RedState and Federalist Roundup

I owe longtime readers here some explanation and apology – my work at both RedState and The Federalist is now exclusive, at least when first published, to those sites, and while I post links on Twitter and Facebook, I tend to forget sometimes to post links back here at the old stomping grounds. (I may well close the comments section here too soon, since the lack of activity means a high spam-to-real-comments ratio, and since most regular commenters by now know how to find me elsewhere).
Here’s my most recent posts over the past month, all of them on matters of politics and/or history:
RedState:
Ferguson, Missouri and the Fog of Partisanship and Ideology
93% of Democratic Senate or Governor Candidates Are White
Where I Was On September 11 (a repost of the annual remembrance)
Is The Democratic Party Proud of its History of Slavery & Segregation?
Mid-September Polls Are Not The Last Word On Senate Races
The Federalist:
History Is Not On The Democrats’ Side In 2016
Presidential Battleground States: A History

Mid-September Polls Are Not The Last Word On Senate Races

RS: Mid-September Polls Are Not The Last Word On Senate Races
The perennial question about election polls is back again, if ever it left: how far can we trust them? Should we disregard all other evidence but what the current polling of individual Senate races tells us – which is, at this writing, that if the election was held today, Republicans would gain 6 seats in the Senate to hold a narrow 51-48 majority? As usual, a little historical perspective is in order. It is mid-September, with just over seven weeks to Election Day, and as discussed below, all the fundamental signs show that this is at least a mild Republican “wave” year. A review of the mid-September polls over the last six Senate election cycles, all of which ended in at least a mild “wave” for one party, shows that it is common for the “wave party” to win a few races in which it trailed in mid-September – sometimes more than a few races, and sometimes races in which there appeared to be substantial leads, and most frequently against the other party’s incumbents. Whereas it is very uncommon for the wave party to lose a polling lead, even a slim one, after mid-September – it has happened only three times, one of those was a tied race rather than a lead, and another involved the non-wave party replacing its candidate on the ballot with a better candidate. If these historical patterns hold in 2014, we would therefore expect Republicans to win all the races in which they currently lead plus two to four races in which they are currently behind, netting a gain of 8 to 10 Senate seats.

Continue reading Mid-September Polls Are Not The Last Word On Senate Races

93% Of Democratic Senate Or Governor Candidates Are White

RS: 93% Of Democratic Senate Or Governor Candidates Are White
The last primaries ended last night, and down to defeat in the Rhode Island Governor’s race went Providence Mayor Angel Tavares, the last chance for the Democrats to nominate a Hispanic candidate for one of the two big statewide offices (Senate and Governor) – while Republicans will be running two Hispanic Governors for re-election, Democrats will not have a single Hispanic candidate heading a statewide ticket. We can revisit my analysis from May of the demographic breakdown of the Democrats’ statewide candidates, now that we have final results. In the 71 races they are contesting, 66 of the 71 candidates the Democrats are running (93%) are white, 56 of the 71 (79%) are male, and 53 of 71 (75%) are white males. That could spell trouble for the Democrats’ hopes of turning out a voting base that is disproportionately non-white and female. For all the Democrats’ rhetoric about race, they are running fewer non-white candidates than the Republicans are, and fewer in races they are seriously contesting.

Continue reading 93% Of Democratic Senate Or Governor Candidates Are White