Revisiting the jungle

In Louisiana there's another statewide election scheduled. And not the one scheduled for December 6, which will decide whether incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu will keep her seat for another six years or if Rep. Bill Cassidy can take it from her. In 2002, the runoff fight for this same seat was termed "Operation Icing on the Cake" by Republican operatives; the only thing a victory in Louisiana would have done for Republicans was pad their majority from 51 seats to 52. And this year it's similar, although since Republicans are more likely than not to lose several seats in the 2016 elections--which favor Democrats for the same reasons 2014 favored Republicans--every seat they can get will be helpful. But despite the dearth of polls since Election Day, there's not much reason to suspect that Landrieu has any better chances of keeping her seat after the December runoff. Although her effort to bring the Keystone XL pipeline to a vote on the Senate floor--where Landrieu claims to have a filibuster-proof sixty-seat majority--has finally succeeded, it has really lost much of its importance election-wise since 1) it turns out a lot of voters didn't really care about her seniority when casting their votes and 2) her seniority wouldn't mean much in the 114th Congress anyway, seeing as she'd be demoted to the ranking Democratic member of the Energy Committee, from the chairmanship that she holds now. (Meanwhile, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska appears to be very pleased about her own rise to the chairmanship.) The DSCC has pulled its spending from the state and Landrieu looks to still be deep in it. LIKELY REPUBLICAN

That's all we have to say about that. The real competitive election in the Pelican State is next year, when Louisiana (as well as Kentucky and Mississippi) holds its gubernatorial election. Not even counting the fact that this election is not held in a midterm year (it's one of five states that holds its state elections in odd-numbered years), there are some key differences between 2015's gubernatorial and 2014's Senate election that make next year's more complicated to evaluate:

Ratings Update: September 19, 2014

We're less than seven weeks out from the elections, and it's around now that some uncertainty begins dropping out of the forecast--mainly because 1) there's more polling out, giving us a more accurate picture of where candidates stand, and 2) there's less time for the underdogs to make up the difference before the election. So a lot of our ratings changes this time will be adjusting for that.

Ratings Update: September 1, 2014

Just in time for the Labor Day campaign season kickoff, here's some ratings changes:

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:

Close-Up: The Bill Clinton Effect

Vulnerable Democrats across the country are distancing themselves from President Obama, even as his disapproval rating continues to fall nationally. In some places that distancing takes the form of hand-waving the president's relevance to the election, as Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska has done by taking the line of "mend it, don't end it" on the Affordable Care Act. In other places, like Louisiana, it takes the form of outright chastising the president's agenda, as Sen. Mary Landrieu has taken to doing, especially on his energy policy.

And then there's Kentucky. In February, former President and Democratic "Explainer-in-Chief" Bill Clinton hit the campaign trail in support of Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, whose family has a long relationship with the Clintons. It's a boon to Sec. Grimes, who can campaign on the popularity of a former president, rather than campaign against the unpopularity of a current president. Among the Democratic establishment, Clinton commands better fundraising capacity than any other Democrat in the country, save for possibly President Obama himself. Unlike many Democrats these days, Clinton is still popular in the South, as he is across the nation. And if the psycholinguists at NC State are to be believed, even his accent can help with Southern voters. (Sec. Grimes's accent is still noticeable, although not nearly as recognizable as Clinton's.)

New Polls Out, Have Political Junkies Questioning Meaning of Existence

I said something a while ago about one poll not being news. What about, I dunno, four?

Campaign junkies are (or at least, I am) either excited, disgusted, or perplexed by the latest set of polls out from Upshot, a new 2014-midterxtravaganza section from The New York Times, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. You've got David Lauter at the Los Angeles Times giving a positive "always look on the bright side of life" spin, especially on Sen. Mark Pryor's chances in Arkansas. Then on the other side you've got the always-prescient Karl Rove at Fox News raising some admittedly reasonable objections to the poll methodology. And then you've got non-partisans wondering why these polls bucked trends so hard.

That's me, the last one. (I'm also a bit excited, but only because these are the first polls to come out of some of these states in weeks.) 

So, first things first: what do the polls say?

The Run-Down: March 31, 2014

To start off, we're going to give basically the crash-course summary of this election, of who wants what to happen.

Thirty-six elections to the Senate will happen on November 4, 2014: 33 "class 2 Senate seats" as well as three special elections in Hawaii, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Currently, the Democrats have a majority in the Senate, with 53 Democratic senators as well as two independents in Vermont and Maine who are caucusing with the Democrats. Republicans, therefore, need to pick up six seats in order to capture the majority (in the event of a 50-50 split, Vice President Joe Biden would be able to cast a tie-breaking vote).

It's way easier than it sounds. The quirk of Senate elections is that if a senator is elected in a presidential election year, that senator's next election is guaranteed to be in a midterm year, and vice-versa. Midterm elections have historically been horrendous for the president's party: only twice since World War II (in 1998 and 2002) has the president's party gained seats in a midterm election. Even in a neutral or sort-of-okay year, we'd expect the Democrats to lose seats in the Senate. However, this year the Democrats' problem is much worse simply because they did so well six years ago, in 2008, when Senator Obama's popularity allowed him to win the presidential election and swept in a number of Democrats on his coat-tails. As a result of their stellar performance in 2008, not including the special election seats (which are safe for one party or the other, as described below) Democrats now must defend 21 seats, while Republicans only have 12 to defend. Even worse for the Democrats, the GOP seats this year consist of the safest ones that they were able to defend in 2008, while the Democratic seats include many marginal victories they won in competitive states like North Carolina, Louisiana, and Alaska.