With all the obsession in Washington over (brightening) Democratic prospects for retaking the U.S. Congress, it’s good to see the Washington Post taking notice of the other big battleground for 2006: governorships.In yesterday’s WaPo, Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza note that 22 Republican governorships will be up next year, as compared with 14 Dem seats. They cite New York, California, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Arkansas and Colorado and Maryland as Republican-held state chief executive postions potentially vulnerable in 2006, with Massachusetts as an add-on if Mitt Romney decides not to go for another term. For some reason, they miss Alabama and Georgia, where Republican incumbents got a temporary boost from their reaction to Hurricane Katrina, but remain vulnerable. ‘Bama’s Bob Riley still has to get past Judge Roy Moore, R-Hysteria, and then will probably face Democratic Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley, a candidate with almost no negatives. And Georgia’s Sonny Perdue remains a shaky pick against Democrats Cathy Cox and Mark Taylor, both of whom were running ahead of the GOPer in pre-Katrina polls.I’d add to the mix Alaska, where profoundly unpopular incumbent Republican Frank Murkowski’s acting like he will run again, at a minimum creating a messy and negative GOP primary. House Democratic leader Ethan Berkowitz (disclosure: a friend of mine) is already in the field, and could be joined by former Gov. Tony Knowles, but anyway you slice it, this is not a safe seat for GOPers.The WaPo report cites Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm, Wisconsin’s Jim Doyle, and Illnois’ Rod Blagojevich as potentially vulnerable incumbent Dems, with Iowa’s open seat (vacated by Tom Vilsack) as another GOP target. But the Dem incumbents have yet to draw any kind of world-beating rivals, and the Iowa situation remains very fluid.Add it all up, and it looks like the Donkey party is in a great position to regain a majority of governorships (we currently trail 28-22). And that’s great news for a party that came out of the 2004 elections afraid that it was becoming ghettoized into a small number of states.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 11: If Biden “Steps Aside” and Harris Steps Up, There Should Be No Falloff in Support
At New York I discussed and tried to resolve one source of anxiety about a potential alternative ticket:
One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.