Tag: New Hampshire

New Hampshire man finishes Chicago Marathon with world-best time for a Special Olympian

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A man from Nashua has just finished the Chicago Marathon with a world-best time for a Special Olympian.It was a time faster than even Thomas Cantara himself expected, but he’s just getting started.”If someone told me years ago I’d be running these times, I would have thought they were crazy,” Cantara said. “The fact that I came further than I thought I could do is just so much, and marathon has given me a new look on life in a way, and I want others that think they want to try marathon to see it from my point of view and accomplish more then they think they can imagine.” It was his 20th marathon, but even this seasoned runner said he hit a wall at around the 21-mile mark. He said his experience helped him through.”I just told myself I’m almost there, this is a walk in the park, stick to a comfortable pace the rest of the way if I have to,” Cantara said. That pace was even faster than even Cantara expected.It took only 2 hours, 36 minutes and 28 seconds to finish the 26.2 miles — a pace faster and a 6-minute mile on average.It’s 6 minutes faster than his previous personal record and good enough for 261st place out of an expected 40,000 runners.As for what’s next, Cantara said he wants to run even faster. “Just always try to make what I have and make it better every race,” Cantara said.Cantara’s next race is the Boston Marathon. He hopes he can improve his time even more.

NASHUA, N.H. —

A man from Nashua has just finished the Chicago Marathon with a world-best time for a Special Olympian.

It was a time faster than even Thomas Cantara himself expected, but he’s just getting started.

“If someone told me years ago I’d be running these times, I would have thought they were crazy,” Cantara said. “The fact that I came further than I thought I could do is just so much, and marathon has given me a new look on life in a way, and I want others that think they want to try marathon to see it from my point of view and accomplish more then they think they can imagine.”

It was his 20th marathon, but even this seasoned runner said he hit a wall at around the 21-mile mark.

He said his experience helped him through.

“I just told myself I’m almost there, this is a walk in the park, stick to a comfortable pace the rest of the way if I have to,” Cantara said.

That pace was even faster than even Cantara expected.

It took only 2 hours, 36 minutes and 28 seconds to finish the 26.2 miles — a pace faster and a 6-minute mile on average.

It’s 6 minutes faster than his previous personal record and good enough for 261st place out of an expected 40,000 runners.

As for what’s next, Cantara said he wants to run even faster.

“Just always try to make what I have and make it better every race,” Cantara said.

Cantara’s next race is the Boston Marathon.

He hopes he can improve his time even more.

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October 10, 2022
Why the GOP can’t count on Joe Biden’s low ratings to sink Democrats | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

We are now under a month until Election Day, and you can feel the midterm campaign really taking hold. From Herschel Walker generating headlines for his troubles in Georgia to the Senate GOP campaign arm cutting bait in New Hampshire, we’re getting down to crunch time.

All of this is happening with President Joe Biden’s approval rating stuck in the low-to-mid 40s. Democratic Senate nominees, though, still seem to be holding leads in a number of important battlegrounds (i.e., Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania) that are key to determining control of the chamber.

So this got me thinking: In an era of high polarization, will Biden sink his party in these key races? A look back through recent history suggests that it may not.

And that’s where we begin our view of the week in politics that was.

This past week, CNN released polls conducted by SSRS in Arizona and Nevada. What was notable was that Biden’s approval rating was a mere 41% among likely voters in both states.

Looking at that number, you’d think Democrats should be down considerably in both states. But in Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly clung to a narrow lead, while Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was in a close race in Nevada.

Indeed, these are not the only states where that is true. Recent polling from Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania shows Biden well south of a 50% approval rating, but the Democratic Senate nominees there are polling a good deal ahead of him.

For Republicans hoping Biden’s numbers will drag the Democratic ticket into oblivion, history says to hold on for a second.

The high correlation between how people feel about a president and how they vote for the Senate began in earnest in the 2010 cycle. That gives us two midterms to analyze whether Democrats can win with an unpopular Democratic president.

It turns out there were at least eight Senate races in which the Democratic nominee won and the exit polls found the Democratic president (Barack Obama) with an approval rating below 50%.

Three of these were in 2010 (Colorado, Nevada and West Virginia) and five were in 2014 (Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon and Virginia). Obama averaged an approval rating of 44% in these eight states. Democrats were able to emerge victorious in all of them.

Now some of these (i.e., Illinois and Oregon) were blue states that aren’t politically comparable to the states Democrats need to win this year to maintain Senate control.

But the other six were either swing states or flat-out red (i.e., West Virginia). Obama’s approval rating averaged 42% in these six states.

The formula to win in these six states tended to be pretty simple: a very popular Democratic nominee (i.e., Joe Manchin in West Virginia) or an unpopular Republican nominee.

Consider the three races that are probably the best analogies to this year’s races: Colorado and Nevada in 2010 and New Hampshire in 2014. Republicans Ken Buck of Colorado, Sharron Angle of Nevada and Scott Brown of New Hampshire all had negative net favorability (favorable minus unfavorable) ratings.

(It was harder to get reliable data for Minnesota and Virginia, though it seems Republicans in those states were also underwater in terms of their favorable and unfavorable ratings.)

Take a peek at recent 2022 polls from Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. They all share something in common: the Republican Senate candidate has a negative net favorability rating.

The aforementioned CNN poll from Arizona is a perfect example. Republican Blake Masters had a net favorability rating of -16 points among likely voters. Kelly’s was +6 points.

History has shown this is a recipe for success for Democrats. People vote for a Senate nominee of the president’s party when they like that nominee and dislike both the president and the other party’s Senate nominee.

And it could be the recipe that saves Democrats’ Senate majority this year.

A lot has been written about how polls have underestimated Republican strength in recent years. For Senate races, that might not have as big a consequence as you might think. In fact, Democrats would still win the Senate today if every state had the same polling miss it did in 2020.

Less spoken about is the House. Even a small miss on the generic congressional ballot could have major consequences in terms of who controls that chamber.

The generic congressional ballot usually asks respondents some form of the following question: “If the elections for Congress were held today, would you vote for the Democratic or Republican party?”

The final generic congressional ballot aggregates have differed from the House popular vote by an average of about 3 points since 2000. That may not seem like a lot, but consider this: Every extra point swing in the national House vote is worth about three to four seats. So an average error of 3 points could be worth upward of 12 House seats.

A generic ballot error like we had in 2020 (4 points) could be worth upward of 16 seats. That’s why the House forecasts in 2020 underestimated Republicans so much. The national environment was 4 points more Republican than what the polls indicated.

Right now, Democrats and Republicans are tied on the generic congressional ballot of the national House vote. One estimate from FiveThirtyEight suggests that would result in an evenly divided House in terms of seats.

So if the generic ballot ends up being off by the same margin this year as it was two years ago and if the current polling holds through the election, Republicans could be looking at a gain north of 20 House seats.

Of course, it’s worth considering whether Democrats’ position on the generic ballot underestimates their standing nationally.

Recent special elections have suggested a political environment that leans in their favor. If they were able to win the national House popular vote by a few points, they’d be clear favorites to hold on to the chamber.

That is one reason why, as a number of smart people have said, it is time to seriously consider the possibility of Democrats holding the House. It’s still not likely, but it’s realistic.

Growing up, many of you may have marked Columbus’ birthday each year. A CNN poll from 1992 showed that 57% of Americans thought the country should be celebrating the 500th anniversary of his voyage to America.

Last year, however, only 27% of Americans told Ipsos that they planned to observe Columbus Day in the upcoming year.

The change in celebrating Columbus comes as views of him have shifted in the last 30 years. A 1991 Gallup poll found that 59% of Americans believed Columbus first discovered America, compared with 14% for Leif Erikson and 7% for American Indians/Native Americans.

In 2014, 49% of Americans said American Indians/Native Americans deserved the most credit, according to a CBS News survey. Columbus’ share dropped to 40%.

Views split on Covid-19 communication: A bare majority (51%) told the Pew Research Center that public officials have done an excellent or good job of communicating with the public about the coronavirus outbreak. A similar 49% said public officials have done a poor or only a fair job.

We’re becoming a cashless society: Just 24% of Americans had never used cash in a typical week back in 2015, according to Pew. That’s up to 41% this year.

Flying the flag: Most Americans (55%) said in a Marist College poll that they display the American flag on their property for at least some of the year. There was a partisan split: 75% of Republicans do so compared with 43% of Democrats.

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October 10, 2022
The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2022 | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

The race for the Senate is in the eye of the beholder less than six weeks from Election Day, with ads about abortion, crime and inflation dominating the airwaves in key states as campaigns test the theory of the 2022 election.

The cycle started out as a referendum on President Joe Biden – an easy target for Republicans, who need a net gain of just one seat to flip the evenly divided chamber. Then the US Supreme Court’s late June decision overturning Roe v. Wade gave Democrats the opportunity to paint a contrast as Republicans struggled to explain their support for an abortion ruling that the majority of the country opposes. Former President Donald Trump’s omnipresence in the headlines gave Democrats another foil.

But the optimism some Democrats felt toward the end of the summer, on the heels of Biden’s legislative wins and the galvanizing high court decision, has been tempered slightly by the much anticipated tightening of some key races as political advertising ramps up on TV and voters tune in after Labor Day.

Republicans, who have midterm history on their side as the party out of the White House, have hammered Biden and Democrats for supporting policies they argue exacerbate inflation. Biden’s approval rating stands at 41% with 54% disapproving in the latest CNN Poll of Polls, which tracks the average of recent surveys. And with some prices inching back up after a brief hiatus, the economy and inflation – which Americans across the country identify as their top concern in multiple polls – are likely to play a crucial role in deciding voters’ preferences.

But there’s been a steady increase in ads about crime too as the GOP returns to a familiar criticism, depicting Democrats as weak on public safety. Cops have been ubiquitous in TV ads this cycle – candidates from both sides of the aisle have found law enforcement officers to testify on camera to their pro-police credentials. Democratic ads also feature women talking about the threat of a national abortion ban should the Senate fall into GOP hands, while Republicans have spent comparatively less trying to portray Democrats as the extremists on the topic.

While the issue sets have fluctuated, the Senate map hasn’t changed. Republicans’ top pickup opportunities have always been Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and New Hampshire – all states that Biden carried in 2020. In two of those states, however, the GOP has significant problems, although the states themselves keep the races competitive. Arizona nominee Blake Masters is now without the support of the party’s major super PAC, which thinks its money can be better spent elsewhere, including in New Hampshire, where retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc is far from the nominee the national GOP had wanted. But this is the time of year when poor fundraising can really become evident since TV ad rates favor candidates and a super PAC gets much less bang for its buck.

The race for Senate control may come down to three states: Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, all of which are rated as “Toss-up” races by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. As Republicans look to flip the Senate, which Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called a “50-50 proposition,” they’re trying to pick up the first two and hold on to the latter.

Senate Democrats’ path to holding their majority lies with defending their incumbents. Picking off a GOP-held seat like Pennsylvania – still the most likely to flip in CNN’s ranking – would help mitigate any losses. Wisconsin, where GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is vying for a third term, looks like Democrats’ next best pickup opportunity, but that race drops in the rankings this month as Republican attacks take a toll on the Democratic nominee in the polls.

These rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising and advertising data, and polling, as well as historical data about how states and candidates have performed. It will be updated one more time before Election Day.

Incumbent: Republican Pat Toomey (retiring)

Sarah Silbiger/Pool/Getty Images

The most consistent thing about CNN’s rankings, dating back to 2021, has been Pennsylvania’s spot in first place. But the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey has tightened since the primaries in May, when Republican Mehmet Oz emerged badly bruised from a nasty intraparty contest. In a CNN Poll of Polls average of recent surveys in the state, Democrat John Fetterman, the state lieutenant governor, had the support of 50% of likely voters to Oz’s 45%. (The Poll of Polls is an average of the four most recent nonpartisan surveys of likely voters that meet CNN’s standards.) Fetterman is still overperforming Biden, who narrowly carried Pennsylvania in 2020. Fetterman’s favorability ratings are also consistently higher than Oz’s.

One potential trouble spot for the Democrat: More voters in a late September Franklin and Marshall College Poll viewed Oz has having policies that would improve voters’ economic circumstances, with the economy and inflation remaining the top concern for voters across a range of surveys. But nearly five months after the primary, the celebrity surgeon still seems to have residual issues with his base. A higher percentage of Democrats were backing Fetterman than Republicans were backing Oz in a recent Fox News survey, for example, with much of that attributable to lower support from GOP women than men. Fetterman supporters were also much more enthusiastic about their candidate than Oz supporters.

Republicans have been hammering Fetterman on crime, specifically his tenure on the state Board of Pardons: An ad from the Senate Leadership Fund features a Bucks County sheriff saying, “Protect your family. Don’t vote Fetterman.” But the lieutenant governor is also using sheriffs on camera to defend his record. And with suburban voters being a crucial demographic, Democratic advertising is also leaning into abortion, like this Senate Majority PAC ad that features a female doctor as narrator and plays Oz’s comments from during the primary about abortion being “murder.” Oz’s campaign has said that he supports exceptions for “the life of the mother, rape and incest” and that “he’d want to make sure that the federal government is not involved in interfering with the state’s decisions on the topic.”

Incumbent: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto

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Republicans have four main pickup opportunities – and right now, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s seat looks like one of their best shots. Biden carried Nevada by a slightly larger margin than two of those other GOP-targeted states, but the Silver State’s large transient population adds a degree of uncertainty to this contest.

Republicans have tried to tie the first-term senator to Washington spending and inflation, which may be particularly resonant in a place where average gas prices are now back up to over $5 a gallon. Democrats are zeroing in on abortion rights and raising the threat that a GOP-controlled Senate could pass a national abortion ban. Former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt – the rare GOP nominee to have united McConnell and Trump early on – called the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling a “joke” before the Supreme Court overturned the decision in June. Democrats have been all too happy to use that comment against him, but Laxalt has tried to get around those attacks by saying he does not support a national ban and pointing out that the right to an abortion is settled law in Nevada.

Incumbent: Democrat Raphael Warnock

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The closer we get to Election Day, the more we need to talk about the Georgia Senate race going over the wire. If neither candidate receives a majority of the vote in November, the contest will go to a December runoff. There was no clear leader in a recent Marist poll that had Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who’s running for a full six-year term, and Republican challenger Herschel Walker both under 50% among those who say they definitely plan to vote.

Warnock’s edge from earlier this cycle has narrowed, which bumps this seat up one spot on the rankings. The good news for Warnock is that he’s still overperforming Biden’s approval numbers in a state that the President flipped in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes. And so far, he seems to be keeping the Senate race closer than the gubernatorial contest, for which several polls have shown GOP Gov. Brian Kemp ahead. Warnock’s trying to project a bipartisan image that he thinks will help him hold on in what had until recently been a reliably red state. Standing waist-deep in peanuts in one recent ad, he touts his work with Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville to “eliminate the regulations,” never mentioning his own party. But Republicans have continued to try to tie the senator to his party – specifically for voting for measures in Washington that they claim have exacerbated inflation.

Democrats are hoping that enough Georgians won’t see voting for Walker as an option – even if they do back Kemp. Democrats have amped up their attacks on domestic violence allegations against the former football star and unflattering headlines about his business record. And all eyes will be on the mid-October debate to see how Walker, who has a history of making controversial and illogical comments, handles himself onstage against the more polished incumbent.

Incumbent: Republican Ron Johnson

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Sen. Ron Johnson is the only Republican running for reelection in a state Biden won in 2020 – in fact, he broke his own term limits pledge to run a third time, saying he believed America was “in peril.” And although Johnson has had low approval numbers for much of the cycle, Democrats have underestimated him before. This contest moves down one spot on the ranking as Johnson’s race against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has tightened, putting the senator in a better position.

Barnes skated through the August primary after his biggest opponents dropped out of the race, but as the nominee, he’s faced an onslaught of attacks, especially on crime, using against him his past words about ending cash bail and redirecting some funding from police budgets to social services. Barnes has attempted to answer those attacks in his ads, like this one featuring a retired police sergeant who says he knows “Mandela doesn’t want to defund the police.”

A Marquette University Law School poll from early September showed no clear leader, with Johnson at 49% and Barnes at 48% among likely voters, which is a tightening from the 7-point edge Barnes enjoyed in the same poll’s August survey. Notably, independents were breaking slightly for Johnson after significantly favoring Barnes in the August survey. The effect of the GOP’s anti-Barnes advertising can likely be seen in the increasing percentage of registered voters in a late September Fox News survey who view the Democrat as “too extreme,” putting him on parity with Johnson on that question. Johnson supporters are also much more enthusiastic about their candidate.

Incumbent: Democrat Mark Kelly

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Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who’s running for a full six-year term after winning a 2020 special election, is still one of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents in a state that has only recently grown competitive on the federal level. But Republican nominee Blake Masters is nowhere close to rivaling Kelly in fundraising, and major GOP outside firepower is now gone. After canceling its September TV reservations in Arizona to redirect money to Ohio, the Senate Leadership Fund has cut its October spending too.

Other conservative groups are spending for Masters but still have work to do to hurt Kelly, a well-funded incumbent with a strong personal brand. Kelly led Masters 51% to 41% among registered voters in a September Marist poll, although that gap narrowed among those who said they definitely plan to vote. A Fox survey from a little later in the month similarly showed Kelly with a 5-point edge among those certain to vote, just within the margin of error.

Masters has attempted to moderate his abortion position since winning his August primary, buoyed by a Trump endorsement, but Kelly has continued to attack him on the issue. And a recent court decision allowing the enforcement of a 1901 state ban on nearly all abortions has given Democrats extra fodder to paint Republicans as a threat to women’s reproductive rights.

Incumbent: Republican Richard Burr (retiring)

Demetrius Freeman/Pool/Getty Images

North Carolina slides up one spot on the rankings, trading places with New Hampshire. The open-seat race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr hasn’t generated as much national buzz as other states given that Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in the state since 2008.

But it has remained a tight contest with Democrat Cheri Beasley, who is bidding to become the state’s first Black senator, facing off against GOP Rep. Ted Budd, for whom Trump recently campaigned. Beasley lost reelection as state Supreme Court chief justice by only about 400 votes in 2020 when Trump narrowly carried the Tar Heel state. But Democrats hope that she’ll be able to boost turnout among rural Black voters who might not otherwise vote during a midterm election and that more moderate Republicans and independents will see Budd as too extreme. One of Beasley’s recent spots features a series of mostly White, gray-haired retired judges in suits endorsing her as “someone different” while attacking Budd as being a typical politician out for himself.

Budd is leaning into current inflation woes, specifically going after Biden in some ads that feature half-empty shopping carts, without even mentioning Beasley. Senate Leadership Fund is doing the work of trying to tie the Democrat to Washington – one recent spot almost makes her look like the incumbent in the race, superimposing her photo over an image of the US Capitol and displaying her face next to Biden’s. Both SLF and Budd are also targeting Beasley over her support for Democrats’ recently enacted health care, tax and climate bill. “Liberal politician Cheri Beasley is coming for you – and your wallet,” the narrator from one SLF ad intones, before later adding, “Beasley’s gonna knock on your door with an army of new IRS agents.” (The new law increases funding for the IRS, including for audits. But Democrats and the Trump-appointed IRS commissioner have said the intention is to go after wealthy tax cheats, not the middle class.)

Incumbent: Democrat Maggie Hassan

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A lot has been made of GOP candidate quality this cycle. But there are few states where the difference between the nominee Republicans have and the one they’d hoped to have has altered these rankings quite as much as New Hampshire.

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who lost a 2020 GOP bid for the state’s other Senate seat, won last month’s Republican primary to take on first-term Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. The problem for him, though, is that he doesn’t have much money to wage that fight. Bolduc had raised a total of $579,000 through August 24 compared with Hassan’s $31.4 million. Senate Leadership Fund is on air in New Hampshire to boost the GOP nominee – attacking Hassan for voting with Biden and her support of her party’s health care, tax and climate package. But because super PACs get much less favorable TV advertising rates than candidates, those millions won’t go anywhere near as far as Hassan’s dollars will.

A year ago, Republicans were still optimistic that Gov. Chris Sununu would run for Senate, giving them a popular abortion rights-supporting nominee in a state that’s trended blue in recent federal elections. Bolduc told WMUR after his primary win that he’d vote against a national abortion ban. But ads from Hassan and Senate Majority PAC have seized on his suggestion in the same interview that the senator should “get over” the abortion issue. Republicans recognize that abortion is a salient factor in a state Biden carried by 7 points, but they also argue that the election – as Bolduc said to WMUR – will be about the economy and that Hassan is an unpopular and out-of-touch incumbent.

Hassan led Bolduc 49% to 41% among likely voters in a Granite State Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. The incumbent has consolidated Democratic support, but only 83% of Republicans said they were with Bolduc, the survey found. Still, some of those Republicans, like those who said they were undecided, could come home to the GOP nominee as the general election gets closer, which means Bolduc has room to grow. He’ll need more than just Republicans to break his way, however, which is one reason he quickly pivoted on the key issue of whether the 2020 election was stolen days after he won the primary.

Incumbent: Republican Rob Portman (retiring)

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Ohio – a state that twice voted for Trump by 8 points – isn’t supposed to be on this list at No. 8, above Florida, which backed the former President by much narrower margins. But it’s at No. 8 for the second month in a row. Republican nominee J.D. Vance’s poor fundraising has forced Senate Leadership Fund to redirect millions from other races to Ohio to shore him up and attack Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee who had the airwaves to himself all summer. The 10-term congressman has been working to distance himself from his party in most of his ads, frequently mentioning that he “voted with Trump on trade” and criticizing the “defund the police” movement. Vance is finally on the air, trying to poke some holes in Ryan’s image.

But polling still shows a tight race with no clear leader. Ryan had an edge with independents in a recent Siena College/Spectrum News poll, which also showed that Vance – Trump’s pick for the nomination – has more work to do to consolidate GOP support after an ugly May primary. Assuming he makes up that support and late undecided voters break his way, Vance will likely hold the advantage in the end given the Buckeye State’s solidifying red lean.

Incumbent: Republican Marco Rubio

DREW ANGERER/AFP/POOL/Getty Images

Democrats face an uphill battle against GOP Sen. Marco Rubio in an increasingly red-trending state, which Trump carried by about 3 points in 2020 – nearly tripling his margin from four years earlier.

Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who easily won the party’s nomination in August, is a strong candidate who has even outraised the GOP incumbent, but not by enough to seriously jeopardize his advantage. She’s leaning into her background as the former Orlando police chief – it features prominently in her advertising, in which she repeatedly rejects the idea of defunding the police. Still, Rubio has tried to tie her to the “radical left” in Washington to undercut her own law enforcement background.

Incumbent: Democrat Michael Bennet

DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/AFP/POOL/Getty Images

Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is no stranger to tough races. In 2016, he only won reelection by 6 points against an underfunded GOP challenger whom the national party had abandoned. Given GOP fundraising challenges in some of their top races, the party hasn’t had the resources to seriously invest in the Centennial State this year.

But in his bid for a third full term, Bennet is up against a stronger challenger in businessman Joe O’Dea, who told CNN he disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. His wife and daughter star in his ads as he tries to cut a more moderate profile and vows not to vote the party line in Washington.

Bennet, however, is attacking O’Dea for voting for a failed 2020 state ballot measure to ban abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy and arguing that whatever O’Dea says about supporting abortion rights, he’d give McConnell “the majority he needs” to pass a national abortion ban.

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October 4, 2022
The Great Senate Stalemate

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The map of competitive Senate elections is shrinking—and not just for November.

Though Republicans began the year expecting sweeping Senate gains, the party’s top-grade opportunities to capture seats now held by Democrats have dwindled to just two—Nevada and Georgia—and both are, at best, toss-ups for the GOP. And while Democrats, somewhat astoundingly, have emerged from the primaries with at least as many plausible flipping chances as Republicans, Pennsylvania is the only GOP-held seat clearly favored to go blue, and even that isn’t guaranteed. It remains entirely possible that November’s results will leave the Senate divided again at 50–50, something that has not happened in consecutive elections since the Seventeenth Amendment established the direct election of senators more than a century ago.

Matthew Yglesias and Steven M. Teles: A moderate proposal

This standoff partly reflects the volatile dynamics of the 2022 election, in which Republican advantages on the economy have been largely neutralized by public unease over gun violence, the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, the resurgent visibility of former President Donald Trump, and the GOP’s nomination of weak, Trump-aligned candidates. Yet the possibility of a virtual draw—after a campaign season in which the two sides have already poured more than $850 million into just the 10 most expensive Senate races—reflects larger changes in the electoral competition.

One of the most powerful trends in modern politics has been for each party to consolidate control of the Senate seats in the states it usually captures in the presidential election. That’s lowered the ceiling on the number of Senate seats each party can win. And that lowered ceiling, in turn, has diminished each side’s ability to maintain control of the Senate majority for any extended period.

The Senate is therefore frozen in the sense that neither side, in normal times, can seriously contest more than a handful of the seats held by the other party. Paradoxically, it’s unstable in the sense that the shrunken playing field leaves each side clinging to tiny majorities that are vulnerable to small shifts in voter attitudes in the very few states that remain consistently competitive.

Throughout the 20th century, it was common for one side to build a comfortable majority in which it held at least 55 percent of the Senate’s seats. Republicans hit that level of dominance in 10 of the 15 Congresses from 1901 through 1930. Then, from 1932 to 1980, Democrats regularly reached the 55 percent threshold. (The big exception to this pattern came in the 1950s, when the ideological lines between the parties blurred and neither won more than a two-seat Senate majority through four consecutive Congresses.) Even from 1980 to 2000, one side or the other reached 55 seats seven times. Since 2000, though, the parties have controlled at least 55 seats only three times: Republicans immediately after George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004 and Democrats immediately after Barack Obama’s presidential victories in 2008 and 2012.

Smaller margins have reduced both parties’ ability to defend their majorities for any extended period. Since 1980, neither party has controlled the Senate for more than eight consecutive years. That’s unprecedented: The U.S. has never gone four decades without a Senate majority that survived for more than eight years.

Both the thin margins and frequent turnover are rooted in a third trend: the growing alignment between states’ votes for president and Senate.

Especially through the second half of the 20th century, states routinely supported presidential candidates from one party and Senate candidates from the other. After the landslide reelections of Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984, for instance, Democrats still controlled about half of the Senate seats in the states that voted for them both times.

But as American politics has grown more partisan and parliamentary, those split-ticket senators have virtually gone extinct, which has reduced the number of states each side can realistically contest.

Read: Voters don’t split tickets anymore

After the 2020 election, the GOP held 94 percent of the Senate seats in the 25 states that voted for Trump both times while Democrats held 98 percent of the seats in the 20 states that twice voted against him. Democrats have squeezed out their current 50–50 Senate majority by winning eight of the 10 Senate seats in the remaining five swing states that switched from Trump to Joe Biden.

Last spring, Republicans anticipated a midterm red wave that would break this stalemate, followed by a push toward a filibuster-proof 60-seat Senate majority in 2024.

Both parties identified Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, Raphael Warnock in Georgia, Mark Kelly in Arizona, and Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire as the most vulnerable Democratic senators. Beyond that, Republicans hoped to seriously challenge Michael Bennet in Colorado and Patty Murray in Washington. The 2022 electoral environment remains unsettled, and it’s possible that continuing discontent over the economy could improve GOP prospects before election day. But for now, with Colorado, Washington, Arizona, and New Hampshire all moving toward the Democrats, it appears that the list of fully plausible GOP Senate targets has fallen to just two: Nevada and Georgia.

All polls in Georgia show a tight race between Warnock and the Republican nominee, Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia football star. And with Republican Governor Brian Kemp holding a steady lead over Democrat Stacey Abrams, it remains possible that a Georgia crimson tide (pun intended) might carry Walker to victory. But Walker may be the most obviously unqualified Senate nominee in recent memory, and he’s facing a seemingly endless procession of personal scandals. Walker’s vulnerabilities might allow Warnock to survive even a strong Republican current; indeed all but one of the five most recent public polls have shown Warnock in the lead.

That leaves Nevada as the best chance for Republicans to capture a seat Democrats hold now. A state with legions of low-wage workers, Nevada has heavily felt the effects of coronavirus shutdowns and inflation. The state also lacks the large pool of college graduates and white-collar professionals heavily motivated by abortion and other social issues lifting Democrats elsewhere. But even with all that boosting them, Republicans can hardly be confident about Nevada: For longer than the past decade, Nevada Democrats, operating the political machine assembled by the late former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have shown a knack for turning out just enough of their voters to win very close races.

Democrats, unexpectedly, have kept a larger roster of GOP Senate seats in play. The Senate race most likely to change hands between the parties remains Pennsylvania, where Republican Pat Toomey is retiring. Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, although some polls show his margin narrowing, remains favored over Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee. Oz is laboring under strong unfavorable ratings and will likely face an undertow from the governor’s race, where Doug Mastriano, among the most extreme GOP nominees anywhere this year, could face a crushing defeat.

Polls also show Democrats Mandela Barnes and Tim Ryan locked in margin-of-error races in Wisconsin and Ohio. Barnes and Ryan have given themselves a realistic chance to win against GOP opponents who are also laboring under high unfavorable ratings, Senator Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and J. D. Vance in Ohio. But those are both states where Democrats often struggle to find the last few percentage points of support they need, and this will especially be the case while Biden’s approval rating is depressed among the white non-college voters so plentiful in each.

Read: What the primaries reveal about the future of Trumpism

In North Carolina, Democrat Cheri Beasley is likewise step for step in polls with Republican Ted Budd—though, since 2008, that state has functioned as a kind of heartbreak hill for Democrats, who have suffered a succession of narrow defeats there. Florida has become an even tougher state for Democrats, but polls have consistently shown Democratic Representative Val Demings remaining closer to Republican Senator Marco Rubio than most analysts initially expected.

This playing field still leaves Republicans a path to a majority, but one much narrower than they anticipated. If the GOP loses Pennsylvania, which remains likely, its most plausible path to retake the Senate is to win both Nevada and Georgia, while simultaneously holding off the Democrats in both Wisconsin and Ohio, not to mention North Carolina and Florida. Republican upsets in Arizona or New Hampshire, or Oz surging past Fetterman during the final weeks in Pennsylvania, would ease that pressure. But today, none of those outcomes look probable.

Yet even if Democrats hold the Senate, it will likely be with a very narrow majority, and perhaps with nothing more than another 50–50 tie that Vice President Kamala Harris will step in to break. Democrats would still remain at substantial risk of surrendering their majority in 2024, largely because they will be defending all three of the seats they hold in the states that twice voted for Trump—Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Jon Tester in Montana, and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. That won’t be easy in a presidential-election year.

Early in Biden’s presidency, some Democratic strategists, such as the data analyst David Shor, ominously warned that the party could face an extended period of Republican dominance in the Senate, largely because of the GOP’s hardening advantage in heavily white interior states. The GOP probably does hold an edge in the long-term battle for Senate control because it is regularly winning slightly more states than Democrats in presidential contests. But the fizzling of the GOP’s Senate opportunities this year shows how difficult it may be for either side to secure a sizable, much less durable, majority.

Political scientists and strategists alike usually find far more meaning in elections that deliver resounding change than those that reconfirm the status quo. Yet it will send a powerful message if neither party in November can break through the forces that have left the Senate so precariously balanced. It will show that the two sides remain locked in a grinding trench warfare where neither can overwhelm the other’s defenses and the handful of states in the no-man’s-land between them hold decisive power to tilt the national direction. That’s a recipe for more years of bitter but inconclusive conflict between two political coalitions that are now almost identical in size—but utterly antithetical in their vision for America’s future.

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Ronald Brownstein

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September 28, 2022
WAMC Gives Back During June Fund Drive

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Press Release
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Jun 9, 2022

ALBANY, N.Y., June 9, 2022 (Newswire.com)
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WAMC/Northeast Public Radio completed its June Fund Drive on June 9, 2022, raising over $1,000,000 to support the station’s award-winning news and cultural programming thanks to the generosity of listeners contributing during 12 hours over four days of on-air fundraising and also to the Locked Box. This drive marks the second of three this year.

Taking precautions for the health and safety of volunteers and staff, WAMC has continued to delay returning to its traditional Fund Drive. Instead, the Locked Box and Fund Drive were completed with the help of a few volunteers and the WAMC staff, who fielded calls and online donations.

WAMC was honored to partner with The Food Pantries For The Capital District and Janitronics to help feed hundreds of families this summer through the drive.

WAMC President and CEO Alan Chartock says, “Even in our most challenging times, including COVID and political disruption, WAMC’s listeners have come through to keep this station going. This is an incredible family, and I couldn’t be more proud. I’m forever grateful for the support once again.”

Ray Graf, newscaster and Vox Pop host, adds: “These are tough economic times; it’s difficult for many to even put food on the table. Add to that a world that is still picking up the pieces of a pandemic and still the WAMC family is there to help. It amazes me.”

WAMC is a listener-supported station that relies on contributions to stay alive. Its Fund Drives primarily occur three times a year: February, June, and October. Each drive has a $1 million goal to support the general operations of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio.

If you’re interested in finding out more about their Fund Drives, or to donate or volunteer, please contact Amber Sickles at 1-800-323-9262 ext. 133.

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a non-commercial, public radio station and nonprofit organization that presents award-winning news and cultural programming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. WAMC’s listening area reaches parts of seven states, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; as well as parts of Canada. With over 400,000 monthly listeners, WAMC ranks among the most-listened-to public radio stations in the United States. WAMC is a member of National Public Radio and an affiliate of Public Radio International. For more information on WAMC, please visit www.wamc.org or call 518.465.5233.

WAMC-FM 90.3 FM, Albany, NY; WAMC 1400 AM, Albany, NY; WAMK 90.9 FM, Kingston, NY; WOSR 91.7 FM, Middletown, NY; WCEL 91.9 FM, Plattsburgh, NY; WCAN 93.3 FM, Canajoharie, NY; WANC 103.9 FM, Ticonderoga, NY; WRUN 90.3 FM, Remsen-Utica, NY; WAMQ 105.1 FM, Great Barrington, MA; WANZ 90.1 FM, Stamford, NY; WANR 88.5 FM, Brewster, NY; WQQQ 103.3FM Sharon, CT; 103.9 FM Beacon, NY; 97.3 FM, Cooperstown, NY; 106.3 FM Dover Plains, NY; 96.5 FM Ellenville, NY; 102.1 FM Highland, NY; 97.1 FM Hudson, NY; 88.7 FM Lake Placid, NY; 106.3 FM Middletown, NY; 90.9 FM Milford, PA; 107.7 FM Newburgh, NY; 90.1 FM Oneonta, NY; 99.3 FM Oneonta, NY; 95.9 FM Peekskill, NY; 93.1 FM Rensselaer-Troy, NY; 92.9 FM Scotia, NY, 107.1 FM Warwick, NY, and online at www.wamc.org, www.facebook.com/wamcradio, www.instagram.com/wamcradio, and www.twitter.com/wamcradio.

Source: WAMC Northeast Public Radio

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June 9, 2022
How strong is Trump? He’s beating Republican rivals in their home states | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Do you know who is polling third in the 2024 Republican race for president? That may feel like an odd question given that the two leading candidates, former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are the only ones averaging over 5% nationally.

The answer, though, is former Vice President Mike Pence and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, both tied at just 4%.

More worrisome for Haley, who is taking part in a CNN town hall Sunday evening, and other candidates polling outside the top two is the seeming nationalization of the GOP primary process this year. We’re seeing that reflected in state polling, including in the early voting and declared candidates’ home states: All largely show a significant advantage for Trump.

Presidential primaries, unlike general elections, don’t occur on the same day. They’re sequential, with outsize importance given to the states that vote first. This is why you see Republican candidates flocking to Iowa (for its caucuses) and New Hampshire (for the first-in-the-nation primary).

In recent years, national polling leaders at this point in the primary season who would go on to lose their party nominations did so in part because they lost the Iowa caucuses. That happened to the two candidates with the largest national leads: Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Clinton, each in 2008.

Both were clearly in trouble in Iowa at this point in the cycle. In fact, neither led their side’s contests in Des Moines Register polling from May 2007.

This year, we’re not seeing such a disconnect between national and early-state polling – at least not yet. The top two candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire surveys released to the public have been Trump and DeSantis. A University of New Hampshire poll taken in mid-April, for example, had Trump at 42% and DeSantis at 22%. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who is expected to announce his 2024 plans this week, was in third place at 12%.

Let’s focus closer on that Sununu datapoint. A few years ago, I noted that one of the better ways to predict whether a candidate trailing in national and early-state polls could surprise people is by examining how they were doing in their home states.

At this point in the 2016 cycle, Sen. Bernie Sanders was already leading in the Vermont Democratic primary, despite Hillary Clinton’s sizable national edge. On the other hand, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s lack of any polling strength in his home state made me dismiss him as a contender.

Home-state polling is a crucial early indicator of a candidate’s strength. Voters there know these candidates best. If you can’t break out where the voters already know you, how can you break out in states where voters are just getting to know you?

Sununu doesn’t need to worry about name recognition in the Granite State. The same is true for Haley in South Carolina, where she used to be governor. South Carolina also happens to be the third state on the 2024 GOP nominating calendar, after Iowa and New Hampshire.

The most recent poll from South Carolina that meets CNN’s standards for publication put Trump well out in front. The Winthrop University survey, completed in early April, had Trump at 41%, DeSantis at 20% and Haley at 18%. Her fellow South Carolinian, Sen. Tim Scott, came in at 7%. More recent data hints at Haley dropping a little and Scott climbing up in the weeks since, though Trump is still way ahead.

It’s quite possible Trump keeps his lead and knocks Haley out of the race with a victory in the South Carolina primary. Remember, he did something similar in 2016, when he ended Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential bid by beating him in Florida.

Of course, you can spot where Trump is vulnerable, if you look hard enough.

For example, in Florida, DeSantis and Trump have been trading leads in polling this year.

And you can make the case that these early-state polls overall suggest that Trump is a bit weaker than the national numbers might indicate. On average, he’s polling in the low-to-mid-40s in the early states versus in the mid-50s nationally. In other words, a majority of voters in the early states are going for someone other than Trump, which isn’t true at the national level.

Can you imagine how devastating losing in New Hampshire or South Carolina – or both – would be for Trump? It would puncture a large hole in the idea that his nomination is inevitable.

For the moment, though, that scenario seems like a fantasy. Trump may be showing some weakness in the early-voting states but not close to the same degree as national front-runners who lost in years past.

Trump can be beat. It’s just going to be really tough.

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April 12, 2021
Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, once again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election and repeated false claims about it being stolen at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

Taking questions from GOP primary voters at the town hall moderated by “CNN This Morning” anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump remained defiant about the 2020 election as well as the myriad investigations into him – making clear that he’s sticking to the script he’s delivered over the past two years on conservative media.

The town hall at Saint Anselm College – his first appearance on CNN since 2016 – came as unprecedented legal clouds hang over him as he seeks to become only the second commander in chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation GOP primary, is also home to many swing voters and is a state he lost in both 2016 and 2020 after winning the primaries.

The audience of Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary cheered Trump throughout the evening, including when he attacked Tuesday’s jury verdict that found he sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump mocked Carroll on Wednesday while downplaying the significance of the $5 million the jury awarded her for battery and defamation.

The former president said he would pardon “a large portion” of the rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and even pulled out a printout of his own tweets from that day in an attempt to deflect blame as Collins pressed him on why he waited three hours before telling the rioters to leave the Capitol.

“I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump said Wednesday night.

When Collins pressed Trump on the Manhattan federal jury finding Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996, Trump suggested it was helping his poll numbers.

When asked if the jury’s decision would deter women from voting for him, the former president said, “No, I don’t think so.”

Trump insulted Carroll, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even Collins when she pressed him on a question about why he hadn’t returned classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

“It’s very simple – you’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you,” Trump said on stage.

Trump also took questions from New Hampshire voters on the economy and policy issues, such as abortion. The former president, who solidified the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that struck down Roe v. Wade, repeatedly declined to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if he won a second term.

Trump suggested Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit if the White House does not agree to spending cuts.

“I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default, and I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen, but it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” Trump said.

When Collins asked him to clarify whether the US should default if the White House doesn’t agree to cuts, Trump said, “We might as well do it now than do it later.”

Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump also faces potential legal peril in both Washington, DC – where a special counsel is leading a pair of investigations – and in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney plans to announce charges this summer from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.

Still, the twice-impeached former president has repeatedly said that any charges will not stop him from running for president, dismissing all of the investigations as politically motivated witch hunts. That’s a view many GOP voters share, according to recent surveys. Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters in a recent NBC News poll said investigations into the former president “are politically motivated” and that “no other candidate is like him, we must support him.”

Trump was pressed on the investigation into his handling of classified documents and why he didn’t return all of the documents in his possession after receiving a subpoena. He responded by pointing out the classified documents found at the homes of others – including President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. But they both returned the documents once they discovered they had them in their possession.

The FBI obtained a search warrant and retrieved more than 100 classified documents from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022, which came after he had received a subpoena to return documents in June 2022 and after his attorney had asserted that all classified material in his possession had been returned.

Asked during the town hall whether he showed the classified documents to anyone at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “Not really.”

The former president would not say whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to win the war during Wednesday’s town hall, instead saying that he wants the war to end.

“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” he said.

When asked again whether or not the former president wants Ukraine to win, Trump did not answer directly, but instead claimed that he would be able to end the war in 24 hours.

“Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying,” Trump said. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”

Trump said he thinks that “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin made a mistake” by invading Ukraine, but he stopped short of saying that Putin is a war criminal.

That’s something that “should be discussed later,” Trump said.

“If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped,” he said.

While a handful of rivals have entered the Republican presidential primary – and Trump’s biggest potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not yet officially launched a bid – Trump has maintained a healthy lead in early GOP primary polling. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Trump unprompted when asked who they would like to see the party nominate in 2024, compared with 20% naming DeSantis, and 2% or less naming any other candidate.

Trump’s participation in the town hall was indicative of a broader campaign strategy to try to expand his appeal beyond conservative media viewers, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported earlier Wednesday. He’s surrounded himself with a more organized team and has been making smaller retail politics stops while scaling back larger rallies – signs of a more traditional campaign than his 2016 and 2020 operations. He lost that 2020 race by about 7 million votes, although he continues to falsely claim it was stolen from him – claims he stuck to on Wednesday night.

There have been warning signs for the GOP that the obsession with the 2020 election isn’t palatable beyond the base. Many of Trump’s handpicked candidates who embraced his election lies in swing states lost in last year’s midterm elections. And his advisers acknowledge he still has work to do to engage with Republican voters outside of his loyal base of supporters, multiple sources told CNN.

But that didn’t mean Trump was ready to acknowledge the reality that he lost the 2020 election. And if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024, Trump said Wednesday he would not commit to accepting the results regardless of the outcome, saying that he would do so if he believes “it’s an honest election.”

“If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to,” he said.

This story has been updated with additional details from the town hall.

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April 12, 2021