No Runny Eggs

The MacIver Institute has launched an Election Day live-blog, with reports from both the MacIver News Serivce and various bloggers. From the announcement:

Contrbutors can merely read the various posts or submit their own original content.The MacIver Institute’s History as it Happens Election Day Live Blog will record information, anecdotes and analysis on:

• The most hotly contested local races
• Voting experiences at polling places across Wisconsin
• Turn out levels throughout the day
• Final GOTV activities by candidates
• Local referenda across the state
• Any incidents of voting irregularities

The forum will be moderated by the team at MacIver. Promotion of individual candidates or political parties, promotion of any organization or cause, innuendo, rumor and name calling will be prohibited.

Since I’m one of those who was invited, I’ll simulcast the event here.

(H/T – Jon Henke)

…Congressman Ron Kind (D-La Crosse), who attempted to grab the video camera of a blogger for La Crosse WatchDog who dared confront him on PlaceboCare.

[youtube width=”560″ height=”340″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WjCU6yNs9o[/youtube]

If the voters in the 3rd Congressional District needed another reason to retire Kind, he just delivered.

With the election tomorrow (7 am-8 pm in Wisconsin, check with your local election officials for times and poll locations), it’s as good a time as any to tell you who I’ll be voting for and who I would be voting for if I were in various districts other than my own:

Races I will be voting on

• Wisconsin governor/lieutenant governor – Scott Walker/Rebecca Kleefisch – In case you missed that little graphic on your right (or you’re viewing this place on a mobile phone), I’ve been an early backer of Scott Walker. Do I really need to repeat what I said in September?
• US Senator from Wisconsin – Ron Johnson – Going back to the September ballot explanation, I said that I trust someone whose “gut” was in the right place. Johnson has learned how effectively voice his “gut conservatism”, and how to avoid the types of mistakes that other first-timers have made.
• 1st Congressional District – Paul Ryan – There is a runaway fiscal train coming down the tracks, and despite what certain “libertarians” think, Ryan is one of the few willing to work on rerouting the train away from the derailing curve at the bottom of the hill.
• Attorney General – J.B. Van Hollen – There is a reason Van Hollen was the only Republican to win a major statewide/Congressional office held by a Democrat in 2006; he is a law-and-order type who runs a lean department.
• State treasurer – Kurt Schuller – Schuller sold me on his candidacy in an interview he did shortly after the primary. I’m still not entirely convinced that the state treasurer’s office should go away entirely, but until/unless it does, he will fill the job in a fiscally- and constitutionally-responsible manner.
• Secretary of state – David King – I’ll go back to an interview he did back at the RPW convention.
• Milwaukee County Sheriff – David Clarke – Simple; he has professionalized the Sheriff’s office while streamlining the costs.
• 7th Senate District – Jess Ripp – The Milwaukee Democrats made a big mistake in removing Jeff Plale in the primary in favor of someone who, if elected, would be the most-liberal Senator in the next session of the Legislature. Ripp, and my fellow voters, are just the people to explain to them just how big.
• 21st Assembly District – Mark Honadel – Honadel took a district that had been a Democrat stronghold for 80 years during southeast Wisconsin’s precursor to the TEA Party. Now that he’s about to finally be in a government-limiting majority, it’s time to make sure he’s there to make it happen.

Races I wish I could be voting on

• 5th Senate District – Leah Vukmir – She is, simply, one of the brightest people who ever went into the Capitol to serve, and the Capitol hasn’t corrupted her.
• 21st Senate District – Van Wanggaard
• 31st Senate District – Ed Thompson
• 6 of the other 7 Congressional races – Chad Lee (2nd), Dan Kapanke (3rd), Dan Sebring (4th), Jim Sensenbrenner (5th), Sean Duffy (7th) and Reid Ribble (8th) – It’s about the spending. Sensenbrenner is a proven spendthrift, and the other 5 are running as the same. A couple of them won’t win just because the districts (2nd and 4th) are just that rigged for Democrats, but this time last year, everybody thought Dave Obey was safe in the 7th. In case you were wondering where Tom Petri is, see the open.
• 25th Assembly District – Bob Ziegelbauer – Sink the other part of the Democrat Party Purification to bear at least some fruit this cycle. The Democrats and AFSCME went so far as to insert a faux “Republican” into the race (finally succeeding after some nomination signatures were found well after the deadline and after the Government “Accountability” Board threw out enough signatures to deny the stalking horse a ballot spot); don’t let them oust the last moderate Dem to see where the party is headed.
• Racine County advisory referendum on new taxes for KRM – No – KRM should be dead and buried in the new year, but it’s best to drive this stake through it.

Note – Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is the Deputy House GOP Whip and recruitment director of the NRCC, and he’s been covering various candidates on RedState the past few weeks.

Tomorrow is Election Day, and I’m excited for the Republican House candidates who have worked so hard over the last several months. Momentum is on our side, and tomorrow, Americans can make a bold statement to change our country’s direction.

One who I am excited about is Young Gun candidate Sean Duffy, who is running in Wisconsin’s Seventh Congressional District. If Sean looks familiar, it’s because he was on MTV’s Real World. But in the actual real world, Sean is a former prosecutor who stepped forward to run for Congress when he saw the Democrats’ failed policies hurting the country.

Just like he chops logs as a competitive lumberjack, Sean wants to chop down the federal budget deficit. He would do that by freezing non-discretionary federal spending to 2008 levels and canceling unspent stimulus money.

Sean is also on a mission to get the economy going to create jobs. Instead of the Democrats’ tired idea of more stimulus spending, Sean believes in releasing the energy of small businesses. That means stopping the Democrats’ tax increases coming on January 1, 2011, abandoning a cap-and-trade energy tax, and reducing regulations on small businesses.

Some of those new regulations are found in the Democrats’ government takeover of health care. Sean rejects that Big Government approach and will work for real solutions like letting consumers buy insurance across state lines and lawsuit abuse reform.

Check out Sean’s website and follow him on Twitter.

Thanks,

Rep. Kevin McCarthy

I really should have waited one more day to do a poll-a-copia because Public Policy Polling released their last pre-election poll taken of 1,372 likely voters between 10/26 and 10/28 this morning. On the other hand, there’s a few results in the identical 53%-44% leads Scott Walker and Ron Johnson enjoy over Tom Barrett and Russ Feingold (respectively) that bear longer looks than I could afford in a month-long “wrap-up” post.

The first item of note is the partisan split. PPP’s split in this poll was 37% independent, 34% Republican and 30% Democrat. I do have to note that Wisconsin does not have state-monitored party registration, and differeing polling firms have different screens for who is a Republican versus who is a Democrat. It is remarkable how even the topline likely-voter results are between the 4 different non-St. Norbert pollsters that took polls this month even as they had significantly different partisan splits.

PPP noted that there is a rather significant “enthusiasm gap” in Wisconsin, at least as it is measured by those who admitted to voting for Barack Obama in 2008 versus who actually voted for him in 2008. Obama carried Wisconsin by a 56.2%-42.3% margin over John McCain, but among the likely voters this year, only 49% admitted to voting for Obama while 46% said they voted for McCain.

PPP further noted that Obama’s job approval really slipped. Among all the likely voters, it was down to 37% approve/54% disapprove. That compares rather darkly to Rasmussen’s essentially-contemporaneous 48% approve/51% disapprove/-16 Approval Index (strong approve less strong diapprove, with no equivalent in PPP’s polling) statewide, and a national rolling average of 44% approve/55% disapprove/-20 Approval Index taken the same 3 days as PPP’s poll. Worse for Obama, his approval rating among those who admitted to voting for him was only 70% approve/18% disapprove. Perhaps that is why Obama has decided not to head to Wisconsin one more time (H/T-Ed Morrissey).

Meanwhile, both soon-to-be-ex-governor Jim Doyle’s and Russ Feingold’s job approval ratings were in negative territory, and worse than Rasmussen’s equivalent numbers (Rasmussen used favorability for Feingold rather than job approval). There also is a troubling trend for Herb Kohl in the PPP poll – his job approval index was barely above water at 41% approve/40% disapprove.

I’m sorry that it’s been a while since I did one of these. Outside the outliers of the St. Norbert’s Senate poll and various Democrat-sponsored internal polls, not much had really changed in the aggregate since the end of September until now. To make up for that lack of attention, I’ll expand the look to cover the two Congressional races in the northern part of the state, the 7th and 8th Congressional Districts.

Before I really begin, I may as well explain why I’m completely discounting the St. Norbert’s polls, even though their gubernatorial poll appeared to confirm what everybody else has. They have a long, bipartisan history of being outliers, likely due to the extended length of time covered by the polls and the fact that it’s conducted by college students just learning how to do polling.

Senate/Gubernatorial polls

First up for review in both the gubernatorial and Senate races is the Reuters/Ipsos poll (crosstabs courtesy RealCleaPolitics), taken between 10/8 and 10/11 among 600 registered and 451 likely voters. On the likely-voter end, Republican nominee Ron Johnson had a 51%-44% lead on Democrat incumbent Russ Feingold in the Senate race, and Republican nominee Scott Walker had a 52%-42% lead on Democrat nominee Tom Barrett in the gubernatorial race. On the registered-voter end, Johnson’s lead almost completely evaporated to 46%-45%, while Walker’s lead shrunk by less to a 48%-41% lead. Of note in this poll is the partisan split; while the registered voter partisan split was 46% Democrat-38% Republican, the likely voter partisan split was 45% Republican-42% Democrat.

Ipsos did not break down the likely-voter numbers by party. Among the 9% of registered voters who identified themselves as independents in this poll, Johnson had a 38%-30% lead, with a significant part of Feingold’s support coming from those who were merely “leaning” toward him (the “firm-committment” numbers were 37%-25% in favor of Johnson). Meanwhile, Walker had a 41%-15% lead among the independents with leaners and a 36%-15% lead among independents who expressed a “firm committment”.

Next up is the Time/CNN/Opinion Research poll, taken between 10/8 and 10/12 among 931 likely voters. Johnson and Walker both had identical 52%-44% leads over Feingold and Barrett respectively. While the partisan split was not released, based on the margin of error, independents were a substantial plurality, while Republicans and Democrats were roughly equal in representation. Both Johnson and Walker had roughly 20-point leads among independents.

Finally, the Rasmussen polls taken on 10/25 among 750 likely voters. Johnson had a 53%-46% lead on Feingold, while Walker had a 52%-42% lead on Barrett. Democrats had a 39%-37% advantage in the poll over Republicans, but Johnson held a 21-point advantage and Walker held a 27-point advantage among independents.

Going back over the numbers from RealClearPolitics, in the Senate race, outside the St. Norbert outlier, Johnson has been above 50% since the September primaries and Feingold has been at or under 46% against Johnson since polling started including him in May. On the gubernatorial side, outside of a late-September Fox News/Pulse Opinion Research poll, Walker has been at or above 50% since the primaries, while Barrett has been at or below 45% for the entire year including that Fox News/Pulse Opinion Research poll.

Revisions/extensions (1:34 pm 10/29/2010) – I should have procrastinated a bit longer because Public Policy Polling released a poll this morning with Johnson and Walker holding identical 53%-44% leads. Fuller discussion is above.

8th Congressional District

Publicly-available polling has been rather sparse in this district, with only two polls that RealClearPolitics noted, one from The Hill/Penn, Schoen and Berland taken between 10/12 and 10/14 among 415 likely voters and one from DailyKos/Public Policy Polling taken between 10/23 and 10/24 among 1,419 likely voters.

In The Hill’s poll, Republican nominee Reid Ribble had a 45%-44% lead on Democrat incumbent Steve Kagen. There were two items in the crosstabs (courtesy WisPolitics’ DC Wrap) that do not match up with most other polls taken nationwide; the partisan split, and the independent voter result. The split was listed as 38% independent-32% Republican-25% Democrat, while Kagen held a 3-point lead among independents.

The DailyKos poll is far more interesting, not the least of which is the size of the poll. Ribble had a 40%-37% lead on Kagen, with 23% undecided. Meanwhile, Johnson had a 52%-45% lead on Feingold in the district, while Walker had a 52%-44% lead on Barrett.

The demographic percentages at the bottom of the crosstabs seem to have been fouled up, but the partisan split appears to be roughly 38% independent, 31% Democrat and 30% Republican. Among independents, Ribble had a 41%-31% lead, while Johnson had a 16-point lead and Walker a 18-point lead among those same independents.

7th Congressional District

Like the 8th Congressional, publicly-available polling is hard to come by, with the added handicap of no crosstabs from the two outfits that polled the district. The Hill/Penn, Schoen and Berland polled 400 likely voters between 10/2 and 10/7, and found Republican nominee Sean Duffy up on Democrat nominee Julie Lassa 44%-35%. The Hill noted Duffy held a 17-point lead among independents (no partisan split given) and a 2-point lead among women, with Lassa’s only demographic lead being among voters over 55 years old.

An outfit called We Ask America polled 1,150 registered voters on 10/18. They found Duffy up 46.00%-38.61% (yes, they reported to the nearest hundredth of a percent), a bit of a tightening from their 8/4 poll of 1,002 registered voters that had Duffy up 41.83%-33.09%. The partisan split was 39% independent-32% Democrat-29% Republican, and Duffy held a 49.10%-29.95% lead among independents.

Republican Senate nominee Ron Johnson and Democrat Senator Russ Feingold will be appearing before Mike Gousha and a statewide townhall audience tonight for their last debate. The fun begins at 6:30 pm, and if you’re not in Wisconsin, you can head to wisn.com, the host of tonight’s debate, to watch. Meanwhile, saddle up to the bar, pour yourself a cold one, and come on in for another semi-drunkblog (how much I drink depends on how far Feingold goes off the rails). Do be advised that the language may become salty.