MN-01

Republican Gil Gutknecht got 60% of the vote in 2004, and so I'm surprised to see it so close as he runs for re-election (MN-01: 48-45, R.)

People can donate to Democrat Tim Walz here for this race.

MN-06

Democrat Patty Wetterling got 46% of the vote in 2004, and so I'm surprised to see her so far behind against a more extreme opponent, Michelle Bachman (MN-06: 53-42, R.)

Numbers look great for us, but the poll asked for Welch v. Generic Republican.  The primary is next week and Rainville should win easily, I want to see the same poll with her as Welchs opponent.

Wow.  Just, wow.  If I were a Republican insider right now, I'd be shitting my pants.  And if I worked for the majority on the Hill, I'd definitely be sending cover letters and resumes out about now.  

I am GLEEFUL!!!

It is good to see Taylor still losing to Shuler. But, dammit I wish they would have done NC-08.  If the DCCC put some money into that race, then I am sure they would add it to the next poll.

This is great news.

Re: Florida

Registered independents (called unaffiliated) may not vote for anything other than the judges and school board candidates that were on the ballot this primary, which would also affect turnout.  Bad rain in some areas esp south generally agreed to affect turnout, according to St Pete Times.
But in my opinion, it's the horrifically underwhelming and wimpy choice between the two candidates for governor that kept a lot of Dems home. The debate between the two candidates was a frikkin' joke. From the beginning I thought Crist was going to take this thing walking away, and that was before the debate when I realized he had NO competition on the Dem side whatsoever.

As a resident Floridian, I say fairly confidently that the low Democratic turnout will be limited to the primary only.  First of all, you have two (relative) unknowns in a dem primary for governor and no primary competition for Bill Nelson.  Crist and Gallagher were much more visible in their primary fight than Davis and Smith.  Combine that with the fact that it's the day after labor day and there was bad weather plus a primary where there's not much to vote on and you get people staying home.  

November should be different because a)Harris is not popular (even among Republicans) which should suppress turnout among Republicans b)Crist's moderate stances on social issues will suppress conservative turnout c)Bill Nelson has a wad of cash to spend which will help him and Davis conceivably d)Seeing as Davis has much lower name recognition than Crist, to only be down 5 points (according to Rasmussen) two months from election day bodes well.

Just my two cents.  All that being said, yeah, we need to work our asses off to get Dems to the polls and make it happen.

What's great about PA-10 is that it's completely outside the "wave" -- it's all on Sherwood's character, and if he's that low already, he's toast.

should be Klein. I just got an invite to his kickoff bbq.

Chris, Dem turnout for the FL primaries was low, probably because of the torrential rains in Broward County. Also, Jeb  pumped a lot of money to try and unseat Villalobos, so there was a huge R turnout in that district. The governor's race was the big race and neither of the dem candidates had any name recognition here, in Broward. I couldn't even get the results on tv after the evening news. So you could just as easily say that tv coverage was low. Go figure.

What you can say for sure  is that Jeb can sure get out the vote. I'd hate to think that labor can't get their people to the polls. That would be bad. But our labor union unseated everyone on the school board that we wanted to get out, so I think we're in good shape down here.

What is Pat Murphy missing here?  Name recognition?  With the 'wave' in the Philadelphia Suburbs, I'd think Fitzpatrick would at least be below 50%.

Any thoughts?

Dude, there's a pretty simple an obvious reason turnout was low among Dems.  It was raining in South Florida ALL DAY.  Even I didn't bother voting, because it was literally a torrential downpour during the hours the polls were open.  

It's true that a lack of competitive districts and a lack of excitement over gubernatorial choices had their impacts.   BUT DON'T FORGET THE RAIN.  That, and that alone, explains the disparity between Dems and GOP turnout.

Hey man, you didn't check out the internals on the FL-22 poll before writing it off.  14% of Shaw's voters are listed as 'weakly committed'.  the problems remain numerous, not least of which is that the Democrat, alcee hastings, in the adjacent district has refused to endorse.  frankly, what a fucking prick?  first the guy participates in a gerrymandering that left his district and shaw's 40% apart in voter party ID so they'd each be guaranteed a seat, and now he won't support Klein.  fuckhead.

Based on the results in CA-50 and generally this year, I think we should be more optimistic about the districts where a plurality or near equality of the voters are now calling themselves "Democrats" and less hopeful about the districts where a margin of votes is based on carrying a large majority of the voters who are calling themselves "independent." I think we can count on those who count themselves as Democrats to turn out in large number this year. Those who call themselves "independents" are all to likely to have their disgust turn to non-voting as it did in CA-50.

With this much solid good news, I start wondering about a possible landslide effect.

Of course we should take nothing for granted.  But as the GOP focuses more and more attention on trying to save these seats, their resources get stretched, and it makes prospects even better for seats that aren't on this list.  A mass poll-release like this just has to have a significant psychological effect.

Say, I've got an idea!  Now that Pakistan has allied itself with the Taliban, maybe the GOP could get some al Qaeda pollwatchers in key Democratic precincts.  That could suppress Dem turnout something fierce.  Nothing says "stay home" on Election Day like a little bit of down home terrorism.

I love the results of this, but one poll has me confused.  CT-04 is an exact replay of 2004 - Diane Farrell challenging Chris Shays.  Farrell lost 52-48 (and had no oppertunity to whine and run as an independent afterwards).  Why would she lower in the polls on the Democrat-friendly year?  Especially with Bush so unpopular in CT now, unlike '04.

Yet another agreeing no reason to freak about Florida turnout.  Harris vs. the Field and Crist/Gallagher were the marquee match-ups, which pushed the GOP turnout.

No worries.

I don't see Florida so much a "Red" state as "Pink."  The 600-vote difference between Bush & Gore was only six years ago.  There may be a "Jeb" bump but I don't think that will last forever.

I noticed a small error in your updated forecast.  You have CO-4 listed as a possible pickup and then again listed below in the other category.

Looking at the latest polls, the best data I've seen yet, I would predict between four and six pick-ups and one loss (IL-8) resulting in no take over of the House.

I'm not at all being pessimistic -- I base this on two factors: one, polls that do not show a decisive Democratic advantage at this point will translate into Republican victories due to money issues, and the party faithful coming home at election time; two, Rove is setting the stage for a vote over security versus civil rights -- Americans don't give a shit about their rights (like the Russians, they will sacrifice rights for security and stability every time).

As for IL-8, Bean may have more money than the average Dem candidate, but she has lost her campaign volunteers.  It was not money that won the election last time, it was union members and other supporters walking the district and standing out front of grocery stores that won the election.  

A new poll was released today showing that Kirsten Gillibrand is only 8 points behind John Sweeney.

(Cross posted in comments at Square State).

The nice thing is how nicely Majority Watch/RT Strategies/Constituent Dynamics displays their data. You can drill down to find the cross tabs. For example, clicking on the Partisan Identity bar gives you a PDF file with all the details.

I didn't have time to pursue things in depth, but here are a few interesting observations about CO-04 and CO-07. See RT Strategies Methodology Statement for more.

(1) 1000 person sample is higher than normal for district polls. This leads to 3% accuracy, and more confidence in the cross-tabs.

(2) The district map includes sub-districts, with the corresponding partisan index. So, we see that Larimer County portion of CO-04 is +10 Dem and the rest of the district is +13 Republican. Big warning to Perlmutter in CO-07: In the cross tabs, O'Donnell is doing better in the West Suburbs (50-44) when compared with the partisan index which shows Dems should be at +14. (I'm not sure how they compute the partisan index for the geographic cross-tabs).

(3) The Partisan Identity is "SELF-IDENTIFIED" partisan. The polled universe in both CO-04 and CO-07 identifies themselves as more Republican than the SOS registration numbers. To me this is a negative for the Dems as it indicates Republican sentiment is higher than the registration number, which is probably a lagging measure of partisan identity.

(4) Also more negative for the dems is the likely voter indication, which gives O'Donnell the edge 50 to 45. Most likely voter modeling is difficult in an off election, where turnout depends on partisanship and hot-button issues... hmm....like what???

(5) More hopeful is the partisan breakdown of the poll. For Perlmutter, the GOP support is 10% down when compared to either Dems or Indies. Musgrave loses 17% of the Republican vote to Paccione, while the big P loses onlly 7% of Dems to the <hiss> lady in pink <un-hiss>. Paccione wins Larimer 48-38, while Musgrave almost exactly flips this in Weld/Longmont/Plains.