links for 2010-01-18

The FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecasting Model, which correctly predicted the outcome of all 35 Senate races in 2008, now regards Republican Scott Brown as a 74 percent favorite to win the Senate seat in Massachusetts on the basis of new polling from ARG, Research 2000 and InsiderAdvantage which show worsening numbers for Brown's opponent, Martha Coakley. We have traditionally categorized races in which one side has between a 60 and 80 percent chance of winning as "leaning" toward that candidate, and so that is how we categorize this race now: Lean GOP. Nevertheless, there is a higher-than-usual chance of large, correlated errors in the polling, such as were observed in NY-23 and the New Hampshire Democratic primary; the model hedges against this risk partially, but not completely.
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Handwriting on the wall?

In an interview on Monday, Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, who opposes the Senate bill because of provisions related to insurance coverage of abortions, said: "House members will not vote for the Senate bill. There's no interest in that."

When the idea was suggested at a meeting of the House Democratic Caucus last week, Mr. Stupak said, "It went over like a lead balloon."

"Why would any House member vote for the Senate bill, which is loaded with special-interest provisions for certain states?" Mr. Stupak asked. "That's not health care."
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No, it isn't and Dem House members would be fools to ram this through should Scott Brown win.

Republican Scott Brown holds a lead in all 18 alternative models of the Massachusetts Senate race polls, now including all polls released through 6:00 p.m. Monday. Our standard trend estimate puts the race at a 6.2 point Brown lead over Democrat Martha Coakley. The less sensitive alternative linear model puts the Brown lead at 7.3 points. Across all models, Brown leads by between 1.0 and 8.9 points. Three quarters of the estimates have Brown ahead by 4 points or more.

Brown built this lead over the past week of polling with only some tentative sign of the trend flattening over the weekend. Of course the last available polls were completed Sunday evening so we do not know if any movement has occurred on Monday.
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Truly amazing campaign……

Massachusetts isn’t the only “blue” state where Republican Senate candidates are nipping at the heels of Democrats. According to Rasmussen,

Senator Barbara Boxer is now the latest Democratic incumbent to find herself in a tightening race for reelection.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely California voters finds Boxer with narrow leads over her three leading Republican challengers, including newcomer Tom Campbell.

Against each of the three Republicans, vying to oppose here, Ma’am holds at 46%. My gal Carly does the best at 43% (didn’t I see a poll last week that had the Massachuetts race at 43-46?). Tom Campbell, fresh from switching races (he had been barnstorming the state as a candidate for Governor, but had not been polling well against Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner in the contest for taking on Democrat Jerry Brown) is at 42, with longtime candidate Chuck DeVore at 40%.

Methinks Chuck might do well to shop for an open Congressional seat.
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Yep….

The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders, scrambling for a backup plan to rescue their health care legislation if Republicans win the special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday, have begun laying the groundwork to ask House Democrats to approve the Senate version of the bill and send it directly to President Obama for his signature.
A victory by the Republican, Scott Brown, in Massachusetts would deny Democrats the 60th vote they need in the Senate to surmount Republican filibusters and advance the health legislation.

And with the race too close to call, Democrats are considering several options to save the bill, which could be a major factor in how they fare in this year’s midterm elections.

Some Democrats suggested that even if their candidate, Martha Coakley, scraped out a narrow victory on Tuesday, they might need to ask House Democrats to speed the legislation to the president’s desk, especially if lawmakers who had supported the bill begin to waver…..

There has been a wider than normal range of polling results in the last two weeks from the Massachusetts Senate special election. This has been further clouded by a number of leaked internal polls and polling by relatively unknown and unproven pollsters, some partisan but others not. And most importantly, the rapid shifts in the race, reflected across all the polls, makes this a fast moving target. So let's take a moment to consider what we could reasonably conclude based on the data.

But no matter how you slice the data, the only reasonable conclusion is that Scott Brown has moved from well behind to a lead somewhere between 4 and 11 points.

The chart above shows all the polls we have available as of 12:36 a.m. Monday morning. That includes new PPP and Pajamas Media/CrossTarget polls released late Sunday evening. The chart also includes the leaked polls, mostly from the Coakley campaign but one from Brown as well.
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Stay tuned – it will be quite a ride tomorrow.