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Thursday, September 11, 2008
Alan Abramowitz’ bar bet: Barack Obama by 54 percent
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democrats hyperventilating about the September rise of Republican John McCain should find a paper bag and relax, says Alan Abramowitz.
Barack Obama has this one in the can, the Emory University political scientist says. Abramowitz’ call for November: A popular vote of 54.3 percent for Obama versus 45.7 percent for McCain.
Which would “certainly” translate into an electoral college victory, the professor says.
Abramowitz says he’s got a “time for change” data model that fits the popular vote winner, within two percentage points, for the last five presidential elections.
The keys: The state of the economy, presidential approval ratings and the number of terms a party has been in power.
Details will be published in the October issue of “PS: Political Science and Politics.” Some excerpts:
— “While factors outside of the model, such as rising partisan polarization and resistance to an African-American candidate by some white voters may result in a somewhat smaller popular vote margin for the Democratic nominee, the combination of an unpopular Republican incumbent in the White House, a weak economy and a second-term election make a Democratic victory in November all but certain.”
— “Economic conditions have a substantial impact on the outcomes of presidential elections. For every additional percentage point of real annual [Gross Domestic Product] growth during the second quarter, the candidate of the president’s party can expect to receive an additional 0.6 percent of the vote. Thus, the difference between running with a stagnant economy and running with a booming economy is substantial.”
— “A candidate from the president’s party running in a second- or later-term election suffers a penalty of more than 4 percentage points compared with a candidate running in a first-term election… Regardless of the popularity of the president or the state of the economy, it is simply much more difficult for the president’s party to retain its hold on the White House.”
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Poll: McCain steps out to an 18-point lead over Obama in Georgia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A poll by InsiderAdvantage/Poll Position says that Republican presidential nominee John McCain has jumped out to an 18-point lead over Democrat Barack Obama in Georgia.
Click here for the details released by InsiderAdvantage. McCain is getting 73 percent of the white vote in Georgia, while only 19 percent say they prefer Obama. McCain is also supported by 61 percent of those who describe themselves as independent.
But the big difference is among party stalwarts. Ninety-four percent of Republicans polled said they would choose McCain. But only 76 percent of Democrats said the same about Obama.
The poll of 506 likely voters was taken Wednesday, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. No crosstabs of the survey were made available.
On its web site, WSB-TV quotes Matt Towery of InsiderAdvantage as saying that the steep decline for the Obama campaign likely explains why the candidate is moving resources out of Georgia.
Poll Position, by the way, is the new polling arm that InsiderAdvantage is launching.
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ICYMI: Powell residency case goes to Supreme Court, Barr wants Paul on his ticket, and perhaps a last word on pigs and lipstick
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just in case you didn’t see these:
— The Savannah Morning News reports that the Georgia Supreme Court has agreed to hear Secretary of State Karen Handel’s appeal of lower-court ruling that reversed her decision to remove Democrat Jim Powell from the ballot in the race for the fourth district of the Public Service Commission. Powell, a Democrat, claims partisan politics influenced Handel, a Republican, to disqualify him - a charge Handel denies.
— On Wednesday, former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul urged voters to vote for third-party candidates in the presidential contest. Any third-party candidate. An offended Libertarian candidate Bob Barr didn’t attend the Paul press conference.
Nonetheless, Barr invited Paul to be his running mate. My AJC colleague Aaron Gould Sheinin has the full story.
— In what it called “a highly scientific survey of the Congressional Record,” the newspaper Roll Call counted up the number of times that pigs and lipstick were mentioned in the same breath by current members of Congress.
Sixteen, the newspaper reported. Six times by Democrats, and 10 times by Republicans. Apparently it’s a Southern thing. Our own U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland was responsible for three of the GOP references.
For Westmoreland, two of the three times were during energy policy debates. So far as is known, presidential campaigns were offended.
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MSNBC weighs in on Rick Goddard
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On a radio/Internet/cable TV program in Macon last week, 8th District congressional candidate Rick Goddard called a black MSNBC reporter “uppity” for posing to Newt Gingrich a question about Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s qualifications.
MSNBC answered last night.
Keith Olbermann, back to full-time commentating after being dumped as one of two anchor’s for the network’s political news nights, declared Goddard — who’s challenging Democratic incumbent Jim Marshall of Macon — to be “the worst person in the world.”
At least on Wednesday.
How much weight the left-of-center Olbermann swings in middle Georgia is open to dispute. But you can see the clip below.
On the same topic, Goddard did pick up some cover from Herman Cain, the former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who now hosts a talk show on WSB Radio.
Cain, who is African-American, was questioned by Travis Fain of the Macon Telegraph:
Telegraph: Can you use the word uppity to refer to anyone who’s black and have it not be — is that automatically a racial term or a racist term?
Cain: No. It is not automatically a racist or a racial term… I’m not familiar with that incident, but the word uppity, it does not suggest that it’s being used in a racial context in my opinion. I know some uppity white people. Okay? Just like I know some uppity black people. It is a term, in my opinion, and I grew up here in Atlanta, that refers to anyone who thinks that they are all that and a bag of chips, as my son would say.
Telegraph: Would Barack and Michelle Obama qualify?
Cain: As being uppity?
Telegraph: Yes sir.
Cain: Some people might think that they do, but I don’t really see that. … These labels, in the end, I think, do more harm than they do good and I don’t think that any of these labels… have any real solid meaning to them.
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A sobering start to the political season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond just issued this:
The Georgia Department of Labor announced today that 59,090 laid-off workers filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance benefits in August, an increase of 72.1 percent from August of 2007.
From July to August, the initial claims declined from 59,165, a drop of one-tenth of one percent.
“The August increase is the largest over-the-year increase in initial claims since October of 2001, when we began experiencing significant layoffs following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” Thurmond said.
