PA-PPP: Toomey leads

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

The most surprising thing in that poll IMO is that Chris Matthews only has 43% name recognition in Pennsylvania.  How is that even possible?

Because only staunch, partisan democrats watch his show.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Casey and Toomey could be a long time duo. Toomey will always have tougher races but Pennsylvania always seems to give both parties a chance. Poll results don't mean anything right now, especially when 1/3 of the electorate has no idea whats going on.

I assume that Pennsylvania goes Democratic by 3-4%, if it goes Democratic. I go off the 2012 results and don't see why these wouldn't hold as a ceiling.

If something is a ceiling, then it should never go above it. Pennsylvania has gone Republican many times before, therefore its not a ceiling.

He's talking about the democratic ceiling not the republican ceiling. He was likely rebutting OC's post, which said that an 8-9 point presidential result in PA is a real possibility.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

28% approval for an incumbent Governor or Senator is horrible. He can't crack 45% support against potential opponents still comparatively unknown.

From February 2010:

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http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2010/02/blanche-lincoln-poll.html


To be sure, having an approval rating at 28% twenty-two months before the election isn't quite as bad as having a 27% approval rating nine months before the election... but not even Barack Obama can campaign his way out of that level of disapproval.

I call it here: Republicans are going to cut their losses with Senator Toomey very fast. He's a bad fit for Pennsylvania, barely getting elected in the wave election of 2010, the sort who loses in a high-participation Presidential election.  They probably have a better chance of picking up an open Senate seat in California than they have of holding onto this one. 

I'm not calling a Democratic wave yet. 

Let's go over a few things.

First, Your philosophy is that an incumbent Senator needs 44% approval - two years before the election - to have a realistic chance of winning, correct? So, you assert that Toomey, who is at 28% approval, has only a 1% chance of victory, just like CA republicans. Would you also say, that Burr, who is only 3 points higher in approval, at 31%, only has a 1% chance of Victory? Would you also say that Bennet, who is at 30% approval, has that same 1% chance. Would you say that Isakson, at 39%, is a serious underdog? I doubt you would. Approval Ratings are not death sentences. Furthermore, Toomey's approval rating doesn't matter, because his opponents - those that will actually run, Rendell isn't going to - aren't any more well-known than he is, and don't have high favorability either. Sestak, the current likely nominee, is at 20% favorability - lower than Toomey. And yet you think the PA race is Safe D. How silly.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2014/PPP_Release_NC_12102014.pdf\ - burr approval
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2014/11/2016-senator-approvals.html - the others

You then assert that Toomey is the most vulnerable. He isn't. That title belongs to Johnson, who unlike Toomey, has not made any attempt at all to give out a moderate image. Toomey has made occasional glances toward bipartisanship and even joined with Manchin on a gun bill, Johnson hasn't done that at all. Also, likely candidate Russ Feingold is leading Johnson by 6 in the latest poll, as opposed to Sestak, who again, is trailing Toomey by 4 and can't even get 40 of the electorate to commit to voting for him.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2014/PPP_Release_WI_423.pdf

You'll notice there that Johnson's favorability is higher than Toomey's, yet Johnson polls worse than Toomey. Approval ratings aren't clear cut pictures, and I agree, early polls aren't either. But I'll trust early polling over early approval ratings - which indicate for both Toomey and Johnson that that a sizable portion of the electorate doesn't have an opinion of them - leaving them plenty of room to grow.

I would also say that Kirk is more vulnerable than Toomey. Not only because Illinois is so democratic that a dog with a D next to its name would likely hit 40%, but also because several of the potential candidates against Kirk are great. Lisa Madigan is a popular attorney general. Cheri Bustos is a popular swing-district representative who just survived a republican tsunami, and Duckworth is a veteran (just like Kirk) who easily survived the republican wave, winning by essentially the same margin she did in the democratic wave of 2012.

We'll come back to this when the democratic % of the vote in CA is far higher than it is in PA, and maybe then you'll realize how terribly wrong you are.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Oh, and pbrower, to prove to you even more that approval ratings/favorability ratings mean little, I'd like to point you to three individuals. First, Sen. Mary Landrieu. Her approval in February 2013? 47-45. She loses by 12. Second, Sen. Mark Pryor. His favorability in October 2013? 46-37. Loses by nearly 20 points. Third, Sen. Mitch McConnell, who had 37-55 approval in December 2012. Wins by 15 points. (Hagan was also popular in early 2013, but I decided not to go into her here because her loss was so narrow and wouldn't have happened in a non-tidal-wave year. The other three races would have had the same winner even in a 2012-style climate.)

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_LA_213.pdf
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_KY_121112.pdf
http://images.politico.com/global/2013/10/14/arkansas.html

For you to sit there and say "An incumbent with ~47% approval has an 80% chance of winning! Someone in the 30's has a <15% chance. Silver! Silver!", just sounds silly. And it's not like Silver's some great god these days. Look at his gubernatorial predictions:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-day-left-the-most-competitive-races-for-governor/

Maine, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, and Maryland are all wrong. Yes, these are races that a lot of people got wrong, but the whole hype with Nate Silver was that he was better than the typical predictor.

If we look at his senate predictions, we find that, just like the average predictor, he got the races in KS and NC wrong.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/senate-forecast/

Nate Silver was an excellent predictor in 2008 and 2012, on the presidential level in both years, and in 2008 at the senatorial level. But his 2014 forecasts were decidedly average in all areas. (This gets worse in the sports section, home to his terrible world cup forecast......)

Notice how Sabato, who for what it's worth actually beat Nate Silver in 2014 Senatorial Forecasts (Sabato got KS right), has this race (PA) where it should be, at a pure toss-up.

Bottom Line - Toomey's approvals suck, yes, but his likely opponent not only trails in the polls but also has favorables 8 points worse than Toomey's approvals. I've Illustrated that you're analogy of High Approvals = Amazing! Low Approvals = Death Sentence! was not only untrue in several places in 2014, but also amounts to saying that the race in CO is Safe R, the race in NC is Safe D, and that the race in GA is Likely D, assertions you probably don't agree with.

Oh, and before you point to Begich as an example of your below 44% = Disaster! analogy (Begich was at 42/41 approval in July 2013), keep in mind that he, like Hagan, only lost because of the tidal wave and would have survived in a smaller rep. wave. So, not a good example to use. Again, the three races (AR, LA, KY) I pointed out above would have had the same winner in not only a neutral year, but a 2012-style political climate as well.