Karl Rove joked that he is no longer suicidal after the November election — he’s merely despondent, KFDI reports.

Rove acknowledged the Republican party “is splintered because of intolerant and judgmental language and an unwillingness to acknowledge differences. He said the party needs to find the right language to talk about the
issues without being judgmental or harsh, and it needs to have leaders
who can create that kind of environment.”

He also called his Crossroads group the “worst volunteer job” he’s had his entire life.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Illinois finds that if Gov. Pat Quinn (D) is the Democratic nominee for governor in 2014 Democrats may have a hard time holding onto the office. His approval rate is a deadly 25% to 64%.

But Quinn may never make it to the general election. In a hypothetical primary match up against Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D), Quinn trails by 64% to 20%. Against Bill Daley (D), Quinn trails 37% to 34%.

The public forum of campaign managers to recap the 2012 presidential election at Harvard last night was canceled due to a major power outage, the Boston Globe reports.

However, I attended the off-the-record sessions on Wednesday and Thursday and will have quite a bit to report once I’m allowed.

The New Republic obtained the final internal polling numbers from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign for six key states, along with
additional breakdowns of the data, which were prepared by the
campaign’s chief pollster, Neil Newhouse.

“The first thing you notice is that New Hampshire and Colorado are pretty
far off the mark. In New Hampshire, the final internal polling average
has Romney up 3.5 points, whereas he lost by 5.6. In Colorado, the final
internal polling average has Romney up 2.5 points; he lost by 5.4… The Iowa number is also questionable, showing the
race tied even though Romney ended up losing by almost 6 points.”

“Together, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Iowa go most of the way toward
explaining why the Romney campaign believed it was so well-positioned. When combined with North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia–the trio of
states the Romney campaign assumed were largely in the bag–Romney would
bank 267 electoral votes, only three shy of the magic number.”

Texas Sen.-elect Ted Cruz (R-TX) advised the Republican Party to rebrand itself under a banner of “Opportunity Conservatism” during a sweeping speech that will only stoke speculation about a 2016 presidential run, Politico reports.

Said Cruz: “Why did we lose? It wasn’t as the media would tell you: because the American people embraced big government, Barack Obama’s spending and debt and taxes… That wasn’t what happened. I’m going to suggest to you a very simple reason why we lost the election: We didn’t win the argument. We didn’t even make the argument.”

First Read: “We’ve seen plenty of new senators come in with plenty of hype and
attention (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Marco Rubio), but those worked
hard to keep expectations down. This is something else entirely.”

According to a statistical method that ranks candidates by ideology, Harry Enten notes New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) “simply doesn’t have that liberal allure” that Hillary Clinton or other popular Democrats mentioned as possible presidential candidates in 2016.

“If these numbers are to believed, the possible 2016 roster of candidates will position Cuomo and Warner as ideologically conservative Democrats, Biden and O’Malley as moderate Democrats, Clinton, Patrick, and Schweitzer as liberal Democrats, and Warren as a very liberal Democrat.”

A new Public Policy Polling survey in New Jersey finds that if Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) was to retire — or even if he doesn’t — Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) has a clear shot at the seat.

Key findings: By a 59% to 22% margin Democrats say they would prefer their candidate in 2014 be Booker than Lautenberg. And Booker emerges as the strong favorite in an open seat situation too. 48% would want Booker as their candidate compared to 17% for Rob Andrews and 13% for Frank Pallone, both Congressmen who have shown an interest in moving up.

As the votes keep coming in, David Wasserman notes President Obama’s national lead over Mitt Romney is now 50.9% to 47.4%.

First Read: “That’s a bigger (and more decisive) margin that Bush’s victory over John Kerry in 2004 (which was Bush 50.7% and Kerry 48.2%). What’s more, the president’s lead has grown to close to 3 points in Ohio, 4 points in Virginia and 6 points in Colorado. One doesn’t win Colorado by six points without winning swing voters; there isn’t a big-enough Democratic base to make that argument.”

Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC) finally won his congressional race, “earning a razor-thin victory over his Republican challenger after a machine recount produced hardly any change in the margin,” the AP reports.

The 113th Congress will be represented by 201 Democrats and 234 Republicans. Democrats entered the 2012 elections holding 190 House seats — but due to vacancies in three Democrat-held seats, they gained eight seats overall.