Did under-reporting of Latino vote skew polls?

 

 

Did under-reporting of Latino vote skew the polls?

Thursday, Nov 4, 8:30 a.m.

Could under-reporting of the Latino vote have skewed political polls this year? That's a real possibility, Nate Silver concludes at FiveThirtyEight.com. Results from 15 statewide races in states with the largest proportion of Hispanics in the population showed that Democrats--who tend to be more heavily-favored by Latino voters--did better than projected in 10 of them.

In Connecticut, Hispanics comprise 8.2 percent of eligible voters, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, ranking 11th among the states. And in the hotly-contested 4th and 5th Congressional districts, where the Democratic incumbents outperformed the polls, the proportion is higher than that.

Voters prepared to by disappointed by GOP majority

Wednesday, Nov 3, 2:15 p.m.

Even as they gave Republicans control of the U.S. House, nearly 60 percent of American voters said they expect the new majority will let them down, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll. That includes 37 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of independents, whose anger at Democrats is credited with putting the GOP in charge.

Meanwhile, pollster and analyst Nate Silver says Rasmussen consistently overstated support for the Republican candidates in campaign polling this year. The error averaged 3 to 4 percentage points, Silver says at FiveThirtyEight.com (third item).

 

Is there a lesson about women candidates in Linda McMahon's loss?

Wednesday, Nov 3, 8:40 a.m.

Is there a lesson about women candidates in Linda McMahon's loss?  If there is, it's that "odd-duck female candidates make women voters as nervous as wacky men do," says Emily Bazelon in Slate. Bazelon notes that women voters were overwhelmingly against McMahon in pre-election polls, surmising that McMahon's WWE background is the cause. And despite some high-profile--not to mention high-priced--campaigns featuring women candidates, their numbers are relatively low overall.

 

Mirror joining CT-N for election night coverage

Tuesday, Nov 2, 9:40 a.m.

The Connecticut Mirror is joining CT-N to provide live coverage of election returns starting at 7 p.m. tonight. Look here for a listing of CT-N channel locations on local cable networks, or here to watch on-line.

 

A bad year for self-funded candidates

Monday, Nov 1, 10:15 a.m.

Self-funded candidates aren't having a very good year, David Levinthal says at the OpenSecrets blog of the Center for Responsive Politics. Of the 58 candidates for U.S. House and Senate who have contributed more than $500,000 to their own campaigns, more than half are out of the running even before Election Day. Others, like Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon, are trailing in the polls. But no matter what happens Tuesday, Connecticut will sent a self-funded candidate to the Senate: Democrat Richard Blumenthal has put more than $2 million of his own money into his campaign, giving him a spot on CRP's list too.

 

Scenes from the streets: Seven student journalists report on the campaign

Friday, Oct 29, 2:20 p.m.

From the raucous crowd outside a U.S. Senate debate to a long-shot petitioning candidate running in a four-way General Assembly race in Eastern Connecticut, seven student journalists at the University of Connecticut have chronicled scenes from this years' campaigns. Assistant professor Gail MacDonald sent them out on assignment and assembled their work in a blog.

 

In the Senate, a big hat to fill

Friday, Oct. 29, 8:40 a.m.

When Sen. Chris Dodd leaves leaves office in January, the Senate is losing more than a 30-year veteran; it's losing one of the 10 biggest egos in the institution, according to a survey of all 100 Senate offices by Slate.  The online magazine examined the public areas of the senators' offices, tallying photos of the incumbent--particularly shots with celebrities and presidents--and trophy cases, then applying a formula to come up with an ego ranking. Dodd comes in at No. 8. But even though he's leaving, Connecticut will still have a big head in Washington: Joe Lieberman ranks No. 4.

 

Luntz on 'Oh yeah' girls: Oh no

Thursday, Oct 28, 4:15 p.m.

Did her more harm than good: That's Republican pollster and consultant Frank Luntz's assessment of much of Linda McMahon's advertising campaign. In a column for Time titled "Ad Nauseam," Luntz illustrates one of his rules of for effective advertising--"Fake doesn't sell"--with McMahon's famous "Oh Yeah" girls ad. "The response from viewers: Oh, no. No actors. Ever."

 

Doctors exert powerful influence over Medicare rates

Wednesday, Oct 27, 11:45 p.m.

A little-known group of doctors exercises a powerful influence on how much Medicare pays for more than 200 medical procedures, Joe Eaton reports at the Center for Public Integrity. It's not a federal panel, but a committee of the American Medical Association. One of the more troubling results of the committee's influence in setting Medicare rates, critics say, is that it overvalues expensive, high-tech medical procedures and tests at the expense of face-to-face consultations with family physicians.

 

Linda McMahon can be hard to find, at least judging by the complaints of reporters, but it's another Republican U.S. Senate candidate who gets the prize for elusiveness. Sharron Angle dodged reporters in Nevada this week by decoying them to a staffer's car, where they waited for a half hour. Angle, meanwhile, slipped out a side door, Politico reports.

 

Three Republican candidates for statewide office have spent among them a quarter of a billion dollars of their own money to far--and none of them is doing that well. Alexander Burns says at Politico. GOP Senate candidates Linda McMahon and Med Whitman, who have put up $46 million and $142 million in Connecticut and California, respectively, are trailing in the latest polls, while Rick Scott's $60 million investment in his Florida gubernatorial campaign has left the race too close to call.

 

The US is headed for a fiscal crisis as costs begin to mount for long-term care of aging baby boomers, John Greenwald says at The Fiscal Times. Medicaid spending for long-term care will total $3.7 trillion between 2008 and 2028; by 2030, more than a third of state budgets will go to Medicaid, half of that for long-term care.

 

Pew Research profiles the electorate in its usual through fashion in a new report on the midterm elections. The 80-plus question survey produced more of the usual bad news for Democrats--likely voters back the Republican candidates in their districts by a 10-point margin, they don't like incumbents, and they don't like Barack Obama.

But Pew also delves into questions few other pollsters ask to find that: Voters in the Northeast are paying less attention to the election than voters elsewhere; Democrats are least likely to get their election news from the Internet; half of voters don't care who's paying for the campaign ads they watch; and most people hang up on robo-calls. But you knew that last one.

 

Hundreds of doctors paid by pharmaceutical companies to promote their drugs have been accused of professional misconduct, were disciplined by state boards or lacked credentials as researchers or specialists, a new report by Pro Publica says. The non-profit public interest journalism organization says seven companies, representing just 36 percent of pharmaceutical sales, collectively paid nearly $260 million in 2009 and early 2010. The report includes a list of payments by state, including 492 payments totalling almost $4 million to doctors in Connecticut.

 

Linda McMahon isn't the only candidate to spurn reporters this year. Slate's Jack Shafer looks at the phenomenon and concludes maybe it's not such a bad thing: "Whenever candidates brush journalists off, the press should merely note the pols' taciturnity and maybe give thanks. In my experience, it's better to be snubbed than to be lied to."

 

Scores of lawmakers who opposed federal stimulus spending later wrote letters urging federal agencies to approve projects in their districts, the Center for Public Integrity says. Most of those who voted against the bill but later backed project for stimulus funding are Republicans, the report says, and some continue to criticize stimulus spending in their campaigns. But Democrats aren't unscathed: After bragging that the stimulus bill was free of earmarks, leaders including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made personal appeals on behalf of projects back home, the center says.

 

Two Supreme Court decisions on campaign finance regulation have upended the funding of elections, Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation says. So far this year, independent expenditures by outside groups--expenditures aimed at supporting or opposing a candidate made by organizations not controlled by the candidate--have totaled more than $200 million. Of that, 59 percent has been spent by organizations not linked to a political party. During the same period in the 2006 midterm elections, only 18 percent of independent expenditures had come from non-party outside groups.

At Politico, Jeanne Cummings looks at how the court rulings have allowed wealthy business owners to write corporate checks to influence the process. A relatively small amount of that gets reported to the Federal Elections Commission, she says; most such spending does not have to be disclosed.

 

After watching a dozen televised Senate and Congressional debates in races across the country, veteran journalist Walter Shapiro declares last week's Linda McMahon-Richard Blumenthal matchup "the nastiest."

"What was odd about the combative politics of both Blumenthal and McMahon is that they delivered their snarling one-liners without looking at each other, even though they were standing at adjacent lecterns," Shapiro says at Politics Daily. "At times, they both veered close to 'and your little dog too' over-kill as they kept the brickbats flying."

 

Are landline-only polls biased toward Republicans? The Pew Research Center for People and the Press looked at four national surveys it conducted this year, calling both cell phones and landlines, and found that the landline-only portions of the samples were tilted toward Republicans in three of them. The difference in the margin was four to six percentage points, Pew said.

Doug Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said his organization has done cell phone and landline surveys in other states--though not in Connecticut--and has found little difference in the results. "I have a lot of respect for Pew, \and I'm not going to argue with what they're saying," he said. "But we haven't seen it."

New Q-polls on the state governor and Senate races are due out this week.

 

After 40 years of work to make campaign financing more transparent, there is more secret money pouring into the 2010 elections than ever before, Politico reports. "By Election Day, independent groups will have aired more than $200 million worth of campaign ads using cash that can't be traced back to its original source, predicts Fred Wertheimer, president of the non-profit group Democracy 21." And unless the trend is reversed, anonymous spending the the 2012 presidential cycle will top $500 million, Wertheimer predicts.

 

Most Americans who say they want more limited government also support Medicare, Social Security, unemployment benefits and federal school aid, according to a Washington Post report on a new Post-Kaiser-Harvard poll. While 71 percent say their household has participated in the last two years in one or more federal programs--Medicare or Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment compensation and the mortgage tax deduction-- 54 percent say government programs haven't helped their families. And while they are very nearly split on whether Congress should increase spending to help the national economy (50 percent) or rein in the deficit (46 percent), that changes closer to home: Asked if they want their representatives to fight for more government spending in their districts to increase jobs, 57 percent say yes, 39 percent no, the survey says. (Telephone survey of 2,054 adults; MOE +/- 2.5 percentage points.

 

No matter who wins, Connecticut's next junior U.S. Senator will rank at or near the bottom on the seniority list, Quinn McCord calculates at Hotline On Call. Primary factors in establishing seniority are previous service in Congress or as a governor, which neither Republican Linda McMahon nor Democrat Richard Blumenthal has. Overall, seniority doesn't matter much except in terms of office assignment, McCord notes, but within the party caucuses, it can make a difference in what committees a new Senator sits on.

 

"I have not spent lobbying dollars in Washington," Linda McMahon told a Tea Party group in April. Now Roll Call reports that's not true: McMahon's WWE spent at least $680,000 between 2001 and 2008 to lobby Congress, according to federal records. Spokesman Ed Patru's explanation: "Linda shares the position of the vast majority of Americans who are concerned about the undue influence of special interests in Washington on legislation, and that is the backdrop against which she answered the question, and she probably could have been more precise in explaining that."

 

Connecticut is one of seven states where control of the U.S. Senate is likely to be determined, political analyst and statistician Nate Silver says at FiveThirtyEight. And though his statistical model still gives Democrat Richard Blumenthal a 90 percent chance of winning, "I would place a bet on the G.O.P. side of the line," Silver says.

 

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown is coming to campaign for GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley, Hearst's Neil Vigdor reports, which raises the question of whether they'll both wear their brown barn jackets. Brown used his, and a pickup truck, to cultivate a populist image in his come-from-behind Senate win earlier this year, and Foley has sported one on occasion. But it was a Democrat, John Kerry, who gave the barn coat national status as a political fashion statement in the 2004 presidential campaign.

 

Atheists and agnostics did the best in a survey of religious knowledge, followed closely by Jews and Mormons, a new report says. Overall, Americans were able to correctly answer half the 32 questions in the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life. The Pew web site also includes a 15-question on-line quiz excerpted from the survey.

 

NYTimes off the mark? Salon's Steve Kornacki scoffs at Matt Bai's New York Times Magazine piece on the rise of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon. particularly Bai's assertion that the Democratic establishment mishandled the problems of incumbent Sen. Chris Dodd. Bai claims that the late John Bailey, legendary chairman of the state Democratic party, would have done anything to keep Dodd in the race, despite his lethal poll numbers. Maybe not, Kornacki says: 40 years ago, when another incumbent senator seemed headed for defeat, Bailey dumped him so forcefully that he dropped out of contention for renomination and ran, unsuccessfully, as an independent. That was Sen. Thomas Dodd, Chris Dodd's father.

 

Joe Lieberman was in synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, when he learned Lady Gaga had dedicated a song to him a few nights earlier, the Connecticut senator told CNN's Candy Crowley in an interview posted on the network's website Sunday. The pop star had been actively supporting repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" the policy that bars openly gay men and women from the military, and recognized Lieberman for his leadership on the issue. "I was surprised--but I was grateful, of course," he said. The interview also included a word-association drill that concluded with this exchange between Crowley and the independent Lieberman: "Republicans." "Friends." "Democrats." "Friends."

 

A Connecticut native wonders at the emergence of Linda McMahon as a serious contender for the U.S. Senate: In a story coming in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, national political correspondent Matt Bai, who grew up in Trumbull, says governing Connecticut was once "a predictable, serious affair, the province of mostly estimable public servants who worked their way up through town councils or local party machines." The rising fortunes of a professional wrestling impresario makes him ask himself, "if politics could get this weird here, then what did that mean for the rest of the country?"

 

Everybody knows having contacts in Congress pays off for Washington lobbyists; only now has a group of economists set out to prove it. Researchers at the London School of Economics analyzed lobbying records and concluded that lobbyists who had worked for members of Congress brought in more money in fees than those who didn't. Moreover, when their old bosses left office, these lobbyists' earnings plunged--about $177,000 a year, in the case of former Senate aides. The complete report is here, in a rather dense .pdf file; OpenSecrets.org has a synopsis here.

 

A curse or bad luck? Why do Democrats keep losing the governor’s office, when state voters largely reject Republicans for other top elected positions? New Haven Independent editor Paul Bass explores the question in The New York Times: Some Democrats say it's just bad timing, some say it's because the party puts up candidates who are too liberal, some say it's because of intra-party feuding. Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley has his own answer: “I think people in Connecticut are smart, and they want some adult supervision in Hartford,” he said.

 

Chris Dodd came to the defense of his old friend, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, Monday as he disputed former President Jimmy Carter's claims that Kennedy killed health care reform two decades ago. In a television interview Sunday, Carter said the reform measures signed by President Obama this year could have become law in 1979 if Kennedy hadn't opposed Carter's proposals. Speaking at the Reuters Washington Summit Monday, Dodd said Carter's health care proposals weren't going anywhere in 1979. "You had 22 percent inflation, you had gas lines going everywhere,” he said. “The idea that health care was going to be a major debate in ‘79 is sort of selective history."

 

What do John Larson and Tea Party members have in common? Both are in favor of the latest federal campaign finance reform bill--at least according a group trying to drum up support for the measure. The Campaign for Fair Elections is airing an ad showing participants in progressive rallies in Louisville and Seattle and Tea Party members at the Glenn Beck rally in Washington all speaking in favor of the bill, which would offer public funding to Congressional candidates who raise a qualifying amount in small donations. Meanwhile Larson, author of the legislation, says it should clear the Committee on House Administration Thursday.

 

At $454 per vote, Linda McMahon's capture of the Republican U.S. Senate nomination last month was the most expensive per-vote self-funded primary campaign in the country, Aaron Blake says at The Fix. Next on the list was Republican Bill Binnie, who spend $331 per vote to lose the Senate nomination in New Hampshire. But in terms of total spent by a candidate, McMahon's $27 million comes in third, behind Meg Whitman (California Republican gubernatorial nomination, $71 million) and Rick Scott (Florida Republican gubernatorial nomination, $50 million).

 

Doubts about "don't ask, don't tell" repeal bubbled Thursday after Sen. Joe Lieberman--who took the lead on scrapping the controversial policy on gays and lesbians in the military--said the votes might not be there for passage, Josh Gerstein reports in Politico. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain--whom Lieberman backed for president in 2008--has threatened to hold up the measure, and Lieberman says the voted might not be there to block a filibuster.

 

Elizabeth Warren was named to a key position in the Obama administration's new consumer protection bureau--but lots of people aren't quite sure what she'll be doing, TPM's Brian Beutler says. Even Sen. Chris Dodd, a key player in creation of the agency as part of the Wall Street regulation bill, when asked if he knew what Warren's role would by, simply answered, "No."

 

The Tea Party's upset victory in Delaware's Republican U.S. Senate primary makes Connecticut a more important battleground in Republican efforts to win control of the Senate, Kyle Trygstad says at Roll Call. Christine O'Donnell, who upset GOP favorite Mike Castle Tuesday, is viewed even by many Republicans as unelectable in November, meaning the party will have to win in states like Connecticut, where Linda McMahon is trailing Democrat Richard Blumenthal but mounting a strong challenge.

 

Democrats on the way back? It's always risky to use a few polls as the basis for predicting a trend, Sean Trende admits at Real Clear Politics. On the other hand, most trends evolve from a few polls. So could it be that a handful of recent polls bearing good news for Democrats, including Richard Blumenthal's gain in the latest Rasmussen Reports survey, indicate a reversal of fortune?

 

If ever a year was made for The Daily Show and host Jon Stewart, this is it, Chris Smith says at New York. But figuring out what to make of a Linda McMahon crotch-kick video takes some work...

 

Analyst and statistician Nate Silver says things look good for Congressional Democrats in Connecticut, with the two most endangered incumbents, Jim Himes of the 4th District and Chris Murphy in the 5th, each having a better than 80 percent chance of holding their seats; Democrats in the other three districts are virtual certainties for re-election. Elsewhere the picture is different, Silver says in his New York Times blog, FiveThirtyEight: The currently all-Democratic New England House delegation could get two Republican members from New Hampshire, and nationally Republicans have a two-thirds chance of taking control of the chamber.

 

A business bully or a favorite of Wall Street? The financial industry may be interested in "helping Republicans vie for control of the Senate," as The Hill asserts, but Nos. 1, 3 and 5 on the industry's Senate campaign contribution list, as compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, are Democrats. In fifth place: Richard Blumenthal, with $707,000 in receipts. Meanwhile, Reason's Jacob Sullum joins critics who accuse Blumenthal of bullying business, in this case for forcing Craigslist to shut down its "adult services" section.

 

What is it about East Haven that attracts U.S. Senate candidates? Democrat Richard Blumenthal launched his general election campaign there; Republican Linda McMahon has her regional headquarters opposite the town green. The answer, says Paul Bass in the New York Times, is independent voters. Bass--also editor of the New Haven Independent--notes that 47.3 percent of the city's voters aren't affiliated with a party, just slightly higher than the statewide number, and those voters are expected to be key to the election.

 

It's no secret that the General Assembly has lots of leaders in its ranks, all paid something extra on top of their 28,000 salary, but the Yankee Institute conservative thinktank has laid it out in its Raising Hale newsletter: 36 of 36 member of the state Senate and 107 or 151 Houre members are leaders, earning between $2,403 and $10,689 extra every year. Total cost: more than $700,000.

 

Candidates take news coverage wherever they can get it--especially unknowns without major-party backing. But how many Connecticut candidates wind up in Car and Driver magazine? So far just one--Warren Mosler, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate who uses some of his Wall Street fortune to design and build race cars and other vehicles.

 

A "ray of sunshine" for Democrats. That's how Hearst Newspapers' Washington bureau chief Richard Dunham describes Connecticut's gubernatorial race in his list of the 10 most important elections in the country this year.

 

Were they against it before they were for it? Several Danbury-area lawmakers have accepted public financing for their campaigns despite having voted against the program last month, Dirk Perrefort says in the News Times. "I've participated in the program but I don't believe taxpayer money should be used for political campaigns," Sen. Michael McLachlan, R-Danbury, explained. "I participate in the program because it's the law, and I can't ask someone to donate to my campaign if their tax dollars are going to my opponent."

 

Jumping ship: Both candidates for U.S. Senate are highlighting support from members of the opposing party, Heart's Brian Lockhart reports. Democrat Richard Blumenthal's campaign issued an open letter from six Republicans who are "putting aside partisanship" to back the attorney general. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Republican Linda McMahon says she is approached daily by "disaffected Democrats" who plan to vote for her.

 

From tax breaks to preferential parking, Connecticut should offer an array of incentives to encourage the use of electric vehicles on the state, a new report says. The goal is 25,000 electric vehicles by 2020-a number that represents less than 1 percent of some 3 million vehicles now registered. The Hartford Business Journal summarizes the findings of the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Council; the full report is here.

 

Sarah Palin might still be unknown south of Ketchican if John McCain had listened to his daughter. In her new book, "Dirty Sexy Politics," Meghan McCain says she felt "shaken and troubled" after meeting Palin, her father's pick for vice president, reviewer Steven Livingston says in the Washington Post. Her preference: Joe Lieberman, "a brilliant politician . . . one of the kindest, friendliest, and funniest people I have ever met."