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2014 House

Sabato's Crystal Ball

NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS

House ratings changes A race-by-race analysis, as well as history, suggests Republicans are in line to make a small, mid-to-high single-digit addition to their majority, but there’s been little movement one way or the other in most races or in the overall climate. We’re planning to take a fuller look at the House picture next month, but in the meantime we have a handful of House ratings to tweak: Rep. Cheri Bustos (D, IL-17) — Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic: Bustos won a tough race against former Rep. Bobby Schilling (R) in 2012, and Schilling is running again. However, conversations with partisans on both sides of the race suggest that other contests in Illinois are looking more competitive, such as Democratic-held IL-10 and IL-12 and Republican-held IL-13. Bustos has more than triple the cash on hand of Schilling and, in recently announced multi-district ad buys, both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee — the parties’ House campaign arms — ignored this district (although House Majority PAC, a kind of unaffiliated shadow DCCC, did make some future ad buys in markets here). It’s worth noting that the only district Republicans hold that matches President Obama’s 57%

Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

CANTOR’S FALL

Note: A version of this story appeared as “Your Theory About Why Cantor Lost Is Probably Wrong” on Politico Magazine Wednesday night. The Richmond Times-Dispatch called it a “political earthquake.” It was the “upset of the century,” added Fredericksburg’s Free Lance-Star. A powerful, veteran member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia had fallen in a primary to a political upstart. No, these are not the words used to describe House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary loss Tuesday night to Dave Brat, an obscure economics professor at Randolph-Macon College. They are from 48 years ago, when Rep. Howard Smith, the chairman of the House’s mighty Rules Committee, fell in the Democratic primary to George Rawlings, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. There is a fairly easy explanation for what happened in 1966: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had vastly expanded black suffrage, and a new influx of African-American voters shook up the Democratic Party a year later, contributing not only to the defeat of Smith but also Sen. Willis Robertson, a Democrat and the father of televangelist Pat Robertson, in the Senate primary. The southern Democratic parties had been struggling to reconcile their national and local

Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

MCDANIEL’S ‘FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS’

In his classic book Southern Politics in State and Nation, V.O. Key Jr. wrote about the importance of “friends and neighbors” in one-party southern elections. More than half a century after the book was written, strength at home powered yet another Deep South candidate. Tuesday night featured about as dramatic a race as we’ve seen in recent years, which not only delighted the political hacks on Twitter but, more importantly, produced a result that suggests a victory for the more conservative wing of the Republican Party. Throughout much of Tuesday night’s GOP Senate primary in Mississippi, Sen. Thad Cochran (R) looked like he might not only finish with more votes than his Tea Party challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R), but also get above the 50% threshold he needed to avoid a runoff. Things were looking good for Cochran’s establishment backers, which includes much of the powerful Barbour clan, helmed by former governor and Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, as turnout came in much higher than expected and Cochran performed well in the northeastern part of the state, which some believed would be McDaniel country. But then Jones County, McDaniel’s home base in the southeast near Hattiesburg, finished reporting

Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

Notes on the State of Politics: Primary Edition

National Republicans get their men (and women) The key takeaway from Tuesday night’s primaries, and the primary season in general so far, is that national Republican leaders are getting the general election nominees they want in key races. What they do with those nominees in the fall remains to be seen. In Tuesday’s marquee event, the Republican Senate primary in Georgia, businessman David Perdue (R) — the cousin of former Gov. Sonny Perdue (R)  — and Rep. Jack Kingston (R, GA-1) finished first and second. They will advance to a runoff election nine weeks from now. While of course both candidates could be damaged by the ongoing primary campaign, they are the two preferred candidates of D.C. Republican Senate strategists. Karen Handel (R), the former Georgia secretary of state who finished third, might also have been a decent general election candidate, but she disappointed many Republicans with her lack of fundraising. Bringing up the rear among the top candidates were Reps. Phil Gingrey (R, GA-11) and Paul Broun (R, GA-10), who performed so poorly that their combined vote total didn’t even match third-place finisher Handel. Broun and Gingrey have made controversial social issues comments in the past, the kind that

Kyle Kondik

NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS

Arkansas now a Toss-up It’s become clear over the past few months that Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), despite the increasing Republican lean of his state, has been holding his own, or better, against Rep. Tom Cotton (R, AR-4). Several positive polls for the incumbent, including a too-optimistic 11-point lead from NBC/Marist earlier this week, moved the HuffPost Pollster average in the race to 45.2% Pryor, 42.7% Cotton. Democrats are defending seven Senate seats in states that Mitt Romney won in 2012. In three of these races — Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia — we perceive a clear Republican edge, and have for months. Meanwhile, there are three others — Alaska, Louisiana and North Carolina — that we have seen as Toss-ups for months, and close polls in all three states confirm that view. With a Leans Republican rating, we had Arkansas lumped in with the first group, but it really belongs with the second group. Table 1: Senate ratings change Our most recent Senate ratings are shown in Map 1 below. Map 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings In his Politico Magazine column earlier this week, U.Va. Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato gave a full overview of the

Kyle Kondik

Are Republicans Really Doomed Demographically?

Much of the debate about elections today revolves around the “Emerging Democratic Majority” thesis, taken from the 2002 book of the same name. The thesis is pretty straightforward: Because of demographic changes, the GOP is on a path toward irrelevance unless it can remake itself and appeal to the rising electorate. The theory has congealed into something of conventional wisdom among those who follow politics, at least as it relates to presidential elections. I’ve long been a skeptic of the argument. It’s not that I believe that it is impossible or necessarily wrong. I just think there is insufficient evidence to support a conclusion that we’re drifting toward a situation where Republicans are locked out of the White House except in the worst of circumstances. I’ve written extensively about this elsewhere, and touched on it here. Because the issue will probably come up repeatedly, especially as we march toward 2016, it seemed like a good chance to lay out some basic arguments in response to the thesis for the Crystal Ball’s audience. I’ll be using this column, “The GOP’s Political Reconstruction Project,” published by Pete Wehner in Commentary last month, as an interlocutor. To be clear, I do this not

Sean Trende

PRIMARY ROUNDUP: NORTH CAROLINA REPUBLICANS VOTE FOR ELECTABILITY

Backed by an onslaught of advertising from outside establishment Republican groups and assisted by the lack of a top-tier opponent, North Carolina state House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) won his party’s Senate nomination on Tuesday night, capturing about 46% of the vote. He needed 40% to avoid a runoff against the second-place finisher, Tea Party darling Greg Brannon (R). It’s impossible to quantify, given that we are just at the start of the primary season nationally, but it’s reasonable to wonder whether the GOP primary electorate is learning from its primary mistakes of the past two cycles, when poor Senate nominees lost winnable general elections. At the same time, the 40% rule undoubtedly aided Tillis as well. Whereas most runoff states require winning a majority in the primary to avoid a second round of balloting, North Carolina has a lower hurdle. As Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore pointed out Tuesday night, Tillis’ vote percentage was similar to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s (R-TX) in the Lone Star State’s 2012 GOP Senate primary, but in that case Dewhurst was forced into a runoff that he lost to now-Sen. Ted Cruz (R). Either way, the end result is the more electable candidate won the

Kyle Kondik

The Minimal Class Divide in American Politics

How deep is the class divide in American politics today? According to some scholars and pundits, it is very deep indeed. In a recent post on the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt University, the author of Unequal Democracy and a highly regarded public opinion scholar, presented evidence from a multi-nation public opinion survey that showed the relationship between income and support for cuts in government spending was considerably stronger in the U.S. than in other industrial democracies. Because of the disproportionate political influence wielded by upper-income citizens in the U.S., Bartels argued that their strong support for spending cuts has had a powerful influence on elite attitudes and ultimately on government policies. Bartels’ findings were cited by Paul Krugman of the New York Times, one of the nation’s most influential liberal pundits, as evidence that the United States has become a “class-ridden” society in which income has a powerful influence on political attitudes and behavior. But is this really true? Before accepting results from one study as authoritative, we should examine evidence from other recent national surveys on the impact of social class on political attitudes and behavior in the U.S. to see if they show

Alan I. Abramowitz

Notes on the State of Politics

April quiet brings May excitement After two states, Texas and Illinois, held the first primary contests of the 2014 election calendar in March, April featured exactly zero. But a month and a half of inactivity will give way to a busy May primary season with 11 scheduled elections, as seen below in Table 1. Table 1: Upcoming primaries in May Note: Texas held its primary on March 4, with some races advancing to the state’s May 27 runoff. The first Tuesday of the month, May 6, features primaries in Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio. The Tar Heel State features the marquee contest, the Senate primary on the Republican side. There, the millions-of-dollars question is whether or not state House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) can win at least 40% of the primary vote to avoid an expensive runoff against one of the other seven Republican candidates in the field. Recent polls and our sources suggest Tillis may accomplish this task, which would allow him to save resources for the general election matchup against Sen. Kay Hagan (D). A week later, Nebraska and West Virginia will have their turns. Neither state has an incumbent running in a statewide contest, which is particularly notable in the very conservative

UVA Center for Politics

HELP! I’M DROWNING IN TV ADS!

U.Va. Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato is contributing a regular column to Politico Magazine. This week he takes a look at the first batch of campaign ads this cycle. — The Editors Remember when someone could publish a book about TV commercials entitled The Best Thing on TV? It wouldn’t sell today in any election year. With upwards of $2.6 billion estimated to be spent on political TV spots in 2014 — an increase of 10 percent or more from the last midterm election in 2010 — you’d best get ready for the assault on your senses. Only two states have held a primary, and yet federal and gubernatorial candidates have already spent more than $100 million just on television advertising since the start of the fourth quarter in 2014. Even at this early point in the cycle, political advertising is widespread: Based on records maintained by the Sunlight Foundation, only eight of the nation’s 50 biggest TV markets had no political ad purchases in the first three months of the year. To read the rest of the column, please click here.

Larry J. Sabato

Big and little nothings

Yes, we know reporters have to react to news and find ways to make it relevant, but pardon us if we didn’t gag a little bit seeing headlines about the potential impact of Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy on her mother’s potential presidential campaign. Some said the baby was timed for the campaign — because everyone knows a grandkid on the knee is a guaranteed vote-getter. (That’s why Mitt Romney won in a 2012 landslide.) Others suggested the opposite: Hillary Clinton was all ready to run until this news broke: Now she and Bill will want to babysit instead of barnstorming in Iowa (puh-leeze). The minor media blip got us thinking about some campaign news from 2014: negative stories or gaffes that have at times popped up about this candidate or the other. Do these developments matter? In most cases, no. Clearly, some things that happen during campaigns change the game. Impolitic remarks on social issues by Todd Akin (R-MO) and Richard Mourdock (R-IN) probably cost them Senate seats in 2012. It’s harder to prove, but ethics problems might have fatally harmed Shelley Berkley (D-NV) in her narrow loss the same year. In all three cases, a more generic and less flawed

Kyle Kondik

How Veterans Vote

In Arkansas’ Senate contest, Rep. Tom Cotton (R) has a new ad that goes after Sen. Mark Pryor (D) for his comment that Cotton feels a “sense of entitlement” because of his military service. Cotton humorously utilizes his Army drill sergeant to talk about how his time in the military taught him “accountability, humility and putting the unit before yourself,” all qualities that voters might desire in a senator. Cotton’s military background and Pryor’s ill-considered remark about it could conceivably matter more in Arkansas than in some other places (though there’s little evidence it has mattered so far). Based on 2013 estimates of adult and veteran populations, the Razorback State has the 13th-largest percentage of veterans as a proportion of its adult population (11.1%). That means there are a fair number of potential veteran voters in Arkansas: about 250,000, although the actual number who will turn out in a midterm will be far less. Hypothetically, these voters might be more receptive to Cotton’s candidacy because of his military background. Examining Arkansas’ veteran population naturally led us to look at the country as a whole. Below is a map of states colored by what portion of their adult populations are veterans.

Geoffrey Skelley

Exiting the House

Over the past 40 years, there have been many ways to leave the U.S. House of Representatives. Specifically, nine different methods. The main ones, beyond losing a primary or general election, are to retire or run for another office. But a member can also do one of the following: be appointed to another office, resign, be expelled, pass away or, in the rarest of instances, have the House vacate one’s seat. So far, 50 members of the 113th Congress have either left office or signaled their intentions to leave at the end of this cycle. The manner in which they have left or plan to leave the House varies. Two already found paths to the U.S. Senate: Then-Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) was appointed to the upper chamber and then-Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) won a special election to replace Secretary of State John Kerry. Another 17 are in the midst of running for other offices that will preclude them from running for the House again — 13 are running for the Senate (or ran, in Republican Rep. Steve Stockman’s case), two are running for governor, one is seeking a lieutenant governorship and another is hoping to become a county supervisor. Most

Geoffrey Skelley

The House retirements that (might) matter in November

The retirement of Rep. Tom Petri (R, WI-6) means that 41 members of the House are leaving the lower chamber at the end of this Congress in order to either exit public life or run for another office. There are clear governing implications for these retirements: For instance, several of the retiring members, like Reps. Dave Camp (R, MI-4), Buck McKeon (R, CA-25) and Mike Rogers (R, MI-8), are committee chairmen. But in a political sense, relatively few of the retirements have created true opportunities for partisan turnover in November. To demonstrate this, we looked at what are essentially the 100 most competitive seats in the House, at least on paper: The 50 Democratic-held seats where Mitt Romney did the best in 2012, and the 50 Republican-held seats where President Obama did the best. Of the 50 Democratic seats, just six are now open because the incumbent is retiring or running for another office; of the 50 Republican ones, just eight are open. The retiring Petri’s district just barely makes the list at No. 50. The following two tables show the retiring Democrats and Republicans who currently occupy one of these 100 competitive seats. Table 1: Retiring House members who

Kyle Kondik

Eleven Days to November

U.Va. Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato is contributing a regular column to Politico Magazine. This week he provides an overview of the key primary election dates that will preface the November midterm elections. — The Editors For political junkies desperate for clues to the hottest House, Senate and governors’ races around the country, April is the cruelest month. While Illinois and Texas primaries were held last month, the 48 remaining state contests don’t start up again for three weeks. Here’s the good news for those of us hoping to determine whether Democrats or Republicans will be celebrating in the fall: From early May to early September, we’ll have a steady stream of conventions, primaries and runoffs to keep us busy. We’ve already learned a little from the first two contests. On March 4, Texas told us two contradictory things: The Tea Party has waned in Republican influence because U.S. Sen. John Cornyn won his re-nomination race easily over Rep. Steve Stockman, and the Tea Party is still strong because of its power in the GOP lieutenant governor’s contest and some other lower-level match-ups. Thanks for clearing that up, Lone Star State voters. Maybe the picture will come into

Larry J. Sabato