Franken already a 2:1 favorite to win re-election in 2014
Tuesday, January 06, 2009 at 1:05 pm
- 3 Comments
Al Franken is taking a scolding in some quarters for declaring victory Monday after the State Canvassing Board certified that he received 225 more votes than former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman in Minnesota’s Senate recount. So it’s probably best if he stays off the front steps of his downtown Minneapolis condo today and makes no public comment about this development: A University of Minnesota political scientist has calculated that Franken stands a 67-percent chance of winning re-election to the Senate in 2014 — assuming he ever gets seated in the first place, that is.
In winning the most votes by a slim margin, Franken is “tainted,” according to Republican state Sen. Geoff Michel. And while Michel won’t find an argument with that assertion from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers (from whom he may have taken inspiration for his choice of words), history suggests that a slim winning margin won’t hurt Franken at the polls six years from now.
Eric Ostermeier, writing at his Smart Politics blog from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, takes a look back at past victors in Minnesota elections to the U.S. Senate and finds that “there is virtually no difference in the re-election success rate of those who won narrowly and those who won by large margins.”
In fact, Ostermeier reports, senators who won by double-digit margins did slightly worse in the next election cycle than those who won by narrower margins. His conclusion:
In short, if past is prologue (and all things being equal), should Franken prevail and choose to run in 2014, he would seem to have about a 67 percent chance of winning reelection, as 15 of 22 Senators have done before him.
If it seems a bit early (or even a bit nutty) to run the numbers already on Franken’s chances in 2014 on a day when senators of his own party thought better of even trying to seat him a first time — well, it was early. A date-stamp reveals that Ostermeier posted his electoral research on Tuesday, Jan. 6, at 2:38 a.m.
3 Comments
Comment posted January 6, 2009 @ 2:20 pm
He completely leaves out, not that I know how to quantify it, how irate Republicans are about what they perceive as election theft. Look at the comments they leave on newspaper articles, or their commentary on conservative blogs, and the tin foil hats are on and duct-taped to their heads. Nonetheless, as opposite to fact as their assertions are, they firmly believe them and will be motivated to beat Franken more than other DFL senators. I point last year’s governor election in Washington state, in which the Republicans were motivated enough to make it close in a Democratic year. It wasn’t recount-close this time, but they are still spurred on by the 2004 recount. They will use this recount the same way, and DFLers won’t talk sense in to them. We do however have to get ahead of their attempts to convince people outside the conservative base that something untoward happened.
Comment posted January 6, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
What Eric F overlooks is that Republican opposition is irrelevant to Franken’s reelection. Republicans wouldn’t likely vote for him in 6 years anyway, whether they view this election as ‘stolen’ or not. The more relevant group is the set of swing voters that might vote R, might vote D and might vote I. Look at the 2006 numbers for Klobuchar compared to Pawlenty’s numbers that year, to Obama’s in MN this year, to how Franken/Coleman did. The hardcore party animals don’t decide elections, the swing voters do.
To put it another way, if party anger decided elections, the generic D would have slaughtered Coleman this year, to reclaim Wellstone’s seat. Seeing how that didn’t happen, it seems there’s more at play than who’s mad.
Comment posted January 8, 2009 @ 1:34 am
I just read this great blog on freedomhaters.org about Al Franken versus Ann Coulter.
At one time they were head-to-head political rivals, now Franken has got his place in Senate and Ann Coulter is banned from NBC. You should see the Coulter videos of her lowest moments.
Check it out here:
http://freedomhaters.org/content/franken-verses-coulter
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