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2014 House

Sabato's Crystal Ball

The surprisingly dramatic Terry & Ken Show

A year ago, almost everyone who followed Virginia politics thought that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) had the inside track to winning the governorship. After all, it was in the 1880s when Virginia last gave a party just four consecutive years in the Governor’s Mansion. And Cuccinelli held one of the two positions that have served as a stepping stone to the mansion traditionally. He was running against a controversial, professional fundraiser who was best known as a “Clinton intimate,” and who was last seen getting blown out in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2009. Terry McAuliffe (D) had never held public office anywhere and was not even closely associated with Virginia. Additionally, Virginia had a jinx, going back to 1977, of voting against the president’s party in its gubernatorial election, which is held the year after every presidential election. So it’s actually noteworthy that McAuliffe won by any margin. Ultimately, Cuccinelli was just too socially conservative for a moderate swing state that is trending away from its traditional roots. That said, the results contain bad news for both parties, if that’s possible. Democrats are celebrating victories in at least two of the three statewide positions and have had a

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

AFTER THE SHUTDOWN, REPUBLICANS SORT THROUGH THE WRECKAGE

We’ll save our Republican friends a recitation of all the damage they did to themselves during the recent battle over the government shutdown and the debt limit. Anyone who can read a poll knows what happened. The shutdown kerfuffle has led to a significant improvement in the national political climate for Democrats. The House generic ballot, a national poll that measures whether those surveyed prefer a Democratic or Republican candidate in their local U.S. House race, was generally close over the summer, which was great news for Republicans: According to the Crystal Ball’s Alan Abramowitz, these generic ballot surveys will have to show a double-digit lead for the Democrats around Labor Day next year for them to get within striking distance of picking up the House. But since the shutdown, Democrats are getting closer to the kind of numbers that would put the House in play. The last nine generic ballot surveys listed on HuffPost Pollster as of Wednesday morning read as follows: D+8, D+8, D+7, D+6, D+7, D+10, D+8, D+4 and D+5 — that’s an average lead of seven points. If the numbers look similar close to Election Day next year, Democrats would be poised for significant gains in

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Excerpt: The Kennedy Half Century

Earlier this week, University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato unveiled new information about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as part of the release of his new book, The Kennedy Half Century. His findings, concerning a recording of the day’s events that some believe is proof of a conspiracy to assassinate the president, are detailed in this exclusive excerpt below. If you missed the announcement, you can watch it here. You can also check out two videos from the press conference, one showing JFK’s vulnerability to an assassination attempt and another highlighting police transmissions from that fateful day. For more information on the book and the Center’s Kennedy Legacy Project, visit www.TheKennedyHalfCentury.org. — The Editors Hundreds of books and studies have been written about the Kennedy assassination. Alert readers have noticed that their authors often use the words “alleged,” “claimed,” and “supposedly” — just as I have done in this book. The debate over the Kennedy assassination is one of the longest-running sagas in American history, involving hundreds of subplots. Facts and quasifacts have dribbled out over five decades. Quite a few of these “facts” are unverifiable or only partially verifiable — which does not necessarily

Larry J. Sabato

WATCH LIVE TUESDAY: SABATO TO UNVEIL NEW FINDING ON JFK ASSASSINATION

University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato will reveal a major new finding regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15, and Crystal Ball readers will be able to watch it LIVE online here. For iPhone and iPad users, the press conference will be available at this link. The finding calls into question one of the conclusions of a major government report on the JFK assassination. This is not a new theory; rather, Sabato will describe scientific findings about a key piece of evidence that undergirds a government study. Additionally, Sabato will further discuss the JFK assassination, as well as reveal new information about President Kennedy’s enduring impact on his nine successors in the White House. He will also discuss a major new public opinion survey on the American people’s opinions on JFK and the Kennedy legacy. The live webcast will kick off the Center for Politics’ Kennedy Legacy Project, which includes: Sabato’s new book; a website; a forthcoming international PBS documentary produced by the Emmy-winning Center for Politics and Community Idea Stations team; a free online course on JFK, beginning Oct. 21 and available through Coursera and iTunes U;

UVA Center for Politics

The Politics of the Shutdown

The great electoral question that comes with this week’s shenanigans in Washington is whether Republicans will hurt themselves so badly that the government shutdown, and events to come, will cost them the House. In this piece we look back on the Democrats’ passage of the Affordable Care Act in early 2010. Voting “no” on Obamacare didn’t prevent many Democrats in Republican districts from losing, which leads one to wonder if strategic voting would save moderate Republicans in the event of an unlikely Democratic wave in 2014. In our second piece this week, we welcome Theodore Arrington, emeritus professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, to provide something of a counterpoint: Namely, even if Democrats again do well in the national House vote in 2014 (just as they did in 2012), it might not translate into a big enough gain of seats to actually win the House. — The Editors Tuesday, Oct. 1 represented perhaps the best day for Democrats in the U.S. House this cycle. At midnight, the federal government shut down, an event that Democrats believe will greatly damage their Republican adversaries. At this point, it’s hard to see how Republicans ultimately come out

Kyle Kondik

The Republicans’ Built-In House Advantage

Redistricting for the U.S. House of Representatives is not a unified process, as is the case for most national legislatures. Rather, it’s the result of the cumulative actions of the states that have more than one representative. Nevertheless, it is useful to look at the entire House to see how the decisions in the states combine to form a fair or an unfair playing field for the parties. The findings below indicate that between 1972 and 2010, there was only a very slight overall partisan bias toward Democrats in redistricting. Toward the start of this period, Democrats had a large advantage, but by the 1990s it had become relatively small. Since 2002, the partisan bias in redistricting has shifted in favor of Republicans to a large degree. Looking forward from the 2012 election result, this research finds that Democrats would have to get around 53% of the two-party national House vote to have a shot at winning a majority in the lower chamber. The most commonly used method for analyzing the partisan nature of the redistricting process is the seats/votes relationship (see here for a longer discussion). For this analysis, simple least squares regression is used to relate the percentage

Theodore S. Arrington

House update: Running to stand still

We are making many changes to the Crystal Ball’s U.S. House ratings, but the overall picture in the People’s House remains quite clear: Neither Republicans nor Democrats are positioned to make major gains in the House next year. Republicans are slightly likelier to net a tiny gain than Democrats are. Ergo, the Republican majority in the House appears secure. To review: Republicans currently hold a 233-200 seat edge in the House, with two vacancies soon to be filled in special elections (a super-safe Republican seat in Alabama, and a super-safe Democratic seat in Massachusetts). Additionally, Rep. Rodney Alexander (R, LA-5) is slated to resign next week (leaving another safe Republican seat behind). All told, Democrats need to net 17 seats to win a majority, which is quite a heavy lift. All that gloomy news for Democrats aside, there is at least one positive for them in this new set of ratings: For the first time this cycle, we’ve made an incumbent member of the House an underdog, and he’s a Republican: Rep. Gary Miller (CA-31). Miller won a fluky election in 2012 because California’s new jungle primary system produced a general election between two Republicans in a district where President

Kyle Kondik

MIND THE GAP

News reports that deem a gender gap in polling noteworthy — with women as more Democratic and men as more Republican — are falling into a trap described by a journalistic cliché: They’re reporting when a dog bites a man. That’s because it would be far more unusual — akin to a man biting a dog — for there not to be a gender gap in a federal statewide race. First, as most readers surely know, there’s been a noticeable gender gap in presidential voting for the last 30 years. Chart 1 shows how men and women have voted going back to 1972, when the national exit poll started. Remarkably, men and women voted for Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in precisely the same proportions in 1976. The real gender gap started in 1980, when men preferred Ronald Reagan to a much greater extent than did women. Since then, women have regularly voted 6-10% more Democratic than men — or if you prefer, men have voted 6-10% more Republican than women. Chart 1: Gender gap in U.S. presidential elections, 1972-2012 What may not be so well known is how persistent this gender gap is in individual state-level presidential battles and

Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

OMEN OR NOT?

We can all guess the final result in New Jersey this November, and at this point most observers are less certain about Virginia’s, although we currently rate Terry McAuliffe (D) as a small favorite over Ken Cuccinelli (R) (if you missed our special Crystal Ball on Virginia from last Friday, you can read it here). But the truly sure thing about the two gubernatorial contests set for this November is the avalanche of flat predictions made about the national 2014 midterms that will flow from these two elections. On its face, such an exercise appears foolish. Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) very likely reelection will tell us more about Christie’s potential presidential candidacy than the drift of 2014. Perhaps if the GOP nominated more relative moderates like Christie, the party could become competitive again in the Northeast and on the West Coast, but that’s obvious even without considering Christie. And New Jersey is strongly Democratic territory when Christie is taken out of the equation; the Christie era isn’t going to change that — just look at the state’s October special election for U.S. Senate, where Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) is an overwhelming favorite. Virginia, on the other hand, is newly

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS

Democrats catching breaks in North Carolina While we’re keeping the toss-up rating of the North Carolina Senate race, it’s reasonable to question the Republicans’ chances there against first-term Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC). The top announced candidate for the GOP is Thom Tillis (R), speaker of the state House of Representatives. National Republicans do not seem all that thrilled with his candidacy, and grassroots conservative leaders aren’t really on board either. For instance, RedState.com editor Erick Erickson has endorsed Greg Brannon (R), a conservative physician. Our North Carolina sources don’t seem to think that Brannon would be a particularly viable general election candidate, but the Erickson endorsement is giving him some oxygen at the moment — and, in a Republican primary, who knows what could happen? With Tillis in the race, and state Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger (R) looming as another potential candidate, Republicans have to be alarmed that their eventual candidate might be a leader of the controversial state legislature, which has taken the state in a conservative direction and inspired a series of liberal protests, called “Moral Mondays.” Earlier this week, Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed a strict voter ID law, which also limits early voting. Democrats

Kyle Kondik

Ratings changes — and non-changes

The Crystal Ball has a number of rating changes in Senate, House and gubernatorial races to announce, but perhaps our most notable rating is one we haven’t changed. A couple of recent Democratic polls show Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) narrowly edging out Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in their likely matchup in November 2014. Additionally, McConnell has drawn a potentially credible primary challenger, businessman Matt Bevin. Grimes and Bevin both reportedly impressed at Fancy Farm, the annual Bluegrass State political confab held last weekend. With all that said, we’re keeping this race as “likely Republican.” We favor McConnell to win both his primary on May 20, 2014, and his sixth term in the fall general election. Why? Let’s start with the primary challenge. McConnell is already running ads against Bevin, leading some to ask this question: If McConnell is already on the air, he must be really worried, right? Not necessarily. McConnell is, if anything, an aggressive campaigner, and he has a massive war chest: His most recent fundraising report showed him with $9.6 million cash on hand. Additionally, in a world of SuperPACs, McConnell effectively will have an almost unlimited amount of money behind

Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik

Republicans Certain to Retain Control of Virginia House of Delegates

The Crystal Ball typically focuses on national or statewide politics, but given our base at the University of Virginia Center for Politics and our substantial readership in the Old Dominion, we decided to take a comprehensive look at the race for the state’s House of Delegates. All 100 seats are on the ballot this November. (The Virginia Senate is not up for election again until 2015, though there will be special elections for one or two of its 40 seats depending on the outcomes in statewide races — and these contests will be decisive in a body currently split 20-20.) While there are plenty of interesting House races across the Commonwealth, the overall outcome — continued Republican control by a clear margin — is not privately disputed by either side. — The Editors While the gubernatorial contest between former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe (D) and state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) remains a toss-up for now, the battle for control of the House of Delegates is decidedly not: Republicans will retain control of the Virginia House. To regain a majority in the chamber, Democrats must make a net gain of 19 seats in 2013. As the analysis below

Geoffrey Skelley

The presidency’s political price

Is politics a zero-sum game? Imagine, for a moment, if Sen. John McCain (R) had somehow won the presidency in 2008. How might the country be different? We would not have the Affordable Care Act. Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would not be on the Supreme Court. And the stimulus passed at the outset of McCain’s presidency would probably have been considerably different from the one passed under President Obama. Oh, and there’s this: Democrats would probably still control the House, and they’d certainly still control the Senate. That’s because the president’s party almost invariably pays a price for holding the White House, a price that can be measured in the loss of House representatives, senators, governors and state legislators. Take a look at Chart 1, which examines the electoral history of the 12 presidents who served after World War II. Generally speaking, presidents left office with their parties having smaller House and Senate caucuses than when they arrived, and also fewer governors and state legislative chambers — often dramatically fewer. All in all, these 12 postwar presidents lost an average of 30 U.S. House seats; six senators; eight governors; total control of six state legislatures; and about 360 state

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Take two

Last week, we highlighted 10 classic or notable political ads that we thought 2014 candidates might consider studying (or “borrowing,” to use a euphemism for copying) for their upcoming campaigns. We then asked readers to respond with their own ideas. Five of the best suggestions follow, along with some words of wisdom from a seasoned political pro about the limits of political advertising. “Spelling bee” Description: Missing from our initial list were ads that dealt with the spelling of a candidate’s name, which can sometimes lead to creative ads. For instance, former U.S. Rep. Ed Mezvinsky (D-IA) cut an amusing spot saying that while voters might not be able to pronounce his name, they’d know where he stood on the issues (credit to @johndeeth on Twitter). Former Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-MA) also cut some good ads on his last name, among others. But here’s our favorite suggested “name” ad — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) won an improbable write-in campaign victory in 2010 after losing the Republican primary, and she ran a delightful ad featuring kids at a spelling bee. Who could use it: Any write-in candidate would do well to copy the Murkowski spelling bee ad, and someone with a

Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik

Rinse and Repeat

In American politics, everything old can be made new again, including the themes and attacks in candidates’ campaign ads. Some of the most notable presidential ads of the past few cycles were basically just copies of old ads. For instance, Hillary Clinton’s most famous ad in her 2008 Democratic primary campaign against Barack Obama featured the “3 a.m.” phone call, which emphasized her experience. Well, 24 years earlier, Walter Mondale used a similar ad, featuring a phone, in his primary race against Gary Hart — “Mondale: This president will know what he’s doing, and that’s the difference between Gary Hart and Walter Mondale.” In 2004, George W. Bush ran a tough ad against John Kerry featuring wolves gathering in a forest, a symbol of terrorist threats in the first post-Sept. 11 presidential election. That ad was similar to a Ronald Reagan commercial from his 1984 campaign, in which a bear symbolizing the Soviet Union threatened an armed American hunter. Both ads have a similar look and feel, and they were both run by Republicans who were trying to make their Democratic opponents look weak. As we survey the developing House, Senate and governors races, we thought it would be fun

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley