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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Will The Republicans Win Back The House

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/will-the-republicans-win-back-the-house/

Will The Republicans Win Back The House

Effect Of Republican Retirements

Donald Trump pledges to help Republicans win back the House

Indeed, 2020 was actually a Democratic-leaning year, with Biden winning the national popular vote by 4.5 percentage points. So theres a good chance that states will be at least a bit redder in 2022 than they were in 2020.

That could make these retirements less of a blow to Republicans than they first appear. Whats more, by announcing their retirements so early, Burr, Toomey and Portman are giving the GOP as much time as possible to recruit potential candidates, shape the field of candidates in a strategic way in the invisible primary and raise more money for the open-seat campaign. And in Ohio specifically, Republicans still look like heavy favorites. Even in the Democratic-leaning environment of 2020, Trump won Ohio by 8 percentage points, implying that its true partisan lean is probably even more Republican-leaning. Ohio is simply not the quintessential swing state it once was; dating back to the 2014 election cycle, Democrats have won just one out of 14 statewide contests in Ohio and that was a popular incumbent running in a blue-wave election year .

Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight

Read Also: When Did The Republicans And Democrats Switch Platforms

The Squad Coasts To Reelection

Three high-profile Democratic members of the squad in the House of Representatives held their seats in a comfortable fashion.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will continue to represent New Yorks 14th District, defeating the Republican John Cummings by a wide margin, while Rep. Ilhan Omar also ran well ahead of the Republican Lacy Johnson in the race to represent Minnesotas 5th District.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib also defeated her Republican challenger, David Dudenhoefer, and will continue to represent Michigans 13th Congressional District.

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A Zombie Republican Party Will Overwhelm Joe Biden In The 2022 Midterms

President Biden promised he will restore the soul of America. Hes already running out of time. The commander-in-chief is 78 and unlikely to see out more than one term in office. By the time the pandemic crisis passes mid-2021, inshallah Biden could find his administration has run out of gas before it ever really got started. A week is a long time in politics. Two years can whizz by.

For now, Biden appears to hold the aces. He has a Democratic majority in the House Of Representatives and his vice president, Kamala Harris, can cast the deciding vote in a split Senate. The economy, stimulated to its guts, is expected to roar as this year goes on. His opposition, the Republican Party, looks prone wrecked by its calamitous marriage to Donald Trump. The Republican base still hates the Republican establishment and vice versa. The infamous storming of the Capitol on 6 January, we are told, has tarnished the American right for a generation or more.

The Republican Party, for all its problems, remains the strong favourite to win the House in the 2022 midterms, possibly by a large margin, and they may even take back the Senate

Trump or no Trump, the Grand Old Party marches on. The mistake pundits make is to confuse Republicanism with a normal democratic movement. It is more like the political equivalent of the undead a zombie army that horrifies every sane voter but somehow always wins because people hate the Democrats more.

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How Many Senators Are Chosen

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

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An Incoming Class Of History

Several of the newly elected state representatives are making history.;

The Republican Madison Cawthorn, 25, who beat the Democrat Moe Davis to represent North Carolinas 11th Congressional District, will become the youngest member of Congress in modern history.

The Democrat Cori Bush is set to become the first Black congresswoman from Missouri after winning in the states 1st Congressional District.

The Democrats Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres will also be the first openly gay Black men to serve in Congress, after winning in New Yorks 17th and 15th districts respectively.

And nine out of the eleven Republicans who have so far unseated incumbent Democrats are women wins that will drastically expand the representation of women and especially of women of color in the House Republican caucus.

Currently, there are just 13 voting female Republican representatives in the House and 11 female Republican incumbents who ran for reelection in 2020.

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Gop Lawmakers Threaten To Punish Democrats If They Win Back Control Of Congress

‘When we take the majority back in 2022, I’ll make sure consequences are doled out,’ said Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

Republicans are outraged that Democrats are governing by majority rule in the House. In retaliation, they are vowing to do the same things they now decry as unprecedented and wrong.

“Never in the history of our country has a Speaker acted like such an authoritarian,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted on Thursday.

He was upset that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had rejected his request to appoint Republican Reps. Jim Banks and Jim Jordan to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both men voted to overturn the 2020 election results and pushed the lie that President Joe Biden only won because the election was stolen.

“Never in the history of Congress and the select committee I checked with the historian has this ever taken place, where the one party decides who’s all on the committee,” McCarthy told Fox News in a video he with his tweet. McCarthy in fact voted to give Republican then-Speaker John Boehner the exact same unilateral appointment power in 2014 for the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.

But while House Republicans claim they are being mistreated because the majority won’t let them have their way, they are also promising to retaliate by turning the same actions they criticize now against Democrats in 2023.

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What Is The New Balance Of Power In The House

House Democrats held onto their majority but lost seats to Republican challengers.

More than a dozen incumbent Democrats lost re-election bids, despite earlier projections they could gain up to 15 seats.

Democrats took the chamber after they netted 41 seats in the 2018 midterm elections, their largest single-year pickup since the post-Watergate midterms of 1974. But some of those new Democrats were among the partys losers in 2020.

Rep Emmer On Why He Thinks Republicans Will Win The House

Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee and is leading the GOPs efforts to win control of the House in November. Emmer joins Judy Woodruff from Minneapolis to discuss his reaction to the Republican National Convention so far and why he thinks his party will win a majority in the House this fall.

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What Was The Outlook Prior To The Election

Republicans needed to get to 218 seats to win back the majority they lost in 2018. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, in early 2019 identified dozens of Democratic-held districts to target. They included;30 Democrats;who were elected or re-elected in 2018 in districts that voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. All but one Dave Loebsack of Iowa sought re-election. Most were first-term members who defeated or succeeded Republicans in the 2018 election. Republicans won some of these Trump Democrat districts but needed to unseat most to win back control of the House.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, identified more than 40 Frontline Democrats it expected to have very competitive re-election campaigns. Many of these members represented;suburban districts;that have diversified their populations in recent years. In most of these districts, Democrats were running for re-election for the first time. The Frontline Democrats amassed large campaign funds.

Democrats also identified more than three dozen Republican-held districts they intended to target, including seven in Texas.

Democrats also made a play for the suburban Texas districts of retiring Republican Reps.;Pete Olson;of the 22nd District and Kenny Marchant of the 24th District. They lost the 22nd District, but the 24th is currently too close to call, with Republican Beth Van Duyne leading.

Gop Control Of State Governments Gives It The Edge In Contest To Redraw Congressional Maps To Its Advantage

House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, hopes to become speaker of the House after the November 2022 elections.

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The Census Bureau released the preliminary findings of its 2020 U.S. population count on Monday, setting the stage for a once-in-a-decade congressional redistricting process that could in itself be enough to give the Republican Party the five additional House seats needed to recapture the majority following the 2022 midterm elections.

Under the new count, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will each lose a congressional seat. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon and Florida will gain one seat, while Texas will add two.

Read more: New York, California set to lose House seats; Florida and Texas to gain after Census Bureau reveals 2020 counts

New census data and reapportionment add challenges for the Democrats in the midterm elections, wrote Sarah Bianchi, political analyst at Evercore ISI, in a Tuesday note to clients, pointing out that states that President Joe Biden won in the 2020 election lost a net three congressional seats.

New York could be where Democrats decide to abandon a principled stand against gerrymandering and use their supermajorities to overrule the independent redistricting commission to create a map that nets Democrats four more seats.

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Nbc News Polls Predicts Republicans Will Win House Back In Massive Landslide

August 18, 2021, 7:40 am310 Views

According to a new poll, Republicans are on track to retake the House in a historic landslide in 2022.; And this isnt according to Fox News or another right-wing source, this is coming from NBC.

Based on all factors, youd have to consider Republicans the early favorites for the House majority in 2022, poll tracker David Wasserman told NBC.

Democrats best hope is that Bidens approval rating stays above 50 percent and that Republicans have a tougher time turning out their voters without Trump on the ballot.

Bigleaguepolitics.com reports: The NBC report cites the all-too-predictable trend of the presidents party losing House seats in midterm elections, Democrats choosing not to run for reelection in some cases, and Republicans reaping the benefits of increased online donations, which are now on par with those of Democrats.

As for the Senate, its anyones guess as to what will happen. The chamber is currently deadlocked at 50-50, and at least five GOP senators have announced that they will retire after next years midterms.

2022 will be an interesting and impactful year. Keep checking back with;Big League Politics;for midterm election coverage.

House Passes $35t Budget Framework After 10 Dem Moderates Cave To Pelosi

Trump has ‘no plans’ for third party but will help Republicans win back House and Senate in 2022

The House Democrat in charge of making;sure the party retains control of the chamber after next years midterm elections is warning that a course correction is needed or they could find themselves the minority again with current polling showing the Democrats would lose the majority if elections were held now.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told a closed-door lunch last week that if the midterms were held now, Republicans would win control of the House, Politico reported Tuesday.

Maloney advised the gathering that Democrats have to embrace and promote President Bidens agenda because it registers with swing voters.

We are not afraid of this data Were not trying to hide this, Tim Persico, executive director of the Maloney-chaired DCC,;told Politico;in an interview.

If use it, were going to hold the House. Thats what this data tells us, but we gotta get in action,;Persico said.

Maloney, in an interview with NPR, said issues like climate change, infrastructure, the expanded child tax credits, immigration policies and election reforms will;attract voters next fall.

Were making a bet on substance, Maloney said. Whats the old saying any jackass can kick down a barn, it takes a carpenter to build one. Its harder to build it than to kick it down. And so were the party thats going to build the future.

Maloneys dire warning failed to surprise some Democrats who have been sounding similar alarms.;

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statetalks · 3 years ago

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How Many Republicans Are In The Senate Currently

Filed Candidates By Political Party

Republicans on track to keep U.S. Senate majority

As of September 7, 2020, 519 candidates were filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for U.S. Senate in 2020. Of those, 402â199 Democrats and 203 Republicansâwere from one of the two major political parties. In 2018, 527 candidates filed with the FEC to run for U.S. Senate, including 137 Democrats and 240 Republicans.

The following chart shows the number of filed candidates by political party.

Easy Races Tough Races

In Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly has held strong, sustained leads in the polls for months over Republican Sen. Martha McSally.;

He’s an astronaut and husband of former lawmaker Gabrielle;Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011 and became a gun-control activist.

In Maine, Trump has all but longtime incumbent Susan Collins. She appeared unbeatable until recently, winning;her last race, in 2014, by 37 points.

5 ways a Joe Biden presidency will affect Canada

She’s now trailing in the polls to the speaker of Maine’s legislature, Sara Gideon. Coleman said Collins is being pulled apart by the polarized politics of our time.

Collins frequently enrages Democrats and moderates by voting with Trump. Yet she also infuriates Trump allies; a research project by the news website Axios found that Collins is actually the No. 1 most likely of all congressional Republicans to condemn Trump in a controversy.;

“She’s really tried to walk the line of being a moderate in the Trump era. And that’s just very hard,” Coleman said.

Are Senators Chosen By Popular Vote

Beginning with the 1914 general election, all U.S. senators have been chosen by direct popular election. The Seventeenth Amendment also provided for the appointment of senators to fill vacancies. There have been many landmark contests, such as the election of Hiram Revels, the first African American senator, in 1870.

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List Of Current Members Of The Us Congress

Features of Congress Background United States House of Representatives elections, 2022 Analysis Lifetime voting records Net worth of United States Senators and Representatives Staff salaries of United States Senators and Representatives National Journal vote ratings

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the United States of America’s federal government. It consists of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives, with members chosen through direct election.

Congress has 535 voting members. The Senate has 100 voting officials, and the House has 435 voting officials, along with five delegates and one resident commissioner.

to find your representatives with Ballotpedia’s “Who represents me?” tool.

Us Senate Representation Is Deeply Undemocratic And Cannot Be Changed

Few, if any, other democracies have anything this undemocratic built into their systems.

The U.S. Senate, as you know, is currently divided 50-50 along party lines, thanks to the impressive double win in Georgia, and counting the two technically independent senators as Democrats, since they caucus with the Democrats.

But, according to the calculation of Ian Millhiser, writing for Vox, if you add up the population of states and assign half to each of their two senators, the Democratic half of the Senate represents 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.

Millhisers piece is named after that fact: Americas anti-democratic Senate, in one number.

41.5 million. Thats a lot of people, more than 10 percent of the population . You might think that in a democracy, the party that held that much of an advantage might end up with a solid majority in the Senate, rather than have just barely eked out a 50-50 tie in a body that, taken together, represents the whole country.

Republicans have not won the majority of the votes cast in all Senate races in any election cycle for a long time. Nonetheless, Republicans held majority control of the Senate after the elections of 2014, and 2016 and 2018 and still, after the 2020 races, held 50 of the 100 seats.

GOP does better in lower population states

Works to the detriment of Democratic power

Its deeply undemocratic. Nothing can become federal law without passing the Senate.

Smaller states had to be reassured

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List Of Current United States Senators By Age

This is a list of current U.S. Senators sorted by age. The United States Constitution requires Senators to be at least 30 years of age. Age does not determine seniority in the Senate.

As of August 29, 2021, 5 senators are in their 80s, 18 are in their 70s, 32 are in their 60s, 30 are in their 50s, 14 are in their 40s, and 1 is in his 30s.

The median age of currently serving Senators is 700921436488000000067;years, 339;days.

The median age of taking office for currently serving Senators is 51 years, 75 days.

The median length of their Senate terms to date is 700839925440000000012;years, 238;days.

Rank

United States Senate Elections 2020

U.S. Senate Elections by State U.S. House Elections

Elections to the U.S. Senate were held on . A total of 33 of the 100 seats were up for regular election.

Those elected to the U.S. Senate in the 33 regular elections on November 3, 2020, began their six-year terms on January 3, 2021.

Special elections were also held to fill vacancies that occurred in the 116th Congress, including 2020 special U.S. Senate elections in Arizona for the seat that John McCain won in 2016 and in Georgia for the seat that Johnny Isakson won in 2016.

Twelve seats held by Democrats and 23 seats held by Republicans were up for election in 2020. Heading into the election, Republicans had a majority with 53 seats. Democrats needed a net gain of four seats, or three in addition to winning the presidential election, to take control of the chamber. The vice president casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate.

On this page, you will find:

Information on historical wave elections

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How Is Senate Majority Chosen

The Senate Republican and Democratic floor leaders are elected by the members of their party in the Senate at the beginning of each Congress. Depending on which party is in power, one serves as majority leader and the other as minority leader. The leaders serve as spokespersons for their partys positions on issues.

Effect Of Republican Retirements

Republicans keep control of the House and Senate

Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight

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Many Republicans Mobilizing Against Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill

The bipartisan group of senators who crafted the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is preparing to take a victory lap as the Senate moves toward passing the bill in the coming days.

But a large number of Republicans are mobilizing against the bill that includes $1.2 trillion of spending and $550 billion in new spending on hard infrastructure projects, such as rail, ports, electric vehicle charging stations, and broadband.

Right after the group of bipartisan senators introduced the bills text on Sunday night, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee gave a long floor speech in opposition to the legislation, arguing that the Constitution does not give Congress to go out and spend money on anything that we deem appropriate and that the price tag is too high.

Shame on us for making poor and middle-class Americans poorer so that we can bring praise and adulation to ourselves and more money to a small handful of wealthy, well-connected interests in America, Lee said.

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said that he would vote against the bill, sharing an article that called it an epic binge of green subsidies and more handouts for states and localities.

Several Republicans in the House are also stating their opposition to the bill.

No one should support something that will serve as a trojan horse for the Democrats reconciliation package, which the White House wants to use to pass massive amnesty, the RSC memo read.

Washington Examiner Videos

Join Govtracks Advisory Community

Were looking to learn more about who uses GovTrack and what features you find helpful or think could be improved. If you can, please take a few minutes to help us improve GovTrack for users like you.

Start by telling us more about yourself:

We hope to make GovTrack more useful to policy professionals like you. Please sign up for our advisory group to be a part of making GovTrack a better tool for what you do.

Young Americans have historically been the least involved in politics, despite the huge consequences policies can have on them. By joining our advisory group, you can help us make GovTrack more useful and engaging to young voters like you.

Our mission is to empower every American with the tools to understand and impact Congress. We hope that with your input we can make GovTrack more accessible to minority and disadvantaged communities who we may currently struggle to reach. Please join our advisory group to let us know what more we can do.

We love educating Americans about how their government works too! Please help us make GovTrack better address the needs of educators by joining our advisory group.

Would you like to join our advisory group to work with us on the future of GovTrack?

Email address where we can reach you:

Thank you for joining the GovTrack Advisory Community! Well be in touch.

Recommended Reading: What Percentage Of Republicans Support Trump

About The House Of Representatives

The United States is also divided into 435 congressional districts with a population of about 750,000 each. Each district elects a representative to the House of Representatives for a two-year term.

As in the Senate, the day-to-day activities of the House are controlled by the majority party. Here is a count of representatives by party:

Also Check: Why Did Democrats And Republicans Switch

Republicans Secure Half Of Total Us Senate Seats

WASHINGTON U.S. Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska won reelection Wednesday, assuring Republicans of at least 50 seats in the 100-member Senate for the next two years, while leaving control of the chamber uncertain until two runoff elections are held in Georgia in early January.

After slow vote-counting in the northwestern-most state of the U.S. after the November 3 election, news media concluded that Sullivan had an insurmountable lead over Al Gross, an orthopedic surgeon who ran as an independent candidate with Democratic support. The contest was called with Sullivan, a conservative, ahead by 20 percentage points.

With Republicans assured of at least half the Senate seats, attention now turns to the two January 5 runoff elections in the southern state of Georgia.

Two conservative Republican lawmakers Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler now hold the two seats, but both failed in separate contests last week to win a majority, forcing them into the runoffs.

Perdue faces Democrat Jon Ossoff, an investigative journalist who narrowly lost a 2017 race for a seat in the House of Representatives before trying to oust Perdue from the Senate seat he has held since 2015.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her Senate seat in early 2020, is facing Raphael Warnock, a progressive Democrat who is senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

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Govtrackus Is Taking A New Focus On Civic Education

Help us develop the tools to bring real-time legislative data into the classroom.

If youve visited a bill page on GovTrack.us recently, you may have noticed a new study guide tab located just below the bill title. This is part of a new project to develop better tools for bringing real-time legislative data into the classroom. We hope to enable educators to build lesson plans centered around any bill or vote in Congress, even those as recent as yesterday.

Were looking for feedback from educators about how GovTrack can be used and improved for your classroom. If you teach United States government and would like to speak with us about bringing legislative data into your classroom, please reach out!

Overlap With Other Forms Of Denial

Ultimately, the findings of this analysis show thatdespite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contraryclimate denial remains alive and well in the United States Congress, and its impacts are already costing lives. Furthermore, dangerous denial within Congress is not limited to climate change alone. By this analysis, 82 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and six U.S. senators are both climate deniers and members of the sedition caucusthose who denied the certified results of the 2020 general election and therefore supported President Trumps violent attempt to overturn these democratic results.*** There is also significant overlap between elected officials who deny climate science and elected officials who deny the reality of the pandemic that has sickened millions and claimed the lives of more than half a million Americans in the past year. In fact, as this analysis was being written, one congressman-elect and another congressman who had both cast doubt on the science around climate change died from COVID-19.

Members 1st: January 6, 2015 December 18, 20152nd: January 4, 2016; January 3, 2017

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Democrats Got Millions More Votes So How Did Republicans Win The Senate

Senate electoral process means although Democrats received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, that does not translate to more seats

Follow live updates on US politics

The 2018 midterm elections brought significant gains for Democrats, who retook the House of Representatives and snatched several governorships from the grip of Republicans.

But some were left questioning why Democrats suffered a series of setbacks that prevented the party from picking up even more seats and, perhaps most consequentially, left the US Senate in Republican hands.

Among the most eye-catching was a statistic showing Democrats led Republicans by more than 12 million votes in Senate races, and yet still suffered losses on the night and failed to win a majority of seats in the chamber.

Constitutional experts said the discrepancy between votes cast and seats won was the result of misplaced ire that ignored the Senate electoral process.

Because each state gets two senators, irrespective of population, states such as Wyoming have as many seats as California, despite the latter having more than 60 times the population. The smaller states also tend to be the more rural, and rural areas traditionally favor Republicans.

This year, because Democrats were defending more seats, including California, they received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, but that does not translate to more seats.

The rise of minority rule in America is now unmistakable

Senators Committees And Other Legislative Groups

Democrats win House, Republicans keep Senate

The Senates 63 members represent districts from across New York State. Senators belong to a single conference and one or more political parties.

Weve made it easy to filter senators by party, committee, and the other legislative groups in which they gather to consider the merits of proposed legislation and to better understand complex legislative issues.

Senator has new policy idea

Idea is drafted into a Bill

Bill undergoes committee process

Senate and Assembly pass bill

Bill is signed by Governor

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Arguments For Expanding The Number Of House Members

Advocates;for increasing the number of seats in the House say such a move would increase the quality of representation by reducing the number of constituents each lawmaker represents. Each House member now represents about 710,000 people.

The group ThirtyThousand.org argues that the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights never intended for the population of each congressional district to exceed 50,000 or 60,000. âThe principle of proportionally equitable representation has been abandoned,â the group argues.

Another argument for increasing the size of the House is that is would diminish the influence of lobbyists. That line of reasoning assumes that lawmakers would be more closely connected to their constituents and therefore less likely to listen to special interests.

Why Are There 438 House Of Representative Members

On this date, the House passed the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, fixing the number of Representatives at 435. The U.S. Constitution called for at least one Representative per state and that no more than one for every 30,000 persons. Thus, the size of a states House delegation depended on its population.

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source https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-republicans-are-in-the-senate-currently/

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claremal-one · 5 years ago

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What Are The X-Factors That Could Change The Results In Iowa?

Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Our last politics chat before the 2020 Democratic primary kicks off!! And we’re talking Election X factors! Or what things we should be looking at, besides the polls (and our forecast), that could affect who wins on Monday?

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): To me, in a race that is so close, the number of precincts in which a candidate is either ahead or falling short of the viability threshold – 15 percent at most caucus sites — seems like it could be really important for what happens on Monday. Because say, someone like Bernie Sanders, if his support is concentrated in more urban areas or college towns, does that mean someone like Joe Biden could get more delegate support because he has backing across more rural areas? I don’t know.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Yeah, and related to that point: The polls only measure voters’ initial preferences. But caucusgoers are allowed to realign if their candidate doesn’t meet the viability threshold, and then, of course, the delegates awarded are based on that post-realignment total.

In other words, the polls can’t really tell us exactly how votes will translate into delegates. So it will matter whose support is distributed the most efficiently.

sarahf: (Quick side note: For the first time, raw vote tallies from the first and second alignments will be released publicly, as well as the state delegate equivalents that a candidate earns. In the past, the party only reported the delegate tallies.)

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): Well, and an interesting question along those lines, Geoffrey, is how much will turnout shape the final narrative? In the past, when raw vote totals weren’t released, candidates like Sanders didn’t have as much of an incentive to run up their numbers in places like college towns where they have lots of densely concentrated support. This year, that will be different, and it could make for some confusion when the delegate counts and the raw votes are in.

I’m also curious to see what kind of horse-trading will go on in the caucuses themselves!

geoffrey.skelley: Definitely true, Amelia. I’m looking forward to the possibility of a scenario where Sanders wins the post-realignment raw vote total, but Biden wins the delegate count.

ameliatd: That’s one of the things that makes caucuses so fascinating and unpredictable — people are literally trying to convince each other to join their side as it’s happening.

sarahf: And you’ll be there to see it in action, Amelia! That ought to be wild.

ameliatd: Yes! I will be on the ground at a precinct in Iowa City, which I think will be one of the hubs for a potential Warren/Sanders showdown. My Monday night is going to be full of drama.

sarahf: But play out that scenario you just mentioned, a little bit more, Geoff. How could it work that Sanders wins more votes, but Biden wins more delegates (and therefore Iowa)?

geoffrey.skelley: Basically, every precinct is worth a certain number of state delegate equivalents, which is used to determine delegate allocation for national delegates. So if you get particularly high turnout at a precinct near, say, the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Johnson County, that precinct’s value for delegate purposes is already set based on a calculation determined by the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial Democratic vote share in that precinct. So if Sanders gets like 500 of 600 voters there, it might have the same delegate value as Biden dominating in a different precinct with 150 voters if they are worth the same number of state delegate equivalents. In the 2016 caucuses, for instance, Hillary Clinton swept all 1.6 SDEs in a Waterloo, Iowa, precinct that had 141 people show up, while Sanders got 1.6 of 1.8 SDEs in an Iowa City precinct that had 646 participants. We can’t know what the “popular vote” was in those precincts in 2016 — that’s available for the first time this year — but the delegate value for the two candidates was pretty much the same, even though one precinct had far higher turnout.

nrakich: I’m curious — which of those measures will you guys be paying the most attention to?

sarahf: I mean … I find the whole “both sides could claim victory on caucus night” a bit disingenuous, or at the very least, there should be a heavy burden on the media to report it responsibly. Because you can’t claim victory from the pre-alignment vote total!! That’s not how caucuses work. (Now you can have quibbles with why Iowa caucuses in the first place sure, but this whole sowing confusion narrative bothers me. Let’s not sow confusion!)

nrakich: Why not, Sarah?

That’s the popular vote!

That’s how almost every other state does it, i.e., primary states.

It is the most small-d democratic.

sarahf: That’s true, but Iowa isn’t a primary state! And maybe caucuses should be banned for the reasons you outline (it is really time consuming to caucus), but it’s not like how the winner in Iowa is determined has changed. It’s still based on the number of state delegate equivalents a candidate wins, we’ll just get to see more inside the process, which as a journalist, I’m 100 percent in favor of. More data always, please.

But that means as journalists we have a responsibility to talk about the three different vote totals in the context of how they work within a caucus, e.g. don’t read too much into the pre-alignment vote, because this will change (not every candidate will have enough support to make it to the next round of voting). That vote is the most small-d democratic, as you say, but it’s also not how caucuses work, so we shouldn’t feed into that narrative! Although, I’m sure some candidates will. But whatever. Report the process; don’t sow confusion.

nrakich: My short argument for why the initial preference numbers are the most important is that they’re the best representation of how voters feel — kind of like a massive poll. The state delegate equivalents might matter more for delegate selection, but Iowa is a small state — the number of delegates a candidate gets there is less important than the momentum/vote of confidence he/she receives.

geoffrey.skelley: Right, Nathaniel — in fact, AAPOR (the American Association for Public Opinion Research) recommends that journalists compare poll results from this cycle to those pre-realignment numbers when considering the accuracy of polls.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Here’s a pulled-out question, not related to thresholds: Is there anything that could happen in this last weekend to sway things one way or the other for voters still on the bubble? Is it good for the Democrats that all these senators aren’t going to be in the Senate for a drawn-out impeachment trial after all?

ameliatd: I have to imagine, Clare, that the senators are pretty excited about the prospect of getting back to Iowa. They’ve had surrogates campaigning on their behalf, but having the actual candidate there seems like a much better recipe for firing up their supporters — and that enthusiasm can really matter in the caucuses.

clare.malone: Another x-factor to mention: Could some big-name establishment Democrat speak out against Sanders? That sort of stuff has been floating around the past couple of weeks in news stories. It’s the kind of thing you could see happening on a Sunday show or a cable interview over the weekend.

sarahf: I mean, that’s a great question. In theory, Iowa always has at least a few polling surprises, but it’s also kind of hard for me to see Buttigieg, Warren or Amy Klobuchar making a big comeback at this point.

I know, never say never. But it’s hard for me to see this path — don’t @ me!!

Someone from the Democratic establishment speaking out against Sanders, on the other hand … that could be

Except Democrats would be smart to not have the spokesperson be Hillary Clinton. I feel like that Hollywood Reporter story about that new documentary where she dished on Sanders, and what it was like working with him in Congress, just fired up his base more than it actually hurt him.

nrakich: I don’t know if any figure in the party is big enough to matter, unless their last name is Obama.

And I don’t think either of the Obamas is going to weigh in at this point.

Mayyyybe if Sanders wins the first few states and he becomes the favorite to win the nomination …

geoffrey.skelley: Which could definitely happen — if he wins Iowa, he’ll be favored in New Hampshire and probably Nevada, too.

ameliatd: It would make sense to me if it were that the big establishment figures were biding their time to see how Sanders does in Iowa, and holding their fire until then.

clare.malone: I think the polling surprise is a great point, Sarah.

And considering the big Des Moines Register poll didn’t drop this weekend, we’re kind of in the dark as to where things could be headed. Hazard any guesses on potential surprises?

sarahf: I mean, we expect a few polls later today, but I was surprised in this last week that Buttigieg and Warren didn’t see more of an uptick. If anything, Warren actually ticked down more in our forecast this week despite the endorsement from the Des Moines Register, which should have helped her at least somewhat in the polls.

If anything, Klobuchar has started to do better. Granted she only has a 3 percent chance of winning the most votes in Iowa, but that’s been an interesting development to me anyways.

I mean … if anyone other than Sanders and Biden are in the top two at the end of the night on Monday, that’s an x-factor, right?

ameliatd: It’s all because of Klobuchar’s hot dish, Sarah. Never doubt the power of tater tots!

sarahf: Lol, that article.

nrakich: Klobuchar doing well would be an x-factor because I’m not sure there is room for FIVE front-runners. If Klobuchar surges, in my mind, someone like Buttigieg would have to crater.

As a reminder, we have never seen more than three candidates get more than 15 percent (the threshold required to get delegates) in any state before.

geoffrey.skelley: Definitely agree that it would be surprising if Biden or Sanders were not in the top two, but that’s certainly a possibility. With voters’ second-choice picks being really important in Iowa, I don’t want to totally discount anyone in the top four from winning, or anyone in the top five — so Klobuchar, too — from ending up in second or third.

And right now, we have three polling above 15 percent in Iowa and Warren just under that at 14 percent. Plus, Klobuchar is now right at 10 percent in our polling average.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): In some ways, I wonder if the buzz about Sanders’s potential to win Iowa and that victory catapulting him to the nomination happened a week or so too early for him. And it allowed his opponents within the party to hit him fairly hard, with an argument (electability) that Democratic voters really care about.

clare.malone: Ooooh, I like this take.

Interesting fodder!

And the idea that a person can have a “week too early” surge seems like a very Iowa phenom.

nrakich: It’s amazing how the timing of an election can matter. Random choices like whether the Iowa caucuses were this week or last week can make a big difference in who potentially gets elected leader of the free world.

ameliatd: Well, and a scenario like that could be especially helpful for Biden is that his supporters are generally older and perhaps more likely to caucus, too — although some of those folks aren’t necessarily regular caucusgoers.

perry: Buttigieg is even trying to get former Republicans to go to the caucuses. Those people are not going to support Sanders or Warren as a second choice.

geoffrey.skelley: Actually, age is one of the big questions about the caucus electorate — some polls have people under 50 making up as much as 47 percent of the electorate, which would be good news for Sanders, while others have it much lower than that. This has ramifications for each candidate’s poll numbers, but especially Sanders and Biden because their support at the age poles (oldest and youngest) are opposite of one another.

sarahf: So OK, say Sanders doesn’t win — because as Perry says, he peaked too early — does that put him a few points behind Biden … and Warren? Is there still room for her to be thought of as a moderate alternative to Sanders?

Perry: If the turnout is screwed young, I think Bernie will win. He really needs the electorate to be younger.

geoffrey.skelley: If Warren remains viable in most places, that actually could be quite bad for Sanders. And that’s because she’s the one whose backers are most likely to pick Sanders as their second choice. As the most recent Iowa State/Civiqs poll showed, 33 percent of Warren backers picked Sanders as their second choice, whereas no more than 11 percent of the other leading candidates’ backers chose Sanders as their top second choice.

nrakich: I mean, not to be that guy, Sarah, but in 80 percent of simulations in our model, Sanders could do anything from surge to 43 percent of the vote to drop to 11 percent in Iowa. And yeah, if he falls that far, he could finish below several other candidates (for the record, Warren’s range of outcomes in the 80-percent confidence interval is 3 percent to 31 percent).

ameliatd: I’m also really curious as to what will happen in places like Iowa City, which Bernie won handily in 2016. Obviously, a lot of 2016 Sanders’s voters are already supporting other candidates. But is it possible that all of the sudden focus on Bernie actually energizes his young lefty supporters and juices turnout even more?

Or, to answer your question, Sarah, maybe the attacks on Bernie prompt some progressive folks — the people who actually live and work in college towns, not the students — to give Warren a second look.

geoffrey.skelley: Thing is, because each precinct has a pre-assigned value based on the 2016-2018 Democratic vote, how much you can gain from juiced turnout near college campuses could be limited if it’s in select precincts.

nrakich: Right, which is why the actual preferences of Iowa voters is all that matters

sarahf: Lol, what about the possibility for technical glitches and the fact that Iowa is kind of sort of going to be making it easier to caucus this time around?

Do you think that’s an x-factor at all?

ameliatd: I’m a little skeptical of whether the satellite caucuses are actually going to make things easier. There are not that many of them, and they’re mostly in the middle of the day or the evening.

Of course, there will be a caucus in Tblisi, Georgia, which could really be what gives one of the candidates their edge.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, you still have to gather for a couple hours in the evening. Not like having ~12 hours to show up for 20 minutes and cast a ballot.

ameliatd: Or drop your ballot in the mail!

geoffrey.skelley: So I’m not expecting turnout to be crazy high.

nrakich: I think the overarching thing to remember here is that caucuses are always going to be harder to vote in than primaries. This article, about how difficult it can be for people with physical disabilities to caucus, really stuck with me.

#BanTheCaucus

sarahf: OK, rapid fire, final X-factors going into Monday. What do you think is super important to keep an eye on? I still think there’s got to be some kind of polling surprise that we just don’t know about yet, or wasn’t caught because there were a lot less polls this time around. …

nrakich: I think it will be whether the media makes a big deal out of “so-and-so winning Iowa,” even if he or she wins by just a fraction of a percentage point. To me, that is better thought of as a tie, but the way cable news tends to frame things as winners and losers could have a real impact on the narrative of which campaign is surging and which is struggling going into New Hampshire.

For instance, if Warren and Biden effectively tie, I think it will be spun as a win for Warren but a loss for Biden, and I don’t think it should be.

geoffrey.skelley: Relatedly, I’m interested in the possibility of having super ambiguous results because we will have three different outcomes to look at — first preference, final preference and state delegate equivalents, the last of which actually determines delegate counts.

ameliatd: I’m going to be a broken record but — turnout! Who shows up, and where? Whose supporters are most jazzed up and enthusiastic? That’s something that’s harder to predict/see until the caucuses are actually happening.

perry: What I’m looking for, before Monday night, are any clear urgings from really prominent Democrats to not back Sanders. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave clearly anti-Sanders remarks on Friday, but they didn’t get much attention and she didn’t use his name.) Also, I’m watching for some of the lower-tier candidates to point their supporters to all get behind a second-choice person. (This would not be done by the candidate or their top staffers directly, but more under the radar.) So would most Yang/Gabbard supporters get behind Sanders? Klobuchar backers to Biden? The most interesting questions to me are whether Warren supporters, in places where she is not viable, mostly go to Sanders and in places where Buttigieg is not viable, if his supporters mostly go to Biden.

from Clare Malone – FiveThirtyEight https://ift.tt/2UfQbSp

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nodynasty4us · 4 years ago

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First reactions from the Five Thirty Eight crew:

Perry Bacon Jr.: Trump Interrupts Biden, Wallace And Americans’ Ability To Follow The Debate

Maggie Koerth: What If The Presidential Debate Was Like the Worst Fight Your Uncles Ever Had At Thanksgiving

Kaleigh Rogers: First Presidential Debate Hits A New Low, In A Year Of Nothing But Lows

Amelia Thomson-Deveaux: Everyone Lost The First Presidential Debate

Nathaniel Rakich: This Was The Worst Debate America Has Ever Had

Geoffrey Skelley: Maybe The Only Debate Takeaway Is That Trump Still Refuses To Say He Will Accept The Results Of The Election

Shom Mazumber: An Anticipated Debate Leaves Much To Be Desired

Micah: 2020 Is Perfectly Encapsulated In First Presidential Debate

Galen: Trump Uses Debate As Metaphor For His Governing Style: Chaos

Chris Jackson: Response On Twitter Suggests No One Wins Race-To-The-Bottom Debate

Meena Ganesan: There Are So Many More Days Left In 2020

#debates

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

From sea to shining sea (via purple mountains majesty), today’s primary elections have it all. To have a prayer in November, Alaska Democrats may have to nominate … candidates who are not Democrats. In Florida, three campaigns for Congress have devolved into backbiting and criminal accusations. And in deep-red Wyoming, today’s primary will essentially decide the state’s next U.S. senator. Here’s everything you need to know.

Alaska

In 2018, Republican Rep. Don Young — the longest-serving member of Congress — won reelection by less than 7 percentage points. Notably, his opponent in that race, businesswoman Alyse Galvin, wasn’t even technically a Democrat. She was an independent who ran for and won the Democratic nomination.

Two years later, Democrats are trying to double their luck with the same trick: Galvin is running again for U.S. House, and independent Al Gross is the prohibitive favorite in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Gross, a surgeon and fisherman with a bear of an introductory ad, enjoys the endorsement of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and has raised $5.2 million. Of course, both Galvin and Gross will still face uphill general election campaigns in this red state, but Alaska has a strong independent streak, so Young and Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan can’t take anything for granted.

Florida

Fresh off a victory in the 2018 election, Republican Rep. Ross Spano of Florida’s 15th Congressional District was riding high — until he was faced with the possibility he violated campaign finance law. In a December 2018 filing with the Federal Election Commission, Spano disclosed that he borrowed $180,000 from two friends and then loaned $167,000 to his own campaign. Since individuals were not allowed to give a candidate more than $2,700 per election in 2018, this could be seen as laundering campaign contributions. The House Ethics Committee launched an investigation, and in November 2019 we learned that the Justice Department had opened a criminal inquiry.

Unsurprisingly, Spano is now facing stiff reelection challenges from both parties. In the Republican primary, Lakeland City Commissioner Scott Franklin has hammered Spano as a “criminal” in ads; Spano insists he didn’t know his actions were illegal and is framing himself as a victim of a partisan witch hunt. For his part, Spano has tried to paint Franklin as insufficiently loyal to President Trump — something that has become par for the course in GOP primaries. Both candidates have also accused the other of not being tough enough on illegal immigration.

While Spano has the support of the party establishment, including most of the Republicans serving Florida in Congress, a few high-profile local conservatives have endorsed Franklin. As of July 29, Spano had outspent Franklin, $824,000 to $483,000, and the incumbent’s allies at the anti-tax Club for Growth also invested more than $270,000. But an upset may nonetheless be brewing: Last week, St. Pete Polls found the two men locked in a virtual tie.

Whoever wins will face either investigative journalist Alan Cohn or state Rep. Adam Hattersley, who are squaring off in an evenly matched Democratic primary of their own. As of July 29, Cohn had spent more than Hattersley ($459,000 to $406,600), but Hattersley had more cash on hand for the final three weeks ($236,000 to $130,000). Although the two don’t differ much on policy, Cohn has dinged Hattersley for being too moderate (he has some endorsements from moderate groups and didn’t register as a Democrat until 2018). Hattersley, though, has appropriated that argument to claim he’s the more electable candidate — which might be persuasive given that Trump carried this central Florida district by 10 points in 2016.

Two other Republican primaries in Florida are also on our radar because they’ll likely determine future members of Congress due to the GOP lean of the seats. First, the 19th Congressional District in southwest Florida is open following the retirement of Republican Rep. Francis Rooney, and there are four candidates in serious contention: businessman Casey Askar, state Rep. Byron Donalds, state House Majority Leader Dane Eagle and physician William Figlesthaler.

One of Figlesthaler’s ads aptly describes the contest as “the race to support President Trump,” and all the candidates are fighting for pole position. Figlesthaler says he’ll back Trump’s “America First agenda,” while Eagle argues his experience as a GOP leader makes him the best choice to stand with Trump and “fight for America.” Donalds emphasizes that he’s a “Trump-supporting, gun-owning, liberty-loving, pro-life, politically incorrect Black man.” And Askar proclaims that he’ll “always have the president’s back” in Trump’s battle against the media, bureaucrats and the “radical socialists.”

And as the race has heated up, things have gotten nasty. In one ad, Askar stresses that when he was 18, he signed up for the Marines, whereas Donalds was arrested for drug possession at 19 and Eagle got a DUI at 31. He’s also argued that Donalds lied to get a state job and opposed Trump in the past, attacks that got a “Mostly False” rating from PolitiFact. But Askar’s military service and educational background have been called into question, providing plenty of ammunition for his opponents. And outside groups have also dinged Askar for past contributions to Mitt Romney. They’ve also criticized Figlesthaler for giving money to former Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson (who lost in 2018) and not donating to Trump in the 2016 presidential race.

However, because Askar and Figlesthaler are largely self-funding their campaigns, they’ve dramatically outspent Donalds and Eagle. Askar has raised about $3.7 million (with $3 million from personal loans), while Figlesthaler has brought in a little over $2.5 million ($1.9 million self-funded). Conversely, Donalds has collected roughly $1.2 million and Eagle just about $741,000. However, Donalds has far and away the most outside help thanks to his endorsement from the Club for Growth. The group’s campaign arm has spent about $1.4 million boosting Donalds and another $1.1 million hitting the other three candidates (mainly Askar). And Conservative Outsider PAC, another Donalds ally, has also spent $459,000 attacking Eagle.

As the campaign draws to a close, though, it looks like anyone’s race. An early August survey from St. Pete Polls found the four candidates separated by just 6 points, with Donalds attracting 22 percent support, Figlesthaler 21 percent, Eagle 20 percent and Askar 16 percent.

Meanwhile, the 3rd Congressional District in north Florida also has a busy primary to replace retiring Republican Rep. Ted Yoho. The contest lacks a front-runner, but the most prominent contenders appear to be former Yoho staffer Kat Cammack, businessman Judson Sapp and physician James St. George.

The principal drama in the race has centered on Cammack, who has gained notoriety for running fowl-themed ads in which she calls her opponents and D.C. Republicans too “chicken” to stand up for conservative values. She’s played up her connections to Yoho, too, but those ties have recently come under scrutiny. In late June, Yoho’s son claimed Cammack had been fired as his father’s chief of staff and expressed frustration that Cammack made it sound like the congressman backed her. Following his son’s statement, Rep. Yoho stated that Cammack had been demoted to deputy chief of staff and reassigned to the district office in 2013 “for reasons not to be disclosed,” and later reiterated that he wasn’t endorsing anyone.

As for St. George and Sapp, they have also touted their conservative credentials, support for Trump and opposition to the political left. They’ve also brought more financial resources to the race than Cammack. As of July 29, St. George had raised about $922,000 ($600,000 from his own pocket) while Sapp, who won 24 percent in the 2018 primary against Yoho, had collected $770,000 ($500,000 self-funded). By comparison, Cammack had gathered about $492,000 in contributions with very little self-funding. But Cammack has benefited from the only significant outside spending in the race: $300,000 by the Sen. Rand Paul-aligned Protect Freedom PAC. (Paul has endorsed Cammack.)

And the only recent poll we have of the race suggests Cammack might come out on top with a plurality of the vote. Earlier this month, Meer Research found Cammack garnering 25 percent, Sapp 15 percent and St. George 13 percent. However, 20 percent were still undecided and seven other candidates also attracted support. Cammack doesn’t have an overwhelming lead, so it’s entirely possible one of the other contenders might still best her today.

Wyoming

With the retirement of Republican Sen. Mike Enzi, the GOP primary for Wyoming’s Senate seat is also in the cards, and the winner of this election is essentially guaranteed to become the state’s next senator, as Wyoming is arguably the most Republican state in the nation. Admittedly, there’s not much drama here as former Rep. Cynthia Lummis is a pretty clear front-runner despite the fact that there are 10 candidates on the GOP primary ballot.

But we mention this race because Lummis’s likely election could be meaningful for Republican gender diversity in the Senate. At present, just nine of the 26 women in the Senate are Republicans. Six of them are up for election this November, with four in real danger of defeat.1 So if things go poorly for the GOP, Lummis could be important to shoring up gender representation within the party’s caucus.

Things are busiest in Florida today, but there are intriguing reasons to watch what happens in Alaska and Wyoming, too. There aren’t many primary or runoff contests left in 2020, so enjoy primary season while it lasts.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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While leadership in both houses of Congress remain largely opposed to voting remotely in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, some state legislatures have already moved to adopt a remote setup to avoid the dangers of possibly spreading the virus by meeting in person.

One of the first states to do this was Pennsylvania, where many members of the state Senate and House of Representatives have already cast ballots from afar. So to get a better sense of how the process worked, possible kinks in the system and how it compared to a typical legislative session, we spoke with two members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives: Democratic state Rep. Melissa Shusterman, a first-term member from suburban Philadelphia who is also a deputy whip, and Republican state Rep. Tarah Toohil, who has represented part of northeastern Pennsylvania since 2011. Shusterman worked from home during last week’s legislative session while Toohil worked out of her district office in Hazleton, giving them insight into how remote voting can affect the legislative process.

The move to offer remote voting in the Pennsylvania legislature grew out of a concern about what would happen if members continued to gather on the House floor. “We tend to be kind of all over each other in session, there’s 200 of us — that’s not even including support staff in one room — and we sit very close together,” said Shusterman. So on March 16, the House voted unanimously to change the rules to allow for remote voting. (The Senate changed its rules with a vote on March 18.)

And although voting remotely is optional in Pennsylvania — some members have continued to vote on the floor — at least 114 representatives had opted to work remotely by March 25, with some working from home while others worked from their offices in Harrisburg. Toohil said many members decided not to attend because they were at high risk for the virus — some are immunocompromised, and many are over the age of 65. Personally, though, she said she decided to vote remotely because “what if I’m an asymptomatic carrier? I would have no way of knowing, and I would then be bringing that into a room of 203 voting members … not even counting the number of staff.”

The sudden shift to remote work has meant the legislature has had to work rapidly to set up a virtual system to not only cast votes but also hold caucus meetings — which has created some annoyances as legislators adapt to the new system. For example, in one of the Republicans’ earliest virtual caucus meetings, they didn’t yet have videoconferencing set up. “I had to get into a queue and signal that I wanted to speak, so it just makes it a little bit harder when you’re not able to have this face-to-face communication,” Toohil said. That aspect has improved now that they are using the teleconferencing software Zoom, Toohil said, but that has brought its own issues — “I actually ordered a new computer because I can’t do the Zoom meeting on my old archaic laptop!”

Shusterman told us that, all things considered, it’s come together pretty well, although there were definitely some chuckles as members tried to work via videoconference. “There were humorous moments of trying to get certain people to turn off their microphone or, ‘Hey, we can hear that’ or ‘Maybe you want to change the video, you’re a little too close to the camera,’” laughed Shusterman. But she said the process still felt similar to the typical in-person caucus experience. “It still flowed in a very informative and timely manner so we could go back and vote,” said Shusterman.

There were troubleshooting measures put in place, too, to help ensure the process went as smoothly as possible. “Many of us whips had a phone line going with all the people we were whipping that if they needed further clarification on either a bill or the order — ‘What are we voting on today?’ — or just any question like ‘I can’t hear,’” Shusterman said.

As a deputy whip for the Democrats, Shusterman was closely involved in the first remote votes, too. Normally when the House is in session, whips use pen and paper on the floor to keep track of members’ votes and members vote via an electronic voting device in the chamber. But now they are having to adapt that system to the new reality. Toohil said she is still recording her vote on paper, but she now has to scan it and send a PDF to the GOP whip, who then tallies the votes. “It’s definitely not a system that you would want to have to use,” she said. But Shusterman, who is using an online tool to tally where people stand, was a lot more sanguine about the new process. “People were so engaged that they’re also responding to me via text, via email,” said Shusterman. She hoped to use the online tool for tracking votes even after remote voting is no longer necessary.

At this point, though, the House has only voted remotely on legislation that had strong bipartisan support. “I feel like leadership on both sides of the aisle are working together to make sure we’re voting on things that we’ve probably been working on in different capacities for a long time,” observed Shusterman. So while things have gotten off to a promising start, it remains to be seen how well remote voting will work when addressing more contentious legislation. Toohil was not optimistic: “If it is controversial, it’s going to be much more problematic” to vote remotely, she said — “especially with amendments, as the bills change. It’s going to be a very lengthy process. It’s going to be very hard to see, ‘OK, wait, which amendment are we on now?’”

Because her party is in the minority, we asked Shusterman if she was worried about the Republican House majority trying to take advantage of the circumstances to push through controversial legislation, but she told us she wasn’t that concerned. “I think this is bringing people together. Yes, there are always outliers. But on the whole, people are working together, sharing resources, sharing how they deal with their constituents, with different issues — the flow of information is very, very good.”

One concern about widespread adoption of remote voting is that legislators might be encouraged to use it in non-crisis situations, which could reduce face-to-face interactions and affect the personal relationships that are important for getting things done, both within a party and across the aisle. But Toohil and Shusterman both told us they were doubtful that there would be much interest in using remote voting beyond a crisis. “It’s definitely not ideal. I think maybe years from now it’s something that would be looked at, but I can’t see how [remote voting could replace in-person voting]. Voting is so interactive,” said Toohil. Shusterman agreed: “We’re voted into office to be legislators — we’re also public servants — but our oath is to go in and vote on legislation.” She added that it’s often vital to be at the state capitol to attend information sessions on issues and meet in person to help legislators learn more about important topics.

For now, legislators in Pennsylvania and a handful of other states are trying out remote voting, and in Pennsylvania, at least, despite some hurdles, it’s allowed legislative business to continue, and with a spirit of cooperation to boot. “That really gives me hope that in 2020 we’re going to have a better year as legislators, we’re going to be able to cross that aisle more and more because we’re all in this together,” said Shusterman.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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Today, nine states and the District of Columbia will hold primary elections, most of which were delayed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.1 And although the presidential nomination race is all but over, seven states (and Washington, D.C.) will hold presidential primaries today, while eight states and D.C. will hold primaries for down-ballot contests. So here’s a preview of some of the marquee races that could have implications for key Senate, House and gubernatorial contests in November.

In Iowa, the main events are the Democratic primary for the Senate and the Republican primary for the 4th Congressional District. In the Senate contest, the big question is whether the Democratic establishment will get its preferred pick to take on Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Majority PAC, an outside group allied with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are backing real estate executive Theresa Greenfield over retired Vice Admiral Mike Franken, attorney Kimberly Graham and businessman Eddie Mauro.

It’s a little surprising that national Democrats have invested so much in Greenfield as at the start of the cycle, she was a little-known candidate who had never held office. Yet Greenfield has a compelling narrative: She grew up on a small rural farm and has dealt with her share of tragedy, having to overcome the death of her husband as a young mother. She’s proved to be a strong fundraiser, too, bringing in more money than Ernst in the most recent fundraising period.

But it’s unclear just how much of an advantage Greenfield has despite her national backing. The Des Moines Register endorsed Franken, citing his military and policymaking experience, and Mauro is self-funding his campaign, so his $1.5 million in campaign spending is not that far behind Greenfield’s $2.3 million. Not to mention, Greenfield has been criticized by opponents for her real estate company’s evictions of small businesses and the outside support her campaign has received. Greenfield’s allies are worried enough about Franken that the campaign arm of Emily’s List — a group that works to elect Democratic women who favor abortion rights — has spent $1 million going after him.

The two recent polls of the race show very different results, too. A mid-May survey conducted by Public Policy Polling found Greenfield at 43 percent, well ahead of Franken (12 percent), Graham and Mauro (4 percent each). The only other survey we’ve seen — a poll from Advantage, Inc. — was leaked and came with no information about its sponsor, but it showed a much tighter — and wide-open — race, with Greenfield at 19 percent, Graham at 16 percent, Franken at 15 percent and Mauro at 8 percent.

Iowa’s 4th Congressional District will be a key race to watch as well as Republican Rep. Steve King might be in real trouble of losing his seat. King’s racist and controversial statements have long made him a pariah to many Republicans, and now Republican state Sen. Randy Feenstra is challenging King, arguing that the incumbent can no longer effectively represent the district after GOP leaders stripped him of his House committee appointments.

Two mid-May surveys suggest a tight race with Feenstra, too. Always treat campaign polls with caution, but Feenstra’s internal polling found him trailing King by just 3 points, 39 percent to 36 percent, while a group backing Feenstra found King losing by 2 points, 41 percent to 39 percent. Still, King may survive this primary challenge because many Iowa conservatives haven’t abandoned him. Some influential Republican activists have ditched him, though, including Iowa social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats, who ran an ad in support of Feenstra despite his long-standing relationship with King.

But just how competitive the Iowa 4th is in November will depend on whether King wins renomination. Democrat J.D. Scholten, who lost to King by just 3 points in 2018 in this deep red seat — President Trump carried it by 27 points in 2016 — is back for a rematch and should be competitive against King. But if Feenstra defeats King, the GOP could have a better shot at retaining this ostensibly safe Republican seat.

To the west, Montana is shaping up as the most competitive gubernatorial election in 2020, with both parties featuring contested primaries in the race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock. On the Republican side, Rep. Greg Gianforte lost to Bullock in the 2016 gubernatorial race, but he won Montana’s at-large House seat in 2017, and he’s now taking another shot at the governorship, where he appears to have the upper hand against Montana Attorney General Tim Fox and state Sen. Al Olszewski. This is in part thanks to his sizable funding advantage — Gianforte has raised around $2 million while also loaning another $1.5 million to his campaign. By comparison, Fox has raised only $750,000, while Olszewski has brought in $350,000. The coronavirus pandemic may have boosted Gianforte, too, as he’s been able to advertise while Fox and Olszewski have been unable to campaign in person to overcome their monetary shortfall. There’s been no recent public polling, but it looks like Gianforte’s race to lose.

Meanwhile, the Democratic primary between Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney and businesswoman Whitney Williams has been something of an insider-outsider battle. Cooney has a lengthy political resume in state government while Williams is a first-time candidate — though she is the daughter of longtime Democratic Rep. Pat Williams. But the coronavirus crisis may have helped Cooney — who also has Bullock’s endorsement — as it’s given more weight to his argument that he has the know-how to govern on day one. Still, Williams has run about even with Cooney in the money race — both have raised about $800,000 for the primary — and she’s also received significant outside help from Emily’s List, which made a $700,000 ad buy on her behalf. But a dearth of polling in this primary has left us with little else to go on at this point, so it’s hard to know who is favored.

To the south, there are two congressional primaries worth watching in New Mexico. The Democratic-held 2nd District is one of Republicans’ best pickup opportunities this cycle — it voted for Trump by 10 points. Former state Rep. Yvette Herrell, who narrowly lost the seat by 2 points in 2018, is running again in the GOP primary. Herrell is a conservative grassroots favorite, but she faces stiff competition in oil executive Claire Chase. The primary has turned particularly nasty in recent weeks, with Herrell attacking Chase for her “Never Trump�� past, including releasing an ad that mocks Chase’s 2015 anti-Trump social media posts. It’s not clear who has the edge here, though. We don’t have any polls of the race, and as of May 13, Chase had narrowly outspent Herrell ($1.1 million to $920,000). That said, Herrell has gotten support from outside groups like the political arm of the House Freedom Caucus and even the Democratic group Patriot Majority, which apparently believes she’ll be easier to beat than Chase in the fall.

Next door in the open 3rd District, seven Democrats are vying for the nod in this safely blue seat, including one whom non-New Mexicans may recognize: Valerie Plame, a former Central Intelligence Agency operative who was famously unmasked in 2003 after Plame’s then-husband criticized the Bush administration’s rationale for invading Iraq. With the help of a slick announcement video that went viral, Plame has raised the most money in the race (more than $2 million), but she has also been attacked for linking to an anti-Semitic article in 2017: One extreme dark-money ad even superimposed swastikas on her eyes and linked her to white supremacists. Plame’s main competition for the nomination appears to be civil-rights attorney Teresa Leger Fernandez, who has raised almost $1.3 million, has been endorsed by Emily’s List and received the most support from delegates at the pre-primary convention. We have just one recent poll of the race — an internal poll released by Emily’s List — which gave Leger Fernandez 33 percent and Plame 24 percent, with no other candidate reaching double digits.

Finally, how the elections unfold today is worth watching as well. The pandemic has forced all 10 jurisdictions voting today to make at least some changes to the way the election is being held. In addition, elections are taking place in many cities that have seen extensive unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody, which could affect turnout in unpredictable ways.

Maryland and Montana have done the most to encourage voting by mail, sending every registered voter a ballot. The District of Columbia, Idaho, Iowa, New Mexico, Rhode Island and South Dakota stopped short of mailing everyone a ballot but did mail every voter an application to request one. By contrast, Pennsylvania merely mailed voters a postcard with instructions on how to request an absentee ballot. And Indiana waived the requirement that voters provide an excuse to vote absentee but did not mail anything out at all.

But regardless of the steps each state has taken on the vote-by-mail front, there is likely to be a big spike in the number of mailed ballots, so it will be interesting to see how states are (or aren’t) prepared to handle the increased volume. Already, concerns that many Pennsylvania voters would not receive their absentee ballots in time have prompted Gov. Tom Wolf to extend the deadline for voters in six counties to return their ballots by one week, issues with Maryland’s ballot vendor caused more than 1 million ballots to go out late, and a candidate in Idaho successfully sued to extend the deadline to apply for an absentee ballot after he argued that the state’s ballot-request website got overloaded at the last minute. And voters in several other states are complaining they still haven’t received ballots they requested weeks ago.

Every jurisdiction is also scaling back in-person voting options. New Mexico originally planned to provide 548 polling places, but only 381 are actually open. Rhode Island has consolidated its polling places from 144 in the 2016 primary to 47 this year. The District of Columbia has scaled down from 144 to 20. In addition, D.C. has imposed a 7 p.m. curfew for tonight to stem potential rioting, but voters — who can go to vote centers until 8 p.m. — are supposed to be exempt. Most drastically, Idaho is not opening any in-person voting sites at all — which many voting-rights advocates argue disenfranchises people with disabilities and without mailing addresses.

Some states left the decision of how many polling places to open up to local governments, which could also produce wide disparities in voting access in different corners of the state. For example, Marion County, Indiana — home of Indianapolis and 43 percent of the state’s non-Hispanic black population — will have just 22 polling places, down from more than 250. But suburban Hamilton County, which has the highest per-capita median income in the state, is expected to open all 125 of its usual polling places. In Pennsylvania, the majority-minority City of Philadelphia is consolidating 831 polling places into 190, while affluent suburban Bucks County was planning not to close any. For primary races that cross county and city lines, this threatens to affect the outcome by giving certain localities an outsized proportion of the total votes cast.

We’ll be watching both how today’s key races turn out and whether the elections go off without a hitch. Although we won’t be live-blogging tonight, check back for a recap article soon — just don’t expect it right away, as the high volume of mail ballots likely means results won’t be final for some time.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich

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theliberaltony · 3 years ago

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It’s official: For only the fourth time in U.S. history, a state will hold an election on whether to recall its governor midterm. The long-expected gubernatorial recall election in California is set for Sept. 14, and 46 candidates (not including the governor himself, Democrat Gavin Newsom) have officially qualified to run. But perhaps the most intriguing development in the race has come in recent polling. After the recall looked uncompetitive for months, evidence has emerged that the race is tightening.

Until last week, there had been no new polls of the recall election in about a month. But since then, we’ve gotten two — and both showed Newsom in danger of being recalled. First, an Emerson College/Nexstar Media survey found that 48 percent of registered voters in California wanted to keep Newsom in office, while 43 percent wanted to recall him. Then, a poll from the University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times found that 50 percent of likely recall voters wanted to keep Newsom and 47 percent wanted to oust him. These fresh polls — both within the margin of error — differed markedly from a handful of surveys released in May and June that found the recall effort trailing by at least 10 percentage points.

Who casts a ballot in this unusually timed election could be pivotal. The UC Berkeley IGS/Los Angeles Times poll underscored why: Among registered voters, Republicans were far more likely to say they’d vote than Democrats or independents. Eighty percent of Republican registered voters said they were absolutely certain to vote, compared with only 55 percent of Democrats and about half of independents. As such, likely voters were opposed to removing Newsom by only 3 points, while the spread was much wider among all registered voters — 51 percent were opposed to removing him compared with just 36 percent in favor (in line with the pollster’s findings in early May and late January). In fact, Republicans’ enthusiasm for this race is so high that they make up roughly one-third of the survey’s likely electorate, even though they constitute only about one-quarter of California’s registered voters.

Irregularly timed elections, like a gubernatorial recall held in September of an odd year, can produce unexpected results and lopsided electorates. However, there’s one reason why that might not happen in this race: California has extended its pandemic-inspired election-law changes that require ballots to be automatically mailed to all active registered voters through the end of 2021. Mail elections don’t inherently help the Democratic Party, but studies have found that they do increase turnout, which could help insulate Newsom from a scenario where only his most fervent opponents bother to cast a ballot.

It’s tempting to point to COVID-19 as the chief cause for why Newsom is in hot water since the pandemic helped galvanize the recall effort in the first place. The highly contagious delta variant has led to an uptick in cases of COVID-19 in California, and Newsom is now weighing whether to impose statewide restrictions, which could further energize his opposition. (Los Angeles County has already reinstated an indoor mask mandate.) The governor has also had disputes with teachers unions and school administrators over the reopening of schools, and many Californians are still frustrated by the state’s continually changing vaccination-distribution plan. Yet Newsom’s handling of the pandemic might not be his biggest liability. A slightly greater share of likely voters in the Berkeley poll agreed with the statement that Newsom should be recalled “because he has failed to adequately address many of the state’s longstanding problems,” such as homelessness, income inequality and wildfires (48 percent), than agreed with the statement that he should be recalled “because he greatly overstepped his authority as governor when responding to the COVID-19 pandemic” (44 percent).1

In other words, California voters may be displeased with conditions related to COVID-19, but other problems in the state are troubling them, too. Thus, the pandemic may not be solely responsible for what we’ve seen in the polls.

For his part, Newsom is painting the recall as a contest between him and a rash of Trump-supporting Republicans (for instance, the governor has tried to pin the growing number of COVID-19 cases on Republicans and conservative media and their misinformation on vaccines). But this strategy may be complicated by a judge’s ruling on July 12 that Newsom won’t be listed as a Democrat on the official recall ballot.2 Most Californians are probably aware that Newsom is a Democrat, but having his party affiliation spelled out in black and white could have helped him on the margins in this very blue state.

Recent developments in the recall haven’t been all bad news for Newsom. Crucially, his efforts to discourage other prominent Democrats from running in the recall seem to have paid off. Of the 46 candidates running to replace him, only nine are Democrats — and none are established politicians. By contrast, 24 Republican candidates are in the race, as well as two Green Party candidates, one Libertarian Party candidate and 10 independents. This means that, in the event that Newsom is recalled, it’s very likely a Republican will win the race to replace him (the second question on the recall ballot).

If California does get a new governor, which Republican is it likely to be? According to both recent polls, conservative talk-radio host Larry Elder has the most support (16 percent per Emerson, 18 percent per Berkeley). Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and perennial candidate John Cox make up the second tier, each receiving 6 percent in the Emerson survey and 10 percent in the Berkeley poll. Reality-TV star Caitlyn Jenner, despite getting a lot of media coverage, barely registered in either poll. At this point, though, the race is still very fluid, with the plurality of voters (53 percent per Emerson, 40 percent per Berkeley) still undecided on who should replace Newsom.

And, of course, that question will only come into play if Newsom is recalled. The latest polls suggest real danger for Newsom, but he’s still not in the same troubled territory Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was back in 2003, when Californians voted by 11 points to recall him from office. Surveys conducted around the same time in that election cycle found Davis in very bad shape: The vote to recall him led by about 20 points or more in most surveys, and his approval rating was in the 20s. By comparison, Californians are more inclined to retain Newsom, and they tend to approve of his job performance somewhat more than they disapprove (among registered voters, the Emerson and Berkeley polls put Newsom’s job approval at about 50 percent and disapproval at 42 percent).

Still, Newsom clearly has his work cut out to raise Democratic interest in the recall vote. And if he fails on that front, an unusual off-year electorate might be just Republican-leaning enough to boot him out of office.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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There’s nothing like election night, with its twists and turns. And this year’s contests offered up a fine appetizer to prepare us for the multiple courses to come in 2020. We saw one governor’s seat (probably) change hands while another state handed full control of power to one party. Here’s what went down last night:

The race for governor in Kentucky is still too close to call, according to the Associated Press, but with 100 percent of precincts reporting, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear leads Republican Gov. Matt Bevin 49.2 percent to 48.8 percent, or a margin of a little more than 5,000 votes. And Bevin told supporters last night that he won’t concede, which could complicate things and lead to a recount if Bevin presses the matter. But in a state that otherwise elected Republican candidates for statewide offices last night, Beshear’s possible victory is notable for Democrats, as it’s evidence that split-ticket voting does still occur.

Beshear claimed victory in a speech on Tuesday night, laying out his policy priorities as governor. Within his first week in office, Beshear said, he would drop Bevin’s plan to require certain Medicaid recipients to work in order to receive health coverage, which could have resulted in 95,000 fewer people receiving Medicaid. And he also vowed to follow through on his campaign pledge of restoring the right to vote to 140,000 felons convicted of nonviolent crimes who have completed their sentences — about 4 percent of Kentucky’s citizen voting age population. (Kentucky is one of just two states where all felons permanently lose the right to vote unless it is individually restored by the governor.) However, Beshear’s policy impact may be limited to executive action, as he is still largely powerless to stop Republican legislation. Both chambers of the Kentucky legislature are still Republican-controlled, and in Kentucky, a simple majority is all that’s needed to override a gubernatorial veto.

Democrats achieved an even clearer victory in Virginia, where Democrats now control both the Senate and the House in the Virginia General Assembly. The Democrats gained two seats in the Senate to take a narrow 21-19 majority in the upper chamber, and six seats in the House for a 55-45 majority there. With Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam already in charge of the commonwealth’s executive branch, Democrats now have a “trifecta” — complete control over law-making in Richmond, and the first time Democrats have had full control of Virginia government since the early 1990s.

This shift could have all sorts of policy implications for Virginia, too. One big-ticket item could be gun control legislation. After a shooting in Virginia Beach in May, Northam tried to push through legislation in July that included universal background checks on gun purchases and an assault weapons ban but the GOP-controlled legislature refused to take it up. Democrats could also take up raising the minimum wage to $15, as most Democrats in the legislature previously backed the idea. Democrats have also promised to expand voting rights, protect the rights of LGBTQ Virginians, improve health care affordability, and ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And last but not least, Democrats could have the final word on redistricting after the 2020 census, though a pending constitutional amendment for a redistricting commision might alter how the state draws lines.

But, of course, not everything went Democrats’ way. Republicans salvaged the night by holding onto the Mississippi governorship. There, Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves defeated Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood 52 percent to 47 percent, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. But this was always considered the longest shot of the night for Democrats, with nonpartisan polls and election handicappers all agreeing that Reeves was favored. Still, a win’s a win, and Republicans will hold onto their governing trifecta in the Magnolia State.

What did all three of these races have in common? Well, at a high level, the results provided further evidence for a widening urban-rural political divide. In particular, Democrats’ successes on Tuesday (and we’re including their narrow Mississippi loss as a “success”) were driven by their remarkably strong performances in suburban areas. For example, Democrats’ gains in Virginia pretty much all came in suburban seats, and Beshear and Hood ran up huge margins in suburban counties compared to what the Kentucky and Mississippi maps looked like in 2015. And there was even more good news for Democrats in the suburbs in local races. We’ll take a closer look at those results in an upcoming article, in which we’ll explore the question of what these results mean for 2020.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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The lineups for the first Democratic debates, on Wednesday, June 26, and Thursday, June 27, are out! Only 20 candidates qualified, obviating the need for any complicated tie-breakers. And on Friday, the Democratic National Committee held a two-part random drawing to determine who would debate on each night. The eight candidates with polling averages of at least 2 percent were drawn first (four on one night, four on the other), and then the 12 others (six on one night, six on the other). Here are the resulting lineups for each night, as well as each candidate’s average in qualifying polls:

The second debate features more heavyweight candidates

Combined polling averages of the candidates in each of the first two 2019 Democratic debates

June 26 debate No. of Polls Avg June 27 debate No. of Polls Avg Warren 23 8.7% Biden 23 29.9% O’Rourke 23 5.1 Sanders 23 18.3 Booker 23 2.6 Harris 23 7.6 Klobuchar 23 2.0 Buttigieg 23 5.8 Castro 22 0.9 Yang 21 1.0 Ryan 16 0.6 Gillibrand 23 0.5 Gabbard 23 0.5 Hickenlooper 23 0.4 Inslee 22 0.4 Bennet 16 0.3 De Blasio 15 0.4 Williamson 19 0.2 Delaney 23 0.2 Swalwell 18 0.2 Total support 21.4 Total support 64.0 Average support 2.1 Average support 6.4

Candidate averages based on 23 qualifying polls sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee for determining debate qualification that have been conducted since the start of 2019. Total support does not add up to 100 percent due to undecided respondents, support for candidates who didn’t end up running for president and support for candidates who didn’t qualify.

Source: Polls

By separating the candidates into higher-polling and lower-polling groups, the DNC hoped to avoid a scenario where the lottery happened to put all the top-tier candidates on the same night — effectively relegating the other debate to “junior varsity” status. (In 2016, some Republican debates were divided into “varsity” and “junior varsity” stages, which caused a lot of issues and complaints.) However, as you can see from the table, that kind of happened anyway. Four of the five highest-polling candidates (former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg) will all debate on the same night (Thursday). Meanwhile, the four higher-polling candidates on Wednesday’s slate include Sens. Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, who are polling either right at or just barely above the 2 percent dividing line. In total, 21 percent worth of polling support is on the first night of the debates and 64 percent is on the second night.

What implications will these lopsided lineups have for the debates and the candidates in them? We don’t really know right now, but it may mean the Thursday debate, with more heavy hitters, will get higher ratings. On the other hand, being in the Wednesday debate might be advantageous for a less popular candidate because they will now have more of a chance to step out of the front-runners’ shadows. We’ll be closely following the debates on our live blog; be sure to join us then.

Derek Shan contributed research.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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It’s been a week since Iowa voted, and we have few national polls to help us understand just how much the caucus results — messy though they were — have affected the attitudes of potential Democratic primary voters around the country. But today Quinnipiac University released a national survey conducted entirely after Iowa voted, and it found a new polling front-runner: Sen. Bernie Sanders, who led the field with 25 percent support.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, fell nine points since Quinnipiac last conducted a national survey in late January. This is the first time Sanders has led in a national Quinnipiac survey during the 2020 cycle. As you can see in our national polling average, the gap between Biden and Sanders is shrinking, too — they’re essentially tied at 22 percent.

The Quinnipiac poll also underscored just how fragmented voter support currently is — five candidates polled at least 10 percent. Just behind Biden, who polled at 17 percent, came former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at 15 percent and Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 14 percent. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg wasn’t too distant of a fifth at 10 percent, which marked a 4-point increase from Quinnipiac’s late January poll.

As for how this poll affects our primary forecast, it didn’t shift things that dramatically because the model had already anticipated Sanders’s national numbers would improve after Iowa while Biden’s would fall. However, the fact that Bloomberg made such a substantial gain — he nearly doubled his support from 8 percent in Quinnipiac’s January poll to 15 percent — means that it’s also increasingly likely that no one will win a majority of pledged delegates. Bottom line: Sanders’s gains were already priced in, so the Quinnipiac poll largely fit within the model’s expectations, but there’s also a lot of uncertainty and a 1 in 4 chance that no single candidate wins a majority.

In the meantime, though, the campaigns’ immediate focus is New Hampshire, which holds its primary tomorrow. With the new national poll plus several new New Hampshire polls from last night and this morning now incorporated into our model, the FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Sanders a 2 in 3 (67 percent) chance of winning the Granite State. Buttigieg — who had been gaining ground in New Hampshire but whose polling numbers there appear to have leveled out — has a 3 in 10 (29 percent) chance. No other candidate has more than a 2 percent chance of carrying the state, although our model has Warren and Biden in a tight race for third place — Warren is forecast to get 14 percent of the vote, on average, while Biden gets 13 percent (but remember, the margin of error of these estimates is quite large).

These odds have changed little over the last few days, in part because we keep getting a ton of New Hampshire polls that say roughly the same thing: Sanders leads, with Buttigieg hovering in striking distance and all other candidates trailing to various degrees. We’ve gotten five polls in just the last 24 hours, including the final installments of the three tracking polls in the state:

The final 7 News/Emerson College poll, conducted Saturday and Sunday, found Sanders at 30 percent, Buttigieg at 23 percent, Klobuchar at 14 percent, Warren at 11 percent and Biden at 10 percent. When you adjust for Emerson’s house effects (Emerson has tended to show better numbers for Sanders than other pollsters), our model interprets this as a 1-point Sanders lead.

The final Suffolk University/Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll, also conducted Saturday and Sunday, gave Sanders 27 percent, Buttigieg 19 percent, Klobuchar 14 percent and Biden and Warren 12 percent each. But because Suffolk has historically featured pretty poor numbers for Sanders, our model interprets this as a 10-point Sanders lead.

And according to the last installment of CNN/University of New Hampshire poll, conducted Feb. 6-9, Sanders at 29 percent support, Buttigieg at 22 percent, Biden at 11 percent, Warren at 10 percent and Klobuchar at 7 percent. After our house effects adjustment, the model interprets this as a 5-point Sanders lead.

These final tracking polls disagree more than they did yesterday about the size of Sanders’s lead, but are generally positive for Sanders. Emerson and Suffolk also found Klobuchar making a small charge into third place; for example, she has gone from 6 percent in Feb. 6-7’s Suffolk poll to 14 percent in this latest one. This has perhaps come at the cost of blunting Buttigieg’s momentum, as his vote share has not changed much over the last few days in either poll, even though he gained several points in them throughout last week. And the three installments of CNN/UNH’s poll that we’ve gotten have shown little movement for all candidates.

We also got two new non-tracking polls of New Hampshire:

According to the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Sanders has 25 percent in New Hampshire, Buttigieg has 17 percent, Warren 15 percent, Biden 14 percent and Klobuchar 8 percent. After the house effects adjustment, that’s akin to a 7-point Sanders lead. However, it’s worth noting that this poll is a little older than the others, as it was conducted Feb. 4-7.

Finally, American Research Group, in a poll fielded Saturday and Sunday, says that Sanders is at 28 percent, Buttigieg is at 20 percent, Biden and Klobuchar are each at 13 percent and Warren is at 11 percent. That computes to a 5-point Sanders lead in our model, after house effects are considered.

These polls suggest there is still a chance that Warren, Biden or Klobuchar could catch Buttigieg for second place. However, at the same time, they confirmed the findings of almost every other poll we’ve seen in New Hampshire this week: Sanders has a modest lead.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): This is it — the last presidential debate — and, as we’ve said in our presidential forecast for a while now, President Trump is running out of time. Joe Biden has a double-digit lead in national polls and has gotten a number of good state polls in the past few days.

We still expect the race to tighten here in the home stretch, and a debate is a great way for that to happen. But it’s also true that the last two weeks before an election don’t necessarily change the race all that much.

The final two weeks usually don’t change much

How much the national polling margin changed between 15 days before the presidential election and Election Day, since 1972

Leader in FiveThirtyEight national polling average Year 15 days before ELECTION Election Day Change 2016 Clinton +6.9 Clinton +3.8 3.1 2012 Romney +1.2 Obama +0.4 1.6 2008 Obama +6.8 Obama +7.1 0.3 2004 Bush +2.4 Bush +1.6 0.8 2000 Bush +2.7 Bush +3.5 0.8 1996 Clinton +14.9 Clinton +12.8 2.1 1992 Clinton +14.1 Clinton +7.1 7.0 1988 Bush +11.8 Bush +10.4 1.4 1984 Reagan +16.7 Reagan +18.0 1.3 1980 Reagan +2.3 Reagan +2.1 0.2 1976 Carter +2.0 Carter +0.8 1.2 1972 Nixon +25.5 Nixon +24.1 1.4

The averages listed are calculated retroactively based on FiveThirtyEight’s current polling average methodology.

So, let’s start there. How big are the stakes going into tonight?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): The stakes are kind of big but also kind of not?

On the one hand, it’s the last obvious opportunity for Trump to win voters over and for Biden to screw up. On the other hand, I think the writing is on the wall for Trump.

Granted, our presidential forecast still gives him a 13-in-100 chance of staging a comeback. But Trump just hasn’t shown any inclination to change his base-first strategy. He’s also been behind Biden for a while now in our forecast:

I guess I’m just not counting on seeing a different Trump tonight from the one who bombed in the first debate.

kaleigh (Kaleigh Rogers, tech and politics reporter): It’s rare for debates to have large, lasting impacts on the polls at the best of times, so it’s hard to imagine a scenario where this debate upends things in a dramatic way.

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): Given how rare live events are in the COVID-19 era, though, it’s not impossible that something could come out that reflects poorly on Biden. So, in that sense, it is a big deal.

At the same time, a national poll from The Economist/YouGov found this week that Biden led 52 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, and that only 4 percent of those voters said they might change their minds. So, unless Trump can win over the incredibly small number of voters who genuinely are unsure — there are a lot fewer undecided voters this year — it’s going to be tough to win the election. And I’m not sure much can happen that’s going to shift public opinion sharply.

kaleigh: Like Nathaniel, I’m curious to see whether Trump changes his strategy at all. Obviously, the muted mics will limit how much he can talk over Biden, but arguably, that tactic didn’t work so well. At least one poll found the majority of respondents disapproved of Trump’s behavior in the last debate, and even some Republicans said it made them support him less afterward.

nrakich: I’m not so sure the muted mics will make a big difference, Kaleigh. Maybe we won’t be able to hear Trump’s interruptions, but Biden will. And that could trip Biden up or stop him mid-answer.

sarah: Saying Trump bombed is a bit harsh, though, Nathaniel. After all, Clinton “won” the 2016 debates, and we saw how that turned out.

It’s easy to get obsessed with comparisons to 2016, and as we’ve written, you shouldn’t make too much of one election — after all, it’s a sample size of one. That said, there are some pretty big differences from 2016, yes?

kaleigh: Well, there’s the pandemic. That’s a pretty stark contrast. It has changed how we vote, how candidates campaign, how the economy is doing and so much more.

I wonder how different this election would be compared with 2016’s if COVID-19 hadn’t happened.

geoffrey.skelley: Well, as that Economist/YouGov survey and others have shown, this election has far fewer undecided or third-party voters, which makes it harder for the debates to move mountains.

In FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average, Biden and Trump’s combined support adds up to about 94 percent. But at the same point in 2016, Trump and Clinton totaled just about 86 percent — a lot more voters were in play even in the late stages of the campaign. The same is true in state-level polls as well. For example, around 95 percent of voters in Wisconsin are backing Biden or Trump in our polling average, whereas 86 percent of voters there said they supported Trump or Clinton at this point in 2016.

nrakich: Not to mention, Biden’s lead is simply bigger than Clinton’s was at this stage of the 2016 campaign.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Biden led by 9.9 points in our national polling average; 13 days before Election Day in 2016, Clinton would have led by an average of 6.4 points, using the same methodology.

Something else that I think makes tonight’s debate less important: At least a quarter of voters have probably already cast their ballots. According to statistics collected by political scientist Michael McDonald, more than 41 million early or absentee votes have already been cast, or 30 percent of 2016 turnout (although 2020 turnout could be much higher if voter enthusiasm is any indication). So, even if something big happens tonight, a lot of people will have already voted.

geoffrey.skelley: That’s true, Nathaniel, but it could be that those early voters would have voted already anyway, as studies have shown that voters who vote early are more likely to be very partisan. Or, put another way, maybe those people weren’t going to change their minds anyway.

sarah: Those are all really good points — especially Kaleigh’s, about what this election would have looked like if COVID-19 hadn’t happened. What could we be missing, though? (And one big reason why comparisons to 2016 have their limitations!)

nrakich: Well, it’s always possible there will be a polling error.

So, if the debate budges the polls just enough — say, to where Biden has a 4-point national lead instead of a 10-point one — that makes it significantly more likely that Trump could win.

If Biden stays at +10 nationally, though, it would take a truly bonkers polling error to save Trump.

kaleigh: There are also more conventional differences. For example, this election has an incumbent candidate.

geoffrey.skelley: Speaking of polling error — and whether we could have a “Dewey Defeats Truman” on our hands — pollsters have tried to account for some of the things that led to problems with state polls in 2016. For example, some are weighting their samples by education, or even education and race, to avoid underrepresenting white voters without a college degree, voters who went so strongly for Trump in 2016.

So, some state polls could be better this time — although, of course, it’s impossible to predict the direction of a polling error before an election.

Polling bias is not very consistent from cycle to cycle

Weighted-average statistical bias of polls in final 21 days of the election, among polls in FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings database

Cycle Governor U.S. Senate U.S. House Pres. General Combined 1998 R+5.7 R+4.8 R+1.5 R+4.2 1999-2000 D+0.6 R+2.9 D+0.9 R+2.6 R+1.8 2001-2002 D+3.0 D+1.4 D+1.3 D+2.2 2003-2004 R+4.2 D+1.7 D+2.5 D+1.1 D+0.9 2005-2006 D+0.3 R+1.3 D+0.2 R+0.1 2007-2008 D+0.5 D+0.8 D+1.0 D+1.1 D+1.0 2009-2010 R+0.7 D+1.7 D+0.6 2011-2012 R+1.3 R+3.3 R+2.6 R+2.5 R+2.6 2013-2014 D+2.3 D+2.5 D+3.7 D+2.7 2015-2016 D+3.3 D+2.8 D+3.7 D+3.1 D+3.0 2017-2019 R+0.9 D+0.1 R+0.3 R+0.3 All years D+0.3 D+0.1 D+0.7 D+0.2 D+0.3

Bias is calculated only for elections where the top two finishers were a Republican and Democrat. Therefore, it is not calculated for presidential primaries. Averages are weighted by the square root of the number of polls that a particular pollster conducted for that particular type of election in that particular cycle. Polls that are banned by FiveThirtyEight because we know or suspect they faked data are excluded from the analysis.

sarah: OK, back to the debate. The rules have changed, as Kaleigh and Nathaniel were mentioning earlier, and now the moderator can mute the candidates if they speak out of turn. Here’s a snapshot of the six issues they are expected to stick to:

Fighting COVID-19

American families

Race in America

Climate change

National security

Leadership

What do we think might be covered by these issues? What plays to Biden’s strengths? And Trump’s?

geoffrey.skelley: Well, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that “fighting COVID-19” is not going to go well for Trump because Americans generally think he’s done a poor job handling the pandemic. That leaves Biden with a lot of material to work with.

nrakich: Yeah — according to our poll with Ipsos before the last debate, respondents said 78 percent to 20 percent that Biden was better on the issue of COVID-19. And that was before Trump announced he had tested positive for COVID-19.

More people trust Biden to handle COVID-19

Share of people who named each issue as the most important one facing the U.S., and whether they think Trump or Biden would handle that issue better, according to a FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll

Who’s better on the issue… issue share TRUMP biden COVID-19 31.9% 20.1%

–

78.0%

–

The economy 22.0 79.1

–

19.2

–

Health care 9.6 27.9

–

71.8

–

Racial inequality 7.4 6.0

–

90.9

–

Climate change 4.9 4.7

–

95.3

–

The Supreme Court 4.5 61.1

–

38.4

–

Violent crime 4.2 80.6

–

18.1

–

Economic inequality 2.9 14.3

–

85.7

–

Immigration 2.8 61.3

–

38.7

–

Abortion 2.8 93.5

–

6.5

–

Other 1.7 55.3

–

41.8

–

Education 1.5 44.7

–

44.1

–

Gun policy 1.4 69.6

–

30.4

–

Respondents who didn’t name a top issue are not shown.

Data comes from polling done by Ipsos for FiveThirtyEight, using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, a probability-based online panel that is recruited to be representative of the U.S. population. The poll was conducted Sept. 30 – Oct. 6 among a general population sample of adults, with 2,994 respondents and a margin of error of +/- 2.0 percentage points.

kaleigh: Trump has already been trying to positively spin his bout with the coronavirus — he’s been through it! He survived! But it will be pretty easy for Biden to point out that Trump didn’t take the virus seriously since he actually caught it. Not to mention, many Americans don’t think Trump took enough COVID-19 precautions, and there are signs that this hurt him electorally.

nrakich: I’m curious what the “American families” segment will touch on … does anyone have any inkling what that means?

geoffrey.skelley:

Perhaps it’s a roundabout way of saying the economy. Kitchen table issues. Of course, the economy touches almost every topic to some extent.

kaleigh: That’s my bet, Geoffrey, but it’s just vague enough to be uncertain.

sarah: My money is on the suburbs.

Or, at the very least, I can imagine suburban families being mentioned by both Biden and Trump. Trump won suburban voters in 2016, but he’s in real trouble here in 2020, as many white suburban women are continuing to move away from the Republican Party, as we saw in 2018.

But, yeah, given the economy ranked as voters’ first or second issue, according to our polling with Ipsos, I think that’s right, too, Geoffrey and Kaleigh.

The economy is one issue where Trump has always had an advantage.

nrakich: “Climate change” and “race in America” also seem like good issues for Biden. According to that Ipsos poll, more than 90 percent of Americans trust Biden more than Trump on both of those issues!

On the other hand, they also said they trust Trump more than Biden, about 81 percent to 18 percent, on “violent crime.” So Trump might try to reframe the segment on race in America into one about rioting and looting.

As for national security, I think it’s fair to say that segment will move the fewest votes. American elections generally aren’t decided on foreign-policy grounds.

kaleigh: Honestly, is there anything in that lineup that isn’t well-trodden territory at this point?

sarah: Yeah, it is hard to imagine that any of the issues discussed tonight will cover new ground in a way that sways voters. They do feel like well-trodden talking points at this stage, and the reality remains that Trump really does need the polls to tighten. Otherwise, his odds in our forecast will continue to fall. But, of course, even a 5 percent chance of something happening is something you should take seriously.

OK, the stakes are high. Trump needs some movement in the polls, and Biden isn’t a safe bet. What will you be watching for tonight, and in the last week of the election — knowing, of course, we’re all kind of flying blind?

nrakich: To me, the big question is, can Biden maintain his 10-point national lead after this debate? Or will tonight “reset” the race and bring the polling average down to Biden +7 or so, which is where it has been for most of the year?

Even if that were to happen, Biden would still have a good chance of winning, but the size of his margin could determine things like whether Democrats win the Senate or the number of state legislatures Democrats flip.

geoffrey.skelley: It’s true that incumbent presidents have had a habit of struggling in first debates, only to come back stronger in later ones. This was true of Barack Obama in 2012 and Ronald Reagan in 1984. So don’t count out a much better showing from Trump tonight.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Former Vice President Joe Biden’s team is talking a big game about an expanded electoral map with Arizona, Georgia and Texas in play, even though those states haven’t voted for a Democratic presidential nominee in two decades.

So let’s talk about just how feasible this strategy is. How competitive are those three states at this point? And what’s more, how does this strategy complement — or counteract — Democratic efforts to pick up Midwestern battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, or perennial swing states like Florida?

First up, Arizona. What do we think? Does Biden have a shot there?

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): Of the three states we’re looking at, I think it’s pretty clear that Arizona is the most in play — and that Biden may even have the lead there, based on the limited polling we have.

President Trump won Arizona by 3.5 points in 2016 while losing the national popular vote by 2 points. So it stands to reason that if Biden is up 6 points or so nationally, Arizona is a toss-up, and that’s before we consider other things that may have shifted between 2016 and now.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I agree, although I have been surprised at the degree to which Arizona seems to have moved to the left since 2016.

sarah: What other evidence do we have that Arizona has moved to the left since 2016?

geoffrey.skelley: Well, unlike in Georgia and Texas, Democrats actually won major statewide contests in Arizona in 2018 — including the state’s marquee Senate race — and election turnout was nearly as high as the 2016 presidential contest, meaning that performance may reflect a broader shift toward the Democrats rather than just a side effect of the midterms’ blue wave.

nrakich: G. Elliott Morris of The Economist had an interesting newsletter item recently that showed how much various states have moved left or right since 2016, based on the 2020 polls so far. Arizona had the starkest movement.

And Geoffrey’s right that, if Arizona were still 6 points redder than the nation and Biden led by 6 points nationally, we’d expect polls of Arizona to show a tied race. But Biden has consistently led in Arizona polls so far.

Biden has the edge in Arizona polling so far

Presidential general election polls of Arizona conducted since March 1

Dates Pollster Biden Trump Margin May 18-22 HighGround 47% 45% D+2 May 10-14 Redfield & Wilton 45 41 D+4 May 9-11 OH Predictive Insights 50 43 D+8 April 7-8 OH Predictive Insights 52 43 D+9 March 10-15 Marist 47 46 D+1 March 11-14 Monmouth 46 43 D+3 March 6-11 Latino Decisions 50 42 D+8 March 3-4 OH Predictive Insights 49 43 D+6 March 2-3 Public Policy Polling 48 47 D+1

Source: Polls

On the other hand, I’m still somewhat skeptical of the idea Arizona has moved that much to the left. Some of the higher-quality polls, like from Marist and Monmouth, do have the race closer to a tie, whereas the polls suggesting Arizona has gotten significantly more Democratic (e.g., by showing Biden up by 8 points) are not coming from gold-standard pollsters.

sarah: One other thing about Arizona that makes me think it might be fertile ground for Democrats in 2020 is that Democratic Senate challenger Mark Kelly seems to have the upper hand against Sen. Martha McSally, and if that race ends up close — or flips blue — that bodes well for Democrats in the long run, as it’s more evidence that Arizona might be becoming more of a blue state.

nrakich: Yeah, Kelly has been a monster fundraiser. He’s taken in more than $31 million since the beginning of last year.

Although I don’t think a down-ballot race is likely to drive turnout for the presidential. If anything, Kelly might run ahead of Biden because of his money and great bio.

geoffrey.skelley: That’s fair, but it’s worth remembering that every Senate seat that was up in 2016 went for the party that carried the state at the presidential level, so the fact a Democrat is polling that well in the Senate contest is probably a decent sign for the party’s chances as a whole.

sarah: For sure. It’s less that a down-ballot race would affect the top of the ticket, but more that Arizona really might go blue in 2020.

It sounds like we agree with the Biden campaign’s assessment that Arizona is in play, so does it make sense for them to campaign there?

Or is there an argument to be made that they should keep an eye on it, but maybe not commit fully?

nrakich: I mean … both?

It’s a spectrum.

I definitely think Biden should spend more time and money in Arizona than in Georgia and Texas. But I still think Arizona is unlikely to be the tipping-point state, and Biden should spend even more time and money in must-win states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

geoffrey.skelley: Oh, they should definitely fully commit. Arizona gives them another possible path to 270 in the Electoral College. Arizona’s worth 11 electoral votes, so it could sub in for, say, Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) if Trump were to narrowly carry the Badger State.

nrakich: Now you have me questioning myself, Geoffrey! *whips out calculator*

Hmmm, Florida and Wisconsin were 3 points to the right of the nation in 2016. Arizona, as discussed, was 6. That’s not a big gap at all; maybe they do converge this year?

geoffrey.skelley: Another thing to keep in mind is that Democrats have been making inroads in the suburbs and dominating urban areas. Maricopa County (Phoenix and its environs) was the most populous county in the country to vote for Trump in 2016, but Trump only won it narrowly by about 3 points, and in 2018, Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema carried it by 4 points. So Democrats may be hoping for a repeat in 2020. Win Maricopa, win Arizona.

sarah: OK, it sounds like focusing on Arizona is smart for the Biden campaign, but maybe we’re a bit more skeptical of Georgia and Texas, the other two states the campaign has included in its “expanded” electoral map?

nrakich: Yeah. Georgia was 7 points to the right of the nation in 2016, and Texas was 11 points to the right. Given long-term trends, they have both probably moved a little to the left, but they have further to go than Arizona.

That said, Biden may well win those states — take a look at the polling there:

Georgia polls are extremely close

Presidential general election polls of Georgia conducted since March 1

Dates Pollster Biden Trump Margin May 16-18 Civiqs 48% 47% D+1 May 11-13 BK Strategies 46 48 R+2 May 4-7 Public Opinion Strategies 47 46 D+1 April 25-27 Cygnal 44 45 R+1 March 31-April 1 Battleground Connect 46 48 R+2

Source: Polls

Can Biden shock Trump in Texas?

Presidential general election polls of Texas conducted since March 1

Dates Pollster Biden Trump Margin May 8-10 Emerson College 48% 52% R+3 April 27-28 Public Policy Polling 47 46 D+1 April 18-27 University of Texas at Tyler 43 43 EVEN April 10-19 YouGov 44 49 R+5

Source: Polls

But if he does, he will probably already have clinched the Electoral College in the Midwest, Arizona or Florida.

geoffrey.skelley: Georgia is interesting. On the one hand, Biden could target the increasingly Democratic suburbs of Atlanta. On the other hand, it’s one of the most inelastic states in the country — meaning voters there are among the most likely to stick with their usual party regardless of which way the rest of the country swings — in part because its white voters remain predominantly Republican and its large black population is heavily Democratic, and there just isn’t a ton of movement there.

Additionally, if Democrats couldn’t carry Georgia in 2018 when the electoral environment was very pro-Democratic, that makes me skeptical they can win it in a presidential year, when partisan conditions could be more balanced. That said, if Biden is winning by 6 or 7 points nationally, that might be enough to put Georgia in his column, as Trump only carried it by 5 points in 2016. But as Nathaniel was saying earlier, that’s not a situation where Georgia is an integral part of Biden winning 270 electoral votes. It’s gravy at that point, though maybe it helps Democrats in the two Senate contests there.

nrakich: Yeah, Georgia is definitely inelastic. But on the other hand, Georgia has inched leftward (relative to the nation as a whole) in the last three presidential elections. And I think there is room for more suburban whites to move toward Democrats, not only in Georgia but also in Texas and Arizona.

sarah: That’s a good point, and I think a real question determining whether Georgia and Texas will be competitive is just how much the trends of 2018 — namely, suburban white voters moving to the Democratic Party — hold true.

This is an extreme hypothetical, but earlier this year, Nathaniel looked at what would happen if a state’s presidential vote was based strictly on how rural or urban the state is, and he found that Georgia would remain in the R column, but both Arizona and Texas would swing blue:

What if the urban-rural divide dictated the 2020 election?

The results of a hypothetical presidential election if a state’s urbanization were the only factor, based on the relationship between FiveThirtyEight’s urbanization index and 2016 presidential election results

State Result State Result Alabama R+16.0 Montana R+30.8 Alaska R+27.3 Nebraska R+8.2 Arizona D+6.1 Nevada D+12.3 Arkansas R+20.5 New Hampshire R+11.9 California D+17.7 New Jersey D+18.3 Colorado D+4.2 New Mexico R+12.2 Connecticut D+7.6 New York D+22.5 Delaware D+2.3 North Carolina R+6.6 Florida D+8.3 North Dakota R+23.2 Georgia R+3.6 Ohio D+0.6 Hawaii D+3.3 Oklahoma R+11.6 Idaho R+16.1 Oregon R+1.5 Illinois D+10.3 Pennsylvania D+4.1 Indiana R+5.5 Rhode Island D+11.6 Iowa R+16.1 South Carolina R+9.4 Kansas R+9.3 South Dakota R+27.4 Kentucky R+13.6 Tennessee R+8.3 Louisiana R+8.6 Texas D+4.5 Maine R+23.4 Utah D+1.7 Maryland D+11.5 Vermont R+25.9 Massachusetts D+13.2 Virginia D+1.0 Michigan R+0.3 Washington D+3.8 Minnesota R+4.9 West Virginia R+22.4 Mississippi R+25.1 Wisconsin R+8.3 Missouri R+8.2 Wyoming R+33.6

Source: American Community Survey

What do we make of this? Might Texas actually turn blue before Georgia?

nrakich: We have a tendency to think about elections through the lens of the decisive voters in the previous election, which for 2018 was suburbanites. But as I showed in that urbanization article, Georgia does have a lot of rural voters too, and there is still room for them to move even more toward Trump. So, actually, maybe those two trends will cancel each other out.

geoffrey.skelley: OK, but Georgia was still notably closer to going for Clinton than Texas — Trump won Georgia by 5 points and Texas by 9 points, which is a fairly sizable difference. And while Georgia may be more inelastic than Texas, Texas is not that elastic. Our 2018 elasticity score for Texas was 1.03 — not that far above the baseline of 1 — while Georgia’s was 0.90.

Texas is changing, but Barack Obama lost it by 12 points in 2008, which was a really good environment overall for Democrats.

nrakich: Yeah, there’s just too far for it to go.

geoffrey.skelley: As is often the case with questions about when Texas could go blue, it depends on how fast the political environment changes, but it still probably won’t happen until sometime after 2020, given what we know currently.

sarah: People seem to agree that the Biden campaign shouldn’t invest too much in Georgia and Texas if it comes at the expense of other battleground states in the Midwest or Florida. Is that fair?

nrakich: I think there’s a case for keeping your options open in Georgia. But the Biden campaign would be foolish to invest significantly in Texas. If Texas votes Democratic, Biden will already have won virtually every other swing state and, therefore, the election. It’s simply not a part of his path to 270 electoral votes — more like a part of his path to 400.

Also, Texas is an extremely expensive state in which to campaign, so it just wouldn’t be an efficient use of his money.

geoffrey.skelley: If Trump really is doing a lot worse among older voters than in 2016, it would be foolish for Biden to abandon Florida, which has one of the oldest populations in the country.

I could see reasons for Democrats to worry about Florida being a mirage after they failed to win the gubernatorial and Senate races there in 2018, but it’s just been too close in recent presidential elections to actually give up on it. Trump only won it by 1 point in 2016!

nrakich: Oh, I have strong feelings about Florida.

sarah:

nrakich: Florida is definitely still a swing state; it’s not as inelastic as the 2018 results implied. The Democratic nominees for governor and senator, Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson, still outperformed Hillary Clinton in most counties; they just underperformed Clinton in a few key areas, especially Miami-Dade County. (This article by Florida Democratic consultant Matthew Isbell does a great job showing that.)

The reason for this is probably that their Republican opponents, Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott, did a lot better among Hispanic voters than Trump did. According to exit polls, Trump got 35 percent of the Latino vote in Florida in 2016, while DeSantis got 44 percent and Scott got 45 percent. In 2020, I don’t think Trump will be able to match DeSantis’s and Scott’s numbers.

So if Biden can pair Clinton’s performance among Hispanic Floridians with Nelson’s and Gillum’s among other voters, he can absolutely win Florida.

geoffrey.skelley: We’ve talked a lot about how Biden might be able to expand his electoral map, but he can’t afford to give up on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In 2016, they were collectively decided by 78,000 votes, and who wins them in 2020 will likely be consequential as well.

The bigger questions in the Midwest and Rust Belt are probably whether to invest in Iowa and Ohio, which Trump carried by about 9 and 8 points, respectively. Those two states might be harder for Democrats to win back considering how they swung hard toward the GOP in 2016 after backing Obama in 2012.

That said, Iowa does have some history of being pretty swingy. It’s also cheaper to advertise in Iowa than Ohio, and if we’re talking down-ballot races, there is more at stake there, too. Potentially four competitive House races and a Senate seat in Iowa, whereas Ohio has no Senate race and is likely to have only one or two close House races.

nrakich: Yeah, if Biden wants to be an effective president, he’ll need a Democratic Senate. IMO, that means he should give extra credit to Georgia and Iowa when deciding where to allocate his resources.

sarah: The balancing act that the Biden campaign will inevitably have to engage in isn’t entirely clear to me yet. How much will they actually invest in states like Arizona, Georgia and Texas versus doubling down on states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?

Much of this will inevitably boil down to what the tipping-point state is in 2020, but one thing that’s hard to figure out is how much of the map already realigned in 2016. Put another way, does Biden have his eyes on states like Arizona because winning states like Wisconsin back will be difficult?

nrakich: But I think that’s the needle we need to thread: Arizona might be moving in one direction and Wisconsin in the other, but even in the “realigned” (really more “recalibrated”) 2016 map, Arizona was redder than Wisconsin.

geoffrey.skelley: It’s curious because some of this comes down to the national environment. Maybe Wisconsin is a point or two redder than it was in 2016, but if Biden wins by 4 or 5 points nationally, maybe that’s enough to carry it even if Wisconsin is continuing to move toward the GOP.

But how exactly that plays out in each state is hard to say.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Sarah Frostenson #Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Sk

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): With the spread of the new coronavirus in the U.S., the 2020 Democratic primary is on a bit of a hiatus. Many states have postponed their primaries, and now we might not wrap things up until late June. But the expected outcome is hardly a surprise — former Vice President Joe Biden is for all intents and purposes the presumptive nominee.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is still in the race, but at this point, the question is less about what Sanders can do to mount a comeback and more about what can Biden do — if anything — to win over Sanders voters, particularly as we start to transition to the general-election phase of 2020.

So, let’s unpack this question in three parts:

First, how much does Biden need Sanders supporters? Or in other words, what does it mean for Biden’s base of support if he’s able to win over Sanders supporters? What does it mean if he can’t?

Second, how does Biden actually win over Sanders supporters?

And third, how important is party unity — or Democrats rallying behind one candidate — for what happens in 2020?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Well, this is so obvious that it sounds stupid to say out loud, but: Biden needs some Sanders primary voters to support him in November, since Sanders has won about 31 percent of the national popular vote so far. But he doesn’t need every single one.

Some Sanders-or-bust voters might stay home in November; that happens to some degree in every election.

But most Sanders voters don’t fit that description. According to a recent Morning Consult poll, 82 percent of Sanders supporters say they would vote for Biden in the general election, and just 7 percent said they would vote for Trump. And Quinnipiac University found that 86 percent of Sanders voters would vote for Biden, 3 percent would vote for Trump, 2 percent would vote for someone else, 4 percent wouldn’t vote, and 5 percent didn’t know who they’d vote for.

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): Yeah, I mean, you have polls showing Biden winning ~90 percent of Democrats in general election trial heats against Trump. So he’s likely winning over most Sanders voters. But if a Trump-Biden matchup were to be a close election like 2016, any shortfall in support from Sanders voters would be magnified.

nrakich: Yeah, Biden should certainly want to win over as many Sanders supporters as possible.

Every little bit counts!

sarahf: One thing you’ve written about for the site, Perry, is the age divide we’ve seen play out in the Democratic primary with Sanders consistently winning voters under 45.

But you’ve also written that these voters generally vote Democratic in a general election, so maybe Biden doesn’t have to worry all that much about making special inroads here? That is, it will come with time?

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Every bit of enthusiasm and turnout from younger voters helps Biden. That said, it’s worth separating the cohort of people under 45 from the “Sanders-or-bust” people. Overall, I think the under 45 group will be fine with Biden because they hate Trump more.

geoffrey.skelley: Data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study suggested that about three-fourths of Sanders’s voters backed Hillary Clinton in 2016. Might that number be higher in 2020? Maybe.

On the one hand, it’s possible that some of the anti-Hillary, conservative Democratic voters that Sanders won in places like Oklahoma and West Virginia are now Republicans who didn’t participate in the 2020 primary. But it’s also possible that a handful of those voters back Biden. For instance, he’s already been doing better than Sanders among white primary voters without a college degree, a group Sanders won handily in 2016.

So the tradeoff for Biden in 2020 may be that he loses youth turnout but gets more votes from suburban moderate types who are older. Given that older voters are more reliable voters, that might be an OK trade for Biden.

nrakich: Yeah, I think there are a lot more votes up for grabs among suburban Romney-Clinton voters than there are among young voters.

Biden winning suburban areas in the primary doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll win them in the general (the actual voters are different — primaries are just a fraction of the general electorate). But as a more moderate candidate who doesn’t rail against the rich, he is likely to appeal more to these more moderate, well-to-do voters than Sanders.

sarahf: That makes sense, especially based on your analysis, Nathaniel, of turnout in the primary so far, but I can’t help but wonder about your other point — voters in the primary are different than the general — so maybe some of Biden’s support among the Romney-Clinton style voters is inflated?

Or the fact that Biden has won rural areas that Clinton did poorly in in 2016 isn’t actually that good of a sign for his coalition in a general election context? So maybe young and very liberal voters will actually be very important to Biden’s coalition?

nrakich: People shouldn’t use primary election results as a portent of the general election. Biden won every county in Michigan in the primary, but he obviously won’t do that in the general. Winning white working-class Democrats isn’t the same as winning white working-class independents or Republicans. That said, I don’t think it’s a bad sign for him that turnout was up so much in highly educated suburban areas.

perry: Biden should try to win older voters and younger voters, moderate voters and liberal voters, and I don’t necessarily see those things as trade-offs. Obama was stronger than Clinton across all kinds of voting blocs in 2008.

So getting younger voters excited about his candidacy is important and useful for Biden. He will likely win the under 45 vote (historically, Democrats do), but growing that margin should be a goal of his campaign.

sarahf: OK, so what does Biden do to actually win over Sanders supporters?

nrakich: Well, the first and most obvious answer is to adopt some of Sanders’s positions. He has already started moving left (although, it should be noted, not as far left as Sanders) on issues like free college tuition — quite savvily, in my opinion, because that is one progressive policy that actually has strong support among all voters, not just Democrats.

geoffrey.skelley: Exactly. That seems like a pretty transparent play for younger voters, and possibly older millennials who like Sanders and who also have kids and are starting to think about how they’ll pay for college some day.

nrakich: Two other progressive positions that Biden could take without alienating general-election voters are coming out in favor of legalizing marijuana and implementing an Elizabeth Warren-style wealth tax.

geoffrey.skelley: Of course, the latter might alienate some donors.

nrakich: True.

I also don’t think Biden will ever fully replace Sanders in many voters’ minds — a lot of Sanders’s appeal is based on his personality and tear-down-the-system rhetoric.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, and Biden’s appeal has been that of a safe harbor in a storm — even more so now that we face the new coronavirus threat. He’s interested in reforming the system, not breaking it up and then rebuilding it.

perry: I honestly don’t think Biden has to do much of anything to win the votes of the overwhelming majority of Sanders voters — except to not be Trump. The question is more about, “How does he get them excited?” The danger of Biden is that he is like Clinton in 2016 — he wins the votes of the older, traditional Democrats in the primary, but he is not a candidate people are jazzed about — and that shows up in voter turnout, in donations, in the general mood of the campaign.

Biden can’t be Obama in 2008, but he should avoid being Clinton in 2016 or Kerry in 2004. I think he should aim for a running mate people are really excited to vote for.

geoffrey.skelley: Is that Sen. Kamala Harris? I don’t see it being Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

perry: Geoff, I honestly don’t know who that person is. But I think it should be an Obama-like person — exciting less in terms of policy (the party is divided on policy) but more in terms of persona and charisma.

As I was saying earlier, Biden should focus on energizing “Democrats under 45,” not “Sanders supporters.”

nrakich: The problem is that everyone has a different definition of who is “exciting.” The stereotypical leftist Sanders voter isn’t going to be jazzed about Harris, who has her own problems among the progressive flank. Maybe not even someone like Stacey Abrams, who appeals to the “woke” wing of the party but is certainly closer to Biden than Sanders on policy.

And then there is the fact that it’s debatable how much of an impact vice-presidential candidates even have.

sarahf: That makes sense, Perry, definitely from a messaging vantage point, anyway. But right, to Nathaniel’s point, it’s hard for me to imagine Sanders voters being excited by Harris as his VP pick. But maybe that’s the point — it isn’t about the diehard loyal fans as much as it is about just generally energizing younger voters.

That especially holds true given that turnout in these primaries hasn’t been historic, as many thought it would be.

It’s easy to read too much into the primary and try to apply that to the general election, but the turnout question for 2020 does give me pause, especially if Biden, like you say, is someone the Democratic Party rallies around but isn’t necessarily jazzed about.

nrakich: But how many young voters are against Biden because he’s not far left enough, and how many are against him because they just want a new generation of leadership? I genuinely don’t know.

perry: I think the second group (new generation of leadership) is both bigger and easier to satisfy (because moving left might create electoral problems).

geoffrey.skelley: Right. Pew Research found back in 2017 that while younger Democrats and those who leaned Democratic were more liberal than older Democrats, they weren’t that much more liberal.

sarahf: So how important is party unity for what happens in 2020? As has been said in this chat, in many ways the biggest factor for the Democratic nominee is that they’re not Trump. That said, is there a risk that Democrats don’t rally behind Biden? After all, that was a critique of what happened in 2016, with some arguing Sanders cost Clinton the election. Could that happen again in 2020?

perry: Party unity is super important. But I think Trump will create party unity. Sanders and Warren will eventually be strongly behind Biden. And the biggest difference between 2016 and 2020 is not between Clinton and Biden (they are very similar candidates) but between Trump 2016 (theoretical) and Trump 2020 (a reality Democrats hate). Because of Trump, some of the problems Clinton faced in getting the base behind her won’t be as much of an issue for Biden.

nrakich: Yeah, I think we’ve been getting at this question indirectly. Party unity will be important, sure, but according to the polls cited above, Democrats largely already have it. And some of those Sanders voters who may have cost Clinton the 2016 general election may have just been anti-Clinton voters in the primary as well. It doesn’t seem like there is a rash of anti-Biden protest voting this year.

geoffrey.skelley: It helps to not have been a target of attacks for a quarter century before becoming your party’s nominee.

Also, while we do have some exit-poll data suggesting some Sanders voters might not want to vote for Biden, it’s important to remember that some might answer that question differently once they are no longer in the thick of the primary. I’m reminded of “Party Unity My Ass” Clinton voters (PUMAs) in 2008. Obviously, Democrats were largely unified behind Obama that November.

nrakich: Right, and also, no one asked whether PUMA voters cost Obama that election — he won handily! So it’s clearly possible to win after a divisive primary.

In fact, according to one study, only 70 percent of Clinton voters in 2008 voted for Obama — comparable to, and even a bit lower than, the three-quarters of Sanders voters who we think voted for Clinton in the 2016 general election. So it wasn’t party unity per se that cost Clinton the 2016 election — the party was about equally united in 2008 and 2016. Instead, it was how close the election already was that made the difference. And it could come down to that again in 2020.

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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Welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Election Update for Monday, August 24! As of 5 p.m. on Sunday, Joe Biden had a 73 in 100 chance of winning the 2020 presidential election, while President Trump had a 27 in 100 chance. Biden also has a hefty lead in our forecast of the national popular vote: 53 percent to 46 percent.

This isn’t all that different from when we launched the forecast earlier in August, as Biden’s lead has been steady for months. But with the Republican National Convention starting today — and the Democratic National Convention having ended last Thursday — we have entered a traditionally volatile period for presidential campaigns. So we wanted to pause and take stock of where previous races stood ahead of the conventions.

We don’t have retroactive data on what our forecast — with all its bells and whistles — would have said in past elections, but we have calculated what our polling averages would have said just before the first party convention. (You can download this data on our GitHub page if you want to play around with it yourself.) And based only on the polls,1 Biden led nationally by an average of 8.0 percentage points last Sunday (the day before the Democratic convention began). That was the second-biggest lead for any Democratic candidate heading into the convention period since at least 1968, and the largest for any candidate since 1996, when Bill Clinton led by about 15 points.

Biden’s pre-convention lead was the biggest in two decades

What the FiveThirtyEight nationapolling average would have said the day before the first national convention vs. the final election margin, for presidential elections since 1968

Election 1st convention Poll Margin November Margin Difference 1968 R R+4.1 R+0.7 D+3.4 1972 D R+19.6 R+23.2 R+3.6 1976 D D+7.0 D+2.1 R+4.9 1980 R R+4.3 R+9.7 R+5.4 1984 D R+12.2 R+18.2 R+6.1 1988 D D+1.7 R+7.7 R+9.4 1992 D R+2.7 D+5.6 D+8.2 1996 R D+15.3 D+8.5 R+6.8 2000 R R+7.5 D+0.5 D+8.0 2004 D D+1.3 R+2.5 R+3.8 2008 D D+1.5 D+7.3 D+5.7 2012 R D+0.0 D+3.9 D+3.9 2016 R D+2.3 D+2.1 R+0.2 2020 D D+8.0 — —

Sources: Polls, Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

Undoubtedly, it’s a bullish sign for Biden to be this far ahead of Trump. In fact, since 1968, no incumbent president has trailed by as much as Trump heading into the first convention. However, before we get too carried away, the size of Biden’s pre-convention lead is unlikely to hold. After all, two other presidential contenders led by margins similar to Biden’s: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and George W. Bush in 2000, but by November their leads had all but evaporated. Carter only narrowly beat Gerald Ford by about 2 points nationally, while Bush won the most highly contested election in modern times, which took the U.S. Supreme Court to sort out.

Since 1968, the final national margin has differed from the pre-convention polling margin by an average of about 5 points. So if we were to apply that to the 2020 electoral environment, we’d be talking about only a 3-point national edge for Biden. That, of course, would increase the possibility that Trump could win the Electoral College even while losing the national popular vote.

One thing we’re watching closely as the GOP convention begins is just how much of a bounce Biden and Trump receive from the conventions. Given the unprecedented virtual convention format, it’s hard to know how much of a bounce Trump or Biden will receive, especially considering it’s gotten smaller in recent years and the conventions are scheduled back-to-back. And we’ve seen little change in Biden’s polling average — he’s averaged about 51 percent since last Sunday — and his lead has barely ticked up, going from 8 points to 9 points. For his part, Trump’s standing in the polls also hasn’t moved very much — he’s slid ever so slightly, from 43 percent to 42 percent — but of course, we haven’t gotten that many polls yet either.

Bottom line: Ahead of the Democratic convention, Biden had the largest pre-convention lead in two decades, but past cycles show that the electoral environment can shift quite a bit from the start of the convention period to November. In other words, this still gives Trump about two and a half months to narrow the gap, although because of the uncertainty surrounding the polls during the convention period, it might be a little bit until we have a firmer grasp of where the race stands.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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Believe it or not, the 2020 Democratic presidential primary is still going on — but it comes to an end today. Connecticut’s presidential primary is the last of the cycle, and the fact that it’s happening so late in the season is rare. According to presidential primaries expert and FiveThirtyEight contributor Josh Putnam, it marks the latest presidential nominating contest in the modern era.

But it’s not the presidential contest that will capture headlines today. A total of five states1 will hold their down-ballot primaries or runoffs today, in which the fight between the radical wings and more moderate factions will continue for both parties. Will a controversial member of “the Squad” — a group of first-term congresswomen of color known for their progressive views — lose her Democratic primary? And will Republicans send a believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory (with a history of racist comments) to Congress? We will (maybe) learn the answers today.

Minnesota

Two members of the Squad (Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib) have already routed their primary challengers this year, and another (Rep. Ayanna Pressley) doesn’t even have an opponent. But Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District might not find it so easy, as she’s facing a stiff challenge from attorney Antone Melton-Meaux.

Like Ocasio-Cortez’s and Tlaib’s challengers, Melton-Meaux has attacked Omar for basking in the spotlight of her national fame rather than attending to the needs of her Minneapolis-based district. Omar, though, has racked up a long list of controversies. First, she has made a number of anti-Semitic comments, including linking politicians’ support for Israel to campaign donations from Jewish advocacy groups, for which she apologized in 2019. Omar has also been accused of misusing campaign funds, most notably by paying thousands of dollars to a political consultant whose wife claimed he was having an affair with Omar (since then, Omar and the consultant have divorced their respective spouses and gotten married themselves).

But Melton-Meaux has issues of his own. Omar’s allies recently filed a Federal Election Commission complaint accusing him of concealing the true recipients of almost $100,000 in campaign funds through “mysterious shell companies.” And of course, the campaign is an ideological fight as well. Although Melton-Meaux has branded himself as a progressive, his policy positions are much more moderate than Omar’s. For instance, he does not want to defund the police, and he prefers a public option to a single-payer health care system.

It’s hard to know how close this primary is. In early July, the Omar campaign released an internal poll from Change Research showing the incumbent leading Melton-Meaux 66 percent to 29 percent. However, the money race implies a much tighter race. With the help of Omar’s well-funded political enemies, Melton-Meaux had raised an impressive $4.2 million as of July 22 — almost as much as Omar’s $4.3 million. The pro-Israel super PAC Americans for Tomorrow’s Future has also spent $2.1 million against Omar on attack ads and direct mail. Omar’s recent release of her own negative ad against Melton-Meaux may signal the race is tightening in the final days.

Georgia

We’re also monitoring two Republican congressional runoffs in Georgia, and undoubtedly the most combustible contest is the 14th Congressional District race between controversy-laden construction company owner Marjorie Taylor Greene and neurosurgeon Dr. John Cowan. Today’s winner will be all but certain to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Tom Graves, as President Trump won 75 percent of the northwest Georgia district’s vote in 2016.

At first, it seemed as if Greene was the front-runner. After all, she won 40 percent to Cowan’s 21 percent in the initial vote June 9. However, Greene’s conspiratorial and racist views may have undermined her path to victory. For starters, she has refused to disavow QAnon, an FBI-labeled domestic terror threat that claims there’s a deep state conspiracy against Trump. And just after the June primary, Politico uncovered videos of Greene making racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic statements, which prompted many national GOP leaders and Georgia Republicans to oppose her and/or back Cowan. Koch Industries’ political action committee even asked for a refund on its $5,000 donation to her campaign.

Not that Greene needed that contribution to shore up her finances — as of July 22, she had loaned herself $900,000 out of the nearly $1.6 million she’d raised overall. But it still meant Cowan, who collected about $1.2 million (of which $200,000 was self-funded), entered the home stretch with $237,000 cash on hand, compared to roughly $144,000 for Greene. Nonetheless, despite public opposition from many Republican leaders, there’s been very little outside spending aimed at Greene.

For his part, Cowan has pitched himself as a pro-Trump conservative who doesn’t have Greene’s baggage. He’s also criticized Greene for accepting coronavirus relief funds for her company even though she’s self-funded more than half of her campaign. He has also tried to get to the right of Greene on immigration, running an ad accusing her company of not using the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program to check the immigration status of workers — a contention Greene denies.

Meanwhile, Greene has called Cowan a “globalist Never Trumper” who’s “too afraid to take on China.” She’s also made a play for conservative voters angered by recent protests against the police by attacking Cowan for not speaking out in support of former Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe, who faces 11 charges, including murder, for shooting a Black man who had fallen asleep in his car at a Wendy’s drive-thru. Greene’s campaign slogan is “Save America, stop socialism.”

And those sorts of appeals may be enough for Greene to win today. A late July survey from Cowan’s campaign found the pair tied at 38 percent, numbers that were actually slightly worse for Cowan than in a late June poll from his campaign that put him ahead 43 percent to 40 percent.

Next door in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, the Republican runoff will also likely decide the November winner in this conservative seat in northeast Georgia, which is open because GOP Rep. Doug Collins is running for the U.S. Senate. The clash between state Rep. Matt Gurtler and gun store owner and veteran Andrew Clyde appears to be wide open, after they finished with 21 percent and 18 percent, respectively, in a crowded primary June 9.

Gurtler has touted his belief in limited government and has acquired the moniker “Dr. No” for his tendency to vote against bills in the state legislature. This approach has won him allies — the conservative Club for Growth endorsed his candidacy — but not all of his no votes are popular. For instance, Gurtler has caught flak from some in the GOP after he was the only Republican to vote against a resolution commending President Trump for killing an Iranian commander considered a terrorist by the U.S. government.

As for Clyde, he’s built a reputation for successfully taking on the Internal Revenue Service after it tried to seize nearly $1 million from him. However, Gurtler has questioned why Clyde’s business has continued to sell guns to the agency, as that is seemingly at odds with Clyde’s anti-government rhetoric.

We haven’t seen any polls here, but Gurtler appears to have the most financial backing, even though Clyde had outraised Gurtler about $877,000 to $660,000 as of July 22. Unlike Gurtler, Clyde has mostly self-funded his campaign, and outside groups have poured in around $1.9 million on behalf of Gurtler or against Clyde. The campaign arm of the Club for Growth has been very active, spending about $500,000 boosting Gurtler and $653,000 attacking Clyde. Additionally, Protect Freedom PAC has spent $494,000 to help Gurtler while a single-candidate super PAC backing Gurtler has thrown in about $414,000 to support him or hit Clyde. So we’ll have to see whether all that money pays off for Gurtler in the end.

The three races we’ve highlighted — especially the ones in Minnesota’s 5th District and Georgia’s 14th District — all take place in districts that are safely in one party’s column, but who wins the primary still matters as it will affect the House’s ideological composition and each party’s internal politics. We’ll be watching to see just how these races shape the parties going forward.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich

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