Most polls badly overestimated Mark Pryor's performance, yet 2014 wasn't even a low-water mark for the polling industry
Leading Off:
• Polltopia: There's been plenty of post-election handwringing about how polling wasn't very accurate this year, with polls systematically underestimating Republicans in a number of key races. The Monkey Cage's Eric McGhee, however, puts the polling in historical context, and finds that it wasn't unusually bad by the most recent decade's standards, and actually quite good compared with how bad it was in, say, the 1990s. He accomplishes this by calculating Brier scores (which you might remember from the post-election analysis of how the aggregators did ... though, of course, the aggregators only do as well as the polls do in the first place) for the polls for each election since 1990.
2014 polling was about on a par with 2004 polling, slightly worse than 2006, 2008, and 2012 polling, and noticeably better than 2010 polling (probably based more on that year's House polling, where there was a lot of unexpected carnage, than Senate polling). But the older numbers are a huge reality check for people who've only started following politics in the last decade. Polling, actually, used to really suck: Unexpected things used to happen all the time on Election Days in the 1990s and earlier. It'd be interesting to know more about why polling has gotten better in the 21st century even as response rates have plunged, whether it's more about better technology or better practices, or simply about there being more polls, which results in more herding.
Senate:
• WI-Sen: Former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold hasn't announced whether or not he'll seek a rematch against Republican Ron Johnson, who unseated him in 2010. However, Wisconsin Democrats look prepared to defer to Feingold if he jumps in. In an interview with Roll Call, Rep. Gwen Moore predicted that Feingold would enter the race and would not face a serious primary. However, if Feingold doesn't go for it, Moore didn't rule out her own campaign. When asked if she'd run, Moore only said, "That's a different story."
Gubernatorial:
• LA-Gov, AG: There are plenty of candidates who are still contemplating running for this open seat, but perhaps the biggest is Treasurer and 2008 Republican Senate nominee John Kennedy. However, it's looking like Kennedy may have his eyes on a different post. LaPolitics.com reports that Kennedy is not only considering a run for state attorney general, he's already talking to donors.
Kennedy ran for attorney general back in 1991 as a Democrat, and he still seems to want the job decades later. Republican incumbent Buddy Caldwell hasn't confirmed whether or not he'll seek a third term, but it sounds like Kennedy isn't going to defer to him. If Kennedy jumps in, he'll face another familiar face: Former Republican Rep. Jeff Landry is already running.
House:
• NH-01: Last month Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter narrowly lost her seat to Republican Frank Guinta, and she's thinking about yet another match. In an interview with NH1, Shea-Porter confirmed that she hasn't decided what to do next, but she is being encouraged to run in 2016 and hasn't ruled it out. This would be the fourth battle between the two in as many cycles, and I'm personally betting they keep running against one another until Ragnarok arrives.
Other Races:
• LA-LG: It's no secret that the Louisiana Democratic bench is not in good shape, but one of the party's big names is on the move. East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Kip Holden recently kicked off his campaign for lieutenant governor, which will be an open seat next year. Holden joins Republicans state Sen. Elbert Guillory, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser (who ran in 2011), and Jefferson Parish President John Young in the October jungle primary.
As head of Louisiana's largest parish, Holden's constituency includes Democratic-leaning Baton Rouge as well as several of its very red suburbs. In the Deep South voting tends to be very racially polarized, but Holden has done well among conservative white voters as well as with fellow African Americans. In 2012 as Obama was carrying the parish 52-47, Holden was winning his third term 60-34. Any Democrat will have a tough time prevailing statewide next year, but a Holden victory would be a very big deal for the state party.
• MO-LG: This is nuts.
• NV State Assembly: Could we see five renegade Republicans join with the Democratic minority to take control of the chamber? The idea has gone from mere speculation to something that the Republican leadership is taking very seriously. Jon Ralston gives us the rundown on all the cat fud that's flying in Carson City.
Last month, the speaker-designate stepped down after his very racist past was revealed. Now, incoming Majority Leader Michele Fiore is encountering some problems of her own. Fiore was recently removed as chair of the Taxation Committee after it leaked that she had $1 million in tax liens. Fiore was not happy, and sent an email to her caucus where she accused five unnamed members of planning to meet with the Democrats to discuss an alliance. Fiore threatened to boot any renegades from the caucus and launch recalls against them.
Ralston confirms that while nothing has been planned, the idea is actually being discussed. Fiore was restored as chair shortly after, but this entire incident probably won't help her safeguard control. It remains to be seen if there are actually five Republicans (the minimum required) who, when all is said and done, will go rogue. If the plan succeeded these rebels would almost certainly run the chamber, but mainstream Republicans would devote themselves to their electoral destruction. Only time will tell what happens next.
• VA State Senate: Back in June, Democrat Phil Puckett resigned from his conservative seat, throwing the chamber to the Republicans. Puckett's departure was part of a deal with Republican Del. Terry Kilgore: Puckett's daughter would be confirmed as a state judge and the senator would be given a prized job on the state tobacco commission, in exchange for his departure. Federal prosecutors began an investigation but on Friday they notified Puckett and Kilgore that there would be no charges.
Grab Bag:
• Demographics: The economy might be leaving a lot of people dissatisfied, but at least we're living in a golden age of interactive maps about how the economy sucks. Hot on the heels of Thursday's interactive map from The Wall Street Journal, about wage stagnation over the 2004-2013 period, come two more fascinating maps.
One comes from The Washington Post, as part of an introduction to a multi-part series about the problems facing the middle class. It's an interesting chronological map, filtering out the counties according to in which decade inflation-adjusted incomes peaked. Rust Belt (especially Upstate New York) incomes tended to peak in the 60s, Appalachian incomes peaked in the 70s, and most places' incomes peaked in the prosperous 90s.
This is vaguely reminiscent of an interactive map David Jarman created earlier this year, mapping when counties' populations peaked, but the new map shows something contradictory. The mostly-empty counties across the Great Plains that peaked, population-wise in the 1920s and 1930s, are the ones where incomes are peaking right now. That's partly thanks to the energy sector, especially fracking, and also agriculture, which is profitable but doesn't require any near as large a work force as it used to.
The other map is from a New York Times multi-article look at, specifically, men in the work force. It's a map of the percentage of men of prime working age (25-54) who aren't working, drilling all the way down to the census tract level. The lowest rates are in both prosperous urban cores and suburbs in major metropolitan areas, and also in those Great Plains rural counties mentioned above; the highest rates tend to be in high-poverty areas like the Appalachians and the Black Belt, but also in pockets around major universities. This exposes a weakness of this kind of analysis ... late-20somethings pursuing graduate degrees get lumped in with disabled and long-term unemployed persons. A separate chart helps distinguish these categories, but only at a national level.
• Votes: Thursday night's House vote on the Cromnibus (a delightful portmanteau of 'omnibus' and 'croissant') is one of those rare interesting House votes that's something other than either a straight party-line vote or a unanimous post-office naming. There were 57 Democratic 'yea' votes and 139 'nays,' while there were 162 Republican 'yea' votes and 67 'nays;' ultimate passage was 219-206. There wasn't much of a regional pattern to the breakdown of the vote, except perhaps something of an urban/suburban split among Democrats.
The Monkey Cage's Sarah Binder did some interesting slice-and-dice of the votes; members of both parties who are on the clubby Appropriations and Financial Services committees (who dole out funds and oversee the banks, respectively) were much likelier to vote 'yea' than members not on those committees. In addition, there was a much greater likelihood of outgoing ('lame duck') members voting 'yea' than those who are returning and worried about future elections. In both these ways, it was very reminiscent of the TARP votes in 2008, where departing members of both parties fell on their swords to keep the government operating.
This smells like it has the potential to be one of those unusual 'second dimension' votes, referring to the mysterious element to DW-Nominate scores that measures members' establishment/anti-establishment bona fides more so than their left/right positioning. (Keith Poole's VoteView blog hasn't weighed in yet on the topic, so we won't know for sure until that happens.)
However, unlike, say, the vote on the Amash amendments about the National Security Agency, which was more of a leadership-vs.-outsiders vote, the Cromnibus 'nay' votes don't seem evenly distributed throughout the spectrum, but concentrated heavily on the left and right flanks of the House. Among the Democrats, the 'nay' votes are mostly the most progressive members, though there are some interesting exceptions among members who are both moderate and leaving (Nick Rahall, Mike McIntyre, Mike Michaud) ... and Nancy Pelosi's 'nay' vote makes it difficult to view it as a purely inside/outside split.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir and Jeff Singer, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Taniel, and Dreaminonempty.