After The Fall

“I’m for the Republicans. But we were looking at eight to nine seats in the Senate. We are now looking at seven to eight in my opinion.”

Karl Rove – Fox News, After Christine O’Donnell Defeated Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del) for the Delaware Republican Nomination for the US Senate.(http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42205.html#ixzz10LeNYmLn)

Even if the Republicans don’t win a majority of the seats, will the Democrats really retain control?

Doubtful.

Let’s look at the best case scenario for the Democrats.

The Tea Party will have a Senator from Utah (Mike Lee), likely a Senator from Kentucky (Rand Paul), and a Senator from Alaska (Joe Miller). Add Scott Brown from Massachusetts, and you have four Senators (10% of the Republican delegation) who are Tea Party Senators. Now include Jim DeMint from South Carolina, who has funded many of these Tea Party candidates, you now have five Senators who have a strong Tea Party connection.

Worse yet for the Democrats, these five Senators owe nothing to the Republican Party establishment. Only Scott Brown of Massachusetts has shown any inclination to play along with leadership. But with the backing of four other votes, he is more likely to break away and work with this five person Tea Party Caucus.

These five Senators would all have their seats because they ran against both the Democratic and the Republican establishments. These five have no reason to listen to Mitch McConnell. Anything their leadership would want to do would have to go through them.

In the small clubby world of the Senate, power attracts power. Oklahoma Republican Senators James Inhofe and Tom Coburn are extreme - even by Republican establishment standards. They now have a strong group of allies in the Tea Party caucus, who can provide votes and political cover.

Now there are seven Tea Party votes, which potentially will not be under Mitch McConnell's control.

These seven Republicans who have no allegiance to the either the agenda, agreements or philosophy that have guided the Senate since 1980. This group will wrench the Republicans even further to the right into an even more uncompromising stance.

It gets more interesting.

Nate Silver at Fivethiryteight (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/) projects roughly an 85% chance that the Democrats will retain 50 Senate seats. He rates seven seats as having a greater than 50% chance of flipping from Democrat to Republican. Of those seven (North Dakota, Arkansas, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Illinois and Nevada), three of those likely takeovers would be with Tea Party candidates – Pennsylvania (Pat Toomey), Colorado (Ken Buck), and Nevada (Sharron Angle).

They bring the number of avowed Tea Party Senators to 6, add Inhofe and Coburn and you have 8. Include Jim DeMint who helped finance them, in some cases over McConnell's opposition, and you have 9 Tea Party Senators. This represents nearly 25% of the Republican delegation who owe allegiance only to their ideological purity and Jim DeMint, and not to the Republican Party leadership.

Up for election are six ideological sympathetic establishment Republicans who are not Tea Party candidates: Roy Blunt (R-Mo); Richard Burr (R-NC); John McCain (R-AZ); David Vitter (R-LA); Johnny Isakson (R-GA); Chuck Grassley (R-IA). After the election they will throw their lot in with the Tea Party Senators. This brings the number of Tea Party Senators to fifteen – an even more formidable voting block.

Add to the Tea Party Caucus, those Republican Senators up in 2012 who will cave to the Tea Party caucus to improve their re-election chances, and even if Mitch McConnell retains his leadership post, he won’t be calling the shots anymore.

Now think about what happens if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) looses.

Reid is in the fight of his political life, and stands a good chance to lose his Senate seat. Aside from the fact that a Sharron Angle victory would really embolden the far right Tea Party crowd, there is the impact on Senate leadership.

If Reid is out, it is likely Charles Schumer (D-NY) would take his place. Reid has been an effective Majority Leader. His ability to steer big legislation by Republican roadblocks testifies to that.

But one advantage the Republicans have had for years is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has one of the safest seats in the Senate. He does not have to look over his shoulder with every move worrying about his election like Reid has had to. McConnell can be as partisan as he wants without fear of being thrown out. Schumer would be in the same position.

He has also helped a number of his colleagues get elected or retain their seats. So they owe him. The Senate would be run by two hyper partisans from safe seats not known for compromise. Everyone would posture for 2012 and for two years nothing will get done. The public’s anger will build. 2012 could make 2010 look like a walk in the park.

So regardless of whether or not the Democrats retain the control of the Senate it is hard to see how they can retain control of the Senate’s agenda.

No matter what happens they have lost the Senate.

After Labor Day

However, the headlines for this election have not yet been written, and there is considerable uncertainty in the outcome.

- Nate Silver predicting a 40 seat gain for Republican in the House

You don’t wear white after Labor Day, and voters don’t begin to focus on elections until then either. The current conventional wisdom is that Democrats will loose control of the House and maybe the Senate.

Two weeks ago the Gallup poll that put the Republicans 10 points ahead of Democrats in the “Generic Ballot”, created a lot of headlines and a lot of panic for the Democrats. Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-O) was picking out drapes for the Speakers office.

Not so fast.

Looking at the Generic Ballot poll over the summer shows how volatile this measure is. Nate Silver wrote on 08/31/10 (The Democrat’s New Normal http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/page/2/) that this lead could be statistical noise, in the same way the Democrats lead had been several weeks before.

Sure enough on 09/07/10 Gallup released the next “Generic Ballot” poll, and the Democrats and Republicans were tied at 46% each. On 09/13/10 Gallup “Generic Ballot” poll has the Republican ahead by five points. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/142982/Generic-Ballot-Splits-GOP-Dems.aspx). There is plenty of movement in these numbers.

There is a correlation between the generic ballot polling results and the number of seats won or lost. Looking at these numbers the Republicans are in for a strong showing this election cycle. There is still room for growth in support for the Democrats. 98% of Republicans support their Party while only 90% of the Democrats support theirs. If Democrats come home the election will tighten.

What really matters is a district by district look at the House races. But, this view has its own problems.

Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com created a stir when he released his model of the House races and predicted a 2 in 3 chance that the Republicans will take the House. (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/).

Silver is a respected statistician with an excellent track record. He did have some caveats for his results. One was the lack of objective non-partisan data. In most districts, there were either no polls to use, or polls that were released by the campaigns themselves and were not reliable. Even then there are 90 districts where either party has a 10% chance or better of prevailing. There is, as Silver himself says a lot of uncertainty out there.

On the same week that Fivethirtyeight.Com released their prediction, Electoral-Vote.com released its prediction on the House races. They predicted the Democrats will retain a slim margin in the House with a Republican pickup of 30 seats. (Post on September 11, 2010, http://www.electoral-vote.com/)

Electoral-Vote.com has been up since 2004 has been fairly accurate in its predictions. It uses a different statistical method than Nate Silver to make its predictions.

Silver runs thousands of simulations to account for random events in the election. Electoral-Vote.com tests races against a set of algorithms and predicts the outcome based on whether the condition passes the test or not. For example they start with the view that historically, 85% of incumbents have been reelected. As a result they rates seats where the incumbent won the last election with more than 55% of the vote as safe and not a toss-up.

This difference in models leads to different results. For example Silver suggest the Democrats have only a 51% chance of flipping LA-2 from Republicans and rates this as a toss-up. Electoral-Vote.com sees this as a solid Democratic seat. It has a PVI of +25% for the Democrats, it is a “Minority Majority” District being nearly all black. A Republican had not won the seat between 1891 and 2007. They only did so when former Rep. Jefferson was caught with $90,000 in his refrigerator.

At this point in the cycle the only people really focusing on they election are hard core activists and political junkies. Many average voters don’t even know an election is taking place.

The activists most motived are the Tea Party and they are a major reason for the “enthusiasm gap,” which favors the Republicans. This number is good indication of which party is most likely to turn out to vote. But, the Democrats have a better field operation and the funds on hand to finance a strong get-out-the-vote effort. This could counteract the Republican “enthusiasm.”

But even with the huge “enthusiasm gap” in favor of Republicans, many key races are very close. Carly Fiorina trails Barbara Boxer by 2 points. Sharon Angle trails Harry Reid by two points. Meg Whitman, after spending a 100 million dollars of her own money, is only 2 points ahead of Jerry Brown for CA Governors race even though he has only just now begun to campaign. Races are close in Illinois, New York State, Kentucky.

The Democrats are still competitive.

Speaker Pelosi has made a wise choice that will pa off to let the election play out district by district, each candidate sating their case to their own constituents.

So It is left to President Obama to make the case nationally, and remind everyone what is at stake if the Republicans gain power. Now is the time. It’s after Labor day - when elections are won or lost.

An Alaskan Warning?

There's not much doubt things are getting worse for Democrats -- and they were already pretty bad. Somehow the party base needs to get reinvigorated over the next two months or there's going to be a very, very steep price to pay.

- Tom Jensen Public Policy Polling

Lisa Murkowski (R-ALK) was in trouble. Throughout the primary in Alaska it was a given that Murkowski would beat Tea Party Express candidate Joe Miller for the Republican nomination for Senate. With only a deficit of 1,688 votes and close to 7,600 absentee ballots which can be counted as late as two weeks after the primary, Lisa Murkowski needed to get over 56% of the outstanding absentee votes to have done so. But by Tuesday morning it was obvious she wasn’t going to pull ahead of Joe Miller.

On 8/31/10 Murkowski conceded defeat. She had not ruled out a third party or write-in run for the seat. But the Libertarian Party said they would not put her on their ticket. She could still run as a write-in. But for now she says she will go back to Washington, finish her term and come home.

In a post released on 08/289/10 Public Policy Polling (http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2010/08/alaska-senate-race.html) the Democratic nominee Scott McAdams, is in a strong position. He is running even with the Republicans with the support of 42% of Independent voters. He has a unified Democratic party behind him with the support of 81% of his party’s voters. But with an 18% deficit in party Registration any Democrat has an uphill battle in Alaska.

McAdams may benefit from the fact that Joe Miller, like Sharon Angle has some very extreme positions. These positions may send independent voters as well as disappointed Murkowski voters his way. But currently the Republicans are favored to retain the seat.

Looking back to the one poll taken in the primary, Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com pointed out that Miller had surprising hidden strength in voters. (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/a-closer-look-at-alaska/) A large plurality of voters who knew both Murkowski and Miller supported Miller. In July when the poll was taken 65% of voters didn’t even know who Miller was. With Miller’s name recognition being so low, this was a warning to Murkowski that as voters got to know Miller they would abandon her and vote for him.

Is there a similar warning to the Republicans nationwide?

For most of this cycle In the Congressional generic ballot question tracked by Gallop, the Republicans have held a lead of anywhere between 3-7 points. When the question gallop asks changes from a Generic ballot question to “Do you think your Rep should be reelected?” a majority of respondents say yes. With Democrats in a solid majority this should translate into some seat stability.

The other interesting number shows in a CNN poll. The more Republican voters cite animosity for Obama rather than a support for the Republican party platform as their reasons for voting for Republicans.

How will this play out?

If Obama begins to engage the 2008 voters (likely) and if he increases his popularity (possible), voters whose allegience to the Republican cause is more through anti Obamaism may drift away, just as Murkowski supporters went to Miller.

This is possible. One thing polls have shown consistently is that Republican congressional leadership ranks last in support behind both Obama and the Democratic leader. Republican Congressional leadership does not even have a majority support among likely Republican voters, (for example : http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_National_813.pdf).

A chart published by Gallup also shows that looking across the entire cycle Republicans had a lead outside of the margin error only once - throughout the month of August. The August 31 poll that puts the Republicans ahead at 10% while not good news for the Democrats, may not be the final word. The lead in this poll has changed several times since May. Which indicates soft support for both Parties. There was nothing in the news this week that would drive a seven point spike in the poll for the Republicans. So this lead could be the start of a trend, or just as likely statistical noise.

Right now the two main groups focussed on the election are pundits and Tea Party members. At this point only the hard core and the activist know an election is underway. The average Democratic voter simply isn’t engaged yet. The closer a race gets to election day the tighter it becomes. This one should be no different.

The Democratic party also has a significant edge in cash to use to get out the vote and engage their voters. They have the financial resources to buy $48 Million of advertisements to run two weeks before the election. This, with a stronger get out the vote infrastructure could make the difference in close races.

The nuts and bolts of getting voters to the polls can carry a weaker candidate past a stronger candidate with a poor get out the vote operation. That is what made the difference for Blanche Lincoln in her primary win.

So don’t count the Obama machine out. On 8/25/10 President Obama sent an email message to members of Organizing For America, the PAC he formed after the 2008 campaign, based on his list of volunteers and contributors. In the email Obama asked PAC members to support Jerry Brown’s (D-CA) campaign for Governor of California.

So many people responded that the Brown website crashed.

The enthusiasm for Democrats is there, it is simply waiting to be tapped. It is not too late for Democrats to tap in. Voters may simply waiting to be asked.

And that could make the difference.