2004 User Predictions - Discussion

[jravnsbo]

But a dean north vs Bush South = + Bush/GOp for Senate races.

Based on the 2000 contest and the current circumstances in most states by the summer (i.e the democratic convention) this is how I see the states looking. Dean I would say will very probably be the Democratic nominee with Clarke as his running mate. Dean will do poorly in many southern states…but in states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia next to Gephardt he is best placed to exploit traditional blue collar democratic support amongst Union members and those states which went narrowly to Gore should still go to Dean as the Nader vote will almost certainly go to him in a big way.

The Lean Democratic States are going to be easier to win for the republicans than the lean republican states however I stick by my predictions.      


Alabama (9 EV) – Solid Republican    
Alaska  (3 EV) – Solid Republican    
Arizona (10 EV) – Lean Republican
Arkansas (6 EV) – Lean Republican
California (55 EV) – Solid Democratic    
Colorado (9 EV) – Lean Republican    
Connecticut (7 EV) – Solid Democratic    
Delaware (3 EV) – Solid Democratic    
D.C. (3 EV) – Solid Democratic    
Florida (27 EV) – Lean Republican    
Georgia (15 EV) – Solid Republican    
Hawaii (4 EV) – Lean Democratic  
Idaho (4 EV) – Solid Republican    
Illinois (21 EV) – Solid Democratic    
Indiana (11 EV) – Solid Republican    
Iowa (7 EV) – Lean Democratic  
Kansas (6 EV) – Solid Republican  
Kentucky (8 EV) – Solid Republican    
Louisiana (9 EV) – Solid Republican  
Maine (4 EV) – Solid Democratic    
Maryland (10 EV) – Solid Democratic    
Massachusetts (12 EV) – Solid Democratic    
Michigan (17 EV) – Lean Democratic    
Minnesota (10 EV) – Lean Democratic    
Mississippi (6 EV) – Solid Republican    
Missouri (11 EV) – Lean Republican  
Montana (3 EV) – Lean Republican    
Nebraska (5 EV) – Solid Republican    
Nevada (5 EV) – Lean Democratic    
New Hampshire (4 EV) – Lean Democratic    
New Jersey (15 EV) – Solid Democratic      
New Mexico (5 EV) – Lean Democratic    
New York (31 EV) – SOLID Democratic  
North Carolina (15 EV) – Lean Republican    
North Dakota (3 EV) – Solid Republican    
Ohio (20 EV) – Lean Republican    
Oklahoma (7 EV) – Solid Republican  
Oregon (7 EV) – Lean Democratic    
Pennsylvania (21 EV) – Lean Democratic    
Rhode Island (4 EV) – Solid Democratic    
South Carolina (8 EV) – Solid Republican    
South Dakota (3 EV) – Solid Republican    
Tennessee (11 EV) – Lean Republican    
Texas (34 EV) – Solid Republican  
Utah (5 EV) – Solid Republican  
Vermont (3 EV) – Solid Democratic    
Virginia (13 EV) – Solid Republican    
Washington (11 EV) – Lean Democratic    
West Virginia (5 EV) – Lean Democratic    
Wisconsin (10 EV) – Lean Democratic    
Wyoming (3 EV) – Solid Republican  
 
As for Congressional races I wouldn’t expect much change the Democrats will lose in Georgia for sure however Florida and North Carolina will be more competitive. In the North Dean’s troopers and the Union’s will be beating on doors and galvanising the apathetic to vote for Democratic candidates while in the South the GOP will run riot effectively cancelling each other out.

[jravnsbo]

I thought the civil rights acts were signed in 1965, that is the ones you always hear about.

[jravnsbo]

AR is not that republican but it is a socially conservative state.

Hutchinson lost last year not b/c Pryor was trong or that he was GOp but b/c Hutchinson treated his ex wife poorly and people hated that.

Also Lincoln is moderate as is Huckabee, mod -right.

So a liberal can scratch AR from the list.  Clark as a fov son coud be competitive, but don't se ehim getting nomination.

[jravnsbo]

Is That A Smile, Andy? President Bush's Baghdad sojourn seems to have worked perfectly in one regard: his poll numbers jumped across the board in the days following the secret trip, the National Annenberg Election Survey has found.

The poll, conducted before and after the president’s trip, found "substantial immediate" improvement in Mr. Bush’s job approval (up from 56 percent to 61 percent), disapproval (down from 41 percent to 36 percent) and likability (up from 65 percent to 72 percent).

[jravnsbo]

Well got the report from CBS and that polling group has been used many times in the past.  It showed Bush's numbers when down at 52 and now on the up swing, with the improving economy; signing of Medicare Bill, and trip to Iraq to see the troops.

[jravnsbo]

I know that would be very hard to believe, but it MAY be true

CBS PARTISAN???   NO WAY!!!

[jravnsbo]

The kkey is IA, if Gep wins there it could even be a convention nomination with Dean/Kerry in NH, and Edwards/Clark and dare I say sharpton in SC ( 12% and 2d in latest poll, got to mention him I GUESS, sigh) and Lieberman, Clark etc in other Feb 3 contests.

It could be wide open after Feb 3

OR Dean sweeps and it is over.

[jravnsbo]

I'd say I've seen analysists predict the black turnout in SC could be as high as 49%

I've heard the poll in SC that had Sharpton in 2nd place, though, had a very high percentage of blacks polled. I didn't hear how high but I know I've heard experts say that they feel that black turnout was overestimated in that poll, and that others had Sharpton significantly lower.

[jravnsbo]

encouraging to see wide poll with Bush ahead in NH.  Not all defining this early, but with Dean close by state wise and him leading by big numbers there and Dems pounding the airwaves all year, nice to see BUSH still way ahead.

I eventually think NH will come off the tossup board and go for GOP as NH is so anti-tax and won't stomach Dean's tax proposals.

[jravnsbo]

Bring on DEAn, esp after today!  

That is if the Dems don't dump him now too.

[jravnsbo]

Yep but so do we ; just different reasons.

[jravnsbo]

I haven't seen any Democrats say that there will be a big Dem win in the EC.  

[jravnsbo]

PA Polls out this week have Bush over 50% vs everyone and 49% vs Dean.  

So yes Bush can still Carry PA , it was very close in 2000 and without PA, Dems are done.

Ok, I'll take a stab at objectivity.  The Dem nominee will have a much tougher time keeping the states Al Gore won by 1/2 of one percent - Wisconsin, Oregon, New Mexico, and Iowa -  than George Bush will have protecting his closest states of Florida and New Hampshire.  Bush will run much tougher in California and New york than he did in 2000.  He won't win those two states but will force Dems to spend resources there they didn't have to spend in 2000.  

If Dean is the nominee, Bush carries Minn, Pa, as well.

Bush carry Pennsylvania? After lifting the foreign steel tariffs? That would be quite an accomplishment.

[jravnsbo]

Honestly I've been wondering why Europeans care so much about our electiuons.  seems like we have more european democrats than american ones.

Not a big deal, but we just don't see the reverse, Americans could care less about European elections for the most part.

Sadly, I don't think they are jokes. Why would anyone join a forum like this with the sole purpose of making jokes?

[jravnsbo]

Humm I have some British friends too and they want Bush to win to keep the strong relationship with Blair.

REELECT PRESIDENT BUSH!

[jravnsbo]

No, some are some aren't I have lotso f friend son both sides of the aisle and across political spectrum across the world.

Humm I have some British friends too and they want Bush to win to keep the strong relationship with Blair.

REELECT PRESIDENT BUSH!

Well, that depends on if Blair can get re-elected himself.

And they always say that you become friends with people who are most like you. So OF COURSE your British friends want Bush to win again....they are REPUBLICANS like you! (or think like a Republican anyway) lol

[jravnsbo]

Why would bush give up arkansas, he won it last time.  Plus it is socially conservative state like Bush, and Dean will definately not play well there.

[jravnsbo]

made afew seperate folders in my favorites for national politics and newspapers by states and  such.

Just make sub categories.

[jravnsbo]

Well for one not a lot of people are focused on General election yet.  It is a ways off and still waiting for Dems to pick a nominee.

[jravnsbo]

oh my you guys sometimes leae yourselves wide open to a good slam

a democrat lazy, no come on!   he he

[jravnsbo]

I wasn't talking about polls here, but real polls.  In recent weeks PA, FL, MO, NH and many others have come out with Bush in a huge lead over Dean or Clark or whomever.

I noticed before when I checked, that after, what I think was hundreds of predictions, the median was actually that every single state would vote like they did in 2000. Points at a lack of fantasy, don't you think? According to Jvravnsbo it is leaning republican now, so maybe people are really making predictions now!

[jravnsbo]

Yes last re-elected was in 1999, and I guess that is if you don't count FL being in the deep south.

However the GOP did just elect governors in SC, MS, AL, AR (Hey this was a reelection in 2002) so to just say reelection is a bit misleading.

At the moment it looks as though Bush is polling worse in the Deep South than in most of the rest of the U.S(and this came as a shock to me. Mind you the last governor in the Deep South to be re-elected was Mike Foster in 1999...)
My map is also based on the presumption that the Dems will fight over the economy and possibly causalities in Iraq, not on social issues(and if they want to win that's what they have to do)

[jravnsbo]

Especially when Dean says we need to stop talking about "God, guns and Gays" and then comes out last weeka nd says he will talk more about his religion int he south.  He announced that.

FLIP FLOP--people are and will see through that.

In 2000, Bush carried 72% of congressional districts in the 11 state South - almost half of those with 60% plus percentages.  This was against southernor Gore.  Don't expect a Howard Dean to do nearly as well against Bush in 2004.  However, republicans would welcome the Dems throwing as many resources as they want to at the South.  A little over half of the Southern congressional districts represented by Dems in the South were carried by Bush.  In other words, southern whites, while they sometimes vote for moderate southerners at the local level, are presidential Republicans through and through.

[jravnsbo]

Plus as I've said they are voting for CONSERVATIVE to MODERATE dems in congress, Dean is neither.

Here is a story about Kentucky and how the state Dem party is struggling, esp note how they are strugggling with the national parties stands ona lot of issues.

---
Democrats Losing the Lease on Their Old Kentucky Home
 
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 POLITICS  
 
 KENTUCKY  
 
 KENTUCKY DEMOCRATIC PARTY POLITICS  
 
 DEMOCRATIC PARTY  
 

 

   
 
 
 
 
 
   
By John M. Glionna, Times Staff Writer


LA GRANGE, Ky. — Dethroned Democrat John Black stands on his front porch and gazes ruefully across the street at the City Hall building that had been his life. The longtime public official was voted out of office last month — just one victim of a Republican fervor that has galloped clear across this horse-breeding state.

"It's over," he says softly, pacing in his socks on a cold Kentucky morning. After serving 10 years as mayor and two terms as judge executive, an office similar to county supervisor, Black sighs, "My political career is history, all because I'm a Democrat. And that's just a crying shame."

Kentucky is among a handful of states close to the Deep South — including West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas — that Bill Clinton carried in 1992 and 1996, but that George W. Bush won in 2000. Experts predict that the Democrats probably need to win some of them back to capture the presidency in 2004. .

Democrats once held unquestioned sway in Kentucky. But no more. The state recently elected its first GOP governor in 32 years. The GOP also has made gains from the coal fields in the east to the white-fenced horse stables of suburban Lexington. And this political transformation in Kentucky illustrates the hurdles Democrats will face as they battle to win moderate-to-conservative states in next year's presidential election.

Politicos like Black now view their national party as a liability. They have a stern word of advice for a Howard Dean or any other Democratic presidential nominee who might come calling to reclaim a state that went for Bush: You're in trouble.

The state's 4 million residents — 91% of them white, many the direct descendants of the original 18th century pioneering landowners — have rallied behind the Republican agenda of tax cuts, a well-funded military and increased domestic security.

Meanwhile, local Democrats say they have been hurt by the positions their national leaders take on divisive social issues, such as support for same-sex unions and abortion rights.

"The Republicans are strong in many of these states and becoming increasingly so," said Hastings Wyman, editor of a bimonthly newsletter, Southern Political Report. "These places are conservative on social issues, hawkish on foreign affairs — and that plays into Republican hands."

Even loyal Kentucky Democrats predict that Dean, the former Vermont governor broad-brushed by Republicans as an East Coast liberal, would turn off voters here if he emerges as the party's nominee. They say more moderate candidates, such as retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark or Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, would fare better, but still lose to Bush.

"George Bush is more popular in Kentucky than any state outside Texas," said Paul Blanchard, formerly of the Center for Kentucky History and Politics at Eastern Kentucky University. "Nothing he does with the economy or in Iraq seems to diminish his popularity here."

In Gratz, tobacco farmer Ricky Fitzgerald gives voice to such attitudes, saying the Republicans speak his mind. "I'll be a Bush man until the cows come home. I was so sick of Clinton and the Democrats who ride that same donkey."

Kentucky's religious bent also seemingly works against the Democrats. The state ranks eighth nationally in the number of churches per person, with 18 for every 10,000 residents. And surveys in recent years have shown that church attendance has become an indicator of voting preferences — those who go to services at least once a week are far more likely to back Bush than those who rarely attend.

In 1992, Clinton was able to win in Kentucky by capitalizing on a faltering national economy. He won it again in 1996, but by a narrower margin.

"Clinton talked about a middle-class tax cut and presented himself as a political moderate," said Wyman. "He was a Southern candidate with a Southern running mate. That played well in Kentucky and elsewhere in the region."

But Kentucky residents soured on Clinton and, more recently, Democratic Gov. Paul E. Patton after well-publicized sex scandals. "The Democrats have worn out their welcome," said La Grange resident Meredith Recktenwald. "It started with Clinton and continued right on through ex-Gov. Patton."

Patton's last year in office was clouded by controversy after he first denied, then acknowledged, an affair with a Kentucky businesswoman.

A Democratic fiefdom for roughly 100 years after the Civil War, Kentucky became more receptive to the GOP in presidential elections and some Senate and House races in the 1960s, when the national Democratic Party shifted to the left. But for the most part, state and local offices remained solidly Democratic.

Registered Democrats, in fact, still outnumber Republicans in the state 60% to 40%. But now, many of those Democrats routinely cross party lines when casting their ballot.

"People here didn't leave the Democrats — the party deserted the people of Kentucky," said Paducah Mayor William F. Paxton, a registered Democrat who regularly votes for Republican presidential candidates and in November voted for the new Republican governor, Ernie Fletcher. "With their gay rights and abortions, they just became too darned liberal."

Kentucky state Sen. Tim Shaughnessy, another Democrat, plans to disassociate himself from the national party during his run for reelection next year. "The Democrats are beginning to look like an extremist fringe group," he said. "There's no clear message being delivered — not here and not on the national level."

Shaughnessy is now in the minority in the state Senate, something that would have been hard to imagine in 1988, when Democrats controlled the chamber by nearly a 5-to-1 margin. Republicans now outnumber the Democrats 22 to 16. The GOP took over the chamber in 1999, when two state senators switched parties to join the Republicans.

Democrats still enjoy a comfortable majority, 65 to 35, in the state House. But with help from their new governor, Republicans are confident they can chip away at that margin.

At the federal level, the picture looks bleak for Kentucky Democrats. The state's two senators and five of its six congressmen are Republicans.

Rep. Ken Lucas, the sole Democrat, recently decided not to run for reelection. If they lose that seat next year, Kentucky Democrats will have no voice whatsoever in the nation's capital — ending an era that has seen the state elect at least one Democrat every year since 1828.

Running for Lucas' seat is Democrat Nick Clooney, a newspaper columnist and father of actor George Clooney. The elder Clooney is already being skewered for his family's leftist politics. Carped one state Republican voter in an Internet political chat room: "Given how far left George Looney is, I'm betting Daddy is also a kooky liberal."

On the national front, Kentucky Republicans claim Dean is so far out of line with voters here that he'd lose a "whisper campaign" on just his support of civil unions for gay couples.

"The Democrats' Hollywood left-wing party isn't registering a geehaw with our voters," said Ellen Williams, chairwoman of the Kentucky Republican Party. "The only way a Howard Dean could win votes here is not to speak — to just smile and shake hands. The moment he opens his mouth, he loses voters."

One voter Dean himself says the Democrats have lost is the middle-class Southern white male, a defection party loyalists acknowledge could loom large in next year's presidential race.

"Howard Dean was right — we need that good ol' boy in the pickup truck. Especially in Kentucky," Shaughnessy said. "Because that guy lives in every county across this state. The Democratic Party used to be his party, but not anymore. And we've got to find a way to get him back."

The Democrats haven't lost John Black — not yet. Since leaving office, he's tried selling real estate. But he's not happy. "I want to stay in public service, but it seems the only way to do that is to change parties," he said.

"People tell me to move to another county, but the way I see it there is no place to go. They're all turning Republican."

[jravnsbo]

I would definately consider Arkansas int eh deep south.

What do you define as the deep south?