The Des Moines Register and the New Hampshire Union Leader newspapers announced their endorsements on Friday, but the candidates not being tabbed shouldn’t fret. The DMR endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), while the Union Leader is backing Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MA).
The Des Moines Register editorial board endorsed 11 candidates for the Iowa Caucuses since 1988, inclusive, and only three have won. The Union Leader backing Sen. Klobuchar is not particularly surprising since the paper is known for its conservative bent, and the Minnesota Senator is campaigning closer to the center than most of her Democratic counterparts. Because of its well-known ideological perspective, it’s unlikely that the paper’s editorial board will successfully influence the preponderance of Democratic primary voters. In fact, it may do Sen. Klobuchar more harm than good. Media organizations routinely tout polling as major stories, particularly when coming from major networks and news outlets. A good example is the recent January 20-23 ABC News/Washington Post poll. Looking at the national Democratic presidential preference, the totals find former Vice President Joe Biden leading with 32-23-12-8-7% over Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), ex-NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and businessman Andrew Yang, respectively. But, looking into the methodology, we see that only 349 registered Democrats comprise the entire national sample.
This would be an adequate live interview poll for a congressional district, but for the entire country? The error factor would be so high as to make the results inconsequential. It is becoming clear that the Democratic leadership and key powerbrokers are beginning to coalesce around Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, who is senior pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta where Dr. Martin Luther King was a member. Yesterday, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston, who was an aspiring Senate candidate, announced that she would not run in anticipation of Rev. Warnock soon declaring his intention.
Rev. Warnock will reportedly be entering the Georgia special election to oppose appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R). The special primary will run concurrently with the general election. If no candidate receives majority support, the top two will run-off on January 5, 2021. If Rep. Doug Collins (R-Lawrenceville) decides not to run and the Democrats do coalesce around Rev. Warnock, it is likely this race will turn into a contest with two major candidates and several minor ones. If so, the chances of being forced to a run-off greatly diminish. The Club for Growth conservative Super PAC announced its support for Republican primary challenger Chris Putnam, who is challenging veteran Rep. Kay Granger (R-Ft. Worth) in the March 3rd Republican primary. Mr. Putnam began the race by raising $456,000 before the September 30th campaign finance deadline and is expected to announce another sizable haul when the year-end reports are published soon after February 1st.
The Club’s entrance into this race signals that Mr. Putnam will attract even more financial support, meaning this contest is on the road to becoming a top tier primary challenge. Mr. Putnam is a local businessman and former Colleyville City Councilman. Cuban-born Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez (R), while endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016, announced with the Republican establishment’s blessing that he will challenge Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Miami) later this year. Two Republicans are already in the race, including former Fire Fighters Union president Omar Blanco, but the nomination appears to be Mr. Gimenez’s to lose.
Carlos Gimenez was elected Miami-Dade Mayor in a 2011 election as a result of recalling then-Mayor Carlos Alvarez and re-elected in 2016 after raising over $7 million for the race. Rep. Mucarsel-Powell was first elected in 2018, unseating incumbent Republican Carlos Curbelo, 51-49%. The 26th District was drawn as a Democratic seat but elects a number of Republicans in races within its boundaries. Clearly, Mayor Gimenez is the type of candidate who could win the seat back for the GOP. We can expect this campaign to become a top national target. A new MassInc survey of the New Hampshire Democratic electorate in anticipation of the fast approaching February 11th Granite State primary was released yesterday. The poll (1/17-21; 426 NH Democratic likely primary voters), conducted for television station WMUR in Manchester, finds neighboring Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) leading the candidate field with 24%. Ex-South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is second with 17%, former Vice President Joe Biden third at 14%, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) at 13 percent. The single digit finishers are Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MA), Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, and businessman Andrew Yang with 6-5-5%, respectively.
Baldwin Wallace University conducted a major online poll of the Great Lakes States and tested the evolving Michigan Senate race as part of the questionnaire. The poll (1/8-20; 1,023 MI self-identified registered voters; online) has a high error factor due to its online nature and reliance upon self-identified respondents. That being said, the new data finds Sen. Gary Peters (D) expanding what was previously a lead within the polling margin of error to one that touches ten percentage points. The BWU results find Sen. Peters ahead of businessman and retired Army Ranger John James (R), 42-32%.
Interestingly, this poll discovers a major gender gap and the results show Mr. James already drawing to parity with Sen. Peters among men (39-39%). Women, however, break 44-25% for the incumbent. At this point, Independent voters are also gravitating toward the incumbent (33-21%), which is to be expected in the early going. Overall, even these numbers suggest that the Michigan Senate race has the potential of becoming very close. Millsaps College in conjunction with Chism Strategies released the first Magnolia State poll for the upcoming re-match Senate race between incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) and former US Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy (D). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the survey (released 1/21; 618 MS registered voters) finds Sen. Hyde-Smith holding a 44-36% lead, not unlike their 2018 special election final result of 54-46%. The junior Mississippi Senator’s job approval rating was detected as an identical 44:36% favorable to unfavorable.
One of the 2018 New York primary night surprises was Rep. Yvette Clarke’s (D-Brooklyn) scant victory over Brooklyn Community Board member Adem Bunkeddeko, 53-37%. Her challenger returns for this year’s June 23rd primary, but yesterday New York City Councilman Chaim Deutsch also joined the battle for the party nomination.
With Rep. Clarke and Mr. Bunkeddeko potentially splitting the district’s dominant black vote, Councilman Deutsch may not only have enough support to deny the incumbent re-nomination, but he could conceivably win the party nod. Coalescing the white, Jewish, and less liberal voters, Mr. Deutsch could cobble together a large enough coalition to potentially win a close primary campaign. While having several opponents – four other minor candidates are also in the race – generally helps a weakened incumbent, in this case the larger field could be detrimental to Rep. Clarke. Two presidential campaign political surveys were recently released from the Golden State, which, on Super Tuesday, will determine how 415 first ballot votes will be cast at the Democratic National Convention. The first, from Tulchin Research (1/3-10; 2,000 CA likely Democratic primary voters) sees Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) topping former Vice President Joe Biden 28-24% with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) capturing 12% support. In an extrapolated model of the projected vote, it is likely that all three candidates would qualify for delegate apportionment.
Survey USA conducted their study less than a week later. Here, S-USA (1/14-16; 565 CA likely Democratic primary voters) finds Mr. Biden holding a 30-20-20% advantage over Sens. Sanders and Warren. This model clearly projects that all three would qualify for delegate apportionment. The two polls are relatively equivalent in reliability. While the Tulchin poll has a much larger respondent sample, the S-USA methodology featured live interviews. |
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