Daily Archives
49 posts · Tuesday
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has barred the Des Moines Register from his election night event in Sioux City, the Des Moines Register reports.
Said Jeff King, who is Steve King’s son and a paid staffer of his campaign: “We are not granting credentials to the Des Moines Register or any other leftist propaganda media outlet with no concern for reporting the truth.”
Aaron Blake: “Election night is long — sometimes very long. Sometimes it lingers for weeks or even months. And even longtime analysts like yours truly have a difficult time processing the results of 435 House races and 33-35 Senate races, in real time, to figure out what it all means.”
“One method I’ve always found helpful is to zero in on a few key races — ones that are early in the night, representative of the broader electoral battle, and/or might signal a wave for either party (in this case, the Democrats).”
Here are some of those races: IN-Sen, FL-Sen, KY-6, GA-6, VA-7
Ryan Lizza: “What if the darkest aspects of Trumpism—the racist appeals, the contempt for truth and facts, the assault on the press—not only survive a midterm correction, but are bolstered by it?”
You already know the problem with following the news today: the same story can look very different depending on where you read it — and some stories barely reach you at all because algorithms decide what you see.
That’s why I use and recommend Ground News.
It lets you compare coverage of the same story across the political spectrum, making it easy to see how the framing changes, what gets emphasized and what certain audiences may be missing.
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A county election supervisor in Texas has resigned following an incident in which she was caught on camera screaming at a voter who was reportedly confused about where to vote, KVUE-TV reports.
At one point in the video — which was recorded by another voter — election supervisor and judge Lila Guzman can be heard yelling at the voter to leave: “Get out. Get out. Get out. You are rude. You are not following the law. Go. Go.”
“Long lines and malfunctioning machines marred the first hours of voting in some precincts across the country Tuesday. Some of the biggest problems were in Georgia, a state with a hotly contested gubernatorial election, where some voters reported waiting up to three hours to vote,” the AP reports.
“At a polling place in Snellville, Georgia, more than 100 people took turns sitting in children’s chairs and on the floor as they waited in line for hours. Voting machines at the Gwinnett County precinct did not work, so poll workers offered provisional paper ballots while trying to get a replacement machine.”
Houston Chronicle: “Voters are seeing long lines at multiple polling places across Houston due to technical difficulties.”
New York Times: “Nevada polls recently have shown Dean Heller and the Democratic nominee, Rep. Jacky Rosen, trading off in the lead; Arizona polls have shown a neck-and-neck race between the Democrat, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, and the Republican, Rep. Martha McSally. The mere fact that the Republican Senate candidates haven’t put away the race in those two states has been enough to lead some Democrats to think that Tuesday’s election could lead to a very late night, with the East Coast waiting for the results out West to see who controls the Senate.”
FiveThirtyEight gives Democrats a 19% chance of winning control of the Senate.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said early Tuesday morning that Mike Levin (D), the Democrat candidate running for his seat, is poised to win, The Hill reports.
Said Issa: “Quite frankly, we know the results already. It will be a Democrat representing La Jolla to Solana Beach for the first time in a number of years.”
The Atlantic: “Whatever happens on Tuesday, there’s not much Democrats can do to assume control in Washington. They’re running as a check on Donald Trump’s presidency, playing defense, positioning themselves for the long term, at best. Take the House, and even the Senate, and it’s still about playing to a stalemate.”
“But if results break in their favor on Tuesday, Democrats could take control of state governments that have been in Republican control since 2010 or longer. That year, the GOP picked up six governor seats in what was considered a wave of its own. Democrats are expected to pick up at least that many across the country this year.”
“The result would rework all sorts of state policy, provide a massive injection of talent to the Democratic bench, force pundits to think anew about what the country wants, and through changes to gerrymandering, reshape the next decade in terms of who gets elected to state legislatures and the House.”
Christie Aschwanden: “A 2006 study looking at gubernatorial elections in the U.S. between 1990 and 2005 found that voter turnout increased when the polls were close. Interestingly, people seemed to overestimate the probability of casting a pivotal vote when their candidate had a slight lead. (More evidence that people often misunderstand probabilities.)”
This is a nice note from a Political Wire reader:
I’m a U.S. citizen living abroad, and follow U.S. politics closely. While I read the New York Times, Washington Post, and other news sites every day, the one I turn to first for the latest and best analysis is Political Wire. I visit many times each day, hoping that you’ll have another quote, insight, or link that’ll help me to put things in context. My only complaint is that you don’t update it every time I visit!
Thanks for doing such a great job. I feel good knowing that I’m helping to support you in the great work that you do. You’re a credit to political analysis and the new frontier of online reporting.
And this is amazing:
I ran the New York City marathon yesterday and I’m ashamed to say I checked Political Wire a few times during the race. It’s the best!
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A new Gallup poll finds that Democrats hold an 11-point lead over Republicans in House races among likely voters, 54% to 43%.
Nate Silver: “We’ve frozen our forecasts, the final model runs are whirring away now. And we’ve also frozen our generic ballot average. It wound up at D+8.7. That’s not a good number for Republicans. The Democratic lead ticked up from about 8 percentage points to 9-ish on the last set of polls we entered before freezing everything.”
Brian Beutler: “Trump is a singularly nasty and corrupt individual, but he also embodies something that has been clear about Republican politics for years: Advancing the conservative agenda any further—cutting taxes on the wealthy, slashing public services—requires more and more obfuscation, fewer and fewer voters, and increasingly naked white identity politics.”
“If Donald Trump didn’t exist, Republicans would have had to invent him. Or someone like him. The alternative would have been to moderate the conservative agenda in meaningful ways, and the party has been uncompromising in that regard.”
“By late Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, officials from both parties say we should know whether or not the Democrats have won the House. Until then, everyone is on edge — and the tension is only going to get worse through the long election night,” Mike Allen reports.
“Democrats remain ‘cautiously optimistic,’ one strategist told me, especially ‘after living through 2014 and 2016’ when Democrats had high hopes but suffered major losses. President Trump is sounding the alarm by disputing CNN polls and warning of potential illegal voting.”
Said one national Republican operative: “It’s going to be a bad night in the House.”
Gallup: “More than eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic leaners (81%) say they are very or somewhat worried about what will happen if Republicans maintain control of one or both houses of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections.”
“Alternatively, 66% of Republicans and Republican leaners say they are very or somewhat worried about what will happen if Democrats win one or both houses of Congress.”
First Read: “President Trump and GOP strategists made it all about that base; just see Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh at last night’s rally with Trump in Missouri. But Democrats — especially in the Senate races in red/purples states like Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, Montana and Tennessee — focused their messages on the middle of the electorate.”
“Maybe the best example of this base-versus-middle divide is the 50-50 Senate race in Arizona between Democrat Kyrsten Sinema (whose message was aimed at the middle) and Republican Martha McSally (who was playing more to the Trump base in this traditional GOP state).”
“Be sure to see how independents break in Arizona and nationally. If Democrats are winning them by more than 10 points — our NBC/Marist poll of Arizona had Sinema up more than 20 points among indies — it’s hard to see how they aren’t going to win across the country.”
“In a move that is being decried by several members of the Texas congressional delegation, the U.S. Border Patrol announced Monday that it would be conducting an Election Day crowd control exercise in El Paso, the hometown of Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Beto O’Rourke,” the Texas Monthly reports.
“The exercise will take place next to the Chihuahuita neighborhood, a cluster of about one hundred or so homes along the U.S.-Mexico border that is almost exclusively Hispanic. The exercise is planned to occur within half a mile from at least one designated polling station.“
“One constant of Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency and his two years in power is how behavior that would be not just risky but downright stupid for any normal politician ends up working smartly for him,” Politico reports.
“This is the essence of the Trump Mystique — a three-year record in which he regularly demonstrated that many of the normal precedents, patterns and truisms of American politics simply do not apply to him. This mystique — Is it real or illusion? Is his patented sorcery still working? — is among the big questions being tested in Tuesday’s elections.”
“Trump’s own decisions over the past month have put the issue — whether Trump has defied political gravity or merely delayed its impact — in even sharper relief than it would have been anyway.”
From our friends at the Cook Political Report:
“Follow along on Election Night with this handy guide. Listed are all the 2018 races that we consider competitive or potentially competitive (races in the Likely D/R, Lean D/R and Toss Up columns) sorted by the time polls close (EST).”
The New York Times has a good hour-by-hour guide too.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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