Would Obama have won Arizona if McCain wasn't running?

Sean Quinn's post about the Mountain West at the ever excellent FiveThirtyEight got me pondering the question of whether Barack Obama would have won Arizona if John McCain hadn't been his opponent.

The answer based on my very simplistic analysis is yes. I looked at the difference between the 2004 and 2008 vote for each of Arizona's neighbors:

State	2004 Vote	2008 Vote	Difference
California	D+10	D+24	D+14
Colorado	R+5	D+9	D+14
New Mexico	R+1	D+15	D+16
Nevada	R+2	D+12	D+14
Utah	R+46	R+29	D+17

The trend in those five states is remarkably similar, with Barack Obama doing on average 15 points better than John Kerry did and all of them falling within the 14-17 point range.

George W. Bush won Arizona by 11 points in 2004 so it stands to reason that if Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee had ended up as the GOP nominee instead of McCain, Obama probably would have won the state by 3-5 points if its behavior had fallen in line with all of its neighbors. That tight margin would have easily made it the closest state in the region.

Given the significant gains Democrats have made in the state's Congressional delegation of late and the movement in surrounding states in the Presidential election this year I think you can expect Arizona to be near the top of the list of swing states in the next few cycles.

Paterson popular within party

David Paterson Approval with New York Democrats:

Approve 68
Disapprove 9
Not Sure 23

David Paterson has earned a high level of popularity with New York Democrats since he ascended to the Governor's chair earlier this year. He has a more than 7:1 approval to disapproval ratio.

There has been some discussion that he might appoint Andrew Cuomo to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat to remove him as a potential future rival, but these sorts of numbers do not make it appear he would be particularly vulnerable to a primary challenge. If he decides to appoint Cuomo, it doesn't need to be for that reason.

Among black voters his approval runs 79-4.

Full results here

Kennedy top choice for NY Dems

A new PPP survey of Democrats in New York finds that their top choice for Governor David Paterson to appoint as Hillary Clinton's replacement would be Caroline Kennedy:

Caroline Kennedy 44
Andrew Cuomo 23
Kirsten Gillibrand 6
Brian Higgins 5
Nydia Velazquez 4
Byron Brown 3
Tom Suozzi 3
Carolyn Maloney 3

Kennedy is the most popular potential appointment within every demographic subgroup by race, gender, and age. She is a particularly appealing choice to African Americans, where she is the preferred candidate of 60% of respondents, compared to 19% for Cuomo.

Cuomo had the most respondents list him as their second choice, with 35%. 24% said Kennedy would be their back up. That adds up to 68% of Democrats in the state saying Kennedy is their first or second pick with 58% expressing the same for Cuomo.

Not surprisingly, both Kennedy and Cuomo are viewed very positively overall by New York Democrats. 75% of those surveyed have a favorable opinion of Kennedy with just 11% viewing her unfavorably. 76% approve of Cuomo's job performance as Attorney General, compared to only 9% unhappy with it. It doesn't appear any of the other candidates have much statewide name recognition. For instance, when asked whether they viewed Kirsten Gillibrand favorably or unfavorably 69% had no opinion.

Cuomo and Kennedy definitely seem like they would be the candidates most suited to quickly being able to raise the money they would need to run for reelection consecutively in 2010 and 2012, and they also come to the table with the highest level of popularity. Paterson couldn't go wrong politically by appointing either of the pair.

Full results here

The folks we tested against Dole

Over the course of 2007 when everyone was considering whether to challenge Elizabeth Dole or not, PPP tested ten potential candidates against her. Here's how they stacked up:

Person	Margin Relative to Dole
Mike Easley	+3
Dean Smith	-6
Roy Cooper	-10
Elaine Marshall	-11
Brad Miller	-11
Jerry Meek	-15
Bob Etheridge	-15
Grier Martin	-15
Kay Hagan	-16
Ted Kaplan	-19

The fact that Hagan polled second from the bottom is a pretty good indication that running a strong campaign is a heck of a lot more important than early name recognition.

Easley's obviously taken some hits since this poll was conducted and I think Coach Smith has better ways to enjoy his retirement but it's interesting to see that even then Roy Cooper was the strongest of the potential contenders. He'll be the first person we test against Richard Burr for 2010. Look for that later this week or early next week.

One thing's for sure: I don't think we'll still be testing hypothetical candidates in September praying for someone to enter the race like we were in 2007.

Moore Pt. 2

I heard over the weekend that if Richard Moore does indeed decide to run for the US Senate, he'll make the announcement sooner than later to try to ward off other opponents. He may be able to scare some folks off with success in early fundraising, but it still seems unlikely he'd be able to avoid a tough primary fight after losing this year.

Useless trivia: there's at least one former State Treasurer and Democratic primary for Governor losing person serving in the US Senate right now- Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. And he and Moore share a campaign manager in Jay Reiff.

All that said, I still think taking a few years off and running for Congress may be Moore's best shot at continued political relevance, and he could use that as a launching point for a Senate or Governor bid further down the line after he's repaired some of the damage that his overly negative campaign in the last few weeks of the Gubernatorial primary did to his reputation.

Richard Moore and 2010

There seems to be a lot of speculation that Richard Moore and Roy Cooper's current feud is a preview of a 2010 Senate primary but I really, really doubt it.

I can't imagine Richard Moore is going to run for the US Senate unless the Democratic field is cleared of viable candidates except for him. He already lost one statewide primary, another loss in one would definitely be the end of his political career.

And the reality is that the field isn't going to clear for him. He already has some of the 'loser' stigma attached to him, and he didn't make any friends with the state's black political leadership in the final weeks of his campaign against Bev Perdue. It's hard to win a contested Democratic primary if you do really poorly with that demographic.

I actually think Moore's best next career move would be a reprise of his 1994 Congressional run when Bob Etheridge steps aside. Etheridge has become so entrenched and done such a good job of retaining the seat that it's easy to forget that George W. Bush won the district twice and when it comes open it will be hotly contested. Moore is the kind of moderate to conservative Democrat who can keep that seat in the party moving forward.

I will be very surprised if Moore is a candidate for the Senate in 2010.

Celebrities for Senate

I was interested to see Rasmussen's new poll today on the potential Chris Matthews/Arlen Specter match up in 2010, showing Specter leading just 46-43. That's a much better performance for Matthews than he had in either our survey of the race right before the Presidential election that showed Specter up 40-27 or a recent Quinnipiac one that showed him up 45-33.

It's possible that the Rasmussen poll is just a bit of an outlier, or it could be that as Matthews' potential candidacy has received a lot more attention in the Pennsylvania press his name recognition has increased and his poll numbers along with it. My guess is that it's a combination of the two things.

Either way though, I wonder if Matthews is really the Democrats' best hope for winning that seat. Al Franken may still win in Minnesota, but would Norm Coleman have been definite toast if the Democrats had nominated one of the state's big city mayors, or someone from the Congressional delegation, or even a legislative leader? I don't know the answer- maybe Franken really was the best potential candidate- but I wonder if nominating the contentious celebrity was the best way to go.

And I wonder the same thing about Pennsylvania in 2010. I hope Quinnipiac or someone else who polls the state regularly will look at folks like Joe Sestak and Allyson Schwartz. If their baseline is similar to Matthews, I think there's a good possibility their upside could be higher if they come with less potential baggage than the tv host.

I like Chris Matthews and certainly won't be unhappy if he ends up as the standard bearer but Specter's going to be tough to beat and it's important Democrats nominate the best candidate possible if they're going to do it.

Cabinet Impacts

There's been tons of discussion about the effect that Barack Obama's appointments will have on offices like Hillary Clinton's Senate seat and the Governorships of New Mexico and Arizona but little about what the potential impact of some of Bev Perdue's possible selections of current elected officials to her cabinet might have.

Four legislators prominently named on Under the Dome as possible selections have been Senators David Hoyle and Clark Jenkins and House members Alma Adams and Bill Owens.

The place where it's clearest there would not be a huge change is Adams' slot. More than likely she would be replaced by another African American in the minority/majority district and the only threat to that person would possibly be in the 2010 primary. No chance of a party shift.

There's no real possibility of Jenkins' Senate seat switching parties either, but it does seem quite possible that a black Senator would be appointed in this district where a majority of Democratic primary voters are African American. Jenkins has done a remarkable job of holding onto the seat through multiple primary challenges but it seems pretty inevitable that when he vacates the seat a minority will take his place.

Owens' House district is prototypical eastern North Carolina. It went for George W. Bush by a good margin in 2004 and also went narrowly for Richard Burr. But it voted Democratic for the state offices, albeit in some cases by a close margin. This is the kind of district that could be competitive if it was truly an open seat, but if Owens goes into the cabinet and a replacement gets two years to establish his or herself with the district's voters the seat would certainly be favored to remain in Democratic hands moving forward.

David Hoyle's seat is a whole different story from the other three. It is deeply Republican and that Hoyle has been able to hold onto it for so long is almost amazing. There are two ways of looking at the impact his leaving the Senate could have. The most obvious way is that he's been uniquely equipped to win that seat as a Democrat and if he leaves you may as well turn the seat over to the GOP. The other way you could look at it is that Hoyle is going to retire some day, and whatever small chance the Democrats might have of holding onto the seat would be enhanced if someone new was able to move into the seat and then be able to run in two years as an incumbent. It would still be a tough road, but perhaps more doable than if it was just a complete open seat.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Wrapping up the Georgia Runoff

Well if you grade it on a curve PPP did a good job on the Georgia runoff since we showed Saxby Chambliss winning by more than any other pollster. But we did, like everyone else, underestimate the size of his victory.

It doesn't take a ton of imagination to figure out why we did that. The Georgia electorate is easily the most racially polarized of any state we polled regularly during the 2008 election cycle. Since we had Chambliss winning by 43 points with whites and Martin winning by 77 points with blacks it essentially meant that every point we over or underestimated the African American share of the electorate by was worth 1.2% on the margin. We don't have an exit poll and I haven't seen any hard data from the Board of Elections yet but my guess is that black voters accounted for only 22-23% of those who turned out for the runoff, consistent with their share of early voting numbers. There was no rush to the polls yesterday as we had anticipated.

Chambliss' overwhelming support from voters over 65 was also a death blow for Martin. He had a 68-31 lead with that demographic and I wouldn't be surprised if that most dependable group of voters ended up accounting for almost a quarter of those who voted yesterday, basically twice as much as their share of the November 4th electorate.

The next question: what were the implications of yesterday's results? I think the only implication is that you can't expect to get a failed Lieutenant Governor candidate elected to the US Senate in a conservative state, and certainly not without a drawing card at the top of the ballot to ensure high turnout from strong Democratic demographic groups. Beyond that I don't think it means much of anything.

Martinez news good for GOP

Well within about 15 minutes of my hitting publish on that last post it became obsolete with the news of Mel Martinez's retirement announcement.

That's good news for Republicans. I had pretty much concluded their only prospects for holding onto that seat were if Martinez got booted in the primary. His approval ratings were just unbelievably low- SurveyUSA hasn't done one of its 100 Senator approval things in a long time but if they did I have to imagine Martinez would rank in the bottom five.

It all depends now on who runs but I have to imagine this will be one of the most closely contested and expensive races in the country in 2010 both in the primary and the general election. Unless Alex Sink changes her mind there aren't any clear favorites on either side of the aisle- lots of solid candidates but no real superstars. That's the recipe for a crowded field.