A new poll gives Democrat Jim Kenney a huge lead ahead of the May 19 Philadelphia mayoral primary
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• Philadelphia Mayor: The May 19 Democratic primary pits labor-backed ex-City Councilor Jim Kenney against state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, who is supported by a group of wealthy businessmen who share his views on Michelle Rhee-esque education reform. While Williams and his allies are have heavily outspent Kenney's side, a new independent poll shows Kenney in a dominant position ahead of Tuesday.
The National Research survey, conducted on behalf of the Philadelphia Inquirer, puts Kenney at 42 percent, with ex-District Attorney Lynn Abraham and Williams both taking 15, followed by the three remaining candidates in the low single digits. This is the first (and perhaps last) independent poll we've seen, but two unanswered pro-Kenney polls from late April also gave him a smaller edge. According to National Research, Kenney has not only consolidated the white vote (leading Abraham 58-18), but he even leads among black voters (leading Williams 33-25).
If you're wondering what happened, this race may have actually had a "game change!!" moment in it, when Williams pledged to dismiss Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. The survey asked about the popularity of not just the candidates but other officials around town -- and Ramsey is the most popular person in the entire poll, with 78-11 favorables. That move looks like it seriously backfired on Williams, and he's just about run out of time to recover. However, Kenney's allies at Forward Philadelphia aren't taking any chances. They just released a new spot that touts Kenney's plans for universal pre-K and his backing from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.
The City of Brotherly Love hasn't elected a non-Democratic mayor since the 1940s, and it doesn't look like 2015 will be the year that the streak breaks. There had been some speculation that Sam Katz, who came close to winning the racially-polarized 1999 race as a Republican, was planning to run as an independent this year. However, on Tuesday, Katz announced that he won't jump in after all.
But there's still the possibility that Bill Green IV, a former Democratic city councilor and the son of a former mayor, runs as an independent. Katz said that he wasn't prepared to endorse any of the current candidates, but said that he'll back Green if he gets in. The filing deadline for an indie bid isn't until August 3, so we may have to wait a while on Green. Green's hopes would hinge on Williams losing the primary, and then hoping that Williams' pro-charter schools benefactors transfer their considerable financial backing to him. Still, Green is going to need a lot of luck (and then some) to prevail here in November, and his association with unpopular ex-GOP Gov. Tom Corbett isn't going to help his chances.
Senate:
• IL-Sen: GOP Sen. Mark Kirk isn't wasting any time preparing for his tough defense of his seat in 2016, and he's already going up with his first TV ad. However, it's only on cable channels and only running for $135,000. There's no link to the spot itself yet.
• PA-Sen: Harper Polling, the Republican pollster who rolled out a general election poll on Monday with gaudy leads for Republican incumbent Pat Toomey, tacked on a Democratic primary portion on Wednesday. Ex-Rep. Joe Sestak is much better known than the other options, and he leads with 42 percent, far ahead of Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski's 12 and Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro's 8. Sestak and Pawlowski are both running while Shapiro hasn't announced his 2016 plans.
Gubernatorial:
• IN-Gov: Here's a true test of your political news junkie status: do you remember Bob Thomas? If not, he's the wealthy auto dealer who sought a way to break into Republican politics in Indiana in the 2010 cycle. Eventually, he settled on a self-funded primary challenge to Rep. Mark Souder in IN-03, where he made a decent impression, losing 48-34. (Souder was uncontroversial at the time, but he wound up resigning only weeks later, after news of an affair with a staffer leaked.)
At any rate, Thomas is unexpectedly back, with even bigger plans now. Brian Howey reports that Thomas will challenge Gov. Mike Pence in the Republican gubernatorial primary if Pence runs for re-election. While Thomas is obscure, he can self-fund his way to relative visibility. Another wealthy Republican, ex-Angie's List CEO Bill Oesterle, is also mulling a bid against Pence.
• KY-Gov: With one week to go before the May 19 GOP primary, Agriculture Commissioner James Comer has rolled out a new spot starring his wife T.J. She says some nice things about his conservatism and faith, and normally this kind of ad would come across as very generic. But with Comer defending himself from accusations that he abused his girlfriend in college and took her to get an abortion, this kind of commercial is more likely to stand out, even though it doesn't address the allegations.
House:
• CA-46: With Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez continuing to flirt with a Senate bid, attention has turned to the possible contest to succeed her. Ex-state Sen. Lou Correa sounds the most interested in a campaign, but he's unlikely to have the Democratic field to himself.
Roll Call talks to local operatives who say that Santa Ana Councilor Michele Martinez might campaign for an open seat, though Martinez has yet to say anything publicly. They also mention ex-state Assemblyman Jose Solorio, who didn't sound very excited when he was asked by the Orange County Register, but he didn't rule anything out. Democrats have a good bench in this part of Orange County so other names could emerge if Sanchez departs. Obama won the district 61-36 and it should stay blue in a presidential year.
• IN-03: Three Republicans are already seeking this safely red Fort Wayne-area seat, and the field may grow larger. Indiana Economic Development Corp. member Kip Tom, a corn and soybean farmer, said on Tuesday that he's "very seriously considering running" here. Tom runs the aptly-named "Tom Farms" and also belongs to other agriculture groups, and he sounds well-connected enough to make an impact. Tom says he will make a decision over the next few weeks.
However, another local Republican will be staying put. State Rep. Casey Cox expressed some initial interest in running but he's endorsing state Sen. Jim Banks instead. Banks also earned the backing of powerful state Senate President Pro Tem David Long, who hails from the district.
• MD-06: Maryland's 6th district is swingy enough that it offers at least some faint hope for a Republican looking for a promotion; it went 55 percent for Obama in 2012, and Democratic Rep. John Delaney was re-elected by only a few points in 2014. It'll be harder in a presidential year, but Delaney still hasn't ruled out running in Maryland's open Senate race in 2016, so it could be a plausible GOP target if it were open. With that apparently in mind, Republican state Del. David Vogt set up a campaign committee with the FEC as he prepares for a run. (Hat-Tip Greg Giroux)
• MN-01: On paper, Democratic Rep. Tim Walz should be a top GOP target in his Obama 50-48 southern Minnesota seat, but national Republicans have never managed to land a particularly strong candidate. It's early in the cycle but so far, things aren't going any better for the NRCC. State Rep. Tony Cornish initially sounded very interested in a 2016 campaign, but he announced on Wednesday that he'll stay in the legislature.
2014 nominee Jim Hagedorn is running again, but that's not going to delight many D.C. Republicans. Hagedorn struggled to raise money last time, and his history of offensive blog posts didn't help his chances. Despite the red wave, Hagedorn ended up losing 54-46, and there's little reason to think he'd do better next year. Businessman Aaron Miller, who Hagedorn beat 54-46 in the primary, hasn't ruled out another try, though his last attempt didn't exactly set the world on fire. With Cornish out, the NRCC may step up their recruiting and find a diamond in the ruff, but so far things aren't off to a good start for Team Red.
• NH-01: At most levels, this story isn't good news for Republican Rep. Frank Guinta. He's paying back $355,000 in loans plus a $15,000 penalty to the FEC, over campaign finance violations. The backstory is that during his first run for Congress in 2010, he was questioned over the source of a mysterious $250,000 that appeared in his campaign account, despite not having that sort of money himself. Eventually, it came out that it was from an undisclosed payment of $381,000 from his accounts held in his parents' names, though he claimed he had an equitable interest in those funds. On the other hand, maybe it is good news for him, in that such a blatant violation didn't result in him losing his job in Congress or being criminally charged.
Grab Bag:
• History: Smart Politics, as is their trivial wont, wondered whether the potential general election match up in 2016 in Florida's Senate race between Reps. Patrick Murphy (who'll be 33) and Ron DeSantis (who'll be 38) would be, cumulatively, the youngest-ever Senate race. Turns out it wouldn't be, though it would come in third in the direct election era. The youngest ever was a matchup in Massachusetts between the state's two big dynasties: Ted Kennedy (30) beat George Cabot Lodge (35) in the 1962 special election. At number 2 is the 1978 Senate race in New Jersey, between Bill Bradley (35) and Jeff Bell (34). (You might remember that Bell, now a septuagenarian, ran again for Senate last year, getting flattened by Cory Booker.)
• Polltopia: Pew Research ran an interesting-sounding experiment about polling, looking at the response differences ("mode effects") between live-caller phone responses and online responses. They ran a battery of questions by respondents using both methods and found that online respondents tended to give more negative responses. This was particularly noticeable with approval ratings for politicians, but also for simpler expressions of whether they were satisfied with their family and social life.
On the other hand, respondents asked about whether there is a lot of discrimination in society were likelier to respond "yes" when responding by phone than online. If anything, this seems to show that there's more of a bias toward giving the socially-desirable answer to a live interviewer than to a computer, whether it's being "politically correct" in acknowledging discrimination or simply putting on a happy face in response to questions about your own miserable life. As polling and market research increasingly move online, the disproportionate negativity is something survey designers will need to keep in mind.
This also raises an interesting question that Pew didn't seem to research: whether the same effect occurs in the difference between live calls and robo-calls. Anyone who has looked at PPP's crosstabs and compared how negatively their respondents view politicians, versus a live-call pollster, has probably seen the same effect at work there.
• Redistricting: In his redistricting magnum opus, Stephen Wolf uses hypothetical, alternative non-partisan congressional districts to show how gerrymandering might have cost Democrats the House in 2012. With roughly 55 percent of the seats drawn to favor Republicans, but only 10 percent drawn to favor Democrats, it's not hard to see how that might have been the case. The piece examines what criteria make for optimal non-partisan districts: the Voting Rights Act, communities of interest, city and county integrity, and compactness. Using 2012 precinct data and fully interactive maps, Wolf argues that gerrymandering cost Democrats 17-36 seats that year, when they only needed 17 for a majority.
• UK General: There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the consistently-wrong polls in the United Kingdom election last week (pre-emptive declarations of a polling crisis, for instance). But some new revelations are a reminder of the difference in quality between the polls released for public consumption (which, of course, are all aggregators have to work with) and the ones that campaigns pay a lot of money for and that see the light of day only when there are narratives that need to be changed. It turns out that Labour's internal polls were much closer to the lean-Tories reality than the public polls that converged on a dead heat going into the election.
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner's UK pollster James Morris, writing for the New Statesman, makes the case that, in their tracking polls for Labour, consistent Labour leads in previous years gave way to a tie last October and then small Tory leads starting around Christmas. Their polling in the closing weeks showed Labour behind in the marginal seats, in part because the Tories had successfully sown doubts about the Scottish National Party's influence on what had previously seemed like a Labour-led government. This shows the importance of getting actual constituency-level polls in key races, despite their small population rather than just forcing national polls through the swing-o-meter. It's even more important than polling individual House races here in the States, because the role of strategic voting among multiple parties creates a unique matrix for each seat.
And speaking of constituency races, just how do you make sense of an election that featured 650 seats with an average of six candidates each, and 11 different parties winning spots in Parliament? Dozens of maps and graphs, of course! The rise of the SNP, the fall of the Liberal Democrats, and more can all be seen at Daniel Donner's post here.
Click to enlarge.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir and Jeff Singer, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, and Taniel.
