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Tag: senate 2014
Election Forecast: GOP Has 86 Percent Chance Of Taking Back The Senate

Election Forecast: GOP Has 86 Percent Chance Of Taking Back The Senate

The latest Election Lab forecast from The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog has grim news for Democrats: The GOP has an 86 percent chance of taking control of the Senate in November, and Democrats have less than a 1 percent chance of winning a majority in the House of Representatives.

Currently, the Election Lab projects that Republicans will win a 52 to 48 majority, and that Democrats will only win 193 House seats, down from the 199 they currently have.

The election forecast looks at factors such as presidential approval ratings, the state of the economy, partisanship within the states, whether or not an incumbent is running, and how experienced the candidates are. It then compares these factors to how important they were to the outcomes of past races. For Senate races, predictions are based on a combination of the forecast model and current polls.

The blog has always been confident that Republicans would win the Senate, due to President Obama’s low approval, the GOP-friendly electoral map, and the lack of extreme candidates like those who spoiled winnable races for Republicans in 2010 and 2012. There doesn’t appear to be a Todd Akin or Christine O’Donnell on the ballot this year.

Control of the Senate will likely come down to nine states: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Michigan. Republicans probably need to win five of those races to claim a majority. The Election Lab model shows that Republicans have a very good chance of winning Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana. It also predicts that Republican Joni Ernst has more than a 50-50 chance of winning Iowa. Democrats only have a good chance of winning Colorado, Michigan, and North Carolina.

While other forecasters see states like Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana as too close to call, The Monkey Cage‘s John Sides doesn’t think the polls give them any reason to question that the GOP will win them.

The Real Clear Politics poll averages for all four of the key states show the Republican candidates ahead of the Democrats. Though Sides thinks that the Democratic candidates are strong in all of these states, the Election Lab will continue to predict GOP wins unless the Democrats manage to move the polls.

In fact, according to Sides’ model, Republicans are less vulnerable than they were earlier this year. Sides notes that the Kentucky Senate race between Republican senator Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes was tied for the past few months, making the race look like it could go either way. But recent polls have placed McConnell ahead of Grimes, which is why the Election Lab now predicts a Republican win.

Sides thinks there’s still a chance that Democrats could keep their Senate majority, as there are a few months left until November and many of the races remain competitive. But if conditions stay the same as they are today, then Republicans will probably take full control of Congress.

Other models are more optimistic about the Democrats’ chances. The New York Times’ Upshot blog finds that Republicans have a 56 percent chance of taking back the Senate, with the greatest likelihood of Republicans controlling 51 seats and Democrats holding 49. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver predicts a similar outcome, with a 60-40 chance of Republicans occupying 51 seats in the Senate.

Photo: Crazy George via Flickr

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Alaska Tea Party Candidate Says He’ll Back Republican If He Loses Senate Primary

Alaska Tea Party Candidate Says He’ll Back Republican If He Loses Senate Primary

By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times

The final days in the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate offered some only-in-Alaska moments, as when the three major candidates were asked in a debate about whether they’d eaten salmon in the last week.

Tea party candidate Joe Miller: “Yes.”

Front-runner Dan Sullivan: “Yes.”

Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, showing impressive culinary dedication to the Alaska state fish: “Yes, about five times.”

There were nasty national political disputes, one over the mailer Miller sent around depicting undocumented immigrants as menacing gang members. When Treadwell took the 47-year-old lawyer to task, Miller defended his stance, calling the document “the truth” and “real-world stuff.”

But the pivotal moment was one that Republicans worried might never happen. When asked if he would endorse a Republican rival against Democratic Sen. Mark Begich if he loses Tuesday’s primary, Miller finally said that he would.

“I believe I’m going to be the primary winner, with the voters’ and God’s help,” Miller said Thursday during the last televised debate in the race. “But if one of you two guys — I’ve never said this before: I’ll support you guys. I will. We’ve got to get rid of Begich. There’s no question about it.”

Miller has shaken up Republican politics in Alaska before, and the fear was that he would do it again by continuing on as an independent, splitting the conservative vote and allowing incumbent Begich to win.

That fear spoke to the stakes involved as Republicans try to knock off Begich, a first-term senator whose defeat would be critical to Republican hopes of taking over the Senate.

A third-party challenge would have been an odd echo of the last contentious Alaska Senate race, in 2010, in which the father of eight took on incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in that cycle’s primary and beat her. Murkowski then turned around and launched a write-in campaign, and managed to keep her seat.

Many wrote Miller off for dead politically after that loss, and most polls show him a distant third behind Sullivan — who has served as state attorney general and U.S. assistant secretary of state — and Treadwell, largely in that order. He is also third in the race for campaign donations.

But Alaska is a notoriously tricky state to survey accurately, with its vast geography and sparse population. And Miller appears to have been closing the gap with his rivals.

Treadwell and Miller both have emphasized social issues on the campaign trail, even if the three men who would be senator gave nearly identical responses to a survey from Alaska Family Action.
All are in favor of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. All would repeal the federal health-care law. All would overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that recognized the right to abortion.

Treadwell, however, went one step further, noting that the only time abortion should be legal is “in the rare circumstances that the mother and child will die if the pregnancy continues and all other possible means to save the mother and child have been exhausted.”

Photo: Ryan McFarland via Flickr

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DNC Chair: Joni Ernst ‘An Onion Of Crazy’

DNC Chair: Joni Ernst ‘An Onion Of Crazy’

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) appears to be shifting tactics in Iowa, by painting Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst as an unstable extremist.

DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz set the tone at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, calling Ernst “an onion of crazy.”

“I know that this state is known for its wind energy, for corn, for soybeans, but that woman is an onion of crazy,” she said. “I mean, there is no other way for me to describe it, you just can’t make it up. Every time you peel back a layer, you find something more disturbing about her views.”

As evidence, Wasserman Schultz pointed to Ernst’s past comments that President Obama is a “dictator” who should be impeached or removed from office, and that she still believes “there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

Ernst has tried to walk back both statements, but they are just two on a long list of “crazy” remarks.

She’s also come out against the United Nations’ Agenda 21, which is a voluntarily implemented plan that seeks to promote sustainable development. Ernst erroneously sees it as an evil, foreign force that will abolish all property rights.

And she infamously threatened to “castrate” members of Congress who don’t reduce spending, and released a campaign ad featuring her shooting a handgun at Obamacare.

“When you have a candidate for the United States Senate who was endorsed by Sarah Palin, that should say it all right there,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Do we need a United States senator who’s just going to be a carbon copy of Sarah Palin? I don’t think so.”

The DSCC followed her lead, releasing a video on Monday comparing Ernst to Palin.

“Joni Ernst would be another Tea Party vote in the Senate,” says the ad’s narrator. “Palin. Ernst. Too extreme for Iowa.”

The new rhetoric represents an escalation by Democrats, who previously focused more on her political positions. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA), who is running against Ernst in the general election and whom Wasserman Schultz called “a voice of reason and moderation and leadership,” is running ads emphasizing that Ernst is too “extreme” for Iowa and that her “Tea Party ideas are out of step with Iowa families.” These ideas include getting rid of the federal minimum wage and wanting to privatize Social Security.

Ernst is more than holding her own in this race, however. She, along with her Republican supporters, have tried to paint Braley as “out of touch” for expressing concern that Republican Chuck Grassley could become the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee even though “he was a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.”

The Real Clear Politicspoll average has Ernst ahead by 0.8 points.

Photo: Monica de Argentina via Flickr

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