Pennsylvania 2014 Discussion Thread

[pbrower2a]

One effect of a partisan gerrymander is that one creates a huge bench for the Other Side. Recent Reps get to run for statewide offices.

It's not Pennsylvania, but just look at one of the unintended consequences of the Indiana state legislature redistricting Rep. Joe Donnelly into an impossible seat. He ran for the Senate, which would have been futile against Dick Lugar -- but the Tea Party ran a successful challenge to Dick Lugar only for that extremist challenger to face a moderate. Donnelly got the usual Democratic votes for Lugar and won.

I don't know whether Joe Sestak would be more interested in the Governorship in 2014 or the US Senate seat in 2016.   

[pbrower2a]

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/01/voters-support-corbett-ncaa-lawsuit-but-down-on-him-overall.html#more

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Question: are Pennsylvania voters tiring of Tea Party pols? Sure, Republicans won the majority of House seats from Pennsylvania in 2012, but only because of gerrymandering that concentrated D voters in a few ultra-safe seats and left the rest of the state full of R+5 districts.

Tom Corbett cannot gerrymander himself out of the consequences of unpopularity. He is a Hard Right pol in a moderate state.

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He would have to win over the doubters to have a chance. He will need miracles to win re-election 22 months from now. That 2014 will be a midterm election might help -- but not enough. 

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_PA_107.pdf

 

[pbrower2a]

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/01/voters-support-corbett-ncaa-lawsuit-but-down-on-him-overall.html#more

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Question: are Pennsylvania voters tiring of Tea Party pols? Sure, Republicans won the majority of House seats from Pennsylvania in 2012, but only because of gerrymandering that concentrated D voters in a few ultra-safe seats and left the rest of the state full of R+5 districts.

Tom Corbett cannot gerrymander himself out of the consequences of unpopularity. He is a Hard Right pol in a moderate state.

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He would have to win over the doubters to have a chance. He will need miracles to win re-election 22 months from now. That 2014 will be a midterm election might help -- but not enough. 

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_PA_107.pdf

 

Actually the current PA legislature was elected with the heavily Democrat favored lines that gave Democrats extra seats in Allegheny County that they should not have.

You missed the point on being unable to gerrymander his way out of political trouble in 2014. Gubernatorial elections are by straight popular vote in Pennsylvania as elsewhere. Republicans ran stealth candidates with big money behind them, and those candidates are not gaining popular support, but that is a very different story.

...A year to nine months before a re-election campaign, an incumbent Senator or Governor needs a 44% approval rating to have a roughly 50% chance of winning re-election. The chance of being re-elected approaches 100% with an approval of 50% and approaches 0% with an approval rating near 40%. Below a 40% approval rating most incumbents either choose not to run or lose to primary challenges.

Governor Corbett could win re-election, but if his standing with voters does not improve within a year he will almost certainly (97% or more) be a political goner.  

[pbrower2a]

Ouch.

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How do you mess up that badly? Is he that awful??

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http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/11/corbetts-numbers-just-keep-getting-worse.html#more

24% disapproval. He has gone below Rick Scott at his worst points.

At those low levels of support he could end up with mass demonstrations against him this summer.

Incompetent? Corrupt? Extreme?

Think of what happened in the Senatorial races in Indiana and Missouri: the Republican nominees for the US Senate trivialized rape as an abstraction with "legitimate rape" and similar formulations, and lost decisively in states that Barack Obama lost decisively. The Penn State scandal involved rape, and not as an abstraction -- boys getting raped by some assistant coach who betrayed a basic trust. Being involved in any attempted coverup after the fact is hard to recover from.   

[pbrower2a]

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Well, it will be difficult to be reelected, but not impossible.

Corbett could win a rigged election!

Otherwise, forget it.

[pbrower2a]

Sawx, I'm NOT on drugs. Never used that crap ever in my lifetime, considering that I'm an USAF veteran.

You cannot rule out a comeback for Corbett.

Just saying. Same folks who were predicting that KBH was going to beat Perry in the 2010 GOP primary for governor, but Perry kicked KBH's ass by 21 points (51%-30%) went onto defeating Bill White by 13 points in the general election:55%-42%., carrying 226 out of 254 counties.

Corbett is in such bad shape politically that he would have to rig the election to be re-elected.

[pbrower2a]

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http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/pennsylvania/release-detail?ReleaseID=2012

So what does Nate Silver have to say about Corbett?



http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/myth-of-incumbent-50-rule/

Silver here discusses elections of 2006 to 2009.

The typical incumbent who was successful enough to get elected the first time can usually add 6-7% to early levels of approval to get a fair assessment of his vote share in the November election. (I would have expected reversion toward the mean, with those starting out way behind gaining the most and those far ahead seeing some support slip away). Such is the same whether the incumbent politician starts with 30% approval or 60% approval. An incumbent politician who starts with 44% approval will likely get 50% of the vote and win.

Politicians who seek re-election with approval below 35% are rare. Most spare themselves the trouble. 

Consider that appointed incumbents rarely do well. They didn't campaign for the office, and they may not know how to campaign -- and if they run, they usually gain little from their approval rating to the election. Maybe they need 50% approval with which to win.

An incumbent Governor or Senator is usually shown running against the average challenger and running a campaign of usual competence. To be sure, there can be incumbent politicians who face an unusually-strong challenger and run re-elections campaigns of unusual incompetence in a bad year for their Party and lose despite having 50% approval to begin with (George Allen in 2006). It's bad form for staffers to beat a heckler, and that probably did in the political career of George Allen. 

So why do politicians start with 51% of the vote and get approval ratings around 45% and win re-election? After they get elected they face much carping from the Other Side. That tears down approval ratings. Politicians can't be in campaign mode all the time; they must govern or legislate. But once the governing and legislating ends and campaigns begin, the opponent has to prove himself better than the incumbent. If good enough, an incumbent shows why he wins. If he is as awful as Governor Corbett, he shows that voting for him the last time was a huge mistake. 


   

So how can Tom Corbett win re-election? With his putrid approval rating, he shows that electing him was a mistake in 2010.  He might pick up 7% from his approval rating to his share of the vote in November against an average opponent in an average environment for his Party... and he would probably lose 57-43.

[pbrower2a]

So how can Tom Corbett win re-election? With his putrid approval rating, he shows that electing him was a mistake in 2010.  He might pick up 7% from his approval rating to his share of the vote in November against an average opponent in an average environment for his Party... and he would probably lose 57-43.

In 1986, Bob Casey, Sr, barely got 50% of the vote.  Less than 18 months prior to his re-election, he lost a major campaign for local government tax reform; it required a constitutional amendment that lost by about 70-30. 

In 1990, Bob Casey, Sr. won the greatest majority of any governor since 1926 and the greatest re-election since governors could be re-elected.  He won by greater than 2 to 1.

Incumbent politicians can recover from political failures. Just look at Barack Obama. He has promoted some legislation that has failed to get enacted, and he has made appointments that have failed. Good politicians take chances but never set themselves in a position in which everything collapses if one item on the agenda fails. 

They can't recover from scandals or mishandling them.

[pbrower2a]

The budget situation in Pennsylvania appears to be worsening the budget shortfall has grown to 1.2B as tax collections continue to tumble. Corbett obviously is committed to no new taxes so that means big cuts in an election year.

http://www.enquirerherald.com/2014/06/02/3054920/corbett-shuns-tax-increases-amid.html?sp=/99/117/

That is one way to be defeated -- making unpopular budget cuts.  Such is good for GOTV drives by the Other Side. Tom Corbett will have coattails this year -- but his coattails will be pulling other Republicans into the same political quicksand.