PA-PPP: Toomey leads

[pbrower2a]

Approval at 28% after four years in the US Senate -- he's almost certainly going down. The 2016 electorate will not be so favorable to Toomey as was 2010.

According to Nate Silver's famous study, an incumbent Governor or Senator needs 44% approval at the start of the campaign to have a reasonable chance of being re-elected in a binary election. He has a long way to go to shore up support to be able to campaign to victory. A politician wins while in campaign mode and can't govern or legislate in campaign mode.  So he is going to make some tough decisions that can't satisfy everyone who voted for him.

To be sure he has not abused power as Rick Santorum did as a Senator... and he hasn't committed himself to such a losing proposition as did former Governor Tom Corbett. But he doesn't have to lose 60-40 to lose a Senate seat.

In match-ups with comparative unknowns he gets no more than 44% even if he is ahead. This is ominous. Those unknowns can run against Pat Toomey's record of supporting absolute plutocracy.

Extremists might win one statewide election in Pennsylvania. One election -- and lose the next.

     

[pbrower2a]

Approval at 28% after four years in the US Senate -- he's almost certainly going down. The 2016 electorate will not be so favorable to Toomey as was 2010.

According to Nate Silver's famous study, an incumbent Governor or Senator needs 44% approval at the start of the campaign to have a reasonable chance of being re-elected in a binary election. He has a long way to go to shore up support to be able to campaign to victory. A politician wins while in campaign mode and can't govern or legislate in campaign mode.  So he is going to make some tough decisions that can't satisfy everyone who voted for him.

To be sure he has not abused power as Rick Santorum did as a Senator... and he hasn't committed himself to such a losing proposition as did former Governor Tom Corbett. But he doesn't have to lose 60-40 to lose a Senate seat.

In match-ups with comparative unknowns he gets no more than 44% even if he is ahead. This is ominous. Those unknowns can run against Pat Toomey's record of supporting absolute plutocracy.

Extremists might win one statewide election in Pennsylvania. One election -- and lose the next.

     

Lolpartisanhack

If anything it is the 28% approval rate that is laughable. Pennsylvania statewide politics are fairly easy to watch, and they have some clear patterns.

...I just gave you a tool for arguing that an incumbent Republican is in good shape. If at this stage he has an approval rating near 50% he is doing OK for now. I saw Santorum go down in 2006 and Corbett go down in 2014... from Michigan.  Santorum and Corbett were known commodities as their re-election campaigns went down. It's Nate Silver, and his model explains 2014 well. The Democratic incumbents who went down were shaky at best. So if you see someone like Ron Johnson (R-WI) with an approval rating of 47%... he's not in bad shape.

I spoke only about Toomey this time. Most politicians whose approval ratings are below 35% either choose not to run or lose a primary contest, so Nate Silver doesn't say much about him as a group.  In view of what you just said you need to refute Nate Silver and not my partisan rhetoric. Senator Toomey should be well known in Pennsylvania.  I can't see how Toomey campaigns his way out of his image as a Hard Right figure in a liberal-leaning state.

We're 2.5 months since that PPP poll that found Michael Bennet at 30/35. RIP Senator. I guess Burr, Rubio, and Isakson are as good as dead too. Some people are just unknowns. That's often a good thing.

I also love all the "define the opponent first" strategists. That's not exactly easy to do. They'll be trying to do the same thing. It worked with a guy like Corbett because he was defined so far out that opinions were so ingrained. If you try to define the opponent, you're going to end up with a Hagan/Tillis type race. Or perhaps Shaheen/Brown, I should also offer so you realize you shouldn't be so cocky.

Precisely. Define the incumbent as a crook, an extremist, or a failure and win. That's how Reagan defeated Carter, who was neither an extremist not a crook.

It may be early... but count on plenty of material on Burr from PPP. Everyone will be polling Florida.

So what does early polling on Toomey say about the chances of the Republican Party to hold the Senate? Only one seat. He's one case, as was Corbett last year; anyone who drew any inference on how the GOP would do nationwide from how Corbett was doing was a fool.

I am confident at this stage that if any Republican incumbent in the US Senate goes down, it will be Pat Toomey. He could be the only one who goes down based upon the polls since the 2014 electoral disaster for the Democratic Party.

[pbrower2a]

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:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

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. 

[pbrower2a]

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:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

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.

Toomey is simply the first incumbent Senate Republican shown after the 2014 election -- and he is not doing well, to put it mildly. I have not seen post-election polls involving Illinois or Wisconsin yet; I see Kirk an Johnson likely to be in the same position as Toomey -- very poor fits for their states in which they are Senators. Show me post-2014 polls for Johnson and Kirk, and I may have a numerical (and even stronger) justification for saying that they go down to defeat, too.

Nate Silver applies the  44% threshold early in the electoral season.  Yes, someone with a 42% approval rating may have (let me guess) a 20% chance of winning re-election if much goes right -- excellent campaigning,  political events going favorably after being horrible, a weak opponent, and perhaps a huge infusion of support by 'independent' organizations flooding the media with last-minute smear campaigns. Being a Republican in a state that Republicans lose rarely or a Democrat in a state that Democrats rarely lose helps, too.

On the other side, having an approval rating of 47% (again I am guessing) might imply an 80% chance of winning. That is also a 20% chance of losing, so if one has ten incumbents, half of whom have approval ratings of 42% and half of whom have approval ratings of 47%, one of those with an approval rating of 42% will win and one of those with an approval rating of 47% will lose if results imitate the most likely result of random chance.  So if political events go badly, an incumbent becomes a weak campaigner, the challenger is unusually strong, and an opposing front group floods the media with a last-minute smear campaign... a 70% chance of winning can completely dissipate. 

Silver does not mention scandals. (I am going to guess that voters are the last to know. The politician is often secretive, which likely hurts his approval rating before his bad deeds are exposed). Journalists generally do not align themselves with politicians in trouble, so the tone of voice from a nearly-neutral broadcast journalist about Barack Obama can be very different from that for Rod Blagojevich.

With an approval rating of 28%, Toomey is clearly in deep trouble in any effort to get re-elected. He may not be in as spectacularly bad shape to lose a re-election bid as  Santorum was in 2006 (abuse of power within the Senate) or Corbett in 2014 (getting connected somehow to a horrible scandal of child abuse).  He needs to get his approval rating up to at least 40% to have a real chance at re-election. But that is going to be difficult. He will be vulnerable to negative ads about his positions. He can't run from his right-wing voting record.

We saw lots of incumbent Democrats up 44-41 or so early in 2014... and they still lost. They generally had low approval ratings, in part because they fit their states poorly.

A guess that the Republicans may have a better chance of winning an open seat in California is ... well, a guess on which non-zero probability is bigger. It's rare that I could call a Senate race against an incumbent this early. I just lack the imagination to see how Senator Toomey can be re-elected.