37% approval? What would Nate Silver think?
http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2010/03/nate-silver-debunks-another-polling.html(This applies to races of 2006, 2008, and 2009 for incumbent Governors and Senators, but such observations as I have indicate that it held as well for the R wave election of 2010 as for D wave elections of 2006 and 2008).
When an incumbent Governor or Senator has an approval rating of 48% he is doing well enough if it is April going into the election year. Unless the incumbent is appointed (the record for appointed incumbents winning re-election is awful) one usually gets to find why the pol won in the first place.
Once in office an elected Governor or Senator has a voting record, and that will rarely please large majorities. Challengers can carp at will at an incumbent's record. So who fails?
(Ted Strickland, the Governor of Ohio seeking re-election in 2010, lost to John Kasich who had a well-funded, well-organized stealth campaign behind him. Such happens. Usually the challenger doesn't have such advantages). A 35% chance of losing often turns into a loss.
Of course thing can go well for an incumbent -- a weak challenger, an economy turning from weak to strong or even mediocre, more than the usual political savvy. Things can also go wrong -- like a breaking scandal, an unusually-strong opponent with a well-organized campaign, misconduct by the campaign, or an economy going into the tank.
This surprises me. I would have expected a reversion to the mean, with the weaker incumbents gaining more than the stronger ones or especially the strongest ones losing some ground. Maybe politicians don't stop campaigning for re-election just because they have approval ratings in the 60s or higher. Once a spirited campaigner always a spirited campaigner.
George Allen ran a terrible campaign. He even got tripped up on the ancestry of his mother. He used a racial slur. His campaign staffers beat up a heckler. He also faced an unusually-strong opponent who ran a superb campaign during a campaign season in which any incumbent Republican with a problem lost.
...I see few incumbent Governors and Senators running for re-election when their approval ratings are in the mid-thirties or lower. Most such pols either decline to run or get defeated in primary elections. In 2006 such incumbents as Senators Burns, Talent, DeWine, Chaffee, and Santorum were in deep trouble. In 2008 so were Stevens and Dole, both of whom lost. In 2010 Governor Strickland was in trouble -- and Senators Feingold and Lincoln were in deep trouble. In 2012 seemingly no incumbent lost a Senate seat or a Governorship.
Unless Senator Mitch McConnell can shore up support in the next two years through legitimate achievements he will be defeated in a re-election bid should he choose to run. Sure, he has power as the Senate Minority Leader -- but he has achieved practically nothing, as shown in his abysmal approval rating in Kentucky, one unusually low for an incumbent Republican in the Senate. He bet everything politically on the defeat of President Obama in 2012 and lost that bet. Rick Santorum was Senate Majority Leader in 2006 and had failed to deliver the goods -- and lost. But, you say, he is from Kentucky which shows much tolerance for right-wing incompetence and extremism. Of course. But Ted Stevens could lose a Senate seat in Alaska, then a very strong R state, in 2008 because of hints of scandal.
You see it here first -- unless Senator Mitch McConnell can resuscitate his approval rating through valid achievements before January 2014 he will go down to defeat 56-44 should he run for re-election. He is now the most vulnerable of Republican Senators to defeat in 2014, not that there are many vulnerable ones. (Far more Democrats now seem vulnerable).
