March Senate Predictions

I’m going to forecast some Senate races in 2008. These are obviously extremely preliminary, but early polling data can give us a rough estimate over what to expect in the fall. And I decided to be gutsy and not lump them into “Democratic favored” or “leans” categories…

I’ll keep up with Senate race predictions on my new “Senate Races” section.

Democrats Keep: (11 seats)

Pryor (D-AK), Biden (D-DE), Durbin (D-IL), Kerry (D-MA), Levin (D-MI), Reed (D-RI), Rockefeller (D-WV), Harkin (D-IA), Baucus (D-MT), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Johnson (D-SD)

Republicans Keep: (14 seats)

Stevens (R-AK), Sessions (R-AL), Chambliss (R-GA), McConnell (R-KY), Wicker (R-MS), Dole (R-NC), Inhofe (R-OK), Graham (R-SC), Alexander (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Roberts (R-KA), Cochran (R-MS), Enzi (R-WY), Barrasso (R-WY)

Democratic Takeover: Close races but are currently trending Democratic takeover (4 seats)

Norm Coleman (R-MN) to Al Franken, John Sununu (R-NH) to Jeanne Shaheen, Pete Dominici (R-NM) to Tom Udell, Open Seat to Mark Warner (D-VA)

Republican Takeover (1 seat)

Mary Landreau (D-LA) to John Kennedy

Too Close: Close races with no clear front-runner (3 seats)

Bob Schaffer vs. Tom Udall- Colorado, Gordon Smith (R-OR) vs. No Clear Challanger, Susan Collins (R-ME) vs. Tom Allen

I put in the “too close” category because there are truly a few races that will be very close in November, or at least they’re trending that way right now. Republicans Smith, Collins, Sununu and Coleman are vulnerable while Democrats have their eyes on open seats in Virginia & Colorado. If everything goes as planned for the Democrats, they could walk away with a net gain of 5 seats in November, giving them a 56-44 majority in the Senate. It currently looks like, unfortunately, Mary Landreau (D-LA) will lose her seat. In the after math of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of New Orleans residents fled Louisiana, depressing the city’s Democratic electorate. Landreau squeaked by in 2002 (before Katrina). Now it looks like without the base that elected her, she will be unable to win in November. That’s the only bad news for Democrats–and the only reason she is vulnerable is because of the political implications of a natural disaster. Republicans are certainly going to be on the defensive this year.

Once again, this is where I stand as of right now. I’ll post more in depth info about some of these races and new predictions as the year progresses. Public opinion changes, events happen, controversies erupt: you never know what can swing an election.

Obama wins Iowa… again…

Today Iowa had it’s state Democratic convention, and according to NBC’s Chuck Todd:

The state’s 99 county Democratic parties held conventions today and the two campaigns were actively fighting to gain even more pledged delegates. At stake: the 14 pledged delegates John Edwards earned during the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Tonight, the Obama campaign claimed a gain of 7 pledged delegates, added to the 16 they earned on Jan. 3.

I averaged out the difference between the major media outlets’ estimates of the delegate lead (Washington Post, New York Times, AP, CNN, ABC, CBS & NBC). Right now Obama has a 123 delegate lead over Clinton, including among superdelegates. Since her Ohio win, she has lost 7 super delegates, while Obama netted 6 today alone. She also lost the Texas caucus, allowing Obama to net more delegates out of Texas.

Update: 
Looks like Obama will gain two more delegates after last night. According to Todd:

Last night, when I reported the net gain of 7 delegates for Obama out of yesterday’s 99 county Democratic conventions, it was based on 96% of conventions reporting. But there were two Cong. districts where Edwards was teetering on the edge of viability, the 1st and the 4th. Well, Edwards teetered the wrong way and Obama netted the delegates. So, here are the final results: … the overall delegate take for each candidate: 25 for Obama (that’s up from 16 during the Jan. 3 caucuses). 14 for Clinton (that’s down one from her 15 during Jan. 3). And 6 hung with Edwards, that’s down from 14 on Jan. 3.

Manlove lost!

A little back I wrote a post about John Manlove who is seeking the Republican nomination for Texas’ 22nd Congressional District. And… in a more than immature way… I poked fun at him simply because his name was “Manlove”.

Well upon looking at this race more in depth, I learned that some interesting stuff has happened in Texas’ 22nd Congressional District in the past two years.  

In 2006, Rep. Tom DeLay resigned from his seat (for being a corrupt SOB). Texans voted on Nov. 7, 2006 casting two ballots: one to fill the remainder of DeLay’s term, and the other to determine who will serve the next term.

Republican Houston City Councilwomen Shelley Sekula-Gibbs won the special election to fill DeLay’s seat for the remainder of his term, however Democrat Nick Lampson won on the general election. Lampson most likely beat Sekula-Gibbs because her name wasn’t on the ballot. In a last ditch effort to stop the Democrats from taking a safe-Republican seat, the RNC pushed a voter education drive to learn how to spell Sekula-Gibbs name to write her in on the ballot. They failed.  

In 2008, it looks like Rep. Lampson is extremely vulnerable. Up to a week ago, there were 3 (of an original 10) Republicans vying for the opportunity to take the Republican nomination to defeat Lampson. Among those was John Manlove, a former businessman and missionary. They all seem to be flexing their conservative creds, and so I have no idea how Lampson can be anything in Congress other than a Democrat in name only if he intends on keeping his seat. It’s normal to have a wide array of primary challengers in a contested election; it’s not so normal to be the only moderate in the race and have every other guy vowing to uphold strict conservative principles (and stand a decent chance of winning).

Manlove dropped out of the race last week, and the field has been narrowed to two. It’s been getting contentious for the Republican nom… probably because Republicans feel they can beat Lampson in this district by a significant margin no matter what happens. The RNC probably believes, possibly rightly so, that Lampson’s victory was only a fluke.

But let’s get to the real story: there won’t be a Congressman Manlove (R-Texas). Oh well… it’s upsetting I know.

But in January of 2008, there might not be a Rep. Lampson either.

The 2008 Electoral Map

In the first national poll of presidential preferences, SurveyUSA asked 30,000 respondents in all 50 states, if the election were held today, who would you vote for.

The Results:
Both Democrats Beat John McCain
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hillary Clinton 276
John McCain 262

States Democrats Pick Up:
West Virginia, Arkansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Florida

States Democrats Lose:
Washington, Oregon, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire

View Clinton/McCain Electoral Map
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Barack Obama 280
John McCain 258

States Democrats Pick Up:
Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia

States Democrats Lose:
Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey

View Obama/McCain Electoral Map

I’m always skeptical of national polls, but it’s interesting that this is the first conducted in all 50 states for the general election.

Can Obama can declare victory in Texas?

As I said yesterday, the story in the coming days is going to be the delegate math.

Check out this, reports CNN:

Texas Primary Results- 99% Reporting- 126 Total Delegates

Hillary Clinton, 1,455,959, 51% (65 delegates).

Barack Obama, 1,356,330, 48% (61 delegates).

Texas Caucus Results- 40% Reporting- 67 Total Delegates

Barack Obam, 56%

Hillary Clinton 44%

The Texas Primary is worth 2/3 of the delegates, and the caucus is worth 1/3. Clinton and Obama are reletively close in the delegates linked to the primary (65-61). If Obama sustains this margin, which it is predicted he will, Obama will win the state of Texas, netting 3 delegates.

So here is a question for the media: Who wins? The delegate winner? Or the popular vote winner? Isn’t this a delegate race?

It continues…

Please excuse the following rant.

You can’t get rid of Hillary Clinton, she wont go away. She’s like the terminator, you think you’ve eliminated her and she keeps regenerating herself. Is it dead? No, it’s not…

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s going to take a lot of work to destroy the Clinton machine. And yes, the way I envision the Clinton machine is something like this —->

Whew, now that that’s off my chest…

Last night Clinton won Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas, and Obama won Vermont. I completely anticipated VT to be in the Obama category, I was less optimistic about Ohio. Honestly thought he had a shot in Texas with his big ad buys and huge rallies. Ultimately, I think the Hispanic vote really came out for Clinton in an unprecedented way, and she was able to regain her pre-Potomac Primaries coalition of women, traditional Democrats and downscale voters.

That said, Obama did well last night. This is the narrative that isn’t going to be covered until tomorrow, possibly Thursday. He won in Texas’ inner cities that award more delegates by substantial margins and most likely, took the caucus.

Of course the headlines today are going to be focused on the Clinton victory in the popular vote, but look for the delegate story in the coming days. Rhode Island and Vermont will essentially net 0 for both candidates… they both were 60-40 margins.

One final thing of note from last night:
Dennis Kucinich will keep his congressional seat. With votes still being counted at this hour he looks on track to defeat Cleveland City Councilman Chimperman 52-38. Chimperman contested Kucinich in a primary fight forcing Kucinich to drop his presidential campaign to defend his house seat. In yesterday’s primary, Chimperman was well financed but Kucinich benefited from a divided opposition in that 4 Democratic candidates were on the ballot in OH-10.

Texas: Hillary’s Alamo

I think it’s an accurate analogy: Texas could be Hillary’s last stand.

This race is remarkable when it comes to both campaigns playing up or playing down expectations. For weeks the Clinton camp watered down the significance of Obama’s 11 straight primary/caucus wins by essentially saying, hold on, our chips are on Ohio and Texas. For months, Clinton enjoyed a huge lead in both states. But like the ultimate demise of Rudy Giuliani, who put all his chips on Florida, the Clinton campaign underestimated the perception of loss.

The public doesn’t care about political strategy… (only us political junkies do.) People catch on when your campaign loses 11 straight contests… after all, it’s on the front page of every newspaper and magazine the day after. Even if your only interaction with politics is reading the newspaper headline the day after, your perception of the race is changed. If hypothetical headline read, “Obama Wins Texas” and the sub headline was “Clinton wins more delegates” –a very sizable portion of the public would walk away with the perception that Obama won decisively. The bottom line: perception matters. You can’t pull a Giulianiesque strategy of wait and hold, I’ll just keep losing these states, and not expect to come out damaged.

And that has been a consistent theme in this campaign. Late decider’s vote for Obama… possibly because they’ve been so swept up by the momentum in his campaign. On the reverse, we found that a good majoirty of early absentee ballots in early states were cast for Clinton. If you decide on election day, stastistically, you’re more likely to vote Obama. For the reason outlined above, Hillary has the stench of defeat on her.

In 72 hours the people of Rhode Island, Texas, Ohio and Vermont will vote in what is being dubbed, “Mini Super-Tuesday.” Lets be honest, Clinton is expected to win Rhode Island, Obama is expected to win Vermont and the remaining 398 delegates will be decided in Texas & Ohio.

The Clinton campaign did not anticipate a primary fight beyond February 5th. They didn’t research Texas’ “primacaucus” system, nor did they realize that Texas’ funky proportionment rules favor Obama because they award inner cities more delegates as opposed to the rural, Hispanic-dominated regions of the state. The fact that Texas has 1/3 of it’s overall delegates awarded via caucus after a primary vote also favors Obama. Consistently he has won caucuses, and his supporters are more enthusiastic.

Again, the bottom line: it’s very possible that Clinton could win the popular vote in Texas, but Obama could walk away with more delegates.

So the Clinton camp is desperate. Hillary made an appearance on SNL last night, and she will be on the Daily Show tonight. And finally this, which I admit kind of angered me. Her “manual” of sorts, or instructions, for how Clinton supporters should behave themselves in tomorrow’s Texas caucus:

The materials say in part, “DO NOT allow the supporter of another candidate to serve in leadership roles.”

It goes on to say, “If our supporters are outnumbered, ask the Temporary Chair if one of our supporters can serve as the Secretary, in the interest of fairness.

“The control of the sign-in sheets and the announcement of the delegates allotted to each candidate are the critical functions of the Chair and Secretary. This is why it is so important that Hillary supporters hold these positions.”

Congress needs Manlove

This is really immature, but I find it all too funny. There is a Republican minister & businessman in Texas running for Congress by the name of John Manlove.

Check out his campaign website.

His campaign theme: Rock Solid Conservative. Here are some bumper sticker themes I’ve come up with…

“Texas wants Manlove!”“I support Manlove!”

“Congress NEEDS Manlove!”

“Congress could benefit from some Manlove.”

As much as I disagree with this guy on almost everything, I think it’d be worth electing him to office. Who knows, maybe one day Speaker of the House Manlove? It says something about the people of Texas… in that they’re not all perpetually 10 years old and get a kick out of a man’s gay sounding last name.

Interesting videos & new polls

Here are some contrasting videos (1 min/ea):

1. Bill Clinton in the 1992 campaign for president outlining his “experience” (1 minute)
2. Hillary Clinton discussing her prospects at the Democratic nomination last summer.
3. A Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Amy Poehler playing Hillary Clinton last September.

Check out the day’s polls:

Recent National Polls:

Los Angeles Times/ Bloomberg
Feb. 28, 2008
Obama 48%
Clinton 42%

USA Today/ Gallup
Feb. 24, 2008
Obama 51%
Clinton 39%

CBS/ New York Times
Feb. 24, 2008
Obama 54%
Clinton 38%

Texas
InsiderAdvantage
Feb. 25, 2008
Obama 47%
Clinton 46%

SurveyUSA
Feb. 25, 2008
Obama 49%
Clinton 45%

Rasmussen
Feb. 24, 2008
Clinton 46%
Obama 45%

Public Policy Institute
Feb. 24, 2008
Obama 48%
Clinton 48%

Interesting videos & new polls

Here are some contrasting videos (1 min/ea):

1. Bill Clinton in the 1992 campaign for president outlining his “experience” (1 minute)
2. Hillary Clinton discussing her prospects at the Democratic nomination last summer.
3. A Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Amy Poehler playing Hillary Clinton last September.

Check out the day’s polls:

Recent National Polls:

Los Angeles Times/ Bloomberg
Feb. 28, 2008
Obama 48%
Clinton 42%

USA Today/ Gallup
Feb. 24, 2008
Obama 51%
Clinton 39%

CBS/ New York Times
Feb. 24, 2008
Obama 54%
Clinton 38%

Texas
InsiderAdvantage
Feb. 25, 2008
Obama 47%
Clinton 46%

SurveyUSA
Feb. 25, 2008
Obama 49%
Clinton 45%

Rasmussen
Feb. 24, 2008
Clinton 46%
Obama 45%

Public Policy Institute
Feb. 24, 2008
Obama 48%
Clinton 48%