From “Early voter turnout explodes in New Orleans; could be good sign for Mary Landrieu” by Robert McClendon at The Times-Pacayune:

New Orleanians have been voting early in droves, according to the Orleans Parish registrar of voters.
About 17,430 city residents have cast ballots during early voting, which ends today, said Sandra Wilson, registrar of voters. That’s nearly twice as many early voters as the last midterm election in November 2010, when 9,031 voted early in person, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s figures.
…The big early voting turnout this year may be a good sign for Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu as she fights to keep her Senate seat. African-Americans, who vote overwhelmingly Democrat, have much higher early voting rates than whites, and maximizing voter turnout in New Orleans is seen by many as key to Landrieu’s electoral hopes.
..Wilson said that there has been steady increases in early voter turnout since Hurricane Katrina, but this year’s jump is unprecedented. “It has been amazing,” Wilson said. “It seems like early voting is really taking on.”

“Wilson said that some of the rise in early voting can be attributed to the addition of a new early polling-place,” reports McClendon. “She also said hundreds of “Vote Early” signs that have sprung up in neutral grounds across the city have helped.”
The hope is that those are indicators that New Orleans Democrats have got their act together and intend to hold this seat for Mary Landrieu and the Democrats.

One of the great hobbies of political junkies everywhere is the search for the magic indicator, the polling statistic that predicts more accurately than any other who is going to win. At CNN Politics, Peter Hamby reports on one such number:

The number making Mike Podhorzer anxious these days is 15…That’s the lead Democrats have over Republicans among working class voters in the final days of the 2014 midterm elections, according to his polling at the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation. That might seem good for Democrats, but in modern times, the party always wins voters making $50,000 or less….For Podhorzer, the AFL-CIO’s political director and one of the Democratic party’s top thinkers on voter turnout, it’s the spread that matters.

Quibble if you will that defining working-class voters as those earning under $50K is a tad simplistic. It doesn’t factor in race, for example. But “the under $50Ks” is a good as any demographic to eyeball as campaigns progress, if you know where to draw the line. Hamby points out that Dems won in 2012 with a 22 percent spread with the less than $50Ks, vs. the 11 percent spread they had in 2010 when they lost bad. He continues:

The 55-40 lead Democrats are clinging to among people making under $50,000 is wider than the 50-39 lead they had earlier this summer, making this year’s outcome harder to predict. Podhorzer said it does explain why Democrats are still in the hunt heading into next Tuesday, suggesting that next week’s election won’t resemble the GOP tidal wave of 2010.

The idea is to look for the spread in individual election polls. Magic number notwithstanding, Hamby adds,

Podhorzer, an engineer of the progressive movement’s superior voter turnout machinery, said the battle on election day will be about get-out-the-vote mechanics.
He framed the contest as a test of the GOP’s “wholesale GOTV” — paid media and base enthusiasm in a good Republican year — versus the “retail GOTV” of the Democratic coalition that relies on the party’s technological advantages and focuses on person-to-person contact…
…”The Democrats’ retail GOTV has gotten much, much stronger than in 2010, when the base was even more disillusioned,” he said. “Democrats will do a better job on retail GOTV, and have more of the personal networks on the ground to pull people out. It’s going to be interesting to see how effective that can be.”

The 15 point spread with the under $50Ks is a good polling indicator for how things are going in individual races and it can be helpful in telling campaigns where to put their resources. But to win, Dems will have to set a new midterm standard in retail GOTV, while keeping in competitive in ads, debates, speeches and the other elements of wholesale GOTV.

So how close is the battle for Senate control at this political moment? Princeton Election Consortium’s Sam Wang sees seven Senate races within 3 percentage points — a hell of a lot better for Dems than was supposed to be the case.
“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd asked Schumer why voters should care about the prospect of the Democrats losing their current Senate majority…”You asked one reason: Supreme Court. The money that’s cascading into our system,” Schumer said in a reference to the 2010 Citizens United decision that legalized Super PACs. “If the Supreme Court continues to be the way it is and there’s a vacancy and they buttress that, we will be subject to these few people just dominating the elections for decades to come. The Supreme Court on voting rights makes a huge difference. The Supreme Court on women’s issues makes a huge difference.” — from Zach Carter’s HuffPo post “Chuck Schumer: Supreme Court Will Thwart Democrats For Decades If We Lose Midterms”
“Will last minute strength be enough for Dems?” Stephen Collinson ruminates on the prospects for Dems holding their senate majority at CNN Politics.
At The New Republic John B. Judis illuminates the strategy of pro-Democratic ‘Battleground Texas’: “Texas has already become a majority-minority state like California. According to 2013 census figures, only 44 percent of Texans are “Anglos,” or whites; 38.4 percent are Hispanic; 12.4 percent African-American; and the remainder Asian-American and native American. By 2020, Hispanics are projected by the Texas State Data Center to account for 40.5 percent of Texans and African-Americans for 11.3 percent compared to 41.1 percent of Anglos. Texas’s minorities generally favor Democrats over Republicans, but they don’t vote in as great a proportion as Anglos who have favored Republicans by similar percentages. Battleground’s strategy assumes that if it and other organizations like the Texas Organizing Project can get many more minorities, and particularly Hispanics, to the polls, then, as minorities increasingly come to outnumber Anglos, Democrats can take back the state.”
As the political parties kick their GOTV operations into high gear, NYT’s Ashley Parker and Jonathan Weisman discuss “For Midterms, Betting on Feet and Good Apps.”
Here’s a turnout clue from Thad Kousser’s L.A. Times op-ed, “Want to Increase Voter Turnout: Here’s How”: “…Targeting different types of often-ignored voters could also pay off for campaigns. Ethnic minorities, especially Latinos, Asian Americans and Middle Eastern Americans who do not speak English at home, often do not get the full attention of campaigns. But in their path-breaking book, “Mobilizing Inclusion,” Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Melissa R. Michelson used randomized experiments to show that well-designed outreach efforts to this group can lead to massive increases in voter turnout. And a group of Yale researchers found that formerly incarcerated felons, who are often ignored by campaigns even after their franchise rights have been restored, could also be effectively mobilized.”
This short-sighted article fails to consider that every vote cast for a Republican advances their efforts to win majority control, dominate congressional and senate committees and crush all environmental regulation. Some environmental groups sincerely want to reward those few Republicans who occasionally support environmental reform. Others are targeting gullible Greens in hopes of neutralizing informed environmental voters as much as possible.
Kennedy Elliot and Scott Clement of The Washington Post have a gizmo for “Measuring the midterm turnout gap,” which provides a helpful visual depicting the midterm shortfall when combining up to three different demographic variables of your choice.
Could we have a little more generosity toward Democratic candidates from outgoing Democratic Sens. Baucus, Harkin and Tim Johnson, whose campaign coffers are reportedly flush?

The indisputable winner of the “Pundit Whopper of the Week” Award has to be David Brooks, who writes in his Friday New York Times column that “The fact that the federal government has not passed major infrastructure legislation is mind-boggling, considering how much support there is from both parties.”
Yes, that’s right. He actually went there.
It did not go unnoticed by his colleague Paul Krugman, who responded in his “Conscience of a Liberal” blog:

Well, the Obama administration would love to spend more on infrastructure; the problem is that a major spending bill has no chance of passing the House. And that’s not a problem of “both parties” — it’s the GOP blocking it. Exactly how many Republicans would be willing to engage in deficit spending to expand bus networks? (Remember, these are the people who consider making rental bicycles available an example of “totalitarian” rule.)

To be fair, the rest of Brooks’s column is not so bad, almost reminiscent of Republicans of yesteryear, back in the day when they actually negotiated in good faith.
Nonetheless P.M. Carpenter piles on in his commentary,

In fact it’s such a stunningly counterfactual claim, I just now violated my day’s Brooks-abstinence and checked his column to see if it was taken out of context by Krugman. It was, in a way. Here’s how Brooks led into his befuddlement over the federal government’s infrastructure inaction: “If you get outside the partisan boxes, there’s a completely obvious agenda to create more middle-class, satisfying jobs.” If you get outside the partisan boxes….
In other words, if one altogether ignores the ruthless, relentless, existing Republican partisanship that is obstructing infrastructure projects, then one’s mind is boggled at the lack of such projects which otherwise enjoy tremendous bipartisan support!
In precisely what sort of Maxwell Smart Cone of Silence walled off from reality does David Brooks write?

Me, I would just ask Brooks to identify GOP supporters of serious infrastructure upgrades, beyond pork projects in their districts only.

Nate Cohn of NYT’s The Upshot doesn’t see any good news for Democrats in early voting data thus far. But maybe he should take a closer look at Texas, where early voting numbers are encouraging for Dems. As Zachary Roth writes at msnbc.com:

After an energetic Democratic campaign to get new Texas voters to the polls, turnout rates spiked on the first day of early voting in the state.
According to figures released by the secretary of state’s office, Texas’ six largest counties all saw increases in voting Monday compared to the first day of early voting in 2010, the last midterm election.
The voting surge came amid an intense push by groups supporting Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for governor, to register and mobilize millions of new voters, many of whom are minorities. The effort was led by Battleground Texas, a group of former Obama campaign veterans aiming to make the state competitive over the long term. Texas has long had some of the lowest voting rates in the country.

Roth notes, however, that Davis still trails in polls and cautions that more data will be needed to substantiate Democratic hopes for an upset in the making. Still, adds Roth:

The turnout numbers were striking. In Tarrant County, which contains Davis’s home base of Fort Worth, 29,391 people voted Monday, nearly three times the comparable number for 2010. Heavily Hispanic El Paso County also saw a nearly threefold increase.
Harris County, which contains Houston, saw 61,735 voters Monday — an increase of more than 11,000 compared to the number who voted on the first day in 2010. Bexar County, containing San Antonio, saw an increase of nearly 7,000 voters. In Dallas and Travis (Austin) counties, the increases were respectively nearly 3,000 and nearly 1,000.
More than one-third of Texans live in those six counties.

And those same counties have grown by 373,000 since 2010. Texas may indeed become the proving ground for the ‘GOTV can trump polls’ strategy.
It looks like Wendy Davis has created an exceptionally-tough campaign. Put that together with a sharp, appealing candidate, worrisome economic and education indicators and a Texas tradition of electing feisty Democratic women, and it all spells rising trouble for Republicans in the Lone Star state. Here’s her ActBlue page.

At VOXXI Tony Castro explains “The midterm paradox of the US Latino vote,” noting a new Pew Research study which finds that “It comes as a disappointing paradox that though a record 25.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote in these midterm elections — comprising 10.7 percent of eligible voters nationwide — they only make up a small share of voters in the many states with close Senate and gubernatorial races this year…Specifically, in the eight states with the closest Senate races, just 5 percent of eligible voters on average are Latinos and average substantially under half of the national average.”
With respect to the TX governor’s race, however, Wendy Davis’s campaign is betting substantial resources on turning out the Latino vote, reports Gromer Jeffers, Jr. at the Dallas News. Davis describes “her voter turnout program as the “most significant field operation that state has ever seen.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s column on “The Blue Collar Imperative” notes “The elections in Georgia and Kentucky are different in important ways, but one lesson from both is that Democrats can’t win without a sufficient share of the white working-class vote.” Despite oft-cited concerns about racial resentments among white workers, “race is not the only thing going on. Andrew Levison, the author of “The White Working Class Today,” says it’s important to distinguish between racial feelings today and those of a half-century ago. “It’s not 1950s racism…It’s more a sense of aggrievement — that Democrats care about other groups but not about the white working class.” Dionne adds “younger members of the white working class are more culturally liberal than their elders. They are also more open to a stronger government role in the economy, as Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress have shown.” Further, “Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, says this points the way toward arguments that progressives need to make in the future: “We have to expose the unholy alliance between money and politics,” she says. “Concern about inequality is unifying, it’s cross-partisan, and it’s not ideological.”
The Wall St. Journal’s Janet Hook and Patrick O’Connor discuss the “Democrats’ New Senate Move: Backing Long-Shot Candidates.”
“On Friday, two Democrats running in key Senate races called for a temporary travel ban from countries battling Ebola: Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and Georgia’s Michelle Nunn,” reports Sean Sullivan at Post Politics. Furher, “A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that shows 67 percent of Americans would support restricting entry to the United States from countries fighting dealing with an Ebola crisis.”
In the CA state legislature, “Democrats’ hope of Senate supermajority could rest with 2 districts,” according to Patrick McGreevy’s L.A. Times post.
At The New Yorker Jelani Cobb’s “Voting by Numbers” shares some interesting data, including that “black women had the highest voter turnout of any segment in the country in 2008 and 2012” and “A Gallup poll conducted in July found that sixty-three per cent of respondents believed that we would be better off with more women in elected office. (The partisan divide on the question was noteworthy: seventy-five per cent of Democrats agreed with the sentiment; forty-six per cent of Republicans did.)”
In his post, “Dems Take Comfort from Early Voting Numbers,” The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent offers some encouraging data for Democrats re the IA Senate race: “The DSCC says that…over 170,000 Iowans have already voted in 2014, a 63 percent increase over 2010…A DSCC official emails: ‘Among those ballots cast, nearly 7,000 more registered Democrats have voted than registered Republicans. Our models show that Bruce Braley has a lead of over 15,000 votes among those who have already voted, thanks to a 25-point lead among the unaffiliated voters who have already voted…The recent Des Moines Register poll also showed Braley leading among early voters. But here’s the key nuance. The DSCC official says its model shows Dems are bringing in significantly more non-2010 voters than Republicans.”
From Stephanie Simon’s Politico post “GOP Schooled on Education Politics“: “Accusing Republicans of cutting programs for students while giving tax breaks to the rich motivates diffident voters more than similarly partisan messages on reproductive rights, the economy or health care, veteran Democratic political strategist Celinda Lake found in a series of focus groups and polls…Lake’s research, commissioned by MoveOn.org, included a survey of 1,000 Democratic voters who said they weren’t sure they’d bother to vote in the key states of North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, Colorado and Iowa. Coupling the education theme with talk about the middle class falling behind was “nearly a slam dunk with these targets,” Lake wrote…Democratic strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg came to a similar conclusion after polling 2,200 likely voters in battleground states. They found that unmarried women in North Carolina and Georgia were particularly swayed by messages about expanding access to early childhood education. In Iowa and Colorado, affordable college loans hit the mark. Combining those issues with an appeal to raise the minimum wage, they wrote, creates a “powerful, populist opportunity to shift the vote.”

Josh Kraushaar has a clue for Dems, particularly Michelle Nunn in GA in his National Journal post, “The Democrats’ Most Effective Midterm Message: Outsourcing: Taking a page from Obama’s 2012 playbook, Democrats have found a winning message in a dismal political environment.” But it’s not only Georgia; Kraushaar notes that the issue has traction in IL, MN, CT, MA, or pretty much any electorate with substantial numbers of “blue- and gray-collar voters that aren’t that enthused about shiny young capitalists.”
Luke Brinker presents compelling evidence at Salon.com for “How the minimum wage could tip key midterm races.”
At NBC News.com Mark Murray writes of the GOP lead in a new national bipartisan NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll: “Their edge over Democrats (two points among likely voters) is narrower than it was at this same point in 2010 (seven points), suggesting the GOP won’t see the wave-like gains it made in the last midterm cycle.” Republican Bill Mc Iturff notes, “When you are sitting on top of an unstable electorate, there is a joker in the deck.” Murray notes further, “And in perhaps the best news of all for Democrats…they’re leading Republicans in congressional preference among registered voters in the top-11 Senate races, 47 percent to 42 percent. That’s a reversal from a month ago, when Republicans held a 10-point lead in the top Senate races.”
Crystal Ball’s Sean Trende observes, “To predict Democrats retaining Senate control, you basically have to bet on (a) Democrats sweeping South Dakota, Iowa, Colorado, and North Carolina; (b) picking off enough Republican seats in very red states like Kentucky, Kansas, or Georgia to offset any losses in (a) or; (c) systemic polling failure. You can make a plausible case for each of those scenarios, with (b) probably being the most likely. Regardless, given the current state of polling and knowing how races have behaved over the past few cycles, those really do appear to be the options left for Democrats.”
At Post Politics Sean Sullivan explains “Why Georgia looks more promising than Kentucky for Senate Democrats.”
Talking Points Memo’s Dylan Scott explores “The Strategy Dems Are Betting Will Save Mark Udall — And The Senate“:…Focus on two core Democratic constituencies — women and Hispanics — and an unprecedented, data-driven get-out-the-vote effort…The methods have evolved — better software this time, an all mail-in ballot election — but the foundation remains the same, Paul Dunn, DSCC’s national field director, told TPM in a phone interview.” Scott notes that Udall’s campaign supposes “Bennet’s operation in key categories: 25 field offices in 2014, versus 15 in 2010; 100 field organizers versus 40; and 3,200 volunteers in the last month versus less than 1,000.”
Marquette law School poll has stat tie in Governor’s race, with Republican Scott Walker trending down.
At Time Politics Jay Newton-Small notes an encouraging trend, “Midterm Elections See Surge in Tough-to-Lure Candidates: Young Moms.” Newton-Small notes, “On average, women enter politics four years later–at the age of 51 versus 47–than men, according for Rutgers University’s Center for American Women in Politics. But not so this cycle: A remarkable number of young mothers are running for Congress.”
Timothy Cama reports at The Hill that “Six organizations are teaming up to visit college campuses and encourage young people to vote in the name of environmental protection….The groups, led by the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Defend Our Future campaign, are backing a Campus Consciousness Tour in eight college towns.”

Dan Balz’s “A consumer’s guide to the final weeks of Campaign 2014” at The Washington Post provides a sort of drive-by tour of where things stand in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. He cites polls and forecasts indicating a Republican edge, but neglects to address Sam Wang’s prediction that Dems will hold the Senate, despite Wang’s impressive track record.
Michael P. McDonald reports “robust” early voting in states with competitive races thus far — and it’s just gutting started.
“…One of the most fascinating numbers from Elect Project’s excellent round-up of early voting is this: 34.5 percent of Georgians who requested a mail ballot this year did not vote in 2010,” reports Jef Singer in a Daily Kos e-blast..
In “Cassidy’s Count,” at The New Yorker John Cassidy has one-paragraph updates on 10 key senate races.
At MSNBC.com Benjy Sarlin concludes, ” It doesn’t look like a Republican wave in which a national tide boosts candidates around the country – some races have moved in the GOP’s direction in recent weeks, others the opposite way. On the other hand, almost all the top tier races are currently either tossups or not much better for either side.”
For more on an issue Dems might be able to leverage, read “Ebola Vaccine Would Likely Have Been Found By Now If Not For Budget Cuts: NIH Director” by Sam Stein at HuffPo.
And a new poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for RespectAbility indicates that LVs and swing voters in battleground states strongly favor more federal and state support for employment of Americans with disabilities. “Said Stan Greenberg, PhD, “Issues of employment among people with disabilities can affect outcomes in competitive races for Senate and Governor. This community is far bigger than many people realize, including people in my profession.”
At The New Republic, Rebecca Leber, Naomi Shavin, and Elaine Teng have a warning: “What the Next Two Awful Years Will Look Like: The five things to fear about a Republican Congress.” Their concerns include: The Gutting of Dodd-Frank; A Keystone Showdown–And Possible Shutdown; The Continuance of NSA Snooping; Strategic Slashes to Obamacare; and Confirmation Chaos.
And if that doesn’t wake up your friends who are considering whether or not to vote:

Wisconsin voter i.d. law bites the dust in 6-3 Supreme Court decision. No surprise that dissenters are the most partisan ideologues, Scalia, Thomas and Alito.
How ActBlue has raised $619 million over the last ten years.
NYT’s Jeremy W. Peters discusses whether the GOP’s Downerama strategy can work. Obama should have some fun with it.
At The Upshot Nate Cohn reports on new RAND study showing Dems have a retention problem.
A Charleston Gazette editorial nonetheless meditates on “America’s ‘blue’ future?”
More evidence that Dems have not done a good job of explaining why the midterm elections are important. Only 15 percent are “closely following news about the midterms” — down from 25 percent in 2010.
But here is great news from the sunshine state.
At Campaign for America’s Future, Bill Scher makes the case that Georgia’s Republican senate candidate David “the Outsourcer” Perdue may deserve “The Worst Gaffe of 2014” honors for his remarkable “Defend it? I’m proud of it” double down on the merits of exporting jobs from Georgia, which has the highest unemployment rate of all 50 states.
Well, yeah. That’s why they do it.

Despite all of the buzz about Democratic success in fund-raising outpacing Republicans, Elaine Kamarck reports at Brookings that conservative organization independent expenditures on Congressional primaries and the general election in 2014 is more than double that of liberal organizations.
According to a new NYTimes/CBS News/YouGov poll of more than 100K respondents conducted 9/20-10/1 reported by Nate Cohn at The Upshot, Democrats are 4 points ahead in 46 U.S. Senate races, but have only “a nominal edge” in NC, CO and IA. “If the Democrats sweep all three — an outcome by no means assured with such tenuous leads — Senate control could be decided by Kansas, where the Republican senator Pat Roberts is tied with the independent candidate Greg Orman. If Mr. Orman won and caucused with the Democrats, then they would hold the Senate.” If Dems can’t win KS or AK, explains Cohn, they will have to win one of four southern states, KY, AR, LA or GA, where “Republican David Perdue saw his lead fall to four percentage points against Michelle Nunn….Whether the Democratic turnout machine can turn its advantage in voter contacts into additional votes on Election Day might well determine Senate control.”
In GA, reports Bloomberg View’s Albert R. Hunt, “This race is surprisingly close because of the state’s changing demographics. As recently as 2004, whites, who vote overwhelmingly Republican, accounted for 71 percent of the electorate. In 2012, they made up a little more than 61 percent. The black vote, almost all Democratic, grew to 30 percent from less than 25 percent, and the small Hispanic vote is increasing. The Atlas Project, a Democratic organization that studies voting patterns, projects that this trend will continue.” Hunt calculates that Nunn needs 30 percent of the white vote, and for African Americans to be 30 percent of the electorate in GA.
Nunn’s opponent David Perdue is in some pretty scalding hot water, explain John Bresnahan and Manu Raju at Politico: “David Perdue has run aggressively as a “job creator,” touting his record as a top executive with Fortune 500 companies as the chief selling point in his Georgia Senate campaign…Yet during a…nine-month stint in 2002-03 as CEO of failed North Carolina textile manufacturer Pillowtex Corp…– Perdue said he was hired, at least in part, to cut costs by outsourcing manufacturing operations overseas. Perdue specialized throughout his career in finding low-cost manufacturing facilities and labor, usually in Asia…During a July 2005 deposition, a transcript of which was provided to POLITICO, Perdue spoke at length about his role in Pillowtex’s collapse, which led to the loss of more than 7,600 jobs. Perdue was asked about his “experience with outsourcing”…”Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that,” Perdue said, according to the 186-page transcript of his sworn testimony.”
Nunn’s ad on the revelations:

A new NBC/Marist poll of LVs has “Kansas GOP Sen. Pat Roberts down double digits, North Carolina Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan with a 4-point lead and a neck-and-neck race in Iowa,” reports James Hohmann at Politico. Hagan “has now led in the past 10 public polls.”
Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains “Why Democrats aren’t getting credit for the economy.” Dionne cites as key factors the “different worries” that come with better times and wage stagnation.
In addition to low wages, long-term unemployment and involuntary part-time employment are still too high, add Yulan Q. Mui and Katie Zezima, also at The Post.
2014 as best year for private sector job growth since 1999 is not a bad meme, however. Or if you want to up the ante, how about “Best Year for Job Creation This Century”