I guess I just can't get that worked up about all the Democratic retirements yesterday.
John Cherry, who was clearly going to lose for Governor of Michigan, decided not to run. O well.
Byron Dorgan, who was clearly going to lose his seat if John Hoeven made a Senate bid, decided not to run. O well.
Bill Ritter, who's been trailing Scott McInnis by a significant margin in our polls since last April, decided not to run. O well.
And Chris Dodd, who was going to lose a Senate seat in one of the bluest states in the country, decided not to run. Hallelujah.
Democrats will keep the Senate seat in Connecticut now. They'll have a better chance on the Colorado Governorship. I don't see a lot of hope on the Michigan Governorship but the odds aren't a whole lot worse than they were 24 hours ago. North Dakota is the only really bad news for Democrats of the day, but the bad news is that Hoeven's running, not that Dorgan's retiring. Better to retire now than be retired in November.
I know Republicans will say, yeah, but all the retirements are confirmation that things are really bad for Democrats. Well, duh! That's not exactly breaking news. What will help Democrats is if more incumbents like Dodd and Ritter, whose departures will aid their party's chances of keeping their seats, would read the writing on the wall and decide to get out.
We're going to poll alternatives to the incumbents in Arkansas, Colorado, and Nevada over the course of the next month. I doubt any of those odds get as strikingly better with a retirement as they do in Connecticut but it's worth looking at.
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11 comments:
You're way overconfident, I have hi res pics of Blumenthal doing it with farm animals. Just wait!
The allegations that Byron Dorgan "was clearly going to lose his seat if John Hoeven made a Senate bid" are clearly unfounded. There have been very few polls, and almost all of them were GOP-biased, with the intention to help the party recruit Hoeven into the race. What do you think of the prospects of a governor leaving in the middle of his term to challenge a popular incumbent senator?
"Democrats will keep the Senate seat in Connecticut now. "
I'm gonna bookmark this. :-)
I guess the strongest democratic candidate in Arkansas would be Mike Beebe? Just for the fun of it, I'd like to see how Bill Clinton polls.
How do you reason that having ANYBODY besides Harry Reid as the Dem standard bearer in Nevada doesn't help the odds of keeping the seat?
You seem a little, just a bit, biased.
Please poll Shelley Berkley in Nevada, and Diana DeGette in Colorado as alternatives to Reid and Bennet.
I would also be interested in seeing some polling of South Carolina. SC is becoming an interesting state, and I'm curious as to how popular loony tune Jim DeMint really is down there. I know there isn't much of a Dem bench, but with two potentially competitive congressional races, could be interesting.
Aside from the fact that Martha Coakley does not seem to be running as strong a race as might be hoped (what's with the no advertising?) Deval Patrick is in lots of trouble in Massachusetts. I personally like Patrick and think he has not gotten credit for many things that he has done, but he is having trouble raising money, and the strategy of counting on Tim Cahill keeping down Charlie Baker's numbers is very questionable.
Any chance of polling North Dakota soonish? Would be interesting to see how Pomeroy, Ed Schultz match up against Hoeven.
In AR, test former state Sen. Jim Holt. He lost to Lincoln in 2004 and lost the Lt. Gov race in 2006 to Bill Halter. He announced yesterday he is running again.
Test Dina Titus in NV, Perlmutter and Hickenlooper in CO and maybe Halter and Beebe and some picked at random unknown state senator or something like that in AR. Just to see if Lincoln is more damaged than the Democratic brand.
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