Conservative Badlands

Seeing What You Want to See

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:27:00 +0000

Everyone is guilty of this at one time or another. Amongst political junkies it shows as the tendency to cherry pick data that seems to support one's own political point of view. What is even worse than seeing what you want to see is believing what the other side wants you to believe. The Democrats did that at first after Scott Brown got elected. They promptly saw that voting for the health care bill was the political kiss of death, which it was and still is in many districts. They eventually convinced themselves that they were believing what the Republicans wanted them to believe and pushed it through anyway.

On the other hand, the Republicans to this very day are still believing what the Democrats want them to believe. What is more Republicans have been conned into believing that most of the Democrat held seats in the House are "safe" or are at least only marginally vulnerable and so there is no point in seriously contesting any but a few of them. That is absolute bull crappy. Why do Republicans buy into this nonsense? They point to the projections of so-called "experts" as proof that this is true. We hate to tell Republicans this but most of those "experts" are Democrats and their "projections" show their bias big time.

Let's take the case of what will happen in the House of Representatives in the November elections. Even some of the most biased Democrats admit that they will lose a "few" seats in the House. So how many is a few and which seats are we talking about? Since 2008 was a presidential election and 2010 is a midterm election the Democrat turnout will be lower as it always is in midterm elections. When there is a Democrat president, this favoring of the Republicans is strengthened. To see what might happen in 2010, we need to look at a previous midterm election. 2006 was a banner Democrat year and this is not shaping up to be another banner Democrat year.

The 2002 election would appear to be more like we can expect in this election so let's see what the 2002 election tells us. We have arranged the table at the bottom of this article in order by descending Democrat results. That means that Democrat seats that were held by a Republican in 2002 will be a minus figure. In cases where there was no opposition by a major party, we have used the result from the closest year to 2002 where there was opposition. To the table we have added poll results, Obama's margin, the health care vote on 3/21 and ratings by four analysts plus our own.

One thing stands out immediately and that is a forest of the letter "D" in the races carried by Republicans by the widest margins in 2002 even when poll results show the Republican candidate ahead now. How can this be? The short answer is that these projections are highly suspect. Take OH-16 for an example which had a Republican incumbent from 1950 through 2006 and where Rep. Boccieri won with a 10.73% margin in 2008. Obama lost the district by 2.61% and a poll taken 3 days before the health care vote on March 21st shows any Republican candidate ahead of any Democratic candidate by 11 points.

In addition, the poll asks specifically what the respondents would do if "the Republican candidate proposes repealing and overturning the health care reform bill AND Congressman John Boccieri, votes to pass the health care reform bill." By a margin of 53% to 40%, the respondents would vote for the Republican. Rep. Boccieri did vote for the bill and yet this district is rated from leans D to likely D by four different analysts. Why would you believe any of them after that? Isn't our own rating of leans R a tad more realistic? Only Real Clear Politics has ratings that have any validity. At least they think the Republicans will pick up 18 seats with a good chance at 29 more.

If this were the only case then we could say this was just a mistake. Look at NY-20, PA-4 and IL-11 where the Republicans are up from 6 to 9 points in the polls but the other analysts say these seats will likely go Democrat. Look at VA-11 and NV-3 where the Republicans are up 5 points in the polls. Yet only Real Clear Politics sees these two as toss-ups. The other three give the edge to the Democrats by a little or a lot. Stop believing what the experts want you to believe and look at the results of the previous elections if you want to see what will happen in November.

Take NY-27 as another example. Yes, Rep. Higgins was unopposed by a Republican in 2008 and won by a whopping 58.54% margin in 2006. But his margin was only 1.33% in 2004 and the district had a Republican incumbent from 1982 to 2002 including a 41.57% margin in 2002. This is not to say that the Republicans can win this district but to say that it definitely will go Democrat and it is not even in play is another thing entirely. Republicans believe nonsense like this to the point of not even fielding a candidate against Rep. Higgins this year.

There are 13 districts in New York that the Republicans have a chance at winning and yet in three districts (21, 27 and 28), they are letting the Democrat run opposed. Why are Reps. Tonko, Higgins and Slaughter getting a free ride? Rep. Tonko is a freshman and this is not going to be a 2008 type year so his 27% margin does not mean much when Obama is not on the ballot and helping him with an 18.14% margin. Rep. Slaughter only had a 16.57% margin in 1994 so why let her run unopposed? Why do Republicans buy into letting Democrats win by default?

This is not 2006 or 2008. It is not even 2002 but going to be much more like 1994 and perhaps even more so. Republicans need to stop being defeatist. Unless both the Democrat incumbent and Obama won by more than a 30% margin, the district is a possibility. We list 137 districts as being in play unlike all the other analysts. Scott Brown won in the most Democrat state in the union so we know it can be done. Of course the Republicans will not win any 137 seats but surely half of them is not an unreasonable expectation.

Tomorrow there is an election in Florida for Congress. Did you even know that? Is anyone paying any attention? No, because everyone just assumes that the Democrat will win because the Democrats have won in that district since it was created in 1982. Well, hello, this is an OPEN seat. Look at the bottom of the table where you see a lot of the letter "R" in otherwise hopeless districts. At least we have a Republican running in FL-19. Ed Lynch has gotten no support and little money when he had a chance of winning. The best that the Republicans have ever done in this district was 41.15% of the votes. We predict that Ed Lynch will do better than that with no support. With the kind of support Scott Brown got, he could have won.

SEAT
02 MAR
OBAMA
08 MAR HCV POLL OURS
CQ POL COOK
ROTHBRG
RCP

LA-3
-73.36%
-23.96%
14.72% Open
Likely R
Leans R
Likely R
Leans R
Likely R

GA-8 -56.66% -13.36% 14.49% No
R toss-up Likely D Likely D D favored Likely D

NY-25 -45.65% 13.12% 12.94% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

NY-27 -41.57% 10.16% 58.54% Yes
R toss-up Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

WI-8 -40.32% 8.47% 8.10% Yes
Leans R Leans D Leans D D favored Safe D

AL-2 -39.23% -27.37% -39.23% No D +24 Likely R Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Toss-up

OH-16 -37.74% -2.61% 10.73% Yes R +11 Leans R Likely D Leans D D favored Leans D

MD-1 -37.69% -18.45% 0.79% No R +13 Likely R Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Leans R

IL-14 -37.26% 11.06% 15.50% Yes R +1 R toss-up Leans D Leans D Safe D Toss-up

CO-3 -34.53% -2.54% 23.23% Yes D +2 Leans R Likely D Leans D D favored Toss-up

NY-19 -33.47% 2.28% 17.35% Yes
R toss-up Leans D Leans D Leans D Toss-up

OH-15 -33.18% 7.12% 0.76% Yes
Likely R Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Toss-up

OH-18 -32.33% -7.86% 19.75% No
D toss-up Leans D Leans D D favored Toss-up

PA-7 -32.18% 12.64% 19.19% Open
D toss-up D toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Leans R

NY-20 -32.13% 3.00% 0.45% Yes R +9 Likely R Likely D Likely D D favored Leans D

MS-1 -31.99% -23.54% 10.59% No
R toss-up Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Toss-up

NJ-3 -31.10% 5.38% 3.31% No
Leans R Leans D Leans D D favored Likely D

FL-8 -30.27% 5.70% 4.03% Yes
Leans R Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Leans R

AZ-8 -29.74% -5.94% 11.90% Yes
Leans R Likely D Leans D D favored Toss-up

OH-1 -29.60% 10.25% 4.94% Yes R +17 Leans R Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Leans R

PA-4 -29.11% -10.45% 11.72% No R +9 R toss-up Likely D Likely D D favored Leans D

CT-4 -28.86% 20.06% 3.97% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Leans D

IL-11 -28.64% 8.18% 23.92% Yes R +6 R toss-up Likely D Leans D Safe D Leans D

VA-5 -26.99% -2.31% 0.23% Yes Tied Likely R Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Toss-up

MN-1 -26.100% 4.37% 29.57% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

NY-23 -26.29% 5.22% 2.37% Yes
Leans R Leans D Leans D Leans D Toss-up

PA-8 -25.19% 8.93% 15.14% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Leans D D favored Toss-up

AZ-5 -24.92% -4.53% 9.58% Yes
Leans R Leans D Leans D D favored Toss-up

FL-24 -23.68% -1.95% 16.09% Yes
R toss-up Toss-up Leans D D toss-up Toss-up

NY-24 -23.02% 2.36% 3.94% No
Leans R Leans D Leans D Leans D Toss-up

FL-22 -22.41% 4.04% 9.34% Yes
R toss-up Safe D Likely D Safe D Likely D

VA-11 -22.06% 14.96% 11.64% Yes R+5 R toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Toss-up

MI-7 -21.04% 5.23% 2.31% Yes R +10 Leans R Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Leans R

CA-11 -20.63% 9.33% 10.55% Yes
R toss-up Leans D Leans D D favored Leans D

PA-3 -20.16% -27 votes 2.47% Yes
Likely R Leans D Likely D Safe D Leans D

NH-1 -19.64% 6.21% 5.89% Yes R +10 Leans R Leans D D toss-up Toss-up Leans R

ID-1 -19.63% -25.94% 1.21% No
Likely R Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Toss-up

NV-3 -18.81% 12.76% 5.14% Yes R +5 Leans R Leans D D toss-up Leans D Toss-up

MI-9 -18.22% 12.96% 9.45% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

KY-6 -18.02% -12.19% 29.32% No
D toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

NY-13 -17.99% -1.82% 27.63% No
Likely D Likely D Leans D D favored Toss-up

NH-2 -15.95% 13.09% 15.01% Open R +7 R toss-up Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Leans R

IL-8 -14.86% 12.88% 21.44% Yes Tied R toss-up Safe D Likely D Safe D Likely D

IA-1 -14.51% 17.52% 29.19% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Likely D Safe D Likely D

CO-4 -13.27% -0.88% 12.39% Yes
R toss-up Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Toss-up

NC-11 -12.69% -5.62% 26.13% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

NM-2 -12.51% -1.33% 11.92% No R +2 R toss-up Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Leans R

CT-5 -10.99% 13.94% 20.17% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Likely D D favored Likely D

NM-1 -10.68% 20.43% 11.31% Yes D +9 D toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Toss-up

GA-12 -10.38% 8.84% 32.00 No
Leans R Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

VA-2 -10.25% 1.96% 4.94% No
R toss-up Leans D D toss-up D toss-up Toss-up

NY-29 -9.86% -2.22% 1.93% Open
Leans R Toss-up Leans R Toss-up Leans R

NC-8 -9.00% 5.88% 10.76% No D +16 D toss-up Leans D Likely D D favored Likely D

CT-2 -8.18% 18.41% 33.40% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

SD-AL -7.83% -8.41% 35.11% No D +2 R toss-up Likely D Likely D D favored Leans D

IA-2 -6.45% 21.61% 18.42% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

IN-8 -5.28% 3.90% 29.50% Yes R +10 Leans R Toss-up Leans R Toss-up Leans R

PA-10 -5.16% -8.43% 12.66% Yes
Leans R Leans D Leans D D favored Leans D

IN-2 -4.68% 9.38% 36.86% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

TX-23 -4.32% 2.69% 13.84% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

AZ-1 -3.57% -10.17% 16.45% Yes
R toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Leans D

KY-3 -3.22% 12.30% 18.73% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Likely D Safe D Likely D

CO-7 -0.07% 19.07% 26.96% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Likely D Safe D Likely D

UT-2 0.73% -18.17% 26.88% No
Likely D Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

NY-1 1.64% 3.82% 16.77% Yes D +2 R toss-up Likely D Leans D Leans D Toss-up

PA-17 2.82% -3.45% 27.36% No
Likely D Likely D Likely D D favored Toss-up

KS-3 3.22% 2.58% 16.78% Open
Leans R Likely R Leans R R toss-up Leans R

PA-13 3.61% 18.05% 28.26% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

TX-17 3.98% -35.17% 7.48% No
Leans R Likely D Leans D D favored Toss-up

ME-2 4.01% 11.26% 34.87% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

WA-2 4.30% 13.95% 24.78% Yes
Leans D Safe D Likely D Safe D Likely D

ND-AL 4.81% -8.63% 23.95% Yes
R toss-up Leans D Leans D Safe D Leans R

IN-9 5.02% -1.76% 19.36% Yes D +1 Leans R Leans D D toss-up Leans D Toss-up

TN-4 5.59% -29.81% 20.96% No
D toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

CA-18 7.90% 20.27% 30.95% Yes
Leans D Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

IA-3 8.37% 9.37% 14.25% Yes
R toss-up Leans D Leans D D favored Toss-up

MD-2 8.59% 21.59% 47.05% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

OR-5 9.65% 10.62% 15.92% Yes
D toss-up Likely D Likely D Safe D Likely D

FL-3 10.90% 47.31% 18.57% Yes
Leans D Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

NV-1 11.00% 29.43% 39.32% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

NY-4 13.01% 16.64% 28.01% Yes
D toss-up Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

PA-11 13.18% 14.83% 3.25% Yes
Leans R Leans D Leans D D favored Toss-up

AR-2 16.01% -9.91% 21.08% Open R +17 Leans R Leans R Leans R Toss-up Leans R

WA-3 23.38% 6.72% 28.03% Open
R toss-up Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Toss-up

TN-6 33.59% -25.78% 35.77% Open
Leans R Likely R Likely R Leans R Likely R

AR-1 33.67% -20.28% 33.14% Open
Leans R Toss-up Leans R Toss-up Leans R

MI-1 36.57% 1.82% 32.30% Open
R toss-up Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Safe D

MA-10 38.46% 11.27% 34.94% Open R +3 D toss-up Likely D D toss-up D favored Toss-up

TN-8 42.84% -13.28% 46.37% Open
Leans D Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Leans R

PA-12 46.97% -0.31% 15.70% Open
D toss-up Toss-up D toss-up D favored Leans R

HI-1 47.94% 42.29% 58.07% Open
D toss-up Leans D Leans D Leans D Likely D

The Next Scott Brown?

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:40:00 +0000

Many of you may remember that we were the first ones to alert you to the possibility of electing Scott Brown in Massachusetts way before the first poll came out. That race was ignored by all the political pundits because obviously a Republican could not possibly get elected in the most Democrat state in the union to fill the Ted Kennedy vacancy. Well, here is another one for you and the election is two weeks away on April 13th. This special election is also on no one's radar because obviously the Democrat candidate will win. That is the conventional wisdom among the pundits. Well, it might be conventional but that does not make it wisdom any more than it did for Scott Brown.

This election is being held in Florida in congressional district 19. This is just as tough as Massachusetts was and probably even more so. If the Republican candidate, Edward Lynch, does not get some support and money immediately, the conventional wisdom will be right. People, this race is doable because the health care bill is still fresh in everyone's minds especially in Florida where it is extremely unpopular right along with its major supporter. The Democrat candidate has this little gem on his website:

Dear Friends, Last night, Congress made history by passing health care reform legislation that expands access to affordable coverage to 32 million more Americans. When President Obama signs this historic reform bill into law, the residents of Florida's 19th district will immediately begin to reap its benefits.

The Republican candidate has this to say about that:

First, let me state that I do believe that we need to make sure that every LEGAL American citizen has access to the best healthcare system in the world and that it is affordable for everyone. Let me also state that, after reading the bills that are being considered, if the healthcare plan was a good plan, I would let you know that. That being said, the proposals set forth in the house (HR 3200) and in the senate are very bad for America...

Given that this district has double the national average of senior citizens in it and in Florida those same citizens are opposed to Obama Care by a 65-25 margin, all we can say is: CHARGE. Send money right now to https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=32307. If you live in Southern Florida's east coast, go here: http://electlynch.com/get_involved. Obviously the national Democrats did not get the message Massachusetts sent them so let's send them another one from Florida. Here is everything you need to know about this district:

Florida 19 House District

Democrat Sen. Ted Deutch

Republican Edward Lynch (foreground)

Florida 19 House District

Representative Wexler had represented this district since 1996 when he resigned this year to take another post. He did get a 38.93% margin in 2008 while McCain-Palin lost this district by a 31.5% margin. No Republican has ever been elected in this district since it was created in 1982. Under ordinary circumstances this district would be hopeless for Republicans and would not really be in play next November either. The fact that there is a special election on April 13th coming right on top of the passage of Obama Care says that these are no ordinary circumstances. Republicans always turn out much better than Democrats in special elections.

Almost one-third of the adult population in this district are 65 or older and they are very annoyed about Obama Care passing according to a poll taken by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research. An article in the Miami Herald entitled Florida poll: Healthcare law hurts Obama, Democrats says this:

Only 34 percent of Florida voters support the new law while 54 percent are against it, according to the poll. Opposition is significantly strong among two crucial blocs: those older than 65 and voters with no party affiliation. Seniors disfavor the bill by a 65-25 percent margin, while independents oppose the law 62-34.

The poll, conducted last week, is the first to be taken in Florida since Obama signed the healthcare reform bill into law.

It shows that Floridians have a more negative than positive view of Obama by a margin of 15 percentage points. And they oppose his so-called ``cap-and-trade'' global warming legislation as well as the new healthcare law.

This being the case, this district is suddenly very definitely in play although we still have to rate it as only possible if the Republican candidate gets a lot of support and money very soon.

The Republican primary for this special election has chosen this candidate:

Ed Lynch (R) - Building Contractor & '08 Nominee

His website is Edward Lynch for Congress.

**Ratings for This District**
MARGIN	OBAMA	MARSTON	CQ POL	COOK	ROTHENBERG
#17.69%	31.5%	Leans D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D

Nov 04, 2008

Robert Wexler(I)
202,143
66.16%

Edward Lynch
83,205
27.23%

Benjamin Graber
20,180
6.60%

Nov 07, 2006

Robert Wexler(I)
1
100.00%

Nov 02, 2004

Robert Wexler(I)
1
100.00%

Last 3 Election Results
Here are the demographics for this District:

Cities in Florida 19

State	District	65 or Older	White	Black	Latino	HS Grad	Coll 4Yr	Median HH Income	Poverty Level
United States		16.7%	74.3%	12.3%	15.1%	84.5%	27.4%	52,175	13.2%
Florida	19	32.8%	79.6%	10.7%	18.0%	88.4%	30.3%	51,018	9.1%

Illinois 11th Congressional District

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:23:00 +0000

Many have asked us what they can do now to help elect Republicans in November. As a practical matter, we have to wait until the Republican candidate is chosen in a primary election. Fortunately, Illinois has already held a primary election and Texas has held the first round with any required runoff races to be held on April 13th. We will only look at races where we feel the Republican candidate has a decent chance of beating the Democrat incumbent.

Illinois has four competitive races against Democrat incumbents so we will look at another of those today:

Illinois 11th House District

Democrat Rep. Debbie Halvorson
Republican Adam Kinzinger

Illinois 11th Congressional District

Representative Halvorson carried this district by a 23.92% margin in 2008 while McCain-Palin were losing by an 8.18% margin. The former Republican incumbent, Gerald C. "Jerry" Weller, retired in 2008. He had represented this district since 1994. Due to the high margin and the McCain-Palin loss, we cannot give it more than an outside chance since it would take a year like 1994 to overcome those factors. Rep. Halvorson has made it easier by voting for both health care bills. As you can see from the poll below, the Republican candidate is doing far better than the mathematical odds would predict.

The Republican primary has already been held in Illinois so the Republican candidate is:

Adam Kinzinger (R) - Ex-McLean County Commissioner & Iraq War Veteran

His website is Adam Kinzinger for U.S. Congress

**We Ask America Poll Results on 3/18/10**
ILLINOIS 11	RESULTS
Sample Size	804
Democrat Debbie Halvorson	30.22%
Republican Adam Kinzinger	42.04%
Unsure	26.99%

**Ratings for This District**
MARGIN	OBAMA	MARSTON	CQ POL	COOK	ROTHENBERG
23.92%	8.18%	Leans D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D

Nov 04, 2008

Debbie Halvorson
185,652
58.40%

Marty Ozinga
109,608
34.48%

Jason Wallace
22,635
7.12%

Nov 07, 2006

Gerald C. "Jerry" Weller(I)
109,009
55.10%

John Pavich
88,846
44.90%

Nov 02, 2004

Gerald C. "Jerry" Weller(I)
173,057
58.67%

Tari Renner
121,903
41.33%

Last 3 Election Results
Here are the demographics for this District:

Cities in Illinois 11

tate	District	65 or Older	White	Black	Latino	HS Grad	Coll 4Yr	Median HH Income	Poverty Level
United States		16.7%	74.3%	12.3%	15.1%	84.5%	27.4%	52,175	13.2%
Illinois	11	14.9%	85.1%	8.3%	10.3%	88.0%	21.4%	58,652	9.9%

Illinois 8th Congressional District

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:09:00 +0000

Illinois 8 House District

Democrat Rep. Melissa Bean

Republican Joe Walsh & His Family

Illinois 8 House District

Representative Bean carried this district by a 21.44% margin in 2008 while McCain-Palin were losing by an 12.82% margin. The former Republican incumbent, Philip M. Crane, was beaten by her in 2004. He had represented this district since 1992. Rep. Bean has made the mistake of voting for Obama care twice even after being targeted by the National GOP for her vote the first time. This has moved her into range in the quite possible group for the Republicans to take this seat.

The Republican primary has already been held in Illinois so the Republican candidate is:

Joe Walsh (R) - Teacher, '96 Candidate & '98 State Rep. Candidate

His website is http://walshforcongress.com/

**We Ask America Poll Results on 3/18/10**
ILLINOIS 8	RESULTS
Sample size	827
Democrat Melissa Bean	37.61%
Green Party Bill Sheurer	3.87%
Republican Joe Walsh	38.33%
Unsure	20.19%

**Ratings for This District**
MARGIN	OBAMA	MARSTON	CQ POL	COOK	ROTHENBERG
21.84%	12.88%	D toss-up	Safe D	Likely D	Safe D

Nov 04, 2008

Melissa Bean(I)
179,444
60.72%

Steve Greenberg
116,081
39.28%

Nov 07, 2006

Melissa Bean(I)
93,355
50.91%

S. David McSweeney
80,720
44.02%

Bill Scheurer
9,312
5.08%

Nov 02, 2004

Melissa Bean
139,792
51.70%

Philip M. Crane(I)
130,601
48.30%

Last 3 Election Results
Here are the demographics for this District:

Cities in Illinois 8

tate	District	65 or Older	White	Black	Latino	HS Grad	Coll 4Yr	Median HH Income	Poverty Level
United States		16.7%	74.3%	12.3%	15.1%	84.5%	27.4%	52,175	13.2%
Illinois	8	12.3%	80.3%	4.0%	15.9%	89.8%	36.0%	75,522	6.5%

Bart Makes a Big Boo-Boo

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:32:00 +0000

Michigan 1st House District

Representative Stupak carried this district by a 32.3% margin in 2008 while McCain-Palin were losing it by 1.82%. Ordinarily this would make this a safe district. But that was before Rep. Stupak made a cause out of preventing federal funding of abortions in the Obama care bill. Having made a strong case he then sold out his principles for a useless piece of paper and made himself vulnerable because he has now alienated both sides of the abortion debate. Because he made himself out to be pro-life, he attracted a pro-abortion Democrat lady to run against him in the primary. He already had Republican opposition but when he gave into Pelosi and Obama, he infuriated the conservatives by his betrayal who will now fund his Republican opposition.

Rep. Stupak apparently figured that he had more to worry from a left wing Democrat in the primary than he had to worry about any Republican challenger. In this he made a huge mistake for now everyone will be funding his opposition albeit for far different reasons. This is what happens when a politician tries to play both ends against the middle. He had a safe district but he was so busy looking over his left shoulder at the Democrat opponent he neglected to look over his right shoulder to see the Republicans gaining on him after he energizing them to the maximum. We can only give the Republicans the lowest possible chance in the quite possible bets group at this time but that may well change soon.

Several Republicans agree with this assessment and are vying for this seat according to politics1.com:

Dan Benishek (R) - Surgeon & GOP Activist
Linda Goldthorpe (R) - Attorney, Ron Paul Campaign Activist & '08 Candidate
Don Hooper (R) - Retired Businessman, Army Veteran & Frequent Candidate
Dennis Lennox (R) - Cheboygan County Drain Commissioner, Non-Profit Group Executive, Ex-State Legislative Aide & Pro-Life Activist

**Ratings for This District**
MARGIN	OBAMA	MARSTON	CQ POL	COOK	ROTHENBERG
#19.16%	1.82%	D toss-up	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D

Nov 04, 2008

Bart Stupak(I)
213,216
65.04%

Tom Casperson
107,340
32.74%

Jean Treacy
2,669
0.81%

Dan Grow
2,533
0.77%

Joshua J. Warren
2,070
0.63%

Don Hooper (W)
8
0.00%

Nov 07, 2006

Bart Stupak(I)
180,396
69.42%

Don Hooper
72,728
27.99%

Joshua J. Warren
2,274
0.88%

David J. Newland
2,250
0.87%

Kenneth L. Proctor
2,195
0.84%

Nov 02, 2004

Bart Stupak(I)
211,571
65.57%

Don Hooper
105,706
32.76%

David J. Newland
3,105
0.96%

John W. Loosemore
2,292
0.71%

Last 3 Election Results
Here are the demographics for this District:

Cities in Michigan 1

State	District	65 or Older	White	Black	Latino	HS Grad	Coll 4Yr	Median HH Income	Poverty Level
United States		16.7%	74.3%	12.3%	15.1%	84.5%	27.4%	52,175	13.2%
Michigan	1	22.9%	93.5%	1.3%	1.1%	87.6%	16.3%	40,243	14.4%

It is Now Down to 8 Votes

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:39:00 +0000

It has all come down to these 8 members of the House whose votes will determine whether Obama care passes or not. There are some who voted no the first time and are under intense pressure from Speaker Pelosi to change their vote. She can make their life miserable and they know it. She can also cost them their seat in Congress if they vote yes and they know that, too. The others voted yes but for one reason or another are rethinking their position.

Things have been crazy all day. We started out needing three more votes but then out of the blue, Zack Space decided he had better vote no this time to save his seat. Pelosi countered by getting DeFazio flip to yes so we were back to needing three more votes. Then Matheson came in as a no dropping us to needing two. Finally Nye announced he would vote no again so we now need one more. We had better hope that Lincoln Davis votes no once again to make sure this bill crashes and burns. You can e-mail any House member here but you must say you live in his or her district. Here is the scoop on all of them:

Brian Baird (WA-3) - He voted no the first time but has decided not to seek re-election. The only workable approach is to urge him to respect the wishes of his constituents. His phone numbers are: 202-225-3536, fax is 202-225-3478.
Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3) - She represents the Erie, Pennsylvania area and voted yes the first time. She has a problem with the bill without the Stupak language on abortions. The latter is the key to getting her to vote no. Her phone numbers are: 202-225-5406 and fax is 202-225-3103.
Lincoln Davis (TN-4) - Remind him that McCain-Palin carried his district by a whopping 29.81% margin so this is no time to play cutesy and hard to pin down. Tell him to do the right thing and just vote no like he did last time. His phone number is 202-225-6831 and fax is 202-226-5172.
Paul Kanjorski (PA-11) - Explain that you can understand why he voted for the bill the first time since it had the Stupak amendment in it. Since this bill does not have it your conscience will not let you support someone who votes for this bill without it. Add that you know a lot of people who feel the same way and given his meager 3.25% margin last time, you are afraid he will lose if he votes yes. His numbers are 202-225-6511 and the fax is 202-225-0764. The danger is that he could well defect like Carney did.
Marcy Kaptur (OH-9) - She should easily get re-elected so there is no handle there. She voted yes the first time and is likely to do so again. Still you can try to persuade her at 202-225-4146 or fax her at 202-225-7711.
Alan Mollohan (WV-1) - He voted yes the first time and it caused a firestorm and put his re-election in doubt when it should have been a slam dunk. Tell him that health care is a deal breaker for you and he needs to vote no. Phones are 202-225-4172 and fax is 202-225-7564. Remind him that McCain-Palin carried his district by 15.26%.
Solomon Ortiz (TX-27) - This is a tough one because he voted yes the first time and is likely to do so again. The best approach is to tell him that James Duerr is just waiting for him to vote yes so he can crucify him for it. Phones are 202-225-7742, fax 202-226-1134.
John Tanner (TN-8) - He voted no the first time but has decided not to seek re-election. The only workable approach is to urge him to respect the wishes of his constituents. His phone numbers are: 202-225-4714, fax is 202-225-1765.

As you can see Kaptur and Ortiz will likely vote yes. Kanjorski is being pulled by Carney's defection when he was a solid no but if Dahlkemper votes no, he might follow her as all three of them are from Pennsylvania. Baird and Tanner are weak because they are not running for re-election. While we probably will have Davis, we need a couple more to be on the safe side. That means we really could use Dahlkemper and Mollohan. All of this assumes that everyone else breaks the way they have announced or are leaning. However, nothing is ever certain in politics until the roll call vote is closed.

Suicide Watch List (Part 2)

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:10:00 +0000

In our last article, Suicide Watch List 1, we concentrated on those who have openly announced their intention of committing political suicide. We now turn our attention to those who are wondering if they can get away with jumping off that ledge and not get seriously hurt in the fall (pun intended). We will only list those who are virtually certain to die a death of several thousand vote cuts. Once again the phone lines are overloaded so we will give you fax numbers instead. If that does not work, try an e-mail if you can find one. The Clerk of the House website is down from the overload most of the time so use this url instead to get more details about a House member and how to reach them.

Gerald Connolly (VA-11) - He has already jumped once which resulted in the GOP targeting him for that vote so he wants to make sure he commits suicide this time? Fax him at 202-225-3071 and point out that Bob McDonnell got 55.25% of the vote for Governor in his district just last November. Does he really think an 11.72% margin is enough to save him when he is down 5 points in a poll already?
Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-8) - Another second time jumper who got targeted by the GOP for her vote. Fax her at 202-225-0378 and remind her that John McCain carried her district by 5.94% in a really bad year for Republicans. Ask her if she really thinks that the students at the University of Arizona will really turn out for her the way they did for Obama last time.
Baron Hill (IN-9) - Let's see: He also got targeted by the GOP for his vote last time, he is down 8 points in a poll and John McCain carried his district by 1.76%. Maybe it is not even worth faxing him at 202-226-6866 if he is dumb enough to even thinking of voting for another version of a health care take over again.
Jim Himes (CT-4) - This guy just barely managed to defeat Chris Shays by 3.97% when Obama got over 5 times that margin. Well Obama is not on the ballot this time to save him. Fax him at 202-225-9629 and explain the facts of political life to him and that only by reversing his vote from last time can he possibly save himself.

Now we come to the folks who are standing at the window of their House office and considering climbing out on the ledge in hopes they will not fall. Once again we will only list the ones who face almost certain death if they do so.

Timothy Bishop (NY-1) - Obama's margin is his district was less than 4% and his vote for the first health care bill caused the GOP to put a big target on his back. Remind him that Artschuler gained 19 points after his first vote and is only 2 points behind. He is having serious doubts about climbing back out on that ledger so fax him at 202-225-3143 and encourage him to keep his seat in Congress.
Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3) - McCain-Palin carried her district by 27 votes and she only got a 2.47% margin. Being a freshman, she did not know not to vote for health care the first time which resulted in the GOP targeting her for that vote. Fax her at 202-225-3103 and ask her not to make the same mistake this time especially sincs this bill does not have the Stupak amendment.
Lincoln Davis (TN -4) - Fax this guy at 202-226-5172 and remind him that McCain-Palin carried his district by a whopping 29.81% margin so this is no time to play cutesy and hard to pin down. Tell him to do the right thing and just vote no like he did last time.
Brad Ellsworth (IN-8) - He is running for the Senate and is 6 points behind the man he defeated to win his House seat. He has announced that in his core he knows this bill is best for Hoosiers. Fax 202-225-3284 and beg to differ with him because voting for this bill a second time will just elect Hostettler which it will.
Bill Foster (IL-14) - Everyone is telling him he can get away with voting a second time for this bill because he got a 15.5% margin last time. Fax 202-225-0697 and explain that even that high a margin is not safe in a year like this one. Voting yes the first time and getting targeted by the GOP for his efforts should have clued him in.
John Hall (NY-19) - Fax this man a dear John letter at 202-255-3289 at explain that his voting for this bill the first time really damaged his relationship with you and doing so a second time will definitely cause a divorce. Add that being targeted by the GOP for his vote should have been a wake-up call because now all those Republicans breathing down his neck are trying to seduce you.
Phil Hare (IL-17) - Poor Phil has been hornswoggled into believing that because he was unopposed the first time, he is home free and can get away with voting for this bill a second time. Fax him at 202-225-5396 and remind him that the last time he had Republican opposition his margin was less than 15% and that is just not safe enough in a banner Republican year.
Paul Kanjorski (PA-11) - Fax 202-225-0764 and explain that you can understand why he voted for the bill the first time since it had the Stupak amendment in it. Since this bill does not have it your conscience will not let you support someone who votes for this bill without it. Add that you know a lot of people who feel the same way and given his meager 3.25% margin last time, he will lose.
Ron Klein (FL-22) - Ron is in need of reality check because he is not being told that his 9.34% margin last time just will not cut it this time but he can save himself by changing his vote to no. Call him at 202-225-3026 and explain how worried you are about his not getting re-elected just because of this one controversial vote after being targeted by the GOP from his first vote.
Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24) - Unlike many of her Democrat colleagues, she knew she could not vote for the first bill if she wanted to get re-elected after McCain carried her district with a 1.95% margin. Now Pelosi is trying to push her out onto that ledge so she can fall to her political death. Fax her at 202-226-6299 and tell her that you are behind her 100% and she should stick to her guns.
James McGovern (MA-3) - Fax him at 202-225-5759 and explain that you are a member of the Scott Brown brigade. Add that since 57.6% of the voters in his district have already voted against this health care fiasco that you expect him to respect their wishes and vote no like Stephen Lynch is doing because 56.9% of his voters made their distaste for this bill clear by electing Scott Brown.
Gerald McNerney (CA-11) - Jerry is beginning to realize that his 10.55% margin is just not good enough this year when the GOP targeted him for voting for this bill the first time in California of all places. Fax 202-225-4060 and tell him that you will forgive him for his first vote if he will vote no this time.
Harry Mitchell (AZ-5) - Harry knows he only got elected because J. D. Hayworth wore out his welcome. He knows that McCain carried his district by 4.53% and his 9.58% margin is not enough for a year like this one. Phone Harry at 202-225-2190 and explain that he should respect the wishes of his constituents and vote no.
Scott Murphy (NY-20) - Pelosi has conned Scott that he should vote for her bill this time and that he has a safe district because Obama carried his district by a whole 3% margin even though his own margin was a paltry 0.45%. Fax him at 202-225-1168 and ask him what Pelosi would know about a competitive district. Tell him if he votes yes, he is toast.
Richard Neal (MA-2) - Fax him at 202-255-8112 and remind him that Scott Brown got 56.9% in his district. Scott got the same margin in district 9 and Representative Lynch got the message and is voting no this time. Remind him that his first vote caused a doctor to be so mad that he is running against him and that you want him to respect the clearly stated wishes of his constituents.
Glenn Nye (VA-2) - Glenn was smart enough to vote against this turkey the first time because his 4.94% margin would vanish in a year like this one. Now Pelosi wants him to fall on his sword for the Party. Fax him at 202-225-4218 and tell him that Pelosi does not know beans about what a competitive district is like. He should hang in there or else he will wind up hanging himself.
Tom Perriello (VA-5) - Poor Tom is in a world of hurt because he won by a whisker with a 0.23% margin. Not knowing the ropes, he made the mistake of voting for the Pelosi bill the first time. He is tied with a Republican challenger in a poll as a result. McCain-Palin carried his district by 2.31% and Pelosi has conned him into repeating his mistake. Fax 202-225-5681 and tell him he is toast.
Earl Pomeroy (ND-AL) - Earl voted for this mess the first time and now Rick Berg is six points ahead of him. Fax him at 202-226-0893 and tell him he can still survive if he votes no this time.
Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23) - Ciro also got it wrong the first time because he thought a 13.84% margin was good enough to let him do that. Fax him at 202-225-2237 and tell him that Canseco will make a federal case out of his doing so again. He should follow the lead of Chet Edwards and vote no this time.
Kurt Schrader (OR-5) - Kurt mistakenly thought that being from Oregon was sufficient to allow him to vote for the Pelosi bill the first time. Now he is having second thoughts after the GOP targeted him and two Republicans are just waiting for him to do it again so they can crucify him. Fax 202-225-5699 and tell him to vote no and save himself.
John Salazar (CO-3) - John has convinced himself that he can vote for the Pelosi bill a second time and get away with it even though McCain-Palin carried his district by 2.54% and the GOP targeted him for his vote. Fax 202-226-9669 and tell him he is sadly mistaken if he really thinks he can do this and still win in November.
Zack Space (OH-18) - Our boy Zack is trying to make like a conservative on his website and is pussyfooting around his yes vote the first time which got him targeted by the GOP. Fax him at 202-225-3394 and tell him that he should make good on his conservative boasts by voting no this time. Remind him that McCain-Palin carried his district by 7.86% and that Bob Gibbs is waiting to pounce.

Suicide Watch List (Part 1)

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 01:24:00 +0000

From The Marston Chronicles

We are witnessing the rarest thing you see in politics, a need for a political suicide watch list. It is very rare because few politicians are willing to commit political suicide by casting a vote that means they will lose the next election. Only tried and true ideologues do that. The strange thing is that ideologues are usually found in safe districts where they can vote their ideological convictions with impunity. Politicians in competitive districts can't afford the luxury of doing that. Yet here we are with dozens of Democrats seriously contemplating taking that leap off the ledge to a virtually certain political death.

The strangest thing of all is that several Democrats are teetering on the edge of the ledge outside their office and are announcing that they are definitely going to jump. The only thing we can do is to try and talk then down before they wind up bloody and smashed on the sidewalk below. There are 16 such Democrats that we need to try and save. The phone system at the Capitol is overloaded and it is hard to get through. Try faxing these 16 people before they do jump:

John Boccieri (OH-16) - He apparently believes that a 10.73% percent margin even though McCain-Palin carried his district by 2.61% will provide enough of an updraft to allow him to land safely on his feet. Please fax his suicide prevention hotline at 202-225-3059 and urge him not to jump.
Leonard Boswell (IA-3) - His suicide hotline fax number is 202-225-5608. No one is even trying to talk him off the ledge because they assume he is going to jump anyway even after injuring himself when he jumped last November. Explain to him that in a banner year for Republicans even a 14.25% margin is not good enough when Obama only carried his district by 9.37%.
Alan Grayson (FL-8) - He apparently believes that because he is the wealthiest member of the House, he can do as he pleases and just buy re-election like he bought his seat in 2008. Fax his number at 202-225-0999 and explain that all the money in the world will not save him if he jumps a second time.
Steven Kagen (WI-8) - Fax him at 202-225-5729 and explain that an 8.1% margin for both himself and Obama will not save him if he jumps again in a year like this one. Surely as a doctor he knows how much damage jumping will cause to himself and others.
Mary Jo Kilroy (OH-15) - Kilroy was here but will not be here next year if she jumps a second time. Fax her at 202-225-3529 and ask her why she is doing this when she won by a miniscule 0.76% in a great year for Democrats when this will obviously be a great year for Republicans. Obama will not be on the ballot to help her like last time.
Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-1) - This poor woman actually thinks that because she got a 16.45% margin that she can safely jump. Fax her at 202-226-9739 and remind her that John McCain carried her district by 10.17%. Explain that she only got that margin because the previous Republican got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and that even the $6,000,000 she spent last time will not be enough to save her in a red state like Arizona this time if she jumps.
Dan Maffei (NY-25) - This deluded man thinks that because he is from New York, the fire department will be there with a safety net a second time. Fax him at 202-225-4042 and explain that since the fire department is short staffed due the economy, it cannot help him this time. Add that even a 12.94% margin just won't cut it in a year like this one.
Betsy Markey (CO-4) - Just because we talked her out of jumping last time does not mean we can save her if she jumps this time as she seems determined to do. Fax 202-225-5870 and ask her why she is so determined to do this when even John McCain carried her district. Tell her that you cannot support someone trying to commit suicide.
Patrick Murphy (PA-8) - This guy really needs help because no one is trying to talk him out of jumping a second time. Fax him at 202-225-9511 and warn him that former Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick is standing behind him ready to give him a shove. Remind him that Fitzpatrick only lost by 1,518 votes in a really bad Republican year which this year will not be.
William Owens (NY-23) - Surely he knows that he only got 48.35% of the vote last November because the Republican vote was split after the Party nominated someone even more leftist than him. Fax him at 202-226-0621to explain that Doug Hoffman is just waiting for him to jump a second time so he can attend his funeral.
Gary Peters (MI-9) - This is another second time jumper who risks as all by doing it again when he only got a 9.45% margin. Remind him that Obama pulled a lot more votes than he did in his district and that a margin of less than 10% is not considered safe in a normal year let alone one like this one. You might still save him by faxing 202-226-2356.
Chellie Pingree (ME-1) - This woman thinks all that Maine snow will break her fall. Remind her that both her Senators voted against this bill and she represents half their state. Point out that Obama got over twice the margin she did and that a 9.8% margin is not a safe margin in any year. You can fax her at 202-225-5590 and help her come to her senses before it is too late.
Mark Schauer (MI-7) - Does this poor man actually think a 2.31% margin will save him when Obama got over twice that margin? Fax him at 202-225-6281 and remind him he is already 10 points behind in a poll. He got away with jumping once but doing so a second time is the kiss of death for a man in the 10th most vulnerable district in the country.
Carol Shea-Porter (NH-1) - This woman must be a slow learner. She has already jumped once which resulted in the GOP targeting her for that vote so she wants to make sure she commits suicide this time? She has to know what the result will be when she is already 10 points behind in a poll. Fax 202-225-5822 and try dissuade her from doing this.
John Tierney (MA-6) - He has to know that Scott Brown campaigned against this bill and got 57.4% of the voters in his district to agree with him. What is he thinking? Fax him at 202-225-5915 and tell him you are a member of the Scott Brown brigade and just like you worked for Scott Brown you will work for whichever of three men wins the Republican primary if he jumps again.
Niki Tsongas - (MA-5) - She only got a 6.21% margin the last time she had Republican opposition. Scott Brown got 56.2% of the votes in her district and she is going to vote for this beast again? Fax her at 202-226-0771 and tell her you voted for Scott Brown for his opposition to this bill and advise her to wake up and smell the coffee.

The Slaughter Rule Vote

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

From The Marston Chronicles

The Republicans offered a motion to bypass the Slaughter Rule that will be voted on this coming Sunday. It would have forced an up and down vote on the Senate Bill complete with its Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase. That caused several Democrats to vote for this motion out of loyalty to their party. What is interesting is who voted against this motion and their own Party.

Adler, Arcuri, Boren, Bright, Carney, Childers, Cooper, Costello, Dahlkemper, Davis (AL), Giffords, Herseth Sandlin, Holden, Kosmas, Kratovil, Lipinski, McIntyre, McNerney, Melancon, Michaud, Minnick, Mitchell, Nye, Perriello, Schuler, Stupak, Taylor, and Teague voted against the rule.

The surprise came in who also voted against this motion and joined all of the Republicans present who were not listed as no votes. They are Cooper, Dahlkemper, Hall, Kosmas, Mitchell, Nye, and Perrielli. The two Arizona Democrats who are in tight re-election races, Gifford and Mitchell, suddenly voted with the Republicans when they are supposed to be yes votes. Perhaps they hope to point to this vote after voting for health care as saying they were against the health care bill before they were for it. Better yet they may have decided that voting for health care is political suicide in their districts, which it is.

Cooper is not vulnerable to losing his seat but he is from Tennessee where the Democrat version of health care reform is extremely unpopular. Hall from NY-19 is vulnerable and may be feeling the Republicans running against him breathing down his neck. These two were thought to be yes votes as well. Dahlkemper, Nye and Pierrello are undecideds and are in the list of Democrats who might be persuaded to vote no. All three are vulnerable. If these seven vote with the listed no votes, the health care bill dies.

The Swing House Health Care Votes

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:15:00 +0000

From The Marston Chronicles

There are a couple of reports from Representative Dreier and Michael Barone saying that Speaker Pelosi is ten votes shy of the 216 votes needed to pass her new version of health care reform. Because there are only 253 Democrats in the House out of a present 431 members, it takes 216 votes to pass a bill. This means that Pelosi cannot lose more than 37 votes since all the 178 Republicans are opposed. Since she is short 10 votes, that means that 47 Democrats are telling her they cannot vote for the bill. That brings up the question of which members are in this group of 47 no votes.

As we pointed out in our last article on this subject, The Case of the Missing House Health Care Votes, which we have updated, the ones in play are pretty well known. The Hill lists 36 people as being in various classes of no votes. We have identified 24 as being pretty firm no's:

John Barrow (GA-12), Dan Boren (OK-2), Rick Boucher (VA-9), Allen Boyd (FL-2), Bobby Bright (AL-2), Ben Chandler (KY-6), Travis Childers (MS-1), Arthus Davis (AL-7), Lincoln Davis (TN-4), Chet Edwards (TX-17), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD-AL), Tim Holden (PA-17), Larry Kissell (NC-8), Frank Kratovil (MD-1), Jim Marshall (GA-8), Mike McIntyre (NC-7), Mike McMahon (NY-13), Charlie Melancon (LA-3), Walt Minnick (ID-1), Collin Peterson (MN-7), Mike Ross (AR-4), Heath Schuler (NC-11), Ike Skelton (MO-4) and Gene Taylor (MS-4).

That leaves another 12 in the leaning no category according to The Hill. Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics has also been running a tally and he now agrees with the Hill with the exception of Luis Guttierrez. That leaves us with 11 in this category:

John Adler (NJ-3), Michael Arcuri (NY-24), Marion Berry (AR-1), Christopher Carney (PA-10), Jerry Costello (IL-12), Joe Donnelly (IN-2), Steve Driehaus (OH-1), Daniel Lipinski (IL-3), Jim Matheson (UT-2), John Tanner (TN-8) and Harry Teague (NM-2). We can now add Steve Lynch (MA-9) to this group now.

Next we have the members who voted no the first time who are not in the first two groups of 35 members. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich and Bart Gordon who flipped to yes, these members remain uncommitted:

Jason Altmire (PA-4), Brian Baird (WA-3), John Boccieri (OH-16), Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24), Betsey Markey (CO-4), Scott Murphy (NY-20) and Glenn Nye (VA-2).

That gives us a total of 42 out of the 47 probable no votes. The 5 remaining ones are probably among the ones on Jay Cost's likely list that are not included already. They are:

Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3), Brad Ellsworth (IN-8), Baron Hill (IN-9), Paul Kanjorski (PA-11) and Tom Pierrello (VA-5).

The bottom line is that we are down to these last two groups of a dozen people whose votes will decide this issue. The weakest of these is Brian Baird because he is retiring and therefore is not vulnerable to losing the November election unlike the other eleven. Brad Ellsworth is running to replace Senator Bayh and he is behind in the polls so voting yes in Indiana would not be a wise move. The best reason for the remaining ten to vote no is that they will lose if they vote yes. Here is a table showing why they should do that:

Democrat	Seat	Margin	Obama	Marston	CQ Pol	Cook	Rothenberg
Tom Perriello	VA-5	0.23%	-2.31%	91.5%	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up
Scott Murphy	NY-20	0.45%	3.00%	88.5%	Likely D	Likely D	D favored
Kathy Dahlkemper	PA-3	2.47%	Tie	79.6%	Leans D	Likely D	Safe D
Baron Hill	IN-9	4.52%	-1.76%	72.9%	Leans D	D toss-up	Leans D
Paul Kanjorski	PA-11	3.25%	14.83%	71.8%	Leans D	Leans D	D favored
Glenn Nye	VA-2	4.94%	1.96%	70.3%	Leans D	D toss-up	D toss-up
Jason Altmire	PA-4	11.72%	-10.45%	61.1%	Likely D	Likely D	D favored
John Boccieri	OH-16	10.73%	-2.61%	59.8%	Likely D	Leans D	D favored
Betsey Markey	CO-4	12.39%	-0.88%	57.0%	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up
Suzanne Kosmas	FL-24	16.09%	-1.95%	52.7%	Leans D	Leans D	D toss-up

Notice that six of them won by less than a five percent margin. Of the remaining four, notice the minus sign in the Obama column which means that McCain-Palin carried their district. Yes, the other analysts are saying that all but Perriello and Markey do not have a problem, but the figures do not warrant such a conclusion as you can see for yourself. That is especially true in this banner year for the Republicans unlike 2008 which was a horrible year for them.

The Case of the Missing House Health Care Votes

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:17:00 +0000

It seems that everyone and his brother, too, are busy handicapping whether the Democrats can round up the votes in the House of Representatives to finally pass some version of health care. To start with, they have to eventually pass the Senate bill either before they patch it or after using the so-called Slaughter Proposal. To do this they need 216 votes and given that they have lost some of their yes votes, they need to hold virtually all of those members and flip some of the no votes to a yes. Since none of the Republicans will vote for the bill and they are now down to 253 Democrats, they can only afford to lose 37 votes (253 - 216).

One of the handicappers has been The Hill and another has been Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics. They each have their own count of the votes in various categories of how committed they are. What are we to make of this? There were 39 Democrat no votes the first time. Thus the first question is whether any of them can be flipped. Both The Hill and Jay Cost agree there are at least 25 solid no votes out of the original 39 as follows:

John Barrow (GA-12), Dan Boren (OK-2), Bobby Bright (AL-2), Ben Chandler (KY-6), Travis Childers (MS-1), Arthus Davis (AL-7), Lincoln Davis (TN-4), Chet Edwards (TX-17), Parker Griffith (AL-5), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD-AL), Tim Holden (PA-17), Larry Kissell (NC-8), Frank Kratovil (MD-1), Dennis Kucinich (OH-10), Jim Marshall (GA-8), Mike McIntyre (NC-7), Mike McMahon (NY-13), Charlie Melancon (LA-3), Walt Minnick (ID-1), Collin Peterson (MN-7), Mike Ross (AR-4), Heath Schuler (NC-11), Ike Skelton (MO-4), John Tanner (TN-8) and Gene Taylor (MS-4).

To this group we can add Frederick Boucher (VA-9) since Jay has him as very hard to persuade and The Hill has him as leaning no. That leaves 13 that might be persuaded to vote yes. Eric Massa has resigned so that leaves 12 who might be shaky as follows:

John Adler (NJ-3) - Jay has him as persuadable and The Hill has him as leaning no.

Jason Altmire (PA-4) - Jay has him as very hard to persuade but The Hill has him as undecided.

Brian Baird (WA-) - Jay has him as persuadable and The Hill has him as undecided.

John Boccieri (OH-16) - Jay has him as persuadable and The Hill has him as undecided.

Allen Boyd (FL-2) - Jay has him as very hard to persuade but The Hill has him as undecided.

Bart Gordon (TN-6) - Jay has him as persuadable and The Hill has him as undecided.

Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24) - Jay has her as persuadable and The Hill has her as undecided.

Betsey Markey (CO-4) - Jay has her in too tight race to vote yes and The Hill has her as undecided.

Jim Matheson (UT-2) - Jay has him as in a district that too heavily favored McCain and The Hill has him as a likely no.

Scott Murphy (NY-20) - Jay has him as persuadable and The Hill has him as undecided.

Glenn Nye (VA-2) - Jay has him in too tight race to vote yes and The Hill has him as undecided.

Harry Teague (NM-2) - Jay has him in too tight race to vote yes and The Hill has him as leaning no.

That means the no side has to hold 11 of the 12 left which is not very likely which is why the Democratic leadership is so optimistic. On the other hand they have a lot of yes votes who no longer can be automatically counted on since the election of Scott Brown. Jay has a list of 26 such members while The Hill has 7 members in the no group and another several dozen in the undecided group. Most of those undecideds will still vote yes and are saying they are undecided to see what kind of a deal they can get and to keep their staff from being inundated with phone calls from angry voters. Since The Hill has 2 that are not on Jay's list, let's look at those 28.

Michael Arcuri (NY-24)

Marion Berry (AR-1)

Shelley Berkley (NV-1)

Tim Bishop (NY-1)

Dennis Cardoza (CA-18)

Christopher Carney (PA-10)

Jerry Costello (IL-12)

Henry Cuellar (TX-27)

Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3)

Joe Donnelly (IN-2)

Steve Driehaus (OH-1)

Brad Ellsworth (IN-8)

Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-8)

Luis Gutierrez (IL-4)

Baron Hill (IN-9)

Steve Kagen (WI-9)

Paul Kanjorski (PA-11)

Marcy Kaptur (OH-9)

Dan Lipinski (IL-3)

Dan Maffei (NY-25)

Alan Mollohan (WV-1)

James Oberstar (MN-8)

Solomon Ortiz (TX-27)

Earl Pomeroy (ND-AL)

Nick Rahall (WV-3)

Kurt Schrader (OR-5)

Bart Stupak (MI-1)

Dina Titus (NV-3)

We now have 40 people whose votes will decide this issue and are the only ones worth looking at. Remember that those opposed to this measure need only 11 of these 40 to defeat this bill. Now it is time to add our own analysis to all of this. We are going to add some more folks who voted yes and should now vote no if they wish to avoid joining that vast list of unemployed Americans next January. The ?? column is where the person stands where Y is yes, U is undecided and 40 means they are in the in play list of 40 people. In the margin column a # means we did not use the most recent election results for one reason or another. The Us column is our own rating in terms of the percentage we think the district is likely to go to the Republicans.

Democrat	Seat	??	Margin	Obama	Us	CQ Pol	Cook	Rothenberg
Tom Perriello	VA-5	U	0.23%	-2.31%	91.5%	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up
Scott Murphy	NY-20	40	0.45%	3.00%	88.5%	Likely D	Likely D	D favored
Mary Jo Kilroy	OH-15	U	0.76%	7.12%	85.5%	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up
Kathy Dahlkemper	PA-3	40	2.47%	Tie	79.6%	Leans D	Likely D	Safe D
Mark Schauer	MI-7	U	2.31%	5.23%	78.8%	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up
William Owens	NY-23	U	3.11%	5.22%	75.5%	Leans D	Leans D	Leans D
John Adler	NJ-3	40	3.31%	5.38%	74.7%	Leans D	Leans D	D favored
Michael Arcuri	NY-24	40	3.94%	2.36%	73.4%	Leans D	Leans D	Leans D
Baron Hill	IN-9	40	4.52%	-1.76%	72.9%	Leans D	D toss-up	Leans D
Alan Grayson	FL-8	Y	4.03%	5.70%	72.0%	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up
Paul Kanjorski	PA-11	40	3.25%	14.83%	71.8%	Leans D	Leans D	D favored
Glenn Nye	VA-2	40	4.94%	1.96%	70.3%	Leans D	D toss-up	D toss-up
Steven Driehaus	OH-1	40	4.94%	10.25%	67.6%	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up
Jim Himes	CT-4	U	3.97%	20.06%	67.4%	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D
Carol Shea-Porter	NH-1	U	5.89%	6.21%	66.2%	Leans D	D toss-up	Toss-up
Dina Titus	NV-3	40	5.14%	12.76%	66.1%	Leans D	D toss-up	Leans D
Harry Mitchell	AZ-5	U	9.58%	-4.53%	62.2%	Leans D	Leans D	D favored
Jason Altmire	PA-4	40	11.72%	-10.45%	61.1%	Likely D	Likely D	D favored
Paul Hodes	NH-2	Y	7.10%	13.09%	61.0%	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up
Niki Tsongas	MA-5	Y	#6.21%	19.51%	61.0%	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
Steve Kagen	WI-8	40	8.10%	8.10%	60.5%	Leans D	Leans D	D favored
John Boccieri	OH-16	40	10.73%	-2.61%	59.8%	Likely D	Leans D	D favored
Ron Klein	FL-22	U	9.34%	4.04%	59.7%	Safe D	Likely D	Safe D
Gabrielle Giffords	AZ-8	40	11.90%	-5.94%	59.4%	Likely D	Leans D	D favored
Christopher Carney	PA-10	40	12.66%	-8.43%	59.2%	Leans D	Leans D	D favored
Harry Teague	NM-2	40	11.92%	-1.33%	57.8%	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up
Betsey Markey	CO-4	40	12.39%	-0.88%	57.0%	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up
Gary Peters	MI-9	Y	9.45%	12.96%	56.6%	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D
Earl Pomeroy	ND-AL	40	#15.11	-8.63%	56.2%	Leans D	Leans D	Safe D
Gerald McNerney	CA-11	U	10.55%	9.33%	56.1%	Leans D	Leans D	D favored
Ann Kirkpatrick	AZ-1	U	16.45%	-10.17%	54.9%	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D
Ciro Rodriguez	TX-23	U	13.84%	2.69%	54.1%	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D
Chellie Pingree	ME-1	Y	9.80%	22.82%	52.7%	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
Suzanne Kosmas	FL-24	40	16.09%	-1.95%	52.7%	Leans D	Leans D	D toss-up
Gerald Connelly	VA-11	Y	11.72%	14.96%	52.6%	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D
Dan Maffei	NY-25	40	12.94%	13.12%	51.7%	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D
John Tierney	MA-6	Y	#12.18%	16.94%	51.4%	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
Martin Heinrich	NM-1	Y	11.31%	20.43%	51.3%	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D
Leonard Boswell	IA-3	Y	14.25%	9.37%	51.3%	Leans D	Leans D	D favored
Rick Boucher	VA-9	40	#20.37%	-19.10%	50.7%	Safe D	Leans D	D favored
Patrick Murphy	PA-8	Y	15.14%	8.93%	50.3%	Likely D	Leans D	D favored
Timothy Bishop	NY-1	40	15.77%	3.82%	49.8%	Likely D	Leans D	Leans D

As you can see, 21 of the 40 folks in the swing group are not guaranteed of getting re-elected. There are another 11 people in the undecided group as well. That makes a total of 32 people who have every reason to vote no to avoid a chance of committing political suicide. There another 19 people belonging to the 40 group who are not vulnerable to losing the election but have expressed doubts. That is a total of 51 people and the Democrat leadership can only afford to lose 11 of them. Notice that there are another 10 yes votes who should rethink their position. Right off hand, it would appear that having to get a yes vote from 50 of the 60 people who at least should be in play is definitely a tough haul. The odds of that happening are about 17%.

Our analysis would not be complete without pointing out that several members from Massachusetts, all of whom voted yes, should rethink doing so again. Scott Brown carried 7 of the 10 districts and 6 of them by 56% or more of the votes. He ran against this health care proposal and you are going to vote yes in the face of that? All of you have Republican opposition for a change and you know they are going to make a federal case out of your voting yes. If you vote no you can just say that you changed your mind after listening to your constituents. Here is the percent of the votes that Scott Brown got in your district:

MA - District 01	John W. Olver	48.4%
MA - District 02	Richard E. Neal	56.9%
MA - District 03	James P. McGovern	57.6%
MA - District 04	Barney Frank	50.1%
MA - District 05	Niki Tsongas	56.2%
MA - District 06	John F. Tierney	57.4%
MA - District 07	Edward J. Markey	45.8%
MA - District 08	Mike Capuano	35.8%
MA - District 09	Stephen F. Lynch	56.9%
MA - District 10	William D. "Bill" Delahunt	59.3%

For that matter there are a few other yes votes that would be risky to say the least. Gary Peters got less than a 10% margin which is the safety margin in an ordinary election year which this is not. Chellie Pingree had both her Senators vote against the Senate bill and also got less than a 10% margin. She represents half the state of Maine so how does she explain her vote in the face of determined Republican opposition? Paul Hodes is running for the Senate and is behind in the polls already so he is going to vote for this bill so his opposition can crucify him for it? Gerry Connelly apparently thinks an 11.72% margin is safe enough to vote yes but is it really in this year?

Bad News for Republicans

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:50:00 +0000

From The Marston Chronicles

There has been a definite fall off in the Republicans prospects for this year. Our average of the opposition to Obama care had reached as high as 17% opposed and now it is only 11%. Obama's disapproval rating has never gotten above 50% in our average and does not look like it will any time soon. Finally and worst of all, the Republican edge in the generic ballot polling has lost a point in Rasmussen Reports and this figure is backed up by identical results in another likely voter poll from McLaughlin & Associates. As you know from our Handicapping Control of the House article, in midterm elections, the generic ballot results are a predictor of the percentage of the vote percentage of the two major parties. That in turn gives an estimate of the seats each party will wind up with in the election.

The table in our article shows that a drop from 8 to 7 points in the generic ballot translates to a failure to gain 8 more seats than would otherwise be the case. Another factor to consider is what the various polls in the House races are telling us as shown in our A Reality Check article. That showed that we were erroneously favoring the Republicans in 4 out of 5 cases. Between these two factors, it was obviously time for us to adjust our projections once again. The end results of that is that we are now projecting a gain of 56 seats instead of 63 seats for a drop of 7 seats for the Republicans.

Once race in IA-1 has dropped out of being in play. The races that returned to being now more likely to be retained by the Democrats are AR-4, CA-10, IL-14, IL-17, NY-1, NY-19, NC-8 and OR-5. There was one offset where ND-AL moved from a toss-up favoring Democrats to one favoring Republicans. We may be Republican analysts but we are very careful to adjust our ratings in whichever direction is required by the shifting political winds. Still none of these adjustments jeopardize the projected Republican control of the House. A net gain of 56 seats produces a 234 to 201 seat majority for the Republicans and that still is even better than what happened in 1994 by a few seats.

What is causing this drop off? One must remember that very little of the projected big gains for the Republicans is due to voters suddenly favoring the Republicans. It is primarily due to dissatisfaction with the Democrats and there is really no real other choice but the Republicans. Perhaps the change is due to people turning to third parties in a "pox on both your parties" attitude. It could also be that there is nothing going on other than suggestions that the Democrats will still try to jam through their Obama care plan. What turned things dramatically better for the Republicans was the Christmas Eve vote on the Senate version of Obama care.

The Louisiana Purchase and Cornhusker Kickback really turned the voters off. The Democrats still have the opportunity to once again annoy the voters and help out the Republicans by trying to bend the rules and pass Obama care with reconciliation or the so-called Slaughter proposal. If they come to their senses and stop pushing Obama care, we will undoubtedly wind up making more adjustments in their favor.

A Reality Check

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:22:00 +0000

From The Marston Chronicles

In our last report, we explained how we use mathematics to project who will control the House of Representatives and by how much. We also explained that we use mathematics to project which House races are in play and will likely flip to the opposite party. The major problem with this approach is that it is applied across the board to all races and does not account for local conditions that could affect the race. For that reason, we need to conduct a reality check to see if what we project seems to be actually happening. That means we have to look for poll results in various House races. Those are relatively rare but there are always some done. Here is what the polls are telling us:

RACE POLL HCV CQ POL COOK ROTHENBERG MARSTON

Alabama 2 D +24 No Toss-up Leans D R toss-up Likely R

California 44 R +14 No Likely R Likely R R favored Safe R

Colorado 3 D +2 Yes Likely D Leans D D favored Leans D

Delaware AL D +10 Open Likely D Leans D D favored Leans D

Indiana 9 R +8 Yes Leans D D toss-up Leans D Leans R

Maryland 1 R +13 No Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Likely R

Massachusetts 10 R +3 Yes Likely D D toss-up D favored R toss-up

Michigan 7 R +10 Yes Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Likely R

Minnesota 6 R +16 No Leans R Likely R R favored Safe R

Nevada 3 Tied Yes Leans D D toss-up Leans D Leans R

New Hampshire 1 R +10 Yes Leans D D toss-up Toss-up Leans R

New Hampshire 2 R +7 Open Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Leans R

New Mexico 1 D +9 Yes Likely D Likely D Safe D R toss-up

New Mexico 2 R +2 No Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up R toss-up

New Mexico 3 D +6 Yes Safe D Safe D Safe D Likely D

New York 1 D +2 Yes Likely D Leans D Leans D R toss-up

North Carolina 8 D +16 No Leans D Likely D D favored R toss-up

North Dakota AL R +6 Yes Leans D Leans D D favored D toss-up

Ohio 1 R +17 Yes Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Leans R

Oklahoma 2 D +16 No Safe D Safe D Safe D Safe D

South Carolina 5 D +7 No Leans D Leans D Leans D Leans D

South Dakota AL D +7 No Likely D Likely D D favored Safe D

Virginia 5 Tied Yes Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Likely R

Now we look to see if the letter designating the party which should win the race in the Marston column matches the letter of the party that is ahead in the poll results column. They do match in 16 races but not in the other 7 races. Now we look to see what is going on in those 7 races. In two cases the poll showed a tie which means we will need a newer poll to see which way the political winds are blowing in that race. In four cases we project the race for the Republican when the polls show the Democrat ahead. In one case (ND-AL), the poll shows the Republican ahead when mathematics calls the race for the incumbent Democrat. Those races require further examination.

When we first looked at the results, we thought that the vote on health care might have something to do with these results so we added a column showing that vote. It would seem that a no vote helped in AL-2 and NC-8 to insulate the incumbent Democrat in a red state. Likewise a yes vote in ND-AL put the incumbent Democrat in a red state in trouble. In NY-1, the Democrat has a small lead so perhaps we should move him from R toss-up to D toss-up. In NM-1 we have the Democrat well ahead so we need to move him from R toss-up to leans D.

One other thing that sticks out is the huge lead shown for Bobby Bright in Alabama 2 when we have him as the most vulnerable Democrat in the country. He got 50.23% of the vote in a terrible Republican year while McCain-Palin carried his district with 63% of the votes. In what appears to be a banner year for Republicans, he is ahead by 24 points against his strongest Republican opponent? That does not make any sense. We have never heard of the polling company that conducted the poll but something is clearly off. We do not know what that polling company was smoking but it would appear that it was not legal.

We will make adjustments for a health care vote in cases were this vote made a difference in either direction and fix the two races where local conditions indicate that necessity. We suspect it will not change the final result in the House margin but obviously it will affect which seats make up that margin. We will know more once the changes are made. Now you see how an analyst proceeds. You can evaluate races on a subjective basis race by race and make adjustments as the situation changes like the other analysts do or you can use a mathematical model and adjust your equations or chose the results in a previous year when local conditions warrant it. We prefer the latter approach because it is less subjective.

Handicapping Control of the House

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:24:00 +0000

From The Marston Chronicles

Can you really accurately predict this far in advance which party will control the House of Representatives after the November elections? The answer is only in midterm election years can you do it this far in advance. As we wrote in Will GOP Regain Control of the House, there is a known correlation between the generic ballot results and the percentage of votes that a given Party will get if the election were held today. You can find a table of how good of a predictor of the result the generic ballot is at Election Polls -- Accuracy Record Midterm Congressional Elections on the Gallup website. You will notice that only a generic ballot poll that uses likely voters works well.

Unfortunately Gallup does not switch to a likely voter model until just before the election. Indeed, there is only one pollster that always uses a likely voter model when polling and that is Rasmussen Reports. If you look at where Rasmussen lists the results of its generic ballot polling, you will see that the results of the polls have changed drastically since the last election. That means that who would have controlled the House and by how much if an election had been held at the same time the poll was taken has varied considerably over that same time period. This is not surprising because voter sentiment has varied greatly over that time as we are sure you have noticed.

That brings up the question of how to predict the makeup of the House. The Gallup table gives the relationship between the generic ballot result and the vote total a Party will get nationwide in all the House races combined. We know what the makeup of the House was after each midterm election so we ought to be able to correlate the two. It turns out that directly using the generic ballot to predict the House makeup does not work that well. It requires a two step process to first predict the vote percentage and then use that to predict the House makeup. For you mathematical wonks, the best fit in the first step is a quintic equation and then use a straight linear regression to get to the House makeup from there.

Since most of you never liked algebra in high school anyway, we will skip to the chase and give the results in the form of a handy-dandy table and not strain your brains with polynomial equations and least squares regression analysis.

GENERIC BALLOT DEM PCT SEATS MARGIN M.O.E.

Democrats +20 58.73% D 292 R 143 D 149 +1

Democrats +19 57.75% D 284 R 151 D 133

Democrats +18 57.09% D 279 R 156 D 123

Democrats +17 56.65% D 276 R 159 D 117

Democrats +16 56.35% D 274 R 161 D 113

Democrats +15 56.13% D 272 R 163 D 109

Democrats +14 55.93% D 271 R 164 D 107 - 12

Democrats +13 55.72% D 269 R 166 D 103

Democrats +12 55.46% D 267 R 168 D 99 - 9

Democrats +11 55.15% D 265 R 170 D 95

Democrats +10 54.78% D 262 R 173 D 89 + 3 / -7 / -15

Democrats +9 54.34% D 259 R 176 D 83

Democrats +8 53.85% D 255 R 180 D 75 -12

Democrats +7 53.32% D 251 R 184 D 67 +18

Democrats +6 52.76% D 247 R 188 D 59 -8

Democrats +5 52.19% D 243 R 192 D 51 -4

Democrats +4 51.62% D 238 R 197 D 41 +27

Democrats +3 51.08% D 234 R 201 D 33 +2

Democrats +2 50.57% D 230 R 205 D 25 -5

Democrats +1 50.11% D 227 R 208 D 19

Tied 49.69% D 224 R 211 D 13

Republicans +1 49.33% D 221 R 214 D 7

Republicans +2 48.99% D 219 R 216 D 3

Republicans +3 48.67% D 216 R 219 R 3

Republicans +4 48.33% D 214 R 221 R 7

Republicans +5 47.92% D 211 R 224 R 13

Republicans +6 47.39% D 207 R 228 R 21 +3

Republicans +7 46.65% D 201 R 234 R 33 -3

Republicans +8 45.63% D 193 R 242 R 49

Republicans +9 44.20% D 183 R 252 R 59

A few things jump out at you from this table. First, the Republicans have to be 2.5 points ahead to gain control of the house. The margin of error column tells you that this prediction can be anywhere from 1 to 27 seats off which can make a rather large error in some cases. In three midterm elections, 1962, 1978 and 1982 the Democrats were 10 points ahead in the generic ballot and they achieved 259, 277 and 269 seats respectively. The mathematical equation cannot be in three different points at the same time so the best fit predicts 262 seats. Even so, this table is better than nothing since none of the errors changed which party controlled the House. The last point is that the Republicans only had control twice out of 15 midterm elections since 1950.

The Rasmussen Reports have had the Republicans ahead by 3 points or more ever since July 5th and our table says they get control of the House if that result held up at the time of the next election. The Republicans have been ahead by as much as 9 points since then. That would translate to a 59 seat margin in our table and even the maximum error of 27 seats would still give them control. Any generic ballot result of 7 or more points in their favor gives the Republicans control even with the maximum error applied.

Now you know why we have had the Republicans regaining control of the House as a result of the November elections ever since last October unlike the other analysts. That was when the Republicans got ahead 4 points in the Rasmussen generic ballot and never fell below it. That was when we projected a gain of 46 seats which would give the Republicans control by 8 seats. After the election of Scott Brown, we revisited our projections because by that time the Republicans had been ahead by at least 8 points for 4 weeks in a row. That caused us to adjust our formula for projecting which way a seat will go (a cubic equation this time) to give the Republicans another 17 seats for a margin of 47 seats just as the table would predict.

Our current prediction is from 63 to 72 seats for margins of 47 to 56 seats depending upon a 8 or 9 point generic ballot lead for the Republicans. Can we be off in our projection? Of course, we could be off by as much as 27 seats but that still gives the Republicans in a worst case scenario a margin of 20 seats. We do not make these projections up nor do we overestimate for the Republicans just because we are Republican analysts. There is a solid mathematical basis for our projections because unlike other analysts, we do not make "seat of the pants" calls.

The Anomalous 2008 Election

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:28:00 +0000

Battleground States Demographics
	2008 in 1000's	2004 in 1000's
STATE	BLACK	HISP	18-24	25-44	BLACK	HISP	18-24	25-44
Indiana	219	36	222	955	198	41	232	868
North Carolina	919	77	362	1,566	784	27	310	1,327
Missouri	336	20	304	912	324	35	269	965
Virginia	686	74	311	1,262	477	70	215	1,091
Florida	985	1227	693	2,246	919	824	581	2,173
Colorado	81	195	231	808	56	165	212	758
Ohio	630	74	581	1,757	586	90	599	1,861
Nevada	105	119	85	357	56	72	83	291
Iowa	42	20	147	470	23	12	183	474
New Hampshire	4	8	72	230	1	5	54	241
Wisconsin	145	66	267	901	133	67	301	1,059
New Mexico	20	289	69	239	23	276	74	284
TOTALS	4,172	2,205	3,344	11,703	3,580	1,684	3,113	11,392

The 2008 presidential election was the strangest such election in the last 40 odd years. It simply did not follow any historical trends which made it very hard to predict. It is only from the results of previous elections that we can predict future ones and when the results do not follow previous results then the analyst will usually get it wrong like we did. For one thing, we did not think that the American people were ready for a black President before we elected a female one. After all, females are 51.4% of the voting age population while black Americans are only 11.4% of that population. We are glad to say we were wrong about that assumption because it did show that race relations have improved tremendously since the era of the Jim Crow laws.

Still based on previous elections John McCain should have won handily in terms of electoral votes. Presidential elections are won in the so-called battleground states as illustrated in Presidential Elections in a Nutshell. Once a Republican has the usual red states, all he needs are the Republican leaning purple states of North Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, Florida, Colorado and Ohio to achieve a tie in electoral votes. To win the Republican must pick off one of the Democrat leaning purple states of Nevada, Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin or New Mexico. George Bush won in 2004 by picking off Nevada, Iowa and New Mexico. He won in 2000 by picking off Nevada and New Hampshire.

Obviously that is not what happened in 2008. Barack Obama won by holding all of Democrat and leaning Democrat states and picking off Ohio, Colorado, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina plus the red state of Indiana. So what happened in these six states that they switched sides? One theory is that the Obama campaign managed to greatly increase the turnout of minority voters and voters under 30 years old. Perhaps they did manage that in some states but all we care about is what happened in the battleground states since the results in red and blue states would still have been the same. We have prepared a table of the battleground states plus Indiana using voter turnout figures from the census bureau for the 2004 and 2008 elections by various demographic groups.

Battleground States Demographics

2008 in 1000's
2004 in 1000's

STATE BLACK HISP 18-24 25-44 BLACK HISP 18-24 25-44

Indiana 219 36 222 955 198 41 232 868

North Carolina 919 77 362 1,566 784 27 310 1,327

Missouri 336 20 304 912 324 35 269 965

Virginia 686 74 311 1,262 477 70 215 1,091

Florida 985 1227 693 2,246 919 824 581 2,173

Colorado 81 195 231 808 56 165 212 758

Ohio 630 74 581 1,757 586 90 599 1,861

Nevada 105 119 85 357 56 72 83 291

Iowa 42 20 147 470 23 12 183 474

New Hampshire 4 8 72 230 1 5 54 241

Wisconsin 145 66 267 901 133 67 301 1,059

New Mexico 20 289 69 239 23 276 74 284

TOTALS 4,172 2,205 3,344 11,703 3,580 1,684 3,113 11,392

While the numbers of these various groups did change as a whole in these 12 states, they were not evenly distributed. Still overall, the number of Blacks voting increased by about 592,000, the number of Hispanics doing that increased about 521,000. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau does not break out turnout by age by very small groupings so we were forced to use 18 to 24 and 25 to 44 groups. In the former the numbers voting increased about 231,000 and the latter about 311,000. The question now is whether these groups changed any of these states from the way they usually vote all by themselves or even in combination. We have another table below comparing the change in voter turnout to the margin by which Obama carried that particular state.

Changes Between 2004 and 2008
State	~ Black	~ Hisp	~ 18-24	~ 25-44	~ Totals	Margin	Differs
Indiana	21,000	-5,000	-10,000	87,000	93,000	26,163	+66,800
North Carolina	135,000	50,000	52,000	239,000	476,000	13,692	+462,300
Missouri	12,000	-15,000	35,000	-53,000	-21,000	-3,632	-17,400
Virginia	209,000	4,000	96,000	171,000	480,000	232,317	+247,700
Florida	66,000	403,000	112,000	73,000	654,000	204,577	+449,400
Colorado	25,000	30,000	19,000	50,000	124,000	196,658	-72,700
Ohio	44,000	-16,000	-18,000	-104,000	-94,000	206,830	-268,800
Nevada	49,000	47,000	2,000	66,000	164,000	119,896	+44,100
Iowa	19,000	8,000	-36,000	-4,000	-13,000	140,732	-173,700
New Hampshire	3,000	3,000	18,000	-11,000	13,000	67,654	-54,700
Wisconsin	12,000	-1,000	-34,000	-158,000	-181,000	412,293	-593,300
New Mexico	-3,000	13,000	-5,000	-45,000	-66,000	120,638	-186,600

Changes Between 2004 and 2008

State ~ Black ~ Hisp ~ 18-24 ~ 25-44 ~ Totals Margin Differs

Indiana 21,000 -5,000 -10,000 87,000 93,000 26,163 +66,800

North Carolina 135,000 50,000 52,000 239,000 476,000 13,692 +462,300

Missouri 12,000 -15,000 35,000 -53,000 -21,000 -3,632 -17,400

Virginia 209,000 4,000 96,000 171,000 480,000 232,317 +247,700

Florida 66,000 403,000 112,000 73,000 654,000 204,577 +449,400

Colorado 25,000 30,000 19,000 50,000 124,000 196,658 -72,700

Ohio 44,000 -16,000 -18,000 -104,000 -94,000 206,830 -268,800

Nevada 49,000 47,000 2,000 66,000 164,000 119,896 +44,100

Iowa 19,000 8,000 -36,000 -4,000 -13,000 140,732 -173,700

New Hampshire 3,000 3,000 18,000 -11,000 13,000 67,654 -54,700

Wisconsin 12,000 -1,000 -34,000 -158,000 -181,000 412,293 -593,300

New Mexico -3,000 13,000 -5,000 -45,000 -66,000 120,638 -186,600

When the figure in the differs column is plus, these demographic groups did explain the result in that particular state. In particular, the increase in the black vote almost by itself explains why Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia flipped to the Democrats. The big increase in the Hispanic voters explains what happened in Florida although Hispanics in the Miami area do tend to vote Republican if the are from Cuban families. It is interesting to note that these groups actually decreased in Missouri which allowed McCain to hang on to that purple state. What is puzzling is that these groups also decreased in turnout in Ohio and yet Obama won handily.

All of these groups together explain why McCain did not carry Nevada. Nevada has been tending more Democrat as the minority population has increased significantly and as liberal voters flee the high taxes in California for the no state income tax in Nevada but still take their voting habits with them even though those habits are what caused the high taxes in California. It would appear that Iowa, Wisconsin and New Mexico may have simply gotten out of reach for Republicans.

The 2010 Census will likely add 6 more electoral votes to red states at the expense of blue states so this could help offset negative demographics for the Republicans in the purple states. The Republicans cannot win the Presidency if they lose any of the purple states that tend Republican with the possible exception of Colorado. They would need to carry New Hampshire or Nevada to make up for losing Colorado.

What happened in Colorado, New Hampshire and Ohio in 2008? New Hampshire voted for Obama because its voters were enamored of the idea of having a black President. We suspect that factor also contributed to what happened in Indiana, Colorado and Ohio as well but only time will tell if that is a correct hypothesis. If it is incorrect and these states are simply becoming more Democrat then the Republicans could be in a world of hurt in Presidential elections from this point on.

Charlie, You Have Us Confused

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 04:55:00 +0000

From The Marston Chronicles

Charlie Cook has us really confused at this point. We have watched a video in which he says, "And it's very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don't lose the House." Then we look at his competitive House races tally which shows a grand total of 6 Democrat held House seats going to the Republicans. Since he says that the Republicans will lose the seat in Delaware and thus would need to pick up 41 Democrat held seats to regain control of the House, what scenario is he talking about? Even if we give the Republicans all 21 seats listed as Democrat toss-ups, that only gives them 27 new seats, still 14 short of control.

It would seem to us that Charlie Cook already has a scenario in which Republicans do not regain control of the House, namely his own charts. So where does he come up with this scenario that is not hard to imagine giving the Republicans 41 Democrat held seats? Now he does say that those seats are not there right now but surely there are more than 6 that the Republicans would pick up if the election were held today. We are curious as where Charlie thinks the other 35 seats might come from. To help him out, we are going to construct a new chart for him showing what it might look like.

There have been polls taken in several House districts, so where the polls have show the Democrat losing by 10 or more points, we will make them likely Republican. If the Republican is up less then ten but more than three points we will make the seat leaning Republican. For a race from tied to up by three points we will make the race a Republican toss-up. That would add 10 seats to the Republican group which would not all be coming from the Democrat toss-up group either. MA-10 comes from the likely Democrat group and ND-AL comes from the leans Democrat group. The Republican groups would then look like this:

REPUBLICAN TOSS UP

LEAN REPUBLICAN

LIKELY REPUBLICAN

DIST.	REPRESENTATIVE	PVI
IL-10	OPEN (Kirk)	D+6
MA-10	Bill Delahunt	D+5
NV-3	Dina Titus	D+2
LA-2	Joseph Cao	D+25
VA-5	Tom Perriello	R+5

2 REPUBLICANS
3 DEMOCRATS

DIST.	REPRESENTATIVE	PVI
AR-1	OPEN (Berry)	R+8
AR-2	OPEN (Snyder)	R+5
CA-3	Dan Lungren	R+6
IN-8	OPEN (Ellsworth)	R+8
IN-9	Baron Hill	R+6
KS-3	OPEN (Moore)	R+3
NH-2	OPEN (Hodes)	D+3
ND-AL	Earl Pomeroy	R+10
PA-6	Jim Gerlach	D+4
PA-15	Charlie Dent	D+2

3 REPUBLICANS
7 DEMOCRATS

DIST.	REPRESENTATIVE	PVI
AL-5	Parker Griffith	R+12
AZ-3	OPEN (Shadegg)	R+9
CA-44	Ken Calvert	R+6
CA-45	Mary Bono Mack	R+3
FL-12	OPEN (Putnam)	R+6
LA-3	OPEN (Melancon)	R+12
MD-1	Frank Kratovil	R+13
MI-7	Mark Schauer	R+2
MN-6	Michele Bachmann	R+7
NE-2	Lee Terry	R+6
NH-1	Carol Shea-Porter	R+0
OH-1	Steve Driehaus	D+1
OH-2	Jean Schmidt	R+13
OH-12	Patrick Tiberi	D+1
SC-1	OPEN (Brown)	R+10
SC-2	Joe Wilson	R+9
TN-6	OPEN (Gordon)	R+13
WA-8	Dave Reichert	D+3

12 REPUBLICANS
6 DEMOCRATS

Italicized name denotes Freshman member

This is much more realistic but surely a scenario that will eventually give the Republicans control of the House should have more than 16 seats going to the Republicans already. So let's give the Republicans those seats where the Democrat won by less than 6 points in 2008 with less than 2 points being likely, 2 to 3 being leaning and 4 to 5 being a toss-up. The problem here is that several races would be coming from the likely Democrat or leans Democrat and not just the toss-up group. From the likely Democrat group, we would have to move CT-4, NY-20 and PA-3 over to the Republican side and not to the toss-up group either.

Scott Murphy in NY-20 wins with a 0.45% margin while Obama only wins by a 3% margin in a terrible year for Republicans and that is a likely Democrat seat? Kathy Dahlkemper wins in PA-3 by a 2.47% margin while the Presidential candidates are essentially tied and that is a likely Democrat district? This does not compute. This means we will also have to move NJ-3, NY-23, NY-24, NY-29 and PA-11 from the leans Democrat as well and not to the Republican toss-up group either. Perhaps those districts needed to be re-evaluated anyway. With these changes we would add 21 more seats to the Republican groupings for a total of 28 seats.

Surely this would be more in line with a quote about it being hard to imagine the Republicans not regaining control of the House. That still leaves needing 13 more seats to gain control of the House but there are only 8 seats left in the Democrat toss-up group so we had better move some of the leaning and likely Democrat seats over to the Democrat toss-up group. Let's pick those seats where the incumbent Democrat won by more than 6 but less than a 10 point margin. That moves AZ-5, FL-22, ME-1, MI-9 and WI-8 to the Democrat toss-ups. Oops, ME-1 is not even listed as being in play. Oh well, surely a seat that was won by less than 10 points should be in play anyway.

With these now 13 seats in the Democrat toss-up group plus the 28 in the Republican group, we can at least see where the 41 seats would come from to give the Republicans control of the House. This way Charlie's charts would match his quote and the confusion would be alleviated. Doesn't this make more sense, Charlie? Please feel free to adopt any of our suggestions that make sense to you in the now revised chart below:

LIKELY DEMOCRATIC

LEAN DEMOCRATIC

DEMOCRATIC TOSS UP

DIST.	REPRESENTATIVE	PVI
AZ-1	Ann Kirkpatrick	R+6
AR-4	Mike Ross	R+7
CA-18	Dennis Cardoza	D+4
CA-20	Jim Costa	D+5
CA-47	Loretta Sánchez	D+4
CO-7	Ed Perlmutter	D+4
CT-5	Christopher Murphy	D+2
FL-2	Allen Boyd	R+6
GA-8	Jim Marshall	R+10
GA-12	John Barrow	D+1
IL-8	Melissa Bean	R+1
IL-11	Debbie Halvorson	R+1
IN-2	Joe Donnelly*	R+2
IA-1	Bruce Braley	D+5
KY-3	John Yarmuth	D+2
KY-6	Ben Chandler	R+9
MN-1	Tim Walz	R+1
MO-3	Russ Carnahan	D+7
NM-1	Martin Heinrich	D+5
NY-25	Dan Maffei	D+3
NC-11	Heath Shuler	R+6
OH-6	Charlie Wilson	R+2
OR-1	David Wu	D+8
OR-5	Kurt Schrader	D+1
PA-4	Jason Altmire	R+6
PA-17	Tim Holden	R+6
SD-AL	Stephanie Herseth Sandlin	R+9
TN-4	Lincoln Davis	R+13
TX-23	Ciro Rodriguez	R+4
VA-11	Gerald Connolly	D+2
WA-2	Rick Larsen	D+3
WV-3	Nick Rahall	R+6
WI-3	Ron Kind	D+4
WI-7	Dave Obey	D+3

34 DEMOCRATS
0 REPUBLICANS

DIST.	REPRESENTATIVE	PVI
AZ-8	Gabrielle Giffords	R+4
CA-11	Jerry McNerney	R+1
CO-3	John Salazar	R+5
DE-AL	OPEN (Castle)	D+7
FL-24	Suzanne Kosmas	R+4
HI-1	OPEN (Abercrombie)	D+11
IL-14	Bill Foster	R+1
IA-3	Leonard Boswell	D+1
MO-4	Ike Skelton	R+14
NY-1	Tim Bishop	R+0
NY-13	Mike McMahon	R+4
NY-19	John Hall	R+3
NC-8	Larry Kissell	R+2
OH-13	Betty Sutton	D+5
OH-16	John Boccieri	R+4
OH-18	Zack Space	R+7
PA-8	Patrick Murphy	D+2
PA-10	Chris Carney	R+8
SC-5	John Spratt	R+7
TX-17	Chet Edwards	R+20
VA-9	Rick Boucher	R+11

20 DEMOCRATS
1 REPUBLICANS

DIST.	REPRESENTATIVE	PVI
AZ-5	Harry Mitchell	R+5
CO-4	Betsy Markey	R+6
FL-22	Ron Klein	D+1
ME-1	Chellie Pingree	???
MI-9	Gary Peters	D+2
MS-1	Travis Childers	R+14
NM-2	Harry Teague	R+6
PA-7	OPEN (Sestak)	D+3
PA-12	VACANT	R+1
TN-8	OPEN (Tanner)	R+6
WA-3	OPEN (Baird)	D+0
WV-1	Alan B. Mollohan	R+9
WI-8	Steve Kagen	R+2

13 DEMOCRATS
0 REPUBLICANS

REPUBLICAN TOSS UP

LEAN REPUBLICAN

LIKELY REPUBLICAN

DIST.	REPRESENTATIVE	PVI
FL-8	Alan Grayson	R+2
IL-10	OPEN (Kirk)	D+6
MA-10	Bill Delahunt	D+5
NV-3	Dina Titus	D+2
LA-2	Joseph Cao	D+25
VA-2	Glenn Nye	R+5
VA-5	Tom Perriello	R+5

2 REPUBLICANS
5 DEMOCRATS

DIST.	REPRESENTATIVE	PVI
AR-1	OPEN (Berry)	R+8
AR-2	OPEN (Snyder)	R+5
CA-3	Dan Lungren	R+6
CT-4	Jim Himes	D+5
IN-8	OPEN (Ellsworth)	R+8
IN-9	Baron Hill	R+6
KS-3	OPEN (Moore)	R+3
NH-2	OPEN (Hodes)	D+3
NJ-3	John Adler	R+1
NY-23	Bill Owens	R+1
NY-24	Michael Arcuri	R+2
ND-AL	Earl Pomeroy	R+10
PA-3	Kathy Dahlkemper	R+3
PA-6	Jim Gerlach	D+4
PA-11	Paul Kanjorski	D+4
PA-15	Charlie Dent	D+2

3 REPUBLICANS
13 DEMOCRATS

DIST.	REPRESENTATIVE	PVI
AL-2	Bobby Bright	R+16
AL-5	Parker Griffith	R+12
AZ-3	OPEN (Shadegg)	R+9
CA-44	Ken Calvert	R+6
CA-45	Mary Bono Mack	R+3
FL-12	OPEN (Putnam)	R+6
ID-1	Walter Minnick	R+18
LA-3	OPEN (Melancon)	R+12
MI-7	Mark Schauer	R+2
MN-6	Michele Bachmann	R+7
NE-2	Lee Terry	R+6
NH-1	Carol Shea-Porter	R+0
NY-20	Scott Murphy	R+2
NY-29	Eric Massa	R+5
OH-1	Steve Driehaus	D+1
OH-2	Jean Schmidt	R+13
OH-12	Patrick Tiberi	D+1
OH-15	Mary Jo Kilroy	D+1
SC-1	OPEN (Brown)	R+10
SC-2	Joe Wilson	R+9
TN-6	OPEN (Gordon)	R+13
WA-8	Dave Reichert	D+3

12 REPUBLICANS
10 DEMOCRATS

Italicized name denotes Freshman member
* denotes possible incumbent retirement
# denotes possible serious primary challenge

The 40 Needed Republican House Seats

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:27:00 +0000

The Republicans need to gain a net of 40 seats to regain control of the House of Representatives. Since every analyst seems to predicting they will lose both the Delaware at large seat and the Louisiana 2 seat, they will need to capture 42 seats currently held by the Democrats. That brings up the question of where these 42 seats will come from. We have our own idea of 74 seats which we believe are either odds on bets or are quite possible for the Republicans to capture. We will list them along with what other analysts think are the chances in the table. Notice that in the top 40 ending with CO-4, the margin of the incumbent Democrat does not go over 10% unless Obama lost the district. Also notice that in addition to the top 40, other analysts think that PA-7 and PA-12 are primarily toss-ups because there is no incumbent Democrat. That makes 42 seats for the Republicans and control by 1 seat after losing two seats. See if you think there are more than 42 seats in the table that the Republicans can capture.

SEAT
MARGIN
OBAMA
MARSTON
CQ POL COOK
ROTHENBERG

AL-2
0.62%
-27.37%
99.2%
Toss-up
D toss-up
R toss-up

LA-3
0.50%
-23.96%
98.7%
Leans R
Likely R
Leans R

ID-1
1.21%
-25.94%
95.7%
Toss-up
D toss-up
R toss-up

MD-1
0.79%
-18.45%
95.4%
Toss-up
D toss-up
R toss-up

VA-5
0.23%
-2.31%
93.0%
Toss-up
D toss-up
R toss-up

NY-20
0.45%
3.00%
90.0%
Likely D
Likely D
D favored

OH-15
0.76%
7.12%
87.0%
Toss-up
D toss-up
R toss-up

NY-29
1.23%
-2.22%
84.4%
Leans D
Leans D
Leans D

PA-3
2.47%
Tie
81.4%
Leans D
Likely D
Safe D

MI-7
2.31%
5.23%
80.3%
Toss-up
D toss-up
Toss-up

TX-17
7.48%
-35.17%
77.8%
Likely D
Leans D
D favored

NY-23
3.11%
5.22%
77.0%
Leans D
Leans D
Leans D

AR-2
#4.70%
-9.91%
76.5%
Leans R
Leans R
Toss-up

NJ-3
3.31%
5.38%
76.2%
Leans D
Leans D
D favored

NY-24
3.94%
2.36%
74.9%
Leans D
Leans D
Leans D

IN-9
4.52%
-1.76%
73.8%
Leans D
D toss-up
Leans D

FL-8
4.03%
5.70%
73.5%
Toss-up
D toss-up
R toss-up

PA-11
3.25%
14.83%
73.3%
Leans D
Leans D
D favored

KS-3
#4.78%
2.58%
72.1%
Likely R
Leans R
R toss-up

VA-2
4.94%
1.96%
71.8%
Leans D
D toss-up
D toss-up

TN-6
#9.30%
-25.78%
71.1%
Likely R
Likely R
Leans R

AR-1
#8.45
-20.28%
70.9%
Toss-up
Leans R
Toss-up

OH-1
4.94%
10.25%
69.1%
Toss-up
D toss-up
R toss-up

CT-4
3.97%
20.06%
68.9%
Likely D
Likely D
Safe D

MS-1
10.59%
-23.54%
68.5%
Toss-up
D toss-up
R toss-up

NH-1
5.89%
6.21%
67.7%
Leans D
D toss-up
Toss-up

NV-3
5.14%
12.76%
67.6%
Leans D
D toss-up
Leans D

AZ-5
9.58%
-4.53%
63.9%
Leans D
Leans D
D favored

PA-4
11.72%
-10.45%
62.6%
Likely D
Likely D
D favored

NH-2
7.10%
13.09%
62.5%
Toss-up
D toss-up
Toss-up

MA-5
#6.21%
19.51%
62.5%
Safe D
Safe D
Safe D

WI-8
8.10%
8.10%
62.0%
Leans D
Leans D
D favored

OH-16
10.73%
-2.61%
61.3%
Likely D
Leans D
D favored

FL-22
9.34%
4.04%
61.2%
Safe D
Likely D
Safe D

AZ-8
11.90%
-5.94%
60.9%
Likely D
Leans D
D favored

PA-10
12.66%
-8.43%
60.7%
Leans D
Leans D
D favored

WA-3
#9.32%
6.72%
60.4%
Toss-up
D toss-up
Toss-up

GA-8
14.49%
-13.36%
60.1%
Likely D
Likely D
D favored

NM-2
11.92%
-1.33%
59.3%
Toss-up
D toss-up
R toss-up

CO-4
12.39%
-0.88%
58.5%
Toss-up
D toss-up
Toss-up

NC-8
10.76%
5.88%
58.4%
Leans D
Leans D
D favored

MI-9
9.45%
12.96%
58.1%
Likely D
Likely D
Safe D

CA-11 10.55% 9.33% 57.6% Leans D Leans D D favored

AZ-1 16.45% -10.17% 57.4% Likely D Likely D Safe D

TX-23 13.84% 2.69% 55.6% Likely D Likely D Safe D

TN-4 20.96% -29.81% 54.3% Likely D Likely D Safe D

MA-10 #10.58% 11.27% 54.3% Likely D Likely D Safe D

ME-1 9.80% 22.82% 54.2% Safe D Safe D Safe D

FL-24 16.09% -1.95% 54.2%
Leans D Leans D D toss-up

PA-12 15.70% -0.31% 54.2% Toss-up D toss-up D favored

VA-11 11.72% 14.96% 54.1% Likely D Likely D Safe D

PA-7 #12.76% 12.64% 53.6% Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up

NY-25 12.94% 13.12% 53.2% Likely D Likely D Safe D

MA-6 #12.18% 16.94% 52.9% Safe D Safe D Safe D

NM-1 11.31% 20.43% 52.8% Likely D Likely D Safe D

IA-3 14.25% 9.37% 52.8% Leans D Leans D D favored

VA-9 #20.37% -19.10% 52.2% Safe D Leans D D favored

PA-8 15.14% 8.93% 51.8% Likely D Leans D D favored

NY-1 15.77% 3.82% 51.3% Likely D Leans D Leans D

IL-17 #14.25% 14.24% 51.1% Safe D Safe D Safe D

NY-19 17.35% 2.28% 50.9% Leans D Leans D Leans D

IL-14 15.50% 11.06% 50.7% Leans D Leans D Safe D

CA-10 10.28% 31.66% 50.5% Safe D Safe D Safe D

AR-4 #21.21% -18.81% 50.2% Safe D Likely D Safe D

OR-5 16.00% 10.62% 50.1% Likely D Likely D Safe D

OH-18 19.75% -7.86% 49.8% Leans D Leans D D favored

ND-AL #19.16% -8.63% 48.4% Leans D Leans D D favored

MA-3 #15.42% 19.35% 48.0% Safe D Safe D Safe D

HI-1 #10.26% 42.29% 47.0% Leans D Leans D Leans D

KY-3 18.73% 12.30% 45.2% Safe D Likely D Safe D

TX-27 19.57% 7.34% 45.2% Safe D Safe D Safe D

OH-10 17.90% 20.26% 44.0% Safe D Safe D Safe D

IA-2 18.42% 21.61% 42.7% Safe D Safe D Safe D

CT-5 20.17% 13.94% 41.6% Likely D Likely D D favored

You can see that the analysts seldom agree on any given seat. This is because the other three analysts use subjective criteria which produces a "seat of the pants" rating than using purely objective criteria like we do. We use a mathematical formula based strictly on the incumbent's winning margin and the margin that Obama-Biden got in the 2008 presidential election. We feel that any other approach invites introducing too many judgment calls that are hard to statistically evaluate. In our opinion, these judgment calls lead to what what can only be called many surprising ratings by the other analysts.

You will see three D's in several districts when the winning margin is less than 5% and in two cases where Obama did not even carry the district (NY-29 and PA-3). Rep. Murphy in NY-20 won by less than one-half of 1% in a terrible Republican year and yet all three think he will win easily in what looks to be a banner Republican year. You will also notice that the other analysts ignore all of Massachusetts but MA-10 even though Scott Brown carried six districts by over 56%. They also ignore Maine 1 even though Rep. Pingree won by less than a 10% margin. They say that CT-5 is in play when Rep. Murphy got over a 20% margin and Obama had almost a 14% margin, yet in TX-27 they say that Rep. Ortiz is home free with a margin of less than 20% but where Obama got a margin of less than 8%. Go figure. Perhaps now that Rep. Ortiz has hints of a scandal, the other analysts will change their ratings.

A final note about our own ratings which are expressed in the percentage probability of the district being captured by the Republicans. When there is a # in front of the Democrat margin, it means we did not use the 2008 margin. This could be due to the fact that the seat is open so we used a margin from an earlier election under similar circumstances. It could also mean that the Democrat was unopposed by the Republicans and we were forced to use an earlier election in which the Democrat did have Republican opposition. Finally there are a couple of cases where polls or later election results (VA, NJ, MA) indicate that the election will be closer than the 2008 margin would predict so we have used a margin from a year with closer results.

Just because we list a district as having a better than even chance (50% or better) of going Republican does not mean we believe it will necessarily go Republican. An odds on bet is never a sure thing even when the percentage is above 90%. For example a Public Policy Polling result shows Rep. Perriello in VA-5 is tied with his best Republican opponent even though he has a 93.0% chance of losing. Our present mathematical formula does not allow for local conditions that vary from district to district. As we get closer to the election, we will introduce more variables into the formula to account for such conditions. One thing we may introduce quite soon is an allowance for the Democrat voting no on the Pelosi health care bill which based on some polls seems to be insulating some Democrats from being in trouble compared to others who voted yes.

Reading the Political Tea Leaves

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:04:00 +0000

As most followers of politics know, in midterm elections, the party not controlling the Presidency tends to pick up a bunch of seats. While there are exceptions to this rule like 1998 and 2002 were, the average pick-up is 28 seats over the last 17 midterm elections. Sometimes the shifts are even more dramatic. The Republicans lost 48 seats in both 1958 and 1974 and the Democrats lost 54 seats in both 1946 and 1994. Most people would admit that it would appear that 2010 is going to look a lot more like 1994 when the Democrats lost 54 seats than it will 1978 when they only lost 15 seats. At the very least, 2010 will be another 1950 when they lost the average of 28 seats.

There seems to be quite a disconnect between what is happening in politics and what the analysts are predicting will be the results of the November elections. This is particularly true in the 435 races for the House of Representatives. There are four reports for these results: CQ Politics, the Cook Report, the Rothenberg Report and our own, the Marston Report. Thus one would expect all four of them to show at least 28 Democrat seats going Republican and perhaps one showing as high as 54 seats in view of what happened in Massachusetts with the election of Scott Brown. None of the first three show other than minimal gains for the Republicans.

CQ Politics predicts a net gain of 3 seats with 18 toss-ups. Charlie Cook predicts a net gain of 6 seats and 23 toss-ups. Stu Rothenberg predicts a net gain of 10 seats and 10 toss-ups. Only our own report shows a net gain of 63 seats for the Republicans. There are 9 polls taken in House races in recent months showing the Republican candidate ahead or tied with the incumbent Democrat. One would expect those races with the Republican ahead to be favoring the Republicans and the tied one to be a toss-up but that is not the case as the following table shows:

RACE POLL CQ COOK ROTHENBERG MARSTON

Indiana 9 R +8 Leans D D toss-up Leans D Leans R

Maryland 1 R +13 Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Likely R

Massachusetts 10 R +3 Likely D Likely D Safe D R toss-up

Michigan 7 R +10 Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Likely R

Nevada 3 Tied Leans D D toss-up Leans D Leans R

New Hampshire 1 R +10 Leans D D toss-up Toss-up Leans R

New Hampshire 2 R +7 Toss-up D toss-up Toss-up Leans R

North Dakota AL R +6 Leans D Leans D D favored D toss-up

Ohio 1 R +17 Toss-up D toss-up R toss-up Leans R

As you can see, CQ Politics is the least realistic listing 5 races as favoring Democrats when the polls have a Republican from tied to 10 points ahead. The Cook Report shows 2 races as favoring Democrats when the polls have a Republican up by from 3 to 6 points and even the 8 toss-ups as slightly favoring the Democrats. The Rothenberg Report shows 4 races for the Democrats when the polls range from tied to a Republican up by 8 points but at least it shows that 2 of the races lean slightly to a Republican candidate when the polls have him up from 13 to 17 points. On the other hand, Rothenberg lists MA-10 as not even in play and hence is a safe Democrat district when a poll has a Republican candidate up by 3 points even before the Amy Bishop scandal.

We make no pretense about our not being Republican analysts and that opens us up to being biased in favor of the Republican Party. In light of all of the above, we feel that our own report is the most realistic given the known facts, but we will let the public come to its own conclusion on that score.

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:10:00 +0000

While Senate races are often polled, it is much harder to find polls for House Races. Still there are always some that are done for one reason or another. We have found nine that clearly illustrate the high cost to a House member who voted for the Pelosi version of health care in the House. All nine of these House members are in districts that are at risk for a Republican pick-up in November. Seven of them voted for the health care and two did not. This table makes it all clear:

District Incumbent Vote Polls

Indiana 9 Baron Hill Yes

Sodrel 49% Hill 41% SurveyUSA 1/17-19/10

Michigan 7 Mark Schauer Yes

Walberg 50% Schauer 40% National Research 1/11-12/10

Nevada 3 Dana Titus Yes

Heck 40% Titus 40% Mason Dixon 11/30-12/2/09

New Hampshire 1 Carol Shea-Porter Yes

Guinta 43% Shea-Porter 33% Univ. of NH 1/27-2/3/10

New Hampshire 2 Paul Hodes Yes

Ayotte 46% Hodes 39% Rasmussen Reports 2/10/10

North Dakota Earl Pomeroy III Yes

Berg 46% Pomeroy 40% Rasmussen Reports 2/9-10/10

Ohio 1 Steven Driehaus Yes

Chabot 56% Driehaus 39% SurveyUSA 1/12-14/10

North Carolina 8 Larry Kissell No

D'Annunzio 38% Kissell 54% Public Pol icy Polling 1/9-11/10

South Carolina John Spratt Jr No

Mulvaney 39% Spratt 46% Public Policy Polling 1/22-24/10

As you can see every Democrat who voted for the Pelosi health care bill is either losing or tied at best. On the other hand, both Democrats who voted against the bill are ahead. We don't know about you but to us this is a very powerful message. Voting for Obama care in any of its various forms is the kiss of death politically speaking. A yes vote was very costly already and that is before ads appear pointing out this vote in the worst possible light. There is still time for the Democrats in competitive districts to save themselves because the Democrat leadership is stuck on stupid and planning to put all of these Democrats on the spot with another health care vote and thereby seal their fate.

Far be it for us to give Democrat House members any advice but it comes down to voting for Obama care or getting re-elected because they are mutually exclusive. Still it would seem to us that voting against Obama care this time around would allow a Democrat to counter those very damaging ads by pointing out in their own counter ads their second vote on the subject and say that they listened to their constituents and changed their minds and their votes. Reps. Kissell and Spratt clearly are already benefiting from their no votes and it is apparently not too late for other Democrat House members to do the same.

Stuck on Stupid

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:55:00 +0000

You may have noticed that politicians of both parties are quite prone to get stuck on stupid. That is they keep doing something that is obviously counterproductive given the costs to them of continuing to do that same thing over and over. There is usually a difference between both parties as to how they get stuck on stupid, however. Although the ideological disease strikes both parties to some extent, the Democrats are far more prone to succumb to the siren call of their far left agenda. As we have commented earlier, Ideologues Make Poor Politicians. Ideologues are so consumed with their agenda that they lose sight of the fact that if they cannot sell their agenda to a majority of the voters, they will soon will not be able to do anything about their agenda because they will be out of office.

This problem occurs because the ideologue is convinced that his or her agenda is morally correct and/or is good for the country and its people. This conviction borders on a religious fervor among ideologues. In the case of the Republican Party, this is found among the right to life contingent. Because they are convinced that the soul takes possession of the fetus at conception and not at birth, they are adamantly opposed to Roe vs. Wade and will do whatever it takes to get it repealed. The fact that this is not going to happen because a majority of the voters do not want it repealed is lost on them.

They continue to oppose Republican candidates who are not "right" on this issue even when it results in the election of a politician who is actually pro-abortion as opposed to pro-choice. Refusing to turn out and vote for McCain because he was not sufficiently pro-life even when Obama was clearly a pro-abortion candidate is a case in point. This is definitely being stuck on stupid because they can sell banning partial birth abortions, prohibiting denial of care to a fetus born alive, and prohibiting federal funding of abortions to a majority of the voters. An ideologue just is not willing to settle for half a loaf of bread. Instead they prefer to go down with their capsizing ideological ship.

What is interesting is that the left wing of the Democrat Party clearly sees that the pro-life folks have the position they do due to their religious beliefs. What they do not so that they are attached to their own beliefs with that same fervor even though by and large those beliefs have nothing to do with religion. To them their beliefs are not beliefs at all but are facts that anyone with a grain of intelligence should be able to understand. After all they are intelligent and all the intelligent people they know accept these facts so anyone who does not is automatically stuck on stupid in their mind. Global warming caused by man is an excellent point in fact for this. To them the science is settled and information that the scientific data used to come to this conclusion was rigged does not deter them from continuing to insist that they are right.

To them, the fact that everyone does not have health insurance or even if they do the cost is outrageous is a crying shame. Since the health insurance companies are charging too much they are part of the problem and not part of the solution so then we must turn to the federal government for a solution. The fact that the federal government has screwed up everything it has touched since day one is lost on them. The fact that they cannot point to one thing the federal government has successfully accomplished outside of the military and the space program, both of which they oppose, is beside the point to them. Needless to say, the resultant loss of freedom to make one's own choices is not worthy of consideration to them.

One can push an agenda but only when there is some hope of getting it accepted. The Democrat leadership is determined to keep pushing their health care agenda seemingly oblivious to the cost to them. President Obama proclaimed recently that he is not an ideologue. He is either lying or has no clue what an ideologue is and how one behaves. He fits the definition of an ideologue to a "T". To anyone not committed to this far left agenda, this is a no sale with the American people. To continue to push an agenda that is not selling is to be stuck on stupid.

The lessons of the elections in Virginia and New Jersey might be written off as a phenomenon of local politics. What then are we to make of losing a senate seat held for 60 years by Democrats to a Republican in the most Democrat state in the union? If this message is lost on the Democrat leadership they are indeed stuck on stupid. Yes, they can continue to try and jam their version of health care through using the reconciliation process but at what cost? A prominent Democrat political analyst, Charlie Cook, says, "it's very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don't lose the House."

Their only hope is to sucker the Republican leadership into going along with most of their proposals which is entirely possible since Republicans are far too prone to "go along and get along". Democrats play hardball in politics whereas Republicans tend to play with some sort of political Marquis of Queensbury rules and one hand hand tied behind their back. They just have no instinct for the jugular unlike the Democrats. This is a prime example of where the Republican leadership is stuck on stupid. However, that pales in comparison to the current Democrat leadership where continuing to push this agenda if they cannot sucker the Republicans is a sure way to stay stuck on stupid and lose the Senate as well.

More Scott Brown Fallout

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:08:00 +0000

From The Marston Chronicles

There is no question that the election of Scott Brown sent shock waves through the political establishment as we predicted that it would. While that was true for the nation as a whole, it was even more true for Massachusetts itself. After all, Massachusetts has 10 congresspeople and they are all Democrats and they all voted for the Pelosi health care bill. Since Scott Brown ran as being opposed to the various Democrat health care bills and won, what does that say about what will happen to those 10 Democrats in November? They all are not even listed as being in play by Rothenberg and both Cook and CQ Politics list only MA-10 as being in play and even then list it as likely Democrat. Would you want to be the ranch on this because we sure wouldn't?

Of course, none of these some analysts saw any chance of Scott Brown winning either before the first poll was taken either. We saw the possibilities on December 27th and the first poll was taken on January 5th. Only one analyst, Michael Barone, has said that the Democrats are in terrible shape and that "the numbers tell me that Democrats would fare worse than they have in every election since 1946." We should mention that the Republicans picked up 55 house seats in 1946. Once again we have to say that we that we think that those other analysts are wrong and that we agree with Michael Barone. That means that some of the congressional seats in Massachusetts are in play besides MA-10 and are much more vulnerable than just likely Democrat. To prove our point, let's see how well Scott Brown did in each congressional district.

DISTRICT	INCUMBENT	RECENT %	MCCAIN %	BROWN %	INCREASE
MA - District 01	John W. Olver	64.99% (2002)	33.54%	48.4%	+14.9%
MA - District 02	Richard E. Neal	58.55% (1994)	38.88%	56.9%	+18.0%
MA - District 03	James P. McGovern	56.90% (1998)	39.39%	57.6%	+18.2%
MA - District 04	Barney Frank	67.95% (2008)	34.67%	50.1%	+15.4%
MA - District 05	Niki Tsongas	51.36% (2007)	39.41%	56.2%	+16.8%
MA - District 06	John F. Tierney	54.55% (1998)	40.71%	57.4%	+16.7%
MA - District 07	Edward J. Markey	64.43% (1994)	33.34%	45.8%	+12.5%
MA - District 08	Mike Capuano	81.72% (1998)	13.74%	35.8%	+22.1%
MA - District 09	Stephen F. Lynch	64.97% (2001)	38.50%	56.9%	+18.4%
MA - District 10	William D. "Bill" Delahunt	54.32% (1996)	43.60%	59.3%	+15.7%

It does not take a rocket scientist to see that we can agree that districts 1, 7 and 8 can retain their safe Democrat rating because Scott Brown lost those districts. He did carry Barney Frank's district by a whisker but barring a poll showing otherwise we can keep that one safe Democrat. We can also eliminate districts 1 and 9 because the incumbent had a wide margin in his worst recent year. But that still leaves 5 districts in play. Obviously Rep. Tsongas is in a world of hurt because of her narrow margin and Scott Brown getting 56.2% of the votes in her district and must be rated leaning Republican. Only Rep. Neal has a big enough margin to remain likely Democrat. The other races must be rated as toss-ups with a slight benefit to the Republicans.

What makes us so sure of our ratings? It just so happens a poll was taken in MA-10 on January 30th and 31st by McLaughlin & Associates showing Rep. Delahunt behind Joseph Malone, one of the Republican candidates, 34 to 31%. This poll was taken before the Amy Bishop scandal broke so one can just imagine what it would be now. It seems that Rep. Delahunt was a district attorney back when she shot her brother and arranged to get her released and somehow the case files got "lost". This was before she murdered the three professors in Alabama. I think a new poll would make this a likely Republican after that mess but it will take a new poll before we can move it out of the toss-up group.

The bottom line is that other analysts just have not made enough adjustments to their projections to account for the election of Scott Brown in the bluest state in the country. He carries 7 of the 10 congressional districts and we are only going to put one of them in play and even then rate it as likely Democrat? We just do not see this as realistic. We should add that we have added IL-17 to the toss-up group. We missed this one because Rep. Hare was unopposed in 2008. However, he only got 57.17% of the vote in 2006 and that is just not good enough in a year like this one is shaping up to be for the Republicans so this race is rated a toss-up. We now project that the Republicans will pick up 64 Democrat seats while losing 2 for a net gain of 62. This would give them control of the house by a 242 to 193 margin.

Bye-Bye Bayh

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:44:00 +0000

Senator Evan Bayh has decided that the odds of his getting re-elected were not that good and decided to pack it in while he was ahead. We find this interesting because we had him rated at only a 37.2% chance of losing. We have had to change our rating to a 74.2% chance that the Republicans will pick up this now open seat. What is interesting is that we had 11 other seats with a better chance of going Republican than Indiana. Actually there were 12 seats with a better chance but Scott Brown already picked up one of them in the Massachusetts special election last month. If the incumbent in our weakest real possibility of a seat going Republican decided he should quit, what does that say about the other 11 seats?

This retirement would ordinarily mean that control of the Senate would now go to the Republicans since they would pick up another 12 seats for a total of 53 versus 47 for the Democrats. The only reason this is in doubt is because the Republican Party cannot get candidates to run in three of the seats to get them above a tie with Vice-President Biden casting the deciding vote. Can you believe that? Polls show the Republicans could beat Gillibrand in New York but Pataki will not commit to run. They show that Thompson could beat Feingold in Wisconsin but Thompson is not even interested. They also show that Rossi could beat Murray in Washington and he has not decided to run either.

The Republicans have a golden opportunity to win control of the Senate and they cannot get good candidates to run. What are we to make of this? It would appear that the Republicans have gotten so used to losing elections in the last four years that they cannot even get candidates to try. We show 12 seats with a better than even mathematical chance of winning in our Senate target table. With the sudden addition of Indiana, only 7 of these seats are really good bets. Illinois and California are toss-ups and the other three have candidates who could win and will not commit to run. Illinois is a pretty good bet because Kirk is ahead of Giannoullias by 6 points. That makes 8 seats leaning Republican which would put the Republicans down by one in the Senate, 51-49.

The polls still show Boxer ahead in California over Campbell by 4 points but they also showed Bayh ahead by only three points and he decided to throw in the towel. What does that say about Boxer? Granted Indiana is red state and California is a solid blue one but so is Massachusetts and look at what happened there. Obviously California is not critical to gain control of the Senate if the Republicans could just get decent candidates to run in three odds on bets races. Is anyone listening out there in Republican land? Part of the problem is that Republicans do not even believe they can gain control of the House let alone the Senate because most analysts do not show them gaining more than 30 seats.

We hate to tell those analysts that they are wrong but they are. 2010 is shaping up to be a better year than 1994 for the Republicans. In 1994, the Republicans gained 52 seats in the House and 9 seats in the Senate. They only need 40 more seats in the House and 10 in the Senate to gain control of both houses. Gaining control of the House is highly likely at this point. The Senate is within their grasp but only if the Republicans can get good candidates to run.

Here is How Taxing the Rich Works

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:20:00 +0000

The idea here is that the rich have more money than they know what to do with so why not raise taxes on them so the government will have more money to spend on programs to help people who struggling to survive? You need to know how the rich live and what they do with their money so you can see how this works. Believe us when we tell you that the rich do not hide much of their money in a wall safe in their master bedroom. They have three choices of what to do with their money. They can spend it, put in a bank and let it collect interest or they can invest it and hope to get a good return on their investment.

If they spend it that means they have had to pay for the goods or services they bought and they have to pay sales taxes on what they bought. Whichever company supplied the good or service along with their employees then gets the money. All that does is make whoever runs that company richer after he pays his employees. The rich could put their money in a bank so the bank would have money to loan to people but then banks only loan to people who have excellent credit and that sure does not include us who are struggling to survive. Even if they will lend to us, their interest rate is so high we can never pay the bank off so who needs this total ripoff anyway?

The third thing they can do is invest their money and get even richer by demanding control over whomever they are are willing to provide their money. Even though some of that money will be used to build new buildings and machines and another company has to supply the materials and labor to build the buildings and make the machines, only a small part of that money will go to pay their employees. The people running the construction companies and manufacturing companies will keep most of the money and get even richer. What little trickles down to us from those companies in the form of wages does not begin to make up for the huge profits that goes to the company executives and to the rich people who buy stock in those companies. Yes, we do own stock in companies through our 401(k) accounts but these bastards always manipulate the stock market so we never get ahead anyway.

Now you can see how taxing the rich works because it takes their money away from them before they can use it for any of those things that only the rich can do. Now the money goes to the government so they can use it to give to people who are struggling and do not have a job or have a lousy job that does not pay enough for them to live on decently. Of course, this does make us somewhat dependent on the government for our survival but it is free money. Naturally since the government is dispensing this money it will have to set some rules about who gets this money and what we do with it. But since we decide who runs the government this is not a problem. We still get this free money and so putting up with some bureaucrats telling us what to do is no big deal.

Naturally the folks running the government expect you to vote for them so they can keep finding more ways to tax rich people so they will have more money to give us. Of course, a fair amount of this money will have to go to government employees so they can make more laws and set rules and regulations to make sure we spend the money they have given us properly. Now you know enough about politicians to now that another bunch of that tax money will go to grease the palms of their buddies who have made substantial contributions to their re-election campaign. But hey, that is the way the system works so you can get the money from the rich who do not deserve it and do not need it. So maybe only half of that money ever finds it into the pockets of those who are not rich but something is better than nothing.

Now you can see the advantages of taxing the rich. They do not need all that money to spend, put in banks to loan folks and invest in businesses to make still more money. Of course, if they do not do that with their money there will not be enough money available to borrow from banks or to lend to new businesses to hire more employees. This is also not that big a deal because the government can just print more money to give to companies so they will do that. That way the young people who just got out of school and need a job can find one. Your kids who now need a job or your friend who got laid off can find work eventually as soon as the government dispenses that newly printed money and those new companies get those buildings built and the machines bought. Now the poor people who did get the money can go down to Wal-Mart and spend the money to buy some things that they could not afford before. Of course, those goods were made in China so only the employees at the Wal-Mart and the fat cats who run it got paid.

That is not a problem since your kids and the laid off friend can always go down and get a job at Wal-Mart until the government figures out how to get all that new money spent. Of course, Wal-Mart jobs do not pay very well but we can fix that by unionizing Wal-Mart and make it pay better wages. That will raise the prices at Wal-Mart but we can take care of that by raising the taxes on the rich some more. So now you see what a good deal it is to just make the rich give most of their money to the government so we can get our half of it. There is a small downside to this though in that who would want to get rich if the government is going to take away most of the money they make over $250,000 a year? Unfortunately there will not be much encouragement for people to work hard and get rich so the government can take most of their money away from them to give to us. We can solve that easily by raising taxes higher on those that are already rich.

Think of how much better it will be to not have to work so hard for a living or even to work at all and let the rich take care of the rest of us. That way we do not have to worry about unemployment because we can just go on welfare. Of course, with fewer people working, fewer people will be paying taxes so we will have to change our definition of who is rich to those making more than $100,000 a year so there will be more rich people to tax. Eventually we will have to get down to those people making more than $40,000 before we take most of their money away from them above that amount in taxes. Oops, people making only $40,000 a year are not rich; they are the middle class. Something has gone wrong with this idea.

It sounds like the rich are getting poorer but we are not getting richer. Instead our taxes are going up so anything we have gained is going to people who are poorer than we are. How are we better off with this plan in the long run? Gee, maybe it is better to let the rich people keep most of their money so there will be money to lend and create decent paying jobs with good wages. Damn, maybe socking it to the rich does not work so well after all. How about that? Then why are President Obama and the Democrats in Congress proposing that we do this? Damned if we know; you will have to ask them to explain how this works out so well. We must be missing something on how us poor folks can get ahead under this scheme of theirs.

Who Voted to Deny You Freedom with no Consequences?

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:07:00 +0000

We pointed out in our last posting called Pity the Democrat Members of Congress that a lot of House Democrats are going to lose their seats. We also pointed out that the ones who were the most enthusiastic about things like Obama care did so at no pain to them since they are from safe seats. Yet Scott Brown won in Massachusetts where all ten members of Congress from that state voted for Obama care. Needless to say, they are all Democrats since only one Republican voted for that bill and he represents New Orleans. Analysis shows that none of these 10 Democrat congressmen from Massachusetts has anything to worry about in November even after Scott Brown got elected there by opposing Obama care and treating terrorists not only as a criminal but with all of the rights a U. S. citizen enjoys to boot.

Can we now be so sure of that in light of the election of Scott Brown? We have already projected that the Republicans will pick up 60 seats held by Democrats which is double any other analyst is willing to project. How could there possibly be any more? The fact remains that there are 182 House seats where the Democrat incumbent voted for Obama care with most likely no unpleasant consequences like not getting re-elected. Since 219 Democrats voted for Obama care, there are only 37 who will likely pay the price for their foolishness. That means there are another 23 Democrats who voted against Obama care but will pay the price anyway for the 182 who will not. We have a map of those folks on our 2010 election outlook page.

Over 83% of the Democrats will not pay any price for voting to make you buy health insurance under penalty of fine or imprisonment if you do not. Forget about anything else having to do with the House care reform bill pro or con. 182 Democrats voted to force you to buy something with your own money supposedly for your own good whether you like it or not and they will get away with it with no consequences. Why in the world would you want to let them get away with that? To help you see whether you live in a district represented by one of these 182 freedom hating Democrats and one Republican, here is a map of them:

Go to The Marston Chronicles for A Big Map

Pity the Democrat Members of Congress

paul@marstonchronicles.info (gemimail) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:56:00 +0000

A lot of Democrats in both the House and the Senate are going to lose their seats in November. The heck of it is that the ones who most deserve to lose are not the ones who will lose. The people pushing the socialist agenda of Obama like Pelosi are not going to lose their seats. Republicans could not get elected dog catcher in their districts. No, it is the Democrats in marginal and certainly in the conservative districts who are going down. They are the ones whose arms had to be twisted to get them to vote for Obama's agenda.

The strange thing is that though these Democrats have poll numbers in the toilet, President Obama's are not. Oh, they have fallen drastically but they were unrealistically high to start with. Right now his approval ratings exceed his disapproval ratings by one point give or take a point. We find this strange that his agenda is hurting the Democrats badly in Congress but not causing him that much trouble when it is his agenda we are talking about. On top of that are his very visible personal failings. He seems to think nothing of telling outright whoppers which all but his most sycophantic followers know are not true. His decisions on dealing with the war on terror are incomprehensible and his appeasement foreign policy is a total joke. Yet still his ratings are not near as bad as those vulnerable Democrats in congress.

Right now, the Democrats are on the verge of losing both houses of Congress and unless things improve soon that is exactly what will happen in November. If Obama's agenda is killing the Democrats in Congress and it clearly is, why isn't the voting public just as annoyed with Obama? Why is that? Why is his personal approval so much higher than ratings for his agenda? There has to be some reason why this agenda has not pulled down Obama's approval to match that of the Democrats in Congress. We think it is because a lot of voters have been unwilling to admit they made a mistake in electing him. Perhaps others are less than truthful to polling companies because they do not want to be considered racists. Let's face it, the Obama administration has relentlessly played the race card and very effectively.

That brings up the question of why the Democrats in Congress have been willing to fall on their swords to advance this agenda when it only hurts them and not Obama. One would think that the vulnerable Democrats would have long since have seen the handwriting on the wall and told Obama they were all through paying such a heavy price for advancing his agenda. The election of Scott Brown does seem to have been the necessary wake-up call for a lot of them. Perhaps that is why his agenda has suddenly screeched to a halt. The odd part of all of this is that Obama is still pushing his far left agenda seemingly oblivious to the damage it is doing to his party. If you truly believe Obama's claim that he is not an ideologue then we have this great bridge in Brooklyn we can make you a great deal on.

We can understand why those Democrats from safe districts can enthusiastically support this agenda because it is no skin off their electoral hides. Not only that, but their constituents undoubtedly favor socialism or else why would they continually vote for these leftist wackos? But what about the rest of those Democrats who only got there in 2006 or 2008 at the expense of a Republican incumbent? Whatever possessed them to commit political suicide for this idealistic and yet totally unrealistic nonsense? Did they truly think the American electorate would let them turn this country into Sweden lite? If so they totally misread the message that the voters were sending them in 2008 as is now readily apparent to anyone who does not have blinders on. Enthusiasm for our first black President is not a mandate for socialism.

Some people just have to learn things the hard way so pity those blue dog Democrats who really were not very enthusiastic about this agenda and who are now paying the price for those who were. It is too bad that those who are all for this nonsense are getting off Scot free and so is Obama who will not get his comeuppance until 2012.

SEAT	02 MAR	OBAMA	08 MAR	HCV	POLL	OURS	CQ POL	COOK	ROTHBRG	RCP
LA-3	-73.36%	-23.96%	14.72%	Open		Likely R	Leans R	Likely R	Leans R	Likely R
GA-8	-56.66%	-13.36%	14.49%	No		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	D favored	Likely D
NY-25	-45.65%	13.12%	12.94%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
NY-27	-41.57%	10.16%	58.54%	Yes		R toss-up	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
WI-8	-40.32%	8.47%	8.10%	Yes		Leans R	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	Safe D
AL-2	-39.23%	-27.37%	-39.23%	No	D +24	Likely R	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Toss-up
OH-16	-37.74%	-2.61%	10.73%	Yes	R +11	Leans R	Likely D	Leans D	D favored	Leans D
MD-1	-37.69%	-18.45%	0.79%	No	R +13	Likely R	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Leans R
IL-14	-37.26%	11.06%	15.50%	Yes	R +1	R toss-up	Leans D	Leans D	Safe D	Toss-up
CO-3	-34.53%	-2.54%	23.23%	Yes	D +2	Leans R	Likely D	Leans D	D favored	Toss-up
NY-19	-33.47%	2.28%	17.35%	Yes		R toss-up	Leans D	Leans D	Leans D	Toss-up
OH-15	-33.18%	7.12%	0.76%	Yes		Likely R	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Toss-up
OH-18	-32.33%	-7.86%	19.75%	No		D toss-up	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	Toss-up
PA-7	-32.18%	12.64%	19.19%	Open		D toss-up	D toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Leans R
NY-20	-32.13%	3.00%	0.45%	Yes	R +9	Likely R	Likely D	Likely D	D favored	Leans D
MS-1	-31.99%	-23.54%	10.59%	No		R toss-up	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Toss-up
NJ-3	-31.10%	5.38%	3.31%	No		Leans R	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	Likely D
FL-8	-30.27%	5.70%	4.03%	Yes		Leans R	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Leans R
AZ-8	-29.74%	-5.94%	11.90%	Yes		Leans R	Likely D	Leans D	D favored	Toss-up
OH-1	-29.60%	10.25%	4.94%	Yes	R +17	Leans R	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Leans R
PA-4	-29.11%	-10.45%	11.72%	No	R +9	R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	D favored	Leans D
CT-4	-28.86%	20.06%	3.97%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Leans D
IL-11	-28.64%	8.18%	23.92%	Yes	R +6	R toss-up	Likely D	Leans D	Safe D	Leans D
VA-5	-26.99%	-2.31%	0.23%	Yes	Tied	Likely R	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Toss-up
MN-1	-26.100%	4.37%	29.57%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
NY-23	-26.29%	5.22%	2.37%	Yes		Leans R	Leans D	Leans D	Leans D	Toss-up
PA-8	-25.19%	8.93%	15.14%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Leans D	D favored	Toss-up
AZ-5	-24.92%	-4.53%	9.58%	Yes		Leans R	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	Toss-up
FL-24	-23.68%	-1.95%	16.09%	Yes		R toss-up	Toss-up	Leans D	D toss-up	Toss-up
NY-24	-23.02%	2.36%	3.94%	No		Leans R	Leans D	Leans D	Leans D	Toss-up
FL-22	-22.41%	4.04%	9.34%	Yes		R toss-up	Safe D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
VA-11	-22.06%	14.96%	11.64%	Yes	R+5	R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Toss-up
MI-7	-21.04%	5.23%	2.31%	Yes	R +10	Leans R	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Leans R
CA-11	-20.63%	9.33%	10.55%	Yes		R toss-up	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	Leans D
PA-3	-20.16%	-27 votes	2.47%	Yes		Likely R	Leans D	Likely D	Safe D	Leans D
NH-1	-19.64%	6.21%	5.89%	Yes	R +10	Leans R	Leans D	D toss-up	Toss-up	Leans R
ID-1	-19.63%	-25.94%	1.21%	No		Likely R	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Toss-up
NV-3	-18.81%	12.76%	5.14%	Yes	R +5	Leans R	Leans D	D toss-up	Leans D	Toss-up
MI-9	-18.22%	12.96%	9.45%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
KY-6	-18.02%	-12.19%	29.32%	No		D toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
NY-13	-17.99%	-1.82%	27.63%	No		Likely D	Likely D	Leans D	D favored	Toss-up
NH-2	-15.95%	13.09%	15.01%	Open	R +7	R toss-up	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Leans R
IL-8	-14.86%	12.88%	21.44%	Yes	Tied	R toss-up	Safe D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
IA-1	-14.51%	17.52%	29.19%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
CO-4	-13.27%	-0.88%	12.39%	Yes		R toss-up	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Toss-up
NC-11	-12.69%	-5.62%	26.13%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
NM-2	-12.51%	-1.33%	11.92%	No	R +2	R toss-up	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Leans R
CT-5	-10.99%	13.94%	20.17%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	D favored	Likely D
NM-1	-10.68%	20.43%	11.31%	Yes	D +9	D toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Toss-up
GA-12	-10.38%	8.84%	32.00	No		Leans R	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
VA-2	-10.25%	1.96%	4.94%	No		R toss-up	Leans D	D toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up
NY-29	-9.86%	-2.22%	1.93%	Open		Leans R	Toss-up	Leans R	Toss-up	Leans R
NC-8	-9.00%	5.88%	10.76%	No	D +16	D toss-up	Leans D	Likely D	D favored	Likely D
CT-2	-8.18%	18.41%	33.40%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
SD-AL	-7.83%	-8.41%	35.11%	No	D +2	R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	D favored	Leans D
IA-2	-6.45%	21.61%	18.42%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
IN-8	-5.28%	3.90%	29.50%	Yes	R +10	Leans R	Toss-up	Leans R	Toss-up	Leans R
PA-10	-5.16%	-8.43%	12.66%	Yes		Leans R	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	Leans D
IN-2	-4.68%	9.38%	36.86%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
TX-23	-4.32%	2.69%	13.84%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
AZ-1	-3.57%	-10.17%	16.45%	Yes		R toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Leans D
KY-3	-3.22%	12.30%	18.73%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
CO-7	-0.07%	19.07%	26.96%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
UT-2	0.73%	-18.17%	26.88%	No		Likely D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
NY-1	1.64%	3.82%	16.77%	Yes	D +2	R toss-up	Likely D	Leans D	Leans D	Toss-up
PA-17	2.82%	-3.45%	27.36%	No		Likely D	Likely D	Likely D	D favored	Toss-up
KS-3	3.22%	2.58%	16.78%	Open		Leans R	Likely R	Leans R	R toss-up	Leans R
PA-13	3.61%	18.05%	28.26%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
TX-17	3.98%	-35.17%	7.48%	No		Leans R	Likely D	Leans D	D favored	Toss-up
ME-2	4.01%	11.26%	34.87%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
WA-2	4.30%	13.95%	24.78%	Yes		Leans D	Safe D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
ND-AL	4.81%	-8.63%	23.95%	Yes		R toss-up	Leans D	Leans D	Safe D	Leans R
IN-9	5.02%	-1.76%	19.36%	Yes	D +1	Leans R	Leans D	D toss-up	Leans D	Toss-up
TN-4	5.59%	-29.81%	20.96%	No		D toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
CA-18	7.90%	20.27%	30.95%	Yes		Leans D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
IA-3	8.37%	9.37%	14.25%	Yes		R toss-up	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	Toss-up
MD-2	8.59%	21.59%	47.05%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
OR-5	9.65%	10.62%	15.92%	Yes		D toss-up	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	Likely D
FL-3	10.90%	47.31%	18.57%	Yes		Leans D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
NV-1	11.00%	29.43%	39.32%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
NY-4	13.01%	16.64%	28.01%	Yes		D toss-up	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
PA-11	13.18%	14.83%	3.25%	Yes		Leans R	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	Toss-up

AR-2	16.01%	-9.91%	21.08%	Open	R +17	Leans R	Leans R	Leans R	Toss-up	Leans R
WA-3	23.38%	6.72%	28.03%	Open		R toss-up	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Toss-up
TN-6	33.59%	-25.78%	35.77%	Open		Leans R	Likely R	Likely R	Leans R	Likely R
AR-1	33.67%	-20.28%	33.14%	Open		Leans R	Toss-up	Leans R	Toss-up	Leans R
MI-1	36.57%	1.82%	32.30%	Open		R toss-up	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Safe D
MA-10	38.46%	11.27%	34.94%	Open	R +3	D toss-up	Likely D	D toss-up	D favored	Toss-up
TN-8	42.84%	-13.28%	46.37%	Open		Leans D	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Leans R
PA-12	46.97%	-0.31%	15.70%	Open		D toss-up	Toss-up	D toss-up	D favored	Leans R
HI-1	47.94%	42.29%	58.07%	Open		D toss-up	Leans D	Leans D	Leans D	Likely D

RACE	POLL	HCV	CQ POL	COOK	ROTHENBERG	MARSTON
Alabama 2	D +24	No	Toss-up	Leans D	R toss-up	Likely R
California 44	R +14	No	Likely R	Likely R	R favored	Safe R
Colorado 3	D +2	Yes	Likely D	Leans D	D favored	Leans D
Delaware AL	D +10	Open	Likely D	Leans D	D favored	Leans D
Indiana 9	R +8	Yes	Leans D	D toss-up	Leans D	Leans R
Maryland 1	R +13	No	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Likely R
Massachusetts 10	R +3	Yes	Likely D	D toss-up	D favored	R toss-up
Michigan 7	R +10	Yes	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Likely R
Minnesota 6	R +16	No	Leans R	Likely R	R favored	Safe R
Nevada 3	Tied	Yes	Leans D	D toss-up	Leans D	Leans R
New Hampshire 1	R +10	Yes	Leans D	D toss-up	Toss-up	Leans R
New Hampshire 2	R +7	Open	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Leans R
New Mexico 1	D +9	Yes	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	R toss-up
New Mexico 2	R +2	No	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	R toss-up
New Mexico 3	D +6	Yes	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Likely D
New York 1	D +2	Yes	Likely D	Leans D	Leans D	R toss-up
North Carolina 8	D +16	No	Leans D	Likely D	D favored	R toss-up
North Dakota AL	R +6	Yes	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	D toss-up
Ohio 1	R +17	Yes	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Leans R
Oklahoma 2	D +16	No	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D	Safe D
South Carolina 5	D +7	No	Leans D	Leans D	Leans D	Leans D
South Dakota AL	D +7	No	Likely D	Likely D	D favored	Safe D
Virginia 5	Tied	Yes	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Likely R

GENERIC BALLOT	DEM PCT	SEATS	MARGIN	M.O.E.
Democrats +20	58.73%	D 292 R 143	D 149	+1
Democrats +19	57.75%	D 284 R 151	D 133
Democrats +18	57.09%	D 279 R 156	D 123
Democrats +17	56.65%	D 276 R 159	D 117
Democrats +16	56.35%	D 274 R 161	D 113
Democrats +15	56.13%	D 272 R 163	D 109
Democrats +14	55.93%	D 271 R 164	D 107	- 12
Democrats +13	55.72%	D 269 R 166	D 103
Democrats +12	55.46%	D 267 R 168	D 99	- 9
Democrats +11	55.15%	D 265 R 170	D 95
Democrats +10	54.78%	D 262 R 173	D 89	+ 3 / -7 / -15
Democrats +9	54.34%	D 259 R 176	D 83
Democrats +8	53.85%	D 255 R 180	D 75	-12
Democrats +7	53.32%	D 251 R 184	D 67	+18
Democrats +6	52.76%	D 247 R 188	D 59	-8
Democrats +5	52.19%	D 243 R 192	D 51	-4
Democrats +4	51.62%	D 238 R 197	D 41	+27
Democrats +3	51.08%	D 234 R 201	D 33	+2
Democrats +2	50.57%	D 230 R 205	D 25	-5
Democrats +1	50.11%	D 227 R 208	D 19
Tied	49.69%	D 224 R 211	D 13
Republicans +1	49.33%	D 221 R 214	D 7
Republicans +2	48.99%	D 219 R 216	D 3
Republicans +3	48.67%	D 216 R 219	R 3
Republicans +4	48.33%	D 214 R 221	R 7
Republicans +5	47.92%	D 211 R 224	R 13
Republicans +6	47.39%	D 207 R 228	R 21	+3
Republicans +7	46.65%	D 201 R 234	R 33	-3
Republicans +8	45.63%	D 193 R 242	R 49
Republicans +9	44.20%	D 183 R 252	R 59

RACE	POLL	CQ	COOK	ROTHENBERG	MARSTON
Indiana 9	R +8	Leans D	D toss-up	Leans D	Leans R
Maryland 1	R +13	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Likely R
Massachusetts 10	R +3	Likely D	Likely D	Safe D	R toss-up
Michigan 7	R +10	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Likely R
Nevada 3	Tied	Leans D	D toss-up	Leans D	Leans R
New Hampshire 1	R +10	Leans D	D toss-up	Toss-up	Leans R
New Hampshire 2	R +7	Toss-up	D toss-up	Toss-up	Leans R
North Dakota AL	R +6	Leans D	Leans D	D favored	D toss-up
Ohio 1	R +17	Toss-up	D toss-up	R toss-up	Leans R