As a political prognosticator, I am at somewhat of a disadvantage this year because I live in Pennsylvania where sanity prevails. According to a recent Franklin & Marshall University poll, the incumbent Republican Governor Tom Corbett is losing to Democrat Tom Wolf by a whopping 25 points.
The poll found the incumbent trailing his Democratic challenger by 49 percent to 24 percent, with one in four registered voters still undecided.
Pennsylvania has never voted out an incumbent governor, so these poll results should be stunning. Something less decisive but related is happening in Michigan, where Governor Rick Snyder has fallen behind in the polls to a relatively unknown former congressman. Indeed, if you don’t add special sauce, the polls are very positive for the Democratic Party. What’s bringing down their prospects in prognostications are things like fundamentals and historical markers. But when you ask people how they intend to vote, things look fairly positive. The generic Congressional vote is still positive for the Democrats, with the most recent poll giving them a five point advantage. The most recent poll out of Wisconsin has Governor Scott Walker losing and even Rasmussen has Sen. Mark Pryor narrowly ahead in Arkansas.
Where I live, the Republicans have never been more unpopular, and I’m trying not to let that distort my analysis. It is not a normal thing for an incumbent governor here to lose, let alone by more than twenty points. Things are not as dire for the GOP in other states, and I recognize that. But the wave I am seeing is not one that pushes against the Democrats. At all.