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• Congress: Here's a bookmark-worthy resource from Larry Sabato and friends, tracking changes in Senate, House, gubernatorial, and state legislature composition over the post-WWII years... but always from the perspective of how the president's own party fares further downballot. If there's a consistent theme, it's that they usually fare very poorly, probably thanks to the public's tendency to seek to impose a check on the party in power or, more generally, just to take out their frustrations on whoever they perceive as being in charge.
As a result, almost every president has seen fewer members of his own party occupying seats in Congress or the state houses at the end of his term than at the beginning. This isn't a new trend, either: Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower had their own wave-election shellackings. In fact, in terms of state legislatures, no one fared worse than Ike: There were 1,009 fewer legislative Republicans in 1960 than there were in 1952! (David Jarman)
Senate:
• KY-Sen: So that rumored PPP poll has turned out to be real after all. On behalf of two progressive organizations, DFA and the PCCC, PPP went into the field in Kentucky from July 19 to 21, and they found Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes narrowly edging Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell 45-44. That's little different from what PPP found at the end of May, when the two were tied at 45.
One thing that did change, though, were McConnell's approvals, which fell to 40-51, after bouncing all the way up to 44-47 last time. Unfortunately, the poll's sponsors only released a few teasers, so we can't see if Grimes's favorables have changed since she launched her campaign. We also don't have access to the crosstabs, so we can't get a sense of how those undecideds might lean, though as ever, capturing that final 5 percent will be Grimes's toughest challenge.
• MI-Sen: That Denno Research poll also had a Senate component, but details are sparse. All we know is that Dem Rep. Gary Peters is tied with Republican ex-SoS Terri Lynn Land at 39 apiece. There's no information about either candidate's name recognition levels, but in other surveys, Land's have predictably been higher (as a former statewide official). Therefore, a tie actually means she's at a disadvantage, since Peters has more room to grow. But Denno also had weird polling last cycle, with a mid-October poll that had Obama up just 44-41 in Michigan—a ton of undecideds so late in the game, not to mention that the president won by 9.
• MN-Sen: State Sen. Julianne Ortman, who said she was "seriously considering" a Senate bid back in June, has decided to make it official and will launch her campaign this weekend. She'll join businessman Mike McFadden and state Rep. Jim Abeler in the GOP primary, though she's probably a cut above either of those two in terms of candidate quality. However, freshman Sen. Al Franken remains a strong favorite for re-election.
• SC-Sen-A: The Republican primary for South Carolina's Class 2 Senate seat is about to get a bunch more crowded. Sen. Lindsey Graham is already facing some competition from businessman Richard Cash, and now businesswoman Nancy Mace says she, too, will join the race, with an announcement planned for Saturday. On top of that, Paulist state Sen. Lee Bright adds that he expects to enter the contest in the next few weeks as well.
Of the trio, Mace has the most intriguing profile, since she was the first female graduate of South Carolina's prominent military college, The Citadel, which did not admit women until the mid-1990s. (Her father is also a retired Army brigadier general.) But despite the heresies which have earned Graham conservative ire over the years, it'll be hard for one of these challengers to unseat him if the anti-incumbent field remains split three ways. It would take a lot of money, too, probably in the form of some outside help from groups like the Club for Growth. Mace is taking on a major battle here (something I'm sure she'd say she's no stranger to), but she could potentially gain some traction and make Graham sweat.
Gubernatorial:
• CA-Gov: Abel Maldonado's fundraising reports have always been something of an adventure, but his latest is just a dive into the abyss. The GOP's least-awful hope in next year's gubernatorial race raised only $314,000 in the first six months of the year, but he spent $318,000. That negative cash flow seems like it's going to be a problem, because Maldonado already owes $48,000 but has just $45,000 on hand. I don't really think any of this matters, though (except to his creditors), since Dem Gov. Jerry Brown has 222 times as much in the bank. No, my finger did not get stuck on the "2" key—that was two hundred twenty-two. Brown's got $10 million.
• HI-Gov: Gov. Neil Abercrombie reported raising $859,000 from January through June of this year, leaving him with $2.1 million cash-on-hand. State Sen. David Ige is challenging Abercrombie for the Democratic nomination, but he only announced after the end of the reporting period, so there's no word on what his fundraising looks like yet.
• ID-Gov: GOP Gov. Butch Otter still hasn't formally announced his re-election campaign, and his latest fundraising report doesn't suggest he'll seek a third term. He took in only $84,000 in the first six months of the year and has $129,000 in the bank. (The numbers are a bit confusing, though, because Otter's fundraising report also says he forgave a $130,000 loan to the campaign, which would constitute a contribution of sorts, but elsewhere the loan is described as being repaid, which would be very much the opposite.) These totals aren't wildly different from the same point four years ago, but Otter's now 72 years old and has been in office since 2007.
What's more, Rep. Raul Labrador still has not ruled out a challenge in the Republican primary, though Dan Popkey says he and Otter may be playing a game of chicken, with Otter potentially waiting until Labrador declines, then stepping aside in favor of Lt. Gov. Brad Little. Of course, if that were to happen, Labrador could always change his mind and get in anyway.
• NH-Gov: First-term Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan's job approval rating sits at a gaudy 58-18 according to UNH's latest poll (PDF), up from 51-11 in April. It also looks like conservative activist Kevin Smith, who took 30 percent while losing last year's Republican primary, won't run again, since he's reportedly accepting a job as town manager of Londonderry, in the southeastern part of the state.
• RI-Gov: Among Democrats likely to run for governor next year, state Treasurer Gina Raimondo led the way in fundraising in the second quarter with a $399,000 haul, giving her $2.1 million in the bank. Providence Mayor Angel Taveras raised $158,000 and has $693,000 on hand, while Gov. Lincoln Chafee took in just $70,000 and has only $358,000 in his war chest. Last in the polls and last in fundraising is not really a good place for any incumbent to be, especially a guy who's just switched parties.
House:
• ME-02: In her Farm Team installment on Maine, Roll Call's Emily Cahn has an update on the shape of the field in ME-02, which is likely to be open since Dem Rep. Mike Michaud appears poised to run for governor.
Grab Bag:
• Pres-by-LD: Our tour of slightly peculiar state legislatures continues, with Massachusetts and West Virginia:
• Democrats dominate both chambers of the
Massachusetts General Court, which is notable for naming, as opposed to numbering, its districts. A resident of the Commonwealth might find himself in the "35th Middlesex" House District (Malden and Medford), or the "Berkshire, Hampshire, Franklin and Hampden" Senate District (which is, contrary to popular belief, not the name of your attorney's firm). Apparently, the legislature is also into
permutations and not combinations (PDF), as the "Middlesex and Worcester" SD is not the same as the "Worcester and Middlesex" SD.
Obama actually won every SD in the state (though the narrowest by only a 6-vote margin), meaning that all four Republicans in the 40-member chamber sit in Obama districts. Obama also carried 135 of the 160 HDs in the state, though Republicans sit in 14 of those seats. (Of the 25 HDs that Romney carried, Democrats sit in 9 of those seats.) The median district in both chambers is 58.9 percent Obama, about 2 points back from his 60.8 percent statewide showing (likely owing to the high concentration of Democrats in Boston and surrounding towns).
• The West Virginia legislature, meanwhile, bears some resemblance to the New Hampshire General Court (though, thankfully, no floterial districts.) The House of Delegates has 100 members, but only 67 districts. If you're doing the math, clearly, 67 doesn't divide 100 equally, and the solution is...you guessed it, multi-member districts of varying size. (47 of 67 HDs are single-member, while the remaining 20 range in size from 2 to 5 seats.) Only 4 HDs (comprising 4 seats) went for Obama (all are occupied by Democrats), which means the other 50 Democrats in the chamber sit in Romney-won districts. The median seat (again, multi-member districts are counted multiple times) is only 35.0 percent Obama, not far from his 35.5 percent statewide haul.
The 34-member Senate is comprised of 17 districts, with two Senators representing each district. One is elected in Presidential years, while the other is elected during midterms. Perhaps indicative of how the state has swung in federal elections, Democrats maintain a 24-10 supermajority in the chamber, despite Romney having carried all 17 SDs. (Obama's best was a 46 percent showing in the Eastern Panhandle-based SD-16, which has started to experience the effects of exurban DC sprawl; the median district is 33.3 percent Obama.)
With a state like West Virginia, a look at a state-level race (consider, for example, Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's 5-point win) tells a far different story: despite Tomblin's narrow victory, he nonetheless carried 12 of 17 SDs and 36 HDs accounting for 61 seats. Even in his 2.5-point statewide loss running for Attorney General, Democrat Darrell McGraw carried 7 of 17 SDs and 28 HDs accounting for 53 seats. (jeffmd)
• Voter Suppression: Much of the sturm und drang regarding the right's efforts to shrink the pool of voters has focused on voter ID requirements, despite the fact that voter ID requirements have an effect only around the margins. Harry Enten, however, has done some important number crunching on a topic that doesn't get anywhere near the press, but has a much bigger quantitative effect on who votes: felon disenfranchisement.
There's a remarkable amount of disparity between the states in terms of when (or if, at all) felons can get their voting rights restored; however, the states with the least restrictive laws tend to have some of the lowest African-American populations, while the most restrictive ones have some of the highest black percentages. The net result is that 38 percent of all persons disenfranchised by felon voting restrictions are black.
Even assuming that almost all of those voters would vote Democratic, that's still not enough to put, say, Alabama and Mississippi back in play, but it is a big deal in Florida and Virginia, two states that tilt only narrowly in the Dem direction at the presidential level and where the GOP is in control further down the ballot. Enten calculates that if ex-felons were allowed to vote in those states, that would have increased Barack Obama's 2012 margin by 2.2 percent in Florida and 1.2 percent in Virginia. Not that a voter suppression "grand bargain" is ever likely to occur, but if it did, it would give the Democrats great bang-for-the-buck to trade more restrictive voter ID requirements for less restrictive laws on keeping ex-felons away from the ballot box. (David Jarman)
