05-19-2016, 10:35 AM
(05-18-2016, 08:31 AM)Bronco80 Wrote:(05-17-2016, 05:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Note: This assessment can change rapidly should the Republicans not play obstructionist games with the nomination of a Justice of the Supreme Court. Anyone with an approval rating below 40% is in extreme danger of defeat, no matter what State he represents. Many pols with such low approval ratings retire or get defeated in a primary.Every Democrat running against an incumbent Senator should be hammering over and over again about how important the stake of shifting the Supreme Court is in their race.
Of course, should Republicans act responsibly with an Obama appointment this assessment reverses.
Also, Murray and Wyden only "likely" Democratic wins? They're long time incumbents and the GOP has condemned itself to irrelevancy west of the Cascades.
I go on approval ratings. By adding six to an early approval rating and you get an assessment of the likely vote share of an incumbent seeking re-election. This is an estimate based on the assumption that every elected Senator (it also works for Governors) will be less popular by about 6% while governing or legislating than while in campaign mode. Nobody can maintain the campaign mode once the election is over. On the average one expects an 'average' opponent and a re-election campaign of reasonable competence. This applies to someone who has been elected before; this is incumbent advantage, and this does not apply to someone who has been appointed to office. Appointed Senators and Governors have yet to show that they can campaign competently.
I may be understating the chances of Murray (if she gets 53% of the vote, then she wins... and she could do better than that), or Wyden, for whom I have no polls. My assessment is based on "It's Oregon". That's how I have my assessment of South Dakota until I see polls from South Dakota.
I had Senator Grassley (R-IA) as practically certain of a win when his approval rating was in the low 50s... but that was before the Senate leadership of the GOP took the high-risk course of holding off on approving any Justice to replace the open seat on the US Supreme Court that Antonin Scalia vacated due to death. The model cannot predict the effect of such a course of action upon incumbent Republican Senators. This should reasonably help incumbent Democrats far less than it hurts incumbent Republicans. Polling has shown low approval ratings for most incumbent Republicans, and that people in states with incumbent Republicans want their Senators to give some hearing to an Obama appointee. Of course the Senate can reject a Presidential crony, an extremist, or someone unready or corrupt. Presidential elections have consequences, one of which is the responsibility to appoint qualified people to Cabinet posts and federal judgeships.
...The current class of US Senators were elected in 2010 in the Tea Party election. That political environment is very different from what we have now. High-turnout elections on the whole favor Democrats. 2010 was a Republican wave, and Republicans were able to get some Senators elected that might not get elected in a more normal climate. Some Republicans have been elected in places in which they would never be elected except in a Republican wave, and some have been shown either extreme or not up to the task.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.