Close-Up: Doubly Dynastic

Only one half of the Senate match-up in Georgia has been settled: Michelle Nunn won the Democratic nomination essentially unopposed. Well, she faced three other Democrats, but they didn't exist as far as media coverage of the race was concerned. The proof? Unless you're from DeKalb County (home of runner-up, former state senator Steen Miles) or a member of the Board of Trustees of the Georgia Psychiatric Physicians Association (on which fourth place finisher Dr. Branko Radulovacki sat from 2007 to 2009), you don't recognize the names of any of the other candidates. (There's also a chance you read the Wikipedia article on the election, but even then the third place finisher, former U.S. Army Ranger Todd Robinson, doesn't have his own Wikipedia article, which is totally a good judge of notability.)

Establishment 3, Far Right 0

Three primaries were held in competitive states yesterday. It appears that most of the media hype around insurgent right-wing Republicans was just that--hype. Recognized "establishment" candidates won pretty easily over Tea Party-backed opponents in the following states:

More on the Louisiana runoff

A couple days ago this article on the Fix at The Washington Post popped up in my Google Alerts. In it, Aaron Blake brings up something I had written about five days earlier--the very strong possibility that the Senate election in Louisiana will proceed to a runoff due to the inability of the two highest-polling candidates, incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu and U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, to break 50%. 

Blake suggests a pretty simple (and pretty good, roughly) way to interpret the polls that don't ask about the head-to-head between Sen. Landrieu and Rep. Cassidy--just stack up the votes for Republican candidates--that includes state representative Paul Hollis and retired USAF Col. Rob Maness as well as Rep. Cassidy--and those are the votes Republicans get in the runoff.

Nationalizing the Races

One way to look at the 2014 midterms--any midterm, really--is to consider them to be a referendum on President Obama. That is, voters will vote mostly based on their perception of President Obama rather than on their perceptions of the candidates running in their district or state. In such a world, where local races are completely nationalized, Democrats are doomed. As of December 2013 (which is a long time ago according to campaign time, but recent enough to make some judgments), in only one state--his native Hawaii--is his approval rating above 60%; moreover, of the 12 most disapproving states, two, Alaska and Arkansas, are home to two of the most vulnerable Democratic senators in the country. 

Of course, we don't live in that world. Regardless of whatever pundits might say about how the president's favorability impacts the races in the states, the fact is that the elections this year don't have President Obama vs. a generic Republican on the ballot. They're about two candidates that have their own records and their own personal appeal on which to run.

Pollsters Are Looking at the Wrong Race in Louisiana

Don't get me wrong; the Senate race is the only statewide one this year. (Louisiana holds its statewide elections every fourth year; the most recent one was in 2011.)

What I'm referring to is the Pelican State's unique (well, within the United States) system of elections, a holdover from when New Orleans was the largest city in the French North American colonies. A holdover from French civil law, Louisiana doesn't hold primaries; instead it pits every candidate that files from all parties into a great one-versus-the-world battle, known as a "jungle primary". If no majority is reached by a single candidate, the two highest-performing candidates advance to a runoff held on December 6. This allows for some great political theater, but it's hard on pollsters who have to decide which candidates to include in their polling, especially since it's possible for multiple candidates to run from each party.

Fielding Questions: Defending More Ratings

I had a nice conversation with the president of the Dartmouth College Democrats the other day about our latest ratings. Apparently he was pretty happy with them--I don't want to chalk it up to partisan wishful thinking, but I feel that might be at least part of the reason he's pretty optimistic about Democratic chances in Mississippi. (By the way, that isn't something to be ashamed of--go ask Nancy Pelosi what she thinks about the chances of a Democratic House majority in 2014. I guarantee you that she won't scare away donors by telling the truth.) While he's happy with our current predictions that have Democrats just barely holding onto the Senate (at this time, we're saying 50-50, with Vice President Joe Biden providing the tiebreaking vote), he did question some of our other ratings that maybe weren't as friendly to Democrats as he thought they should be.

As a result, we think it's fair that we should address two of his concerns, and maybe justify some of the ratings we maintained and therefore didn't include in the last update (because who wants to hear again about all 72 elections in a single post?). We're not changing any of the ratings; this is just a brief recap of the ones that seemed questionable to him.

What We're Doing with This Campaign Finance Stuff

In partnership with Dartmouth Rootstrikers we've been keeping track of monthly polling averages for all of the races we've been watching, including the 34 Class 2 Senate elections plus the two special Senate elections, as well as all 36 gubernatorial elections this year. Rootstrikers, if you didn't know, is a group (largely students) devoted to reducing the influence of money in politics. In part this is an extension of our study over the winter, in which we found a negative correlation between the amount of money spent in a Senate race and the margin of victory in that race: the more money was spent, the more competitive the race was.