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November 03, 2010
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) leads challenger Dino Rossi (R) by about one percent, "but the electoral math seemed to favor the three-term incumbent," the
Seattle Times reports.
The reason: "She captured 62% of the votes counted Tuesday night in King County. It's estimated nearly 350,000 additional votes remain to be counted there -- more than a third of the total uncounted votes statewide."
Nate Silver: "An extrapolation of county-by-county results would have Ms. Murray eventually winning by about 1.5 points; she leads by 1 point now."
Rick Scott (R) rode a Republican wave to victory over Alex Sink (D) in the Florida governor's race, the
Miami Herald reports.
"In
a year when Republicans slaughtered Democrats in Cabinet and
congressional races, Scott's razor-thin margin reflected a level of
distrust among voters who were bombarded with mailers and television ads
that featured the record Medicare-fraud fine that his former hospital
company paid."
Sink is expected to formally concede later this morning.
Minnesotans "woke up to a repeat of their long nightmare -- a statewide race with a margin that leads straight into the depths of a recount," the
Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
Mark Dayton (D) leads Tom Emmer (R) by less than one half of 1 percent -- 43.67% to 43.24% -- within the margin for an automatic recount like the one faced two years ago when Al Franken (D) defeated Sen. Norm Coleman (R).
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) will be elected to the U.S. Senate after pulling ahead of challenger Ken Buck (R) this morning, the
Denver Post reports.
"Long after most Coloradans -- including the candidates and their supporters -- had gone to bed, returns from Denver and Boulder moved Bennet past Buck and into the lead, 47.5% to 47.1%. A recount would be required if the difference between the two candidates' vote totals is less than one-half of 1 percent of the highest vote total, or about 3,900 votes based on current tallies."
Josh Marshall: "It makes sense to be pretty careful in judging how things will affect Sarah Palin. But there's a decent argument that this is not a great night for her. Think about if Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell hadn't won their primaries. There's a decent chance Dems would have lost the Senate tonight. That's a pretty big deal. She also made a late endorsement of John Raese in West Virginia. He got crushed. And perhaps most importantly, she went to war in a big way with her state's senior senator, Lisa Murkowski. She got her beat in the Republican primary. But now it's looking like Murkowski's quite likely to win as a write-in, which is usually pretty much impossible to pull off."
Shushannah Walshe: "If there was a silver lining for the former Alaska Governor, it came in the form of Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Susana Martinez in New Mexico, and Mary Fallin in Oklahoma -- the first time women won governorships in those three states."
Perhaps the biggest winner last night was Sen.-elect Marco Rubio (R), who decisively won the three-way Florida U.S. Senate race capturing more than 50% of the vote. Rubio's
acceptance speech shows why many Republicans are confident he'll become a future leader of their party.
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"While our new majority will serve as your voice in the people's House, we must remember it's the president who sets the agenda for our government."
-- House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), in his
speech last night, not exactly grabbing the reigns of power.
Brad Phillips: "2010 was supposed to be the year that attacking the media -- if not ignoring it altogether -- was the winning media strategy. It didn't turn out that way. Tuesday's election results are a vindication for media strategists who have long argued that maintaining positive press relations is still the best path to electoral success."
"That's not to say that an anti-media campaign strategy can't work. It can, and it did for a handful of candidates. But the high-wire tactic tends to be horribly overused, unnecessarily crippling otherwise viable candidates."
President Obama will hold a White House news conference at 1:00 pm ET to discuss yesterday's midterm results.
What will he say?
Ezra Klein: "From the perspective of actually getting anything done in the next two years, there was perhaps no worse outcome. Republicans don't fully control Congress, so they don't have enough power to be blamed for legislative outcomes. But Democrats don't control the House and they don't have a near-filibuster proof majority in the Senate, so they can't pass legislation. Republicans, in other words, are not left with the burden of governance, and Democrats are not left with the power to govern. Republicans don't have to be responsible, and Democrats can't do it for them."
First Read: "The likely next House speaker, John Boehner, couldn't have asked for a better result from last night. With Democrats in charge of the White House and the Senate, Boehner's GOP-controlled House now has the potential to pass legislation at will, but blame the Obama administration and the Senate for the inability to get things done -- or to pass THEIR versions of legislation (like, say, repealing health care). Which ever party wins the spin war over the expected gridlock in Washington will have the upper hand heading into 2012."
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has "a good chance to become only the second candidate to run a successful write-in campaign for the U.S. Senate in the nation's history," the
Anchorage Daily News reports.
Preliminary results show that "about 40% of the voters had filled in the write-in oval on their ballot... But it won't be clear for weeks at least how many of the voters wrote in Murkowski's name, and how many did it properly enough to be counted."
Joe Miller (R), "who ran on a tea party platform with the backing of former Gov. Sarah Palin, was pulling in 35% of the vote. Miller was followed by Democratic nominee Scott McAdams, who had about 24% of the vote."
Washington Post: "Just four years after surrendering power, Republicans recaptured control of the House and made gains in the Senate on Tuesday night, in a major rebuff of President Obama and the Democrats by an electorate worried about the economy and the size of the government."
New York Times: "A Republican resurgence, propelled by deep economic worries and a forceful opposition to the Democratic agenda of health care and government spending, delivered defeats to House Democrats from the Northeast to the South and across the Midwest. The tide swept aside dozens of lawmakers, regardless of their seniority or their voting records, upending the balance of power for the second half of Mr. Obama's term."
Wall Street Journal: "Republicans won control of the House of Representatives as voters dealt a stiff rebuke to President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in a historic wave that swept the GOP to power in states and districts across the country."
Politico: "American voters Tuesday violently unraveled the complex map of America President Barack Obama proudly displayed after his 2008 victory, driving Democrats from rural and suburban districts, from virtually the entire South and unseating a generation of powerful, centrist Democratic legislators."
Nate Silver did a quick check on the accuracy of polls from Rasmussen Reports, which came under heavy criticism this year because its polls showed a strong lean toward Republican candidates.
"Indeed, Rasmussen polls quite consistently turned out to overstate the standing of Republicans tonight. Of the roughly 100 polls released by Rasmussen or its subsidiary Pulse Opinion Research in the final 21 days of the campaign, roughly 70 to 75 percent overestimated the performance of Republican candidates, and on average they were biased against Democrats by 3 to 4 points."
Despite losing a significant number of seats -- in Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, so far -- Democrats will retain control of the U.S. Senate.
However, more interesting is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has apparently won re-election despite a very competitive race against Sharron Angle (R).
November 02, 2010
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), writing in the
Wall Street Journal: "Congratulations to all the tea party-backed candidates who overcame a determined, partisan opposition to win their elections. The next campaign begins today. Because you must now overcome determined party insiders if this nation is going to be spared from fiscal disaster."
"Many of the people who will be welcoming the new class of Senate conservatives to Washington never wanted you here in the first place. The establishment is much more likely to try to buy off your votes than to buy into your limited-government philosophy. Consider what former GOP senator-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott told the
Washington Post earlier this year: 'As soon as they get here, we need to
co-opt them.'"
Marc Ambinder: "In 2008, a New Orleans funeral procession cling-clanged through Studio 47 here at CBS. The Republican Party was dead. It would take at least several cycles before it returned... Such hubris. So we should be wary of hubristic projections tonight. Clearly, a dead party can revivify in two years provided the energy in the electorate is there."
A few interesting observations:
If Dan Maes (R) doesn't get 10% in Colorado's race for governor, the Republican party will lose major party status which could have implications for the 2012 presidential race if the GOP candidate is listed way down the ballot.
Marco Rubio (R) could possibly win more than 50% of the vote in Florida's three-way U.S. Senate race,
Nikki Haley (R) won an unexpectedly close race for South Carolina governor which will fuel criticisms that national Democrats didn't take the race more seriously.
Early indications suggest it was a good year for pollsters generally.
Trying to buy your way into political office didn't work very well for Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in California and Linda McMahon in Connecticut.
For comparison,
Michael Crowley looks back at how former President Bill Clinton reacted to Democrats losing control of Congress in 1994.
"Clinton struck a hard note of conciliation, admitting that Democrats had not done enough to change the culture of Washington (sound familiar?) and urged Republicans to 'join me in the center of the public debate where the best ideas for the next generation of American progress must come.' But he also warned against 'jeopardizing this economic recovery by taking us back to the policies that failed us before.' (Sound familiar?)"
With nearly everyone projecting Democrats to lose control of the House but retain control of the Senate, there are several key contests -- "silver-lining races," according to
First Read -- that Democrats are still watching closely. They are:
- Florida Gov (Sink vs. Scott)
- Ohio Gov (Strickland vs. Kasich)
- Colorado Senate (Bennet vs. Buck)
- Nevada Senate (Reid vs. Angle)
NBC News projects that Republicans will gain a majority in the House, 236 seats to 199 seats with a margin of error of 13 seats.
That's a projected net pick up of 46 to 72 seats for Republicans.
The bottom line: It's been a very good night (so far) for pollsters and forecasters.
Check our
Election Aggregator for the very latest results, reactions and buzz.
Key races so far: Manchin wins WV-Sen, Blumenthal wins CT-Sen, Paul wins KY-Sen, Rubio wins FL-Sen, Ayotte wins NH-Sen, Coats wins IN-Sen, Portman wins OH-Sen
"I see a looming giant on the horizon for 2012... you better try to get an interview with him because if he runs, it is not only a three way race, he's going to blow the whole two party system apart."
-- Ralph Nader, in an interview on the Fox Business Network, on New York City Michael Bloomberg possibly running as an independent candidate for president.
Here are the leaked exit polls for key U.S. Senate races as reported by the
Drudge Report and
Huffington Post:
Blumenthal (D-CT) +8
Rubio (R-FL) +21
Blunt (R-MO) +10
Boxer (D-CA) +8
Kirk (R-IL) +6
Paul (R-KY) +11
NV--EVEN
Bennet (D-CO) +2
Toomey (R-PA) +4
Murray (D-WA) +6
Manchin (D-WV) +7
Johnson (R-WI) +5
Extreme caution is advised in attempting to interpret these results.
Interestingly, Sen. Harry Reid's (D-NV) campaign is confident they have a lead among those who voted early so a tie among today's voters would be good news for him. Based on the exit polls, pollster
Frank Luntz thinks Reid will win.
In his forthcoming memoir,
Decision Points, former President George W. Bush writes that he considered dumping Vice President Dick Cheney from his 2004 reelection ticket to dispel the myths about Cheney's power in the White House and "demonstrate that I was in charge," the
New York Times reports.
"The idea came from Mr. Cheney, who offered to drop out of the race one day during a private lunch between the two men in mid-2003. 'I did consider the offer,' Mr. Bush writes, and spent several weeks exploring the possibility of replacing Mr. Cheney with Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, before opting against the switch."
An
AP analysis of exit polling shows voters around the country "are intensely worried about the economy and dissatisfied with the way the federal government is working... Nearly all voters are worried about the future direction of the economy, and about 4 in 10 say they are worse off financially than they were two years ago."
"Voters are expressing dissatisfaction with President Barack Obama and
the Congress, and they don't have a favorable view of either the
Democratic or Republican parties."
Jim Geraghty: "I am told that one Democratic strategist, helping a television network
with Election Night analysis, just declared that the Democrats were
experiencing something on par with mass murder. The GOP counterpart
looked at the same numbers and concluded the Democrats are, so far, not
getting the urban turnout they need; suburban and rural areas are seeing
big turnouts."
Nate Silver: "Whatever these polls say, you should mostly ignore them; early exit
polls are not intended to be taken at face value and can even be rather
misleading."
CBS News reports President Obama's approval rating is 45% in early exit polling, with 54% disapproving.
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