re: GOP Takes First-Ever Early Voting Lead in Iowa

Isn't Iowa an open seat?

Nate Silver has Iowa as most important seat.

68% chance republicans have outright majority if Iowa moves to GOP

The weight of the non partisan polls have 11/13 for Ernst but within 2.5 points

Colorado it's the same consistency at about 3.5 points Gardner. Nate believes Colorado is basically gone.

Kansas is all about the ground game. Roberts is being dragged down by Brownback on governors ticket.

Georgia is going into a runoff. Nunn looks like she splits the libertarian vote in runnoff. Half are Rand Paul libertarians anf the other half liberal leaning. Perdue could be in real trouble. A "professional outsourcer" won't win many elections.

North Carolina, I have no idea how Hagan wins? Obama turned AA turnout to 21-23% of electorate. How Hagan even gets to 15% AA turnout is hard to imagine. Still, Tilis is within 1.5 points now and Hagan is hovering around 45% favorable.

Colorado mail ins are a huge GOP advantage so far, like 600K.

One reason given was that younger people may not have stamps.

And then fiscal conservatives need to win at least the next three Novembers. And then fiscal conservatives need to make sure the GOP doesn't screw it up yet again.

In some ways, the GOP could win, and get blamed for consequences of current policies that we won't see the impact of for another 3-5 years.

I wonder a lot lately if it even makes a difference any more.

It looks as promising as it ever has here. Having said that, the R effort was to make R's vote early. The D's effort (they claim) was to get out early votes of people who don't normally vote. So the D position right now is that the early R votes are just borrowed from votes they would have received anyway.

We'll see. I talk to some folks in Des Moines a lot. DC also. I've alluded to that on here, and got crucified for it. Anyway, they are as positive as I've ever seen them.

Again, my opinion is that the Loras College poll has been the most accurate here. You can dig down in to that poll on Real Clear Politics.

I went to the Iowa-Maryland game and played Congressional CC. They put us with two members who were lobbyists for a firm called Venable, which I understand to be a huge multinational lobbying firm. Ernst is their client is what they told me. They mostly asked me questions, but I played their game and later on started to see if they would drop some stuff as they got more comfortable with us. They weren't indicating a sure thing, but they too were positive. Way too expensive guest fees there.

On a completely unrelated observation, DC is another world. One that I'm not sure I'm really comfortable with. The one guy had a putter signed by Dan Rostenkowski. Money guys. So I'm not sure they care about much outside of billing clients and getting their clients favorable legislation. As long as they can bill Ernst it's not clear to me anything they said would mean anything.

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Iowa Golfer

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Dude, post more on here...

I love getting the different angles. Ernst is really a good candidate. The possibility of Iowa having 2 republican senators is a big deal for the GOP.

Final Loras College poll shows Braley up by 1%.

LINK