stimulus to a state that badly needed it. But voters aren’t convinced the economy has improved. According to Gallup, Michigan residents are far less likely to have confidence in their state’s economy than the average voter nationwide.
Democratic challenger Mark Schauer has tried to leverage that angst to his advantage. He has pointed out that the governor’s policies have not resulted in rising job growth. Snyder contends that the Michigan has grown jobs, if slowly, under his administration and that lowering taxes helped to keep the economy afloat in a state that was hard hit by the 2008 recession.
Voters seem more likely than not to give Snyder a second term. According to EPIC-MRA, most voters think the state is headed in the right direction and have a more favorable view of Snyder than Schauer. The race should be close; FiveThirtyEight projects Snyder to win by less than 2 percentage points. That is good enough to be a 75 percent favorite.
Gov. Scott Walker faces his third election in Wisconsin in the past four years. He’s loved by Republicans and hated by Democrats. There was some belief that an investigation of the Walker campaign’s possibly illegal coordination with outside groups might damage the incumbent’s prospects, but it doesn’t appear to have moved opinion much.
Walker is viewed the same way by Wisconsinites as he has always been. According to the Marquette Law School Poll, which has used a likely voter sample all year, Walker hasn’t ever had an approval rating above 51 percent or below 47 percent among registered voters. Not surprisingly, his polling numbers against Democrat Mary Burke have been more consistent than sappy moments on “Full House.” He has led by an average of 3.7 percentage points over Burke among likely voters in polling taken this year by Marquette. FiveThirtyEight projects Walker to win by 2.6 percentage points.
Burke will need the polls to be wrong to win. Marquette’s most recent survey found that a majority of voters thought the state was headed in the right direction and that Walker was up 7 percentage points among likely voters. That may be overstating Walker’s lead, though it’s doubtful the poll is off by enough for Burke to win. Walker is a 75 percent favorite.
Quinn, of Illinois, looked to be in the most danger of these three incumbents. My polling-based analysis in early summer had him with a 25 percent chance to beat Republican Bruce Rauner. At the time, however, I warned that Quinn probably had a better shot than early polls suggested. Quinn is a Democratic governor in a Democratic state. He won in 2010 despite an approval rating of 40 percent (at best) and with only about 15 percent of voters saying the state was heading in the right direction.
This year, Quinn’s approval rating is again between 35 percent and 40 percent. And again, he looks like he may win. His campaign has somewhat successfully painted Rauner as an out-of-touch millionaire. According to a recent Chicago Tribune poll, voters are more likely to say Quinn is in touch with people like them. They also view him as more honest than Rauner, even if they think Rauner can better handle the economy.
The fight between an incumbent people don’t approve of and a challenger with his own flaws has resulted in a close race, but one in which Quinn is a favorite. The FiveThirtyEight model gives him a 66 percent chance of winning.
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is in trouble for three related reasons: a Republican party split, economic woes and education. For as long as most of us have been alive, Kansas has leaned to the right, practicing its own brand of moderate Republicanism. Brownback, though, has governed as a pure conservative.
It has hurt him; Democrat Paul Davis has been endorsed by scores of moderate Republicans upset by cuts to education necessitated by Brownback’s large tax cuts.
According to SurveyUSA, taxes and education remain among the most important issues to voters in 2014. The result has been disenchanted Republicans. The share of registered Republicans in Kansas was 9 percentage points higher than the share of self-identified Republicans, according the latest Marist College poll. Many of these Republicans now identify as independent, a group Davis is winning by a 26-point margin.
Although polls have narrowed from a few months ago, most surveys have Davis riding Republican discontent to a lead. He’s an 82 percent favorite.
Likewise, Coloradans are upset with Hickenlooper over his stance on the death penalty. Voters in the state are overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty, but Hickenlooper turned against it while in office. Hickenlooper’s Republican challenger, Bob Beauprez, and his allies have emphasized Hickenlooper’s changed position in television ads.
Yet even in his worst polls, Hickenlooper is liked by as many voters as dislike him. Polls have shown that he is running a few percentage points ahead of Democratic Sen. Mark Udall. That could make the difference in a tight race. Although FiveThirtyEight’s model forecasts Udall losing, it has Hickenlooper ahead by 0.5 percentage points and winning 57 percent of the time.
Alaska is perhaps the strangest race of the cycle. As I discussed previously, Republican Gov. Sean Parnell is being challenged by a unity ticket of former Republican turned independent Bill Walker and former 2014 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Byron Mallott. In other words, there is no Democratic nominee for governor. To make matters even stranger, former governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has endorsed Walker and not her former running mate, Parnell. Why?
It has a lot to do with taxes and energy prices. Oil prices continue to fall at a rapid pace, which is a big deal in Alaska. This lead to statewide deficits. Those have been made worse, Walker would argue, by the tax cuts on oil companies drilling in Alaska, which Parnell signed into law. This reversed the taxes Palin had signed into law when she was governor. Walker has argued that the state must cut spending even more than it has under the Parnell administration to erase the deficits. Parnell has argued that Walker and his team will cut education funding.
This back and forth has left Walker with a slight advantage. FiveThirtyEight gives him a 61 percent chance of winning. Given the much-discussed lack of accurate polling in Alaska and the long time to count ballots, the winner of this race may not be known for days or weeks to come.
If all the FiveThirtyEight favorites win, Republicans will have 26 governorships in 2015, Democrats will have 23 and independents will have one.
CORRECTION (Nov. 3, 1:10 p.m.): A previous version of this article incorrectly said no Democrat had been elected governor of Rhode Island since 1990. A Democrat was elected in 1992.
Let’s look at some of the closer races. We’ll go by region, from north to south and from east to west. The forecasts are based on polls through Sunday night; we’ll capture any polls released Monday in an update Tuesday.
New England
The Maine race revolves around two-and-a-half candidates. Independent Eliot Cutler, who has been lagging in the polls, told his supporters they could back another candidate if they choose. He stopped airing some of his ads, and one of Cutler’s big supporters, independent Sen. Angus King, is now backing Democrat Mike Michaud.You might think Cutler’s decision would sink Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s re-election. LePage snuck by four years ago when liberals split their vote between Cutler and Democrat Libby Mitchell. The result has been something of a mismatch: a conservative Republican in blue Maine. The state has elected Republicans before — for years both its senators were Republicans, and one still is — but typically it elects moderates. LePage is much more conservative than Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins, for instance, according to OnTheIssues.org. And LePage has been more unpopular than popular for most of his term.
But Cutler hasn’t dropped out of the race, and not all of his votes will go to Michaud. FiveThirtyEight is estimating that he’ll get half as many votes as he would had he not semi-dropped out. With LePage winning a greater share of Republicans than Michaud is Democrats, Michaud is only a 57 percent favorite.
In Massachusetts, Republican Charlie Baker has an 86 percent chance to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley. Yes, this is the same Coakley who lost to Scott Brown in the special Senate election in 2010. Whether Coakley blew this race is an open question. Her favorable rating — 42 percent favorable vs. 47 percent unfavorable, according to the most recent Western New England University (WNEU) poll — didn’t help.
What cannot be debated is that Massachusetts has a history of electing relatively moderate Republicans as a check on its liberal legislature. Before Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick was elected in 2006, there hadn’t been a Democrat elected governor of Massachusetts since Michael Dukakis in 1986.
Baker has run a fairly good campaign. He has spent a ton of money on television and is well liked by Massachusetts’s voters. In the WNEU survey, Baker’s favorable rating was 52 percent compared to an unfavorable rating of just 27 percent. That’s great for any politician in any state these days.
Next up: Rhode Island, where the picture is a lot less clear. FiveThirtyEight has Democrat Gina Raimondo as a 75 percent favorite because she has led Republican Allan Fung in every poll taken of the race, but there have been very few public polls conducted compared to other competitive races. The last live telephone poll by Brown University had Raimondo ahead 38 percent to 37.4 percent for Fung, with independent Bob Healey at 11.8 percent.
While it would be easy to assume the Democrat can’t lose in Rhode Island given Democrats’ dominance of the state in presidential elections, it’s important to realize how unique Rhode Island’s politics are. It is the least polarized state in the union with plenty of liberal Republicans (think Lincoln Chafee) and conservative Democrats. No Democrat has been elected governor since 1992.
Raimondo is seen as a moderate. She has failed to pull together the Democratic base after a hard-fought primary. She is winning 26 percentage points less of the Democratic base than Fung is winning of the Republican base. Raimondo has also been outspent in the general election. Raimondo is the favorite, but it’s easy seeing either of these candidates winning.
Wrapping up our tour of New England, the Connecticut gubernatorial race is perhaps the closest in the country. FiveThirtyEight has Democratic Gov. Dan Malloy with a 56 percent chance of holding off Republican Tom Foley. It’s nearly a coin flip. In a rematch of the same race four years ago, Foley and Malloy have traded polling leads all campaign. Malloy won in 2010 by just 0.5 percentage points, nearly identical to his 0.6 percentage-point lead right now. Before Malloy, Connecticut, like Massachusetts, hadn’t elected a Democrat governor since 1986.
The reason Malloy is in trouble is simple: the economy. Per Gallup, Connecticut residents rank far below the national average in confidence in the economy — they’re less likely than to think that it’s a good time to get a job and that taxes are at the proper level, and less likely to be satisfied with the state or city they live in. According to a Quinnipiac University poll taken in September, Foley had a double-digit lead on Malloy on the question of who was best to handle jobs and the economy, government spending and taxes.
Will the state’s Democratic lean be enough to drag Malloy across the finish line? We can’t be sure. Foley’s favorable ratings have not been great, but they are much better than Malloy’s. The incumbent has consistently had a higher unfavorable rating than favorable rating.
The South
I’ve written about Florida twice before. The story has been the same throughout campaign season. Voters dislike both candidates — former Republican governor turned Democrat Charlie Crist and current Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Both candidates’ net favorable ratings (favorable rating minus unfavorable rating) have been negative for most of their campaigns. The race may be remembered more for the fact that it features the two most disliked gubernatorial candidates over the past decade than for any particular policy or issue.Quinnipiac has found that voters think neither candidate is trustworthy and that they say Scott doesn’t care about people like them. Scott was able to close an early deficit in the polls by vastly outspending Crist; more than $100 million total has been spent on the race so far. Yet the recent gap in spending between the two sides hasn’t been nearly as pronounced as it was earlier.
Florida voters have to choose one of these guys. FiveThirtyEight thinks Crist is slightly more likely to be that guy; he has a 60 percent chance of winning.
The Midwest
Earlier this year, there was an anti-incumbent mood in the Midwest. Three governors — Republican Rick Snyder of Michigan, Republican Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Democrat Pat Quinn of Illinois — looked like they might lose earlier in the cycle. Now, all three are favorites.In Michigan, Snyder was elected four years ago as one tough nerd, someone who would provide an economic stimulus to a state that badly needed it. But voters aren’t convinced the economy has improved. According to Gallup, Michigan residents are far less likely to have confidence in their state’s economy than the average voter nationwide.
Democratic challenger Mark Schauer has tried to leverage that angst to his advantage. He has pointed out that the governor’s policies have not resulted in rising job growth. Snyder contends that the Michigan has grown jobs, if slowly, under his administration and that lowering taxes helped to keep the economy afloat in a state that was hard hit by the 2008 recession.
Voters seem more likely than not to give Snyder a second term. According to EPIC-MRA, most voters think the state is headed in the right direction and have a more favorable view of Snyder than Schauer. The race should be close; FiveThirtyEight projects Snyder to win by less than 2 percentage points. That is good enough to be a 75 percent favorite.
Gov. Scott Walker faces his third election in Wisconsin in the past four years. He’s loved by Republicans and hated by Democrats. There was some belief that an investigation of the Walker campaign’s possibly illegal coordination with outside groups might damage the incumbent’s prospects, but it doesn’t appear to have moved opinion much.
Walker is viewed the same way by Wisconsinites as he has always been. According to the Marquette Law School Poll, which has used a likely voter sample all year, Walker hasn’t ever had an approval rating above 51 percent or below 47 percent among registered voters. Not surprisingly, his polling numbers against Democrat Mary Burke have been more consistent than sappy moments on “Full House.” He has led by an average of 3.7 percentage points over Burke among likely voters in polling taken this year by Marquette. FiveThirtyEight projects Walker to win by 2.6 percentage points.
Burke will need the polls to be wrong to win. Marquette’s most recent survey found that a majority of voters thought the state was headed in the right direction and that Walker was up 7 percentage points among likely voters. That may be overstating Walker’s lead, though it’s doubtful the poll is off by enough for Burke to win. Walker is a 75 percent favorite.
Quinn, of Illinois, looked to be in the most danger of these three incumbents. My polling-based analysis in early summer had him with a 25 percent chance to beat Republican Bruce Rauner. At the time, however, I warned that Quinn probably had a better shot than early polls suggested. Quinn is a Democratic governor in a Democratic state. He won in 2010 despite an approval rating of 40 percent (at best) and with only about 15 percent of voters saying the state was heading in the right direction.
This year, Quinn’s approval rating is again between 35 percent and 40 percent. And again, he looks like he may win. His campaign has somewhat successfully painted Rauner as an out-of-touch millionaire. According to a recent Chicago Tribune poll, voters are more likely to say Quinn is in touch with people like them. They also view him as more honest than Rauner, even if they think Rauner can better handle the economy.
The fight between an incumbent people don’t approve of and a challenger with his own flaws has resulted in a close race, but one in which Quinn is a favorite. The FiveThirtyEight model gives him a 66 percent chance of winning.
The Plains States
There’s really only one competitive gubernatorial race on the Great Plains: Kansas.Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is in trouble for three related reasons: a Republican party split, economic woes and education. For as long as most of us have been alive, Kansas has leaned to the right, practicing its own brand of moderate Republicanism. Brownback, though, has governed as a pure conservative.
It has hurt him; Democrat Paul Davis has been endorsed by scores of moderate Republicans upset by cuts to education necessitated by Brownback’s large tax cuts.
According to SurveyUSA, taxes and education remain among the most important issues to voters in 2014. The result has been disenchanted Republicans. The share of registered Republicans in Kansas was 9 percentage points higher than the share of self-identified Republicans, according the latest Marist College poll. Many of these Republicans now identify as independent, a group Davis is winning by a 26-point margin.
Although polls have narrowed from a few months ago, most surveys have Davis riding Republican discontent to a lead. He’s an 82 percent favorite.
The West
The issues facing Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper in Colorado are considerably different. Voters are not upset with the economy; they’re upset about social issues. After the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Hickenlooper, along with a Democratic legislature, enacted tough gun-control laws. Voters didn’t like that. They turned out two Democratic state senators in a recall in 2013, and voters still disapprove of Hickenlooper’s handling of gun control, according to Quinnipiac.Likewise, Coloradans are upset with Hickenlooper over his stance on the death penalty. Voters in the state are overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty, but Hickenlooper turned against it while in office. Hickenlooper’s Republican challenger, Bob Beauprez, and his allies have emphasized Hickenlooper’s changed position in television ads.
Yet even in his worst polls, Hickenlooper is liked by as many voters as dislike him. Polls have shown that he is running a few percentage points ahead of Democratic Sen. Mark Udall. That could make the difference in a tight race. Although FiveThirtyEight’s model forecasts Udall losing, it has Hickenlooper ahead by 0.5 percentage points and winning 57 percent of the time.
Alaska is perhaps the strangest race of the cycle. As I discussed previously, Republican Gov. Sean Parnell is being challenged by a unity ticket of former Republican turned independent Bill Walker and former 2014 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Byron Mallott. In other words, there is no Democratic nominee for governor. To make matters even stranger, former governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has endorsed Walker and not her former running mate, Parnell. Why?
It has a lot to do with taxes and energy prices. Oil prices continue to fall at a rapid pace, which is a big deal in Alaska. This lead to statewide deficits. Those have been made worse, Walker would argue, by the tax cuts on oil companies drilling in Alaska, which Parnell signed into law. This reversed the taxes Palin had signed into law when she was governor. Walker has argued that the state must cut spending even more than it has under the Parnell administration to erase the deficits. Parnell has argued that Walker and his team will cut education funding.
This back and forth has left Walker with a slight advantage. FiveThirtyEight gives him a 61 percent chance of winning. Given the much-discussed lack of accurate polling in Alaska and the long time to count ballots, the winner of this race may not be known for days or weeks to come.
Bottom line
There are a lot of tight races. Five seats are forecasted to flip from Republican to Democratic or independent control: Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Maine and Pennsylvania. Two seats are projected to flip from Democratic to Republican control: Arkansas and Massachusetts.If all the FiveThirtyEight favorites win, Republicans will have 26 governorships in 2015, Democrats will have 23 and independents will have one.
CORRECTION (Nov. 3, 1:10 p.m.): A previous version of this article incorrectly said no Democrat had been elected governor of Rhode Island since 1990. A Democrat was elected in 1992.
Related
No comments:
Post a Comment