Over the past six months, it has proven impossible to read political news for two consecutive days without reading the latest (and, inevitably, redundant) forecast of extraordinary doom to be visited upon the Democrats in November.
And for all we know, that pessimism may still prove to have been prescient, especially if the much-flogged enthusiasm gap proves to be as bad as everyone in Punditland insists that it will be. Just look, as an example, at yesterday's polling effort from McClatchy/Marist. In three key Senate races, races that were toss-ups among registered voters were converted to sizeable GOP leads once a likely voter screen was dropped on the data. History on whether or not that produces more accurate results is, at best, mixed. But it is certainly plausible that gaps this wide are telling Democrats something very, very bad about November.
All that said, if there is a silver lining for the Democrats, it is the fact that a number of races have clearly, in the course of the last few weeks, moved in the direction of the Democrats. Their common theme is that they come in states where, at least on the surface, it looks like Democrats are starting to come home. If that phenomenon can be mimicked across the nation, Democrats might succeed in beating the pointspread on Election Day.
Today, let's look at five such examples. Before we do, though, an honorable mention to two races that may well fit that description.
It might be a bit early yet to call it a complete momentum shift in Maine, given the relative paucity of polling there. But one pollster, Critical Insights, has seen an enormous shift in their own numbers, going from a double-digit lead for Republican Paul LePage to a single-point edge for Democrat Libby Mitchell in just two weeks. LePage has helped Mitchell's cause, of course, by losing his grip on multiple occasions in those intervening weeks. LePage has gone from somewhat nebulous conservative outsider to ill-tempered bully in nothing flat, and Mitchell has been the beneficiary.
Meanwhile, at the start of the month, it looked like Washington Senator Patty Murray would fit this description. And she may yet still, despite a trio of polls in the past two weeks showing her hot streak cooling noticeably. That might have to do with the pollsters in question (SUSA, Rasmussen, and Fox News-using-a-Ras-subsidiary), so let's put Murray in the "wait-and-see" file.
The five candidates that follow, however, have either been resurrected from political Hades in the past month, or have moved a toss-up into something quite different. Either way, Democrats are feeling considerably better about this quartet of gubernatorial candidates, and one incumbent Senator.
EXAMPLE #1--California Governor--Jerry Brown
As summer drew to a close, it began to look exceedingly likely that gazillionaire Meg Whitman was going to ride her nine-figure war chest to the governor's mansion in the largest (and one of the bluest) states of the nation. Jerry Brown, the Democratic nominee seeking a second act as the state's chief executive, was being roundly criticized for waging a moribund campaign. Brown's campaign, though, shifted into a higher gear after Labor Day, and the impact on Whitman's campaign was immediate. In addition, Whitman had a poor week: she underperformed in their televised debate this week, and that was before her campaign was paralyzed by Housekeeper-Gate.
The net result, as you can see, is a movement of over seven points in this race over the past two weeks:
Polling Avg--Sept 1-15 (4 polls): Whitman +4.5
Polling Avg--Sept 16-30 (8 polls): Brown +2.8
What's more, given that Whitman's whole strategy was to flood the zone early and define both herself and Brown before he could really respond, it is going to be tougher for her to regain the edge. Her advertising is veering extraordinarily close to diminishing returns, given how long she has been on the air.
EXAMPLE #2--California Senate--Barbara Boxer
When Republicans began to salivate over the possibility of reclaiming the United States Senate, one of the states that they tentatively penned into their column was California, where the GOP was convinced that former HP executive Carly Fiorina was their ticket to finally knocking off the three-term Democratic incumbent, Senator Barbara Boxer. And polls at the close of the summer seemed to indicate that a Boxer defeat was a very real possibility. But those same polls have moved sharply since then, with Boxer now enjoying a cushion of several points over her GOP challenger. Part of the reason is the brilliant efforts of Team Boxer to define their challenger, best seen in this devastating ad:
The ad is an unsparing look at Fiorina's business past, and it has to be considered a contributing factor in the divergence of the polls in this race:
Polling Avg--Sept 1-15 (4 polls): Boxer +0.8
Polling Avg--Sept 16-30 (8 polls): Boxer +6.1
Another factor here may well be the Democrats bridging the enthusiasm gap in California. In PPP's poll of the state earlier this month, the sample was not dramatically more Republican than the electorate that showed up in 2008. There was still a gap, but it wasn't the chasm that has been seen elsewhere.
EXAMPLE #3--Illinois Governor--Pat Quinn
Pat Quinn, who ascended to his role as Illinois chief executive in the midst of the Rod Blagojevich meltdown, has the triple whammy of being an incumbent in a tough environment, being a Democrat in a tough climate, and being the guy left to clean up after Blago. Given all that, it is perhaps expected that his job approval numbers have been nothing short of abysmal. A recent PPP poll put Quinn's job approval at an abysmal 24/60 spread. In a normal election, this would be fatal. But this is not a normal election.
In the earliest primary of the cycle, Republicans nominated downstate state legislator Bill Brady, easily the most conservative candidate in the field. Throughout the campaign, the lesser-known Brady has held a significant edge over Quinn. Now, in retrospect, it is pretty clear that was almost entirely a referendum on the incumbent. As the campaign cycle has heated up over the past month. As Brady becomes a known quantity to voters in the Land of Lincoln, the results have been striking. A Chicago Tribune poll released last week was the first in months to give Quinn a lead (albeit a single point). Other pollsters, however, confirm the movement, which has more than halved Brady's lead:
Polling Avg--Sept 1-15 (3 polls): Brady +9.3
Polling Avg--Sept 16-30 (5 polls): Brady +3.8
What's more, the gap could narrow further, according to PPP's Tom Jensen. The undecided voters in their poll were tilted sharply to the left, having gone for Obama over McCain by a 67-20 margin in 2008.
EXAMPLE #4--Minnesota Governor--Mark Dayton
At the beginning of the year, this looked like one of the more likely pickups for Democrats across the country. The state has a clear (though not overwhelming) tilt to the Democrats, and Republican Tim Pawlenty was aided twice by Independent challengers, allowing him to win with 44 percent and 47 percent of the vote in his two bids for the office. Republicans nominated archconservative Tom Emmer, making it seem even more likely that Democrats could reclaim this statehouse. However, the numbers seemed to indicate otherwise, as Democrat Mark Dayton emerged from a competitive August primary with a narrow mandate, and seemed to have early trouble uniting his party. August and early September polls showed that Emmer had made up a single-digit gap to Dayton, and had pulled the race close to even.
As time elapsed, however, that seemed to be becoming less and less of a problem:
Polling Avg--Aug 29-Sept 15 (3 polls): Dayton +3.7
Polling Avg--Sept 16-30 (3 polls): Dayton +6.3
The swing, for what it is worth, is even wider than it appears, because the late September polls are wildly disparate. Two recent polls from the University of Minnesota and Princeton Survey Research had leads of 11 and 9 points, respectively, for Dayton. There were somewhat offset, however, by Rasmussen, which 10 days ago gave Tom Emmer the only lead he has seen in any poll since May 24. Given the polls around it, this Ras poll smells like an outlier.
EXAMPLE #5--Ohio Governor--Ted Strickland
I suppose one could call this "saving the best for last". Because no race in America is moving as rapidly as this battle in the Buckeye State. Incumbent Governor Ted Strickland had, for all intents and purposes, been left for politically dead by most election analysts. Since June, Strickland has led in just one out of nearly two dozen surveys in the state (a late June Quinnipiac poll). As the summer rolled to a close, multiple pollsters saw a double-digit edge for the Republican front-runner, former Congressman John Kasich.
What a difference a few weeks makes. Now, it is getting harder and harder not to reference this race as a toss-up:
Polling Avg--Sep 1-15 (6 polls): Kasich +10.0
Polling Avg--Sept 16-30 (7 polls): Kasich +3.0
The margin is even tighter, if you exclude the three polls during the second half of the month from Rasmussen and Ras' subsidiary, Pulse Opinion. With that trio of polls out of the mix, Kasich's margin drops down to just over a point.
Strickland is not particularly beloved. He still has a net negative favorability, according to a recent CBS News poll. The problem for the GOP, and this is being replicated in races around the country, is that their candidates are not seen as suitable alternatives. Kasich's favorabilities were also net negative (21/25), according to the poll.
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There are some commonalities between these five Democrats. All are running in states carried by Barack Obama, and all five are facing opponents who, in recent polls, are dealing with negative favorabilities. In addition to Kasich, Emmer (40/41), Brady (36/44), Whitman (35/49), and Fiorina (34/42) are all underwater in that regard.
What this means for November is that the undecided voters here are more likely than not to be Dem-leaning, and it also means that the GOP candidate will have to redefine themselves to be a palatable alternative. This could be a good sign in all five of these races, as well as others with similar characteristics.