Posts tagged Wisconsin

Wisconsin and Connecticut Primaries

14
9 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

Tonight, we get the answer to two impor­tant ques­tions regard­ing the future of the United States Sen­ate. Both Wis­con­sin and Con­necti­cut have their Repub­li­can pri­mary elec­tions for their Sen­ate candidates.

Let’s look at the two states, today’s elec­tions, and the impli­ca­tions of the poten­tial outcomes.

Con­necti­cut

Both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans head­ing to the polls in Con­necti­cut, but the out­come isn’t really in doubt. For Team Blue, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Mur­phy (D-​​Cheshire) has con­sis­tently polled com­fort­ably ahead of for­mer state Sec­re­tary of State Susan Bysiewicz. And on Team Red, World Wrestling Enter­tain­ment founder Linda McMa­hon, who in 2010 lost her bid for the United States Sen­ate to Richard Blu­men­thal, has con­sis­tently polled even more com­fort­ably ahead of Chris Shays, who used to rep­re­sent the Fourth Con­gres­sional Dis­trict until he lost the seat to Jim Himes.

Assum­ing the out­come matches expec­ta­tions, Mur­phy seems likely to win the seat, which is being vacated by inde­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Joe Lieber­man. Mur­phy has polled ahead of McMa­hon in every poll con­ducted to date, though at times by a low single-​​digit mar­gin. Con­necti­cut is still a “Leans Demo­c­ra­tic” state, but with enough room for change between now and November.

Wis­con­sin

This is a more inter­est­ing race, at least on the Repub­li­can side. For Democ­rats, the choice is sim­ple: Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tammy Bald­win (D-​​Madison) is the only can­di­date on the bal­lot. But for Repub­li­cans, there has been a bru­tal bat­tle among the early favorite, for­mer Gov­er­nor Tommy Thomp­son; the recent star, bank­ing exec­u­tive Eric Hovde; and the under­dog, for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mark Neu­mann (R-​​Janesville).

As I dis­cussed in “The Ide­ol­ogy Gam­ble”, the trend is toward more hard-​​line con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates in the gen­eral elec­tions, even at the risk of giv­ing more seats to Democ­rats. This is another such instance. Thomp­son is the main­stream Repub­li­can can­di­date, while Hovde is the hard-​​line Tea Party favorite. Mean­while, Neu­mann splits the dif­fer­ence, with a DW-​​NOMINATE around the cur­rent Repub­li­can aver­age of +0.7.

All three can­di­dates poll within the mar­gin of error from each other. This is truly anybody’s race.

As has been the his­tory with the ide­ol­ogy gam­ble, the mod­er­ate Thomp­son polls best against Bald­win, to the point where it’s essen­tially a tossup between the two, based on his­tor­i­cal polls. The other two tend to poll a cou­ple of points worse against Bald­win than does Thompson.

Should Thomp­son win, Wisconsin’s sen­ate race is a tossup. Should he lose, it’s a “Leans Demo­c­ra­tic” state, though just barely.

This, too, will be a state to watch closely over the next three months.

Related arti­cles

Primary Recall

101
11 months ago
by Michael Weiss in , ,

Today we have two elec­tions of sig­nif­i­cance. Cal­i­for­nia is hold­ing its pri­maries, and Wis­con­sin is hold­ing recall elec­tions for the Gov­er­nor and four state Senators.

In Cal­i­for­nia, the selec­tions for Pres­i­dent are fore­gone con­clu­sions, and decid­edly unin­ter­est­ing, but there are two other state bal­lot items, and one local, wor­thy of examination.

First up is the Class 1 Sen­ate seat, cur­rently occu­pied by Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Dianne Fein­stein. There’s no seri­ous like­li­hood that she will lose today, but this is the first elec­tion in Cal­i­for­nia in which the two Sen­ate can­di­dates with the most votes, regard­less of party, will face each other in Novem­ber. (more…)

Republican Primaries: Maryland, DC, Wisconsin

27
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

Today looks like it’s shap­ing up to be a very good day for for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney. Per­haps his cam­paign has man­aged to shake the Etch-​​A-​​Sketch meme.

Two states, plus our sole dis­trict, vote today: Mary­land, Wis­con­sin, and the Dis­trict of Columbia.

Mary­land has 37 del­e­gates up for grabs in a closed pri­mary. Three are the usual assigned to the party, ten are at-​​large winner-​​take-​​all, and the remain­ing 24 are Con­gres­sional dis­trict winner-​​take-​​all.

Rom­ney is assured to get the three party del­e­gates and the ten at-​​large del­e­gates. He’s also pretty much assured to get all but maybe three of the 24 dis­tricts. The pan­han­dle is for­mer Sen­a­tor Rick Santorum’s (R-​​PA) strongest ter­ri­tory, and he may pick up one or two dis­tricts over there, which would trans­late to three or six delegates*.

Wis­con­sin has 42 del­e­gates avail­able in an open pri­mary. Aside from the three party del­e­gates, there are 15 at-​​large winner-​​take-​​all, and 24 Con­gres­sional dis­trict winner-​​take-​​all delegates.

As in Mary­land, there’s lit­tle doubt that Rom­ney will take the party and at-​​large del­e­gates, given his near-​​double-​​digit lead over San­to­rum in all polls. But San­to­rum may be able to pick off a bet­ter ratio of the dis­trict del­e­gates than he can in Mary­land. Even so, Wis­con­sin can be expected to increase Romney’s del­e­gate lead over the for­mer Senator.

The Dis­trict of Colum­bia has 19 del­e­gates in a closed pri­mary. There are the three party del­e­gates, plus 16 winner-​​take-​​all. One party del­e­gate has already been assigned to Romney.

This one’s a real snoozer. Rom­ney will walk away with all 19 del­e­gates, period.

So, yes, today’s a very good day for Rom­ney. And a very bad day for those who have been hop­ing that some­thing, any­thing, will keep the increas­ingly inevitable Romi­na­tion from com­ing to pass.

*Note: in an ear­lier ver­sion of the arti­cle, I incor­rectly stated that San­to­rum might win one or two del­e­gates. In fact, since each dis­trict has three winner-​​take-​​all del­e­gates, San­to­rum would either get three or zero for each district.

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Block the Vote!

88
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

Image via Wikipedia

The Wikipedia def­i­n­i­tion is as good a place as any to start:

Voter sup­pres­sion is a strat­egy to influ­ence the out­come of an elec­tion by dis­cour­ag­ing or pre­vent­ing peo­ple from exer­cis­ing their right to vote. It is dis­tin­guished from polit­i­cal cam­paign­ing in that cam­paign­ing attempts to change likely vot­ing behav­ior by chang­ing the opin­ions of poten­tial vot­ers through per­sua­sion and orga­ni­za­tion. Voter sup­pres­sion instead attempts to reduce the num­ber of vot­ers who might vote against the can­di­date or propo­si­tion advo­cated by the suppressors.

In the short time since the 2010 elec­tions, in state after state with Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tures and Repub­li­can gov­er­nors, under the guise of pre­vent­ing vote fraud, laws have been intro­duced which will, unques­tion­ably, have the effect of low­er­ing voter turnout. The spe­cific groups of vot­ers who are most likely to be affected tend to vote Democratic.

Is this sim­ply coin­ci­den­tal? (more…)

Open Mic August 19

57
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

What hap­pened this week?

Michele Bach­mann won the Ames Straw Poll. Rick Perry declared him­self a can­di­date. Chris Christie and Paul Ryan are flirt­ing, though not with each other. Every­one ignored Ron Paul, except the peo­ple who put him into a vir­tual tie with Bach­mann in Ames. Wis­con­sin com­pleted its his­toric batch of recalls. The DJIA con­tin­ued doing strange things. Pres­i­dent Obama went on a brief bus tour to pro­mote jobs, while Repub­li­cans got their usual knee-​​jerk hate-​​on. Rebels made great head­way in Libya, but they might have been led by Ron Paul for all the press they got. Until Gad­hafi started pack­ing, any­way. Euro­pean mar­kets took a beat­ing. Gold hit a record high. IBM announced “cog­ni­tive com­put­ers.”

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

Final (?) Recall: Wisconsin, August 16

26
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in ,

The last two of Wisconsin’s his­toric series of nine recall elec­tions hap­pens today. Incum­bent Democ­rats Jim Holperin of Conover and Robert Wirch of Pleas­ant Prairie will be defend­ing their seats against Repub­li­can chal­lengers Kim Simac and Jonathan Seitz, respectively.

These final two elec­tions seem anti­cli­mac­tic after Democ­rats failed to win a major­ity in the Wis­con­sin state sen­ate a week ago. The stakes are real, though. Most obvi­ously, Democ­rats picked up two seats on August 9, putting them in a much bet­ter posi­tion to influ­ence leg­is­la­tion. Today presents a chance for the Repub­li­cans to regain some lost ground.

It is also a pos­si­ble test of remain­ing inter­est and enthu­si­asm, in an ongo­ing bat­tle with national reper­cus­sions. Wis­con­sin has been seen as a test of the rel­a­tive strengths of America’s two major par­ties in the months lead­ing up to next year’s all-​​important Con­gres­sional, Sen­ate, and Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Wis­con­sin vot­ers, in anger at Repub­li­can over­reach as exem­pli­fied in the arro­gance of Wisconsin’s new union-​​busting laws, sparked a tidal wave of recalls against six Repub­li­can state Sen­a­tors, a wave answered by a back­wash directed toward three Demo­c­ra­tic coun­ter­parts. This is echoed nation­ally, as the pop­u­lar­ity of Con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans has taken a nose­dive, exceed­ing a smaller but also sig­nif­i­cant decline in approval of Con­gres­sional Democ­rats. (more…)

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