Google Ads


Site Stats

PA-12: Dems Trailing in Special to Replace Murtha

by: DavidNYC

Fri Apr 30, 2010 at 11:53 AM EDT


Research 2000 for Daily Kos (4/26-28, likely voters, no trendlines):

Mark Critz (D): 40
Tim Burns (R): 46
Undecided: 14
(MoE: ±4%)

Things are looking tough for Democrats in the race to fill the late Jack Murtha's House seat, with Research 2000 giving Republican Tim Burns his biggest lead yet. An earlier PPP poll showed him up three points, while interestingly, Burns's own internal had him back one. Critz's standing seems to be no fault of his own. He has similar favorables to Burns (44-33 vs. 46-40). The problem is simply that this is a bad district and a bad environment - a toxic combination.

Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district is a socially and culturally conservative place, the kind of area which has steadily been moving away from Democrats for quite some time. While much has been made of the fact that PA-12 was the only CD in the nation to flip from John Kerry to John McCain in 2008, that's a pretty arbitrary metric. The real story is that it was one of just 35 CDs (out of 435) where Barack Obama got a smaller share of the vote than Kerry did. So while the nation as a whole was voting a whole lot more Democratic, PA-12 took a step in the other direction.

And it shows in two other key poll numbers. Obama's approval in the district is just 38-55. Just as troubling, only 34% of voters say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports healthcare reform, while 48% are more likely to pull the lever for someone who advocates repeal. This helps explain why Critz has said he would have voted against HCR, but with this kind of headwind, that may not make much of a difference.

Both parties are seriously contesting this race - the DCCC has spent $472K so far, while the much less flush NRCC has matched them with $482K. Dems have also sent Joe Biden into the district to campaign for Critz. The election is a little over two weeks away (May 18), and undoubtedly it will be fought hard until the very end. But if Democrats' streak winning special elections comes to an end, it may truly be a case of wrong place, wrong time.
DavidNYC :: PA-12: Dems Trailing in Special to Replace Murtha
Tags: , , , , , (All Tags)
Print Friendly View Send As Email

PA-12: Dems Trailing in Special to Replace Murtha | 28 comments
PA
Standard Tekzilla rates apply...

I can't see how we hold this.

I think our competitve primaries will help a little, but I still think this will be a close loss.

That being said, I think we will be fine in the rest of PA and may even pick up 2 seats there to counter this.

Does anyone know if PA-12s registration edge is trending Republican or are Democrats still picking up voters even here?

29/D/Male/NY-01

The voter registration trend would be good to know, BUT...
...I think it's instructive only if the registration is trending away from us.  If it's trending toward us, that could be misleading since Obama did such heavy voter registration work in every swing state in 2007 and 2008, while Republicans have lagged on that nationwide in recent years.  And if there's been no real change, that, too, doesn't tell us much, as we already know it's a Reagan Democrat district.  But if the voter registration is trending away from us, then that means there's real realignment going on...although I think we knew that already, but it's an additional data point.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10
[ Parent ]
PA
Sorry, I meant to ask about post 2008 voter reg efforts.

29/D/Male/NY-01
[ Parent ]
Methinks we still have hope here due to the primary......
No doubt PA-12 will see a lot more Democratic primary ballots filled out than Republican primary ballots.  And a turnout spike based on that is our biggest hope for getting Critz over the hump.  Because of that turnout model twist, alone, I'm not writing it off at all, especially since it was up-ballot coattails that got Bill Owens over the hump in NY-23 when available pre-election polling said we were toast.

If Critz does pull off the upset win, the primary turnout will almost certainly be the reason, but it won't really matter, a win is a win in the metanarrative going forward.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

I'm curious:
As to the Democratic registration advantage in PA-11 and PA-13. I know the latter district was gerrymandered back in '02 to erase some of the Republican parts but is it still considered to be socially moderate like the more blue-collar 11th?

Speaking of PA-11 I also believe Kanjorski got a lot of work to do if he wants to win reelection.

[ Parent ]
PA voter registration
http://www.dos.state.pa.us/por...

PA voter registration

Joe Cooper

[ Parent ]
you don't mean PA-13, do you?
PA-13 is Allyson Schwartz's district in SE PA.
[ Parent ]
PA's district numbers are messed up
I like NY's district numbers better, where they are nice and in order.

26, male, Dem, NJ-12
[ Parent ]
Ditto California's.


My blog
Twitter
Scribd
28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
CA isn't that bad
it's a fairly linear progression of north to south. PA is like, hey guys, we're starting in Philly and going west! jk, now we're in Pittsburgh! haha gotcha, we're actually in the T! and so on for 19 districts.

TX is also extremely messed up.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/

[ Parent ]
And from the district number
it's fairly easy to tell which part of California the district is in.

1-5 = Upper Northern California
6-16 = San Francisco Bay Area
17-25 = Central California
26-39 = L.A.
40-49 = Orange County/Inland Empire
50-53 = San Diego

My blog
Twitter
Scribd
28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)

[ Parent ]
Um, yeah.
1 and 2 are in the SE corner.  They're surrounded by 6, 7, 8 and 13.  In turn, they're surrounded by 15, 16 and 17, and then 9, 10 and 11.

3, 4 and 5 constitute the great Northwest of the state, leaving 4, 12, 14 and 18 for the Southwest.

Renumbering made it messy.  Before they merged Borski and Hoeffel in 2002, the "3rd" was located next to the 1st and 2nd.  Etc.

Map.

[ Parent ]
Smart comment by David on the 35 districts where Obama did worse, BEGGING THE QUESTION...
...could we have a complete list, plus a map?  That would be real cool to see.  And I'm guessing what we'd find is those 35 districts are in Appalachia on down into the South, then extending west all the way into Oklahoma.  Maybe a scattered few oddball ones, too, where Obama underperformed Kerry by only a trivial and meaningless margin that amounts to mere statistical noise (I think the NY districts of Peter King and Mike McMahon might've been among those).

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10
Perhaps Obama did worse then Kerry in even a couple in MA
districts where Kerry enjoyed a home-state effect?
[ Parent ]
Ask and ye shall receive!......
Obama fared worse than Kerry in 4 MA districts, and did the same under rounded-off percentages in one more.  Obama outperformed Kerry in 5 other districts.  BUT out of all 10, the 2 had more than a 2-point swing, those being Lynch's seat which swung 3 points toward McCain, and Capuano's seat which swung a net 6 points toward Obama.

Statewide, Obama performed almost evenly with Kerry, both winning 62% with rounded-off percentages, and Obama actually ended up with a 0.65% larger margin than Kerry.  Obama actually performed 0.14% worse than Kerry in vote share, but McCain performed 0.79% worse than Bush.

I think MA is actually a good example of the difference between cultural appeal or rejection (which explains Obama doing worse than Kerry in Lynch's district) versus statistically meaningless differences in margin (the other 3 MA districts where Obama performed slightly worse than Kerry).  Yes I know Kerry had the "favorite son" factor as a distorting factor, but the uncommonly strong tailwind for Democrats in 2008 seems on paper to perfectly offset that.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

[ Parent ]
Not surprised at all
This district is very typical of those (mostly in Appalachian region, though not limited by that area) districts, which were rapodly trending from Democrats, not to them even in good 2006 and 2008: socially conservative, at most - moderate on ecomomics, heavily white, economically depressed (with lot of "old" industries like steel and coal and few - based in new scirntific achievements and new technologies). rather poor (at least - not well to do), with lot of "Reagan Democrats" and so on. Just like WV-01 we talked recently. So - i expect good Republican showing there. The only things that still attract many people here to Democratic party - memories of the past, some (but not especially liberal) populism and (in some cases and areas) - unions...
Reagan Democrats
Actually, these kinds of districts were horrible for Reagan. Even as he lost 49 states in 1984, Mondale still beat Reagan in western PA and ran close to him in a lot of typically Democratic, working-class areas of Appalachia. Reagan Democrats were suburbanites and yuppies who allowed him to rack up huge margins in white middle and upper-middle class areas.

20, CD MA-03/NH-01/MA-08
[ Parent ]
You may use other name
but i will disagree strongly: yes, there was some residual loyalty to Democratic party  (since FDR days)in W. Pennsylvania, but generally it's these Democrats - "pto-gun, pro-life, but still pro-labor", who frequently vote republican since end of 70th.. And especially - last years. These same people (usually - lower middle class with traditional lifestyle, many of them - ethnics) voted "en masse" (may be - not majority, but - in big numbers) for Brown in Massachusetts this January. There are simply less such people in Massachusetts (and more - traditional liberals) then here
[ Parent ]
The Name Matters
Calling them "Reagan Democrats" continues the silliness of Reagan being all things to all people (that he's beloved by deficit hawks, the don't flee from terrorists crowd, and the bomb Iran first crowd I find hilarious). The comment above is quite right - in '84 he ran behind his national average in places like this and WV. In 1980 he even lost West Virgina to Carter. So call 'em something else - calling this set "Reagan Democrats" isn't based in the history of that time.
[ Parent ]
Good. Bush-McCain Democrats)))

[ Parent ]
Cross "Reagan Democrats" from my previous post
Other characteristics - mostly old prople, heavily white, lot of ethnics, socially conservative, not too liberal on economics either, but still somewhat populist, churchgoing. employed in problematic "old" areas of industry and so on - still applies. This area as well as other similar areas of Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and so on gave rather good percentage to Bush and then swung even more to McCain...
[ Parent ]
Unfortunately, I think the most precise term is
"Nixon Democrats"

What is being described is the Democratic demographic that Dick Nixon appealed to in '68 and '72.

Nixon took advantage of how anti-Vietnam war activists turned off this demographic.

[ Parent ]
May be. I will not object))

[ Parent ]
Nixon Democrat
Nixon Democrat is a far better term seeing many of these people voted for him, but did not vote for Reagan.  Nixon did better in SWPA than Reagan did.  Actually Nixon was the last Republican to actually poll well in SWPA until Bush 43 in 2004.

23, male, center-right cynical Republican, PA-7
[ Parent ]
Dems are way too pessimistic here...
I still am skeptical of the Republicans winning this seat.  Maybe it is because I lived in the district before and realize how much the Democrats dominate the state legislative delegation and local offices there.  

The Democrat registration advantage is still worth something as shown in last fall's local elections where the Democrats won the judicial races in this district while they were getting their rear ends handed to them pretty everywhere else outside of Philadelphia and Allegheny counties.  Based off the elections last fall, I would actually be more worried about Patrick Murphy.  Fitzpatrick is raising money and a similar rate as Murphy and will not have the top of the ballot drag he had in 2006 with Swann and Santorum, which probably played a large role in Fitzpatrick losing by roughly 1500 votes.

If I was a Democrat, I would actually be less worried of losing the rural seats like PA-3, PA-4, PA-10 and PA-17 because of fundraising and institutional advantages for the Democrats.  I would be more worried of losing PA-7(which I think is already gone) and PA-8 because they are traditionally Republican, the Republicans got good candidates and they resemble the areas where the Democrats saw a shift against them in 2009.  Remember PA-7 and PA-8 are still dominated by Republicans, albeit generally moderate ones, on the local level.  

23, male, center-right cynical Republican, PA-7

Long term trends
Suggest otherwise but we shall see.
[ Parent ]
The local politics matter
How an area votes in terms of state and local races does matter.  If you vote Republican for state and local offices, but vote Democrat for President, does that make you a Democrat or a Republican?

I remember in 2008 seeing a lot of homes with Dem State Rep and Murtha signs beside McCain signs in PA-12 and saw the exact oppose where I live in PA-7 where I saw Obama signs in yards with Republican signs for the legislature.

23, male, center-right cynical Republican, PA-7

[ Parent ]
Hope you're right, but have you actually been in PA-12 recently???......
Obviously Critz and our party want this race localized and the GOP wants it nationalized.

But every poll so far gives Burns a lead, even if none a big one.

If the political environment is bad for us, and all indications are that it is bad for us, then that's got to show up somewhere.  And a district that strongly dislikes a President it narrowly voted against in the first place is a district in which to expect it to show up.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

[ Parent ]
PA-12: Dems Trailing in Special to Replace Murtha | 28 comments

Copyright 2003-2010 Swing State Project LLC

Primary Sponsor

You're not running for second place. Is your website? See why Campaign Engine is ranked #1 in software and support among Progressive-only Internet firms. http://www.mediamezcla.com/

Menu

Make a New Account

Username:

Password:



Forget your username or password?

About the Site

Publisher: DavidNYC

Senior Editor: James L.

Senior Editor: Crisitunity

Contributing Editor: Jeffmd

Search the SSP archives:

Sign up to receive a daily e-mail whenever the SSP is updated:

SSP Resources

Presidential Vote by CD

SSP Document Collection

Race Tracker Wiki

Dave's Redistricting App

Blogroll

Daily Kos Elections
DemConWatch
Five Thirty Eight
Governing
Hotline On Call
Political Wire
Pollster.com
Prop*50
Public Policy Polling
The Thicket
Powered by: SoapBlox