Senate Watch: July 7

Posted by

It’s July, and that means we get to start shrink­ing the bound­aries of tossups. Two states changed this time, only one because of the changed boundaries.

Here is the cur­rent map:

Now for the details.

As always, “Con­tin­u­ing” refers to the seats in Sen­ate Classes 2 and 3, which are not up for elec­tion this cycle.

Here the high­lights of the past two weeks, walk­ing from the Pacific to the Atlantic:

  • Ari­zona: We’re miss­ing one key data point in this race: who will be the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee? This mat­ters tremen­dously, because Ras­mussen found that real estate exec­u­tive Wil Car­don polls much worse against for­mer United States Sur­geon Gen­eral Richard Car­mona than does Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jeff Flake (R-​​Mesa). The Repub­li­can pri­mary, to be held on August 28, has been polled very lightly, and only by Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling. All three matchups (Cardon/​Flake, Cardon/​Carmona, and Flake/​Carmona) have been polled too lightly to have much con­fi­dence in any of this. Ari­zona is a pretty reli­able Repub­li­can state in most respects, though, so I still believe Real Clear Pol­i­tics has this one right as a “Leans Repub­li­can” state. I look for­ward to more data to nar­row it down.
  • Michi­gan: I said last time that a lack of move­ment here would change me from call­ing Michi­gan a “Leans Demo­c­rat” state to a “Likely to stay Demo­c­rat” state. We now have an addi­tional poll, from NBC News/​Marist, show­ing incum­bent Sen­a­tor Deb­bie Stabenow with an unad­justed dozen-​​point lead over the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee, for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pete Hoek­stra (R-​​Zeeland). This is an adjusted nine-​​point lead, which, when cou­pled with the exist­ing data does con­firm the move. Michi­gan is now “Likely to stay Democrat”.
  • Ohio: The lat­est polls from Quin­nip­iac and Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling pro­vide a mixed mes­sage. Quin­nip­iac gives incum­bent Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Sher­rod Brown an unad­justed 16 point-​​lead (which, because the Reg­is­tered Voter bias and house bias can­cel each other out, trans­lates to an adjusted 16-​​point lead as well), over state Trea­surer Josh Man­del. PPP, on the other hand, shows an unad­justed seven-​​point lead (cor­re­spond­ing to an adjusted two-​​point lead). Aver­ag­ing the two’s adjusted mar­gins puts them roughly in line with Rasmussen’s adjusted score from May of six points for the incum­bent. No mat­ter how you look at this, it’s a noisy data set. Ohio is prob­a­bly a “Leans Demo­c­rat” state, but it’s not a sure thing.
  • Vir­ginia: Every­thing had been point­ing in the direc­tion of for­mer Gov­er­nor Tim Kaine hav­ing a couple-​​point lead over for­mer Gov­er­nor George Allen…until WeAskAmer­ica dropped this poll into our laps. A swing of 11 points in a month, entirely due to a decrease on Kaine’s side, sounds sus­pi­ciously like an out­lier. I’m not mov­ing Vir­ginia to a dif­fer­ent col­umn with­out a cor­rob­o­rat­ing poll.
  • Florida: Polls have been fluc­tu­at­ing a wildly in Florida as they have in Ohio. Quin­nip­iac pub­lished yet another poll, this time show­ing the incum­bent Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Bill Nel­son with a mere one-​​point edge over his almost cer­tain oppo­nent, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Con­nie Mack, IV (R-​​Fort Mey­ers). With so much noise, I’m decreas­ingly con­fi­dent in my assess­ment that Florida is a leaner. For this rea­son, I’m mov­ing it into the “Tossup” col­umn until we get closer to Novem­ber or show a trend out­side of a mere point or two.
  • Mass­a­chu­setts: One new poll from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling has an unad­justed tie, which cor­re­sponds to a five-​​point lead for the Repub­li­can incum­bent Sen­a­tor, Scott Brown, over his Demo­c­ra­tic chal­lenger, Eliz­a­beth War­ren. It appears to be a slight out­lier, absent con­fir­ma­tion of a shift to the right from the pre­vi­ous trend. That pre­vi­ous trend has Mass­a­chu­setts look­ing like a mir­ror image of Florida, just barely to the right of a pure tossup.

Our “Tossup” and “Leans” zones have nar­rowed start­ing this month. Thus far, the nar­rower zones have impacted only Michi­gan, though as the month pro­gresses and we get another round of poll results we can expect to see more movement.

The major­ity of the 113th Sen­ate con­tin­ues to hang in the bal­ance. There are five tossups: Florida, Indi­ana, Mass­a­chu­setts, Mon­tana, and Vir­ginia; plus a sixth that prob­a­bly belongs there: North Dakota. It seems cred­i­ble for Repub­li­cans to win at least three of those six, since they have struc­tural advan­tages in all of them. This is prob­a­bly why Intrade is giv­ing Repub­li­cans about a 53 per­cent chance of tak­ing the Sen­ate, down four points from two weeks ago, with a 33 per­cent chance of Democ­rats hold­ing at least 51 seats (up a point from last time), and 21 per­cent chance of exactly 50 seats (up four points). Note that the three add up to 107 per­cent, which I believe reflects more about how lightly traded these mar­kets are than any­thing else.

How cred­i­ble do you think those mar­ket num­bers are? Do you agree or dis­agree with my state analy­ses above?

Related arti­cles



Leave a Reply

  1. @Michael

    A fair assess­mentvof the cur­rent sta­tus of these races, as usual. :-)
    I’m always a lit­tle sur­prised to see Indi­ana in tossup ter­ri­tory, because I’ve always thought of them as so much more con­ser­v­a­tive than my home state. But, as the cur­rent Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor from Mass­a­chu­setts proves, state-​​level pol­i­tics can diverge from national pol­i­tics in unex­pected ways.

    As far as the Intrade num­bers, they seem close to right, though per­haps a lit­tle high on the odds for an exact tie.

  2. I dis­agree on Ohio. I think Sher­rod Brown is prob­a­bly as close to a sure thing as you can get in this elec­toral cli­mate. I’d be inter­ested in what Shiloh and GROG think, since they not only live there but also live on oppo­site sides of the polit­i­cal divide.

    Still… pres­i­dency, Sen­ate, the econ­omy, major social issues, all bal­anced and tee­ter­ing on a knife edge. I know we say it every time, but I really think this elec­tion may be the most volatile, unpre­dictable (and con­se­quen­tial) of our life­times. It should be exhil­a­rat­ing for polit­i­cal junkies, but I’m actu­ally find­ing it kind of  terrifying.

  3. Sher­rod Brown voted against NAFTA and refused sen­ate med­ical cov­er­age until ACA was passed ie he’s a com­mon folk politi­cian which works well in Ohio. Whereas his oppo­nent is an aloof train wreck, much like mit­tens. So even though he’ll prob­a­bly be out­spent 5 or 6 to 1, he’s a safe bet imo.

    Inter­est­ing Obama’s Bain Cap­i­tal ads are very effec­tive, mainly because they’re all true. Whereas there’s not enough $$$ in the world to turn Rom­ney into any­thing other than an out-​​of-​​touch schmuck.

    The auto indus­try is mak­ing a come­back, and kasich’s anti-​​union ref­er­en­dum went down 2 to 1 ie a defeat for mit­tens who sup­ported kasich.

    >

    Again, McCain lost Ohio in 2008. McCain was a war hero. mit­tens lost badly to McCain in 2008.

    >

    As men­tioned pre­vi­ously, there should be many books writ­ten on how polit­i­cal cam­paign ad over-​​saturation effected 2012 races.

    Noth­ing kills a bad prod­uct faster than good advertising …

    >

    Now I’m off to the Brady reunion ~ Erin Go Bragh! :)

  4. I saw a wealthy Demo­c­ra­tic cam­paign doner on Rachel’s show yes­ter­day. She asked him why Demo­c­ra­tic cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions were down so much this year from four years ago, par­tic­u­larly with Repub­li­can con­tri­bu­tions set­ting new obscene records. He told her that no amout of false adver­tiz­ing can help a bad prod­uct — Rom­ney is burnt toast, so all the money Repub­li­cans are spend­ing isn’t going to help. On the other side, Obama is pretty much a shoe-​​in, so there’s not much point in spend­ing money that isn’t going to be needed.

    It sounded like an inter­est­ing take on things.

     

  5. fil­istro,
    Keep in mind that I’m look­ing at the polling first, and using the other ele­ments sec­ond. And Brown has a DW-​​NOMINATE that’s pretty far to the left of the state’s vot­ers. And we’re still far enough from Novem­ber that things can shift enough to change the out­come of that election.

  6. It’s inter­est­ing to com­pare the elec­toral col­lege map with the sen­ate pre­dic­tion map.  As mclever points out, local issues can diverge from the national ones. 

    I also think it is inter­est­ing that the par­ties in cer­tain states have such weak benches, con­sider team R in the most recent sen­ate pri­mary in Cal­i­for­nia.  When you look at who runs in the pri­mary, you won­der how that party could not find any­one bet­ter to com­pete.  Of course, shiloh would argue that the same thing holds true for the repub­li­cans in this year’s pres­i­den­tial race.

  7. astro­dude is still here!

    This guy has been around longer than almost any of us… all the way back to the old Nate Sil­ver 538 days, no?

    It’s so great to see you again. :-)

  8. Hi fil­istro!
    I’ve cer­tainly been lurk­ing ever since the old 538 days, but never posted until you made a plea for the lurk­ers to come out of hid­ing.  I am so glad to see that you are post­ing again.  Just as with mclever, see­ing your name again made my 4th of July.
    I read the arti­cles and the com­ments every day, but usu­ally by the time I get to the site any­thing that I would have said has been said already by one of the reg­u­lars (and with much more insight and verve, I have to admit).

  9. Thanks, astro­dude. I wish more peo­ple would pop out of lurk mode every now and then, if only just to say hello.

    I remem­ber a year or so ago when I asked peo­ple to post just once in their life and let us know where they were read­ing from, to give us some idea  how many states, provinces and coun­tries were rep­re­sented among our reg­u­lars. As I recall, the num­ber was quite astonishing.

    Maybe we should do that again some­time :-)

  10. astro­dude,

    con­sider team R in the most recent sen­ate pri­mary in Cal­i­for­nia. When you look at who runs in the pri­mary, you won­der how that party could not find any­one bet­ter to compete.

    The thing about the Cal­i­for­nia Sen­ate seat is that DiFei has long been the less vul­ner­a­ble of the two Sen­a­tors. This is why we saw so much weight being thrown behind Carly Fiorina’s run against Boxer in 2010. Con­sid­er­ing that Boxer wasn’t able to be unseated in a hard­core anti-​​Obama midterm elec­tion, nobody of seri­ous cal­iber wanted to waste their dry pow­der on a run against Fein­stein in 2012. Add in the wild card of the top-​​two pri­mary, and it makes a lot of sense that she was pretty much left alone to win.

    Of course, shiloh would argue that the same thing holds true for the repub­li­cans in this year’s pres­i­den­tial race.

    That may well be the case, though I won­der who would have been a cred­i­ble can­di­date that would have made it through the Romney-​​vs-​​NotRomney bat­tle? Those who stayed on the side­lines made, in my opin­ion, a wise choice.

  11. Hi Michael,

    You make good points about the Cal­i­for­nia race.  I have to say, though, for many elec­tion cycles it seems as if the repub­li­cans in Cal­i­for­nia had it com­pletely back­ward.  They would run some­one rea­son­ably cred­i­ble against Fein­stein, and not get any­where.  Then, when Boxer, who is in my opin­ion the more vul­ner­a­ble of the two sen­a­tors, would come up for re-​​election the repub­li­cans seemed out of steam and ran a weak or more fringe can­di­date against her.  You’re right in that they seem to have finally reversed that trend in the last cycle.

    As for the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, I have no feel­ing for how it would have played out if some­one more cred­i­ble had run this time around.  It seems that part of the crazy dynamic of the pri­maries was that Rom­ney seemed like the best bet of that group in terms of tak­ing on Obama, but no one really liked him and so we had the not-​​Romney fla­vor of the month (or is that fla­vor of the week?).  What if a stronger can­di­date had joined the group?  Would the anti-​​Romney peo­ple have coa­lesced behind him/​her?  Or was Romney’s posi­tion as the runner-​​up from 2008, and thus the anointed one, unas­sail­able?  As I say, I have no feel­ing for this.

  12. astro­dude,

    I have to say, though, for many elec­tion cycles it seems as if the repub­li­cans in Cal­i­for­nia had it com­pletely backward.

    It would seem so at first blush, but “The Ide­ol­ogy Gam­ble” illus­trates why this hap­pens. A polit­i­cal party wants to elect some­one who is as extreme as they can get away with. Against a mod­er­ate oppo­nent, an extreme can­di­date is much less likely to win, absent a sig­nif­i­cant national wave. But against an extreme oppo­nent, an extreme can­di­date has a pretty decent shot.

  13. mclever,
    I for­got to respond to this earlier:

    I’m always a lit­tle sur­prised to see Indi­ana in tossup territory

    It’s prob­a­bly not. I’ve been hold­ing it there because of the wild card of an extreme con­ser­v­a­tive run­ning against a mod­er­ate Demo­c­rat, with no polling data. It’s just too hard to tell what’s going on there, and I can’t fig­ure out why it’s not get­ting polled heavily.

  14. Michael,
    Thanks for the pointer to the arti­cle.  Before I clicked the link, I was going to say that this was new to me, but since the link was to a log­a­rchism arti­cle I must have read it at the time.  So, thanks for remind­ing me about this con­cept.  It makes a lot of sense to me.  I guess that the ques­tion of whether you come out ahead (if you see the elec­tion of a more extreme per­son as pos­i­tive) depends on what the prob­a­bil­ity of suc­cess in elect­ing that per­son is.  As you point out in the linked arti­cle, the elec­tion of R. Paul the younger sug­gests that the prob­a­bil­ity is not van­ish­ingly small.  Alas.  As a mod­er­ate, I don’t see elect­ing fringe mem­bers of either party as a good thing.  On the other hand, my fam­ily spans the full range of far left to far right, so I’m out­num­bered at fam­ily reunions. ;-)

  15. Pingback: Logarchism » Senate Watch: July 21