May 13

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News from the Votemaster

Today's the big day: MS-01 votes. This is the third special election for a House seat this year in which a Democrat might win a district that is highly Republican and has been occupied for a Republican for years. This was Roger Wicker's old seat until Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour appointed him to fill Trent Lott's seat in the Senate. There was a special election on April 22 and neither the Democratic candidate, Travis Childers (Chill-ders) nor the Republican candidate, Greg Davis, got the required 50% so there is a runoff today without any minor candidates this time. Last time Childers got 49.6% and Davis got 46.3%. Both the DCCC and NRCC are pouring money into this race like there is no tomorrow. After Democratic victories earlier this year in two R+7 districts, IL-14 and LA-06, a third straight loss for the GOP will be hugely demoralizing.

The Republicans are so worried about this district they sent Dick Cheney down their to campaign for Davis. It is not clear if that is going to help as Cheney is not the most popular guy in the country, not even in Mississippi.

This is an R+10 district that should be a piece of cake for the Republicans, yet Childers came within 410 votes of winning it outright 3 weeks ago. Davis strategy is to say that Childers is a liberal and closely associated with Barack Obama. In reality, Childers is pro-life and pro-gun and has never met Obama. The strategy of trying to tie Democratic House candidates was tried in LA-06 in which Woody Jenkins (R) tried to tar Don Cazayoux (D) as a great friend of Barack Obama. It didn't work. Cazayoux won. We'll know tomorrow if it worked the second time around.

MS-01 is somewhat different than LA-06 in that it is (1) Mississippi not Louisiana, (2) more rural than LA-06, and (3) has fewer black voters. In retrospect, Jenkins constant harping that Cazayoux is like Obama may have encouraged many blacks go to vote--for Cazayoux (who is white). There is also a geographical factor in MS-01. Childers is a court official in Prentiss County, in the eastern part of the district. Davis is mayor of Southaven, a Memphis suburb in the western part of the district. Part of Childers pitch is "we need someone to represent Mississippi, not Tenness.e, in Congress." Still, Childers is a populist Democrat and a victory by a Democrat in three straight contested special elections will be seen as the handwriting on the wall for November.

Yesterday, the Memphis Commercial Appeal endorsed Childers rather than the local guy, Davis. They felt that Childers will hit the ground running, by which they mean House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reserved a seat on the agriculture committee for Childers, something Davis won't get. Since most people in MS-01 are farmers, the farm bill now being prepared is of tremendous importance to them. This is a situation where being in the majority matters. With the Democrats in control, Pelosi can arrange for a new member to get some goodies quickly to impress the folks back home. Republicans can't do that. That's politics and both parties do it, only now the Democrats control the House.

The other election day is the presidential primary in West Virginia. No suspense here: Hillary Clinton will win in a landslide as discussed yesterday. Barack Obama spent only 1 day in the state and has said he expects to lose big. If Clinton get 2/3 of the votes, as predicted, she will net about 10 delegates.

Here are the new primary polls today.

Here are the new general election polls.

The polling results for all primaries and caucuses are available as a Web page and in .csv format.

Barack Obama netted a couple more supers yesterday. Here are the current estimates.

Delegates

Needed to win: 2025

Here is another source for delegate totals.

WWW www.electoral-vote.com