Tag: elections

So… the opposition party won outright in India yesterday.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: this is not my field of study.  But this does sound important…

In a historic result, opposition leader Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party are celebrating a resounding win in India’s elections Friday, after ousting the Congress party that has long dominated politics in the world’s largest democracy.

As of Friday afternoon, the tally kept by India’s NDTV showed Modi’s party, the BJP, winning or leading in 334 districts, compared to 59 for the Congress party. The final tally isn’t yet out, but the BJP has far surpassed the required 272 of 543 total seats.

…I did know that India’s Congress Party has indeed dominated that country’s politics for sixty years, with all the problems that such a situation would imply. I won’t regurgitate Wikipedia at you, not least because I don’t know how accurate any of it is, but I’ll say this: if Barack Obama is smart he’ll have Kerry put together a, heh, Tiger Team over in State that can advise the President how to get in on the ground floor and off on the right foot with the new government*.  It’d be useful.

 

Continue reading So… the opposition party won outright in India yesterday.

Iowa Democrats mulling ensuring election fraud in 2016 primary caucuses.

Otherwise known as ‘voting over the Internet.’

Iowa Democrats are mulling a slate of ways to boost participation in their next presidential caucuses, including permitting Internet voting, a controversial method that would mark the first time in history the web is utilized to cast an official ballot preference for president.

I look forward with some interest to see how that experiment works out for them. And for the screams of horror and despair, of course.

Moe Lane

PS: I do not expect Mickey Mouse or [whatever Howard Stern suggests] to win the 2016 Democratic Iowa caucus.  I simply no longer think that such a thing can be ruled out.

WaPo uses the dread number ‘2006’ when discussing Barack Obama.

Everyone in the world – well, maybe not quite that many people – is talking about this Washington Post-ABC poll/article that suggests that Barack Obama has been merely spitting in the wind for the last month.  There’s a lot to mine in there, and not just for our side*, but this passage jumped out at me:

Although Obama’s overall approval rating is at its lowest point ever in Post-ABC polls, his disapproval is still a few points better than at its worst. That’s because more people than usual say they had no opinion. At this point, Obama’s approval rating looks only slightly better than that of President George W. Bush in the spring of 2006.

Continue reading WaPo uses the dread number ‘2006’ when discussing Barack Obama.

Absent Factor X, the Democrats are not going to get back the House this year.

Articles like this are very helpful. For Republicans: “Is there anyway Democrats can win the 17 seats they need to capture the House majority this November? In one word: Yes.”

In several hundred words: no, not really.

Juan Williams is pretty much stuck with arguing generalities and gerrymandering. The first is used to assure his readers that the American people clearly love the Democrats more, while the latter is used to explain away that pesky problem that said American people have been apparently hate-voting the GOP into power since 2010. But it’s probably wise on Mr. Williams’ part, given that when actual numbers come into play things get sticky: “In the 2012 House races Democrats won 50.6 percent of America’s votes with a popular President Obama at the top of the ballot.” Continue reading Absent Factor X, the Democrats are not going to get back the House this year.

NRSC: Senate map is nicely expanding for the GOP.

A quick bite:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, a group tasked with getting Republicans elected to the Senate, believes Republicans have expanded the 2014 playing field with five more contested races as the GOP seeks to retake control of the chamber.

In a memo released to consultants Friday morning, NRSC political director Ward Baker writes that Republicans have become competitive in Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, Oregon and Minnesota since the start of the year.

Continue reading NRSC: Senate map is nicely expanding for the GOP.

Normally you don’t see “Turnout will save us!” until about October or so.

It’s a bad time to be a Democrat, apparently, because they needed to toss out stuff like this pretty darn early this cycle: “[T]he most important news for Democrats going into November is that the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee is planning to spend $60 million on data-driven GOTV efforts specially focused on reducing the “midterm falloff” factor.”  The link – unlike TPM’s – works, but I wouldn’t recommend clicking one way or the other.  The major questions raised by that quote: Continue reading Normally you don’t see “Turnout will save us!” until about October or so.

Quote of the Day, Good Sign / Don’t Get Cocky edition.

This is from, of all places, NPR:

“We always look at the question: how interested are you in the upcoming elections on a 1-to-10 scale, with a 9-to-10 being the most interested.” said Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican research firm, who pointed to a recent Wall St Journal/NBC News poll his firm did with Hart Research Associates.

“In a presidential election, it doesn’t mean as much because everybody votes. In a mid-term election, where you’re looking at 40 percent turnout, it does make a difference… Among voters who rate their interest a 9 or 10, Republicans have a 15-point advantage, 53 [percent] to 38 [percent]. So you have Republicans now gaining the same kind of intensity they had in 2010. It’s like our guys are campaigning downhill as opposed to the Democrats.”

But, as the title says, don’t get cocky. “Confident” is fine, though. People react well to that and it’s good for morale.

Moe Lane

An annotated chart about why Presidential approval ratings matter.

Strictly speaking, I am not criticizing the Fix for not drawing a more explicit link between Presidential approval ratings and Senate churn in a midterm election. They established the basic point, which was that both parties are increasingly taking seriously that the President’s current low numbers will translate into Democratic losses in the Senate.  The Monkey Cage spells it out:

Presidential approval is strongly correlated with midterm congressional election outcomes.  Gallup has polled Americans on presidential approval during every midterm election cycle since 1954.  Across the 16 midterm election cycles from 1954 through 2012 the average level of presidential approval during the first quarter (January to March) of the election year is about 58 percent.  Over the available Gallup presidential approval polls for the first quarter of this year, Obama’s approval is significantly below the average, about 42 percent, worse than every other year except 2006 and 1974.

Continue reading An annotated chart about why Presidential approval ratings matter.

Tweets of the Day, Pay Attention To Who Accepts The Crimea Results edition.

These two tweets pretty much sum up my reaction…

Continue reading Tweets of the Day, Pay Attention To Who Accepts The Crimea Results edition.

Actually, Barack Obama is already poisonous to Democrats. Radioactive, too. Possibly even corrosive.

This statement, I admit, raised my eyebrow: “One Democratic lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Obama was becoming “poisonous” to the party’s candidates.”

Continue reading Actually, Barack Obama is already poisonous to Democrats. Radioactive, too. Possibly even corrosive.