Day one of our US midterm elections live blog

October 5th, 2010 admin

Welcome to the first day of the Guardian’s rolling live coverage of the US 2010 midterm election campaign

12.22pm ET:

My colleague Ed Pilkington’s earlier piece about Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch” ad draws this historically accurate response in the comments from reader ternunstoned :

She has to offer more proof that she isn’t a witch. What about a televised dunking? Hosted by someone dressed as Matthew Hopkins .

Hmm, good point. So if she sinks, she isn’t a witch, right?

12 noon ET:

I was about to do a lunchtime round-up when this new poll for the West Virginia senate seat landed – and it’s more bad news for the Democrats:

Deep resistance to Obama’s agenda has put a West Virginia Senate seat once thought to be safe territory for Democrats in serious jeopardy.

The poll gives Republican businessman John Raese a five percentage point lead over the state’s Democratic governor Joe Manchin among likely voters, by 48% to 43%. Strangely, most voters like Manchin – they just don’t want to vote for him for the US Senate.

A loss in West Virginia would be a huge boost to Republicans attempts to win a majority in the Senate and this will be one of the most closely watched races out there this year. Nevada, another key senate seat, is also looking good for the Republicans, by 49% to 46%.

11.50am ET:

It must be “nasty ad month” here in America: here’s the Tea Party Express having a low-blow at Lisa Murkowski, who was defeated by Tea Party superhunk Joe Miller in the Republican primary but is now running as a “write-in” candidate for Alaska’s senate seat:

Murkowski is trying to get the ad taken off TV … but I don’t fancy her chances.

11.36am ET:

In her Gothic masterpiece of TV advertising, Christine O’Donnell tells us that if elected, she’d “do what you would do”. Now what exactly does that mean? Gabe at the hilarious Videogum site suggests:

To be fair, if Christine O’Donnell were elected to the Senate she probably WOULD do what I would do if I was elected to the Senate: walk around in perma-flop sweat, looking really confused and feeling out of one’s depth while struggling to grasp even a child’s understanding of parliamentary procedure and proving almost comically incapable of the day-to-day business of crafting legislation. PERFECT!

In conclusion, says Gabe: “Seriously, though, shut up, Christine O’Donnell.”

My colleague Ed Pilkington has a slightly more generous interpretation of O’Donnell’s performance art:

It has the feel of one of those washing-up liquid ads from the 1970s.

Our American readers might like to know that “washing-up liquid” is British for dishwashing detergent, which is what people used to use to clean plates and so on before the invention of massive dishwashing machines that do that for you.

11.20am ET:

The Washington Post has a poll out today that has a glimmer of good news for Democrats, who are slightly up on their miserable summer polling. But it’s still bad news overall:

Among likely voters, Republicans hold a six-point edge, 49% to 43%, on the congressional ballot. At this time four years ago, Democrats led by 12 points. Then, Democrats also held a 19-point advantage when voters were asked which party they trusted to deal with the country’s main problems. Today, the public is almost evenly divided on that question, nearly matching public sentiment in October 1994, the last time Republicans won both the House and the Senate.

Since turnout is crucial in a midterm election, lacking the bait of a presidential elecvtion year, it’s the “likely voter” numbers that are important. Many more Republicans say they are folloiwing election news closely, which is generally a good indicator of voting intentions.

10.52am ET:

One of the key Senate battlegrounds is going to be Wisconsin, where Democratic heavyweight Russ Feingold is under pressure according to recent polls. Feingold’s got a new TV ad up that’s clever and punchy, without being defensive:

Hat-tip to Mike Memoli – @mikememoli – one of the Guardian’s Top 50 Twitter accounts to follow for US politics and election coverage.

10.30am ET:

The Washington Post has a long (and frankly, tedious) profile-cum-notebook dump on Hawaii’s ancient and long-serving Senator Daniel Inouye. It makes Hawaiian politics sound insular, which is hardly surprising. Somehow the Post’s editors managed not to cut out this amusing detail on page 23:

Inouye keeps no computer, a promise he made to himself after helping pass the telecommunications act in 1996, because he considers them too addictive. “I only have a cellphone,” he said, happily taking a blank-screened phone out of his pocket. “And this cellphone is not on. No one can call me, and I have no idea what the number is.”

Which kind of defeats the purpose of having a cellphone, really. But then Inouye is 86 years old and it’s his cellphone.

10.15am ET:

The most fascinating story of the day brings together race, politics and the economy in a eye-opening way.

Two academics have run the numbers and found that predatory mortgage lending and then mortgage foreclosures followed predominantly African American, racially segregated neighbourhoods. The authors write:

By concentrating foreclosures in metropolitan areas with large racial differentials in subprime lending, segregation structured the causes of the crisis, as well as the geographic and social distribution of its costs, on the basis of race. Segregation therefore racialized and intensified the consequences of the American housing bubble.

You can get the article here but this looks like being a powerful piece of research, and the first one to put hard numbers on an effect that many people suspected was the case.

10am ET:

The obvious subtext running through this election season is the 2012 presidential elections. Isn’t that two years away, you say? Well, not quite. The first contest will be in January/February 2012, a mere 14 months after the midterms are over, and as we saw in 2008, there’s no time to lose.

It’s useful to assume that the 2012 Republican presidential primary kicks off on 3 November, the day after the midterms end. Oh joy.

Mitt Romney will appear in all the lists of runners and riders, and he certainly wants to run. He hasn’t got a hope in the current climate. For example: Romney recently endorsed the Alabama Republican governor candidate Robert Bentley. Or he tried to, until Bentley turned him down :

A spokeswoman for Bentley, Rebekah Mason, said Friday that Bentley wanted to concentrate on the race for governor and did not want to give the impression that he was endorsing anyone in the 2012 presidential race.

When candidates don’t even want your endorsement in a general election, then you are really in trouble. Save your money, Mitt, and stay home next year.

9.45am ET:

Speaking of Christine O’Donnell, the fabulous Michael Kinsley has his first column in his new role as an op-ed columnist for Politico. It’s on the subject of intellectual honesty. Pausing briefly to school some young bloggers, Kinsley then smacks Mitt Romney around the head with a truth-fish:

If he thought there was some political advantage in asserting that two plus two is five, Romney would be out there within minutes with a speech about how business had taught him a thing or two that these government bureaucrats will never understand and promising that in his administration two plus two will equal six.

You can read the whole thing here . Kinsley is a crown jewel of US journalism.

9.30am ET:

Following Christine O’Donnell’s unusual “I’m you” TV ad last night – and how many people around Delaware are thinking “You ain’t me, lady” – the campaign of her Democratic rival Chris Coons is quickly up with a response website, christineisnotme.com , with the riposte:

In her new television ad, Christine O’Donnell says she is you. But unless you think the retirement age for Social Security should be raised, want to further de-regulate Wall Street, are against a woman’s right to choose, think public schools should teach Creationism, and think homosexuality is an “identity disorder,” she is not you.

That makes the point pretty clearly.

9.20am ET:

How bad is the outlook for the Democrats in the House of Representatives? This bad: according to the latest seat by seat ratings from the Rothenberg Political Report , the Republicans have 86 seats that they can potentially win off the Democrats. The Democrats have … just eight.

9.10am ET:

By the way, the timestamps on this live blog are in Eastern Summer Time, which is five hours behind British Summer Time (and I use the word “summer” in a purely technical sense).

9am ET:

It was a busy night last night with a batch of candidates debates, most notably in Connecticut – a super-crucial Senate race – where two flawed candidates went at each other hammer and tongs. The NYT reports :

Richard Blumenthal and Linda E McMahon questioned each other’s truthfulness and qualifications to serve in the United States Senate Monday in a televised debate marked by tart exchanges and obvious iciness between them.

McMahon, the Republican, used to run World Wrestling Entertainment, a “sport” with a number of ethical issues, while Blumenthal has, over the years, exaggerated his military service. McMahon is hugely wealthy and is plastering the tiny state with ads such as this:

“If he lied about Vietnam, what else is he lying about?” Dangerous stuff and as nasty as it gets.

Good morning. If you thought American politics was non-stop in 2008: welcome to the 2010 midterm elections, where more money being spent on an election cycle than any previous time in human history.

From now until 3 November, we’ll be live-blogging our way through the thickets of attack ads and polling data every weekday, in an attempt to keep up with the political activity through the US, with 37 Senate races, 39 gubernatorial elections – including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands – a strew of state legislatures and every seat in the US House of Representatives all up for election.

One thing that seems pretty plain, even a month out, is that the Democrats are in for an old fashioned hiding. After just two years of Democratic rule, the miserable state of the US economy has disheartened their supporters and fired up Republicans. As things stand, the Republicans will almost certainly gain a clear majority in the House of Representatives, and even win a majority in the US Senate – the latter being unthinkable just a few months ago.

But there is one iron rule that drives US midterm election results: turnout. Republicans and Republican-supporting independents will go out and vote. Democrats will stay home. And that will make all the difference.

The worst news for the Democrats came yesterday, with a sophisticated poll by Gallup . It attempted to gauge the level of chances of different groups bothering to go and vote . And it found that the fewer people that voted, the better the Republicans would do. In its worst case scenario, Gallup found that with the lowest turnout the Republicans would win a 56% share of the vote nationally, and the Democrats would win just 38%.

To avoid a crushing defeat, Democrats have to convince their supporters to go and vote – it’s as simple as that. And that’s one of the things we’ll be watching for in the next four weeks.

In the meantime here’s the political ad that Tea Party darling and Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell broadcast to the people of Delaware last night for the first time, in an attempt to remake her image.

It begins with O’Donnell saying “I’m not a witch,” which is possibly the first time that’s happened in modern election history, at least since the Salem witch trials.

But does it work, especially the “I’m you” refrain? Let us know by leaving a comment below. Personally, I don’t think it does: if she’s not a witch why is she dressed in black and standing before a spooky dark background while haunted house-style music plays in the background? US midterm elections 2010 US politics US Congress Democrats Republicans United States Richard Adams guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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