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Notes on state of pol

Sabato's Crystal Ball

NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS

Exit Bachmann Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R, MN-6) decision not to seek a fifth term in the U.S. House makes it likelier that Republicans will hold her heavily Republican district. So we’re switching the rating in MN-6 from “leans Republican” to “likely Republican.” Yes, it’s odd to argue that a party is better served by an incumbent retiring rather than running for another term in an institution where more than nine in 10 members who run for reelection are reelected, but Bachmann is no ordinary incumbent. The suburban Twin Cities Republican has always been controversial, and her image as the “Queen of the Tea Party” (as dubbed by the Weekly Standard) has proven to be a liability even in MN-6, the most Republican district in Minnesota. Only four Republican members of the House ran further behind Mitt Romney in their districts in 2012: three freshmen members and two-term Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R, TN-4), another incumbent with problems. Bachmann barely won reelection last year against wealthy Democratic businessman Jim Graves in 2012, and she was in for a tough rematch this time, particularly because she now has ethical and legal questions to go along with her highly polarizing image. Perhaps Republicans will

UVA Center for Politics

Notes on the State of Politics

2016 Presidential Update: The newest shiny object Last week, intense speculation centered on freshman Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) possible presidential aspirations. The revelation has prompted all sorts of reactions, including a positive one from the unlikeliest of sources. While some have asked questions about his constitutional eligibility to run for the highest office in the land, Cruz’s strong conservative appeal could very well make him a force in the next presidential race. For that reason, he deserves a place on our list of 2016 GOP hopefuls, though he starts near the bottom. In some ways, the rise of someone like Cruz into the Republican presidential discussion is unsurprising. Cruz is the newest shiny object for Tea Party members and constitutional conservatives in the GOP, supplementing those who prefer Rand Paul or Marco Rubio (though the shine is off Rubio because he favors immigration reform). It is a reminder that in the next three years, even newer, shinier objects may come to the fore. For example, if Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) wins the state’s governorship this November, it is an easy prediction that he will consider a presidential run, with strong backing from his intense supporters. Barack Obama’s promotion

UVA Center for Politics

Notes on the State of Politics

The Little Things Matter Many politicians may not want to admit it, but much of political success is built on timing and luck. In what is probably going to be a close election on Nov. 6, every small turn of fortune for each candidate could serve as the little push that puts one over the top on Election Day. Looking back at some recent events, who appears to be the luckier candidate at the moment, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? A federal judge ruled that Ohio must allow in-person voting on the weekend before the presidential election. Although the ruling is being appealed, 93,000 votes were cast during this period in 2008, and it’s believed to be worth tens of thousands of votes to Obama. Conservative ex-Rep. Virgil Goode has qualified for ballot access in Virginia as the Constitution Party candidate, potentially siphoning off some votes from Romney in Goode’s home state. Some Republican electors who support Ron Paul have threatened to withhold their electoral votes from Romney. A judicial panel ruled that Nevada can keep its “None of the above” ballot option, much to the chagrin of Republicans who didn’t want another voting option for voters who disapprove of

Geoffrey Skelley

Notes on the State of Politics: Recapping Wisconsin

Walker’s Wisconsin win not necessarily a harbinger As soon as the recall of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) was finalized in mid-March, the Crystal Ball made Walker a favorite, giving the race a rating of leans Republican. We upgraded his chances roughly two weeks ago to likely Republican, and he ended up winning by a relatively comfortable seven-point margin. Walker led in all recent public polling, and we also sensed that a critical Democratic/Independent slice of the state’s electorate was sick of the constant turmoil caused by recall mania over the past year and a half. As exit polling indicated, many voters viewed recall as a remedy only to be used for official misconduct in office, not to be employed for simple disagreement with an elected official’s policy choices. These voters made the difference for Scott Walker, and they are not necessarily available to Mitt Romney. Wisconsin may or may not turn into a swing state this year — that’s yet to be determined — but the presidential contest will be run under different conditions with two candidates not named Walker and Tom Barrett (the latter having been, for a second time, a second-rate contender). There are five months to go

UVA Center for Politics

NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS

How Santorum can win by losing April 3 was a one-two punch in favor of Mitt Romney. Wisconsin was Rick Santorum’s last, best chance to slow Romney’s inevitability train. And the Tuesday engine pulling the Romney train, oddly enough, was driven by Barack Obama. In front of America’s newspaper editors, he all but declared his November opponent to be Romney. No, Obama didn’t name Mitt because he feared Rick. The president simply accepted reality. Whether and when Santorum accepts reality is another question. He deserves full credit for making the most of very little money and overcoming a 17% reelection loss to emerge as the strongest anti-Romney candidate. Santorum has earned another run in 2016 or 2020. But it is three long weeks until the next set of primaries. He is guaranteed to lose four of five contests on that day, and he may even lose Pennsylvania — a potentially crippling embarrassment for his future plans. Santorum has no real chance to stop Romney and may squander the admiration he has won in the GOP base. It is an easy choice for Santorum, if he thinks about it in the campaign lull to come. Yes, Santorum can win some May primaries in favorable territory, but

UVA Center for Politics

Notes on the State of Politics

So much for that anti-incumbent wave Last week’s primary loss by Rep. Jean Schmidt, a southwest Ohio Republican, ginned up curiosity in Tuesday night’s congressional primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, where several House incumbents were supposedly in danger of losing their primaries. That list included powerful House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R) of Alabama. That said, all 11 House incumbents in Mississippi and Alabama (nine Republicans and two Democrats) were renominated on Tuesday, and none of their races was particularly close. Even in a time of widespread discontent with Congress, it’s unwise at this point to predict that many House incumbents will fail to be renominated by their own parties. In the post-World War II era, 1992 featured the greatest number of House incumbents defeated in primaries: 19 out of 368 members who sought reelection to the House lost in a primary. In other words, even in a supposedly bad year for incumbents, primary voters in 95% of contests that year were happy to give their incumbents a shot at another term. And that was a redistricting year, just like this year, which always complicates House elections because of map changes and added or subtracted seats. Will more

UVA Center for Politics

NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS

Crystal Ball flashback: What fuels presidential approval? With increasing gas prices again dominating the national news — stories about prices at the pump led network news broadcasts on Tuesday night — we wanted to remind readers of a piece we published last year about gas prices and their effect on presidential approval. Former Crystal Ball staffer Isaac Wood, now a student at the University of Virginia School of Law, took a look at the question and came to the following conclusion: On the one hand, it is clearly true that high gas prices often coincide with lower presidential approval ratings. As political scientists have long demonstrated, these approval ratings are a strong indicator of a president’s reelection chances. As we have seen, though, gas prices alone certainly are not a perfect predictor of approval ratings or, indirectly, reelection. While continually rising gas prices would likely weaken Obama’s reelection standing, it would be just one of many factors voters consider when evaluating his first term. To read the full article, click here. — The Editors Correction on presidents and their home states Last week’s Crystal Ball contained an error about the number of presidents who won the presidency without winning their

UVA Center for Politics

Notes on the State of Politics

Modern Cabinets: No “Team of Rivals” With Mitt Romney leading in the Republican nomination battle, there has been talk of what kind of roles the other GOP candidates might occupy in a hypothetical Romney administration. Naturally, the first position discussed is vice president, but there has also been talk of Cabinet appointments, and it is certainly possible that some of Romney’s foes would make plausible candidates. However, recent history tells us that incoming presidents do not typically appoint their former rivals for the nomination. Many incoming presidents have surely reacted skeptically to the idea of bringing in individuals who had so recently opposed them; perhaps they even responded as Barbara Walters did when she heard Herman Cain state that he would hypothetically be open to taking the secretary of defense position. If we look at presidential Cabinets from 1960 to now, we found only four Cabinet appointments by incoming presidents that came from the intraparty competition. First, in 1968, George Romney (Mitt’s father) ran an abortive campaign for the GOP nomination, and ended up becoming Richard Nixon’s first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Nixon also appointed Massachusetts Gov. John A. Volpe as transportation secretary, but Volpe’s presidential campaign

UVA Center for Politics

Notes on the State of Politics

Ben Nelson and the Senate calculus Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) decision to retire makes a Republican takeover of the Senate a little more likely, but just a little more. It does not dramatically change the Senate landscape. Why? Because Nelson could easily have lost if he ran again. Still, out of deference to the powers of incumbency, we had previously kept Nebraska as a toss up. Now that Nelson has retired, we have switched our rating in this race to LIKELY REPUBLICAN, and that could become “safe” eventually. It appears that the only big-name Democrat who could make this a race is former Sen. Bob Kerrey, but we’ll be surprised if he runs. Apparently, the remaining Democratic bench consists of various mayors and state legislators who would have a steep uphill climb to victory. In any event, the Republican nominee for president is likely to get 60% or more of the vote in Nebraska, which will make it very difficult for the Democratic candidate. This is a polarized, highly partisan era, very different than the one that nurtured such Nebraska Democratic U.S. senators as Kerrey, Nelson, Jim Exon and Ed Zorinsky. In 2000 Nelson won a Senate squeaker despite George

UVA Center for Politics

Notes on the state of politics

Primary date musical chairs With all of the uncertainty surrounding the Republican presidential primary battle as we approach Iowa, at least the schedule for primaries and caucuses is set in stone, right? Guess again. It turns out that even the calendar is keeping us on our toes this campaign cycle. Ohio and Texas, two major states with a large number of delegates — Ohio with 66, and Texas with 155 — have shifted their primaries to new dates. On Dec. 15, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio signed off on moving the Ohio primary to Super Tuesday (March 6) from its previous position on June 12. This move was part of a larger bill that finished redistricting and ensures that Ohio will hold only one primary for all its races, not two (saving the state $15 million). Now that it’s a part of Super Tuesday, Ohio likely will have a better chance of influencing the race for the GOP nomination. Meanwhile, the Lone Star State had to shift its primary from Super Tuesday back to April 3 because of ongoing drama over its congressional redistricting. After Texas Republicans drew a new map to account for the state’s four new districts, the

UVA Center for Politics

Notes on the State of Politics

Gingrich grabs lead in Hawkeye State Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, also a former college history professor, has written a number of alternate history novels. But the plots of his re-imaginations of World War II and the Civil War would pale in comparison to the potentially very real story of his comeback from Republican afterthought to possible Republican presidential nominee. A Des Moines Register poll released over the weekend shows Gingrich leading the GOP field in Iowa with 25%. His next closest competitors are Rep. Ron Paul at 18% and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 16 percent. This number represents a huge gain for the former speaker, as the last poll, released on Oct. 29, had him in fifth place with 7%. Poll after poll released this week has shown him solidifying his Iowa lead. With less than a month before the Iowa caucus on Jan. 3, the poll seems to send a clear message.  A closer look at the data reveals some interesting numbers, though. Despite the highly positive numbers for Gingrich, 60% of those polled stated that they might switch their support to an alternate candidate, while 11% remain undecided. Even more remarkable is that

UVA Center for Politics

NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS

Tomblin survives in West Virginia Give West Virginia’s acting governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, some credit: He fought off a spirited effort from a stronger-than expected challenger and the powerful Republican Governors Association to win the right to remove “acting” from his title. Tomblin, a career Mountain State Democratic legislator, defeated Republican businessman Bill Maloney by about 2.5 percentage points in Tuesday’s West Virginia gubernatorial special election. Maloney beat Tomblin in two of the state’s three congressional districts, but Tomblin carried the Third District (in the southern part of the state) by more than 20 points, according to Bloomberg congressional race guru Greg Giroux. That’s good news for that district’s long-time Democratic incumbent, Rep. Nick Rahall, although Maloney’s win in the First District — held by the narrowly-elected freshman Rep. David McKinley (R) — might be another indicator that that district is trending away from Democrats. This race could be repeated next year, when Tomblin will try to win a full term and Maloney, emboldened by his strong showing, might try for a rematch. We also don’t know if Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-WV and daughter of former Gov. Arch Moore, will toss her hat in the ring. Meanwhile, Sen. Joe

UVA Center for Politics

NOTES ON THE STATE OF POLITICS

Too Late for Christie, Palin? While New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has denied that he will enter the Republican presidential primary field, many political insiders continue to buzz over this possibility — especially after his Tuesday night speech at the Reagan Presidential Library. Those close to him — including his own brother, Todd — have clearly stated their doubts that Gov. Christie will run. The possibility remains, however, that Christie will dispel these doubts and join the field.  Either way, though, the governor of the Garden State is inching closer to primary filing deadlines that could effectively keep him out of the running. The filing deadline for the Utah primary, Oct. 15, is fast approaching. While a potential Christie campaign would most likely not suffer from missing this contest, his staff will have to be mindful of the next deadline: Florida. Failing to file by the Oct. 31 deadline in the Sunshine State would almost certainly derail any chance that Christie would have at grabbing the Republican nomination. As the New York Times recently reported, these deadlines will similarly affect Sarah Palin and her decision to join the Republican field. Candidates such as Gov. Rick Perry have certainly been able to enter the race

UVA Center for Politics