Agree, and point taken - mine was meant to express that accepting corrupt PAC money says a great deal about the moral compass and the candidate’s ability to be compromised when addressing the needs of the people.
The problem isn't with the PACs themselves, it's that they're funded by billionaires and big corporations.
Ergo, I completely agree that Citizens United should be overturned. We need to substantially reduce the influence of billionaires and corporations not just in our elections, but in our entire political system as a whole.
Exactly. If AIPAC is really someone's biggest issue, rather than reducing inflation, lowering the cost of health care, protecting the environment, ensuring high-quality education, protecting and expanding workers' rights, regulating AI, protecting our democracy and standing up to Trump, ending cooperation with ICE, etc... then frankly there's something terribly wrong with them.
On the flip side, her not taking that money may convince leftier voters into backing her, even if it isn’t technically relevant to the race. People vote for weird reasons sometimes.
I wrote a deep dive on IA-03 over the weekend. I would rate this race as tilt D. JD Vance is coming to do an event with Zach Nunn, which would be the last thing I'd want if I were a Republican. I would guess they are worried about base turnout.
I heard months ago that Brenna Bird started running positive bio ads out of nowhere, probably in response to bad private polling. Doesn't seem to be slowing down.
She didn't run them--an outside group ran them to boost her favorables. Then they published partial results from their polling, which purportedly showed their ad campaign improved her numbers. They were still terrible, though!
It's all within the margin of error anyway, so nothing to be alarmed about. While it's always nice to see our candidates up, I won't be alarmed until we see him down 4+ points consistently.
KY-Gov: Lt. Gov Coleman (no relation to AG Russell Coleman) will be the first sitting Lt. Governor to run for Governor since Lt. Governor stopped being a separately elected office.
I hadn't noticed Pinkins was pulling 6% in the MS Sen race in that Hyde-Smith/Colom poll. Would imagine if he pulled out that enough of them would move toward Colom to put him on top... (Still 14% undecideds though.)
A minor correction: Betty Yee, who is now a former candidate for CA-Gov, was previously California's Controller, not Comptroller. While those might be two variations on the name of the same office, in California we have someone controlling the flow of state finances. Nobody is in Comptrol, really!
Hey, at least we don't have prothonotaries in California...
You're welcome and thank you, too. We don't want to have a gang war between the Controllers and Comptrollers here. "Boring Betty" (a self-description) would kick some comptroller butt.
Those old posts by Bob Brooks are pretty interesting considering he is running as the Progressive candidate. They sound like the kinda stuff my 65-year old GOP dad posts on Facebook lol. Although they were from 2019 and I have gone from Right-leaning centrist to leftist Progressive since 2019 so I suppose Brooks could’ve done the same
Yup, the social media/text/statement scandals are now entirely a thing of the past in American politics, barring extraordinary circumstances (looking at Mark Robinson the proud black Nazi). Voters don’t care anymore. Whether that’s actually a good thing, I have my doubts, but it’s the reality in today’s voting electorate.
Trying to imagine the mass collective shrug by voters and the media if Mitt Romney made the 47% comment today, instead of it pretty much ending his presidential campaign a decade ago.
First, welcome to the good side of the spectrum! Second, that's precisely what I thought when I saw those posts - older white retiree posting on FB....
It’s in play, but likely will be hard to flip because it’s really easy for us to get 46% in Mississippi and near impossible to get that last few percent to get to 50%.
Absolutely in play – if Democrats play it right! Great efforts in GOTV can make up that difference. We just have to make sure that the turnout for our voters is, say, 10 percent greater than for GOP-MAGA.
It's in play in that 2% perfect storm scenario of supercharged Democratic base turnout coupled with historically lethargic Republican turnout. With Cindy Hyde-Smith being a perennial underperformer, there's a scenario where this race goes Democrat. It's highly unlikely, but after this polling info, there's no excuse for Democrats to be caught napping if said perfect storm continues brewing by fall.
Yesterday I said I didn’t think we’d win a 1 on 1 federal race for a whole list of reasons in MS. I forgot there was an independent left candidate running in the race also. Unless Pinkins drops out, there’s no scenario we win here unfortunately, not even in a mega tsunami blue wave election. If the left splits in such an already extremely hostile, extremely polarized, extremely inelastic state for our party, that 1-5% chance of something crazy happening evaporates entirely.
Interested in the 2027 MS-Gov race Presley getting just short of 48% makes me think an a right leaning independent and a little more work could get him over the line.
The last few % are massive gulf to cross. You'd need historically high black turnout, cratering GOP turnout, and some sort of candidate implosion a la Roy Moore to happen. Even then, it would be an uphill climb.
It is one of those states you only fund and promote (at least on the Democratic side) if you have basically maxed out on spending on more traditionally competitive states. In 2020 we stated going after places like SC and KY (and indeed MS itself) when we were way passed the point if diminishing returns in ME, NC, GA, TX, ect.
Purely vibes based but all these numbers feel… more or less plausible to me? Especially Florida not being that rosy for Ds makes me feel good about the rest of the poll’s methodology
I wish they tested other GA gov Dems beyond KLB, but good to see her ahead of all the Repub candidates as the candidate I think many people worried about being the Dem nominee.
I will never understand why Ohio is so hard for us to win, even relative to other rust belt states. We’ve lost 8 of the past 9 gubernatorial elections there, I think Utah, Idaho, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas are the only other states where we’ve done that badly since 1990, and on paper Ohio has always been more competitive than those states - it just hasn’t translated into us winning elections there. We’ve won more governors races in places like Oklahoma, Wyoming, Indiana, and Kentucky than we have in Ohio.
I think the issue with Ohio is a double demographic issue: the cities aren't on the wealthier or more educated side of urban areas and thus aren't as strong for us, while the rural areas are either directly in Appalachia or are influenced by it, making us extra weak there too.
The city side seems to be slowly changing with Columbus' modern growth, but that isn't enough on its own.
Good points. I think Appalachia will be the very last region in this country to turn against Trump. They will die on the hill of white supremacy and blaming the wrong people for their economic misfortunes.
While nowhere near a perfect comparison, think of it like Texas, while there are blue areas with a lot of population, there’s a bunch of highly populated deep red or reddening areas that cancel out the blue and then some
I said yesterday that a generic Democrat should be favored in an open GA-Gov race with how blue this year is shaping up. This poll corroborates that. I agree that Ohio probably isn’t anywhere near that bad for us. Probably just a sampling issue. If Brown is only down 3 and Acton only down 1 in a 2024 recall electorate, there’s an excellent chance they are both ahead.
I have a weird feeling that Dems are just going to steamroll the GA GOP this cycle regardless of candidates. Like win Senate, Governor, AG, SOS, Superintendent, commissioners, etc.. Kamala actually held up extremely well in GA (and NC) relative to the rest of the Country.
This is now the 2nd poll to show Wahls doing better than Turek against Hinson. Obviously, 1 point difference in both is not anything at all between the candidates and could easily be a rounding error, but the idea that Turek is more electable than Wahls is starting to get a bit muddier. I’m also starting to wonder if the DC/Washington/Schumer factor supporting Turek is making a difference at the margins in a race potentially decided with those same margins.
Regardless of who wins though, having 2 strong Democratic candidates running real statewide competitive campaigns in Iowa will only benefit our primary nominee winner in a state we’ve lost a ton of ground in over the last decade, which has mostly defunct and derelict political infrastructure for our party since the Obama era. Hopefully the primary stays relatively civil.
As a Turek supporter, I let people know that Zach worked for a group that does not disclose their donors, has DSCC members on his campaign staff, also asked Chuck Schumer for his support in the race. Everyone else says this happened. When Laura Belin asked him about it, he says he met with a large number of people. Dude was the most well known member of the legislature except for Pat Grassley. He is still a legend for his speech many years ago. I salute Zach for his work, but I don't care for his approach to this campaign.
The idea of electability differences won’t manifest until people know who each of Turek and Wahls are. I doubt many know that Turek is a parlympian gold medalist or that Wahls is known for his gay rights speech.
It’s more about what you expect will be an easier sell to persuadable voters once they begin advertising in earnest that you would expect the poll numbers to diverge.
I think it may have to do with their respective bases. There are just a lot more Dem and swing voters in Eastern IA than there are in the western part of the state.
Stray clear of discussing Israel. I think talking about the PAC is ok.
Agree, and point taken - mine was meant to express that accepting corrupt PAC money says a great deal about the moral compass and the candidate’s ability to be compromised when addressing the needs of the people.
Not all PACs are corrupt. That also holds true for some PACs that you may dislike intensely.
Still, I would like to see PAC influence in elections dwindle if not leave completely. Citizens United needs to be overturned.
The problem isn't with the PACs themselves, it's that they're funded by billionaires and big corporations.
Ergo, I completely agree that Citizens United should be overturned. We need to substantially reduce the influence of billionaires and corporations not just in our elections, but in our entire political system as a whole.
Hear, hear!
This is a gubernatorial race. You’d think there’d be so many other domestic issues for people to focus on instead of that.
Exactly. If AIPAC is really someone's biggest issue, rather than reducing inflation, lowering the cost of health care, protecting the environment, ensuring high-quality education, protecting and expanding workers' rights, regulating AI, protecting our democracy and standing up to Trump, ending cooperation with ICE, etc... then frankly there's something terribly wrong with them.
Not to mention trying to do all that while having to deal with the KY General Ass-embly.
There is a portion of the base that wants nothing more than to fight over the forbidden issue.
And frankly, those people are the problem.
If Democrats underperform this fall, they're the ones I'm going to blame.
On the flip side, her not taking that money may convince leftier voters into backing her, even if it isn’t technically relevant to the race. People vote for weird reasons sometimes.
When it comes to deciding who to vote for in May 2027, that's ... not going to be high on my list of priorities.
I wrote a deep dive on IA-03 over the weekend. I would rate this race as tilt D. JD Vance is coming to do an event with Zach Nunn, which would be the last thing I'd want if I were a Republican. I would guess they are worried about base turnout.
https://laurabelin.substack.com/p/zach-nunn-is-in-troubleand-jd-vance
I heard months ago that Brenna Bird started running positive bio ads out of nowhere, probably in response to bad private polling. Doesn't seem to be slowing down.
She didn't run them--an outside group ran them to boost her favorables. Then they published partial results from their polling, which purportedly showed their ad campaign improved her numbers. They were still terrible, though!
I wrote about this in November:
https://laurabelin.substack.com/p/conservative-group-attempted-image
That’s a great read! Very informative.
CA-Gov: If Becerra was elected, he'd be the first Hispanic governor of the state, right?
First elected, not first serving. Gov. Romualdo Pacheco served part of a term in 1875 after being elected as LG.
First since the 1870s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romualdo_Pacheco
Pacheco served as governor about 130 years ago. He is the only non-white governor of California.
If Porter is elected, she'd be the first woman Governor of California.
For an allegedly progressive state with egalitarian ideals, California has had a shockingly non-diverse history of Governors.
Hey now, Pete Wilson once put dimes in his penny loafers as a joke - now that’s a diversity of comedy!
Husted jumped Brown? Any other recent polls for OH ?
That poll modeled a Trump +11 recalled vote (i.e. nearly the same as 2024), which is unlikely to be duplicated.
It's all within the margin of error anyway, so nothing to be alarmed about. While it's always nice to see our candidates up, I won't be alarmed until we see him down 4+ points consistently.
Was it an R pollster showing Brown down 7pt?
KY-Gov: Lt. Gov Coleman (no relation to AG Russell Coleman) will be the first sitting Lt. Governor to run for Governor since Lt. Governor stopped being a separately elected office.
The more I think of this statistic the less surprised I am by it
I hadn't noticed Pinkins was pulling 6% in the MS Sen race in that Hyde-Smith/Colom poll. Would imagine if he pulled out that enough of them would move toward Colom to put him on top... (Still 14% undecideds though.)
A minor correction: Betty Yee, who is now a former candidate for CA-Gov, was previously California's Controller, not Comptroller. While those might be two variations on the name of the same office, in California we have someone controlling the flow of state finances. Nobody is in Comptrol, really!
Hey, at least we don't have prothonotaries in California...
Patriots in Comptrol
Thank you! I've corrected
You're welcome and thank you, too. We don't want to have a gang war between the Controllers and Comptrollers here. "Boring Betty" (a self-description) would kick some comptroller butt.
Those old posts by Bob Brooks are pretty interesting considering he is running as the Progressive candidate. They sound like the kinda stuff my 65-year old GOP dad posts on Facebook lol. Although they were from 2019 and I have gone from Right-leaning centrist to leftist Progressive since 2019 so I suppose Brooks could’ve done the same
I don’t think it will matter in the general. It hasn’t for Graham Platner if polling is to be believed.
Yup, the social media/text/statement scandals are now entirely a thing of the past in American politics, barring extraordinary circumstances (looking at Mark Robinson the proud black Nazi). Voters don’t care anymore. Whether that’s actually a good thing, I have my doubts, but it’s the reality in today’s voting electorate.
Trying to imagine the mass collective shrug by voters and the media if Mitt Romney made the 47% comment today, instead of it pretty much ending his presidential campaign a decade ago.
The difference is that there are fairly strong alternatives in PA-07, McClure was leading in a December Brooks internal, albeit with 53% undecided.
Yeah, I don’t care about these posts. He was able to win the support of both Shapiro and other progressive orgs. That’s enough for me.
I mean, we keep being told that moderate to conservative social/cultural and progressive on economics is the way forward...
First, welcome to the good side of the spectrum! Second, that's precisely what I thought when I saw those posts - older white retiree posting on FB....
Does the poll showing Cindy Hyde-Smith leading Scott Colom by only 3 points mean that the Mississippi Senate seat is really in play?
It’s in play, but likely will be hard to flip because it’s really easy for us to get 46% in Mississippi and near impossible to get that last few percent to get to 50%.
Absolutely in play – if Democrats play it right! Great efforts in GOTV can make up that difference. We just have to make sure that the turnout for our voters is, say, 10 percent greater than for GOP-MAGA.
So . . .not really in play.
It's in play in that 2% perfect storm scenario of supercharged Democratic base turnout coupled with historically lethargic Republican turnout. With Cindy Hyde-Smith being a perennial underperformer, there's a scenario where this race goes Democrat. It's highly unlikely, but after this polling info, there's no excuse for Democrats to be caught napping if said perfect storm continues brewing by fall.
I think it's definitely "in play" insofar as us winning is conceivable. We're still significant underdogs there though.
Yesterday I said I didn’t think we’d win a 1 on 1 federal race for a whole list of reasons in MS. I forgot there was an independent left candidate running in the race also. Unless Pinkins drops out, there’s no scenario we win here unfortunately, not even in a mega tsunami blue wave election. If the left splits in such an already extremely hostile, extremely polarized, extremely inelastic state for our party, that 1-5% chance of something crazy happening evaporates entirely.
Interested in the 2027 MS-Gov race Presley getting just short of 48% makes me think an a right leaning independent and a little more work could get him over the line.
The last few % are massive gulf to cross. You'd need historically high black turnout, cratering GOP turnout, and some sort of candidate implosion a la Roy Moore to happen. Even then, it would be an uphill climb.
It is one of those states you only fund and promote (at least on the Democratic side) if you have basically maxed out on spending on more traditionally competitive states. In 2020 we stated going after places like SC and KY (and indeed MS itself) when we were way passed the point if diminishing returns in ME, NC, GA, TX, ect.
💃💃💃💃💃
FL-7:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/nancy-mace-introduces-resolution-expel-republican-cory-mills-house-rcna341122
Rep. Nancy Mace has introduced a resolution to expel Rep. Cory Mills. We’ll see where this goes.
https://x.com/i/status/2046566435942477982
SENATE POLLING By Echelon Insights (A)
GEORGIA
🟦 Ossoff: 51%
🟥 Collins: 44%
---
🟦 Ossoff: 52%
🟥 Carter: 43%
——
FLORIDA
🟥 Moody: 50%
🟦 Vindman: 43%
——
MAINE
🟦 Platner: 51%
🟥 Collins: 45%
---
🟦 Mills: 48%
🟥 Collins: 46%
——
IOWA
🟦 Walls: 46%
🟥 Hinson: 44%
🟦 Turek: 46%
🟥 Hinson: 45%
for Net Choice | 4/3-9 | LV (avg +/- 6%)
Is that the first polled general election senate lead for us in Iowa?
Looks like it!
Purely vibes based but all these numbers feel… more or less plausible to me? Especially Florida not being that rosy for Ds makes me feel good about the rest of the poll’s methodology
Others
Governor
🟦 Rob Sand: 51%
🟥 Randy Feenstra: 39%
Ohio:
🟥Vivek Ramaswamy 49%
🟦Amy Acton 44%
——
Georgia:
🟦Keisha Lance Bottoms 49%
🟥Burt Jones 43%
—
🟦Keisha Lance Bottoms 49%
🟥Rick Jackson 43%
—
🟦Keisha Lance Bottoms 46%
🟥Brad Raffensperger 44%
Ohio:
🟥Jon Husted 51% (incumbent)
🟦Sherrod Brown 45%
6% MOE, so be a bit skeptical.
I wish they tested other GA gov Dems beyond KLB, but good to see her ahead of all the Repub candidates as the candidate I think many people worried about being the Dem nominee.
I will never understand why Ohio is so hard for us to win, even relative to other rust belt states. We’ve lost 8 of the past 9 gubernatorial elections there, I think Utah, Idaho, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas are the only other states where we’ve done that badly since 1990, and on paper Ohio has always been more competitive than those states - it just hasn’t translated into us winning elections there. We’ve won more governors races in places like Oklahoma, Wyoming, Indiana, and Kentucky than we have in Ohio.
I think the issue with Ohio is a double demographic issue: the cities aren't on the wealthier or more educated side of urban areas and thus aren't as strong for us, while the rural areas are either directly in Appalachia or are influenced by it, making us extra weak there too.
The city side seems to be slowly changing with Columbus' modern growth, but that isn't enough on its own.
I think we were punching above our weight in Ohio in Presidential races for a good while.
Good points. I think Appalachia will be the very last region in this country to turn against Trump. They will die on the hill of white supremacy and blaming the wrong people for their economic misfortunes.
As someone who was born and raised in Appalachian Ohio, I can't tell you how true that statement is. He is practically worshiped in Appalachia.
While nowhere near a perfect comparison, think of it like Texas, while there are blue areas with a lot of population, there’s a bunch of highly populated deep red or reddening areas that cancel out the blue and then some
GA-Gov seems too bullish, and their overall OH sample seems too Republican. Acton and Sherrond may lose, but they're going to do better than this.
I said yesterday that a generic Democrat should be favored in an open GA-Gov race with how blue this year is shaping up. This poll corroborates that. I agree that Ohio probably isn’t anywhere near that bad for us. Probably just a sampling issue. If Brown is only down 3 and Acton only down 1 in a 2024 recall electorate, there’s an excellent chance they are both ahead.
I have a weird feeling that Dems are just going to steamroll the GA GOP this cycle regardless of candidates. Like win Senate, Governor, AG, SOS, Superintendent, commissioners, etc.. Kamala actually held up extremely well in GA (and NC) relative to the rest of the Country.
This online poll’s samples are quite D friendly. The recalled votes are 2-6pt better than 2024 results. Ex, the Georgia sample is Harris+3.
Good thing they didn’t try to weight to 24 results.
That Iowa number is eye-popping
Echelon Insights?
6%, what is that maybe 200 people polled?
Iowa numbers seem a bit too rosy and Ohio numbers seem a bit too bearish.
Damn. If GA and IA turn out this good for us, we will have a really good night. Next, maybe Emerson will give us some good news out of Alaska
Iowa is amazing.
This is now the 2nd poll to show Wahls doing better than Turek against Hinson. Obviously, 1 point difference in both is not anything at all between the candidates and could easily be a rounding error, but the idea that Turek is more electable than Wahls is starting to get a bit muddier. I’m also starting to wonder if the DC/Washington/Schumer factor supporting Turek is making a difference at the margins in a race potentially decided with those same margins.
Regardless of who wins though, having 2 strong Democratic candidates running real statewide competitive campaigns in Iowa will only benefit our primary nominee winner in a state we’ve lost a ton of ground in over the last decade, which has mostly defunct and derelict political infrastructure for our party since the Obama era. Hopefully the primary stays relatively civil.
As a Turek supporter, I let people know that Zach worked for a group that does not disclose their donors, has DSCC members on his campaign staff, also asked Chuck Schumer for his support in the race. Everyone else says this happened. When Laura Belin asked him about it, he says he met with a large number of people. Dude was the most well known member of the legislature except for Pat Grassley. He is still a legend for his speech many years ago. I salute Zach for his work, but I don't care for his approach to this campaign.
The idea of electability differences won’t manifest until people know who each of Turek and Wahls are. I doubt many know that Turek is a parlympian gold medalist or that Wahls is known for his gay rights speech.
It’s more about what you expect will be an easier sell to persuadable voters once they begin advertising in earnest that you would expect the poll numbers to diverge.
I think it may have to do with their respective bases. There are just a lot more Dem and swing voters in Eastern IA than there are in the western part of the state.
https://www.axios.com/2026/04/21/sheila-cherfilus-mccormick-democrats-ethics-expel
FL-20: We could see a Cherfilus-McCormick expulsion as early as today.
Not unless Mills is expelled at the same time.
The Democratic House leadership would be fools if they fail to insist on simultaneous expulsion votes!
I have bad news for you...they're fools either way. ;)
I don’t know if it was purposeful but “No Labels” failing to re-label made me chuckle.
Breaking News: She’s gone.
https://x.com/MZanona/status/2046649786472800690
🚨Cherflius McCormick resigns, minutes before her Ethics sanctions hearing
Third House member to resign since last Monday
And I imagine RDS will not schedule a special election. At least now I won't have to struggle to remember if it's "Cherlifus" or "Cherfilus"
Almost certainly the seat will remain unfilled until November.
Can't the FL Democratic Party sue to get a special election?
Manley could be sworn in before January and gain some seniority, however
Assuming it’s him. An open seat may draw a bigger name.
West Palm Beach mayor Kevin James and Palm Beach County commissioner Bobby Powell are reportedly considering, as well as some other local Palm Beach County officials. https://floridapolitics.com/archives/766930-calls-mounting-for-sheila-cherfilus-mccormick-to-resign-speculation-about-who-could-replace-her-is-already-heating-up/
I would still give it to Manley, based on his support and fundraising already achieved.
My mistake was always "Cherflius" lol
Cherfilus_McCormick resigns https://x.com/reesejgorman/status/2046648087632863669?s=20