This morning, I raise my coffee in a silent toast to Eric Adams’ bloated ego! He’s not going to get out of Cuomo’s way – heck, Adams can’t even get out of his own way.
I think Spanberger is going to hit Josh Stein levels of victory. Earle-Sears hasn't made the kind of gaffes that Mark Robinson did but she's not distancing herself from TACO and DOGE either.
Reid (the guy Youngkin and co wanted to throw out for being gay and doing gay things) apparently doing the best of all the R candidates is yet more egg on their faces.
If that ends up happening I can kind of see the explanation. In an election defined in no small part in reaction to an unpopular republican admin, probably the biggest thing most VA voters are hearing about Reid is that other republicans dislike him. That could soften his perception in the minds of swingy voters, especially among those who want to "balance" their votes.
Not predicting that it will happen, but I can see the logic if it does.
Many Republicans think that Attorney General Jason Miyares should do the best of their ticket, due to his incumbency. Some even have suggested redirecting their efforts closer to the election to focus on him and maybe the HoD if Earle-Sears looks like a lost cause.
But the polling isn't showing that so far. Miyares seems to have largely campaigned and served as Generic R, without making much of an individual impression. That likely won't be enough for him to win if the rest of the ticket is losing by significant margins.
NORWAY: Voter participation in yesterday’s parliamentary election was 78.9 %. That’s the highest seen since 1989. But Norway still has a ways to go to surpass the high watermark reached in 1965: 85.4 %.
I don't remember where I saw this exactly, but I think some analysis of non-voters in 2024 showed that they were more likely to be Trump voters than Harris.
I've seen these surveys every year since 1988, and amazingly, they always show the same thing: people who didn't vote, who had access to knowing who won, say they would have voted for the winner.
On the contrary, most nonvoters said they would have voted for Gore back in 2000.
But even if that was true, I don't see why that would be disqualifying, especially when done with the gargantuan sample size that was reportedly used last year. By and large, the low-information nonvoters seem to be of the same profile as the low-information undecided voters who decide elections based on which way they break. So it stands to reason that undecided voters and nonvoters tended to lean the same way.
With that in mind, I'll ask you to defend your hypothesis that their conclusions give surveys like this "a bad name".
Again, this comes from people knowing the result already and wanting to be associated with the winning side. It's like asking people which lottery numbers they would have picked for last week's lottery drawing.
Non-voters are more often disengaged and don't have strong partisan or ideological preferences, so associating themselves with the winner is not contradictory to their beliefs.
I'm not sure which data is in the figure in this article, but the CES also asks a question before the election who people intend to vote for and then validate if they vote or not, so it should be possible to determine this also from intended vote before the fact.
Well, now we've got some people saying that people were asked before the election and then their non-voting was validated after the election, and other people saying that it was a large sample size. Unlikely both are true.
Imagine how much better off our country would be if we drove 85% of eligible Democrats and Independent voters to cast a vote – but MAGA Republican turnout remained unchanged.
That is also the reason while Texas could get closer with more suburbanization, I seriously doubt it flips soon. There are still tons of conservative White non-voters there.
Just look at how sticky North Carolina is. More and more transplants as a stimulus to the Southern White voters to turn out. Just 20 years ago, wouldnt believe the rural White voters there would vote at a rate matching or even exceeding Minnesota. Yet here we are.
Looking at the numbers, Labour will need suport from all parties in the Red-Green bloc (Centre, Socialist Left, Reds, and Greens) to forma majority government. Is it expected that this will complicate the coalition process? Is it likely that Labour will end up forming a minority government?
Correct, and Labour will get that support. (It would be an earthquake-level shock if they don’t.)
A full coalition is unlikely, for the simple reason that some of these parties do not wish to sit with certain other parties. We may see one or two of them join a coalition, but I think the most likely solution is a minority Labour government supported by the other Red/Green parties. Labour will, of course, have to make certain concession, especially during the budget process.
Who do you think is the most likely coalition partner(s)? I remember reading that the Centre party left the coalition earlier this year, leaving Labour as a sole-party minority government. Is there bad blood between them that will send labour looking to other parties like the socialist left or greens?
Interestingly, the Centre Party lost a lot of support after leaving the Labour-led coalition in January, dropping from 13.5% in the last election to 5.6% in this one. As a result, it dropped from 28 representatives to merely 9! Meanwhile, Labour increased from 26.2% to 28% – growing from 48 to 53 representatives.
I think each of the four parties that are natural allies of Norway’s Labour Party will seek to extract concessions rather than actually joining a coalition. So in my book, the most likely scenario is a minority Labour government.
We want elevated turnout of our voters! Lots of analyses examine the hypothetical impact of a cross-the-board increase in turnout. That, in my opinion, is mostly irrelevant.
KY-Sen: Don't get your hopes up. Andy Beshear is "free to revisit" his decision about running for Senate because he is a real person who really has agency. I'll believe that he _has_ done that when _he_ says that he has.
Presidential elections are rare enough, close enough, and feature a default candidate frequently enough, that we cannot make much over such observations. Over any consistent political era we will see only a handful of actual presidential candidates, and only one person can win each election. The sample sizes are too small.
Even going from 1976 to 1992 represents some substantial shifts in the political landscape. Never mind the gap from 1992 to 2008, or 2008 to 2024.
Retire, or position himself for a cabinet position.
Realistically, it's Kentucky. Why waste his time and diminish his legacy?
Every now and then people get excited because we have a strong senate candidate for the state. Without fail each and every one of them gets crushed unceremoniously. And you know, they generally all were strong candidates, significantly outperforming the concurrent or most recent dem presidential performance as appropriate.
Beshear would presumably do quite a bit better than our baseline in a senate race, but our modern baseline in Kentucky is losing by 25-30 points. He could do 15 points better and still he would lose.
I wouldn't be surprised if it would help his career if he's seen as being a team player that forced republicans to spend money in Kentucky. It would diminish his legacy and represent a waste of his time on a personal level.
The question for him is if it would do enough to help his chances of landing an appointed promotion to be worth the time and effort and adding the L to his legacy.
A further consideration is the historical trend of losing ex-Governor Senate nominees. Larry Hogan, Phil Bredesen, Linda Lingle, Tommy Thompson, Steve Bullock, etc. I don’t think Beshear would go over much better.
That’s really speculative but in all honesty, Beshear is right now all Democrats have as far as a credible Senate candidate.
Also, given McConnell is retiring, any Democratic Senate Candidate’s best shot at running a race would be in an open Senate race. Challenging incumbents is a really tough nut to crack.
I doubt there's an appreciably different chance for a Democrat to win -any- senate seat in Kentucky. Their only shot would probably be something like the Moore special election in Alabama. I don't think a "credible" candidate matters, just someone who articulates the party's message acceptably and, most importantly, doesn't embarrass themselves or the party.
The hard truth is that Beshear's popularity is due to the legislature overturning all of his social policies like abortion rights, lgb rights, trans rights, banning conversion therapy, immigration reform etc. He would be crushed in a nationalized senate race like any other Democrat. What Kentuckians support are his investments in education, policing, mental health, infrastructure, budget etc.
But you made a blanket comment about why he is popular as Governor that is not relevant to how he would fare in a Senate race. If it is not supported by the link you posted, what _is_ it supported by?
He would take a hit for backtracking after having said "No" so firmly and for so long. As I said, I'll believe he's reconsidering when *he* says so, and not until then.
I know almost nothing about NYC, but the poll numbers that suggest only 2% of Sliwa/Adams voters would shift to Mamdani seems off to me. I realize both are far to the right of Mamdani, but it seems like his populist message would appeal to more of that group than 2/24 when considering the alternative is Cuomo.
Everyone who would vote for Mamdani is already voting for him. Actually surprised Cuomo gets this close in the head-to-head, but alas, no one’s dropping out.
I think Mamdani will end up somewhere in the low 50s, on the back of pretty significant differentials in turnout rates among the various candidates' supporters
I agree with this. Voters do not have the ideological consistency or coherency that we'd expect based on our own views. Sure, most will behave in the way we expect overall. But enough will vote non-intuitively to make this kind of result improbable in practice. Especially when voters will see both Mamdani and Cuomo as democrats. I think a greater percentage of the electorate voted for AOC and Trump simultaneously last year than we have shifting to Mamdani in this poll. The ideological gap between AOC and Trump is quite substantially larger than the gap between Mamdani and Cuomo.
In the dem primary Cuomo got roughly 1/3 of the votes from eliminated ballots. Around a quarter of the ballots did not rank Mamdani or Cuomo. The remainder went to Mamdani.
Obviously that's a dem primary and not a general election, where the dynamics and ideologies at play will be quite different. But I think that gives us a very high level, very broad concept of how people do not reallocate their votes quite so neatly. I'd expect in this case that there would be more Sliwa/Adams voters becoming non voters (pushing up Mamdani's and Cuomo's percentages) and that we would see more than 2 points of them shifting to Mamdani.
The majority by far would go to Cuomo, but not so neatly or overwhelmingly.
JUST IN: -911,000 fewer jobs were created between April ’24 and March ’25, the BLS says. Wow, that’s a big revision. That means the labor market was weak even before the tariffs kicked in. The job market was mostly frozen in 2024, too.
Average job gains before revision =147,000 per month
**Average job gains AFTER revision = 71,000/month**
[Note: This annual revision process is normal. The BLS does it every year. Last August, the BLS reported -818,000 fewer jobs. Yes, these are large (negative) revisions. Why? It’s mainly due to problems accounting for new/closed businesses since the pandemic.]
I am not sold on this. If the job market was regularly adding six figures of jobs months before the tariffs were even introduced, then what the hell were these numbers in the first place?
The job market was volatile and growing but saying it’s frozen is stretching it. Now the market is for sure frozen and slow but saying it was back in 2024 really doesn’t make sense at all.
I honestly never have understood numbers being revised downwards crap. That’s like I am giving a report to the executive in charge of my department (say a Chief Marketing Officer) and telling him, “Jim, just a heads up, those 1,000 leads I was telling you about, well, turns out they are 230 leads after all.” How do you think he’d react to this news?
BLS needs to modernize its data reporting and do so in a way that truly accurately captures what is going on in the labor market. There has even been criticism of the BLS (which I echo as well) not accurately capturing the freelance market as not all self-employed people are really freelancers as marked on the tax forms.
Of course, I would not be like Trump and fire the messenger just because I have issues with the stats.
If revised numbers show payroll data changed, there can be only one reason why:
Layoffs. There have been layoffs on a regular basis going on for months, even prior to Trump being elected. If the BLS data that you are referring to is telling anything, it's that layoffs are happening more regularly than they did before even in the period of 2021-2023.
Otherwise, once a job is added, it is not assured to last for any particular time. A business hires several people, those employees could last several years. If the same business hires 10 more people but lays off 6 later on after three months because of the challenging economy, then
Jobs added = jobs added. Changing the original numbers from what they originally were downwards is still crappy data analysis however you spin it. Data needs to be truly valid and verifible or otherwise, it's not assured to be truthful enough.
Gov. Mills says she's still seriously considering a run for US Senate
"Every day I pick up the newspaper and I read the headlines and I watch the news, and there are a lot of very disturbing things going on in Washington," Mills said.
regardless disappointing to know Gov Mills appreciates Collins. Baffling tone deaf statement by her. Was taking a sojurn up to Maine as I switched jobs and was able to attend the rally for Bernie Jackson and Platner with my retired Maine voter parents. Incredible energy in that room. Never saw a similar event for Sara Gideon when she was running against Collins six years ago. So much energy in that room that my dad--the one unaffiliated voter in the family is enrolling to vote for Platner in the primary. Troy Jackson is worth a look too re governors race fwiw!
His folksy appeal combined with Platner's booming charisma is imo just the ticket we need in Maine. Jackson being from Aroostook county also helps given Jared Golden some cover as opposed to a southern Maine gov nominee
How (or do?) folks think the horrific subway stabbing will play in the NC Senate race? Trump already trying to blame Cooper/Dems with typical soft-on-crime stuff.
It's Trumped up BS from the Conservative Media Machine and the more we respond to it the more it becomes an issue. Pivot to the cuts to mental health services and privatization of those same services in the 2000s and how that aligns with Conservative Policies instead.
Not just the Trump media machine but the "heterodox" anti-woke "liberal" crusaders, Abundists and their neoliberal allies are also at it. Increasing funding and tougher prosecution to tackle crime better is fine but blaming Democrats for the stabbing is just insane.
A young white woman (& Ukranian Refugee) was stabbed to death by a mentally disturbed black man with a long rap sheet so naturally the Conservative Media Machine shifts into overdrive to gin up outrage about it.
Of course and then they howl and bemoan how the "MEDIA" isn't covering the story which in turns causes them to cover the outrage to NOT covering the story which then puts Democrats on the defensive about how to respond to these bad faith calls to discuss the manufactured outrage that THEY created.
Violent crime committed in public space isn’t exactly news in America these days. How many people get murdered every day in the US? Just another day in a country unwilling to put the resources it takes to actually help people with mental health issues. Also, kind of hard to blame Democrats when you’re the party in power who actually has control in the average voters mind, but this is nothing new.
If batteries went up $1 everywhere because of some Trump tariff he’d still blame Democrats. It’s literally the only response Republicans actually have on any subject. It works when Democrats have power, not so much when they don’t. “A meteor crashed to earth destroying a farm, here’s why Democrats are at fault”. Unless prices and the cost of living magically go back in a time warp to 2019 no amount of bullshit will persuade the non-MAGA Trump 2024 voters in 2026.
The problem is, having the issue of crime tying to the Senate race doesn't have as much direct impact vs. at the local and state level it does. Normally pre-2025 I'd say possibly.
However, Trump himself has got bigger baggage. He's also going after a popular former Governor who is a Senate candidate. As long as Cooper is on message, he should be fine.
I think the huge projected spike in health care premiums next year could seal the deal for Dems next year. So I'm puzzled as to why congressional Dems are pushing to cut a deal with the GOP to extend the Obamacare premium subsidies through the midterms and let vulnerable Republicans off the hook. It just seems like it would be a better idea to push for these things AFTER you win and you have more leverage.
We do need to be smarter about how we do it though. A two year extension or something similarly short isn't worth that much in practice. Get a decade long extension for the trouble.
The ending is far enough in the future that nobody can count on being in or out of power at the time. It's short enough of a time that politicians can pretend it's only temporary. All while being long enough of a time to have a substantial and meaningful impact on a lot of lives even if it ultimately is temporary.
Would Schumer risk a shutdown over that, when he wouldn't even risk a shutdown in exchange for nothing?
Even if he would, that strategy only works while we're out of power. When we're the ones holding the presidency, while republicans hold at least one veto point is when they can turn it around. At that stage they can kill the program and hurt us. Ten year extensions are "safe" in that they punt the whole thing far enough into the future that even if it does hurt us it will still have done a lot of good in between.
Here’s a question I have for posters here that relates to another comment I made.
At what point does an ex-Governor running for Senate have an actual chance? What separates the John Hickenloopers and (hopefully) Roy Coopers from the Larry Hogans and Steve Bullocks?
VA-11: Walkinshaw wins (this was never in doubt) and is so far turning in a healthy overperformance: up 75-25 with 67% reporting (Connolly's wins were typically more like 66-33).
Oye Owolewa, DC's shadow representative (meaning not Norton the Delegate who serves as a Member of Congress in House committees, but the unpaid one who technically would become the official U.S. Rep. if it became a state) announced he's running instead for one of the two at-large seats on the DC Council up next year, currently held by Anita Bonds (second longest serving member and former chair of the DC Democratic Party). No DC shadow rep has served longer than six years/three terms.
I know nothing about him, but Anita Bonds is so useless that in the last election, even the Washington Post endorsed against her. When an incumbent friendly, anti-progressive, normie paper like the Post says you're useless, that's saying something.
Early results from Boston's preliminary round are in. As widely expected it'll be Wu and Kraft advancing to November. Wu is ahead about 65-30 with about 15% of the vote counted.
NYC mayor Siena:
Mamdani 46
Cuomo 24
Sliwa 15
Adams 9
In a two-way. Mamdani Leads Cuomo 48-44.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/nyregion/mayor-poll-mamdani-cuomo.html
This morning, I raise my coffee in a silent toast to Eric Adams’ bloated ego! He’s not going to get out of Cuomo’s way – heck, Adams can’t even get out of his own way.
Adams fighting Cuomo is gold.
But if Trump came out and endorsed Cuomo, boy, that would PISS Adams off!
Hakeem Jeffries still needs more time to decide if he's going to make an endorsement though.
New VA poll D lead solidifying https://x.com/samshirazim/status/1965399299740893312
I think Spanberger is going to hit Josh Stein levels of victory. Earle-Sears hasn't made the kind of gaffes that Mark Robinson did but she's not distancing herself from TACO and DOGE either.
And has way less money to make the case.
and the VA poll was weighted to 2021 so its not D friendly https://bsky.app/profile/bluevirginia.bsky.social/post/3lyfx77lohk24
Pollsters love to live in the past with their modeling
Eagle Sears is so extreme that she hates her own LG because he's gay, still opposes equal rights for LGBQ+ too.
Reid (the guy Youngkin and co wanted to throw out for being gay and doing gay things) apparently doing the best of all the R candidates is yet more egg on their faces.
If that ends up happening I can kind of see the explanation. In an election defined in no small part in reaction to an unpopular republican admin, probably the biggest thing most VA voters are hearing about Reid is that other republicans dislike him. That could soften his perception in the minds of swingy voters, especially among those who want to "balance" their votes.
Not predicting that it will happen, but I can see the logic if it does.
Many Republicans think that Attorney General Jason Miyares should do the best of their ticket, due to his incumbency. Some even have suggested redirecting their efforts closer to the election to focus on him and maybe the HoD if Earle-Sears looks like a lost cause.
But the polling isn't showing that so far. Miyares seems to have largely campaigned and served as Generic R, without making much of an individual impression. That likely won't be enough for him to win if the rest of the ticket is losing by significant margins.
NORWAY: Voter participation in yesterday’s parliamentary election was 78.9 %. That’s the highest seen since 1989. But Norway still has a ways to go to surpass the high watermark reached in 1965: 85.4 %.
Imagine how much better off our country would be if 85% of eligible voters in the United States voted in last year's presidential election...
I really despise gerrymandering and voter apathy.
I don't remember where I saw this exactly, but I think some analysis of non-voters in 2024 showed that they were more likely to be Trump voters than Harris.
I've seen these surveys every year since 1988, and amazingly, they always show the same thing: people who didn't vote, who had access to knowing who won, say they would have voted for the winner.
Surveys like this give research a bad name.
Fair point! Though I don't actually know if it was a poll, per se, or like a demographic analysis.
Not sure I know what you mean by these terms.
Ok yeah when I searched for it I guess it was just a survey; like you said, probably subject to confirmation bias
On the contrary, most nonvoters said they would have voted for Gore back in 2000.
But even if that was true, I don't see why that would be disqualifying, especially when done with the gargantuan sample size that was reportedly used last year. By and large, the low-information nonvoters seem to be of the same profile as the low-information undecided voters who decide elections based on which way they break. So it stands to reason that undecided voters and nonvoters tended to lean the same way.
With that in mind, I'll ask you to defend your hypothesis that their conclusions give surveys like this "a bad name".
This study of the CES (prominent PoliSci survey) suggested that Trump's margin would have grown to 2.6 pts in the overall popular vote had there been universal turnout. https://goodauthority.org/news/trump-also-captured-the-support-of-nonvoters-who-stayed-home-on-nov-5/
Again, this comes from people knowing the result already and wanting to be associated with the winning side. It's like asking people which lottery numbers they would have picked for last week's lottery drawing.
Non-voters are more often disengaged and don't have strong partisan or ideological preferences, so associating themselves with the winner is not contradictory to their beliefs.
I'm not sure which data is in the figure in this article, but the CES also asks a question before the election who people intend to vote for and then validate if they vote or not, so it should be possible to determine this also from intended vote before the fact.
So it's a panel study?
I'm pretty sure the poll was taken before the election, not after.
Well, now we've got some people saying that people were asked before the election and then their non-voting was validated after the election, and other people saying that it was a large sample size. Unlikely both are true.
Imagine how much better off our country would be if we drove 85% of eligible Democrats and Independent voters to cast a vote – but MAGA Republican turnout remained unchanged.
Don’t assume that would help Democrats.
Especially after the Trump realignment, I think it's a very likely bet that it wouldn't help Democrats.
That is also the reason while Texas could get closer with more suburbanization, I seriously doubt it flips soon. There are still tons of conservative White non-voters there.
Just look at how sticky North Carolina is. More and more transplants as a stimulus to the Southern White voters to turn out. Just 20 years ago, wouldnt believe the rural White voters there would vote at a rate matching or even exceeding Minnesota. Yet here we are.
Looking at the numbers, Labour will need suport from all parties in the Red-Green bloc (Centre, Socialist Left, Reds, and Greens) to forma majority government. Is it expected that this will complicate the coalition process? Is it likely that Labour will end up forming a minority government?
Correct, and Labour will get that support. (It would be an earthquake-level shock if they don’t.)
A full coalition is unlikely, for the simple reason that some of these parties do not wish to sit with certain other parties. We may see one or two of them join a coalition, but I think the most likely solution is a minority Labour government supported by the other Red/Green parties. Labour will, of course, have to make certain concession, especially during the budget process.
Who do you think is the most likely coalition partner(s)? I remember reading that the Centre party left the coalition earlier this year, leaving Labour as a sole-party minority government. Is there bad blood between them that will send labour looking to other parties like the socialist left or greens?
Interestingly, the Centre Party lost a lot of support after leaving the Labour-led coalition in January, dropping from 13.5% in the last election to 5.6% in this one. As a result, it dropped from 28 representatives to merely 9! Meanwhile, Labour increased from 26.2% to 28% – growing from 48 to 53 representatives.
I think each of the four parties that are natural allies of Norway’s Labour Party will seek to extract concessions rather than actually joining a coalition. So in my book, the most likely scenario is a minority Labour government.
Nordic people!
BTW, I think in swing states 2024 turnout was fairly close to that. WI and MI are in high seventy. GA, NC, PA are in low to mid 70s.
If you just look at White voters, (just to compare with Norway), WI/MI/PA probably already exceeded that 78% figure. GA and NC exceeded 80%.
If people think their votes matter, they will vote. Don’t assume higher turnout always helps.
We want elevated turnout of our voters! Lots of analyses examine the hypothetical impact of a cross-the-board increase in turnout. That, in my opinion, is mostly irrelevant.
KY-Sen: Don't get your hopes up. Andy Beshear is "free to revisit" his decision about running for Senate because he is a real person who really has agency. I'll believe that he _has_ done that when _he_ says that he has.
It will be political suicide. I hope he doesn't throw away his career.
What else could he do, though, unless you're thinking of a long-shot presidential campaign?
Dem Governors of southern red states have been known to succeed in the past.
Carter and Clinton were a long time ago, and their states weren't red then. So please name one.
I feel like 50% of our successful nominees over the past 60 years is nothing to sneeze at.
That is not relevant at all anymore. Our track record in recent years is abysmal. Cooper has a decent shot in NC, but that's not really a red state.
Presidential elections are rare enough, close enough, and feature a default candidate frequently enough, that we cannot make much over such observations. Over any consistent political era we will see only a handful of actual presidential candidates, and only one person can win each election. The sample sizes are too small.
Even going from 1976 to 1992 represents some substantial shifts in the political landscape. Never mind the gap from 1992 to 2008, or 2008 to 2024.
None of them were from red states, so 0%.
If his presidential campaign fails to take off, maybe campaign as a surrogate and aim for the VP slot or a cabinet post?
I sort of shrug at this, but maybe. Do you think he's a very likely running mate for anyone?
Wayy too early to tell
True, but those kinds of decisions usually take the winnability of a state at least somewhat into account.
Retire, or position himself for a cabinet position.
Realistically, it's Kentucky. Why waste his time and diminish his legacy?
Every now and then people get excited because we have a strong senate candidate for the state. Without fail each and every one of them gets crushed unceremoniously. And you know, they generally all were strong candidates, significantly outperforming the concurrent or most recent dem presidential performance as appropriate.
Beshear would presumably do quite a bit better than our baseline in a senate race, but our modern baseline in Kentucky is losing by 25-30 points. He could do 15 points better and still he would lose.
I agree that he would lose. But I don't see how it would ruin his career. He could still be a cabinet secretary after losing a senate election.
I wouldn't be surprised if it would help his career if he's seen as being a team player that forced republicans to spend money in Kentucky. It would diminish his legacy and represent a waste of his time on a personal level.
The question for him is if it would do enough to help his chances of landing an appointed promotion to be worth the time and effort and adding the L to his legacy.
A further consideration is the historical trend of losing ex-Governor Senate nominees. Larry Hogan, Phil Bredesen, Linda Lingle, Tommy Thompson, Steve Bullock, etc. I don’t think Beshear would go over much better.
That’s really speculative but in all honesty, Beshear is right now all Democrats have as far as a credible Senate candidate.
Also, given McConnell is retiring, any Democratic Senate Candidate’s best shot at running a race would be in an open Senate race. Challenging incumbents is a really tough nut to crack.
I doubt there's an appreciably different chance for a Democrat to win -any- senate seat in Kentucky. Their only shot would probably be something like the Moore special election in Alabama. I don't think a "credible" candidate matters, just someone who articulates the party's message acceptably and, most importantly, doesn't embarrass themselves or the party.
Yeah, we're not winning a senate seat in KY, regardless of the matchup, barring a truly off the rails R candidate and probably not even then.
You're probably right but I'd bet the odds are more likely in an open race vs. challenging an incumbent.
Either way, win or lose, who else besides Beshear would the Democrats need to be the nominee?
You suppose that increases the chances by 200%? You could be right - from 0.1% to 0.2%.
The hard truth is that Beshear's popularity is due to the legislature overturning all of his social policies like abortion rights, lgb rights, trans rights, banning conversion therapy, immigration reform etc. He would be crushed in a nationalized senate race like any other Democrat. What Kentuckians support are his investments in education, policing, mental health, infrastructure, budget etc.
https://www.270towin.com/states/kentucky: Presidential margins
And where do you get what you said out of what's written at the page you linked?
I just posted that link to reference the presidential margins in Kentucky which is insurmountable.
But you made a blanket comment about why he is popular as Governor that is not relevant to how he would fare in a Senate race. If it is not supported by the link you posted, what _is_ it supported by?
He would take a hit for backtracking after having said "No" so firmly and for so long. As I said, I'll believe he's reconsidering when *he* says so, and not until then.
I know almost nothing about NYC, but the poll numbers that suggest only 2% of Sliwa/Adams voters would shift to Mamdani seems off to me. I realize both are far to the right of Mamdani, but it seems like his populist message would appeal to more of that group than 2/24 when considering the alternative is Cuomo.
I think they're more likely to not vote than switch to Mamdani.
Everyone who would vote for Mamdani is already voting for him. Actually surprised Cuomo gets this close in the head-to-head, but alas, no one’s dropping out.
Alas?
Not alas because I'm opposed, but alas in that electorally we'll never know the result of a 1-on-1 race with any of them.
I can do without knowing. :-)
I think Mamdani will end up somewhere in the low 50s, on the back of pretty significant differentials in turnout rates among the various candidates' supporters
I don't think socialism/populism has much appeal to right leaning voters
Left wing populist messages don't really appeal to conservatives.
I agree with this. Voters do not have the ideological consistency or coherency that we'd expect based on our own views. Sure, most will behave in the way we expect overall. But enough will vote non-intuitively to make this kind of result improbable in practice. Especially when voters will see both Mamdani and Cuomo as democrats. I think a greater percentage of the electorate voted for AOC and Trump simultaneously last year than we have shifting to Mamdani in this poll. The ideological gap between AOC and Trump is quite substantially larger than the gap between Mamdani and Cuomo.
In the dem primary Cuomo got roughly 1/3 of the votes from eliminated ballots. Around a quarter of the ballots did not rank Mamdani or Cuomo. The remainder went to Mamdani.
Obviously that's a dem primary and not a general election, where the dynamics and ideologies at play will be quite different. But I think that gives us a very high level, very broad concept of how people do not reallocate their votes quite so neatly. I'd expect in this case that there would be more Sliwa/Adams voters becoming non voters (pushing up Mamdani's and Cuomo's percentages) and that we would see more than 2 points of them shifting to Mamdani.
The majority by far would go to Cuomo, but not so neatly or overwhelmingly.
NH-all: So St. Anselm released general election numbers for the only non-open seat but not NH-1 or NH-Sen?
They previously released NH-Sen general numbers. We noted that in the writeup.
Well I feel sheepish
JUST IN: -911,000 fewer jobs were created between April ’24 and March ’25, the BLS says. Wow, that’s a big revision. That means the labor market was weak even before the tariffs kicked in. The job market was mostly frozen in 2024, too.
Average job gains before revision =147,000 per month
**Average job gains AFTER revision = 71,000/month**
[Note: This annual revision process is normal. The BLS does it every year. Last August, the BLS reported -818,000 fewer jobs. Yes, these are large (negative) revisions. Why? It’s mainly due to problems accounting for new/closed businesses since the pandemic.]
https://x.com/byHeatherLong/status/1965416209161064712
I am not sold on this. If the job market was regularly adding six figures of jobs months before the tariffs were even introduced, then what the hell were these numbers in the first place?
The job market was volatile and growing but saying it’s frozen is stretching it. Now the market is for sure frozen and slow but saying it was back in 2024 really doesn’t make sense at all.
I honestly never have understood numbers being revised downwards crap. That’s like I am giving a report to the executive in charge of my department (say a Chief Marketing Officer) and telling him, “Jim, just a heads up, those 1,000 leads I was telling you about, well, turns out they are 230 leads after all.” How do you think he’d react to this news?
BLS needs to modernize its data reporting and do so in a way that truly accurately captures what is going on in the labor market. There has even been criticism of the BLS (which I echo as well) not accurately capturing the freelance market as not all self-employed people are really freelancers as marked on the tax forms.
Of course, I would not be like Trump and fire the messenger just because I have issues with the stats.
FYI:
If revised numbers show payroll data changed, there can be only one reason why:
Layoffs. There have been layoffs on a regular basis going on for months, even prior to Trump being elected. If the BLS data that you are referring to is telling anything, it's that layoffs are happening more regularly than they did before even in the period of 2021-2023.
Otherwise, once a job is added, it is not assured to last for any particular time. A business hires several people, those employees could last several years. If the same business hires 10 more people but lays off 6 later on after three months because of the challenging economy, then
Jobs added = jobs added. Changing the original numbers from what they originally were downwards is still crappy data analysis however you spin it. Data needs to be truly valid and verifible or otherwise, it's not assured to be truthful enough.
Mills is not winning the primary anymore and Collins just got brilliant ad material.
[ "Sen. Collins tells Semafor she was “delighted” to hear Mills’s remarks on her fight against the Trump tariffs
“The governor and I have always had a good relationship”
Quoting
@GovJanetMills
on
@SenatorCollins
: "She's in a tough position. I appreciate everything she is doing."
https://newscentermaine.com/article/news/politics/maine-politics/maine-governor-janet-mills-us-senate-run/97-077787b1-acaa-47b6-b695-f770d4879cac
@grahamformaine
: "I do not appreciate everything that Susan Collins is doing.”
https://x.com/burgessev/status/1965439208283369947 ]
I haven't thought, and don't think, she's running.
Gov. Mills says she's still seriously considering a run for US Senate
"Every day I pick up the newspaper and I read the headlines and I watch the news, and there are a lot of very disturbing things going on in Washington," Mills said.
agree...she won't challenge her "friend"...she would run only if Collins doesn't
regardless disappointing to know Gov Mills appreciates Collins. Baffling tone deaf statement by her. Was taking a sojurn up to Maine as I switched jobs and was able to attend the rally for Bernie Jackson and Platner with my retired Maine voter parents. Incredible energy in that room. Never saw a similar event for Sara Gideon when she was running against Collins six years ago. So much energy in that room that my dad--the one unaffiliated voter in the family is enrolling to vote for Platner in the primary. Troy Jackson is worth a look too re governors race fwiw!
His folksy appeal combined with Platner's booming charisma is imo just the ticket we need in Maine. Jackson being from Aroostook county also helps given Jared Golden some cover as opposed to a southern Maine gov nominee
How (or do?) folks think the horrific subway stabbing will play in the NC Senate race? Trump already trying to blame Cooper/Dems with typical soft-on-crime stuff.
It's Trumped up BS from the Conservative Media Machine and the more we respond to it the more it becomes an issue. Pivot to the cuts to mental health services and privatization of those same services in the 2000s and how that aligns with Conservative Policies instead.
Not just the Trump media machine but the "heterodox" anti-woke "liberal" crusaders, Abundists and their neoliberal allies are also at it. Increasing funding and tougher prosecution to tackle crime better is fine but blaming Democrats for the stabbing is just insane.
When I read "subway stabbing", I at first thought something happened here in New York. How many people were killed?
A young white woman (& Ukranian Refugee) was stabbed to death by a mentally disturbed black man with a long rap sheet so naturally the Conservative Media Machine shifts into overdrive to gin up outrage about it.
Black being the operative term. A white male could gun down a room full of school children and they wouldn’t say boo.
Of course and then they howl and bemoan how the "MEDIA" isn't covering the story which in turns causes them to cover the outrage to NOT covering the story which then puts Democrats on the defensive about how to respond to these bad faith calls to discuss the manufactured outrage that THEY created.
It won't be an issue since the main election won't be for another year.
North Carolina has a subway?
Probably no effect.
It's the Charlotte light rail system--not really a subway.
Violent crime committed in public space isn’t exactly news in America these days. How many people get murdered every day in the US? Just another day in a country unwilling to put the resources it takes to actually help people with mental health issues. Also, kind of hard to blame Democrats when you’re the party in power who actually has control in the average voters mind, but this is nothing new.
If batteries went up $1 everywhere because of some Trump tariff he’d still blame Democrats. It’s literally the only response Republicans actually have on any subject. It works when Democrats have power, not so much when they don’t. “A meteor crashed to earth destroying a farm, here’s why Democrats are at fault”. Unless prices and the cost of living magically go back in a time warp to 2019 no amount of bullshit will persuade the non-MAGA Trump 2024 voters in 2026.
Willie Horton rides again.
The problem is, having the issue of crime tying to the Senate race doesn't have as much direct impact vs. at the local and state level it does. Normally pre-2025 I'd say possibly.
However, Trump himself has got bigger baggage. He's also going after a popular former Governor who is a Senate candidate. As long as Cooper is on message, he should be fine.
This is all that the idiot non-rich people who think Trump is working for them need to know: https://politicalwire.com/2025/09/09/trump-halts-irs-crackdown-on-major-tax-shelters/ But they won't find out, and if they do, they'll support it.
Ahhh yes, those wealthy tax dodgers that Trump voters hate are getting a break from him so they can continue to be filthy rich.
Richer.
Ahhh yes. Filthy richer then!
As rich as they can possible get so they can exert control on anything they want.
Eugene DePasquale is the new chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in case anybody missed this: https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania-democrats-depasquale-street-fetterman-elections-20250906.html
I think the huge projected spike in health care premiums next year could seal the deal for Dems next year. So I'm puzzled as to why congressional Dems are pushing to cut a deal with the GOP to extend the Obamacare premium subsidies through the midterms and let vulnerable Republicans off the hook. It just seems like it would be a better idea to push for these things AFTER you win and you have more leverage.
Dems desire to protect voters from themselves borders on the pathological.
Because they care about people.
We do need to be smarter about how we do it though. A two year extension or something similarly short isn't worth that much in practice. Get a decade long extension for the trouble.
The ending is far enough in the future that nobody can count on being in or out of power at the time. It's short enough of a time that politicians can pretend it's only temporary. All while being long enough of a time to have a substantial and meaningful impact on a lot of lives even if it ultimately is temporary.
Can't the Democrats insist on it again next year on pain of another shutdown?
Would Schumer risk a shutdown over that, when he wouldn't even risk a shutdown in exchange for nothing?
Even if he would, that strategy only works while we're out of power. When we're the ones holding the presidency, while republicans hold at least one veto point is when they can turn it around. At that stage they can kill the program and hurt us. Ten year extensions are "safe" in that they punt the whole thing far enough into the future that even if it does hurt us it will still have done a lot of good in between.
I don't disagree with you.
We don't need the healthcare issue to help Democrats win the midterms. It was already looking bad for the GOP months ago to begin with.
Never play politics with the issue of healthcare, especially if there are those who could lose it or pay a higher premium.
Here’s a question I have for posters here that relates to another comment I made.
At what point does an ex-Governor running for Senate have an actual chance? What separates the John Hickenloopers and (hopefully) Roy Coopers from the Larry Hogans and Steve Bullocks?
The partisan lean of the state at the federal level, as well as the dynamics of the election cycle in which said governor runs.
Whether the governor is popular also matters, as long as the other two factors cooperate.
VA-11: Walkinshaw wins (this was never in doubt) and is so far turning in a healthy overperformance: up 75-25 with 67% reporting (Connolly's wins were typically more like 66-33).
I can only assume the state GOP is rummaging around their closets for an unsoiled pair of pants.
Yep. Now >94% reporting and the 75-25 lead has held!
Earle-Sears, Miyares and Reid need to be preparing their concession speeches once 11/4 rolls around.
The elections coming up are not going to be pretty for Rs for the next couple cycles.
Next couple of cycles? From your lips to God's ears!
To get as recent a comparison as we can, Connolly's 2024 win was almost exactly 66-33: it was 66.7-32.9.
A result of 75-25 represents a 17 point shift in our favor.
Oye Owolewa, DC's shadow representative (meaning not Norton the Delegate who serves as a Member of Congress in House committees, but the unpaid one who technically would become the official U.S. Rep. if it became a state) announced he's running instead for one of the two at-large seats on the DC Council up next year, currently held by Anita Bonds (second longest serving member and former chair of the DC Democratic Party). No DC shadow rep has served longer than six years/three terms.
https://www.dcnewsnow.com/news/local-news/washington-dc/rep-oye-owolewa-announces-run-for-dc-council-at-large/
I know nothing about him, but Anita Bonds is so useless that in the last election, even the Washington Post endorsed against her. When an incumbent friendly, anti-progressive, normie paper like the Post says you're useless, that's saying something.
Early results from Boston's preliminary round are in. As widely expected it'll be Wu and Kraft advancing to November. Wu is ahead about 65-30 with about 15% of the vote counted.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/09/09/2025-boston-mayor-preliminary-election-results