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The Surge: Our Book on 2014 & 2016 Is Available for Pre-Order

The Surge, the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ postmortem of the 2014 midterms and preview of the 2016 presidential election, is now available for pre–order. Edited by Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato and Sabato’s Crystal Ball editors Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley and published by Rowman and Littlefield, The Surge: 2014’s Big GOP Win and What It Means for the Next Presidential Election brings together some of the nation’s top political journalists and analysts to explain why and how the Republicans took the Senate and where American politics stands as the country’s polarized political parties gear up for 2016. The contributors and their chapters are: Larry J. Sabato provides an overview of the 2014 election, including a look at historical election patterns and demographic voting trends. Long-time political expert and Crystal Ball Senior Columnist Rhodes Cook explores the 2014 primary season and how those nominating contests influenced the November results. Politico’s James Hohmann and the Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley provide in-depth analysis of, respectively, the Senate, House, and gubernatorial races. Former Federal Election Commission chairman Michael Toner and former FEC staffer Karen Trainer examine the ever-growing pot of money involved in American elections and

UVA Center for Politics

Checking in on 2015’s Gubernatorial Races

Barring a surprise special election, the only statewide contests of note this year will take place in three small southern states that have voted comfortably for Republican presidential candidates in at least the last four elections: Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. While these states are reliably Republican now at the presidential level — Mississippi hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter in 1976, while Kentucky and Louisiana voted for Bill Clinton twice — they, like other Southern states, have long histories of Democratic governors, harkening back to the Democratic “Solid South” era that lasted from the end of Reconstruction (1877) through much of the 20th century. The gubernatorial history of all three of these states since Reconstruction is of course dominated by Democrats, but that history has little value now that the region has trended heavily Republican. Kentucky is an exception in that it is one of the few Southern states to support a Democrat for governor while President Obama has been in the White House: Gov. Steve Beshear (D) won reelection in 2011. If one defines the South as the 11 states of the former Confederacy — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina,

Kyle Kondik

Governors 2016: Republicans to Make Further Gains?

Gubernatorial elections take something of a back seat during the presidential cycle. Over time, as most states moved to having four-year terms for their chief executives, most also opted to have their gubernatorial contests in non-presidential years. Just 11 states will choose governors in 2016, versus the 36 that did in 2014 (New Hampshire and Vermont only have two-year terms, placing them in both cycles). Of course, that doesn’t mean we won’t be following the 2016 contests closely, along with the three states that will hold gubernatorial elections in 2015 (Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi). Map 1 shows our first batch of gubernatorial ratings for the 2015-16 cycle, with discussion below. Map 1: Crystal Ball 2015-16 gubernatorial ratings Coming off of a successful 2014 cycle that saw them win two net governorships, Republicans now hold a 31-18 edge nationally (if we include Peter Shumlin of Vermont in the Democratic total; his situation is discussed below), with one independent in Alaska. The GOP could add further seats during the 2015-16 cycle in part because three red states (Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia) have Democratic incumbents who are term limited, producing open-seat races in places where the GOP may have a natural advantage,

Geoffrey Skelley

What a Drag

U.Va. Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato is contributing a regular column to Politico Magazine. This week, he examines the presidential party’s penalty for holding the White House: losing ground everywhere else. This article originally appeared in Politico Magazine on Dec. 1, 2014. Think of the billions the parties must raise to elect a president in 2016. Consider the millions of paid and volunteer man-hours that will be devoted to this enterprise. The White House is the center of the partisan political universe, and Democrats and Republicans alike measure success or failure by their ability to win and hold the presidency. Instead, maybe they ought to hope they lose. The surest price the winning party will pay is defeat of hundreds of their most promising candidates and officeholders for Senate, House, governorships, and state legislative posts. Every eight-year presidency has emptied the benches for the triumphant party, and recently it has gotten even worse. (By the way, the two recent one-term presidents, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, also cost their parties many lower-level offices, but in both cases this didn’t happen until they were defeated for reelection.) Since World War II there have been eight two-term presidencies: Dwight

Larry J. Sabato

University of Virginia Center for Politics to Host 16th Annual American Democracy Conference

Today, Nov. 20, the University of Virginia Center for Politics will host the 16th annual American Democracy Conference. The conference, which will be held at Alumni Hall on the Grounds of the University of Virginia, will feature panels of leading journalists and political experts focused on the results of the recent midterm elections and the upcoming presidential race. The event, which will begin at 10:30 a.m., is free and open to the public with advance registration, and the press is invited to attend. For more information or to register, please visit http://www.centerforpolitics.org/adc.html. The conference will be livestreamed online at the following link: http://new.livestream.com/tavco/UVA-CenterforPolitics. The panels are: 10:30 a.m. to noon: Panel I: The 2014 midterm Moderator: Larry J. Sabato, director of the U.Va. Center for Politics Panelists: Alan Abramowitz, Sabato’s Crystal Ball senior columnist and Emory University professor Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard Chris LaCivita, Republican political consultant who worked on Sen. Pat Roberts’ (R-KS) successful reelection bid Ali Lapp, executive director of House Majority PAC, a Democratic Super PAC Sean Trende, RealClearPolitics senior election analyst and Sabato’s Crystal Ball senior columnist 12:45 p.m. to 2:15 p.m.: Panel II: What to expect in 2016 Moderator: Geoffrey Skelley,

UVA Center for Politics

What Goes Around Comes Around?

Since President Obama’s reelection victory in 2012, a number of Republican state legislators around the country have proposed altering the electoral vote allocation processes in their respective states. Legislative activity on this front has been most common in competitive states that Obama won but where Republicans control most or all of state government, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Despite some claims to the contrary, a key motivation has surely been to help Republicans win electoral votes in states that have been giving 100% of their share to Democrats. The latest entry to the Electoral College change-a-thon is Michigan, where state Rep. Pete Lund (R) has introduced House Bill 5974 to alter the state’s allocation process. A Republican presidential nominee last won the Wolverine State in 1988, meaning Democrats have claimed all of its electoral votes in six straight presidential elections. Another state where this is the case is Pennsylvania, and early in 2013 the Crystal Ball performed an in-depth analysis of a proportional plan then under consideration in the Keystone State. We would do the same for Michigan, but Crystal Ball friend Josh Putnam of Appalachian State University and the invaluable Frontloading HQ blog beat us to the punch.

Geoffrey Skelley

14 from ’14: Quick Takes on the Midterm

After going over the results from last week, we had a number of bite-sized observations to offer — 14, to be exact: 1. The polls really were worse than usual This cycle featured the largest average miss by the two major poll aggregators, RealClearPolitics and HuffPost Pollster, in recent competitive Senate races. This isn’t a slight toward them — after all, they simply use the data that’s available, and it seems the data may be getting worse. While the median miss has been somewhat up and down, the average has increased relatively consistently cycle-to-cycle. Why? Prior to this cycle, neither average had missed a race by double-digits, but this time at least one average missed the Arkansas, Kansas, and Virginia races by at least 10 points. Below you’ll find the median and average miss per election cycle from 2006-2014 for both major poll averages. Table 1: Median and average miss per election cycle for RealClearPolitics and HuffPost Pollster poll averages, 2006-2014 Chart 1: Median and average miss per election cycle for RealClearPolitics and HuffPost Pollster poll averages, 2006-2014 Notes: 2014 Senate data based on margins as of Wednesday, excludes yet-to-be-determined Louisiana contest. Races included in the analysis are all contests

Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley