David Wasserman and the folks at 538.com continue to ring the warning bell that the Clinton campaign should be more concerned about Pennsylvania. The immediate reason why they’ve gone back to this topic now is the revelation that Clinton is spending big advertising bucks in every state that was close in 2012 except the Keystone State.
The campaign and an allied super PAC have reserved $137 million of ads across eight states — yet they’ve conspicuously left out the state that might be likeliest to tip the 2016 election: Pennsylvania.
Michigan and Wisconsin were absent from the list, as well, but the Keystone State is the most curious Rust Belt omission.
For context, Clinton is spending $15.6 million in Colorado and nothing in Pennsylvania, but Obama won both states by the exact same 5.4% margin in 2012. Only Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia were decided by less. In fact, Clinton is spending big money is states that were less competitive than PA, like New Hampshire ($8.8. million), Iowa ($11.3 million), and Nevada ($13.1 million).
However, when contacted by Wasserman, the Clinton Team seemed assured that they weren’t making a mistake.
To be fair, pro-Clinton strategists aren’t simply throwing darts at the map. The Clinton campaign employs a phalanx of pollsters and targeting experts, and aides hint that its sophisticated data analytics contradict recent public polls depicting a very tight contest in Pennsylvania. Asked directly about its lack of an ad buy, the Clinton campaign declined comment except to confirm that it has placed field staff in the state.
Now, I have been mentioning recently that Arizona looks like a swing state, and we now have some new evidence for it in a poll done by Phoenix-based OH Predictive Insights. It’s a good-sized sample of 1,060 Arizonans, and it finds Clinton holding a 46.5%-42.2% lead. This has the state’s Republicans spooked.
Mitt Romney carried Arizona by nine points in 2012.
“It’s shocking to think that a Democratic presidential candidate would carry Arizona if the election were held today, considering that every statewide office in Arizona is held by a Republican as well as significant majorities in the Arizona House and Senate,” said Wes Gullett, a partner of OH Predictive Insight, GOP political consultant and longtime confidant to U.S. Sen. John McCain.
“Arizona should be a reliable red state,” Gullett said.
I haven’t been willing to predict that Clinton will actually win Arizona, but I have been suggesting that it will be close enough to make it worth contesting. This poll suggests that I’m right because, given the margin of error, it shows a toss-up race.
Pennsylvania also has a number of swing House districts and an important Senate race. Clinton should absolutely target it even if it were completely in the bag for her.
Arizona? Well, the Sec of State will have a solution for THAT if it becomes necessary. Just look at what they managed in the primary. LOL
I’m going to flog Sam Wang again. because he has a handy chart of “tipping point” states that indicate which will have the greatest relative significance to the outcome of the presidential race:
NH Clinton +2% 100.0
FL Clinton +3% 91.2
OR Clinton +4.5% 80.8
IA Clinton +3% 79.9
NV Clinton +7% 77.6
CO Clinton +5% 74.0
VA Clinton +3% 73.3
MN Clinton +5% 71.0
OH Clinton +5% 62.3
NM Clinton +8% 52.3
PA Clinton +1% 49.9
AZ Tied 48.3
NC Trump +2% 11.8
MS Trump +3% 7.7
MI Clinton +10% 7.3
NJ Clinton +11%
Note that NH (surprise!) is at the top, and PA is way down there with AZ; part of this has to do with an implicit assumption that state polls are not truly independent. A two percent drop in Arizona correlates with a comparable drop in other states, in other words. I think these are always worthwhile exercises to consider. There’s also plenty of time before election day. Clinton’s campaign staff might just regard PA as being something of an outlier. Recognizing that the central part of the state acts and votes like West Virginia, the metro areas are still a disproportionately large part of the state population.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Clinton is probably trying to maximize her coattails.
Maximizing coattails doesn’t explain this at all. Clinton coattails would be very important in PA and not very important in CO, but she’s advertising in CO and not PA.
If AZ ends up being that close, I wonder what TX will look like on election day. I expect Trump to carry it fairly easily but I wonder if we cut into the GOP lead there maybe even single digits.
The last time PA went GOP was in 1984, and no trend in the past decade to suggest that it’s leaning right anymore than ever. The former seems to be the metric team HRC is using; otherwise they would be spending in WI.
Much more recent GOP wins in CO, FL, IA, NH, and NV. Of those, only IA has been consistently trending right in the past decade. The others are more of a mixed bag. However, HRC isn’t a mountain states type of candidate; OTOH, Trump isn’t either. Those are the states to watch with NV being closer to taking over the “ahow me” status that MO once enjoyed than the others.
Kerry won PA by 2.5, Gore by 4. Obama only by 5, which suggests it is tracking closer to the National Number than it has in the past.
The Cook PVI from 2014 is D+1 for Pennsylvania (even for Virginia, R+1 for Ohio, R+2 for Florida).
Is that 0.5? Else your numbers make no sense.
In ’08 Obama won by 10+; so, can’t say that I see that trend. Low turnout in 2000. Vote totals for Kerry in ’04 and Obama in ’12 were similar. Votes for McCain and Romney were off by one hundred thousand plus from those for GWH in ’04.
When I spoke of voting trends in PA and the other states being discussed, I was referring to all statewide and congressional elections. IA has been trending Republican and PA, while mixed, is less Republican than it was as recently as 2000.
Ariona is the Democratic Version of Pennsylvnia.
People never both to look shit up. It drive me crazy.
And so:
Arizona Republic, June 13 2004. Bush 44, Kerry 41. Final margin, Bush +10.4
PPP, June 26th 2012: Obama 49, Romney 46
There are other examples of Arizona looking close in May, June and July.
And then republicans come home, and it isn’t that close.
See Pennsylvania for the opposite trend.
Yep. However, I still think it’s smart to contest AZ for laying infrastructure for when it is feasible to grab. Anyway, this is going to go exactly as I said in a comment a day or so ago re: PA. Media will pretend it’s in play on their maps, and it’ll be 5+ for the D. 2012 was unusual because of Sandy. I’d say it’ll be between 5-8 for Clinton.
This is not ’00 and ’04: there is so much money you don’t have to triage the way Gore did in 2000.
Cook this morning wrote he thinks Trump is mostly holding the GOP base. If true this is another election destined to be fought between the 45 yard lines. Frankly it is disappointing: but too many just don’t understand that Clinton is a bad candidate.
Beware though – the conventions are really going to scramble this race.
I don’t think Clinton is a great candidate but I’m also not sure of the relevance. Would you agree that there were no great candidates in the Democratic race this cycle? Is it really the candidate that makes the difference or is it greater upheaval within the electorate due to external factors?
Look at 2008. Economic collapse + Obama + McCain/Palin and he only won by 7%. Without the upheaval of a cycle like 2008 why do you presume that a different candidate (Bernie?) would lead to a different result?
RighteousFuryTM
A more traditional/conventional candidate with decent campaign chops in ’08 probably wouldn’t have done any better. Not that such a candidate was on offer, but had there been, McCain wouldn’t have chosen Palin.
HRC wouldn’t have done any better either. The status and status backlash vote for BHO and HRC would roughly have been about the same. Whether BHO’s better campaign chops added more points to his total is one of those things that can’t be known. Bottom line is that even factoring in all those ’08 advantages for the Dem nominee, it’s still remarkable that a black man won by 7 points.
Yes, I think you’re right. I don’t think HRC would have done any better and probably would not have won a state like Indiana.
Agree — HRC wouldn’t have carried IN (and probably not NC either); so, her EC count would have been lower than BHO’s even if her popular vote percentage had been similar. Time for a change was too strong in ’08 for almost any Democratic nominee to lose. That’s why HRC carried on her primary campaign to the bitter end. (And was fiscally highly irresponsible in doing so. Help with paying off those debts was one of HRC’s demands for endorsing Obama. That’s one yuuge difference between
Bernie’s ’16 campaign and HRC’s ’08 campaign.)
Hillary Clinton is the second best candidate of my lifetime. I’d easily prefer her over Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Dukakis, Mondale, or Carter. She’s behind Obama, but that’s a high bar.
I boggle.
No accounting for taste. To be fair, Mondale and Dukakis weren’t good campaigners, but neither were they so over-rehearsed that they came off as inauthentic and dishonest.
Gore’s major funding handicaps were the period between securing the nomination (March 2000) and the convention (August 14-17) and no “victory funds” to draw on for the post-election recount, etc. Gore and GWB accepted federal funds for the general election. However, Gore didn’t have primary cycle campaign infrastructure in place for the general as GWB did.
Federal Funds were relatively small, so campaigns had to triage. Both Bush and Gore were limited, it is true, but it meant the campaigns were focused on fewer states. G
When you have a Billion Dollars to spend, you can afford to build organizations in more states.
If we’re honest, only a few states were in play in ’00. Gore’s data and instincts were correct in that WJC’s “antics” were going to hurt him with the more family values oriented voters, but he didn’t construct a plan to compensate for that.
It meant he had to look outside the ‘bible belt.’ To purple states. What he did was almost the opposite of what was required.
Setting up his campaign HQs in TN shouldn’t have been used as an opportunity to pitch his “family values” — hint, hint, I’m not like Bill. TN for his HQs should have been merely a matter of following tradition. He could have added that it would give him more time and opportunities to become reacquainted with his fellow Tennesseans, but left it at that. Thus, he left himself wide open for media critiques of his cynical calculations that weren’t totally unfair.
Rationally, Tennessee should have been placed in the lean GOP category before Gore began his campaign. Therefore, the small “purple” states were precious and any misstep there could be critical.
That nasty primary campaign he ran in NH was ill advised. A primary win if it costs the state in the general election is a bad deal. While it wouldn’t have looked great for Gore to lose the NH primary, his win in IA was strong and the contests after NH favored him enough that a slim win for Bradley in NH was unlikely to change the dynamics of the race. (Hell, HRC coming off what for practical purposes was a tie in IA and then a huge loss in NH managed to shrug that off.)
Choosing Lieberman was part of that doubling down on “family values.” Exactly where Gore thought Lieberman as the messenger was supposed to help him beats me.
So, how much money did he put into OH before recognizing it was a lost cause? How much went into the TN that should have been recognized as more or less hopeless before he began his campaign? Then they moved on to FL. Not a bad decision based on the electorate, but not cheap and Jeb! was the governor.
Meanwhile, he let CO, NH, and NV (and almost NM) get away. Only needed one of those three.
Disagree. Put the dollars into down ticket races that have better odds. Democrats keep going for the trickle down effect and Republicans are going with the bubble up strategy. If the GOP could figure out how to manufacture a decent POTUS candidate, they would have it all.
The convention will be held in Philadelphia. That’s a huge amount of free advertising. They may believe there’s no need for anything else.
Maybe Pennsylvania is already “fixed”.
OT: FREDDIE GRAY JOINS THE LIST OF MURDERED BLACK PEOPLE WHO NO ONE ACTUALLY MURDERED, APPARENTLY
Damon Young, 6/23/16
Officer Caesar Goodson, the driver of the police van where Freddie Gray was intentionally given a “rough ride” — an act that severed his spinal cord, placed him in a coma, and killed him — was found not guilty on each of the charges (second degree “depraved heart” murder, three different counts of manslaughter, assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office) stemming from Gray’s death. He is the third officer charged in Gray’s death to escape conviction. Three more still await trial, but convictions for any of them seem extremely unlikely now.
Naturally, this series of events leads you to believe that no one actually killed Freddie Gray. Which, of course, seems preposterous. After all, his spinal cord was severed, he was placed in a coma, and he did die as a result of the injuries he received while in that van. Someone or a group of someones must’ve done this to him. But its only preposterous if you fail to realize that it’s not without precedent. American history is full of instances of Black people 1) getting murdered, 2) having their murderers be known to the public, and 3) having those murders carried out in public with no legal consequence for the crime. Sometimes it’s done by officers of the law. Sometimes it’s done by neighborhood watchmen. Sometimes it’s done by crowds of people. And sometimes — like with the castration, burning, flaying, and lynching of Jesse Washington — the murder becomes a festive and communal event, complete with food, music, souvenirs, and commemorative postcards.
Of course, if you’re no one; if you’re a thing that exists but doesn’t actually matter — which is how these dead Black people were regarded by their killers — no one can murder you.
If your opening sentence about Affirmative Action isn’t
“White women are its largest beneficiary”
Then I know that you are not interested in having a serious discussion.
…………………………………………..
White women benefit most from affirmative action — and are among its fiercest opponents
Updated by Victoria M. Massie on June 23, 2016, 12:00 p.m. EST
The University of Texas Austin was Abigail Fisher’s dream school. Fisher, from Sugar Land, Texas, a wealthy Houston suburb, earned a 3.59 GPA in high school and scored an 1180 on the SATs.
Not bad, but not enough for the highly selective UT Austin in fall 2008; Fisher’s dreams were dashed when she was denied admission.
In response, Fisher sued. Her argument? That applicants of color, whose racial backgrounds were included as a component of the university’s holistic review process, were less-qualified students and had displaced her.
Students graduating in the top 10 percent of any Texas high school are granted an automatic spot at UT Austin. Other students are evaluated through a holistic review process including a race-blind review of essays and creating a personal achievement score based on leadership potential, honors and awards, work experience, and special circumstances that include socioeconomic considerations such as race.
A few are accepted through provisional slots that include attending a summer program prior to the fall. One black student, four Latino students, and 42 white students with lower scores than Fisher were accepted under these terms. Also rejected were 168 African-American and Latino students with better scores than Fisher.
……………………………………………………
A 1995 report by the California Senate Government Organization Committee found that white women held a majority of managerial jobs (57,250) compared with African Americans (10,500), Latinos (19,000), and Asian Americans (24,600) after the first two decades of affirmative action in the private sector. In 2015, a disproportionate representation of white women business owners set off concerns that New York state would not be able to bridge a racial gap among public contractors.
A 1995 report by the Department of Labor found that 6 million women overall had advances at their job that would not have been possible without affirmative action. The percentage of women physicians tripled between 1970 and 2002, from 7.6 percent to 25.2 percent, and in 2009 women were receiving a majority of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, according to the American Association of University Women. To be clear, these numbers include women of all races; however, breaking down affirmative action beneficiaries by race and gender seems to be rare in reported data.
OT:
About the Supreme Court decision with regards to immigration:
I hope that folks out there understand this.
WHY it matters who gets to choose the judges on the Supreme Court.
If you do not understand what the consequences of a President Trump – not only his existence, but who he would nominate to the Court…
I’ve got nothing else…
To me, it’s spelled out, plain as day.
Folks need to be REGISTERED to vote.
Folks need to get OUT to vote.
Folks need to see the importance of voting for CONGRESS and SENATE.
Say it with me, boys and girls
G-R-I-F-T
I don’t get why this is difficult. Man submits an expense report, and if there are 100 lines listed, 90 have HIS name on it, and you don’t get that this is one long grift?
That bullshyt about him ‘ forgiving’ the loan he made to the campaign.
I said it before -the donors weren’t giving shyt for him to repay himself.
and, if you actually believe he ‘ forgave’ the loan…you deserve to lose whatever monies you give to that con man.
………………………………………………………
What is Left Hand Enterprises and why did the Trump campaign pay it $730,000?
June 23 at 2:30 PM
One of the top vendors to Donald Trump’s campaign is a company that formed in Delaware at the end of April.
On April 25, a new company called Left Hand Enterprises LLC was formed in Delaware, listing its address at an incorporation service provider in Wilmington.
A few days later, the firm received two big payments totaling $503,133 from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to print and send a major shipment of direct mail. The campaign cut another $227,504 check to Left Hand Enterprises on May 2, new campaign finance filings show.
The rapid series of payments — $730,637 over five days — made Left Hand the 10th biggest vendor to the Trump campaign for the entire election cycle. But why it was hired, and what work it provided, remains a mystery even to some top Trump aides.
The campaign’s use of the mysterious pop-up firm has surfaced at a time of financial tumult for the Trump operation, which began June low on funds and has come under scrutiny for making large reimbursements to his companies.
LOL!
First is the company named after the (fake one) in Mad Men. And now one named ‘Left Hand’ as in ‘the right hand gives to the left hand’.
They are not event trying to hide the grift. That’s how sure they are that they can get away with it.
.
OT, but wanted to share.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jury-sides-with-led-zeppelin-in-stairway-to-heaven-plagiarism-tr
ial_us_576c1e2ae4b0cedfa4b9328c
Thanks!
.
This is who they are.
We’ve always known this.
We don’t need to spend too much time seeking the votes of these people. We need to turn out our voters and simply defeat them. There are no economic policies we could assemble which would win this voting bloc for us.
I want to keep and broaden our multicultural Party.