Republican Sen. Pat Roberts
Leading Off:
• KS-Sen: A few months ago if anyone had suggested that Kansas would host the most nation's craziest general election they'd have been laughed out of the room, but that's exactly what's happening. While absentee Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is incredibly unpopular, he initially looked like he'd win re-election anyway against Democratic nominee Chad Taylor and wealthy independent Greg Orman. However, in early September, Taylor dropped out of the race in an effort to consolidate the anti-Roberts vote around Orman.
Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach has attempted to keep Taylor on the ballot, arguing that the letter in which Taylor announced his withdrawal from the race was insufficient to remove his name from the ballot because it did not state that Taylor would be “incapable” of serving if elected. The decision went to the Kansas Supreme Court and on Thursday the justices ruled that "Taylor's letter effectively declares he is incapable of fulfilling the duties of office if elected," removing him from the ballot.
However, it's not at all clear what will happen next. In response to the ruling, Kobach announced that he was pushing back the deadline for mailing ballots from this weekend to Sept. 27, and he gave Democrats eight days to name a replacement. But this makes it hard to see how he can force Taylor's name to be replaced: Kobach can only go to court to litigate the Democratic Party's refusal to name a candidate after the eight days are over, which is to say on the 27th. The court itself explicitly avoided this question: "Nor do we need to act on Kobach's allegation that a ruling for Taylor would require the Dem Party State Committee to name his replacement."
There's a lot at stake here. While Orman's bid is not doomed if a Democrat stays on the ballot, he'd definitely prefer it if Kobach loses in court again. On Wednesday Fox News released a poll in which Orman led Roberts 48 percent to 42 percent in a two-way race. But when Taylor's name was read to respondents, it was Roberts who veered ahead 40 percent to 38 percent, with Taylor at 11. The dynamic was the same in an August poll taken by PPP.
In any case, with polls showing Roberts in trouble even if a Democrat's name is on the ballot, we're moving this race from Lean Republican to Tossup. This is a volatile situation and Kansas' dark red nature may very well save Roberts, but there's no doubt that he's in for a real fight.
Senate:
• CO-Sen, IA-Gov: Good news, everyone! Democrats in Colorado and Iowa are getting absolutely crushed! Wait, wait—don't send the men in white coats to swaddle me in a straitjacket and toss me in a padded cell just yet. I swear, I can explain! You see, yesterday, we discussed at length why Quinnipiac's new polling seemed to lean implausibly far in the GOP direction, giving Bob Beauprez a 10-point lead in the Colorado governor's race and Joni Ernst a 6-point edge in her bid for Iowa's open Senate seat.
Now we have confirmation that, indeed, these polls were both serious outliers, because Quinnipiac released more data on Thursday. In Colorado, Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is down a hefty 8 points (48-40) to GOP Rep. Cory Gardner, while in Iowa, Democrat Jack Hatch trails Republican Gov. Terry Branstad by an outsize 60-37 margin.
But take a look at the overall polling picture. Prior to Quinnipiac's survey, Udall had led in seven straight polls. Gardner's previous largest-ever lead was 4 points, according to the execrable Gravis; that firm aside, he's never led by more than 2—and Quinnipiac was the last firm to give him that big an edge. What's more, in the 23 polls of the race conducted this year, Gardner's led only six times. And for what it's worth, Udall's claiming he's been up 5 to 6 points in his last two internals. The NRSC, on the other hand, is claiming the race is "breaking" toward Gardner but refused to actually share its private data.
Iowa's much the same way, though the governor's race isn't competitive. However, Branstad's leads have, in recent months, almost always been in the low teens. He's also never been anywhere near 60 percent. Huffington Post Pollster's average (which hasn't been updated to include Quinnipiac as of this writing) gives Branstad an overall 52-37 edge, a far cry from 60-37.
So what's going on here? As we noted when discussing the first half of these polls, Quinnipiac just switched from using a registered voter model to a likely voter model, and it appears that their screen is just too tight. While it might seem obvious that likely voter polls should be more accurate, figuring out just who constitutes a likely voter is really more art than science, and everyone does it differently. And as our analysis has shown, most firms don't do it well.
It'd be one thing if Quinnipiac had one wonky poll, but the fact that they had two at the same time—and in different states—is troubling. They need to go back to the lab and tinker with their formulas. If not, it's going to be a long, painful season of watching them crank out excessively pro-Republican polls.
And hey, we can even play a game of "spot the outlier":
• GA-Sen:
Rasmussen: David Perdue (R): 46, Michelle Nunn (D): 41 (July: 46-40 Perdue).
• KY-Sen: Gravis Marketing: Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 51, Alison Grimes (D): 41 (July: 45-45 tie).
• Polling: Fox News just released four new polls, relying on the combined work of a Democratic pollster, Anderson Robbins Research, and a Republican outfit, Shaw & Company Research. Here's what we've got:
• IA-Sen: Bruce Braley (D): 41, Joni Ernst (R): 41
• IA-Gov: Terry Branstad (R-inc): 50, Jack Hatch (D): 37
• KS-Sen: Pat Roberts (R-inc): 40, Greg Orman (I): 38, Chad Taylor (D): 11
• KS-Gov: Paul Davis (D): 45, Sam Brownback (R): 41, Keen Umbehr (Lib): 4
• LA-Sen: Bill Cassidy (R): 51, Mary Landrieu (D-inc): 38
• NC-Sen: Kay Hagan (D-inc): 41, Thom Tillis (R): 36, Sean Haugh (Lib): 6
Those Louisiana numbers are plug ugly, but they don't resemble
a single other poll taken to date. In fact, Cassidy's largest-ever lead was just 6 points, and that was according to Magellan, a Republican firm that no one should trust. Landrieu may well be the most endangered Democratic incumbent: She's only led in eight of 22 polls taken this year, while Cassidy's been ahead in 11 (three were tied). But without Fox in the mix, she actually holds about a 1-point edge
in the Pollster average, and you'd think that if Republicans had internals that looked this good, they'd put them out there just to try to smother Democratic hopes.
The rest of Fox's polling seems fairly reasonable, though the Iowa Senate results may be a bit optimistic for Ernst. Interestingly, this is the first Kansas poll we've seen that finds Roberts ahead since Taylor reshuffled the race, but in a two-way pairing, Orman actually leads 48-42. We should know very soon (see our KS-Sen item at the top) whether or not Orman gets a two-person fight with Roberts.
Gubernatorial:
• CO-Gov: While the Colorado governor's race might be tighter than Democrats would like, at least Gov. John Hickenlooper keeps outraising his Republican opponent, ex-Rep. Bob Beauprez. Over the most recent two-week period, Hick took in $217,000 to $133,000 for Beauprez, and he also has a $602,000 to $363,000 cash advantage. What's more, Hickenlooper placed a large early fall ad reservation at a time when Beauprez was spending all his dough on winning the GOP nomination, so the financial gulf is actually even bigger than it looks.
House:
• NY-01: After a spate of polls of New York House races that didn't offer much succor for Democrats, Siena's survey of the highly competitive 1st District has some surprisingly good news. There, they find Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop, who's taken a lot of heat over some ugly ethical abuse allegations, with a hale 51-41 lead on his Republican challenger, state Sen. Lee Zeldin.
But even if Siena's right (and they've had a lot of misses), that doesn't mean this won't be a close race. At the same point last cycle, they had Bishop leading his 2012 opponent, Randy Altschuler, 52-39, not long after a Democratic internal found almost identical results. That may well have been accurate at the time, but Altschuler managed to scoop up all the undecideds and only narrowly lost, 52-48. If the same thing happens again, it could be a long election night.
As an aside, this also serves as an illustration of how little House polling we've seen in general this year. Siena's mid-September poll in 2012 was the fifth of the race. This time, it's the very first. Needless to say, that makes accurate election forecasting—a tricky business in the best of times—even more difficult.
• PA-06, 08: There's an odd bit of symmetry in the Philadelphia suburbs, with the National Rifle Association endorsing Republican nominee Ryan Costello in the open 6th, but with Gabrielle Giffords' pro-gun control Americans for Responsible Solutions endorsing Republican incumbent Mike Fitzpatrick in the 8th. Unlike the pro-Fitzpatrick ad, though, the NRA is keeping their support on the QT in the mostly affluent and suburban 6th, sticking with just financial support and field staff. (Also, for what it's worth, Costello's spokesman said that if Toomey-Manchin came to a vote, Costello would "likely support it," so the NRA helping out Costello seems kind of uncharacteristic.)
Grab Bag:
• Polls: Thursday's look at the Poll Explorer shows the impact of multiple outliers in pivotal races in one day on your model: on Tuesday, Democrats' odds of retaining control of the Senate had peaked at 59 percent, but by the end of Wednesday, they were down to 46 percent.
• President-by-LD: Today we head to Arkansas and Vermont, two very different states with two very different state legislatures. Utilizing newly released data from Daily Kos Elections and new interactive maps by Stephen Wolf, Jeff Singer takes a look at both states in a new post.
For both states, we have the results of the 2012 presidential contest calculated by each state House and state Senate district. A major thank you goes out to community member GradyDem for all his help with Arkansas. As always, you can find our master set of data here.
Ads & Independent Expenditures:
• AK-Sen: On behalf of Republican Dan Sullivan, X-Games champion Cory Davis accuses Democratic Sen. Mark Begich of being a phony. Davis argues that Begich was only pretending to ride a snow machine in an ad, officially outing himself as a snow machine truther.
• AR-Sen: Republican Tom Cotton defends his vote against the Farm Bill, accusing Obama of hijacking it and turning it "into a food stamp bill." As Laura Clawson points out, the Farm Bill has had nutrition assistance included since the 1930s.
• IA-Sen: The Sierra Club spends another $209,000 against Republican Joni Ernst and there's more where that came from: They've reserved $1 million in airtime here.
• KS-Sen: Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts launched the first of what will be many attacks tying independent Greg Orman to Obama and national Democrats.
Orman pushes back, arguing that Roberts' attacks are what's wrong with Washington. Orman goes on to say he tried both parties and didn't fit into either, and pledges he'll stand up for Kansas rather than for party. It's a decent response, but it of course won't deter Republicans from portraying him as an Obama proxy.
• KY-Sen: Democrat Alison Grimes features her grandmother describing how the candidate's grandfather suffered a terrible stroke and the family could barley afford to take care of him. Grimes uses the story to call for strengthening Medicare, accusing Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of voting to raise senior's Medicare costs. On the GOP side, the Credit Union National Association spends $300,000.
• MI-Sen: The DSCC once again ties Republican Terri Lynn Land to the Koch brothers. On the other side, a group called B-Pac spends $316,000 for the GOP here.
• SD-Sen: There has been very little significant outside spending in this contest, but that may be starting to change. Every Voice Action attacks Republican Mike Rounds for allegedly being part of a corrupt scene to award EB-5 immigration cards to help his cronies. David Montgomery of the Argus Leader has the background to the EB-5 matter here.
A few weeks ago Democratic rival Rick Weiland hit Rounds on EB-5, and Rounds' defensive response suggests that the Republican thinks this is a real vulnerability. Polls have shown Rounds consistently ahead of Weiland but looking weaker than expected. It'll be worth seeing if other Democratic groups smell blood and start to get involved, and if Republicans feel they need to spend here to help Rounds across the finish line.
• Freedom Partners: The pro-GOP group has new expenditures in AR-Sen, IA-Sen, OR-Sen, and NH-02. We also have new spots in AK-Sen and OR-Sen.
• Senate: Various expenditures from the DSCC and NRSC.
• FL-Gov: Democrat Charlie Crist has another Spanish spot starring his running mate Annette Taddeo.
• GA-Gov: Democrat Jason Carter pledges to stand up for the middle class against the corporations. Carter manages to say the phrase "middle class" an impressive five times in only 30 seconds.
• NH-Gov: Well, this is interesting. The RGA has aired its first spot against Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, who has usually been viewed as the clear favorite against Republican Walt Havenstein. It's not a particularity compelling ad ("Hassan is a politician! Havenstein isn't!") but we'll see if Republicans think they can pull off an unexpected win here.
• OR-Gov: Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber and Republican Dennis Richardson.
• PA-Gov: Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.
• WI-Gov: Two spots from Republican Gov. Scott Walker (here and here). The first ad has him arguing he's saved money for constituents. The second links Democrat Mary Burke to Obamacare.
• AR-02: Democrat Patrick Henry Hays.
• AR-04: Democrat James Lee Witt.
• AZ-02: Americans for Responsible Solutions spends another $370,000 against Republican Martha McSally.
• CA-07: Republican Doug Ose hits Democratic Rep. Ami Bera over the water crisis.
• CA-21: Democrat Amanda Renteria.
• CA-36: Republican Brian Nestande goes after Democratic Rep. Raul Ruiz on the national debt.
• CA-52: Republican Carl DeMaio portrays himself as an independent reformer who will stand up to extremists in his own party. Especially in recent weeks, Democratic incumbent Scott Peters has been working hard to tie DeMaio to those very extremists.
• CO-06: CounterPAC recently aired this spot against Republican Rep. Mike Coffman, and they've spent $122,000 so far on it.
• FL-02: Republican Rep. Steve Southerland.
• IA-03: The NRCC portrays Democrat Staci Appel as weak on terrorism, while praising Republican David Young.
• IL-13: Democrat Ann Callis.
• NY-18: Republican Nan Hayworth.
• NY-21: Republican Elise Stefanik hits Democrat Aaron Woolf on Social Security.
• House Majority PAC: Various expenditures from the pro-Democratic group.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, with additional contributions from Jeff Singer, David Jarman, and Steve Singiser.