To expand on yesterday's update, summarized here:



The AP came dangerously-close to a massive embarrassment last night. It made a call in the WI-06 GOP primary quite early on when State Senator Glenn Grothman was comfortably leading by about 10 points. The problem was that most of Sheboygan, Wisconsin was outstanding and when it started to report shortly after AP made their call things started to tighten, and tighten fast. Grothman's lead shrunk to all of 200 votes before 100% of precincts are in. The AP never retracted their call as the margin narrowed, and at one point even stopped updating. They are praying that Grothman's lead holds.

This is doubly-bad for the GOP unless by some miracle a recount produces a Grothman loss. Not only did the GOP nominate the one man that the party did not want to advance to November, but he won by the narrowest of margins and will probably have to deal with a protracted recount or even lawsuit to hold onto his win. It's even worse if Sheboygan is a major player in a hypothetical recount because that's an area that is important to Democratic nominee Mark Harris' chances of beating Grothman in November to pick up the seat for the Democrats. The GOP is very uneasy at the prospect of Grothman getting so many free media and this seat that retiring Republican Tom Petri has held for 35 years could become yet another pure tossup race in the House like other seats vacated by retiring Republicans.

Edit: Making matters worse, one of candidates that Grothman defeated put his State Senate seat on the line in an attempt to move up into the House of Representatives. WI Republicans have no margin for error in November: they are clinging to an 18-15 edge in the State Senate and are dealing with challenges all over the map, and Governor Scott Walker is also locked in a pure tossup race. Worst case scenario for the GOP is Grothman costs his party what would otherwise be a Safe Republican House seat, a loss of a State Senate seat that could cost them their majority, and depressed turnout in a district that Scott Walker has to romp in if he wants to be reelected. The GOP better hope for a quick rebound.

This post was edited by Pollster on Aug 13 2014 05:04pm

Some interesting developments on the Generic Congressional Ballot:

Faux News, often a punchline in polling, has done something interesting in their latest poll: they've created a new category of voter for the midterm, the "interested voter." Among all voters including leaners Faux found the Democrats leading the GCB by a massive 7 points (46-39). The Democrats' lead among all voters without pushing leaners drops to a 6-point lead (42-36). But among "interested voters" the Republicans magically have a 1-point lead (45-44). Among only "interested voters" without leaners the ballot is tied. Republicans should take note of these figures because they could present a real problem for them. When even Faux News after asking their silly push-poll like questions finds a large lead for the Democrats in the GCB, the GOP is not where it wants to be in it's attempt to get to 51 Senate seats and expand their House majority. Reason-Rupe's first Likely Voter poll has Democrats by 1 (42-41) while McClatchy/Martst's first poll in months produced a massive outlier Republican 5-point lead (43-38). Shortly before that, CBS (41-37) and CNN/OPR (48-44) both found a 4-point lead for Democrats.

We're about to enter a very important time of the cycle for the GCB as vacationers return home and kids start back to school. It was in June/July/August back in 2010 when the GCB began to show the GOP's opportunity to pick up a lot of seats in that year's midterm. This year however the Democrats have owned the GCB since February, posting small but stable leads for most of the 6-month period. If these leads last until Election Day then we are in for cycle where just a couple of seats will flip in both chambers but there's still plenty of time for one party or the other to build a large lead in the GCB; it would happen later than it has been in the two most-recent midterms.

Thats OK because Republicans have Gerrymandered the states to win more senate seats than they should.

Uh... you can't benefit in a Senate election by gerrymandering, imbecile. Gerrymandering to the extreme in a state like North Carolina or Michigan as Republicans did doesn't help them in Senate contests in those states. The only benefit that their extensive gerrymandering could possibly generate is that because they created so many districts without competitive House elections some people might be inclined to just skip November with the knowledge that they'll either be represented by a Democrat in a district that Republicans packed or represented by a Republican in a district that Republicans cracked. But the number of people who would behave in that fashion is exceedingly small, if they exist at all. It won't impact the races. The Republicans have gerrymandered U.S. House and state legislative districts extensively, but that actually minimizes the number of seats that they can win moving forward because in creating for themselves an artificial majority they made it absolutely impossible to compete in essentially 180 districts no matter what the climate of the election cycle is. They have precious few opportunities to add to their majority, they can only focus on trying to retain the majority that they have.

This cycle gives the Republicans their best chance of hitting their ceiling in the Senate of ~52 seats because they temporarily hold several Class 3 Senate seats that they are almost certain to lose in 2016 regardless of climate, much like how the Democrats currently hold several Class 2 seats that they are almost certain to lose this year. Nothing, not even gerrymandering, will prevent the Republicans from going back back into the minority in 2016 if they aren't there already.

You guys can keep the House and take the Senate for all I care. The current Republican Party will never win another presidential election, and that'll eventually translate into the Senate and House, too.

I was joking.
I guess the santa hat wasn't obvious enough.

I agree, the odds are looking pretty good for Republicans to take control of congress with a small majority in the senate.

It looks like both parties win tonight in Alaska. NRSC-recruited Dan Sullivan has been declared the winner in a 3-way contest for the GOP nomination. 2010 nominee Joe Miller with no money and no resources hung with Sullivan all night but couldn't seal the deal. So national Republicans get their guy but the Democrats get to run against the guy they wanted, too. They've already hammered him with over $4 million in ads hitting on his questionable Alaska cred, time with the Bush White House, and his series of gaffes (even in his own ad). If they couldn't get Miller this is who they wanted.

Alaska polling is sparse and suspect, but Begich has lead Sullivan every step of the way outside of one obvious outlier produced by a GOP shill firm. Look for a possible primary bounce for Sullivan in the next couple of weeks and to see if Joe Miller reverses his earlier decision to not run as an Independent in November.



This exact sentiment is being held by the national party more and more as it has gradually become the long-term party. Ten years ago the roles were reversed but things are entirely different now. The Democrats know that they'll be playing serious offense in at least 15-18 GOP-held Senate seats in 2016 and their only semi-vulnerable seats (NV and CO) were held in 2010 in worse conditions. House districts uncompetitive in midterm elections will suddenly become top targets in 2 years. The party knows the money will be much more plentiful as well and that recruiting will be even better (especially in the House). At this stage they believe they are more likely than not going to share a ballot with Clinton, who will be able to cobble together the same "Obama majority" that produced strong results in 2008 and 2012 in addition to her own unique strength with white working-class females and a return to pre-Obama levels of support with white seniors.

The Democrats are more than happy to rent a small and unworkable majority in the Senate to the GOP for 2 years as absolutely nothing gets done regardless of who is control while they plan to run Clinton full-force as an opponent of the most unpopular Congress in history, one that theoretically would be under GOP control and that could no longer use the laughable excuse that Harry Reid is somehow blocking things the country wants. The Obama White House would have two years to draw a contrast that could be deadly for the GOP in 2016. The surest way to tell if the Democrats have placed their focus on 2016 in spite of 2014 is to look at what the Obama executive order on immigration does and when it is announced.

New Ranges, shift, and cause for movement. Some new and likely temporary shifts that will probably reverse, potentially as early as next week in the Senate and Governors elections.

House: D+3 - R+9 - [Shift: <-] (GA-12)
Senate: R+0 - R+7 - [Shift: <-] (KS-SEN)
Governors: D+6 - R+2 - [Shift: ->] (AR-GOV, FL-GOV)

The leftward shift in the House forecast is due to growing Republican pessimism concerning GA-12, a conservative district that continues to be held by Democratic Rep. John Barrow. Republicans openly admit that their polling shows Barrow at or above 50% (which likely means he's even higher) and that they don't seriously think they can beat him. Polling at 50% in Congressional polling is usually a pretty arbitrary distinction, especially when Congress as a whole is so unpopular, but when Republicans concede that a Democratic incumbent is registering strong in their flawed polling you can safely assume he's ahead by a stable margin.

The leftward shift in the Senate forecast is due to Kansas Senator Pat Roberts polling extremely poorly after his recent primary win. Roberts beat back a challenge from an underfunded neophyte but his winning margin was underwhelming. Polling is typically very volatile shortly after a primary election but both PPP and SurveyUSA found Roberts in a statistical tie with his Democratic challenger, and PPP even found Roberts trailing the Independent candidate in a hypothetical two-way race. If Roberts' standing doesn't improve in the next couple of weeks this could be a competitive race in November, especially with the Democrats waging a strong challenge against Republican Governor Sam Brownback and arguably being a small favorite to pick up that seat.

The rightward shift in the Governors forecast is due to a couple of races moving away from the Democrats. Current Democratic-held Arkansas has been moving away for months, while the party's prospects in Florida have dropped slightly due to Republican Governor Rick Scott having the airwaves to himself for months and using that time and many millions in negative ads to temporarily inflate his standing. Charlie Crist, former Republican Governor turned Democratic challenger, will likely unite Democrats and moderates after his expected primary win next week so he may overtake Scott again soon to reverse this shift.

Earth-shattering developments in Alaska and Kansas. In Alaska, Republican Governor Parnell was locked in a competitive 3-way race against Democrat Byron Mallott and Independent Bill Walker. Walker and Mallott announced a fusion ticket, with Walker on top of the ballot, that will challenge Parnell in November. Due to Parnell's earlier-mentioned vulnerabilities this will be very competitive in November.

And in Kansas the news is even bigger. Republican Senator Pat Roberts was also locked in a competitive 3-way race against Democrat Chad Taylor and Independent Greg Orma but Taylor dropped out today leaving Orman, who has fundraised well and who even has self-funding capabilities, to take on Roberts directly (there's also a Libertarian on the ballot). Orman has also recently lead Roberts in recent polling. Orman is claiming that if he won he would caucus with whichever party already held the majority, meaning that the Democrats could retain their majority in the Senate thanks to a seat in Kansas.