Predicting Elections in an Unpredictable Year

FiveThirtyEight has changed its forecast for this fall’s Senate elections — the chance of a Republican takeover dropped from 26 to 15 percent, thanks to Christine O’Donnell’s primary win earlier this week.

Although Ms. O’Donnell and Mr. Coons remain relatively unknown to some Delaware voters, and a comeback by Ms. O’Donnell is not impossible, the forecasting model gives it only a 6 percent likelihood of happening — and has established Mr. Coons, therefore, as a 94 percent favorite. Had Republican voters selected Mr. Castle instead, the numbers would be exactly the opposite: Mr. Castle would be the 94 percent favorite to win the seat, leaving Mr. Coons with just a 6 percent chance of an upset.

How could the GOP obtain a majority? Either they have to win every Democratic seat in contention while holding all of their own, or put new states into play, Nate Silver wrote in his FiveThirtyEight analysis. His analysis, linked to above, is worth reading in its entirety, as he addresses races in states that Republicans would have to focus on in order to win.

Republicans’ hopes for a Senate takeover dimmed significantly after O’Donnell’s victory Tuesday; had Castle won, the seat almost certainly would have gone to him in November, but as Silver notes in his post O’Donnell’s outlook for winning in left-of-center Delaware is weak.

A poll released yesterday by Politico, however, shows that outcome not nearly so certain in the minds of America’s voters. It found that, regardless of who they planned to vote for, voters were most likely to predict Republican takeovers in the House (which is, analysts agree, likely) and the Senate. For the Senate, 46 percent predicted a GOP takeover and 37 percent a Democratic majority. 17 percent were uncertain.

Some other results from the poll:

• 63 percent believe the country is on the wrong track; 10 percent were unsure
• 43 percent said they would vote Republican were the election today; 43 percent said they would vote Democratic were the election today; 10 percent were undecided
• 46 percent specified the economy and jobs as Congress’s top priority; 13 percent said government spending; 8 percent said health care reform
• 57 percent disapprove of the job Democrats have done in Congress
• 59 percent disapprove of the job Republicans have done in Congress
• 80 percent get news about the election from cable news channels including CNN, Fox News and MSNBC; 76 percent from newspapers or newspaper websites; 52 percent from radio programming

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Delaware Dispatch: Primary Post-Mortem

It’s Wednesday, the day after the Republican primary for Delaware’s open Senate seat, and the smoke is starting to clear. “O’DONNELL IN SHOCKER,” my copy of the News Journal screamed this morning. Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell took 53 percent of the vote and the win. Mike Castle, her opponent, former Delaware governor and nine-term congressman and the GOP pick, managed 47 percent, losing his first election ever.

“Don’t ever underestimate the power of the people,” O’Donnell said in her victory speech. “We the people will have our voice heard in Washington once again. This isn’t just about the U.S. Senate race. This is about changing the political system in Delaware so that more everyday Americans can step up to the plate without worrying about character assassinations.”

[The end of that quote seems a little disingenuous, as O’Donnell and her campaign attacked Castle mercilessly, portraying him as a liberal, alleging that his operatives hide in her bushes and implying he is gay.]

O’Donnell, whom the National Republican Senatorial Committee says it will not back in the general election, will face Democrat Chris Coon, the county executive of New Castle County. This primary upset has forced political forecasters and operatives to alter their predictions for the November election. Previously, Castle had been predicted to win Vice President Joe Biden’s old seat; now, because Castle was relying on Democratic and independent support to win and such support is unlikely to go to O’Donnell, Republicans are essentially abandoning the race to Coons.

Now it’s time for the media post-mortem. Delaware is lavished in the kind of attention it rarely receives, and since the interest will likely fade quickly it’s time to get as much as possible.

The News Journal’s Ron Williams, writing yesterday before the primary upset, noted the marked shift in primary campaign strategies. The new emphasis puts less faith in party support and recognizes the increasingly powerful communications tools grassroots campaigns utilize.

This has been the most unpredictable and bizarre primary campaign I’ve ever seen going back to the early 1970s, when primaries were brought into the picture by the two major parties. Before that, the party power brokers and candidates handled the nominations for office by hand-picking their convention delegates. It was actually a very workable, albeit rocky, process. Nowadays we have television and cable advertising, bigger roadside signs, more radio stations to choose for a candidate’s message and the tea party.

Slate’s Dave Weigel, a native Delawarean, writes a “requiem for Mike Castle.”

I see a lot of conservatives arguing tonight that Christine O’Donnell’s victory shows that she can upset the establishment and win this seat. These conservatives are not from Delaware. O’Donnell won a slim majority in a race with around 58,000 Republican voters. She won Kent and Sussex counties, the conservative parts of the state. But even in scoring a massive upset, she lost New Castle County. That’s where 2/3 of the state lives, and where, in the past, I saw yards with Obama/Biden and Castle signs, Kerry/Edwards and Castle signs, Gore/Lieberman and Castle signs — you get the picture. There are tens of thousands of Delawareans who were expecting to vote for Mike Castle who are now given a choice between their workmanlike county executive, Chris Coons, and a woman who spent two weeks on the cover of the News Journal for stories about her trouble paying college fees, her lawsuit against her former employer ISI, her appearance in a MTV special about abstinence, etc, and etc, and etc. She got such rough treatment from the paper that she stopped talking to it.

Over at Salon, Steve Kornacki debunks the same Tea Party claims Weigel dismisses.

Tea Partiers, of course, will argue that O’Donnell will catch us all by surprise in November just as she did in this primary campaign. But her image with the general public seems to mirror that of the Tea Party: rabid enthusiasm among the GOP base, hostility from most others. Running in a GOP primary that was closed to independent and Democrats presented her with a voting universe just narrow enough for her to post a win. The November electorate will be much broader, and even though the casual November voters of 2010 will be strongly inclined to vote against Democrats, it’s hard to imagine someone with her image problems — which will probably only get worse with the media shining even more light on her — garnering a majority.

In a separate post, Kornacki says Beau Biden must be kicking himself right now. The attorney general and son of VP Joe Biden considered a run, but announced in January he would not.

The presence of Castle, with his broad popularity, and the increasingly toxic political climate for Democrats started to give Beau Biden cold feet. He was 40 years old and ambitious, but he had to be careful: The prospect of losing to Castle in a ’10 election was real. How badly would that damage his image and his long-term prospects? Plus, it’s not like Castle would stick around for decades, right? He’d probably win the seat in ’10, treat the next four years as a well-earned career-capper, then ride off into the sunset in 2014. Then Beau could run for the seat himself (probably in a much better climate) and take his rightful place on the national stage. …

Now, it will be a shocker if Chris Coons doesn’t win in November. He just turned 47 a few weeks ago, meaning that he could be in the Senate for decades to come, sitting in the Senate seat that Joe Biden held for 38 years — and that his son was too apprehensive to seek on his own.

U.S. News’ John Aloysius Farrell says there are several ways to view O’Donnell’s victory.

Another way of looking at the Delaware results is to marvel, once again, at the influence of the economy on American politics. You can say all you want about ideology and celebrity and tactics. The truth is that throughout American history, it’s the Panics and Depressions and great Recessions that reliably spur political revolutions. Why should our era be any different? Let’s see. I’ve lost my job and I cannot find work. They are sending my kids to fight wars we cannot win. The government is borrowing zillions from China to bail out everyone but me. My 401k has lost a third of its value and the value of my home has tanked. Sure, I’ll return an incumbent to Washington.

The third alternative is disturbing. I understand Massachusetts and Utah and Alaska and even Kentucky–I’m a bit of a libertarian myself. But the actions of Republican voters in Delaware and Nevada take one’s breath away. Madams O’Donnell and Angle are loony ditzes. Angry or not, folks, voting is serious stuff. We are talking about our country, our children, and our patriotic obligations. Senators vote on nuclear arms treaties, and Supreme Court nominees. Hello?

Dan Balz, writing in The Washington Post, links O’Donnell’s victory to greater trends across the nation.

The outcome was the latest in a string of embarrassments for the Republican establishment this year, underscoring the civil war that continues to rage in the party. Last month, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska lost her primary to political newcomer Joe Miller, who like O’Donnell had the support of Palin and tea party activists. Last spring, tea party forces defeated Sen. Robert F. Bennett of Utah at the Republican state convention.

Those were the most prominent Republicans to fall to the grass-roots movement that is roiling the party, but hardly the only ones. Establishment-backed candidates in Kentucky, Nevada, Colorado and Connecticut also lost in their primaries, and in Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist bolted the party rather than risk losing the Senate nomination to conservative Marco Rubio.

But in some ways, what happened to Castle was the most shocking of all the races this year. O’Donnell is a perennial candidate – she lost the Senate race to Biden two years ago – who was attacked by the party establishment.

The Post’s Ezra Klein says Castle’s loss is part of an orchestrated Tea Party plan to exert control over mainstream Republican politicians.

Rep. Mike Castle’s defeat was proof that no heterodox Republican is safe from a primary defeat — it doesn’t matter how popular you’ve been, or how clearly purple your electorate was. You’re not safe. You’re never safe.

Politicians are, by nature, a fearful species. But their nightmares became a lot more specific last night. The Tea Party, for all its unexpected successes, cannot topple every incumbent Republican in the country. But by toppling the right ones, it can make every incumbent Republican vote and speak and act with the Tea Party in mind.

Finally, James Barnes, writing for the National Journal’s Hotline, attributes O’Donnell’s win to expanding working class areas of the state.

How did Christine O’Donnell go from being a weak third place finisher in the ’06 Delaware Republican Senate primary to slaying the party’s top vote getter, Rep. Mike Castle, and becoming the GOP 2010 Senate nominee today? An analysis of the returns from the state’s 41 election districts shows that O’Donnell did it by winning working class towns and suburbs, the fastest growing parts of the state, and Delaware’s reliably conservative turf in Kent and Sussex Counties. Castle did well in Wilmington and the old-line GOP suburbs outside of Wilmington as well as in Newark, home to the University of Delaware. But these areas that were once the base for moderate Republicans on the East Coast, like Castle, had a relatively lower turnout in the primary compared their percentage of registered Republicans in the state.

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Delaware Dispatch: Senate Candidate Steeped in Tea Party Dough

The Tea Party Express, one of the major national Tea Party groups, will soon launch a $250,000 media campaign for Christine O’Donnell, a Tea Party candidate challenging longtime Congressman Mike Castle for the Delaware Republican senate nomination this fall. The primary is September 14, just two weeks away, meaning that money will likely have some serious impact on the airwaves. What does this mean for the small state (my home) and for national politics?

Mike Castle. Courtesy Castle for Senate.

First, some background; the seat is that formerly occupied by now-Vice President Joe Biden and currently occupied by Ted Kaufman, who was appointed in 2008 and never planned to run for reelection. (The state’s other senate seat has been held by former governor Tom Carper since 2000; he was reelected in 2006 with 70 percent of the vote.) Castle, 71, has served as Delaware’s sole representative in the House since 1993; prior to that he served two terms as governor. In 2008, he was reelected with 61 percent of the vote.

Christine O'Donnell with Michele Bachmann. Courtesy O'Donnell 2010.

O’Donnell, 41, was the Republican nominee against Biden in the 2008 election; she lost to him by a 30-point spread. She worked for the Republican National Committee before moving to Delaware to work for conservative publisher Intercollegiate Studies Institute; more recently she has worked as a marketing consultant and political commentator, often on Fox News.

The Democratic nominee is Chris Coons, 46, the county executive for New Castle County, the largest county in Delaware with approximately half a million residents. Coons previously clerked for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and worked for the “I Have a Dream” Foundation. Although Coons was elected handily three times, New Castle is the most liberal of Delaware’s three counties.

Eight polls conducted since October 2009 have shown Castle defeating Coons, although the Democrat has been gaining slight ground on the moderate Republican. Four polls show Coons easily beating O’Donnell in November; the most recent put Coons winning against O’Donnell 44-37 (and losing to Castle 48-35).

This new Tea Party backing for O’Donnell has the state GOP worried. In a release, after blasting her for shooting video for commercials at Saturday’s Glenn Beck rally in D.C., they trash her as dishonest and against Republican interests in the state.

O’Donnell has been cited repeatedly lying to voters and manipulating her own political history. Recently, O’Donnell has claimed that she won two out of three counties in Delaware in her 2008 race against then-Senator Joe Biden. Election results show that Biden won overwhelmingly against O’Donnell and that she did not win any counties in the state of Delaware.

Her campaign appears to be getting desperate as the Republican primary is only two weeks away. The most recent Rasmussen poll has shown her support drop by five points in only a month to 36 percent – robbing her of the talking point that she would beat Democrat Chris Coons in November.

The Republican primary is closed to Democrats and independents, and O’Donnell seems confident she can defeat the more moderate Castle in such a primary. Money-wise, even steeped in Tea Party dough O’Donnell is woefully behind Castle, who recently reported raising over $3 million for his campaign.

Everyone, the media especially, loves a surprise victory from a dark horse candidate (coughjoemillercough), so this race will certainly draw increased national interest for the next couple of weeks and likely through November.

Bonus: Far less attention has been paid to Delaware’s House race now that Castle is running for the Senate. The Democratic candidate will likely be former lieutenant governor John Carney. The Republican nomination is still largely up for grabs while two businesspeople fight out a primary. However, it may not matter; Castle largely relied on popularity and longevity to maintain his at-large House seat. Delaware has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+7, making it even more likely the seat will shift parties.

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