Oct 07 2010
House Already Slipping Away From Dems
Update: Hotline has compiled a list of Dem House seats currently polling under 50% for the incumbent and they have tallied 66 such instances!
And a staggeringly high number of Democratic incumbents are below the 50 percent mark, including members in much of the polling conducted by Democratic firms released to counteract the GOP narrative. House Race Hotline editor Tim Sahd compiled an invaluable database of all the House race polling conducted this cycle and found 66 Democratic incumbents sitting below that magic 50 percent number.
This to me is the GOP floor for November. Sadly the actual list is behind a pay-wall, but that overall news is stunning enough. – end update
We are one week into October and the House is slipping out of the hands of the Democrats already. Barring something very bizarre (and therefore questionable), it looks like the reign of Nancy Pelosi is coming to an end. RCP has the GOP up in the house race 210 to the Dems 186. For comparison the current make up is GOP 178 – Dems 255. That means the GOP has the lead in 32 Dem held seats and is 8 races away from the majority. A goal easily within their grasp.
In the “toss up” category there are 38D seats and 2R seats. A solid indication of how bad this cycle will be for Dems is the HI1 seat, which is currently R and thought to be an easy D pickup in the blue state of Hawaii. Apparently not anymore, as the latest poll has the race a statistical tie with a 1% difference. The fact this race has moved to this stage is another indicator of the breadth of voter backlash across this nation.
The worst that could happen here is the GOP loses 2 seats. The worst for the Dems is they lose all 38 seats. I don’t see that happening, but I do see them losing a vast majority of them.
A quick sample of the latest polls (Sept or later) in this group shows the following incumbents behind or below 50% (45% is the death zone for any incumbent):
CA20 -2%, 48D-46R
CT5 +6%, 44D-50R
FL22, -5% 48D-43R
IL17 +3%, 38D-41R
MI9 +4, 41D-45R
NC7 +1%, 45D-46R
NJ3 -4.3%, 40.3D-36D
NM1 -7%, 49D-42R
NM2 +2%, 44.3D-46.3R
NV3 0%, 45D-45R
SD-AL -2%, 47D-45R
These 11 races look to almost all go to the GOP since district level polling is the most imprecise of all, and the least consistent in dealing with ‘likely voters‘ in a wave election (I struggled with keeping NM1 in the list) . Many of the other 27D races in the RCP “toss up” category simply do not have recent polls. Only a handful look winnable for the D’s. I could go into the “Leans Dems” category and find other races that should go GOP as well. Clearly the GOP has the races in place to take control of the House of Representatives as it is. It really is coming down to how big a blow out this election cycle will be.
And that all comes down to how angry the American voters are for runaway and wasted spending, bailouts for the fat cats and unemployment and food stamps for Main Street, and the arrogance of DC elites telling us we are too racist and stupid to understand the problems facing America. It really comes down to what is motivating the voters, this election cycle. As Gallup shows in their “likely voter” model, it is not a pro big government, pro big government party year.
Do not underestimate the “power and will” of the “Left.”
Voting fraud will make a hash of expectations and projections.
Be prepared to be underwhelmed.
Just to show how bad it is going for the Dems take a look at this poll on Abercrombie for Hawaii Governor which he was supposed to win in a walk.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/10/06/abercrombie_holds_slim_lead_in_hawaii.html
A new DailyKos/Public Policy Polling survey in Hawaii shows Neil Abercrombie (D) barely leading Duke Aiona (R) in the race for governor, 49% to 47%.
AJ,
Jay Cost acknowledges two key points of this election in a recent post, but only pays attention to one of them here:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/morning-jay-obamas-job-approval-generic-ballot-senate-battles-and-more_500930.html
This is the point he pays attention too:
In my opinion, there are only two factors that really vary from election to election: how independents break and the strength of each party in the electorate. I think it is too early to get a clear sense of the latter factor, so my focus for now is on the independents, who so far have given no indication that they’ll be supporting the Democrats. All of the generic ballot polls that have come out since last Friday – Newsweek, Rasmussen, Gallup, and now ABC News/WaPo – have produced Republican leads among independents larger than what was seen in 1994, this despite the fact that they vary wildly in terms of their final spreads. If these trends continue, the GOP will take better than 3/5ths of all independents.
and this is the point he ignores because he cannot measure it:
In 2004, George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 255 congressional districts while winning the nationwide popular vote by 2.4 percent. That’s 13 more districts for Bush even though his popular vote margin was 5 percent less. The Democratic vote is more concentrated – in majority-minority districts and what Michael Barone calls “gentry liberal” districts. So, Bush’s 37 percent approval in 2006 was better distributed across the 435 congressional districts than Obama’s 46 percent probably will be.
So what happens when Republicans turn out is more than the 2004 “2.4 % higher Republican than Democratic turn out” average in 2010?
Incumbent Democrats who voted for ObamaCare, Stimulus, TARP and Cap & Trade in those 255 districts have effectively removed their local political identity and replaced it with a national Democratic brand in an environment where Republicans since 2009 are voting 9-to-1 against Democrats and Independents are going 3-to-5 against Democrats.
Out of the Democratically held portion of those 255 2004 Bush districts, there are less than 1/2 dozen who voted against ObamaCare, Stimulus, TARP, and Cap & Trade.
A Republican House of 249 seats should be the floor Republicans will have in the House, given a 4.6% enthusiasm gap turn out advantage that is the average Republican advantage in the generic polls.
That is a 71 seat House pick up for Republicans right there.
And that number does not include marginal 2004 Kerry seats in Mid-Western states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa.
The latest Ras poll shows Kristi Noem has regained a 47-44 victory over Congresswoman 92.7%.
Err, lead rather than victory. Kristi seems to be on her way to a November victory, but of course we’re three-plus weeks away from that.
early voting is coming up very soon – it begins Oct. 18 here in Texas. Once that date is passed any new developments or ads become less and less important since a significant amount of the vote will have already been cast. In short, there’s not enough time left for dems to do anything to change the outcome.
And to build on your observations about voter concentration, Trent – this is where the 91% support Dems get from black voters really hurts them. Black voters are about 12% of the population (if memory serves) so they are over a quarter of Obama’s 46% support. (12/46) HOWEVER, they are not distributed evenly – black voters tend to be concentrated in overwhelmingly urban and “safe” dem districts. What this means is that they have almost *no* influence on any of the swing districts that are in play this election.
In almost all of the most important congressional races this year, the Dem’s most loyal voting block is going to be a non-participant.
WWS,
The Senate and state wide elections for Governor and other State level offices — particularly Secretaries of State — are where Democrats really need Black turn out.
Black voter turn out will save Democratic Senators in places like Illinois, if it does come in.
Right now it looks like it won’t, due to unemployment being so high for Blacks, and Obama not being at the top of the ticket.
The same picture seems true for Democrats and Hispanic voters in Nevada, Arizona and California.
AJ,
Angle is now polling by +4% over Senate Majority Leader Reid in the latest Rasmussen poll.
This is the 3rd poll in as many days with her ahead with Fox and CNN showing here up by +2 and +3 respectively.
This “surge” or “tightening” Democratic media types keep talking up the last few days seems to be the same one Republicans saw in late 2008, AKA a “dead cat bounce.”
The same thing happened in October 2006 for Republicans in that Democratic wave election, and for Democrats in October 1994 for that Republican wave election.
Actual significance is very low because pretty well all the political pros factored in that “tighten up” as some base partisans “came home” long ago. And of course whichever party is getting the “tighten up” is also going to spin it as “things are going our way.
The bottom line is that the cat is still dead.
As Sen Reid is finding out now.
[…] chief allies in destroying America are well on their way to being fired by the American People. As I noted in an earlier post, Pelosi may still be in Congress come January 2011, but she will be there as a has-been Speaker. […]
wws, can’t wait for early voting! That said, the polls indicate that in the past 40 percent of the voters have already made up their minds by the start of early voting but I think this year, that number would be about 90 percent voters already making up their minds.
Wonder how the polls will change after early voting starts.
I think Bill White has just made a mistake – he would have been smart to have jumped on top of the Falcon Lake killing and announce he would be all for increased border security. (whether or not the Governor has the power to do that is another question, but no doubt this would make great political theater)
But he’s said nothing at all (scared of the issue?) and so on the issue that every paper is following and everyone is talking about, Perry has the stage all to himself. Simply because of the optics of this, Perry is portraying himself as someone who’s willing to stand up for Texans, and White is being seen as someone who’s AWOL whenever the hard choices come up.
Trent
I still think the Republicans will have more like 278 seats in the house. I think they pick up 100+ seats. It would not surpise me to see Barney Frank and Pig-of-a-lousey gone.
A friend of mine commented to me that voter fraud is less possible in congressional elections than state wide ones because they have to control the individual precencts and cheat at every level. Recounts are easier to monitor and the number are smaller which makes fruad easier to see.
They also have more problems cheating in very high turnout elections because they end up with more votes cast than registered voters which kind of rases issues.