Archive for the 'KY-Dem' Category

In split decision, two worlds and electoral coalitions collided last night

Published
by
Taniel
on May 21, 2008
in KY-Dem and OR-Dem
. 7 Comments

As expected, two worlds collided last night, and each candidate posted a resounding victory. Clinton’s 35 percent victory in Kentucky allowed her to own the night and get as good a pledged delegate split as she has gotten all year. But as has often been the case, Obama was ready with a retort: Not only did his 16 percent margin in Oregon (with 9/10th of the precincts reporting) exceed expectations but he clinched a clear majority of pledged delegates last night, allowing him to heighten his claim to the nomination.

Kentucky and Oregon were also shockingly opposite worlds when it came to the voting behavior of key constituencies. In Kentucky, Clinton’s victory might have been lopsided but there were few surprises in the exit polls: Clinton trounced Obama among white voters, especially women, the working-class, voters with less education and less income. In Oregon, Obama confirmed that the Northwest is among his strongest territories by accomplishing what he had only truly succeeded in doing in Wisconsin: make inroads in Clinton’s constituencies. He opened a small lead among women, voters with no college degree and in almost all income groups. Those groups were still Clinton’s strongest, preserving the gender/income/education gap that has been dominating the Democratic primaries, but Obama had no problem with white blue-collar voters in Oregon.

Yesterday’s votes were more about Obama than about Clinton. With the New York Senator on the brink of elimination, the main question that had to be answered was how Oregon and Kentucky would impact Obama’s candidacy going forward: Would they force him to go through more talk of his electability weakness and his problems among the working class, or would they put a triumphant coda on his march towards the nomination? The size of Clinton’s victory in Kentucky ensures a round of stories addressing the former question — as they should. No presumptive nominee can be trounced by 35 percent and expect to not have that defeat dissected. But the biggest story last night was Obama’s declaring that the nomination is “within reach” and welcoming the majority of pledged delegates.

The difference in the votes of blue-collar voters in Oregon and Kentucky also points to the crucial question of the electoral coalition Obama wants to cultivate. A few days ago, I considered the choices the campaign faces in terms of the electoral map, as Obama’s consistent weakness in Ohio and Florida is leading the campaign to emphasize the importance of other states like Virginia, Colorado and other Western states. To this alternative electoral map corresponds an alternative electoral coalitions, one that does not put as much weight on the Midwest’s white working-class.

Going forward, Obama’s hold on the nomination was not endangered last night — but neither was Clinton’s resolve to stay in the race until every contest is finished. It is this dual reality that is making the Democratic primary such a surreal situation in recent weeks. Clinton will only feel strengthened in her self-proclaimed struggle to represent lower-income voters and women within the Democratic Party after last night, but the math has become impossible for Clinton to even get close to Obama — let alone to take any sort of delegate lead. My calculations now put her 149 pledged delegate away from Obama with 86 remaining to be attributed in 3 states, two of which favor her opponent.

Meanwhile, superdeleates are continuing to flow towards Obama, though the the count this morning is tied so far: Obama got the support of Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney, while Clinton was endorsed by Ohio add-on Craig Bashein. Clinton did get some hope to regain her footing in one metric that only some Democrats insist is important: the popular vote. She netted a 150,000 vote advantage yesterday in her quest to a popular vote majority without counting Michigan.

Results thread: Clinton triumphs in KY, Obama gets Oregon and welcomes majority of pledged delegates

Published
by
Taniel
on May 20, 2008
in KY-Dem and OR-Dem
. 18 Comments

2:30am: Barack Obama got a large victory in Oregon. With 76% reporting, Barack Obama leads 58% to 42% — a large victory that exceeds expectations and partly balances the trouncing he received in Kentucky. Obama got a huge margin in Portland’s county, which is over-reporting. I am unable to get a sense of how favorable the last quarter of counties will be for Obama and how the margin will evolve as the last precincts report. Estimates right now give Obama an 8 pledged delegate lead in the state (Clinton had an edge of 23 in KY).
In the Senate race, Jeff Merkley managed a narrow victory against Steve Novick — 45% to 41% at the present moment, but Novick has already conceded. He will face Gordon Smith in the fall in what is a victory for the DSCC’s efforts to influence the results of a state primary. As for the last Oregon primary that we were following, Erickson managed to get the GOP primary in OH-05 despite the dramatic allegations that he had paid a woman to get an abortion and the calls from a pro-life group for him to drop out of the race.

11pm: Results start being reported in Oregon. I am not sure how the exit poll was conducted here since all the voting was conducted via mailing, but the exit poll shows that SUSA got it exactly right: the two are tied among women and Obama gets a lead solely from the male vote, which he leads by 29%. This suggests that Obama will win by double-digits. He also won the votes of voters with no college degree. He also won voters with incomes of less than $50,000. Among registered Democrats, Obama is up by single-digits. Overall, Oregon looks to be as much a repeat of Wisconsin as any state since in that Obama seems to have made inroads in Clinton constituencies.
I will not be able up to update the results for a while. Follow the results here.

10:30pm: With more than 99% of the precincts reporting in Kentucky, Obama is sitting at 30,0% while Clinton is at 65.5%. This is as big a margin as Clinton was hoping for, and it will trigger a new round of stories about Obama’s weakness among blue-collar white voters. There have been many states now in which Obama has had trouble appealing to this group of voters — just as he had trouble reaching 15% in Hispanic border counties in Texas. In relatively populous Pike County, for instance, Clinton beat Obama 91% (almost 13,000 votes) to 7% (not even 1,000 votes). The pledged delegate count is also very favorable to Clinton, as she got 37 delegates to Obama’s 14.
Just as I explained this afternoon, however, these results are less interesting for the way they impact Clinton’s chances (it is too late for that, and Clinton could have gotten a bigger margin without changing her chances much) than for their impact on Obama’s candidacy going forward. For a presumptive nominee to not reach 30% in two states in a row does not inspire triumphant stories. But, Obama will get a good wave of stories because the important milestone he reached a few hours ago by clinching a majority of pledged delegates!

10:20pm: In his speech, speaking in Iowa in a clear sign that he was getting ready for the general election, Obama channeled some of the themes of his speech on the night of the caucuses. Obama proclaimed that “Change is coming to America” and defied the “cynics” that had counted him out. He claimed the majority in pledged delegates, clearly laying down a claim to the nomination while choosing his word carefully to not let Clinton say he is claiming victory before he has reached it: “Tonight, in the fullness of spring, with the help of those who stood up from Portland to Louisville, we have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people, and you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination.”
He also kept up with a theme in recent days of heralding Clinton’s historic candidacy, one he called “groundbreaking” in an appearance earlier this week. Today, he proclaimed that, “No matter how this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers.” And he repeatedly celebrated Iowa, and how representative it is of America’s problems, hopes and aspirations:

It’s what I saw all those years ago on the streets of Chicago when I worked as an organizer – that in the face of joblessness, and hopelessness, and despair, a better day is still possible if there are people willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it. That’s what I’ve seen here in Iowa. That’s what is happening in America – our journey may be long, our work will be great, but we know in our hearts we are ready for change, we are ready to come together, and in this election, we are ready to believe again. Thank you Iowa, and may God Bless America.

9:45pm: The campaigns released their primary totals today, with the Obama campaign announcing that it had raised $31 million. That’s actually surprisingly close to Clinton’s total of $22 million (it is unclear whether all of that is primary funds, but how many donors would be willing to donate to Clinton’s general election funds?), surprising considering that Obama was already heavily favored to get the nod throughout April. The McCain campaign has raised less than both Democrats, at $18 million.

9:30pm: Obama has clinched a majority of pledged delegates. According to my calculations, he needed 14 more to reach that point, a number he reached in Kentucky alone. And this despite a massive trouncing: With 97% reporting, Obama is barely clinging to the 30% mark, distanced by Clinton’s 65,5%. This means that Clinton will get a very significant delegate margin out of the state. This is a bigger margin than most polls predicted, and I was correct to assume that with Louisville out of the way Clinton’s margin would only increase through the night. In the Senate race, the November match-up will oppose Bruce Lunsford to Mitch McConnell.

7:45pm: With 43% of the precincts reporting, Clinton leads 58% to 39%, and Obama is holding on to a higher than expected showing though his stronger counties (around the cities of Fayette and Louisville) have nearly finished reporting. Obama is getting less than 10% in a number of counties, with Clinton routinely above 85% in a lot of rural counties, especially in the Appalachia region in Eastern Kentucky. Note that John Edwards is not repeating the stunning 7% he got last week in WV, as he is only at 1.7% here; combined with the uncommitted vote, however, more than 3.5% of voters refused to pick between Clinton and Obama (that’s actually much less than the number of GOP voters who shunned McCain, who is only getting 73% of the vote).
In the Senate primary, Bruce Lunsford is leading but by a slightly narrower margin than expected.

7:30pm: Looking at exit polls, the key constituencies are behaving as they have throughout 2008: Clinton carries women by 40% (54% among white women) and she gets 69% among voters with no college degree. She also trounces Obama among voters with a college degree, but less overwhelmingly. More surprisingly, there is no gap along income lines (as Clinton trounces Obama among lower income voters only slightly more than among higher income voters) or along religious lines. Another interesting result is the partisan breakdown: Clinton leads by 40% among registered Democrats, while the independent vote is a much narrower 45% to 40%.
As for the racial factor, it looks to have been as important as in West Virginia as 21% of voters say that race was important to them. Overall, Clinton got 72% of the white vote and Obama got 88% of the black vote. Also, 54% of voters
say that Obama shares the views of Jeremiah Wright. 56% of all voters say they would not be satisfied if Obama wins the nomination.

7:15pm: Kentucky called for Hillary Clinton. Nothing surprising at 7pm, as networks quickly called the state for Clinton. Exit poll numbers, now available, suggest that Clinton will get a margin superior to 30% — the result she was hoping for. With 27.5% reporting, Clinton is leading 57% to 39.5%; if Obama can hold on to these numbers — and hover around the 40% mark — he will have greatly exceeded expectations. But consider that 88% of Jefferson County, where Louisville is located, has already reported, and that Obama is narrowly ahead in that county. This is the only region where Obama could have expected strong results, and it is likely to only go downhill from here.

6:20pm: Kentucky Results have started coming in despite the fact that not all polls are closed in the state. Only 0.5% of precincts are reporting, so it is still early (Clinton is starting with a big lead, with 78% of the vote). But the exit polls are revealing of the state of mind of Kentucky voters, with about 80% of Clinton supporters say they would be dissatisfied if Obama were their nominee, and more saying they would vote for McCain than for Obama. Kentucky is among Obama’s worst states in the primary as well as the general election when compared to Clinton: The latest SUSA poll of Kentucky had McCain leading Clinton by 2% and leading Obama by 37, even besting him among registered Democrats by 1 percent!

Original post: Kentucky and Oregon voters were probably hoping that their primaries would seem more momentous. Not only did Indiana and North Carolina bring an effective end to the competitive part of the race, but the primaries were overshadowed by news that Senator Ted Kennedy had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The political world — Republicans and Democrats — hurried to offer their tribute to one of the most famous American politicians, with Senator Byrd gaining the most headlines for his teary speech on the floor of the Senate.

We will likely have much more to say about Kennedy’s condition and the implications of this news for the Massachusetts political scene, but for now it is Kentucky and Oregon’s turn to shine. Results start trickling in at 6pm ET from Kentucky, with all polls closing at 7pm. In Oregon, results will start being released at 11pm. So this will be a long stretched out night election night.

This will be only the second election night that I will not be constantly liveblogging through the night (the first was Mississippi on March 11th), nor will I be able to watch Obama’s Iowa speech live; but I will certainly offer very regular updates. For now, you can look at my guidelines for tonight’s results — both at the presidential and gubernatorial level.

Kentucky and Oregon guidelines: Presidential and senatorial primaries

Published
by
Taniel
on May 20, 2008
in KY-Dem, KY-Sen, OR-Dem and OR-Sen
. 4 Comments

Ever since the end of February, Democratic voters played a crual game in maintaining the status-quo over and over again, forcing both candidates to go through the motions of a competitive race by granting Clinton victories credible enough for her to win the night but not convincing enough for the fundamentals of the race to change. Since May 6th, we have left the cruelty and entered the surreal phase, in which only one candidate is going through the motions of a competitive race, the other having moved on to the general election by visiting this fall’s battleground state and battling the Republican nominee.

This is what makes today’s elections so difficult to assess: Is there any result, no matter how favorable to her, that could truly help Hillary Clinton? Or is the only question at this point what effect the result will have on Barack Obama — will they force him to go through more talk of his electability weakness and his problems among the working class, or will they put a triumphant coda on his march towards the nomination?

The Kentucky primary is likely to be a triumph for Hillary Clinton which means that the exit polls will be as closely parsed as those in West Virginia last week: Does Obama’s weakness with white voters and blue-collar voters express itself in Kentucky? Will there be as many voters confessing to racial basis as they were last week?

It would be a huge surprise (and the only result worth considering more carefully as to whether it could pause the flow of superdelegates) if Obama did not win the Oregon primary, though the margin should be inferior to that of Clinton in Kentucky. The Obama campaign is quick to point out that Oregon is also big on blue-collar white voters; indeed, Oregon is an ovwelmingly white state with a strong working-class, so it will certainly be important to consider the voting breakdown in Oregon when judging Obama’s weakness among blue-collar voters.

Obama hopes that this proves that his problem is not quite as big as West Virginia’s results suggested, though it’s important to note that Obama was trounced by Clinton among blue-collar voters in states with less racial polarization. In fact, only in Wisconsin did Obama do significant inroads among blue-collar voters. The Obama campaign believes Oregon could be a remake of Wisconsin and that Obama does significantly better than usual among Clinton’s core groups; if it is (and given the fact that the party is increasingly uniting around the Illinois Senator), it would be a huge victory for his camp that would deflect much of the negative press he should receive about Kentucky.

Timing will likely be key tonight, just as it was on May 6th when Gary County holding its results prevented Clinton from claiming victory earlier in the night and only heightened Obama’s domination of the results’ coverage. Tonight, we will get results from Kentucky early: The first numbers will start trickling in at 6pm ET (KY and IN have among the earliest closing times) and there should be a call at 7pm. Oregon, however, starts releasing results at 11pm (note that more than 2/3rds of the votes have arleady been mailed-in before today, and a lot of those will already have been counted so results should come in quickly). That means that when Obama delivers his triumphant speech in Iowa — and possibly at press time — only the Kentucky results will be known, and that could influence the night’s coverage.

Down-the-ballot: Perhaps more suspenseful and ultimately more meaningful than the presidential primaries, there are two Senate primaries playing out in Oregon and Kentucky as well. The tightest is in Oregon, where state House speaker Jeff Merkley is facing a surprisingly competitive challenge by Steve Novick. The DSCC recuited Merkley and has even aired ads to help him and organized phone banks, but the latest polls show a toss-up with the slightest of edges to Novick who ran the more creative campaign. The winner will face Senator Gordon Smith in the genearl election in what Democrats believed would be one of their best opportunities a few months ago; the optimism is less prevalent today.

Kentucky, meanwhile, might be the DSCC’s biggest recruitment failure now that Kay Hagan looks to have some potential in NC. Polls in the fall showed Senator McConnell very vulnerable a number of Democratic officials, all of which declined to run one-by-one. Today, Bruce Lunsford, a centrist/conservative Democrat who lost the gubernatorial primary in 2007, is favored to get his party’s nod against Greg Fisher.

Monday polls: First VP tests, and Obama’s big Oregon lead

Published
by
Taniel
on May 19, 2008
in KY-Dem, MN-Sen, NM-Pres and OR-Dem
. 0 Comments

The Democratic Party’s unification process continued today. After Senator Byrd this morning, Warren Buffet endorsed Barack Obama; he had announced for a long time that he would not endorse before the end of the primaries and had made appearances with both candidates. Meanwhile, Politico reported that Patti Solis Doyle — yes that Solis Doyle — is in talks with the Obama campaign about joining their general election efforts; sure, she appears to be a long time friend of David Axelrod, but it is nonetheless a blow to Clinton that even the woman who coined the term “Hillaryland” is now preparing for her loss.

In other words, everyone but the Clinton campaign is acting like the primaries are over and that Obama has become the presumptive nominee. And that’s exactly what makes tomorrow’s Election Day — and the two campaign’s dual spin — so surreal.

The most dramatic evidence of the shifting dynamics of the Clinton-Obama race was provided by Gallup’s tracking poll where Obama suddenly and dramatically opened his biggest lead yet, forcing Clinton under the 40% bar for the first time. He is now ahead 55% to 39%. Ironically, Clinton progressed in the general election, now ahead of McCain by 4% while Obama is ahead by 1%. Meanwhile, three new primary polls show a much more comfortable Obama lead in Oregon than Suffolk implied this morning:

  • SUSA shows Obama ahead 55% to 42% in Oregon. His lead comes entirely from a 28% lead among men, as the two are tied among women.
  • PPP finds Obama to be ahead 56% to 38%. Obama is at 60% among those who have already voted.
  • In Kentucky, SUSA confirms that Clinton will triumph. She is ahead 62% to 31% — so Obama can expect to do much better than in West Virginia.

Don’t forget that Oregon’s voting is conducted entirely through mail, and voters have until tomorrow to return their ballots. So most of the votes are already in. Also, a huge victory in Oregon could not be enough for Obama to avoid the embarrassment of Wednesday morning headlines; Oregon voting stops at 11pm ET and while the state should be called fairly soon the size of Obama’s victory could not be known until after press time. Also, Obama’s speech in Iowa should come before counting starts in Oregon.

Also today, SUSA released a new poll of New Mexico testing potential vice-presidential match-ups! The numbers show a lot of discrepancy, way more than any vice-presidential pick would ever impact any ticket, and a lot of it is due to name recognition at this stage, but it is still a fun exercise:

  • McCain and Obama are (conveniently) tied at 44% in a straight match-up. Obama gets 67% of the Democratic vote and only 51% of the Hispanic vote — a very weak showing in a key constituency that Obama must do well in.
  • Obama prevails when paired up with Edwards as he improves his share of the Dem vote: He leads McCain-Huckabee by 3, McCain-Romney by 6 and McCain-Pawlenty by 9 (Pawlenty suffers from an obvious lack of name recognition).
  • But Democrats do badly with most other VP tickets: In the match-ups with Pawlently alone (useful to compare people with comparably low name ID), the GOP leads by 7 if Obama picks Sebelius, 4 if he picks Rendell.
  • A very interesting lesson is what happens if Obama picks Republican Chuck Hagel, as his share of the Demcoratic vote drops dramatically. He only gets 52% (!) of the Democratic vote in a match-up with McCain-Pawlently, for instance. The parallel lesson is that McCain is a bit weaker if he picks Lieberman as his vice-president.

Finally, we also got a Senate poll today from Minnesota, in the race that has possibly been polled more than any other in the past few months:

  • Senator Coleman is in single-digits but above 50 percent, leading Al Franken 51% to 44% in the Star Tribune poll.

The article emphasizes that Franken looks to have been hurt by the tax scandal that has engulfed his campaign recently. He should find a way to deal with it soon, because Coleman is a good enough politician that he will make sure to use it relentlessly in the coming months. There is no question that Franken looked much better in late February/March and that Coleman has been regaining strength ever since Franken looked to have closed in on his party’s nod.

Preparing for an election day that has little at stake, as Byrd goes Obama

Published
by
Taniel
on May 19, 2008
in KY-Dem, Nat-Dem and OR-Dem
. 8 Comments

The Democratic campaign is strangely subdued given that we are only one day from the Oregon and Kentucky primaries. The question, after all, is no longer what Hillary Clinton would need to accomplish to remain credible or even to change the fundamentals of the race, but only what she needs to get in order to make her argument that she ought to stay in the race two more weeks and that superdelegates should at least give her one last chance.

Besides the continuing picture of candidates going through the motions of a competitive race in what has ceased to be one, tomorrow night could also be surreal in that it will feature two dramatically different states that will feature two dramatically different results — Clinton is heavily favored in Kentucky, in what should be a replay of her 41% victory in West Virginia, and Obama is favored in Oregon. This is confirmed by today’s polls:

  • Suffolk University finds Clinton leading 51% to 25% in Kentucky, an impressive showing that is inferior to what other polls have been showing. There are obviously a lot of undecideds. Obama’s popularity stands at 43%, and only 41% of Democrats said they would vote for their party’s nominee if their first choice did not get the nomination.
  • In Oregon, Obama is narrowly ahead 45% to 41%. His popularity stands at 73%. Even here, Democrats have a loyalty problem as only 59% of Dems say they would stick with their party’s nominee if their candidate does not get the nod.

Clinton looks to be in a position to pull an upset tomorrow in Oregon despite Obama’s popularity in the state and the huge crowd he drew in Portland (about 70,000 but as we saw in New Hampshire unexpectdly gigantic crowds are not enough to carry one to victory); at least she is in a position to exceed expectations and keep a state that was supposed to be one of Obama’s strongest in single digits. She is also likely to pair any good result with Oregon with a triumphant result in Kentucky. Yet, there is little at stake in such successes since Obama is getting ready to announce he has won a majority of pledged delegates tomorrow in a triumphant speech in Iowa, no matter the results in Oregon and Kentucky. As Plouffe said, “A clear majority of elected delegates will send an unmistakable message — the people have spoken.” To which Clinton’s Howard Wolfson responded that this was “a slap in the face to the millions of voters in the remaining primary states and to Senator Clinton’s 17 million supporters.”

In fact, the attention of superdelegates appears to also have already turned to the general election, making it difficult for Clinton to reach her audience even with convincing victories. Today, Obama got a major endorsement: Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, whose support is announced a week after Obama was trounced in that state. Byrd is now the longest-serving Senator, and an ardent opponent of the Iraq War. He was a member of the KKK in his youth and an anti-civil rights Democrat in the 1960s, so this endorsement will be trumpeted by the Obama campaign as the symbol of the party’s reunification (though Byrd has changed course over the past 40 years). This endorsement actually gets Obama at two superdelegates for the day, as he also got the support of the Chairman of the Washington State Party, Dwight Pelz.

This is not to say that tomorrow’s results are not important. A strong night by Clinton would be given much more weight than West Virginia’s results did last week, especially if she does well in Oregon. WV was expected to go heavily for her, and it was a small state. A strong showing in two bigger states in which she is not supposed to do as well could embarass Obama and push him once again on the defensive.

However much Obama is basically assured of getting the nomination and however much his campaign pretends to be indifferent to tomorrow’s results, that does not mean that they do not care about posting convincing results.

Friday polls: Preparing for May 20th, and new results from Alaska and Maine’s Senate races

Published
by
Taniel
on May 16, 2008
in AK-Pres, AK-Sen, KS-Pres, KY-Dem, ME-Pres, ME-Sen, OR-Dem, WA-Gov and WA-Pres
. 5 Comments

The political world’s attention has turned away from the Democratic primaries — to the great frustration of the 5 states and territories that have not gotten a chance to vote. So close to mattering, Kentucky and Oregon will still decide the conditions in which the Democratic candidates finish the race, how much talk there is of Obama’s general election vulnerabilities and also — and this could obviously prove important — whether Clinton is at all in a position to drag this thing to the convention. Two new polls from ARG suggest Clinton could have a very good day on May 20th, when Kentucky and Oregon hold their primaries:

  • In Oregon, ARG finds Obama to be ahead only 50% to 45%.
  • Oregon’s primary is entirely mail-in and 58% of respondents said they had already turned in their ballot. Among those, Clinton and Obama are tied at 49%. Note that this is the second poll in which Clinton is tied with Obama among this group of voters but trailing overall (SUSA was the first a few days ago) suggesting the Obama camp might be demobilizing.
  • Meanwhile, ARG shows Clinton crushing Obama 65% to 29% in Kentucky, including 73% of white voters. Note that Edwards is once again on the ballot here so we will see if he can repeat his West Virginia exploits.

In the list of “what if”s that must be haunting the Clinton campaign is something they had no control over and that no one really thought would matter until the morning of February 6th — what if West Virginia and Kentucky were scheduled to vote in the latter half of February instead of, say, Maryland and Louisiana. Or Virginia and Wisconsin. Would Obama have built the same unstoppable momentum, putting Clinton in an untenable position in the run-up to March 4th? The quickness with which the race went from “this is a pure toss-up” on February 6th to “is there any path for Clinton to win the nomination” on February 13th was one of the most remarkable stretches of time of this entire campaign.

Meanwhile, general election polls were released today:

  • First, a Strategic Vision poll from Georgia shows McCain leading Obama by a 54% to 40%.

This is not as huge a margin as Republicans can hope, but it’s hard to see a path for Obama to make this state competitive for now, despite talk of that in some Democratic circles. Georgia has been one of the states that has been trending the most Republican in the past few years. It was the only state where Republicans got close to winning a Dem-held seat in 2006 (not one, but two!) and consider that this same Strategic Vision poll shows that the leading Democrat in the senatorial primary is someone who professes to have voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004… Also:

  • A Rasmussen poll from Kansas shows McCain not trembling against either Democrat in this deep red state. He leads Obama 55% to 34% and Clinton 53% to 39%.
  • A Rasmussen poll from Maine shows both Democrats leading McCain 51% to 38%, a good margin in a sometimes-tight state where a close victory would mean the loss of an electoral vote.
  • Also, a Rasmussen poll from Washington confirms that WA will be less competitive this year than in 2000 (it wasn’t at the front of Dem worries in 04). Obama leads 51% to 40%, Clinton 47% to 42% — very similar margins to yesterday’s SUSA poll.
  • Finally, Alaska is the big surprise of the day as polls continue to show a single-digit general election race in what is supposed to be a Republican blowout. Research 2000 finds McCain leading 49% to 42% (Clinton trails 55% to 37%) and Rasmussen finds McCain leading 50% to 41% — slightly larger but still underwhelming.

Alaska’s tightness is the only shocking finding of these numbers, though McCain was certainly hoping to keep both Washington and Maine closer due to his appeal among independents. Maine has been a state where both Kerry and Gore have feared losing one of the districts and thus an electoral vote (ME and NE are the only non-winner-take-all states) and Democrats would not like to have to spend money to defend just one electoral vote come the fall campaign.

Finally, three down-the-ballot polls, both from Rasmussen, give something to spin to both parties:

  • In Washington, Christine Gregoire has opened a surprising 52% to 41% lead against challenger Dino Rossi in the gubernatorial race. All polls of this race have shown a complete toss-up, with the animosity of the 2004 campaign translating to fixed positions in 2008. So until there is confirmation that there has been movement, consider this to be an outlier.
  • Meanwhile, in Maine’s Senate race, Rasmussen finds Susan Collins leading Tom Allen by 10 percent, 52% to 42%. This is down from a 16% lead last month.
  • Finally, a new Rasmussen poll from Alaska shows Mark Begich leading Ted Stevens 47% to 45% — a confirmation of the trouble Stevens is in after a Research 2000 poll showed him trailing by 5% earlier this week. The previous Rasmussen poll showed Stevens leading by 1%.

It’s hard to know what to make of the Maine Senate race. This has been one of the Democrats’ top target since the beginning. But a series of polls in the fall showing Collins with huge leads against Allen showed that this would not be a repeat of Rhode Island’s 2006 race and that Collins had a much more solid base among independents and Democrats (a base any Republican Senator needs in Maine). In this poll, she gets 34% of Democrats and the two candidates are tied among independents. Also, this poll finds her with a 70% favorability rating, including 32% saying they have a very favorable impression of her. And Tom Allen is no unknown…

Yet, in a Democratic year in a Democratic state with a strong candidate, Democrats are not out of the running yet. A 10 percent lead is still not enough to make this a top-tier race, but it looks like the increase of partisanship could be making Collins more vulnerable, and the disparity between her favorability rating and her vote percentage is telling of the same difficulty that plagued Chaffee in Rhode Island. But she remains above 50 percent so we will wait for confirmation that there is any tightening at all here.

Southern polls: North Carolina and Virginia will be battlegrounds

Published
by
Taniel
on May 12, 2008
in KY-Dem, KY-Pres, NC-Pres, NC-Sen, VA-Pres, VA-Sen, WV-Dem and WV-Pres
. 9 Comments

The West Virginia primary feels very much like Mississippi’s on March 11th. It comes the week after a major Election Day and there is no suspense, hardly even on the margin of victory. 24 hours from polls opening, a new poll from WV combined to a poll from Kentucky (which votes next Tuesday) confirms how difficult the Appalachians region is for Obama and how disastrous those two states’ results could be:

  • In West Virginia, Suffolk University shows Clinton leading 60% to 24% for Obama. That’s 71% of the two-person vote, more than what Clinton got in Arkansas.
  • While Clinton has a favorability rating of 70%, only 44% of Democrats have a favorable impression of him.
  • Update: SUSA has released a new poll from Kentucky as well, finding Clinton ahead 62% to 30%, a 2:1 margin which is actually a 2% progression for Obama! In Eastern Kentucky, the Appalachian region bordering West Virginia, Clinton gets 84%! Could Obama fail to reach the viability level in a district?

Those numbers might seem excessive but they are certainly realistic. Not only are they confirmed by other polls but they also conform to what we have been seeing in districts surrounding West Virginia in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania and in which Clinton routinely got 70%. Of the 5 counties of Ohio that border West Virginia, Clinton crossed 70% in 4 of them and got more than 77% in 3.

Obama’s difficulty in winning these regions — whether linked to racism or whether due to the primary’s class-divide, with blue-collar voters dominating these regions being Clinton’s base — probably make West Virginia and Kentucky lost causes in the general election: With only 44% of Democrats having a favorable impression of him in WV, Obama has no path to a majority. That’s not a concern in Kentucky but Democrats might have been looking to put West Virginia in play, as it had long been a blue state before increasingly turning red starting in 2000.

Note, however, that a series of polls taken this fall had Clinton and Edwards looking stunningly competitive in Kentucky, often leading Republicans, while Obama struggled (for example this one). As I have noted many times, both Democrats have regions of the country in which they would be clearly stronger than the other, and this is one Obama is weaker in. The Research 2000 poll referenced above also included some general election numbers with Clinton struggling but performing 13 percent better than Obama in Kentucky:

  • McCain leads Clinton 53% to 41% and leads Obama 58% to 33%. Bush beat Kerry 60% to 40% in 2004.

Meanwhile, three new polls today show that Democrats would be very competitive in Virginia and in North Carolina, two states the GOP has not thought about in recent elections but which it could now have a lot of trouble defending:

  • In Virginia, Rasmussen finds McCain leading Obama 47% to 44% and Clinton 47% to 41%. That’s a great improvement for Dems since the end of March where their numbers had fallen to trailing by double-digits.
  • Obama’s favorability rating (51%) is lower than McCain’s but he has more viewing him “very favorably”.
  • In North Carolina, Rasmussen finds similar results, with McCain leading both Democrats by 3 percent, 47% to 44% against Obama and 43% to 40% against Clinton. That’s an improvement for Clinton but actually a slight drop for Obama who was tied with McCain in the last poll.
  • Finally, Public Policy Polling released a poll from North Carolina as well, confirming that hte race is competitive without being quite as positive for Democrats than Rasmussen: McCain leads Obama 49% to 42% while Clinton trails 46% to 38%.

Virginia has been expected to be a swing state given the state’s rapidly changing demographics and the Democrats’ statewide success in recent years (Kaine, Webb). North Carolina is more of a surprise, after Democrats failed to put it in play in 2004 despite picking Edwards as their vice-presidential candidate. There is no question that forcing the GOP to defend both would be a great victory for Obama, but we should soon move beyond surprise that the state is competitive and start giving McCain credit for still being ahead. After all, Virginia and Colorado are two states who think of as red that the Obama campaign puts at the top of its priorities.

Two Senate surveys came with the polls listed above and they both bring good news for Democrats:

  • Rasmussen confirms that Mark Warner is heavily favored to pick up Virginia’s senate seat, as he leads Jim Gilmore 55% to 37%. 37% have a very favorable impression of Warner, and 29% have a somewhat favorable one (Gilmore’s numbers are 15-33). It’s hard to beat those numbers.
  • More interestingly, PPP released numbers from the North Carolina Senate race. They find Elizabeth Dole leading 48% to 43% against Democrat Kay Hagan.

PPP’s numbers are better for Dole than Rasmussen’s shocking survey last week finding Hagan leading by 1%. But every poll that shows Dole this vulnerable is still a surprise. Hagan is considered a second-tier candidate at best, and few signs pointed to Democrats making it this tight this quickly with this little effort. Given that NC is (was?) about 10th on the Democrats’ priority list, they will certainly take any poll that shows Dole under 50% and leading by single-digits.

Wednesday polls: The battle for independents, and Kentucky is Clinton country

Published
by
Taniel
on April 30, 2008
in AZ-Pres, KY-Dem, NJ-Pres and Nat-Poll
. 33 Comments

After 2 days filled with polls from Indiana and North Carolina, only one primary poll was released today. SUSA polled Kentucky for the third time, and confirms that this could be one of the biggest Clinton states:

  • Clinton now leads Obama 63% to 27%. Two weeks ago, the margin was identical: 62% to 26%.
  • Confirming that Obama’s toughest region in the country is the Appalachians, he loses Eastern Kentucky 84% to 10%, implying there is a risk Obama might not be viable in at least one district.

If Hillary Clinton is still in the race after May 6th, it could mean two very rough weeks for Obama as results in West Virginia on the 13th and Kentucky on the 20th aren’t likely to look very good for him. The demographics of these states will allow Clinton, if she lives up to the potential of this SUSA poll, to further her argument that Obama is too weak among white blue-collar voters to win the general election. Whether or not that hurts Obama among superdelegates, such conversation would continue to put him on the defensive.

National polls confirm that Clinton has found a second life since her Pennsylvania primary. Today’s Gallup poll has Clinton edging out Obama 47% to 46% for the second day in a row; it had been quite a while Clinton had been on top two consecutive days. And Fox News’s latest poll released today has Clinton leading 44% to 41%. These polls are obviously useless measures, since most states have already voted by now; but they still hint at the mood of the electorate and the two candidates’ momentum.

Meanwhile, a series of general election surveys confirms how difficult it is to establish electability comparisons:

  • Fox News finds Clinton edging out McCain nationally, 45% to 44%; Obama trails 46% to 43%. Among independents, a group Obama typically does better in, Clinton now performs better but McCain beats them both (by 4% against Clinton, by 10% against Obama).
  • Interestingly, an Obama-Clinton ticket would beat a McCain-Romney ticket 47% to 41%, suggesting that Democrats would have an edge if they can present a united front.
  • Update: A new New York Times poll was just released. It shows Obama leading Clinton 46% to 38% in the primary but it also shows Clinton running better in the general, leading McCain 48% to 43% while Obama and McCain are tied at 45%.
  • A poll taken in AZ by Arizona State, meanwhile, finds McCain in single-digits against Obama, leading 47% to 38%. He leads against Clinton by a wider 53% to 37%.
  • Finally, a somewhat surprising poll by Monmouth University from New Jersey finds McCain trounced by both candidates. He trails Obama 56% to 32% and Clinton 52% to 38%. The main difference between the two candidates is their strength among independents, as Clinton leads by 1% and Obama by 17%.

Most polls taken in New Jersey suggest a close race; the latest poll prior to this one has both Democrats ahead by 5% and McCain has been able to remain very competitive in Northeastern states. This poll thus looks to overstate the Democrats’ advantage, but it still stands as a reminder of how tough the Garden State still is for Republicans; they seem to waste a lot of money only two years for very little rewards.

Meanwhile, the results in Arizona confirm that McCain starts clearly ahead and it would probably make little sense for Democrats to spend resources here; but I would not be surprised if the race ends up being more competitive here than the conventional wisdom suggests. You might remember that McCain did not even break 50% on February 5th, besting Romney by 12%; McCain seems to have some problems in his home state.

As more ads come in, polls from upcoming primaries are all over the place

Published
by
Taniel
on April 15, 2008
in IN-Dem, KY-Dem, NC-Dem and PA-Dem
. 10 Comments

There are a lot of polls coming in today from many different primaries, and we are forced to conclude that the numbers are all over the place, particularly in Pennsylvania and Indiana where it looks like anything could happen.

Pennsylvania, first, where 3 polls this morning showed Clinton up 14, 5 and 9. Two new surveys released this afternoon show Hillary leading by single digits:

  • LA Times/Bloomberg poll shows Hillary leading in Pennsylvania 46% to 41%. The survey was conducted Thursday through Monday, so partly before bittergate.
  • Strategic Vision, meanwhile, finds Clinton increasing her lead by four percent in a week; she is now ahead 49% to 40%.

My analysis of the Keystone state’s primary does not differ form this morning’s, when I explained that it is difficult to assess what effect Obama’s comments have had, but that the Clinton campaign at least has to be happy that it has stopped the bleeding and the steady plunge it went through for 2 weeks or so. This is not because Obama isn’t trying, however: he is outspending Clinton 5:1 on Pennsylvania cable TV (!), which is truly a huge proportion.

Today, Obama launched his response ad (you can view it here) to the attack ad Clinton started airing yesterday centering on Obama’s remarks. The response ad shows Clinton being jeered when trying to bring up an attack line against her rival, and then goes on to say that we should be looking to work on concrete problems and leave politics as usual behind. The ad is a rather typical response to an attack ad by a front-runner. Indeed, front-runners have nothing to gain from attacking back and they try to portray themselves above the fray (which is exactly what Clinton did for months in the fall when Edwards and Obama were going after her). It is also interesting that the ad never mentions what Clinton is attacking Obama on, so Obama is not using this opportunity to defend himself against criticism.

If Clinton survives Pennsylvania (and with a couple of polls today showing her on the verge of the “Ohio threshold,” she is more than ever in a position to), the race will go on to North Carolina and Indiana (on May 6th). A few weeks later would come Kentucky (May 20th). We got a poll from each of these 3 races today, with good news for both candidates:

  • In North Carolina, which Obama is heavily favored to win, the LA Times poll shows him leading 47% to 34%.
  • In Indiana, where there is less of a defined favorite, Obama posts a 50% to 45% lead (still LA Times).
  • In Kentucky, finally, SUSA finds that Clinton demolishes Obama 62% to 26%… much more than a 2:1 margin. SUSA’s previous poll already had Clinton way up, 58% to 29%.

The most interesting numbers among this set is the Indiana survey. However much the primary has no clear favorite, the two only polls we have gotten from the state have shown Clinton lead. They have both been released from SUSA, and the latest, yesterday, had her leading by 16%. A conventional wisdom was starting to set in, then, that Indiana was Clinton’s to lose. The LA Times reestablishes some balance in our expectations. But it is clear that Clinton needs a comfortable win here on May 6th; she will need it to offset the likely loss of North Carolina.

Finally, an interesting question in Pennsylvania is what effect the prolonged primary has on the general election; there have been a number of polls suggesting that Democrats are improving their position in the Keystone state against McCain and that their millions spent on tv are helping them in the general. Strategic Vision’s poll, however, suggests the exact opposite, as this is the second week in a row that McCain is gaining. Last week, Clinton was leading by 6% and Obama trailing by 5%. In this week’s poll, Obama is led 49% to 39% and Clinton trails 47% to 44%.

Clinton crushes Obama in KY, but her PA lead shrinks in 2 polls

Published
by
Taniel
on April 1, 2008
in KY-Dem and PA-Dem
. 11 Comments

Many of the upcoming primary states have never been polled, so Survey USA’s decision to release a poll from Kentucky last night was particularly exciting:

  • It shows Hillary Clinton crushing Barack Obama 58% to 29%. Obama only gets 23% of the white vote, and is trounced by 37% among women.

Clearly, put Kentucky in with the states Clinton is favored to win — but the primary is not until May 17th, the same day as Oregon. It is unclear, therefore, if Clinton will ever have a chance of winning Kentucky, or whether the results in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina will force her out before May 17th.

The latest Pennsylvania poll from Rasmussen is not reassuring for the Clinton campaign, as it shows Hillary’s number falling dangerously quickly and getting to what I believe is the smallest margin we have seen yet in any Pennsylvania poll:

  • Clinton is up 47% to 42%; she was up 10% last week and 13% two weeks ago.

Obama’s fundraising edge is allowing him to outspend Clinton on Pennsylvania television, which will help him keep the gap close. But the Rasmussen poll clearly identifies another factor in Hillary’s decline and notes that the Wright controversy has been replaced with another scandal, this one hurting Clinton, as the story on Bosnia misstatements seems to have touched a nerve: 47% of voters say they have followed the story “very closely,” and 27% said “somewhat closely.”

We will naturally need confirmation of this poll before concluding that Clinton is in danger in Pennsylvania. The last non-Rasmussen poll still showed her up in double-digits late last week. But keep in mind that it is not just a defeat here that would pretty much end her run: Clinton needs to score a major coup (as big if not bigger than in Ohio) to generate momentum and produce doubts about Obama’s capacity to close it off. She particularly needs to trounce him among blue-collar voters to have more support for her argument that Obama cannot win that group. A 5% victory will not get that job done, at all.

Meanwhile, a very interesting polling story form Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal, who produced an analysis of the Rasmussen and Gallup tracking poll patterns, explaining that Obama consistently goes up in the weekdays in the former and in the weekends in the later. In other words, Blumenthal concludes, the polling methodology of both groups makes the results dependent on the days of the week the polls are taken in (which is a somewhat well known phenomenon, since the sociology of people who pick up the phone changes on Saturday or Sunday).

The conclusion of this is that attempts to use the Gallup and Rasmussen polls to draw daily conclusions about the evolution of the race is not appropriate, contrary to the way they are typically being used. (Note that I rarely reported these tracking polls anyhow, finding them only interesting when broad trends were being revealed, such as Obama’s significant 10-day decline after Wright).

Update: We did not have to wait for long to get another Pennsylvania poll, this one from Survey USA:

  • Hillary Clinton is leading 53% to 41%, a clearly more satisfying lead than the one she has in Rasmussen.
  • But this poll too shows Obama picking up a lot of ground from SUSA’s previous poll released 3 weeks ago; he then trailed by 19%.

This complicates the picture since Clinton has a satisfying lead but is declining. Interestingly, the female vote stayed almost exactly the same and it is the switch of the male vote that allowed Obama to pick up ground. Also, the white vote did not move (Clinton gets 62%) but Obama extended his margin among blacks by 12%.