d10:

I want to add my compliments for a really great OP. Well done, sir!

This is a "macro" factor which is hard to quantify, but I wonder how much of an effect President Trump's favorability/unfavorability ratings might have on these Senate elections?

I'm here in "deep red" Alabama. (I like to joke with out-of-state friends telling them that I'm an endangered species - the only "librul" in the reddest red state in the country!) Admittedly, the election of Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Roy Moore was a bit of a fluke. It was more than a fluke ... If Alabama Republicans had nominated anybody other than Moore - like, for instance, 5th District Congressman Mo Brooks - Doug Jones would (very likely) not have won. (Even with all of Moore's "baggage" the race was pretty close.) So I'm happy with the result, but it was still a fluke. (I suspect when Mr. Jones runs for a full term in 2020, the Alabama GOP will go to great lengths to make sure they don't repeat the mistake they made in nominating a candidate like Roy Moore - even though he has threatened to run again ...)

Trump injected himself into the race. In the closing days of the campaign he publicly announced his support for Mr. Moore - he made no bones about it. He even made a stop in Pensacola, Florida the weekend before the election in order to stump for Moore. Despite Trump's explicit backing, Moore lost anyway. A key factor in Democrat Jones victory turned out to be the heavily African-American vote from the central (so-called "Black Belt") area of the state. Although African-American voters in Alabama make up only a quarter of the registered voters in the state, their vote went heavily for Doug Jones. (Don't know this for absolute certainty, but I seem to recall reading that over 90 percent of Alabama's African-American vote went for Doug Jones.) With a (slim?) majority of the "white" vote probably going to Moore, it can be argued that African-American voters were the deciding factor in putting Doug Jones over the top.

The thing I wonder is how much of that heavy African-American turnout was really an "anti-Trump" vote? Nate Silver and his crew over at Five-Thirty-Eight keep pointing out Trump's approval/disapproval rating. For some time Trump has been running consistently around a 40 percent approval rating and a disapproval rating above 50 percent. (Right now Trump's disapproval rating is 53 percent - according to Nate Silver.) This is a record low approval rating for a President - with the possible exception of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Even at his most unpopular, I don't believe President Obama - or any other President - had numbers that bad going into a mid-term election. A significant proportion of minority voters may have sat out the 2016 election as they weren't as appreciative of Hillary Clinton as they were of President Obama. This is subjective on my part, but after Charlottesville and the comments he's made about NFL players taking the knee during the national anthem, I get the feeling that African-American voters across the country won't be sitting out this election ... they may be highly motivated to go vote against Republican candidates as a way of expressing their disgust with Trump.

So the question boils down to this ... What effect, if any, is Trump's favorable/unfavorable rating having on these Senate races? Are any pollsters in these Senate contests trying to gauge whether or not there is a measurable "anti-Trump" sentiment at play? Expressing it another way, was what happened in Alabama really a fluke - or a not-so-subtle repudiation of Trump?

Field in Minny getting deeper

An ethics lawyer for the GWB administration? **** off.

My god that woman in Tennessee. She apparently has been peddling "planned parenthood has a mail order baby parts business" derp for years?

G W Bush underling trying to primary the Dems? DNCCC is probably jizzing itself over this.

I'm sure I disagree with many of his policies, but Richard Painter is a mensch and great Trump critic.




(He wears the same tie because he's a law prof at Univ. of Minnesota)

He was an "ethics lawyer" for GWB and apparently didn't quit. **** that guy

richard painter would be a welcome democratic senator from texas, but for minnesota i think we can do better

It's good that he's speaking out against Trump, but what are his other views? Did he have a sudden 180 in the last 10 years on almost every position?

Even if so, you can't **** up for so long and then have a change of heart and instantly become the face of the opposition. Especially when he's effectively primarying (by my admittedly quick look at her record) a reasonably good senator.

Painter can be an adviser or something like that. Offices like senator should be off-limits to him. Forever.

As a reminder, the "ethics" within the Bush White House included allowing Dick Cheney to wage war for profit.

This is like the Samuel L Jackson character from Django Unchained trying to switch sides at the end.

Lol any Democrat who wanted to run Franken out of the Senate

Klobuchar isn't safe at all. I think McDaniel is running against Wicker atm but obv could flip or whatever.

When they go low, we go high!

Democrats: gleefully giving the GOP free rolls since forever

Dude, I live in Minnesota. She's safe. She runs the table and spits in your mouth after stepping on your balls every election. Look up prior election maps. She absolutely crushes the state.

I want to see his policy positions. I like him as a commentator and Trump ball-buster, but I'll pass on a corporate Dem who is essentially the GOP without "muh Bible" and hating gays.

Here's a really deep dive into the 2018 Senate election courtesy of Nate Silver's Five-Thirty-Eight web site.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...a-better-time/

Democrats are going to need more than a "wave" election to take control of the Senate - they'll need more like a tsunami.

wow d10 actually made a good post which i read in full

subbed, and going to be volunteering for beto in the dallas area starting next month

Depending on how this startup I'm doing is going I may volunteer time or money to jackie rosen.

I don't like the methodology they used to conclude Democrats need a tsunami. The results since 1992 aren't totally relevant to what will happen in 2018. The candidates are different and the political climate is obviously much different. Whatever correlation does exist isn't going to be very predictive due to the small sample size. It's important to know that it's mostly Democrat seats at risk this election and many of those seats are in red states, but we knew that already.

It's not necessary to bring that into prediction models though. The races in each state are set enough to where you can assign reasonable odds to each and figure out the odds of flipping the Senate from there. I haven't done anything like that yet but considering most races the Democrats need to win are tossups at worst, and a wave that drives out an extra 10% of Democrats in each state would make those tossups near locks, you don't need a tsunami to flip, just a decent strength wave that touches every state. The wave we've seen in special elections is more than strong enough, but still unknown is whether it will hold another 6 months, whether it will apply on a more common election day, and whether it will affect every state.

Hillary only beat Trump by +1.5% in 2016. Evan McMullin got 1.8%.

Favored sure, safe = hell no.

fwiw--I still have R 53. Even with the wave it's kinda hard to see 3 of Tester/Mccaskill/Manchin/Heitkamp/Donnelly winning. Obviously Nevada is a must win.

TN race probably the most interesting.

If it's truly "a wave", all 5 of those are winning. If 3 or more of them lose, there is no wave, Ds lose the house too and we are ****ed.

Klobuchar is not HRC. HRC ignored Minnesota, Klobuchar lives there. The state likes her and the competition is targeting Franken's seat instead of her obviously locked in seat. I'll offer 10:1 on her reelection if you're confident it's closer to 50:50 though. Up to $5k:$500. Push if she drops out of the race before 11/6.

Lol thank you!

Again, Klobochar is safe. If you disagree, you're wrong. Simple as that.