Senate Watch

Senate Watch: Gun Control Edition

19
3 weeks ago
by Michael Weiss in

200px-Seal_of_the_United_States_Senate.svg_With this week’s bat­tle over gun con­trol leg­is­la­tion in the Sen­ate, I thought it worth­while to exam­ine it from a qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive per­spec­tive. A total of 46 Sen­a­tors voted against clo­ture on the Manchin-​​Toomey back­ground check pro­posal, thus killing it with­out requir­ing any­one to actu­ally speak on the floor of the Sen­ate. This is exactly what many peo­ple expected to hap­pen, and why there were calls early in the year to require fil­i­bus­ter­ers to speak on the Sen­ate floor to pre­vent votes on bills.

I wrote this before Nate Silver’s sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis was pub­lished yesterday.

In any case, the 46 Sen­a­tors con­sisted of 41 Repub­li­cans and five Democ­rats. Let’s start by look­ing at the four Democ­rats.  (more…)

Senate Watch: March, 2013

26
2 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

200px-Seal_of_the_United_States_Senate.svg_It’s 19 months to elec­tion day. So why on earth am I writ­ing a Sen­ate Watch now? In part because we’re already hear­ing news of Sen­a­tors retir­ing at the end of their terms. There’s more to look at, but that will wait for upcom­ing arti­cles. Thus far, five Sen­a­tors have announced that they will not be seek­ing reëlec­tion next year. Those five are:

  • Saxby Cham­b­liss (R-​​GA)
  • Tom Harkin (D-​​IA)
  • Mike Johanns (R-​​NE)
  • Frank Laut­en­berg (D-​​NJ)
  • Jay Rock­e­feller (D-​​WV)

And there’s a sixth wild­card seat, aris­ing from Sen­a­tor John Kerry (D-​​MA) mov­ing to replace Hillary Clin­ton as Sec­re­tary of State. What do those six seats’ prospects look like? Let’s take a look. (more…)

Senate Watch: 2014

36
6 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

Wait, what? Didn’t we just have our elec­tion a mere week ago? Why on earth am I run­ning another Sen­ate Watch?

It’s sim­ple, really. This year’s Sen­ate elec­tion gives us a feel for the Sen­ate makeup of the first half of Pres­i­dent Obama’s sec­ond term. But we have enough infor­ma­tion to be able to look ahead and see what this means two years from now. Today, then, I am talk­ing about the impor­tance of the 2012 Sen­ate races with respect to set­ting the table for 2014, and the future of the fil­i­buster. (more…)

Lessons Learned

280
6 months ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

The dust is finally set­tling from the elec­tion. And I’ll be talk­ing more later about some of the ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Today, though, I’m inter­ested in some navel gaz­ing. There are many lessons to be learned from this elec­tion, by many parties.

I’ll cover some high-​​level views today, but next week I’m going to delve into some of the big­ger top­ics from the White House and Sen­ate perspective.

And, with that, here are some lessons.  (more…)

It’s Election Watching Time

1318
6 months ago
by Logarchism.com in , ,

Time’s up! Pen­cils down! Now the bal­lots get turned in and counted. This is the arti­cle in which we can do our play by play watch as the results come trick­ling, and then flood­ing, in.

Here’s a handy list of what to be watch­ing for, and the times to start watch­ing for them.  (more…)

Election Watch: Election Day

109
6 months ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

Here we are, at the end of the road for so many cam­paigns. And it’s the time when I deliver my final predictions.

As with Sat­ur­day, I’m start­ing with early vot­ing. Like Sat­ur­day, this edi­tion includes a sec­tion on the guber­na­to­r­ial races. After that, I delve into the Sen­ate, fol­lowed by the Pres­i­den­tial race. I’m drop­ping the other exter­nal fac­tors, as they should all be priced into the polls by now.

That said, Hur­ri­cane Sandy could have an impact on turnout. But with no prece­dent upon which to draw, it’s anybody’s guess as to what the impact will be.

(more…)

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