Talk Elections

https://www.kfyrtv.com/content/news/SRA-Poll-shows-ND-Senate-race-numbers-reaction-to-Supreme-Court-nominee-Brett-Kavanaugh-case-494849131.html

Kevin Cramer (R)-51
Heidi Heitkamp (D)-41

Who?

Oh please lol

There was a poll in October 2012 that found Berg with a 10 point lead too, interesting

This poll is obviously garbage

Heitkamp needs to Todd Akin him, hard.

Cramer ahead is believable. Cramer ahead by double digits? Not so much.

Hopefully Heidi has a new newspaper to hold up when she wins.

But I thought the Kavanaugh controversy/Cramer's "gaffe" were going to spell doom for him? Cramer +10 is definitely hard to believe (especially if Tester is ahead by 4), but anyone who believes Cramer is the next Akin doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Edit: Oh, this was taken before Cramer's comments. Still, not a good poll for her by any means.

Seems to be a real firm, though I don't believe they have ever released a public poll of a race, so they have absolutely no record.

Definitely seems tough to believe, but I'll certainly buy Heitkamp being in trouble. It would be pretty funny if she ended up winning by 1 again, after a poll showed her down 10.

Wait it was taken that long ago? Was their WV during a similar date range?

They just released the Manchin +8 poll.

As I've said for a while now, North Dakota strongly backs Kavanaugh and a majority of North Dakota voters likely agree with Cramer's comments. If Heitkamp wants to lose, focusing on Cramer's "Akin comments" should certainly be her strategy.

Dems really overplayed their hand and shot themselves in the foot with the Kavanaugh situation, at least in regards to their deep red state Senate incumbents.

I mean she hasn’t leaned into the Cramer stuff as hard as one thought she might after he made the comments.

Interesting. Seems they are expanding their business to TV stations. I wonder who owns these two stations.

Edit: Seems like both are owned by Gray Television,

The West Virginia poll released today was done between 9/17 through 9/26.

http://media.graytvinc.com/documents/September+Survey.pdf

I feel like that doesn’t tell us much... unless Kavanagh hearings didn’t move the needle much in either direction (which would not surprise me)

Because unlike this forum and Twitter users from California she realizes it would backfire. Looks like the Dems overplaying their hand with Kavanaugh has already blown up in her face and could very well cost them their chance at the Senate. Brilliant strategery. Between that and them backing corrupt clown Menendez....Dems are so bad at politics it makes me wince sometimes.

Totally never heard of this pollster before

Democrats are not overplaying their hands with Kananaugh, and the situation is going to result in massive pain for Republicans across the nation, in both R leaning areas, and in D leaning areas, and Icespear concern trolling on the topic is irrelevant to reality.

You get an inch and you take a mile.

By the looks of it, this poll was taken entirely before the hearings and Cramer's comments. While they might not make much of impact, I think its far too soon to say its blown up in anybodies faces yet.

Wow, Berg +10. It's over for Heitkamp.

Just because the polls underestimated Heitkamp in 2012 doesn’t mean they will underestimate her again this year. And the difference between 2012 and 2018 is that there were actually polls showing Heitkamp up in 2012. There hasn’t been one this year since February (and that was from Gravis and had 17% undecideds), and apparently private polling has been pretty ugly for Democrats here. The ND GOP is also much more competent than MO GOP/MT GOP/etc., and Cramer isn’t as "weak" as this forum is making him out to be.

I realize you're Solid, but surely even you can't be delusional enough to think North Dakota opposes Kavanaugh, right? Not everyone is a left wing Chelsea Manning supporter living in Maryland you know. This is rock solid Trump country we're talking about here.

According to RCP, Heidi only lead in one poll in June and that seemed like an outlier at the time. Also, what private polling?

What exactly should they have done then? I think you are forgetting how hard of a needle this is to thread, where Kavanaugh is not just any nominee, but a potential rapist nominee in the #MeToo era nominated by Donald J. Trump, another serial sexual assaulter who has currently lit a nuclear-hot fire under the collective asses of the Democratic Party. I mean... what do you expect? Even if they didn't want to fight over this confirmation with everything they had, the base demands it. You could also argue that Republicans are completely overplaying their own hands here with regards to Gardner too. This kind of issue could come back and bite him in the ass or potentially tank his favorables after the confirmation if Democrats move to weaponize it effectively. Voting for a rapist justice is something a lot of people on the left seem to be taking note of.

Regarding Menendez, it's a shame but, again, this is really just a failure of local political machines not prioritizing ethics and actually reliably winning elections over their friends and favors. Not to mention that the primary voters decided to keep him. Again, Republicans and Republican primary voters have made loads of joke decisions themselves over the years, costing them a number of important, high-profile races. So yes, not trying to oust Bob with everything they had was a dumb move, but not exactly unique in its stupidity among both parties.

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We really need more polling of ND in general. And until I see proof, I'm not willing to buy in completely to the idea that voting against even a rapey SCOTUS nominee means CURTAINS for these people. I'd like to see solid evidence first. I can buy that Heidi is down, but not necessarily that this confirmation is killing her.

I wasn't trying to imply that I think ND polls are going to be wrong again, I just think it would be funny if a 10-point lead in a poll proved to be wrong again for the same race. I think Heitkamp is the most vulnerable Democrat, though, and certainly more likely to lose than not at this point (and you know that I've been bearish on her chances for a while :P)

We need more polling in general. Is it me or has the amount of polling astronomically declined since 2014? Its frustrating that due to the lack of polling, one poll can set the narrative for an entire race.

This race is still very much a Lean D race.

Smells fishy

I realize the base is itching for a fight, but turning it into Waterloo probably wasn't the best idea. It might be a winning issue for them from a national perspective, but in the Senate they're trying to hold or win very red territory where both Trump and Kavanaugh are popular. It's just something that's going to polarize the electorate. This could help them in the House, but in the Senate map it's going to hurt. On top of that, he's likely to get confirmed regardless of how hard the Democrats fight, so was it really worth the political capital?

As for Gardner, he has the benefit of the election being 2 years away, so nobody will remember or care by then. And he's already an underdog regardless. It doesn't matter what Heller does because he's already DOA and has clearly embraced the strategy of praying for a miracle that Republicans turn out and Democrats don't.

The problem with that argument is that there have not really many polls of this race *period* this year

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Likely R

It's just a matter of perspective I guess. I'm not convinced this particular confirmation fight is going to be the big loser for Senate Democrats that is semi-common knowledge right now. I've always been really skeptical of the argument that any fight over the courts inherently favors conservatives (polling right now seems to suggest Democrats care more than Republicans), mostly because conservative voters who even know what the Supreme Court is and/or can even name more than one justice are already staunch Republicans that vote like clockwork. But this time is different, mostly because Kavanaugh is not very popular and accusations of sexual assault do give Democrats some cover among voters the few voters that may care about this and aren't dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered as much in another time, but this particular era is marked by a backlash to sexual abuse and does appear to be having noticeable effects on elections and the candidates that run. Of course, I get that some people think Republicans just don't care about rape or sexual assault because of the magical R, and to a large extent that is probably true, but it doesn't mean they all do. Even a small ~15% sliver is a huge deal in most states.

Gardner can't run a base-only strategy in 2020, so I think once Democrats remind the right people of his vote in this case, it'll peel enough some voters away. It's certainly a potential liability. Voters aren't necessarily indifferent to this stuff. It's just when your goal is convince partisan voters to change their minds that it becomes a problem.

Worth noting that ND had the highest Kavanaugh support of any Dem-incumbent Senate state (albeit a month ago). (http://wpaintel.com/scotus-model/)

Also worth mentioning that ND has changed demographically probably more than any other state since 2012.

I mean I think Cramer wins but this is a bit much.

Whoa I agree with bagel

Cramer wins by 5

[X] doubt

Overall I agree with you, but remember it's not like the Senate map is neutral this time. It's stacked in deep red states. Even if Dems do have an advantage on the issue, is it going to actually translate into helping them in a state like North Dakota, Tennessee, or West Virginia? I highly doubt it. If Republicans found an issue that they had the upper hand on nationwide, it probably wouldn't help them much to use it if they were trying to win a Senate race in California or Vermont, and could even backfire on them.

^^ All of this goes to show that Democrats need to make DC and PR into states ASAP. Their Senate majority hopes resting completely on Republican-leaning states is a potential liability when it comes to the Supreme Court, and Democrats need to be able to fight for a left-leaning majority on the court without constantly hurting their electoral prospects (allegedly :x)

Not to mention making them into states is just the right thing to do, but still.

I guess Cramer must be running a very #populist campaign compared to those other candidates!

But yeah, Heitkamp is in bad shape, polling in the low 40's. Another thing is that Cramer has been a statewide elected official since 2012, as their only house rep, resulting in him getting more exposure than say, the Montana state auditor or something.

I mean, it's not an unreasonable statement to get behind.

I don't really know anything about this pollster, so I wouldn't put too much thought into it. And the margin, I don't buy.

That said, the Dems should be scared about this seat, since it's the only one where there hasn't been any good news for them lately. If Heitkamp wins, it's probably going to be because of a blue wave. And that may not even save her.

This doesn't look right and ND is notoriously hard to poll, but we'll see.

This poll did make 538 change this race from Tilt D to Tilt R in their classic model.

However, I still want to see more polling within the next month before I make any definitive judgment as to who is on track to win.

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Just a friendly reminder :)

What we've got to keep in mind is that the Kavanaugh hearings are entirely about the large contingent Senators running for 2020, none of whom give half a damn if Heidi Heitkamp (or Manchin or Donnelly) is re-elected. They would drown her in the Potomac if they thought it would win them Iowa.

That's very true...sigh. Just like the stupid government shutdown stunt from a while back. Luckily that was so long ago everyone forgot and no longer cares about it. But now we're getting close to the point in the cycle where voters actually start remembering recent events while voting, so it's getting dicey.

ND is pretty solidly more to the right than Montana.

The Government shutdown didnt even hurt the GOP in polling even then and I believe the Dems generic ballot lead started dropping around that time till around July when it stopped dropping . Then in August it started to rise again

Heitkamp isn’t going to do 15-17 points worse than Tester, lol. Most likely this poll is inflating Cramer's lead. Cramer +4/5 and Tester +3/4 sounds more believable.

Probably, but MT was 16 points to the left of ND in 2016.

Just what were Feingold and Bayh's numbers again at this point back in 2016?

Both those states were far more Republican than ND is Democratic

J U N K

Probably an oulier, but Tilt R at least.

Uh...


There's plenty more but I'm sure you get the point.

Heidi is in trouble

It could be that this poll was skewed to scare her into voting to confirm Kavanaugh. However, if she’s going to lose anyway she might as well go down in a blaze of glory

It’s amazing how much we are going nuts over this poll that doesn’t have a memo, any crosstabs, or even dates! All we know is that this poll was conducted in September, but that could be up to four weeks old!

.....are you serious? The poll doesnt even have the dates it was conducted?!

Throw this one in the trash!

No. The poll is not an internal. It was done by Strategic Research Associates for the NBC TV Stations in Western North Dakota.

This happens sometimes for TV station-commissioned polls.

Often times because they drip out the results for different races over days. There are other ND races this cycle. I wouldn't be surprised to see House and Governor results over the next few days, followed by more info on the poll.

Here's the poll memo:

http://media.graytvinc.com/documents/GRAY_ND_September_Survey.pdf

It says that 650 likely voters were polled between September 17-27, 2018.

Interesting ...

Strategic Research Associates from Austin, TX seems to be a fairly new pollster.

An untested one. Which doesn't mean they are bad.

They also show Manchin +8 in WV in their new poll.

Heidi seems to be in some trouble, but I wouldn't count her out yet (see 2012).

I don’t think the shutdown is correlated at all with the spring GCB decline

The minority numbers are clearly skewed. There is no way that Black voters are tied, or that Hispanic or "Other" voters are favorable to Cramer.

All the crosstabs seem to be off, honestly.

Atlas loves to panic over any Republican-friendly poll. Remember, Heitkamp was triaged in 2012 and was behind by 10 in polls.

African-Americans are 1.2% of ND's population. Does it matter if it's a wonky subsample?

There are black voters in ND?

It's still a bad sign for the polls methodology.

Crosstabs are always off, especially when the target group is <2% of the population, like here.

There aren't many black or Hispanic voters in North Dakota. It's overall population is 90% White as of the 2010 Census. The largest minority group is Native Americans at 5.4%. Hispanics are 2%. Blacks 1.2%. Asians 1%.

They polled 650 voters. If African-Americans make up 1.2% of the population and quotas were met (doubtful), that means you'd have a sample size of about 8. Care to guess what the MoE for a sample size of 8 is? +/-34%. In other words, meaningless.

If opposing Kavanaugh means that Heitkamp loses, then welp... I'd rather have that then the Dems being okay with Kavanaugh and allowing him to skate by, considering he's probably a drunken rapist.

ND is like 90% white and 5% Native American. Those numbers are negligible.

Problem being he would be confirmed anyway, so you're basically throwing one or more Senators in the trash can for zero benefit.

And what happens if Dems did just shrug it off and allow a handful of senators to vote to confirm him and (not """"snatch defeat from the jaws of victory"""" like you seem to be so convinced of) Heitkamp is still down 12? Then we basically caved and made people think we're a party okay with rapey judges. Still sounds like zero benefit.

If the Dems have the upper hand on issues like healthcare, the environment (the red tide and algae in Florida is an example), and wage stagnation, then maybe the party base can take one hit for the team in order to sell the larger issues I mentioned to the public.

We won't have the upper-hand with an conservative supreme court. What you're saying doesn't make a lot of sense either. There seems to be a bridge between taking one for the team and selling the larger issues to the public that isn't there.

Also, if Kavanaugh is confirmed and RBG dies, that means we'll have a pretty terrible right-wing supreme court that can end all hopes of having the upper hand with healthcare, the environment, wage stagnation, and probably Roe v. Wade too. Wouldn't surprise me if they made changes to marriage equality too.