Category Archives: Election Analysis

The Last Primary Day

By Jim Ellis

Sept. 14, 2016 — Yesterday marked the end of the congressional primary season as voters in Delaware, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island went to the polls to choose the 2016 cycle’s final House and Senate nominees.

Delaware

At-large Rep. John Carney (D-Wilmington) is leaving the House to pursue the open governor’s position and little doubt remains about the outcome in the state house race. Rep. Carney was unopposed for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and will replace term-limited Gov. Jack Markell (D) as the party standard bearer. For the GOP, Republican state senator and former state treasurer nominee Colin Bonini easily out-polled his lone opponent, minor candidate Lacey Lafferty, a retired police officer. Rep. Carney will be a heavy favorite to win the governorship in the general election.

The more interesting contest was the battle to succeed Rep. Carney as the Democratic congressional nominee. A six-candidate race culminated in victory for one contender. Former state Labor Secretary Lisa Blunt Rochester (D) was widely considered the favorite and that showed when she won by 19 points over the closest challenger.

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Senate: Critical States, Critical Polls

By Jim Ellis

Sept. 13, 2016 — New polls were just released in states that will define which party controls the Senate in the next Congress.

Five polls, four from Quinnipiac University, are now in the public domain from Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. If these latest polls prove correct, the Senate majority would be decided in Nevada and New Hampshire, two toss-up states that were not included in the released data.

Florida

The first Q-Poll gives further evidence that Sen. Marco Rubio (R) is expanding his slight lead over Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Jupiter). According to the data from Quinnipiac’s September Florida statewide poll (Aug. 31-Sept. 7; 601 likely Florida voters), Sen. Rubio has extended beyond the polling margin of error and now records a 50-43 percent advantage.

Any problem he had with Republicans based upon his poor Florida performance against Donald Trump in the March 15 presidential primary appears to be resolved. This Q-Poll finds him attracting 89 percent of Republicans as opposed to losing just six percent of them. This brings him to partisan parity with Rep. Murphy, who captures the Democratic vote with a similar 91-7 percent. Rubio is doing very well among Independents, taking this group 53-37 percent.

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The States Tighten

By Jim Ellis

Sept. 12, 2016 — As the national popular vote pulls into a virtual dead heat, polls released yesterday in the critical swing states suggest that a similar pattern is occurring in the individual voting entities, too.

To re-cap the Electoral College map, in order to win the national campaign Donald Trump must keep the 24 states Mitt Romney claimed in 2012, including key swing North Carolina, and then win Florida and Ohio. President Obama won both of these latter states in each of his national campaigns. For her victory configuration, Hillary Clinton need only preserve 80 percent of the states that Obama won twice.

Once Trump secures the Romney coalition plus Florida and Ohio, he then must take at least one more state totaling more than 16 Electoral Votes, to reach the minimum victory threshold of 270 Electoral Votes. Adding Pennsylvania, for example, would award Trump the presidency.

Quinnipiac University publicized four state polls yesterday, covering each key swing entity. In Florida and Ohio, the Q-Poll finds Trump returning to parity with Hillary Clinton. He trails in North Carolina, however. Though still behind in Pennsylvania, the research projects him pulling back to within five points of her and halving the deficit he faced in the August Pennsylvania Quinnipiac survey.

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State by State

By Jim Ellis

Sept. 9, 2016 — The Washington Post just released their Survey Monkey online polling data for all 50 states. (Poll: Redrawing the electoral map) It gives us our first complete look at the nation’s political predisposition on a state-by-state basis through August and early September (polling period: Aug. 6-Sept. 1).

The results, with several exceptions, are not particularly surprising. The answers you’d expect after understanding how this entire election campaign has unfolded relate to just how negatively people view both candidates. That is, 95 percent of the respondents said at least one of two major party contenders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, would “threaten the nation’s well-being”. Twenty-one percent believe both are a similar threat.

The polls’ cumulative effect gives Clinton a discernible electoral vote lead, which is consistent with other publicly available survey research information. But, several states are inconsistent with other published data and vote history.

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House Races: The Florida Bellwether

By Jim Ellis

Sept. 7, 2016 — The general election campaigns are just about set. Now into September, just two primary days remain (Sept. 8: Massachusetts — Sept. 13th: Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island) and only in New Hampshire’s 1st District – a seat that has defeated more incumbents than any district in the nation since 2006 – and the open Delaware at-large CD is there any remaining nomination uncertainty.

Looking at the entire House, the current majority stands at 246 Republicans, 186 Democrats, with three vacancies. Two of the seats with no current Representative are Democratic, that of the late Rep. Mark Takai (D-HI-1) and PA-2, which Rep. Chaka Fattah-D resigned after being convicted on federal corruption charges. The remaining position, coming open today, belongs to Kentucky Republican Ed Whitfield (R-KY-1). The congressman announced a year ago that he would not seek a 12th term and last week made public his plans to leave the House early. All three seats will remain with their respective parties, meaning the effective partisan division is 247R-188D.

In order to re-capture the House majority they lost in the 2010 election, the Democrats must first secure all 188 of their own seats, and then convert 30 Republican districts just to obtain a one-seat margin of control. No statistical forecasting suggests that such an outcome is in sight.

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The September Reset

By Jim Ellis

Sept. 6, 2016 — Labor Day is always viewed as the traditional general election initiation benchmark for presidential campaigns, so it is important to see where the candidates stand now that we have reached this point in time.

During the Aug. 24-30 period, five national polling entities surveyed the national electorate. The five: USA Today/Suffolk University, Rasmussen Reports, Fox News, Reuters/Ipsos, and The Economist/YouGov find a margin range of Hillary Clinton topping Donald Trump by seven percentage points (USA/Suffolk: Aug. 24-29, 1,000 US likely voters, 42-35-7-4 percent, including Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein) to the Republican going up by a single point (Rasmussen Reports; Aug. 29-30: 1,000 US likely voters, 40-39-7-3 percent).

Together, the five polls produce a net average Clinton edge of 3.0 percentage points with neither candidate exceeding 42 percent support nor dropping below 35 percent.

Turning to a historical comparison, where have other presidential campaigns stood on Sept. 1, and how can previous patterns help us project what may happen in this current election?

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McCain: A Bigger Target

By Jim Ellis

Sept. 2, 2016 — It is clear that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is in a more precarious political position the day after his primary than the day before. On Tuesday, the veteran Arizona senator recorded only a 52-39 percent victory over his top challenger, former state Sen. Kelli Ward. Two other Republican candidates, Alex Meluskey and Clair Van Steenwyk, received a combined 9.1 percent of the GOP primary vote: 5.5 percent for Meluskey and the remainder for Van Steenwyk.

But Tuesday’s underlying numbers illuminate what is likely a greater McCain vulnerability for the fall campaign against 1st District Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Flagstaff): a weak Republican base.

Looking at the state’s 15 counties, Ward actually defeated McCain in three of them, Cochise, Navajo, and Mohave. Additionally, the senator only carried Apache County by 75 votes. Together, this suggests McCain is doing poorly on the Indian reservations, which is not unusual since the region is a Democratic stronghold, but these votes came from within his own party.

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