by Scott Winship
If they’re from Alexandria or Falls Church (outside DC) or Charlottesville (home of UVA), forward them this link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/24/111047/27 and tell ’em to call their local elections board.
I’m more optimistic about chance to regain the Senate than Chris Bowers is — Webb is within the margin of error of most polls, and this race could be key to control of the Senate. It’s really important….

Lest we get carried away with irrational exuberance in the wake of the GOP meltdown, Chris Bowers takes a sobering look at Dem chances of winning a Senate Majority on November 7 in today’s MyDD. Bowers averages the five most recent polls for key Senate races in his article “Control Of The Senate Still a Longshot” and sees tough odds against a Democratic takeover. According to Bowers averages, Dems are ahead 5.8 in R.I.; 5.4 in MT and 3.6 in NJ, but lag by 1.4 in MO, 1.6 in VA and 2.8 in TN.
Other than that, he sees the Democratic prospects as bright:

I do still hope for a pickup of four or five seats in the Senate, taking control of the House, winning the majority of Governors, and doing some real damage in state legislatures.

Obviously Dems still have a fighting chance, and winning five of six key races is not impossible if the big blue wave materializes. Plus, the polls could improve over the next 13 days. Otherwise, winning majorities of the House, governorships and state legislatures is not a bad consolation prize.

by Alan Abramowitz
The new issue of Barron’s Magazine, always a model of objective journalism, has a cover story by Jim McTague that argues that reports of a coming Democratic victory in the 2006 midterm elections are greatly exaggerated.
A lot of McTague’s “analysis” appears to consist of little more than wishful thinking. For example, he predicts that Rick Santorum, who has been trailing Bob Casey, Jr. in every poll in the last six months, will win reelection in Pennsylvania thanks to a late surge in support from the western part of the state and that Mark Kennedy will defy polls showing him trailing by double-digits to defeat Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota.
Beyond wishful thinking, McTague’s argument that Republicans will keep control of the House and Senate rests almost exclusively on the fact that most endangered Republican incumbents have raised more money than their Democratic challengers and, in both 2002 and 2004, the candidate who spent the most money in a House and Senate race almost always won.
But there is a fundamental flaw in this argument: 2002 and 2004 were not wave elections–elections in which there is a strong national tide. In wave elections lots of incumbents lose even though they outspend their challengers. This is what happened in 1974, 1980, 1982, and 1994. In 1994, for example, 26 of the 34 Democratic incumbents who lost their seats outspent their Republican challengers. On average, losing Democratic incumbents outspent their Republican challengers by a margin of $969,000 to $663,000. Republicans also won 14 of 25 open seat races in which the Republican candidate spent less than the Democratic candidate.
Using the the relative size of the candidates’ campaign warchests to predict election results in a wave election can yield highly misleading result. If a strong Democratic wave hits the House and Senate on November 7th, as now appears likely, many Republican incumbents will lose despite outspending their Democratic challengers.

by Scott Winship
I checked back in to Majority Watch today and they are forecasting a Democratic majority in the House of 222 to 230 seats — even if they lose 5 “tied” races. In other words, Republicans will have to win all the ties and at least 5 Dem-leaning districts to retain their majority. It’s difficult to see how that scenario could happen.

If the polls are correct this time, and let us be clear that they are not always on target, it appears that the battle to win a Democratic majority of the U.S. Senate may come down to the four closest races, as Democratic candidates are pulling ahead in other key Senate contests. The two closest in the polls as of today are in Virginia and Tennessee, where the polls are showing a dead heat. Next are Missouri and New Jersey, where Democrats hold a very slight lead.
One of the simplest ways to help Democrats win a majority of the Senate is to make a contribution to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Or, support the four Democratic candidates locked in the closest races:

Harold Ford for U.S. Senate
Jim Webb for U.S. Senate
Bob Menendez United States Senator
Claire McCaskill for U.S. Senate

Between now and November 7th any of the four races could become less competitive. Or other races could suddenly become toss-ups. But it is likely that these races will stay pretty close. Time is short, so a quick contribution to any of the aforementioned links would be a much-needed investment in winning a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate.

The good news is that Democrats have expanded the number of congressional seats they can pick up on Nov. 7 beyond what most insiders thought possible six months ago — as many as 41 in the House, according to DCorps strategist Stan Greenberg, and 7 in the senate. The bad news is that they are far short of the cash needed to run competitive campaigns. According to Jim VandeHei’s WaPo article “Funding Constrains Democrats: Party Chiefs See Chance to Take 40-Plus Seats With TV Push,” Dems face some painful choices over the next two+ weeks:

Some Democratic officials and donors want their money concentrated to maximize the chances that the party captures the minimum number of seats necessary to gain majorities in the House and the Senate, rather than having resources spread too thin by spending on second-tier targets….It would be virtually impossible to expand the number of House seats with fully competitive races without taking some money away from efforts to win back the Senate.
…The DCCC is likely to go deep into debt, perhaps topping the $11 million deficit it racked up in 2004. The committee can borrow as much as a bank is willing to lend. The other option is to take money out of Republican districts that the party is confident it is almost certain to win.
This approach carries a big risk, however. If the party pulls ads in districts such as the Indiana base of Rep. Chris Chocola, who is trailing by double digits in private Democratic polling, it might allow an established GOP incumbent to creep back up in the race.

VandeHei points out that big donors, including George Soros, are not giving as much to congressional campaigns as in 2004, prefering to invest in long-term growth. DCorps strategists Stan Greenberg and James Carville and are now calling on Dem campaigns to borrow as much as they can to close the cash shortfall. As James Carville puts it:

I am saying this is a twice-in-a-lifetime environment… You try to maximize it.

For both parties, it’s all about saturating districts with TV ads over the next two plus weeks, and the GOP has a strong advantage at present. Smaller contributors will probably decide how large the Dems’ margin of victory will be in the House and whether or not Dems win the Senate. Everyone who wants to see a Democratic majority in Congress should make a contribution now.

As usual, protecting the environment does not show up as a top five voter concern in the polls. But certainly there are voters for whom it is a pivotal issue, and in close elections they could make the difference between victory and defeat. To get up to speed on environmental issues at stake in the mid-terms, check out Amanda Griscom Little’s Alternet article “November’s Most Crucial Enviro Elections.” Turns out there is a lot happening at the state level, as Little notes:

Examples of ambitious state-level environmental initiatives are legion: Twenty-two states have implemented a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) mandating that a certain percentage of electricity come from clean sources such as solar and wind. Ten states have followed California’s lead in adopting clean-car legislation requiring new automobiles to have lower greenhouse-gas emissions starting in the 2009 model year. Seven states in the Northeast have joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative committing to carbon dioxide reductions of 10 percent by 2019. And California has, of course, outdone all the rest by becoming the first state in the nation to impose mandatory caps on greenhouse-gas emissions.

With virtually all of the cutting-edge environmental reforms taking place at the state level, the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters are investing heavily in gubernatorial races. Little also provides an insightful run-down of key Gov races and what’s at stake in NY, PA, MA, MD and FL. As always, Dems are in the best position to benefit from environmental concerns, since few Republicans support substantive environmental reforms.

by Ruy Teixeira
cross-posted at the Washington Monthly’s Showdown ’06 blog
Over the weekend, I put up a lengthy post on “State of the Race: The Macro and the Micro“, which provided my basic take on how the campaign currently looks, based both on macro (national) and micro (race-specific) indicators. There isn’t much new micro data, but the release of four new national polls (CNN, USA Today/Gallup, CBS/New York Times and ABC/Washington Post) yesterday allows for some updating of the macro indictors–updating that is all bad, bad, bad for the GOP.
Generic Congressional Vote. In these four polls, Democrats averaged a 17 point lead over the Republicans. That pulls Charles Franklin’s trend-based estimate of the Democratic advantage up to 13 points.
Bush Approval. These four polls averaged 37 percent approval for president Bush. Charles Franklin’s trend estimate has consequentially been pulled down to 38 percent.
Congressional approval. These four polls averaged 28 percent Congressional approval.
Party Favorability and Preferences. In the Gallup poll, Democrats in Congress are favored over Repubicans in Congress on health care (+37), gas prices (+26), corruption in government (+21), the economy (+21), the situation in Iraq (+17), immigration (+13) and even moral standards in the country (+7) and terrorism (+5). In the ABC/Washington Post poll, the Democratic party is favored over the Republican party on health care (+33), ethics in government (+19), the economy (+17), immigration (+13), the situation in Iraq (+13) and even the US campaign against terrorism (+6).
Believe me, this just scratches the surface of all the bad news in these polls for the GOP. If these macro sentiments are driving the micro situation farther toward the Democrats–which they likely are–the GOP is indeed in very big trouble. No wonder Charlie Cook observed in his latest column: “Four weeks is a lifetime in politics and the tide still could shift. But for Republicans to salvage their majorities in the House and Senate, quite a bit would have to change.”
Stay tuned. We shall see if the GOP gets those changes…or whether these polls foreshadow a disastrous election day for the Republicans.

June Kronholz article “Uphill Climb: Registering Hispanics to Vote” in today’s Wall St. Journal provides a discouraging update on efforts to register Latino voters. If Kronholz is right, and we need to hear from other sources on this, Hispanic registration and turnout will fall well short of optimistic goals bandied about in the wake of this year’s massive demonstrations in support of immigrant rights. The stakes are high, and the immigration issue could be pivotal in specific races, as Kronholz notes:

Hispanics are the largest minority group in the U.S. and account for more than half of all foreign-born immigrants. But historically, most of them can’t or don’t file for citizenship, and most of those who do file don’t vote. For example, during a recent week, 28,000 immigrants became citizens. If past patterns hold, 6,160 are Hispanic, and just 3,572 of them will register to vote.
The untapped potential means both political parties have much at stake in the immigration debate. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, an advocacy group, estimates there are 9.4 million immigrants — both Hispanic and non-Hispanic — who are eligible to become citizens and vote. That is almost three times the popular-vote margin for President Bush in the 2004 election.
In a half-dozen swing states, the immigrant vote this year could be decisive for the party that can harness it. The Illinois Coalition says that in Florida, there are 870,000 potential votes among immigrants eligible to naturalize and their voting-age U.S.-born children. An additional 77,000 U.S.-born children of immigrants will be old enough to cast ballots in Florida in the 2008 election, it adds.

The WSJ article has an interesting chart noting that, while Hispanics are the largest demographic minority, they remain a distant third in eligible voters and voter turnout. There are 148.2 million white citizens over the age of 18, compared to 23.3 million African Americans, 16.1 million Latinos and 3.3 million Asians nationwide. But the 2004 voter turnout percentages show an even greater gap that cries out for a more aggressive voter registration program by Democrats: white 67; Black 60; Hispanic 47 and Asian 44.
Voter registration deadlines for ’06 have passed in most states, but it’s not too late to put more resources into increasing turnout. And on the morning after the election, Dems should begin planning for a stronger registration program for ’08.

Newsweek/Princeton Survey Research Associates International has a new poll (conducted 10/5-6) out and for Democrats it’s all good. Some highlights:

A plurality of Americans, 42 percent, now say they trust Democrats to do a better job of handling moral values; 36 percent say they trust Republicans more. This represents almost a complete reversal from an Aug. 2-Sept. 1, 2002 Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard/Washington Post poll in which 31 percent of Americans said they would trust Democrats to handle moral values better while 44 percent said they would trust Republicans more.

On which party is most capable of confronting terrorism:

On the subject of the war on terror at home and abroad, 44 percent of Americans trust the Democrats to handle it better-a five-point increase from the Aug. 10-11, 2006 Newsweek Poll. Thirty-seven percent trust the Republicans more-a seven-point drop from the same August Newsweek Poll.

Dealing with Iraq?

When it comes to the situation in Iraq, 47 percent of Americans say the Democrats would handle it better, versus 34 percent who say the Republicans would.

Your money?

Fifty-three percent say the Democrats would do a better job with the economy, while only 31 percent say Republicans would…Fifty-six percent say the Democrats would do a better job managing gas and oil prices and 53 percent say they would do a better job managing federal spending and the deficit.

And the kicker:

A majority of Americans, 53 percent, would like to see the Democrats take control of Congress in this year’s elections, according to the Newsweek Poll. Only 35 percent say they would like the Republicans to keep control. And 51 percent of registered voters say that if the elections were held today they would vote for the Democratic candidate in their district, versus 38 percent who say they would vote Republican. Among likely voters, 51 percent would vote for the Democratic candidate and 39 percent for the Republican candidate.

With less than a month to go, it would be hard to improve on such numbers. The challenge for Democratic candidates is to hold the line and close the deal over the next 3+ weeks with strong critiques of their opponents, clearly-stated policy positions and an inspiring vision for the future. The challenge for their campaigns is a fierce GOTV program in every district.