Happy Birthday to Guy Sularz, 58
Want some good stuff?
1. Ed Kilgore makes the point I also made yesterday, but in more depth: yes, the "establishment" candidate won in AL-1, but the Tea Partier did well enough to keep the focus on primaries.
2. Kristen Soltis looks at the numbers carefully and it turns out my quick glance is probably correct: it was the Libertarian candidacy which accounts for the polling in VA-Gov.
3. Harry Enten looks at the exit polls. I agree with his main points for the most part, but one word of caution: be very careful about putting too much weight on exit poll numbers, especially for relatively small subsamples. It's really easy for them to be almost useless.
4. Seth Masket on two ballot measures in Colorado: one with a clear partisan pattern, one without.
5. And Elizabeth Warren and the social sciences, from Henry Farrell.
Kilgore trots out the by-now hoary meme of the limit to the Tea Party 'crazy', which the "Defund Obamacare"-motivated shutdown clearly transgressed. Funny to reconsider that in light of Obama's awkward spin today, the growing Obamacare revolt among Senate Democrats, Sebelius' forecast warnings, and anecdotal reports of terrible numbers (e.g. $4 M for 4 signups in Delaware), among others.
ReplyDeleteIn particular, and speaking just hypothetically, assume you were a politician having inside knowledge that your opponents were at the helm of an initiative that was imminently on track for a spectacular crash-and-burn, which couldn't be stopped but needed to be disavowed. What would you do?
Seems to me you'd probably do something awfully similar to what Kilgore and friends label "The Crazy". Interesting.