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Sabato's Crystal Ball

Senate 2014: Roberts Slips in Kansas — and What’s Up in South Dakota?

Come January, Americans may witness something that, up to now, only 6% of the country’s population has ever seen: a senator from Kansas who is not a member of the Republican Party. That’s just one reason why the Sunflower State’s Senate race is the most interesting in the country with a month to go. Kansas last elected a Democratic senator in 1932, George McGill, who was defeated for reelection in 1938 (President Roosevelt’s “sixth-year itch” midterm, when Democrats lost 71 seats in the House and six in the Senate). So only Americans who are 75 and over — a little more than 1/20th of the nation’s population — have been alive to see a non-Republican senator in one of the nation’s consistently bedrock Republican states. Kansas won’t be electing a Democrat to the Senate this year, because there is no Democrat on the ballot. Rather, independent businessman Greg Orman is challenging — and leading — unpopular incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts (R). Roberts won a weak victory over his controversial primary opponent, physician Milton Wolf, in early August. Instead of pushing aggressively ahead in his general election fight, it’s now clear that Roberts expected to coast to victory against Orman and

Kyle Kondik

Skewed

U.Va. Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato is contributing a regular column to Politico Magazine. This week, he examines polling averages, finding that while they are a very useful source of information, they occasionally misfire. — The Editors “Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?” — Comedy writer Robert Orben, who once penned speeches for President Ford America has a love-hate relationship with polls. If you’ve clicked on this column, you likely cull through the latest survey numbers every chance you get. Activists thrill to the polling that shows their party’s candidates ahead, and they tout these favorable numbers as though they were handed down to Moses on the Mount. But if a survey has the opponent leading, many partisans not only feel a punch to the gut, they dig into its “internals” (racial demographics, party ID of respondents, etc.) to find fault. “Too many Republicans are in the sample!” “No way will Democratic minorities be so large a proportion of voters on election day!” There are always defects that supposedly twist the real state of the race, as perceived by activists. Mostly, these

Larry J. Sabato

“Bombs Away” Tackles LBJ, Goldwater and 1964 Election

Marking the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking 1964 presidential campaign, the University of Virginia Center for Politics and Community Idea Stations have released the first trailer for their latest documentary, Bombs Away: LBJ, Goldwater and the 1964 Campaign that Changed It All. Scheduled for nationwide and international release later this fall, the one-hour documentary looks back at a presidential election that not only redefined both political parties but also ushered in a new age of highly negative television advertising. The documentary will be released nationwide beginning Nov. 1, 2014, and will air on PBS stations across the country. It will also be offered to other affiliated networks around the world. Directed by Paul Tait Roberts, Bombs Away examines the 1964 presidential contest between President Lyndon Johnson and Sen. Barry Goldwater. Polarized by very different personalities and ideologies, Johnson and Goldwater attacked each other with gusto — and in the process opened the door to a modern era of campaigning that features highly negative TV advertising campaigns. Bombs Away is the latest documentary produced by the U.Va. Center for Politics and Community Idea Stations, which regularly partner to produce documentary films for public television on American politics and history. The last

UVA Center for Politics

Notes on the State of Politics

Gubernatorial changes: Déjà vu for Coakley? We’ve got four gubernatorial ratings changes to make this week. The big one is in Massachusetts, where state Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) can no longer be called a favorite over Charlie Baker (R), also his party’s 2010 nominee. The most recent polls have generally shown a dead heat, with RealClearPolitics’ polling average showing an overall tie. Polling data, Coakley’s struggles in her infamous 2010 special Senate election defeat to Scott Brown (R), and Massachusetts’ willingness to elect Republican governors despite its deeply blue hue compel us to move this race from Leans Democratic to Toss-up. We assume national and state Democrats will assemble a Coakley rescue team (much as Republicans have done for Sen. Pat Roberts in Kansas). There is a key similarity here despite the differing offices: In this polarized era, the pool of Democratic voters in Massachusetts, like the pool of Republican voters in Kansas, is so large that there is time to pull Coakley and Roberts across the finish line. Whether it will happen in either case is anybody’s guess a month out. Also moving to Toss-up, from Leans Republican, is the gubernatorial election in Alaska. Gov. Sean Parnell (R)

Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

House 2014: Generic Movement, Specific Standstill

The national numbers indicate that Republicans should be on the verge of big House gains. But a district-by-district analysis suggests a different story. Throughout the election cycle, we’ve been closely monitoring the House generic ballot, which is the national poll that asks whether voters would support a Republican or a Democrat in their local House race. For much of the year, the polls have been roughly tied. Those were generally polls of registered voters — a bigger universe of people than the “likely voters” now being tested. With that polling adjustment now in place, Republicans have taken a clear lead in the House generic ballot, though perhaps not as big of a lead as they held at this point in 2010, when they netted 63 House seats and took control of the House. Table 1 shows the results of five recently released generic ballot surveys from high-quality, nonpartisan pollsters, as well as results from those same pollsters roughly this time four years ago. Table 1: National generic House ballot surveys of likely voters, 2010 vs. 2014 Source: RealClearPolitics from 2010 and 2014. This is an imperfect comparison: While the pollsters used are the same, the timing of the surveys does

Kyle Kondik

What Is a Wave in the Senate?

For several months, we’ve held steady on our range of expected gains for Republicans in the Senate: a net of four to eight seats. With Labor Day in the rearview mirror and with less than 55 days to go until the midterms, we’re giving Republicans a slight bump: Our new range is a Republican net of five to eight Senate seats. This means that the best-case scenario we can now envision for Democrats is a 50-50 tie in the Senate, with Vice President Joe Biden’s tiebreaking vote narrowly keeping Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) as majority leader. The likeliest outcome remains a Republican gain of six or seven seats, which we noted before Labor Day and stand by now. That would be good for a narrow 51-49 or 52-48 Republican Senate majority. What’s changed? Not a whole lot: It’s just that the weight of an unpopular president in the White House and a GOP-leaning Senate map is subtly moving things a tick or two in the Republican direction. We do have one major rating change this week: Arkansas is going from Toss-up to Leans Republican. We had Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) as an underdog earlier this cycle, and we’re putting him

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Primary Particulars

After Tuesday’s contests in Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, primary season is essentially over. Only Louisiana remains, but it is in a class by itself with a unique “jungle primary” that takes place on what is general Election Day for every other state. Nothing is ever simple when compiling election stats, and we want to thank the Pelican State for that. We thought it would be useful to compare how incumbents performed in the 2014 primary cycle with the last two midterm cycles, 2006 and 2010. The Crystal Ball spends a lot of time talking about incumbency, and for a good reason: Empirical data have shown repeatedly that incumbency is immensely helpful to a candidate’s election prospects, whether in primaries or general elections. This year’s primary season was no exception. Incumbents in the House As we’ve discussed previously, this cycle has proven far from unkind for incumbents. Of the 387 incumbents seeking renomination outside of Louisiana, 383 (99.0%) won it, with Reps. Kerry Bentivolio (R, MI-11), Eric Cantor (R, VA-7), Ralph Hall (R, TX-4), and John Tierney (D, MA-6) being the only losers. This outcome mirrored 2010, which saw 395 of the 399 (99.0%) House incumbents successfully win

Geoffrey Skelley

Notes on the State of Politics

The GOP’s Jayhawk blues Washington Republicans were reaching for the Pepto-Bismol Wednesday night when the already intriguing Kansas Senate race took a dramatic turn: Chad Taylor, the Democratic candidate, is leaving the race. This gives independent businessman Greg Orman a clean shot at incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts (R). It’s been clear for much of the summer that national Republicans were going to have to spend substantial sums to save embattled, divisive Gov. Sam Brownback (R) in his reelection contest. Now they will have to mount a parallel rescue operation to save Roberts, too. Just last week we flagged this race, noting that Roberts — bearing ugly scars from his primary — was in a stunningly weak position, leading his two other major opponents but drawing less than 40% of the vote in some polls. We switched the race from Safe Republican to Likely Republican because Orman and Taylor were splitting the anti-incumbent vote. Roberts still appeared poised to pull off a plurality victory, unimpressive for a senior incumbent but a win nonetheless. Now his situation has worsened, and we’re downgrading him again: The Senate race in Ruby-Red Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since Franklin Roosevelt’s first presidential victory,

UVA Center for Politics

Off to the Races

Earlier this week we offered a pre-Labor Day assessment of the midterm state of play in the Senate, House, and gubernatorial races coming up in November. The conclusion of that piece, written in Politico Magazine, is as follows: The overall picture is this: A Republican Senate gain of four-to-eight seats, with a GOP Senate pickup of six-to-seven seats the likeliest outcome; a GOP gain of somewhere around a half-dozen seats in the House; and little net party change in the gubernatorial lineup even as a few incumbents lose. So what could shift these projections in a significant way, beyond candidate implosions that move individual races on and off the board? For Democrats, the road to a better result than what we’ve sketched out is Republicans’ ideological disunity and their refusal to march together tactically and strategically. (The destructive sideshow over potentially impeaching President Obama is a prime example.) Last October, Democrats saw, briefly, how the government shutdown boosted their numbers. When Congress returns next month, Democrats hope Republicans will act foolishly just before the election, perhaps during consideration of a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government that Speaker Boehner will have to get through the House. For Republicans, a further curdling of

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

House 2014: Handicapping the “Drive to 245”

A Republican at the end of 1928 could look back on the previous few decades and smile: His party was quite clearly the dominant force in American politics. Starting in 1896, Republicans had held the White House for 24 of 32 years, interrupted only by the GOP split that helped Democrat Woodrow Wilson get elected in 1912.* Another Republican, Herbert Hoover, was about to stretch that streak in the White House to 28 of 36 years. In the House, Republicans also had held control for 24 of 32 years, and Hoover’s 444-electoral vote landslide in 1928 boosted the House GOP majority to 270 seats, a Republican edge whose size was only eclipsed by the 302-member Republican caucus elected in 1920 (the House expanded to its present 435 seats in 1913). Things appeared so bleak for the Party of Jackson that “there was real fear at the time that the Democrats would follow the Whigs into oblivion,” according to the recently deceased prolific historian Robert Remini in The House: The History of the House of Representatives. Of course, the stock market crashed in 1929. Democrats would recapture the House two years later — and hold it for 60 of the next

Kyle Kondik

Notes on the State of Politics

Reaction to third-party piece In an article on the topic last week, we asked readers to chime in with other races where they thought third-party and independent candidates might have an impact on some statewide races. We got a lot of e-mails and tweets about the gubernatorial and Senate contests in Georgia, but multiple readers also mentioned the Connecticut gubernatorial race. Some thoughts on those three races are below. GA-Gov: With ethics troubles making his life more difficult, Gov. Nathan Deal (R) may not be able to win in November; that is, he might have to win in a December runoff. Deal’s problems, which also include lingering frustration with the state’s response to ice storms this past winter, might push some voters toward Libertarian Andrew Hunt, a former tech company CEO. In a June SurveyUSA poll, Hunt garnered 7%. Hunt could send the race into overtime, so to speak, if he helps keep either Deal or his opponent, state Sen. Jason Carter (D), from winning a majority. Should that happen, a Dec. 2 runoff looms. Nonetheless, unless Deal’s problems get even worse (which they could), he would likely be positioned to win that runoff, which would almost certainly feature lower

UVA Center for Politics

Americans Are Politically Divided and Our Feelings toward The Parties Show It

How politically divided are ordinary Americans? The recent release of a report on polarization in public opinion by the Pew Research Center has reignited a debate among journalists and academics about the depth of the divisions between supporters of the two major parties. One of the key findings of the report is that supporters of the two parties hold increasingly negative feelings toward the opposing party and its leaders. While some scholars like Morris Fiorina of Stanford University have disputed the significance of these findings, an examination of evidence from the American National Election Studies provides strong support for the conclusions of the Pew study. The ANES data make it possible to examine trends in feelings toward the Democratic and Republican parties over a fairly long period of time. Since 1978, the ANES has been asking national samples of American adults in every presidential election year and most midterm election years to rate both parties on a feeling thermometer scale. The scale ranges from zero degrees to 100 degrees with zero the most negative rating, 100 the most positive rating, and 50 a neutral rating. Ratings above 50 degrees are considered positive, while ratings below 50 degrees are considered negative.

Alan I. Abramowitz

An Above-Average Year for Incumbents?

With the primary season more than half over, it’s fair to say that incumbents have done just fine this cycle so far: better than fine, in fact. So far this cycle, 273 of 275 House incumbents who wanted another term have been renominated, and 18 of 18 Senate incumbents. That includes results from the 31 states that have held their initial primaries; while a few of those states — Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina — have runoffs coming up later this month, those overtime elections for House or Senate seats are all in open seats. This is a better performance than the postwar averages in both chambers. Since the end of World War II, just 1.6% of House incumbents who have sought another term were not renominated by their party, and just 4.6% of Senate incumbents. The history of incumbent primary losses in each election since 1946 is laid out in Table 1 below. Table 1: Senate and House incumbent primary losses, 1946-2012 Note: Click here for a PDF of these data. Source: Vital Statistics on Congress Anti-incumbent insurgents are going to have to hustle to even match the paltry postwar averages. So what are their best targets? Let’s look

Kyle Kondik

Republicans: “Thank God for Mississippi!”

Editors’ Note: A version of the story below appeared in Politico Magazine on Wednesday morning as Thank God for Mississippi. The Crystal Ball is taking a break for July 4, so our next edition will be published in two weeks, on Thursday, July 10. — The Editors “Mississippi adds another variant to the politics of the South. Northerners, provincials that they are, regard the South as one large Mississippi. Southerners, with their eye for distinction, place Mississippi in a class by itself…every other southern state finds some reason to fall back on the soul-satisfying exclamation, ‘Thank God for Mississippi!’” – V. O. Key Jr., Southern Politics in State and Nation, 1949 Establishment Republicans across the country are saying “Thank God for Mississippi,” but not in the derisive way that political scientist V.O. Key describes it above. The state’s Republican voters, and probably quite a few Democrats, allowed the GOP establishment to fend off a Tea Party challenge to a sitting senator. In the process, they kept Democrats from potentially expanding the Senate’s general election playing field in November and from giving anti-establishment forces in the Republican Senate caucus another ally. Mississippi, a state often ignored by the national political world,

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Picking Your Primary Poison

Analysts are noticing the Democrats’ efforts to meddle in Republican primaries. In a Wall Street Journal article from last month, Janet Hook writes “Democrats increasingly are running ads against GOP candidates even before they win their party’s nomination. By attacking GOP candidates while they are still embroiled in a primary election campaign, some Democrats have seen an opportunity to promote the GOP candidate they think is easiest to beat, or to weaken the one they consider strongest.” Hook points to attempts by Democrats to swing the Republican nomination in North Carolina to candidates other than Thom Tillis, whom many viewed as the most electable Republican. Although Democrats failed to produce a potentially weaker Republican nominee in the Tar Heel State (Tillis won the GOP nomination), they have been more successful in other races. Perhaps most famously, Democrats devoted resources toward enhancing Rep. Todd Akin’s chances of winning the Republican nomination in the 2012 Republican Senate primary in Missouri. Shortly after winning the nomination, Akin made his infamous comments suggesting that a woman who was “legitimate[ly]” raped could not become impregnated, mostly guaranteeing that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) would win reelection. In 2010, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) likewise helped

Sean Trende