“Congress is filled with a bunch of losers, but not exactly in the way you’re thinking,” Nathan Gonzales writes.
“In the wake of the elections, it’s easy to second-guess losing candidates and their campaigns, and to discount their chances of ever winning a seat in Congress. But at least 27 incoming House members have electoral losses on their records — more than 40 percent of the new class — and many of them lost contests for the same seat they will represent in the 114th Congress.”
A new JMC Analytics and Polling survey in Louisiana’s 6th congressional district finds Rep. Garret Graves (R) with a hefty lead over challenger and former Gov. Edwin Edwards (D), 61% to 35%.
“That lines up fairly well with the results of the Nov. 4 primary, where Graves finished second but split the vote with three other significant Republican candidates. About 65 percent of voters in the primary voted for Republicans, while 35 percent voted for Democrats.”
[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]It’s been 31 years since Edwards bragged, “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.” [/speech_bubble]
A new Rassmussen survey in Louisiana finds Bill Cassidy (R) leads Sen. Mary Landriue (D) by 15 points in their U.S. Senate runoff, 56% to 41%.
[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]It’s increasingly hard to see how the passage of the Keystone XL pipeline bill was ever going to save Landrieu.[/speech_bubble]
“My gosh, the president of the United States calls you and you’re going to say ‘No,’? The president of the United States calls and asks for your time, I think generally you should find a way to do it.”
— Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), quoted by the Wall Street Journal, criticizing defeated Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO).
National Journal: “Like other newly elected members of Congress, Reps. Frank Guinta of New Hampshire and Robert Dold of Illinois have come to Washington early this month for orientation. But the litany of instructions for setting up a new congressional office may be less dizzying for the pair of Republicans—they’re freshmen for the second time.”
“Both Guinta and Dold first came to Washington after the 2010 elections as part of the Republican class that took back the House of Representatives that year. But they lost their reelection attempts in 2012 before launching successful comebacks in 2014, effectively riding two Republican waves into office.”
[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]And there’s a good chance they could lose again in 2016.[/speech_bubble]
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 76% of Americans say the midterm election won’t substantially change the nation’s direction.
Also interesting: Americans are split almost evenly between positive (41%) and negative (39%) reactions to Republicans controlling both the House and Senate next year.
Said pollster Fred Yang: “While this wave election has changed the composition of Congress and added Republican governors, it has not changed the nation’s psyche or their expectations… It is almost like the election never happened.”
A new Vox Populi Polling survey in Louisiana finds Bill Cassidy (R) way ahead of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) in their U.S. Senate runoff, 53% to 42%.
David Wasserman: “The answer lies less in what Republicans did, and more in what Democratic voters didn’t do: show up to vote in so-called orphan states.”
“To ease my post-election withdrawal, I built a spreadsheet of results in all 435 districts to analyze what happened. What it illustrated: By winning just 52 percent of votes cast for the House, Republicans were able to win 57 percent of all House seats. Thanks in part to favorable redistricting after the 2010 Census, Republicans will likely have won five more seats than they did in 2010, even though Republican candidates won by less of an aggregate vote margin than they did four years ago.”
“The election of a historically large Republican majority coincided with the lowest turnout in a midterm election since 1942. But the 2014 race for the House played out in two very different sets of states. In the 24 states hosting high-profile, competitive Senate or gubernatorial races, raw votes cast in House races were down an average of 30.5 percent from 2012.2 But in the 26 states that weren’t, raw votes were down a much more severe 43.9 percent.”
[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]This is exceptionally good analysis of what happened in the midterm elections.[/speech_bubble]
“I was never going to run away from the president. It was not even in consideration. I support the president. I think the president has been right. I mean, look at the numbers, look at the job growth, sustained job growth—the greatest in American history. The. Greatest. In. American. History. Why didn’t people run on that?”
— Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D), quoted by the Daily Beast, on why he was one of the few Democrats who survived the 2014 midterm elections.
Former Gov. Mike Dukakis (D) talked to U.S. News about the 2014 midterm elections: “The worst thing, obviously, was this gal from Kentucky, who wouldn’t tell you who she voted for. God. You can’t do that.”
Nathan Gonzales: “There’s plenty of discussion about the difference between midterm and presidential electorates, but there is one emerging constant: the white evangelical vote.”
“In the recent midterm elections, white evangelicals or born-again Christians made up 26 percent of the electorate and voted for Republican candidates 78 percent to 20 percent, according to the National Exit Poll. Two years before in the 2012 presidential election, white evangelicals made up 26 percent of the electorate and voted for Republican Mitt Romney 78 percent to 21 percent over President Barack Obama. And in 2010, white evangelicals made up 25 percent of the electorate and voted for Republican candidates 77 percent to 19 percent.”
Alaska Dispatch News: “After holding on to dwindling hope for days, Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) on Monday conceded he had lost his U.S. Senate race to Republican Dan Sullivan. With the concession coming nearly two weeks after the Nov. 4 general election and with few votes left to count, the statement was largely a formality.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) “is set to arrive in Florida on Tuesday to wrap up his yearlong job as Republican Governors Association chairman, a position that brought national visibility to the potential 2016 contender,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The conference comes on the heels of Republicans picking up four gubernatorial seats in a particularly strong showing during the midterm elections. The GOP now controls 31 governor’s seats, a high last reached in 1998.”
A new Gravis Marketing poll in Louisiana finds Bill Cassidy (R) leading Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) by 21 points in their U.S. Senate runoff, 59% to 38%.
“Less than two weeks after winning a fourth term,” California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) “plans to collect more money for his reelection committee Monday at a Sacramento reception with lobbyists and their clients,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“The event is unusual. Typically, candidates who continue to raise money after being elected do so to retire campaign debt. But Brown, who coasted to reelection, appears to have none to repay. As of Oct. 18, the governor still had nearly $21 million in his reelection account, according to the committee’s most recent finance statement.”
A new Magellan Strategies poll in Louisiana finds Bill Cassidy (R) crushing Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) in their runoff race for U.S. Senate, 57% to 41%.
“The president has got to learn that he lost this last election round. The American people spoke loud and clear.”
— Mitt Romney, quoted by The Hill, saying President Obama should not be using executive actions to advance his policy agenda.
‘There was a collapse of the youth vote. The African-American vote held fairly steady and was remarkable… we had a little bit of a loss of the Hispanic vote perhaps because the president didn’t sign an order on executive action on immigration reform.”
— Bill Clinton, quoted by Politico, on the results of the 2014 midterm elections.
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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