This should be a golden age of political prognostication. Any armchair strategist with an Internet connection can get loads of insider information and blog or tweet their viewpoints. Congressional polling, once a true commodity because few media firms commissioned it regularly, has proliferated, with numerous start-up pollsters releasing data that's eaten up on a daily basis by junkies.
But amid all the information, I'm finding that we've lost a lot of old-fashioned common sense in evaluating and understanding races. We've become beholden to numbers, any numbers, at the expense of states' and districts' fundamental characteristics and candidates' and campaigns' own unique qualities.
Pundits have treated Joe Miller's upset of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, last month as a huge shock, but much of that surprise was based on months-old polls giving Murkowski a comfortable edge. Delving into the fundamentals of the contest (with the great benefit of hindsight), all the warning signs were there. Murkowski's family name had been greatly damaged since her Senate appointment, and Sarah Palin weighed in against her with an assist from Tea Party groups.
Flash back several months ago to Arkansas, where, on the basis of one (now discredited) poll, reporters largely wrote off Sen. Blanche Lincoln's chances in the Democratic primary runoff. This, despite the fact that Arkansas Democrats are a fairly moderate bunch who won't automatically support the more liberal candidate, even in a primary.
Flash back to last year's special election in New York, where polls showed third-party conservative Doug Hoffman holding a seemingly insurmountable lead over Democrat Bill Owens in the campaign's final days. Every poll showed Hoffman winning, one showing him with a landslide victory, even as the de facto Republican nominee gave Owens a last-minute endorsement. But Hoffman, for all the hype, was a lifeless campaigner with zero charisma. I was in Plattsburgh in the run-up to the election, amazed at how uncomfortable Hoffman looked on the campaign trail, and how he was struggling to distill his message even to his own supporters.
I had a hunch that something was amiss -- that Hoffman wasn't capitalizing on the national attention -- but the polls were the polls...
So in the spirit of going with common sense over the in-the-moment numbers and hype, here are four cases where the current narrative tilts in one direction, but where political gravity is bound to set in by Election Day.
1. Battleground West Virginia. The West Virginia Senate special election has been portrayed as a fait accompli for the popular sitting Democratic governor, Joe Manchin, but there are already signs that he'll be facing a closer race than expected against Republican mining company owner John Raese come November.
West Virginia is about as unfavorable to national Democrats as anywhere in the country. President Obama won just 43 percent of the vote statewide and holds just a 36 percent approval rating in the latest Rasmussen poll. If there's any state where the Democratic label could become a scarlet letter, it's the Mountain State. The White House's backing of the cap-and-trade energy bill last year has been toxic to the party in Appalachia; hostility to it played a major role in longtime Democratic Rep. Alan Mollohan's primary loss earlier this year.
And for the first time since he was first elected governor, Manchin is acting as if he faces a hotly contested battle. He's on the defensive in his first television spot, going full-bore after Raese for accusing him of supporting Obama's health care plan. It's a sign of a candidate who understands he can't take the race for granted and is concerned that the attacks will stick.
This is Manchin's first run for federal office, and he's had to square his conservative image with the nitty-gritty of specific policies advocated by the White House and national party leaders, many of them viewed unfavorably in West Virginia.
The good news for Manchin is that he is one of the most popular chief executives in the country, branding himself as a culturally conservative Democrat who has fought for the state's energy interests. Manchin is in good standing with the state's coal industry and has aggressively fought some of the Obama administration's environmental regulations that disproportionately affect the energy-producing state.
But in an open-seat Senate race in a wave election, it's easy to see Manchin's lead dissipating as the attacks pile up. Raese won't be short on resources -- he already has put in about a half-million dollars to the campaign -- and Republicans aren't ruling out spending last-minute money in the state, anticipating that the race could close over the next month. Democratic strategists insist Manchin is in fine shape, but it would be foolish to count out any Republican this year in the Mountain State.
2. Prepare for Perry. Democrats have been hyping the results from two recent polls showing the Texas governor's race to be a barn-burner, both showing Democrat Bill White 6 points behind Rick Perry, within the margin of error. The Democratic Governors Association is no less bullish, citing Texas as one of the four major states that it considers prime pickup opportunities.
There's no doubt that Perry has begun to wear out his welcome in Texas after serving as governor for the last 10 years. And there's little question that White, the Houston mayor, is the strongest opponent he's faced.
But those factors alone don't make an upset likely. Here's a sobering fact for Democrats: In the last three wave elections of 1994, 2006 and 2008, not a single statewide incumbent running with the benefit of the wave has lost in a general election. It's hard to fathom that the exception to the wave would take place in Texas, a state where Republican intensity is as high as anywhere in the country.
3. Don't write Kilroy's or Driehaus' political obituaries yet. Ohio Reps. Mary Jo Kilroy and Steve Driehaus have managed to make it onto the top of most analysts' political death lists. There's no doubt both Democrats are in trouble, but are they the most vulnerable members in the country, ahead of vulnerable Democrats representing solidly conservative seats? These, after all, are seats Obama won comfortably with 54 percent and 55 percent of the vote, respectively.
Both of their districts are filled with Obama surge voter. In Driehaus' district, it's the African-American base in Cincinnati. For Kilroy, it's the college students at Ohio State. Both these areas have been the target of successful Democratic registration and get-out-the-vote drives in recent years. With important upballot races for governor and Senate, expect intensive Democratic turnout efforts here again as well.
A series of polls in key battleground districts sponsored by the GOP-backed American Action Network actually show Kilroy and Driehaus in better shape than many of their embattled colleagues. That's not to say they're doing well -- both trail -- but the fundamentals of their districts suggest they're capable of a comeback.
One plugged-in Ohio Democratic operative speculated that Republicans are specifically hyping the outright demise of Kilroy and Driehaus as something of a bluff -- with a limited bankroll, the GOP doesn't want to spend money in their expensive districts. Last week, I wrote about how Democrats face tougher spending decisions over which incumbents to protect, but that doesn't mean the National Republican Congressional Committee isn't fully cognizant of its finite resources and wouldn't prefer the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to concede certain races so they could focus further down the list of targets.
4. Rubio the clear front-runner in Florida. Most public polling shows the Florida Senate race to be a close, three-way affair. But privately, it's hard to find too many Democratic or Republican strategists who don't view Marco Rubio (R) as the favorite.
Early polling can be misleading in Florida, given that most voters in the major-market state don't start tuning in until the final few weeks before the campaign. Rubio has proven he's one of the more able Senate candidates of the cycle, using Tea Party energy to run a pragmatic conservative campaign in a strong Republican year.
Gov. Charlie Crist (I) leads in several public polls, and no one is ruling him out yet. But all the fundamentals suggest that the governor's support will drop as the campaign fully gets under way. His job approval ratings have been falling, and it's increasingly hard to see him scoring points for his stewardship of the state when he's been on the campaign trail much of the year. The political environment is so polarized nationally that it's hard to see an independent winning -- especially in a state like Florida, where nearly 80 percent of voters register with a major party.
And Crist faces lots of unearthed baggage from his hand-picked state GOP chairman, Jim Greer, who's now indicted on corruption charges. He made matters worse by returning his friend's donation. Only the most politically aware voters are familiar with the details of their relationship now, but when the 30-second ads hit him from both sides, expect his numbers to drop.
Rep. Kendrick Meek (D) has more room to grow and pick off soft Crist supporters, but it's unlikely he'll have the money to do much more than solidify his own base. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is showing no sign of spending significant resources on Meek's behalf with so many other incumbents to defend. Money matters here more than in most states, and given that this is shaping up to be a very favorable year for Republicans, it's hard to see Meek running against the tide.
There are good points in this article. Much of the media has become lazy and simply repeats stories without adding their own spin or doing their own research.
For example, in the West Virginia Senate race, there looks to be a close 3-way battle between Manchin (D), Raese (R), and Jesse Johnson of the Mountain Party; having been ignored by Rasmussen and recently gaining an endorsement from legendary Democratic congressman Ken Hechler, Johnson's numbers will probably be one of the biggest surprises nationwide this November. According to a recent poll in the Charleston Daily Mail, Johnson was in second place with 36% in this 3-way battle.
Kilroy will lose as the student vote from 08 will not deliver to the polls. Secondly the students after weathering a storm of joblessness this summer know that MJK and other progressives have done nothing, I repeat, nothing to spur the recovery of the economy.
Josh, you sir live in a dream world.