• ND-Sen: North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk will announce his formal entry into the Senate race to replace Kent Conrad tomorrow. Kalk, a Republican, raised a really lame $32K in Q1.
• NM-Sen, NM-03: Facing an already-crowded primary field and the prospect of giving up a safe House seat, Rep. Ben Ray Lujan said yesterday that he won't seek the Democratic nod to replace Jeff Bingaman in the Senate.
• OH-Sen: I think we didn't spot this mid-April poll from GOP pollster Wenzel Strategies until now... but definitely take it with something stronger than mere salt. For one thing, they've regularly done polls for WorldNetDaily (I mean, seriously?), and for another, they released a seriously weird-ass poll last cycle that purported to show Rep. Norm Dicks losing to a perennial candidate. (Dicks won by 16.)
But even if you didn't know all that, you'd have to laugh at their absurd spin: They call Sherrod Brown's favorables "dangerous" and his re-elects "disastrous"... even though his head-to-head margin is 49-36 over Ken Blackwell, 50-36 against Mary Taylor, and 48-33 paired with Josh Mandel. In a Republican poll! Anyhow, if you want to chase this one all the way down the rabbit hole, Wenzel also had a component testing the anti-union legislation called SB5, which will very likely appear on the ballot this fall (people want it repealed by a 51-38 spread).
Gubernatorial:
• WI-Gov: Another recall poll from another not-especially-prominent pollster. Republican polling firm Etheridge & Associates (based out of Tennessee) found 44% in favor of recalling Walker and 51% opposed. They also put Walker head-to-head with a real candidate (which is what would happen in a recall election) and found him tied with Russ Feingold at 48 apiece.
House:
• ND-AL: This is a very good report from Kristen Daum, who writes the "Flickertales" blog for the Fargo-Moorhead Forum. She nails freshman GOP Rep. Rick Berg on two counts: First, last year Berg ran heavily on the theme that Earl Pomeroy was mostly relying on out-of-state money while he, Berg, was raking it in from North Dakotans. Well, with the Q1 reports in, Daum observes that about 80% of Berg's campaign cash is now coming from interests outside of ND, including quite a bit from DC. Better still, Berg's staff claimed he hasn't held any fundraisers or solicited contributions... but the Sunlight Foundation's "Party Time" website scrounged up a copy of an invite to high-dollar event held on Berg's behalf by Eric Cantor and a couple of PACs. Whoops!
• NY-13: I'm not even going to summarize what's at the link, except to say it's a truly explosive story about GOP freshman Mike Grimm. Just click and read it.
• WI-01: Businessman Rob Zerban is already running against Rep. Paul Ryan, but The Fix suggests another possible Democratic name: state Sen. Chris Larson.
Grab Bag:
• Americans United: That Americans United for Change ad buy against four Republicans we mentioned yesterday apparent totals $35K. That's at least in the ballpark of real money, and I'm very glad to see groups like AUFC and House Majority PAC start doing these thousand-papercuts sort of campaigns early.
• Polling & Demographics: Ben Smith has an interesting little exchange between a couple of pollsters with experience in working with the Latino community. One, André Pineda (who has polled for Obama, among others), says he thinks that pollsters who gather Hispanic samples by relying on surnames miss a lot of Hispanics who don't have such names, typically because their families have lived in the US longer. These voters, says Pineda, lean more to the right than newer immigrants. But Matt Barreto of the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race says that Pineda's estimates are "way off base." Barreto says only 5-10% of Hispanics do not have Hispanic surnames, whereas Pineda's memo suggests that the number is far higher.
• Town Halls: Want to see if your member of Congress is having a town hall during this recess so that you can go and give them what for? MoveOn has a tool that lets you plug in your ZIP code and find town halls near you.
• Voter Suppression: Unsurprisingly, the Florida legislature is moving forward with a big election law bill that's principally designed to suppress the Democratic vote, as always in the name of preventing VOTER FRAUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111. Changes include shortening the early voting period, adding onerous restrictions on third-party groups which register voters, and preventing voters from changing their addresses at the poll (something which Florida has allowed for forty years). Republicans are also moving forward with bills that would eliminate payroll deductions for union dues, force unions to get each member's permission before spending money on elections, and make it harder for trial lawyers to bring medical malpractice cases. In short, as one Democratic lawmaker put it, it's the entire GOP wish list.
Redistricting Roundup:
• Florida: This is sorta interesting. One Florida lawmaker on the legislature's redistricting committee is telling his fellow legislators not to talk to him about redistricting - at all. The new "Fair Districts" law says that districts can't be drawn to favor or disfavor incumbents, so mapmakers are concerned that if their colleagues start telling them about how they'd like to see the lines crafted, that could later be used as evidence in court.
• Virginia: And so it goes: A week after saying he wouldn't change a thing about his party's map, Dem Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw now says of Gov. Bob McDonnell: "We are talking to him. We are trying to meet all of his concerns." I can't see how this is going to end well for Democrats, who now seem to face a choice between a crappy gerrymander in the Senate and a court-drawn map... and I guess would prefer the former, based on Saslaw's hints. Sigh.
Meanwhile, Republicans are apparently pretty pissed at McDonnell for vetoing their plans, supposedly with almost no warning, but there's a lot that doesn't add up here. For one, the article says that the legislature doesn't have enough votes to over-ride McDonnell's veto, but that's simply not true. If House Republicans really wanted their map badly enough, they could have prevailed on their counterparts in the Senate to vote for the package deal, ensuring it was safe from McDonnell's veto pen.
For the governor's part, he's also full of shit. His spokesman said that he would have preferred the House and Senate maps had been sent to the governor in separate bills, but jeez, this is classic "born yesterday" crap. There's no way the Senate would have given away its one piece of leverage like that. Still, it does sound like the Republican anger at McDonnell is quite real (and not just limited to redistricting), which means a serious derail is not impossible. So maybe there's still a way for Saslaw to snatch something other than defeat from the jaws of... defeat.
• Utah: The state will apparently make redistricting software available to citizens on its website, but the linked article isn't very clear where that will happen. Any ideas?
With the Census Bureau having released 2010 data for all 435 congressional districts, I started slicing 'n' dicing the data last week, looking at population change in the fastest growing and shrinking districts. Today, as promised, we're moving on to how the racial composition of the congressional districts has changed.
You might remember that I did this same project a year and a half ago based on 2008 estimated data, and that was a good template for today's work, as the lists haven't changed that much. Where the lists have changed, it seems to be more likely because of strange sample issues in 2008 (like the rapid appearance and subsequent disappearance of a big Asian population in NY-06) than rapid changes in the trend over the last two years. As with last time, the most remarkable chart is the one showing biggest declines, percentage-wise in districts' non-Hispanic white populations. (Because this is the key chart, I'm extending this list to 25 places.) As you'll no doubt notice, many of these districts also had some of the biggest moves in the Democratic direction over the years from 2000 to 2008.
District
Rep.
2000 white
2000 total
2000 %
2010 white
2010 total
2010 %
% change
2000 election
2008 election
GA-07
Woodall (R)
476,346
630,511
75.5
486,673
903,191
53.9
- 21.7
31/69
39/60
GA-13
Scott (D)
295,107
629,403
46.9
202,053
784,445
25.8
- 21.1
57/43
71/28
TX-24
Marchant (R)
415,842
651,137
63.9
368,645
792,319
46.5
- 17.3
32/68
44/55
TX-22
Olson (R)
394,651
651,657
60.6
405,645
910,877
44.5
- 16.0
33/67
41/58
FL-19
Deutch (D)
494,890
638,503
77.5
456,060
736,419
61.9
- 15.5
73/27
65/34
CA-25
McKeon (R)
363,792
638,768
57.0
352,189
844,320
41.7
- 15.2
42/56
49/48
FL-20
Wasserman Schultz (D)
426,891
639,795
66.7
358,470
691,727
51.8
- 14.9
69/31
63/36
TX-07
Culberson (R)
439,217
651,682
67.4
411,276
780,611
52.7
- 14.7
31/69
41/58
NV-03
Heck (R)
459,756
665,345
69.1
568,343
1,043,855
54.4
- 14.7
49/48
55/43
TX-10
McCaul (R)
431,992
651,523
66.3
513,811
981,367
52.4
- 13.9
34/67
44/55
IL-03
Lipinski (D)
445,179
653,292
68.1
361,581
663,381
54.5
- 13.6
58/40
64/35
CA-11
McNerney (D)
408,785
639,625
63.9
400,825
796,753
50.3
- 13.6
45/53
54/44
VA-10
Wolf (R)
495,611
643,714
77.0
554,054
869,437
63.7
- 13.3
41/56
53/46
TX-02
Poe (R)
418,476,
651,605
64.2
399,454
782,375
51.1
- 13.2
37/63
40/60
FL-08
Webster (R)
447,266
639,026
70.0
459,529
805,608
57.0
- 13.0
46/54
53/47
CA-41
Lewis (R)
405,790
639,935
63.4
404,103
797,133
50.7
- 12.7
41/56
44/54
FL-12
Ross (R)
461,239
640,096
72.1
500,066
842,199
59.4
- 12.7
45/55
49/50
CA-10
Garamendi (D)
417,008,
638,238
65.3
377,698
714,750
52.8
- 12.5
55/41
65/33
CA-22
McCarthy (R)
426,192
638,514
66.7
432,482
797,084
54.3
- 12.5
33/64
38/60
MD-05
Hoyer (D)
400,668
662,203
60.5
368,667
767,369
48.0
- 12.4
57/41
65/33
NV-01
Berkley (D)
342,987
666,442
51.5
322,853
820,134
39.4
- 12.1
56/41
64/34
CA-13
Stark (D)
244,693
638,708
38.3
174,998
665,318
26.3
- 12.0
67/30
74/24
VA-11
Connelly (D)
430,091
643,582
66.8
434,526
792,095
54.9
- 12.0
45/52
57/42
CA-03
Lungren (R)
474,940
639,374
74.3
488,421
783,317
62.4
- 11.9
41/55
49/49
FL-15
Posey (R)
497,676
639,133
77.9
539,194
813,570
66.3
- 11.6
46/54
48/51
Districts appearing in the 2010 data's top 25 that weren't present in 2008 are VA-10, TX-02, FL-08, CA-41, and NV-01; while the other four are driven mostly by Latino growth, the growth in VA-10 (in Washington DC suburbs, more and more centered on once-exurban, now-suburban Loudoun County) is more Asian. These five replace TX-05, AZ-03, TX-06, TX-03, and NJ-07.
This presents a very different picture than the districts ordered according to the actual raw number of white residents lost. That list starts with GA-13 in first, which fell from 295,107 white residents in 2000 to 202,053 in 2010. This is the southern tier of Atlanta's suburbs and exurbs, which is increasingly becoming a magnet for both Atlanta African-Americans moving outward and northern blacks moving south - in turn driving a lot of white flight, much of which seems to be rearranging itself north of Atlanta, especially in the 9th. The fast-growing 13th is unusual on this list, though; most of the remaining top 10 losers are districts where the overall population is stagnant or going down: MI-12, IL-03, PA-14, OH-10, IN-07, IL-02, CA-13, FL-20, and MO-01. As you'll see in upcoming charts, blacks are replacing whites in MI-12, Hispanics are replacing whites in IL-03 and FL-20, Asians are replacing whites in CA-13, while in PA-14, OH-10, IN-07, IL-02, and MO-01, everyone is leaving, with whites are leaving the fastest.
Yesterday I created lists of the biggest gainers and losers among congressional districts over the period of 2000-10, but only hinted at the changes in racial composition that were underlying the overall population changes. A longer post about the racial composition (analogous to this one I did a year and a half ago) changes is in the works, but as part of that I conceived of this table... which really would have worked better with yesterday's piece, so I'm giving it its own home here. It shows the numeric change in each district, broken down by the numeric change among each race in each district.
What should stand out here is that among the 25 biggest gainers, in most of the districts, the combined non-white gains exceeded the (non-Hispanic) white gains. Among the few that didn't, some are districts that are either heavy on retirees (AZ-02, FL-05), some have a large Mormon population (AZ-06, UT-03), with a few a little harder to classify (GA-09 is sort of the exurban white flight receptacle from the rest of the Atlanta area, and ID-01 is a mix of a lot of Mormons and a lot of white flight from southern California). As always, as I've cautioned many times before, these districts aren't an immediate panacea for Democrats and look to stay fairly red for the short term; with most of these districts full of kids (kids who aren't likely to grow up to be Republicans, though!), gains at the ballot box are going to unfold slooooowly.
With the Census Bureau having completed its gradual rollout of data from all the states last week, I've finally gotten around to assembling data from all the various congressional districts into one place. While the actual population gain or loss in each district isn't as important a number, for SSP purposes, as the number of people each district will need to shed or gain as part of the redistricting process (which you can see in the various posts we did as each state's data came out), the overall gain and loss is an important part in the overall picture of where people are moving to and from (and where they're being born). Just the numbers of people moving in or out isn't as helpful as knowing who exactly these people are, and we'll delve a little more deeply into the changing racial compositions of the CDs in the next day or two... but for now, here are the overall population change numbers.
You're probably noticing, "Wow, that's a lot of Republican districts." That's certainly true, but these are also districts that (as we'll see when we talk about changing racial composition), for the most part, aren't becoming more Republican; people tend to bring their values with them rather than undergoing some magical David Brooksian conversion experience once they move in from the city, the inner-ring suburbs, or another country. Some of these districts are ones where much of the gains are Hispanic (like NV-03 or TX-10, or just about any California district on the list); in the case of GA-07, it's becoming more African-American. That isn't to say that these are all on the verge of becoming blue, of course; with much of these districts' non-white populations under 18, it'll be a gradual process. And redistricting is likely to de-diversify at least some of these districts, with some of the closer-in suburban portions of these districts (note that many of these districts are the ones right on the cusp of suburb and exurb) to be given to lower-population urban districts that need to expand outward, with the remaining parts of the districts staying red. (GA-07, again, is a case in point; the innermost parts of Gwinnett County, which are pretty diverse today, probably will need to get added on to underpopulated GA-05, leaving the rest of the district in very Republican-friendly condition.)
You may recall I did this same thing a year and a half ago when the 2008 estimates came out; there's been very little change to the list since then, although with some swapping of places. Despite its position at the absolute epicenter of the housing bubble, NV-03 moved up from 4th to 1st place, past the two Arizona districts and TX-10. Districts that fell out of the top 25 in 2008 include GA-06, TX-03, CO-06, FL-25, IL-14, and FL-06, replaced by VA-10, FL-12, TX-28, TX-23, TX-04, and ID-01.
District
Rep.
2000
2010
Change
NV-03
Heck (R)
665,345
1,043,855
378,510
AZ-02
Franks (R)
641,435
972,839
331,404
AZ-06
Flake (R)
641,360
971,733
330,373
TX-10
McCaul (R)
651,523
981,367
329,844
FL-05
Nugent (R)
639,719
929,533
289,814
CA-45
Bono Mack (R)
638,553
914,209
275,656
GA-07
Woodall (R)
630,511
903,191
272,680
TX-26
Burgess (R)
651,858
915,137
263,279
TX-22
Olson (R)
651,657
910,877
259,220
TX-31
Carter (R)
651,868
902,101
250,233
NC-09
Myrick (R)
619,705
852,377
232,672
VA-10
Wolf (R)
643,714
869,437
225,723
UT-03
Chaffetz (R)
744,545
966,232
221,687
FL-14
Mack (R)
639,298
858,956
219,658
AZ-07
Grijalva (D)
640,996
855,769
214,773
NC-04
Price (D)
619,432
826,878
207,446
CA-44
Calvert (R)
639,008
844,756
205,748
CA-25
McKeon (R)
638,768
844,320
205,552
TX-21
Smith (R)
651,930
856,954
205,024
FL-12
Ross (R)
640,096
842,199
202,103
TX-28
Cuellar (D)
651,259
851,824
200,565
TX-23
Canseco (R)
651,149
847,651
196,502
TX-04
Hall (R)
651,500
846,142
194,642
GA-09
Graves (R)
629,678
823,583
193,905
ID-01
Labrador (R)
648,922
841,930
193,008
And here are the biggest losers, looking every bit as heavily Democratic as the list of gainers is Republican. However, if you go through the list line by line, you'll notice that very few of these districts are even remotely-considered as being on the chopping block. That's partly because many of these are VRA seats, or otherwise set up by Republican legislatures as Democratic vote sinks (PA-14, for example). The most obvious exceptions up for elimination are PA-12, which almost everyone concedes is gone with the wind, OH-10, which is set to get mashed with OH-13, and possibly IL-17, ironically one of the few GOP-held seats on the list (although it might instead wind up getting turned into a significantly bluer district by the now-Dem-controlled Illinois legislature). Instead, as I mentioned earlier, many of these districts are going to wind up reaching out further into the suburbs... in many cases, expanding to follow the same constituents who just moved out of the city (for instance, all the Detroit residents who moved across 8 Mile into MI-12).
This diary is meant to be a little fun given all the heavy redistricting diaries we have on here. The one thing that's always struck me about my home state is how it's so diverse and interesting in spite of being so small. This diary will try to explain how the various cultural groups fit together by using Dave's mapping program, along with accompanying demographic and political data.
I've been doing some research on college students and politics for my political action committee (and wrote up a post for our blog here)--since I don't know enough to contribute much to the discussions about redistricting, I thought I'd share what I've found. Maybe this is just pointless demographic trivia, but bear with me...
The district with the most college and graduate students - by far - is Mike Capuano's MA-08, which includes Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, to name a couple schools. College students make up 16.9% of the district; in no other district are they more than 14.3%.
The only other district with more than 100,000 college students is Jason Chaffetz's UT-03, which is expansive enough to include both Utah State Utah Valley University and BYU. Since UT-03 has been growing so rapidly, though, it ranks only 12th in the proportion of residents who are college students.
10 of the 25 districts with the most college students (as a percentage of residents) are represented by Republicans. Chaffetz's district is the only one among these that is totally hopeless for Democrats, although now that Chet Edwards is gone TX-17 probably falls into that category.
8 of the 10 districts with the fewest college students are represented by Republicans. Nine of those are in the Sun Belt; the district with the 10th fewest, Bill Shuster's PA-09, is the northern district with the fewest students. Gene Green is the Democrat representing the fewest college students, and Scott DesJarlais has the very fewest college constituents.
Not surprisingly, Republicans are much more likely to represent young people than college students. They hold 8 of the 10 districts with the largest proportion of 15-24 year-olds.
I'd started this project because I was curious about the districts of a couple of candidates that my political action committee had endorsed, only to watch them lose heartbreaking races. I figured that Mary Jo Kilroy and Tom Perriello--representing OSU and UVA--would figure high on the list. But it turns out that Kilroy's OH-15 is only 19th, while Perriello's VA-05 is all the way down at 136th. Of course, that doesn't mean that the dropoff in college turnout didn't contribute to their defeats. Anecdotally, at least, I've heard that UVA's turnout was terrible in 2010.
In any case: I'll be interested to see where some of these student populations end up after redistricting, since campuses are convenient blocs of low-leverage voters who can be shuffled around districts.
I'm looking for help finding some demographic information about congressional districts. I work with a student-run political action committee (www.snappac.org) and I'm doing a little bit of research on students and politics to help us with our 2012 targeting. I was curious to know which districts have the most high school and college students (though obviously the answer will change after redistricting). The American Community Survey has estimates of the numbers of college/graduate students and high school students in each district, but I can't find a way to access it in convenient fashion. Instead, I have to go to fastfacts.census.gov and look up each district one at a time.
Anybody know where I could see this information all in one spreadsheet? Or an otherwise sortable format?
P.S. While doing this research, I stumbled on an interesting piece of trivia - the three largest college campuses (at least according to Wikipedia) are all currently represented by freshman Republicans. Pretty vivid illustration of the total disappearance of young voters in midterm elections. Mary Jo Kilroy and (especially) Tom Perriello also come to mind as candidates who suffered from the decline of the university vote.
Right after the 2010 elections (and immediately before) there was some very publichandwringingin themedia about the number of women in congress decreasing. According to the CS Monitor, the election was "tough on all Democrats, but particularly on female lawmakers." I think some of this is misguided. Granted, as markhanna wrote in November, 2010 was definitely not another "year of the woman." But even though the number of women shrank (ever so slightly) in the red wave, as MassGOP suggested it might, the proportion of women within each party grew, and in the long run this isn't much of a setback. You could even read it as progress.
• MO-Sen: Most likely you already saw this story yesterday, but the big story in the Missouri Senate race is that Politico's Dave Catanese seems to be the recipient of various leaks that ex-Sen. Jim Talent will announce soon that he isn't going to run for Senate. We won't start jumping up and down and honking our clown horn until we actually hear it from Talent, but this isn't a surprise, based on previous rumors out of the Show Me State and Talent's seeming decision to focus on hitching his wagon to Mitt Romney's star instead. Without a dominant establishment candidate in the field, it looks like even more GOPers are starting to sniff out the race: MO-08 Rep. Jo Ann Emerson is now on the record as at least "considering" a run. Emerson, who's had some mavericky moments in the House, would easily be the most moderate GOPer in the field if she ran (and may see a path there, with multiple tea partiers seeming poised to cannibalize each others' votes). Emerson's potential departure would create an open seat in the currently R+15 8th, an area that actually went for Bill Clinton but has fallen off the cliff for Dems in recent years, most recently with the fizzle of the touted Tommy Sowers campaign last year.
• NJ-Sen: PPP, while "cleaning out their fridge" as they said, found some week-old GOP Senate primary numbers from their New Jersey sample. They find state Sen. and 2006 candidate Tom Kean Jr. in good shape, with support from both moderates (which is probably what he would qualify as) and conservatives; he leads Lou Dobbs 42-30 with Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno at 7, "someone else" at 6, and 15 undecided.
• KY-Gov: Filing day came and went without any last-minute shenanigans in Kentucky. Steve Beshear will get a totally free ride in the Democratic primary (looks like that primary from the scrap metal dealer didn't materialize), and will face one of three GOP opponents: state Senate president David Williams, teabagging businessman Phil Moffett, or Jefferson Co. Clerk Bobbie Holsclaw. The general election field in the AG race is already set; Jack Conway and Todd P'Pool didn't draw any primary challengers. The most activity seems to be in the Ag Commissioner race (vacated by Richie Farmer, who's running for Lt. Gov.), with 5 Dems and 2 GOPers running.
• MN-08: This probably isn't a surprise, but after his upset loss last year, 76-year-old Jim Oberstar has decided to opt for retirement rather than a rerun against new Rep. Chip Cravaack. Two other high-profile Dems, Duluth mayor Don Ness and state Sen. Tony Lourey have also recently said no. Two DFLers who are considering the race, though, are Duluth-based state Sen. Roger Reinert and Daniel Fanning, Al Franken's deputy state director.
• Omaha mayor: Omaha mayor Jim Suttle narrowly survived a recall attempt in last night's special election. He won 51-49. Suttle vows to do a better job of communicating with voters in the election's wake, although it remains an open question whether he runs again in 2013.
• Redistricting: Here's a new wrinkle in the fight over the Fair Districts initiatives in Florida: Rick Scott seems to be stalling implementation of the new standards (which would limit the state legislature's ability to gerrymander districts). The state "quietly withdrew" its request that the federal DOJ approve implementation of the initiatives, which jeopardizes whether they'll be in place in time for the actual business of redistricting. Florida, as a one-time part of the Deep South, is one of those states that requires DOJ preclearance for changes to its electoral regime under the Voting Rights Act.
Politico also has an interesting article today about the Congressional Black Caucus and redistricting, which will reshape many of their districts, seeing as how some of their members' districts have had the biggest population losses of any districts in the nation (OH-11, MI-13, MI-14, and MO-01 in particular). These districts seem like they can absorb some suburban votes without losing their lopsided Dem advantages, but they're probably more worried about members getting pitted against each other (as might happen with the two Detroit districts) or against another Dem (possible for Marcia Fudge and Lacy Clay). Other lingering questions are whether Sanford Bishop's GA-02 (the only CBC-held district that's legitimately swingy) gets shored up or made worse, and whether South Carolina can be compelled to eke out a second VRA seat.
• Turnout models: I rarely get the chance to say this, but if you look at only one scatterplot today, it should be this one. It's a remarkably-clear slope showing how predictable presidential approval is across demographic groups, and more evidence that the swing in the 2010 election was uniform across groups in response to macro factors (i.e. the stupid economy) rather than a failure of microtargeting. And here are some further thoughts on the matter from Larry Sabato's new book, pointing out the really steep dropoffs in 2010 turnout for the groups I tend to label the "casual voters" (reliably Dem lower-information voters, mostly young and/or people of color, who turn out for presidential races but not the less compelling stuff in between), and how the 2010 model isn't anything like what the 2012 model will resemble.
• MA-Sen: Vicki Kennedy has pretty much ruled out a Senate run, if her comments to the Boston Globe are any indication. She says "the Senate is not my future;" poignantly, she recounts having received Ted's encouragement to run before his death but responding "You're Senator Kennedy, and that's it." Another Kennedy made some news yesterday, though, in fact generating his own little boomlet of Senatorial speculation: Joe III (son of the ex-Rep. and grandson of RFK) gave a mightily well-received speech in front of state legislators decrying the noxious turn in the nation's political discourse. The 30-year-old is currently a prosecutor in Barnstable County and has turned down previous attempts to get him to run for office. Finally, some of the more cogent members of the local tea party seem to have made peace with the fact, despite their discomfort with his voting record, that Scott Brown isn't going to be successfully challenged in the GOP primary in 2012, and are dissuading others from that line of thought. The article mentions recent House race losers Jeff Perry and Jim Ogonowski as possible names, but in the context of even them not likely to be able to gain any traction against Brown in a primary.
• PA-Sen: PPP released Republican primary numbers as part of their Pennsylvania package today, and as with many of their recent primary polls, it's quite the collection of people who aren't going to run. They try doing it both with-Santorum and without-Santorum. (Yes, yes, I know that sounds gross.) The Santorum-covered version, thanks to his high name rec (81% of GOPers have an opinion about him, while Schweiker comes in second at 33%), finds him way in the lead, at 45, with Rep. Jim Gerlach at 9, ex-Gov. Mark Schweiker and Rep. Charlie Dent both at 8, Rep. Tim Murphy at 7, state Sen. Jake Corman at 3, and state Sen. Kim Ward and actual announced candidate Marc Scaringi both at 1. The Santorum-free version gives the edge to Schweiker at 18, Gerlach at 14, Murphy at 13, Dent at 10, Corman at 9, Ward at 2, and Scaringi at 1.
• TX-Sen: This story may be better filed under "Dallas mayor" since it points to a somewhat unexpected vacancy that's going to need to be filled in November. The mayoral candidacy of city council member Ron Natinsky, a key ally of Republican mayor Tom Leppert, makes it pretty clear that Leppert isn't going to run for a second term as mayor. Leppert has often been cited a potential wild card in the GOP Senate primary against Kay Bailey Hutchison, and this may mean he's moving toward that race.
• MS-Gov: Hattiesburg mayor Johnny DuPree made it official today, filing his papers for a gubernatorial run. He'll face off against businessman Bill Luckett in the Democratic primary, and if he wins there, most likely against Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant in the general.
• IL-14: A new profile of ex-Rep. Bill Foster has him sounding pretty uncandidate-ish in the future. He says he'd like to explore business opportunities in green energy and would consider an executive branch position if asked, but there's nary a suggestion of a rematch.
• PA-Auditor: Allegheny Co. Exec (and 2010 gubernatorial loser) Dan Onorato says he won't run for a third term as county executive; this is widely assumed to mean that he'll be pursuing a bid for state Auditor in 2012. (I'm wondering if Jack Wagner, whom you also remember from the gubernatorial race, can run for a 3rd term as Auditor, and, if so, if he's ruled it out? Anybody know about that?) At any rate, Onorato seems to be looking at lower statewide office as a better stepping-stone for his ambitions; he's young enough that he's probably thinking down the road to a 2016 challenge to Pat Toomey or even the 2018 open seat gubernatorial race (which, if history is any guide, will go to a Democrat).
• Special elections: As expected, last night's special elections in Virginia went to the Republicans with totals over 60% (letting them hold both of the red districts up for grabs). Gregory Habeeb is taking over for Robert Hurt in SD-19, while William Stanley takes over for Morgan Griffith in HD-8. Also, in Mississippi, Nancy Adams Collins won in SD-11 to succeed Alan Nunnelee; I can't find any confirmation that she, in fact, was the Republican in the race, but I have dim memories (correct me if I'm wrong) from the myriad MS-01 special elections that special elections in Mississippi don't include party labels on the ballot.
• 2010: You're probably all familiar with the gender gap, but Michael McDonald shows in pretty dramatic fashion just how significant the "age gap" has become, with a 16-point gap in 2010 between the parties between the 18-29 set and the 65+ set, the largest that's ever been. The unfortunate flipside, which does a lot to explain the 2010 results, is that young voter falloff in midterm elections (25% in 2006, 51% in 2008) is much greater than among older voters (63% in 2006, 71% in 2008), boosting Republican odds thanks to their increased strength among seniors.
• Demographics: I suppose we don't need any hints about where people are moving since we just got reapportionment data, but here's some more in-depth data from the Census Bureau, based on what states people are moving into and out of. Long-distance moves hit a record low in 2009, thanks in large part to the sluggish economy disproportionately hitting young adults. Housing bubble/service-sector cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Orlando had drops in migration, while more knowledge-sector places like Austin, Raleigh, and Portland were gainers among young adults.
• Redistricting: I'm hesitant to heap praise on one particular Dave's Redistricting App map diary here, because, really, they're all fantastic and an important part of the site and the community; I learn something new from most of them and they're all time-consuming works of art, so thanks to everyone who posts them. But silver spring's Illinois diary is worthy of some extra attention, in the hopes that the powers-that-be (in this state that's probably the Dems' single best shot to run up the redistricting score) might see this diary and take its basic ideas into account. It's a map that takes the almost-unthinkable and makes it plausible: a map that's 15-3 in favor of Democrats based on 2008 presidential data, and even creates a second Hispanic VRA district for good measure.
