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9/14/2024: Senate's most vulnerable list still dominated by Democrats [Roll Call]


Photo credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

The caption at rollcall.com which accompanies the above photo describes Senator Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) and his wife as they "celebrate on the final night of the Democratic National Convention". That's one grim-looking "celebration". It seems they aren't feeling the "joy" which, as you surely know by now, is one of the laughable emotional buzzwords that has been assigned to Queen Kamala's campaign by the gaslighting liberal media. It looks more like the Caseys are feeling a bit of constipation, and there's some chance they may get that sensation again in November, whenever Pennsylvania finally decides to stop vote-counting.

The article linked above was published on Thursday and ranges from the mundane to the ludicrous. It's mostly good news for Republicans, with (on the mundane side) the five Senate seats most likely to flip being ones currently held by Democrats. On the ludicrous side, they dredge up the highly unlikely possibility of upsets in dead-red (proper color usage) New Mexico and true-blue Nebraska.

We'll give our detailed analysis below, which provides much more depth than the cursory evaluations published by left-leaning Roll Call. What follows are the Senate races, in order of their likelihood to move from R to D based on the outcome of the 2024 elections. The current partisan breakdown of the Senate is 51-49, with Democrats in control. There are only 47 actual Democrats, but there are four so-called "independents" and every one of those four are highly dependent on the Democrat party. Even the ones who are retiring after 2024 (Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema) are still showing their true colors and voting with the Democrats as often as ever.


Photo credit: CNN

1. West Virginia

West Virginia is going to be a Republican pickup, period, and at this point there's nothing pertinent left to say about the Mountain State's Senate race. Incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin ran away rather than see his perfect record of election victories shattered into pieces, and doddering moderate Governor Jim Justice will be the new senator from West Virginia in 2025. His voting record may not differ much from Manchin's, and Justice will be a reliable tool for Mitch McConnell or whichever one of his sock puppets becomes the party leader in the Senate next year.

West Virginia will finally have two elected GOP senators for the first time in nearly a century. It's a shame that this now heavily-Republican state still won't have any conservative senators.


Photo credit: Fox News

2. Montana

The Senate race in Montana is looking OK for now, but don't count those chickens yet; the Biden-Harris administration may quietly transport some Haitian "refugees" into Montana, and those chickens (and geese, cats, dogs, etc.) would become greatly endangered.

A few months ago the GOP establishment, or those who work on its behalf, used threats of violence against conservative Rep. Matt Rosendale and his family in order to intimidate him out of the Montana GOP Senate primary (and out of Congress altogether) just moments after he entered that race.

Moderate businessman Tim Sheehy thus was effectively unopposed for the Republican nomination to take on three-term liberal Democrat Jon Tester. Tester has never been truly popular with the Montana electorate -- he's cleared 50% just once in three tries, and even that one was by a mere 0.3% -- but he is adept at campaigning as something other than the ultra-liberal that he is, he has the state's major media outlets thoroughly on his side, and he has benefited in the past by the presence of Libertarian candidates who suck votes away from the Republican. The last time Tester ran (2018) the Libertarian saw that he was being used as a pawn for Democrat dirty tricks, and he withdrew from the race and endorsed the Republican. But since he exited only one week before the election, it had little effect aside from highlighting the dirtiness of the Democrats.

Montana is far from the monolithically-Republican state that some may think it is. It almost never votes Democrat for President (just once since 1968, and that was only because of the Perot Factor in 1992), but Democrats have won 9 of the last 12 elections for Senator or Governor. One of Montana's two House districts is somewhat marginal; the other is solid GOP.


Photo credit: AP News

At long last it appears that Tester's appeal has diminished to the point where he is in serious trouble. He may be in trouble in the polls, where surveys lately show Sheehy ahead by about 5 points, but if money alone determined the election outcome Tester would be winning in a landslide. As of the latest FEC filings, Tester has spent over $33 million as opposed to just over $10 million for Sheehy. As we have mentioned here on numerous occasions, there's not a House district or Senate seat in the U.S. where Democrats can't outspend Republicans by incredible margins if they want to. This will be proven to be true in almost every single hotly-contested Senate and House race in 2024.

This race is not nearly over yet, and Sheehy's lead is hardly insurmountable. Even months-old data shows Tester with nearly $11 million still in the bank, and those funds will be used to saturate the airwaves and mailboxes of Montana with typical Democrat ads full of hate and lies about Sheehy (and lies about what a great senator Tester has been). Sheehy may not yet comprehend what's going to hit him between now and November, but he will find out shortly and he'd better be prepared. His lead could evaporate as quickly as it materialized.


Photo credit: 10TV

3. Ohio

The current Senate campaign in Ohio bears a strong resemblance to the one which took place in that state two years ago. The only substantial difference is that there was no incumbent seeking re-election in 2022 however there is one running in 2024. Incumbency is normally a distinct advantage, and this race is no exception even though the incumbent is a Democrat and Ohio (like Montana) is thought to be unfriendly territory for those on the far left of the political spectrum.

In 2022, Republican senatorial squish Rob Portman retired and there was a fractious 3-way primary to determine the GOP Senate nominee, while slimy Democrat challenger Tim Ryan faced no intra-party opposition and was able to keep his powder dry while watching three Republicans stab at each other.

In 2024 there was a fractious 3-way primary to determine the GOP Senate nominee, while slimy Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown faced no intra-party opposition and was able to keep his powder dry while watching three Republicans stab at each other.


Photo credit: WCPO

The 2022 Republican nominee, J.D. Vance, was (and still is) unacceptably conservative according to the wimpy wing of the Republican party, he had some trouble raising money and seemed to be off the air for long periods in the summer while Ryan was on the attack 24/7. Smelling blood in the water and sensing an unexpected pickup opportunity, Democrats flooded the state with oodles of cash and Ryan was able to outspend Vance by the margin of $57 million to $15 million. After trailing most of the time, finally in October Vance consistently pulled ahead in the polls and then won in November, but it was uncomfortably close in supposedly "dark red" Ohio.


Photo credit: Ohio Star

The 2024 Republican nominee, Bernie Moreno, is unacceptably conservative according to the wimpy wing of the Republican party, he has had some trouble raising money and seemed to be off the air for long periods in the summer while Brown was on the attack 24/7. Democrats flooded the state with oodles of cash and Brown has so far been able to outspend Moreno by the margin of $43 million to $11 million. After trailing the entire time, finally in September Moreno appears to be closing the gap in the polls, but has yet to be shown in the lead in any poll. Will "dark red" Ohio come through for Moreno, with Trump dragging him across the finish line?

We'll see.

Trump may have difficulty attaining the 8-point margin he received in Ohio in 2020, which means his coattails aren't going to be as long as might be hoped.


Photo credit: Market Realist

4. Michigan

Retiring liberal Democrat incumbent Debbie Stabenow was first elected to Congress in 1996 when she unseated conservative freshman Republican Dick Chrysler in Michigan's 8th congressional district. At the time that district was rated as "even" although it included all of Ingham County (Lansing) and a heavily-Democrat suburban portion of Genesee County (Flint). The presence of suburban Livingston County helped balance out the bad areas of the district, and Chrysler had won in the glorious year of 1994 because of Livingston alone (he very narrowly lost the rest of the district).

As you will see, there has been a cozy relationship between this Senate seat and that particular congressional district ever since.

Stabenow moved up to the Senate in 2000, failing to win a majority of the vote but still defeating incumbent one-termer Spencer Abraham. Abraham's win in 1994 was the last time a Republican was elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Michigan, and Stabenow was re-elected with relative ease in 2006, 2012 and 2018, all of which were anti-GOP years. Like nearly all Democrats in elections which are even slightly contested by Republicans, Stabenow was able to outspend her GOP opponents each time by considerable margins.


Photo credit: Rogers for Senate

Stabenow's replacement in the 8th congressional district in 2000 was Republican Mike Rogers -- the same guy who is now trying to replace her in the Senate in 2024. Rogers, who was at the time a Michigan state senator, defeated fellow state senator Dianne Byrum in 2000 by just 160 votes out of nearly 300,000. Rogers campaigned as a moderate and was even able to obtain some endorsements from Democrat politicians.

Rogers' voting record in the House was a shade to the right of "moderate" for most of his 14-year career, which ended when he chose not to run for re-election to an 8th term in 2014. The 8th district was moved to the right in the 2001 redistricting, perhaps emboldening Rogers to show a little more backbone in his congressional voting. Or maybe it forced him to move a little to the right, lest he be vulnerable to a conservative challenge in a primary election.

The district's partisan composition notwithstanding, Rogers anticipated that he would never face the voters again and therefore he dropped the charade and lurched to the left in his final term. He announced his retirement in March of 2014, and pointedly declined to endorse a conservative Republican state legislator as his successor (claiming that the guy might "embarrass" the district) and opted instead to back the more moderate Mike Bishop.

After two terms in the House, Bishop was sent packing in the anti-Trump referendum election of 2018. Bishop's ultra-liberal Democrat opponent and her party were able to spend a whopping $7.5 million to purchase that House seat -- and that doesn't even include the $5.5 million which was accumulated on her behalf by "independent" groups.

Who was that extremely well-funded Democrat?


Photo credit: CNN

It was Elissa Slotkin -- the "former" Deep State operative who is now the Democrat nominee for the 2024 Senate race against Mike Rogers.

Financially, it's the same story as in all other swing states this year: the Democrat has raised and spent far more money than the Republican. As of two months ago, which is the latest available data at this time, Slotkin has raised $24 million to $5 million for Rogers; she has spent $15 million while Rogers has forked out less than $3 million.

You don't have to be in some Michigan media market to understand that voters are being influenced by non-stop Democrat ads, while Rogers probably has his hands full just playing defense and trying to fight off the attacks. Rogers has done well to stay within the margin of error (but always on the losing side) in the polls. A poll which was released on September 13 showed him down by 3 points, which is his high-water mark over the last several months.

Can Rogers break the 30-year iron grip which liberal Democrats have had on Michigan's pair of Senate seats? The probability of that happening is still less than 50%, but his chances seem to be improving at this time.


Photo credit: Lancaster Online

5. Pennsylvania

Current senator Bob Casey, Jr. is dumber than a chimp (or even Kamala Harris). But unfortunately so are a slim majority of PA voters, as has been consistently demonstrated in recent years with the exception of the 2016 presidential election, when Democrat overconfidence led to a (relative) lack of fraud on their part, and Trump was able to win the Keystone State by a fraction of a percent.

Part of that slim majority of ignorant PA voters consists of Gullible Geezers who tend to believe whatever lies ("Republicans are going to ELIMINATE your Social Security and Medicare! For real this time!") the liberal media continually spouts on behalf of their party.

PA is a fairly elderly state, with a percentage of over-65s (18.8%) that is nearly as high as Florida's (20.3%). When they see the name "Casey" on a ballot, some portion of Pennsylvania geezer-dom undoubtedly believes that it is Bob Casey SENIOR they are voting for. Senior was a much-beloved Governor in the 1980s and 90s who became famous nationally when he was prohibited from speaking at the 1992 Democrat National Convention due to his outspoken anti-abortionist position. Senior was totally in line with liberal Democrat orthodoxy on every other issue, however.


Photo credit: Dave McCormick PA

Casey's (the Junior one) challenger this year is Dave McCormick. McCormick spent lavishly of his own money in the 2022 Republican primary vs. "Electable" Dr. Oz, but lost by less than 1,000 votes out of 1.34 million which were cast. McCormick graciously conceded and now has returned for another shot at the Senate -- this time with the GOP field cleared for him; no more dealing with pesky moderate dilettantes like Oz or staunch conservatives like Kathy Barnette. McCormick is again funding a large part ($4 million as of late June) of his own campaign and, aside from a recent left-biased outlier poll from CBS, appears to be inching closer to a possible -- but still unlikely -- upset.

Casey is now in his 18th Senate year, and has voted the liberal position 94% of the time during his tenure. He has been a reliable supporter of the Biden-Harris agenda and marches out of lockup on only the rarest and most unimportant of occasions. McCormick is a wealthy moderate businessman -- the kind of candidate the GOP establishment absolutely adores. Wealthy businessguys often lack icky conservatism and they have the ability to waste spend lots of money on their own behalf. It could be argued that a true conservative would have little chance of being elected statewide in Pennsylvania, and a nominal conservative like Pat Toomey or Rick Santorum is the best we can do.

Should McCormick somehow pull off the upset, his voting record in the Senate would likely be a little to the left of Toomey-Santorum though nowhere near (hopefully) as lunatic leftist as ex-Republican Senator Arlen "Judas" Specter, who went out in a blaze of bitterness back in 2010. Anything even close to Toomey-Santorum territory would be a tremendous improvement over the Casey pup in the empty suit.

PA may be 51% Democrat at the ballot box, but it deserves better than a pair of 100% liberal Senators; one is quite enough.



Other states which could have close Senate elections:

  • Democrats are desperately wishing for major upsets of Republican Senate incumbents in Florida and Texas; there are no other GOP-held Senate seats which are even close to being in play. Republicans are desperately hoping for major upsets in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin or Maryland. The probability is that none of the above will happen, although the loss of Florida or Texas for the GOP has a greater chance of occurring than pickups elsewhere.
  • GOP candidates are particularly floundering in the southwest (AZ, NV) and Ted Cruz is underperforming in Texas. We've already written in great detail about how Texas is absolutely not the solid "red" state that it might have been a few years ago, and people have quickly forgotten how marginal Florida is capable of being; 2018 wasn't all that long ago.
  • Even after Governor Ron DeSantis' successful election integrity measures which targeted shady Democrat election officials in places such as Broward County and Palm Beach County, Florida can still be finicky and Rick Scott may not be taking this Senate race as seriously as he should. Scott has raised a handsome sum of money, but he may have shot his wad too early -- the femiNazi running against Scott actually has more cash on hand as of the end of July. She is also a lot closer to Scott in the polls than she should be.

    Debbie Mucarsel Hyphen Powell isn't right on Scott's tail because of anything desirable or positive on her end; she may as well be listed on the ballot simply as "Not Rick Scott". Scott is the "Jon Tester" of Florida -- he has won three elections and only once has he cleared 50% (he received 50.1% in 2018). He is not popular and never has been; he has been just barely popular enough in the past.
  • Only one outlier poll has showed the Republican within true striking distance in Wisconsin. In Maryland, although Larry Hogan is keeping it somewhat close against his affirmative-action opponent, Hogan seems less interested in winning a Senate seat than he does in using his campaign as a vehicle for virtue-signaling and Trump-hating.

    Perhaps Maryland's version of Chris Christie is trying to position himself as a GOP presidential candidate for 2028? Or maybe he's looking to be the Democrat nominee? Either way, Hogan's not winning anything in 2024 absent divine intervention. He's going to get beat down hard in the Baltimore-D.C. corridor.


Conclusion:

The most likely scenario is that the Republicans will have a net gain of 1 or 2 seats in the Senate. If they win West Virginia and Montana but nothing more, and do not lose Florida or Texas, that will be a pretty good election night at the Senate level. But we'll still have people wailing and being bitterly disappointed in positive developments -- just like they were in 2022 -- because their greedy expectation of "muh red wayve" didn't come true and Santa didn't leave everything they wished for under the Christmas tree.

Tags:

2024 Senate Montana Ohio Michigan Pennsylvania


8/23/2024: Reverse Poll-arity [RightDataUSA]

Your humble author here at RightDataUSA can now see that he wasted his time many years ago getting a 4-year Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Statistics, because it turns out that a person can become an expert on subjects like polling, sampling, margins of error, etc. without any expensive formal education. He can demonstrate his alleged expertise simply by parroting the same boilerplate drivel which those who are offended by unwelcome polling results routinely resort to.

As the chart above (from Real Clear Polling) shows, this year's presidential election polls were going fairly well (i.e. telling us what we wanted to hear) up to a certain point, and now most of them are absolutely bogus (i.e. telling us what we don't want to hear). These bogus pollsters obviously live in their own fantasy world. They are clearly Democrat puppets with no interest in reflecting reality, but instead are focused on trying to gaslight the public and shape reality to their liking (oh dear, there's some of that boilerplate drivel).

Of course Democrat pollsters damn well do engage in gaslighting, but that (along with the rest of the drivel) is merely a weak crutch; when these crutches are constantly used and abused in an attempt to explain away every poll we don't like -- just as "Frodd, frodd, frodd!!!" is used to explain away every election outcome we don't like -- these feeble rationalizations lose whatever factual impact they may actually have possessed, and they become a cogent explanation for precisely nothing.


Real Clear Politics polling average: Trump vs. Biden (click image to enlarge)

Donald Trump was doing reasonably well in what turned out to be the final polls against Joe Biden, but suddenly things are a lot tighter or have even flipped in some places. Weird, eh?

It's almost as if something important pertaining to the election has changed.

Like the identity of the Democrat nominee.


Real Clear Politics polling average: Trump vs. Harris (click image to enlarge)

Some who are not entirely clueless on the subject of polling claim -- with some justification -- that the reversals suffered by Trump and down-ballot Republicans lately do not necessarily mean that respondents have reconsidered whom they intend to vote for in November. But they proceed from that valid assertion to declare that the numbers have begun heading the wrong direction merely because the pollsters are "cooking the books" -- meaning that they have baselessly altered their underlying sampling schemes in various ways which appear to energize the left and demoralize the right. What these folks identify as the pollsters' motivation for this (e.g., "setting up the Democrat steal in November") descends back into boilerplate drivel territory, but regardless of motivation the dynamics of the upcoming election have changed and the forecasting models which are employed by pollsters therefore must also change.

Polling companies vary in their methods for determining the composition of the American electorate. They must make alterations in their samples regarding respondents' sex, race, political identification, geographic location, education level and a myriad of other factors whenever necessary. Some companies make subtle alterations (which can still be sufficient to generate significant movement); some companies make more blatant alterations; and some perhaps make none at all.

Like the captain of the Andrea Doria, there are pollsters who do not accept that danger lies ahead; they refuse to change course and continue on just as if conditions haven't changed. Continuing that analogy, there are a tiny number of pollsters including Rasmussen Reports which those on the right cling to like a life raft when everything else around them seems to be sinking. Like some others in the business, Ras will only reveal the recipe for their secret sauce for a price, so we can't determine whether the relatively happy (outlier) polling results which they continually provide -- for now -- are based on ignorance of reality or on something else which might be justifiable. Other life rafts for the right (or perhaps just flotsam and jetsam) currently include Fox News (!) and Trafalgar.



Outliers notwithstanding, most pollsters have recalibrated their surveys to reflect the fact that the presidential race is quite obviously not the same as it was prior to the Democrat coup which forced Biden's exit from the ticket. Still, there are those who refuse to accept that these recalibrations are necessary and instead see nothing but sinister motives for the changes.

Well then, let's turn this around 180 degrees and gauge the reaction. What would happen if the identity of the Republican candidate suddenly changed in mid-stream? What would happen if we dumped some lackluster presumptive nominee and switched over to our own "rock star"?


Photo credit: CNN

Picture, if you will, an alternate universe where Nikki Haley easily won all of the 2024 GOP primaries because she was unopposed except by some pissant candidate like whoever the Republican equivalent of Dean Phillips is (some alleged "moderate" who nobody's ever heard of).

Then the conservatives in the GOP stage a "coup" and force Haley out of the race in favor of Donald Trump, who wasn't even on the ballot in the primaries.

Now let's say the pollsters do not change their forecasting models, and therefore they show Trump doing no better than Haley against the Democrat, or perhaps doing even worse than her.

What would we be shrieking about then?


Photo credit: Ethan Hyman

Among other things, we'd be hearing:

"Pollsters are still 'oversampling' wimmen! But Trump is the nominee now and that's going to bring out more men as a percentage of voters! They need to account for that!"

"Trump is White and Haley is a minority (either Asian or black depending on whichever is most helpful at any given moment), but pollsters are still oversampling non-Whites!"

"They aren't acknowledging our exponentially-increased enthusiasm and that's the biggest factor of them all! They've tried to wave that off by claiming that Trump is just enjoying a brief 'honeymoon' period and they believe our enthusiasm will greatly diminish by November. No way, Jose! Trump really is a rock star -- just look at his rallies -- and our excitement is going to peak on election day! It's never going to wear off!"

"We grudgingly voted for Haley in the primaries because we had no other choice; she wasn't inspiring at all. Her support was a mile wide and an inch deep, and yet she wasn't faring too poorly in the polls against the Democrat. But now that Trump is our guy we have discovered the meaning of 'joy'! The pollsters still aren't budging and are refusing to accept what will surely be a dramatic turnout spike on the GOP side! We're pumped! We're stoked! We haven't seen passion like this since Ronald Reagan was running! We'd crawl over broken glass, blah blah blah...."

"In short, everything is different now, but these lying partisan Democrat pollsters haven't changed one thing. They truly live in a bubble!"

But not us. Definitely not us.

We don't like the polls but we can't change reality if we can't even bear to face reality. This election is far from over, but doing an impression of an ostrich from now until November is not the recommended way to try to achieve the best result for America.

Tags:

2024 Polls Alternate Universe


8/22/2024: House Battlegrounds -- Alaska and Washington [RightDataUSA]

In 2020 the voters of Alaska allowed themselves to be bamboozled by a slick advertising campaign bankrolled by tons of out-of-state liberal money, and approved Rigged Choice Voting (RCV) by the margin of 50.5% to 49.5%; it took effect with the 2022 elections. Under RCV as it is still being used in Alaska in 2024, all candidates for an office run together on a single primary ballot, with the top 4 -- regardless of party -- advancing to the general election ballot. If no candidate gets over 50% on the "first" ballot in November, votes are shuffled around and many voters are disenfranchised, and then the Democrat (or ultra-liberal Republican) wins. At least that's how it works in practice.

The primary goal of RCV is to marginalize conservative candidates and prevent them from winning an election, and RCV therefore attempts to force Republicans to move drastically to the left in order to have any chance. Mendacious proponents of RCV claim that the same thing theoretically happens on the other side too -- with radical leftists being forced to the center as well -- yet ultra-liberal Democrats are somehow never affected. Not one Democrat has yet lost a federal election because of RCV, but several Republicans or conservatives have.


Photo credit: womenzmag.com

For example, RCV was directly responsible for the otherwise highly-unlikely Republican loss of the Alaska U.S. House seat in 2022, and this new convoluted way of counting votes assisted immeasurably with the Senate re-election of far-left "Republican" Lisa Murkowski over underfunded conservative challenger Kelly Tshibaka that year. Democrats did not even bother to contest that Senate election aside from the tiniest token effort, since Murkowski is for all intents and purposes one of them anyway; she votes more often with Democrats than she does with Republicans.

One thing which is of paramount importance in this rigged system is for a major party to enforce discipline among its potential candidates, making sure not to split the vote among party rivals. The Democrats, who don't exactly have a lot of candidates in Alaska anyway, understand this; the Republicans -- who are known as the Stupid Party, and for good reason -- have repeatedly failed to grasp this concept.

In 2022, Sarah Palin and Nick Begich split the GOP vote and allowed a liberal Democrat to steal the election even though Republicans took over 60% of the open primary vote. The Palin-haters within the GOP who initially supported Begich then "won" in November by throwing their support to the Democrat instead of to Palin.


Photo credit: Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)

Buyer's remorse regarding RCV has set in, and this November the repeal of that abomination will be on the ballot after withstanding court challenges from the left. That's fine, but Republicans on August 20 took one (perhaps) last opportunity to demonstrate their stupidity. They once again ran multiple candidates for the House -- Begich is back for another shot, opposed by gadfly candidate Nancy Dahlstrom -- and once again have created a damaging intra-party rift which is likely to be costly in November.

Liberal Democrat incumbent Mary Peltola, who has been furiously faking to the center with her House votes this year, even achieved a tick more than 50% of the vote in last Tuesday's all-party primary. If this happens again in 2 1/2 months, the Rigged Choice Voting provisions won't even be necessary for the Republicans to be defeated once more in their quest for Alaska's lone seat in Congress. The disarray among the GOP in The Last Frontier may even result in the permanent retention of Rigged Choice Voting, since Republicans are the ones who oppose this Democrat scheme while Democrats (obviously) strongly support it, and the Republican fracture at the House level may carry over and jeopardize the repeal of RCV.

Those Republicans who support the repeal of RCV are currently being outspent by a 2:1 ratio by Democrat forces which desperately wish to keep it in place. Do not take this issue lightly simply because it's happening in a state which is as far away as possible from most American voters, and not normally considered to be politically significant.

Maine and Alaska have been the guinea pigs for Rigged Choice Voting and liberals couldn't be happier with the results they have achieved so far. Though a handful of states have pre-emptively banned RCV, there's still a good chance that it will be approaching a state near you in the not-too-distant future.


Photo credit: ustimespost.com

The state of Washington held its primary on August 6, but the deadline for vote-counting isn't until August 23. There were a few races worth noting in this all-mail voting state, including one which very may well continue past the stated deadline -- but only if the Republican erases the infinitesimal lead which a Democrat currently has. After all, it's a well-established state tradition that the result of a close election is not declared final until the Democrat wins (just ask Republican "Governor" Dino Rossi).

Washington is one of five states which conduct elections entirely by mail-in voting. The Democrat-controlled legislature passed a bill in 2011 which mandates that approach to elections, and it was signed into law by Democrat Governor Christine Gregoire -- the same person who reaped the benefits of the creative Democrat vote counting (and recounting, and recounting) shenanigans back in 2004 at Rossi's expense.

Since all-mail voting became the law of the land in Washington, Republicans have lost every election for Senate and Governor there, and only two Republicans have been victorious for other statewide elections (one of which wasn't even opposed by a Democrat that November) in 13 years. The GOP hasn't done too well at the state legislative level nor the U.S. House level either, both of those being things which are heavily influenced by perpetual Democrat gerrymanders.

The lone "Republican" who has enjoyed true success running statewide in the Evergreen State was former Secretary of State Kim Wyman. Wyman was elected to that office, which is in charge of election administration (including vote counting) in 2012 and then was elected again in 2016 and 2020. Her effectiveness on behalf of Democrats while in her position as Republican S.O.S. is nicely illustrated by the fact that she resigned in 2021 in order to work for -- we're not making this up -- the Deep State entity known as the "Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency" in an important position dealing with "election security". That is a term normally defined by Democrats as "making sure Republicans don't interfere with our cheating".


Photo credit: carboncredits.com

The real nailbiter of a race which is currently going on in Washington is for the office of Commissioner of Public Lands (CPL), which is wide open since the incumbent liberal Democrat commissioner, Hillary Franz, chose to run for Congress in Washington's 6th district instead. She lost her primary earlier this month and promptly blamed dark and evil forces for her defeat. Speaking of which, the easy winner in November in CD-6 will now be ultra-liberal Democrat Emily Randall, who will be a real barrier-breaker as the first Latina dyke ever to be elected to Congress.

Votes are still being tabulated, but the CPL race unofficially stands like this at the moment:

  1. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R): 419.297, 22.0%
  2. Dave Upthegrove (D): 396,300, 20.8%
  3. Sue Pederson (R): 396,249, 20.8%
Check out the difference between second and third place. Only the top 2 finishers advance to the November election.

Pederson ran against Franz in 2020 and lost by 13.5%. She has never held public office. Herrera is the Trump-hating former congresswoman and Impeachment RINO who was defeated in the 2022 primary election. She refused to endorse the conservative Republican (Joe Kent) who defeated her, and Kent went on to lose narrowly to Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez -- another freshman who, like Alaska's Mary Peltola, has been furiously faking to the center in 2024 in a desperate bid to conceal her liberal leanings from the voters in her district.

Kent has been magnanimous where Beutler was not, and he has endorsed his former opponent in her bid to become Washington's Commissioner of Public Lands.

The top 3 finishers in the CPL race are listed above; the remaining votes are scattered among 4 candidates. Herrera and Pederson are the only two Republicans in the race; five Democrats split approximately 57% of the vote. If the Democrats quickly certify Upthegrove as the #2 finisher in the primary (which they will if he stays ahead; otherwise look for as many recounts as necessary) he will therefore be the clear favorite to win in November when the Democrats unite behind their guy. Having two GOP-ers on the ballot and zero Democrats, resulting in a guaranteed Republican win, would have been quite an accomplishment for the party.

We'll find out shortly if that's allowed to happen.


Photo credit: mynorthwest.com

Elsewhere in Washington, there were hotly-contested primary elections in the three districts (out of a total of 10) where Republicans have any real chance at victory in November.

In CD-5 (Eastern Washington: Spokane, Walla Walla, Pullman) incumbent moderate Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers is retiring at the age of 55 after 10 terms in the House. She will be replaced in the R+8 district by Spokane County Treasurer Michael Baumgartner after the formality of his general election victory in a few months. He's likely to be even more "moderate" than the woman he's replacing. This district could do better.

In CD-3 (Southwest Washington: Vancouver) it will be Round 2 for Joe Kent vs. Marie Perez. The district is rated as R+5 which means it shouldn't really even be a tossup -- the GOP should win with relative ease -- but the solidly conservative MAGA Republican, Kent, was repeatedly backstabbed by his own party in 2022 and might be again. Democrats are spending an ungodly amount of money to try to hold this seat, which is at or near #1 on the list of potential Republican pickups in the House for 2024. Kent may win this time around, but there won't be any "relative ease" about it and he'd better be wearing a Kevlar vest at all times to insulate himself from knife wounds.

After losing by less than 1% in 2022, Kent immediately declared that he would be running again in 2024. Probably with behind-the-scenes help from the GOP establishment, Republican lawyer Leslie Lewallen made her way into the race for the express purpose of sabotaging Kent's chances. She spent the primary campaign focusing solely on attacking Kent even though Democrat Perez was on the same ballot.

Kent trounced Lewallen on August 6 by over 25 points. The two Republicans combined to receive over 51% of the vote, with just under 46% for the Democrat and 2.5% for an independent. If -- and only if -- nearly all of Lewallen's voters move to Kent in November this district will have a conservative congressman for the first time since Linda Smith (1995-1998) and Smith was much more of a libertarian than a conservative.


Washington congressional district 4

The highest-profile congressional primary in Washington took place in the solidly Republican (R+11) 4th district, which covers the central third of the state geographically, including Yakima and the Tri-Cities area. CD-4 is only 52% White and 40% Hispanic (nearly all of which are Mexicans) but the non-citizens tend to not vote, and those citizens who do vote lean staunchly to the right. No Democrat has exceeded 40% in a House election here since 1996, with the exception of 2006 when the Rats barely cleared that figure (40.1%).

The 2024 election will be the third one in the last six where two Republicans and zero Democrats will battle for the win. The incumbent, liberal Republican Dan Newhouse, is the next-to-last House Impeachment RINO left standing. All others among the 10 in the House GOP who voted to impeach Donald Trump have either run away voluntarily or been defeated at the polls since they did their dirty deed. Aside from Newhouse, the only one remaining is David Valadao of California, who represents a Democrat-leaning district in the Central Valley.

While Trump had endorsed one of Newhouse's two challengers (Jerrod Sessler) in this race long ago, he decided to increase his chances of padding the Trump Winning Percentage by also endorsing the other challenger (Tiffany Smiley) on the eve of the primary. Trump's rhetoric against the liberal Newhouse was, oddly (or perhaps not so oddly), comparatively mild compared to his vitriol against 100% conservative Rep. Bob Good, who lost his primary in Virginia a few weeks back.



Sessler ran for the CD-4 seat in 2022 and finished fourth in the primary, splitting the conservative vote with former gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp. Culp finished third, so only Newhouse and Democrat Doug White advanced to the general election. That outcome was quite the win-win for the GOPe and other leftists, with two conservatives biting the dust and two liberals moving on.

A similar scheme was in the cards for 2024 as well, with the GOPe protecting Newhouse again by having former senatorial candidate Tiffany Smiley enter the race belatedly in order to siphon votes from Sessler. Smiley was obliterated in the 2022 U.S. Senate race vs. doddering ultra-liberal incumbent Patsy Murray, but in the process Smiley proved to be an attractive candidate (in maximum contrast to Murray; unfortunately the election wasn't a beauty contest) -- and more importantly Smiley showed a solid ability to fundraise. She actually raised several million more than Murray in terms of small donations, but Murray had the full weight of the ActBlue Democrat money launderers and lots of other billionaire/corporate funding. Plus, this is Washington after all -- it's not as if a Democrat Senate incumbent is going to lose no matter how much money any GOP challenger raises.

Smiley was likely insinuated into the CD-4 House race by the GOPe this year with the hope that she could overwhelm Sessler in the $$$$ department, but she couldn't. Smiley tried to convince voters that she is a conservative but utterly failed to do that. Her past track record as a moderate, including endorsements from groups like the left-wing Log Cabin Republican homos, did not endear her to the voters.

Smiley was eliminated from further contention with less than 20% of the vote. Sessler came in first with 33% and Newhouse received only 23%. This is the first time since 2014 that Newhouse has failed to finish first in the primary -- but he defeated a conservative Republican (former NFL tight end Clint Didier) that November too. Sadly, he'll probably survive again this year. Sessler's going to need damn near every one of Smiley's voters to flock to his side because Newhouse will get the 23% who went for Democrats in the primary. That plus his own 23% gets him real close. Ugh.


Photo credit: jerrodforcongress.com

Sessler is a decorated Naval veteran (not some Stolen Valor coward like Democrat VP nominee Tampon Timmy Walz) who has also beaten Stage IV cancer which was said to be 95% terminal. He is a solid Christian conservative who describes himself as an American Patriot. Perhaps at this point you are beginning to understand why the GOPe fears Jerrod Sessler.

If Sessler is elected, he should be a reliably conservative vote in the House (unlike Newhouse) and based on his background will likely be a fighter for his country and his party, as opposed to being a go-along-to-get-along spineless milquetoast like the vast majority of House Republicans.


Photo credit: Outside Groove

As an aside, Sessler's campaign bio touches briefly on the fact that he is a "former NASCAR driver". It's hardly a big part of his list of qualifications, but it almost became a sticking point two years ago. Sessler was no national star as a driver; he participated in a small regional racing series which was under the auspices of NASCAR. [BTW, Sessler is the second ex-NASCAR driver running for the House this year as a Republican; we wrote about the other one here].

Just before the 2022 primary, NASCAR executives became aware of Sessler's candidacy and were concerned that he might be pulling a "Walz" and claiming to be something he really wasn't; they apparently had no record of Sessler's racing history and would surely have ordered Sessler to cease and desist using the NASCAR trademark in his campaign if evidence had not been furnished to back his claim.

NASCAR, long ago, was considered to be a "Republican" sport and kind of the antithesis of today's leftist/racist WNBA. NASCAR was a sport with good patriotic American participants and fans (again, the opposite of the WNBA). These days, however, NASCAR is every bit as "politically correct" as the major sports it so desperately wishes to emulate, and its corporate executives and bean-counters are almost uniformly well to the left on the political spectrum.

There is no longer any controversy about Sessler's NASCAR credentials, which are unimportant anyway, so those who loathe conservatives -- including the entire Republican establishment -- are finding other weapons with which to assault Sessler. Trump's going to have to put a lot of his political weight behind this challenger, or an Impeachment RINO is going to avoid extinction one more time.

Tags:

2024 House Alaska Washington


7/23/2024: Who Will Be Cackles' Veep? [RightDataUSA]


Photo credit: Robert Deutsch, USA Today

This may become a pertinent question even sooner than expected. Kamala "Cackles" Harris isn't merely the presumptive Democrat nominee for the 2024 presidential election, she may be elevated to President any time now. Although President Biden's personal physician, who is apparently Dr. Nick Riviera, assured the nation on Monday that the President was still alive and continuing to "perform all his presidential duties", this is the same doctor who recently insisted -- everyone's lying eyes notwithstanding -- that Biden was fit as a fiddle and sharp as a tack. The comparison of those items to Biden is valid only if they had just been run over by a train.

And then came the debate. And numerous other examples of physical and mental degradation. Finally the Democrats couldn't abide the devastating polling data (must have been internal polls) any longer and threatened Biden out of the race.

With Biden out of the running and his replacement as Democrat presidential nominee all but official, the focus turns to who the vice-presidential nominee might be.


Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Candidates from the gubernatorial ranks include: Andy Beshear (D-KY), J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) and Tim Walz (D-MN). Beshear, a pretty boy in an empty suit, could (or so the Democrats think) plausibly pose as a moderate, but the reality is that he's no such thing, and he probably wouldn't even be able to deliver Kentucky's 8 electoral votes. Pritzker's usefulness on the ticket would be limited to donut-eating contests; Illinois is in no danger of voting anything other than Democrat for president anyway. The same applies to Walz except for maybe the donut-eating part, though there are (or at least were) some fever dreams on the right about Minnesota going for Trump in November. Democrats are rightfully unconcerned about that possibility, and will not select Walz simply to defend against it.

If a Governor is selected to run alongside Cackles, there's a greater likelihood that it would be one from a swing state and not a state which is either hopeless for Democrats or already in the bag for them. Swing state Rat Governors include Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), Tony Evers (D-WI), Roy Cooper (D-NC, and unemployed as of January) and the Great Jewish Hope, Josh Shapiro (D-PA).

Of those, only Cooper could remotely be described as anything other than extreme-left, and even he isn't far off from that. Not that the Democrats require an actual moderate on the ticket; they can (and will) select an in-your-face ultra-liberal -- like Cackles herself -- and when the media controllers repeatedly lie and claim that whoever the VP turns out to be is a moderate, enough clueless and easily fooled voters will believe it. If the Rats truly wanted a moderate VP candidate, they'd have to look outside the party to someone like Mitt Romney (he's downright "conservative" by Democrat standards).

The liberal Veep-pickers could bypass governors altogether. Or they could put a rump ranger such as Colorado Governor Jared Polis or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttgieg on the ticket, but the Democrats aren't likely to be quite that "bold", and Colorado's not even close to being a swing state.

What with the overt (but totally unreported) trend of a significant portion of Hispanic voters -- particularly rural Hispanics -- towards the Republican party starting in 2020, you might expect that the Dems would look for a VP of Mexican or Puerto Rican descent, but the Democrat puppetmasters apparently believe there aren't any who are prominent enough to be worthy of serious consideration.

Finally, the one U.S. senator who is on the short list is Mark Kelly (D-AZ). Kelly has a military record and was once an astronaut, which would lead the ignorant to believe he must be a patriotic conservative or at least a moderate. He is none of those things (neither was John Glenn except maybe early in his political career), irrespective of the false image of him the media will create if he becomes the chosen one. Kelly is as ultra-liberal as any Democrat senator.


mynewsgh.com

The favorite among these has to be Pennsylvania Governor Joshua Shapiro. Shapiro is from the most important of all swing states, is known to be highly covetous of national office, and PA would instantly go from "tossup" to "likely Democrat" in the 2024 presidential election if Shapiro gets the VP slot. As we mentioned just a few days ago, without Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes Trump is going to have pull off a major upset somewhere else in order to get to 270 EV.

Furthermore, a down-ballot effect in Pennsylvania might help save the Senate seat of dim bulb Bob Casey, Jr. Joshie's presence on the ticket might also help shore up some vulnerable Democrat U.S. House incumbents, of which there are 2 or perhaps 3 in the PA delegation (Susan Wild, Matt Cartwright, Chris DeLuzio) though none of those -- including Casey -- are in grave danger of losing. They are in potentially close races, but creative vote counting on the part of Democrats, if necessary, ought to be enough to return those liberal politicians safely to their offices next year.

As far as having a Jewish candidate for VP, note that while the core of the Democrat party strongly supports the Hamas terrorists, it does not necessarily follow that the party as a whole hates Israel. They DO hate it -- for now -- but that's because of just one man: Benjamin Netanyahu. Once he is no longer in the picture and Israel is controlled by the secular, ultra-liberal, atheistic, self-loathing wing of The Tribe, Democrats will be supporters of Israel again, at least to a much greater extent than they are now.

In the meantime as they wait for Bibi's demise, they may feel it wise to nominate someone from The Tribe as Harris' VP, though of course NOT someone who supports Netanyahu: that description fits Shapiro nicely. This could be the Democrats' attempt to fraudulently claim support for Israel ("Look at our VP! He's Jewish!") -- seeing as how their embrace of anti-Israel terrorists is not completely popular with the American public, or even with some elements within the Democrat party. Democrats already have the total support of Shapiro's tribalists among the media controllers, however this move might help to get those campaign dollars from the ultra-rich Jews flowing again.

Though if we're to believe the recent gaslighting about "record-setting" Democrat contributions earlier this week, that geld may not be necessary. The Dems' ActBlue money laundry has been spinning wildly lately, splitting donations from liberal billionaires into millions of smaller fragments and assigning those fragments to smaller "contributors" in an attempt to create the illusion of broad-based support from the common people, not to mention violating campaign finance law.



The Democrat Veep is still unknown at this moment, but whoever it is will not have a tremendous effect on the national polls; it will be sufficient if he impacts the polls in just one swing state. Some on the right are still nervously reciting (at least for a few more days) polls showing Trump "crushing" Cackles in now-irrelevant surveys which were taken before Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.

Even before this week Harris was speculatively included in some polls of course, but only since Sunday have we been inundated -- and will continue to be inundated -- by liberal media shills puffing about how wonderful, competent and "brat" Cackles is. [We don't speak punkie or monkey around here or whatever language that is, so we don't know what the hell "brat" means, but adolescent voters seem to consider it to be a positive thing.]

Ignorant, gullible, non-adolescent voters who weren't overly familiar with Harris up to now will be told that she's Cleopatra, Indira Gandhi, Eva Peron and Golda Meir all rolled into one; not that any of those are good things, but we're talking about gullible voters here who are easily impressed by whatever lies the media feeds them.

When Harris' approval begins to skyrocket, however astroturfed that skyrocketing is, Trump isn't going to be "crushing" her in any polls -- and he already isn't; at least not in any legitimate polls which were taken beginning on 7/21. And just wait a few weeks, or days (or hours) before Biden croaks or resigns and this thoroughly unqualified dunce is suddenly "President Kamala Harris, Commander-in-Chief"!

If you think the hysterical media worship and adulation for B. Hussein Obama back in 2008 was ridiculous, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Take Bonzo, make him a female (a real one, not a closet homo), and run him/her against the most media-despised presidential candidate in U.S. history. Wait a short period of time for the effect of the 100% positive stories about Harris, combined with the 100% negative media stories about Trump. . . and THEN take a gander at those supposedly crushing polls. They will likely be crushing in a way that the good people of America do not want to believe.



Until actually forced to face reality, some will continue to deny it. They will rely on outdated polls which are no longer relevant, and claim that Trump's overall lead is holding steady. As if that lead was ever much to brag about.

Even considering things as they were prior to Biden's dropout, Trump leading only by 1 or 2 percent, or slightly more but within the small margin of error against a comatose candidate like Biden should hardly fill anyone with confidence. Basement Biden was practically as somnolent in 2020 as he is now, and he still "somehow" won.

No matter whether Harris, Newsom, Whitmer, Manchin or whoever were tested in some previous polls, Trump's Democrat opponent had been Joe Biden and only Joe Biden up until Sunday. Past data on any other matchup is not remotely as meaningful. Now of course, even the Trump-Biden or Trump-Biden-RFK polls are not meaningful anymore.

Those who foolishly believe that Trump was going to cruise (and that cruising was barely above water level anyway) better have their shocked faces ready when the polls come out after the media REALLY goes into overdrive for Kamala, especially when they do so for "President Harris" once Biden croaks/resigns. You've never seen anything like it unless you were in the Soviet Union to observe how their obedient media treated Joseph Stalin, or how our own New York Times adored Uncle Joe -- or Fidel Castro.

True Trump supporters aren't going to be fooled by 24/7 Harris Hagiography; no matter how desperately the Democrat media tries to spin Kamala's record, we know that she got to where she is today because of what's between her. . . well, it's not because of what's between her ears.

But enough ignorant "independent" voters WILL be influenced by the daily coronation ceremonies, and the Rats only need to swing a small percentage of the ignorati back in the Democrat direction. The Trump campaign team better all have their thinking caps on regarding how they're going to combat this. Given Cackles' past, it sounds like it should be fairly easy. But it won't be -- the media won't allow it.



July 25 update: It's fashionable to claim that Shapiro as V.P. would effectively concede the state of Michigan to Trump, and that's a poor trade considering that the Democrats can win Pennsylvania even without Shapiro. That forfeiture of Michigan is not certain by any means. Don't overrate the Muslim vote in Michigan, it's not all that substantial. Anyway, why would those Muslims bypass Kamala Harris, who for all intents and purposes is a Muslim in a political sense, just because of who her VP is? The answer is: they won't.

A lot of them in Michigan will look past the VP selection (Josh Shapiro hates Benjamin Netanyahu as much as a typical Dearbornistan resident does anyway) and vote (D) as they normally do. They will not defect nearly enough to throw Michigan to Trump.

Also: the state of Florida better not even be close in November, but if it is then a pick of Shapiro would be a master stroke, for the obvious reason.

Tags:

2024 Heels Up! Veepstakes


7/13/2024: The "Keystone" For the 2024 Presidential Election, or "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Pennsylvania But Were Afraid to Ask" [RightDataUSA]

If the polls are even close to being accurate, the outcome of the 2024 presidential election is going to be determined by the results in just six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These are often referred to as the "swing" states. North Carolina isn't on that list, but probably should be; folks on the right like to pretend it's a 1000% mortal lock for the GOP, but it's not. It just leans slightly in the direction of Republicans at the presidential level in recent years.


2024 presidential election map; swing states in purple

If the Democrat candidate, whoever it turns out to be, wins every state that Democrats normally win, he/she/it will receive 226 electoral votes (EV) from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine*, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

If Donald Trump wins every state that Republicans normally win, he will receive 235 electoral votes from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska*, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

[* Maine and Nebraska are the only states where electoral votes are not winner-take-all; they award them by congressional district, and the statewide winner gets the other two votes. Because of this, Trump is expected to easily gain one of Maine's four electoral votes, and the Democrat is narrowly expected to take one of Nebraska's five EV.]

The magic number is 270 EV; that's the number a candidate needs to obtain in order to be elected president.

The six swing states combine for 77 EV:

  • Arizona (11)
  • Georgia (16)
  • Michigan (15)
  • Nevada (6)
  • Pennsylvania (19)
  • Wisconsin (10)

Assuming everything else goes as expected, Trump needs 35 EV from those six states in order to win; the Democrat nominee needs at least 44.


2020 presidential election results in PA

Pennsylvania has been reliably Democrat presidentially from 1992 to the present with the exception of 2016 when overconfident Democrats just barely failed to manufacture enough votes in the Philadelphia ghetto to deprive Donald Trump from eking out a statewide win by 0.7%. Trump would have won the presidency even without PA's 20 electoral votes that year, but Democrats still rued their mistake and vowed it would not happen again in 2020. It didn't.

Pennsylvania election results
2020 Joe Biden (D) 3,461,221 49.9% Donald Trump* (R) 3,379,055 48.7%
2016 Donald Trump (R) 2,970,733 48.2% Hillary Clinton (D) 2,926,441 47.5%
2012 Barack Obama* (D) 2,990,274 52.0% Mitt Romney (R) 2,680,434 46.6%
2008 Barack Obama (D) 3,276,363 54.5% John McCain (R) 2,655,885 44.2%
2004 John Kerry (D) 2,938,095 50.9% George W. Bush* (R) 2,793,847 48.4%
2000 Albert Gore, Jr. (D) 2,485,967 50.6% George W. Bush (R) 2,281,127 46.4%
1996 Bill Clinton* (D) 2,215,819 49.2% Robert Dole (R) 1,801,169 40.0%
1992 Bill Clinton (D) 2,239,164 45.1% George Bush* (R) 1,791,841 36.1%


2024 scenarios: If Trump wins all of the states which Republicans usually win these days, he needs only Georgia and Pennsylvania among the six swing states and the result is a 270-268 win.


Trump 270, Democrat 268

If Trump loses PA, then he still loses even if he takes both Arizona and Nevada along with Georgia (268-270).


Democrat 270, Trump 268 (and now that one Nebraska electoral vote looks huge)

Wisconsin likely isn't going to Trump (current illusions aside), what with the Wisconsin Democrat Supreme Court recently issuing a ruling which trashes the election integrity measures passed by the state legislature, and practically mandates Democrat vote fraud. Correspondingly, any delusionals who are dreaming about a GOP Senate pickup in WI can wake up now and face reality unless some 1994-ish tidal wave hits in November.

Politically speaking, Michigan is PA's poorer, more liberal Rust Belt little sister. If Trump can't take PA, he surely isn't winning Michigan. Maybe lightning strikes again as it did in 2016 and he takes both. Like Wisconsin, Michigan has also recently taken measures to thwart election integrity.

To summarize: if the Democrat candidate wins both Michigan and Wisconsin -- as is still probable, though we all wish it wasn't -- and all non-swing states go as expected, there is no scenario under which Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

Even with Joe Biden's obvious mental and physical degradation, swing state polls remain exceedingly close although most of them slightly favor Trump as of this time, but within the margin of error. On July 6, Bloomberg released polls for the seven obvious swing states (NC included) and Trump was ahead in five of those, though the pollster cheerily noted that Biden was closing the gap. This is likely to be as close to reality as we have seen so far, with Trump losing Michigan and Wisconsin. They say he remains slightly ahead in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. One day later the Emerson pollsters had Trump sweeping all six of the swingers (NC wasn't polled).

If 2024 somehow mimics 1984 or 1972 then we will see fluke outcomes in states that shouldn't even be on the radar right now (e.g. Virginia). But even with as much disarray as President Alzheimer and his party seem to be in at the moment, expecting anything along the lines of a rout is foolish.

If you're trying to forecast the 2024 outcome, don't forget to factor in the following:

  1. Biden is looking less and less likely to be the nominee.

  2. Mitt Romney's inflammatory (yet quite accurate) comment from 2012 is still operative, undoubtedly at an even higher level than his now-outdated 47% figure. In case you've forgotten what that comment was:

      "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the [Democrat] no matter what. . . who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."

  3. The mass invasion of new welfare recipients streaming across the Mexican border -- who are infiltrating numerous states and not merely Texas or other border states. And all they have to do to earn their "paychecks" is vote Democrat.
We're all enjoying the clown show right now, but the liberals have four long months to fully recover from the current predicament -- and they will do so, much sooner than that.

The stakes are too high to simply fold up and wait for some other year, as they did in the days of Walter Mondale, George McGovern and Mike Dukakis. Not this time. Not when the GOP nominee is Donald Trump, a man who deranged leftists believe is "literally Hitler". And not with control of the House and Senate so much up-for-grabs. In 1972, 1984 and 1988 Democrats knew with 100% certainty that they would maintain House control irrespective of the presidential outcome; they also had the Senate in their pockets for two of those three election years.

Memo to GOP cheerleaders: become overconfident at your own idiotic risk.



The last Democrat to win the White House without PA was Harry Truman in 1948. George W. Bush was twice elected president without PA, in 2000 and 2004. Richard Nixon accomplished the same thing in 1968 though he and George Wallace combined for 52.4% of the vote in Pennsylvania.

Bellwether status: only three times since 1948 has PA's voting percentage for the GOP presidential candidate varied by more than about 2% from the national average. Two of those years were 1988 and 1984, when longtime Democrat steel-mill towns in southwestern PA, which had begun dying well before Reagan ever took office, swung hard to the left against Reagan anyway. The Pittsburgh metropolitan area was the only one of any significant size in the entire country where Reagan's percentage of the vote declined from 1980 to 1984.

Bush was able to amass enough electoral votes elsewhere that he did not need the Keystone State in '00 and '04. As it turned out, Trump didn't need it in 2016 either -- but he almost certainly does now.


2000 presidential election results

In 2000, Dubya won several states which are no longer normally winnable for the GOP in a presidential election -- Colorado and Virginia being the biggest of those. In 2000 CO and VA, plus Nevada and New Hampshire, added 29 electoral votes to the GOP total, more than offsetting the absence of PA's 23 EV. Bush of course also won as expected in Arizona and Georgia, which were solid Republican properties at that time but are now rightfully considered swing states. Bush did lose Iowa which is now considered true-blue (proper color usage). Bush won by a total of 5 EV that year, 271 to 266.


2004 presidential election results

In 2004 Bush repeated his victories in VA + CO and picked up Iowa and New Mexico but dropped New Hampshire. The outcome in the electoral college wasn't nearly as close as it had been four years earlier. The final score was: Bush 286, Lurch 251. The major Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin once again were not needed.

In 2024, barring a landslide of wishful thinking, Trump is not likely to win states like Virginia (unless Glenn Youngkin is on the ticket as VP, and maybe not even then) and is highly unlikely to win places such as Colorado or New Mexico. He must hold North Carolina and take a couple of the biggest swing states. Pennsylvania is the top prize among the swingers.

Without neglecting the other tossup states, Trump's campaign would do well to stay laser-focused on PA from now through November -- with hard-hitting advertising, as many rallies as possible and -- most importantly -- doing whatever can be done to ensure election integrity in order to avoid a repeat of the highly questionable 2020 results here.



We have divided the commonwealth of Pennsylvania into seven sectors which are analyzed below, in order of their size and political impact, from smallest to largest.


Photo credit: visiterie.com

Erie sector (Erie County):

At one time the Erie area had just about the highest percentage of unionized workers in the entire U.S., however it was still often politically marginal as those workers did not always vote the way their labor union bosses instructed them to. Even working-class Erie was not particularly enamored with FDR and how he prolonged his Great Depression. In 1936 it gave FDR his lowest percentage (barely 50%) of any sector in PA against Republican joke candidate Alf Landon.

Erie was the only urban sector in Pennsylvania to vote against America's beloved King-for-Life in both 1940 and 1944. The sizable Catholic vote in the area helped Erie give a narrow two-point majority to JFK in 1960. Ever since that time, Erie has voted for Democrats in all but the most GOP-landslide years (1972, 1980 and 1984, but not 1988) and had a lengthy streak of voting against the GOP candidate in every presidential election from 1988 through 2012.

After an aberrant vote for Trump in 2016, Erie narrowly returned to the D column -- maybe (see below) -- by 1% in 2020. Erie casts only about 2% of the state vote, but is included here as a distinct though not terribly significant sector of PA, because it doesn't really fit in anywhere else.

[Erie made the news on Election Day of 2020 when an alleged poll worker there by the name of Sebastian Machado boasted on Twitter that he had personally "thrown out over a hundred ballots for Trump already!" and "Pennsylvania gonna turn blue 2020!!". The liberal media quickly raced to defend the Democrat vote-counters. They contacted a Democrat operative in Erie who conducted no investigation but labeled Machado's tweet a "false claim" (referring of course only to the first part of it). Democrats insisted that Machado was not actually a poll worker at all. Then the media -- which is the final arbiter of things like this, not law enforcement -- declared Machado's claim of shit-canning 100+ Trump ballots to be "debunked". Meaning that the number of trashed Trump ballots in Erie was likely far higher.]


Photo credit: govtech.com

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton sector (Lackawanna and Luzerne counties):

Presidentially, the electoral history of the anthracite coal country of northeastern PA has been quite similar -- albeit with a much smaller number of votes -- to that of the bituminous coal region of southwestern PA. To some extent the demographics of these two areas at opposite ends of Pennsylvania are also quite similar, in that they contain a significant percentage of residents of eastern European/Slavic descent -- blue-collar workers with little or no formal education who toiled in the mines and the mills back when such things were operational. Their pride and their work ethic (traits which are absent in certain other demographic subgroups) caused them to volunteer to endure difficult and dangerous jobs rather than being lazy and living off of welfare.

The demographics of southwest PA and northeast PA may be similar but they are hardly identical. As a fairly major city, Pittsburgh has far more blacks than WB/S; prior to the invasion of Hispanics which has greatly accelerated in the 2000s, northeastern PA was one of the Whitest areas in the entire country.

Northeast PA and southwest PA tended to favor the same party (normally Democrats) in almost every presidential election from 1932 through the 1970s. However the two regions diverged in the 1980s when the Pittsburgh area continued to blame President Reagan for the fact that Democrat Jimmy Carter presided over the near-destruction of the steel industry in the 1970s. WB/S voted for Reagan twice in the '80s while metro Pittsburgh remained ignorantly Democrat.

From 1988 through 2008 the two opposite corners of the state were back in sync, voting Democrat for president every time. By 2012 however, the "bitter clingers" in the smaller towns and cities of western PA had taken offense to Bathhouse Barry Obama's slur and his total destruction of the coal industry, and western PA marched solidly to the right. By 2016, northeast PA and southwest PA were marching together again, this time on the GOP side. Despite a noticeably higher minority percentage, Luzerne County (Wilkes-Barre) is much more Republican than Lackawanna County (Scranton).

In recent elections this sector of Pennsylvania casts approximately double the number of votes as Erie County, which works out to about 4% of the state vote.


Photo credit: visithersheyharrisburg.org

Harrisburg-Lebanon-York sector (Cumberland, Dauphin, Lebanon and York counties):

Harrisburg-Lebanon-York, along with the non-metro sector, has been consistently the most patriotic sector in the state even though the city of Harrisburg began deteriorating in the 1950s and continued doing so at an accelerated pace through the 1970s and beyond. Enough good people eventually fled, that the city began electing Democrat mayors and Democrat-controlled city councils, something which had not happened there since before World War I. The suburbs closest to Harrisburg are now nearly as reprehensible as the city itself, and in terms of registered voters Dauphin County flipped from R to D over 15 years ago. York County is steady, however even fast-growing (by PA standards) Cumberland County is beginning to decline and is now only moderately GOP instead of solid GOP.

Contemporary deterioration notwithstanding, in terms of its presidential preference this sector has been highly Republican from the late FDR years through the present time, though the area is weakening. From 1944-2020 the only time it voted for a Democrat was in the anti-Goldwater landslide of 1964 and even then this area only gave LBJ 55% -- a lower percentage than even the staunchly Republican non-metro sector of PA known generally as "The T".

Comparing 2020 to 2016, the aforementioned deterioration of this sector would appear to be slow-paced. Trump's percentage dropped only from 56.9% to 56.1%, but that is misleading. Even though Trump won PA in 2016 and allegedly lost it in 2020, his percentage actually increased in nearly every sector. Only this one and WB/S gave Trump a lower percentage in 2020 than it had in 2016. However the Democrat percentage increased by greater amounts in all sectors, with the number of those who voted third-party dropping substantially from its 2016 level.

In terms of political influence, Harrisburg-Lebanon-York currently accounts for about 8-9% of the votes in the state, which is about 50% more than Erie and WBS combined.


Photo credit: amishfarmandhouse.com

Reading-Lancaster-Allentown sector (Berks, Carbon, Lancaster, Lehigh and Northampton counties):

Northampton County (Bethlehem, Easton) is a true bellwether for the rest of PA. From 1984-2020 the most it has varied from the statewide GOP presidential percentage is a fraction over 1%. In Berks County (Reading), Republicans began to outnumber Democrats (by a very small amount) as of 2023, and this is the first time that has happened in forever. Across most of PA, the GOP is making inroads against the voter registration advantage which Democrats have enjoyed for decades. For a counterexample however, see below for the description of the Philadelphia sector.

As of early July in 2024, the Republican registration deficit in the state is down to 371,000. It was 915,000 in November of 2016, and 687,000 as of the 2020 general election. It's been half a century or more since Republicans were "only" outnumbered by 371,000 in PA.

Like the Harrisburg sector, the Reading-Lancaster-Allentown amalgamation has voted consistently Republican for president since 1944. The two exceptions were 1964, when everyone voted Democrat, and 2008. The mistake of 2008 was quickly corrected; Lehigh and Northampton counties still voted for Obama in 2012, but Carbon, Berks and Lancaster swung to the right sufficiently to push the whole area back into the blue.

Lehigh County (Allentown) remains a Democrat bastion, with the Rats having a 10% registration advantage. Allentown and the portion of Bethlehem which lies in the county cast nearly 30% of the vote, and the rest of the I-78 corridor (Whitehall, South Whitehall, Upper Macungie, Lower Macungie) is no bargain either. The other four counties which comprise this sector of Pennsylvania lean sufficiently to the right to offset Lehigh, though as noted Northampton is perennially close to the state average which means it is close, period.


Photo credit: wellsboropa.com

Non-metro sector, i.e. "The T":

The counties which run across the northern tier of PA combine with a wide swath of counties in the central part of the state, running all the way to the Maryland border to form a capital letter T. These counties are for the most part rural or small-town oriented. Modestly-sized cities such as Johnstown, Altoona, State College, Williamsport, Pottsville and Chambersburg are typical for this area.

We define the non-metro counties of Pennsylvania as the following: Adams, Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Cameron, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Columbia, Crawford, Elk, Franklin, Forest, Fulton, Huntingdon, Indiana, Jefferson, Juniata, Lawrence, Lycoming, McKean, Mercer, Mifflin, Monroe, Montour, Northumberland, Perry, Pike, Schuylkill, Snyder, Somerset, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Union, Venango, Warren, Wayne, Wyoming. The Census Bureau defines some of these as metropolitan, but for our purposes they are small enough to qualify for this grouping.

Voters in most of patriotic, rural, small-town America naturally tend to be Republicans, and The T of Pennsylvania is no exception. In 2020 the above-listed counties represented 20% of the PA electorate, and voted 67.0% for Donald Trump as compared to only 31.4% for Joe Biden. This, not surprisingly, was by far the best portion of the state for Trump. Since 1932, The T has only voted Democrat for president in the landslide years of 1936 and 1964, and much of the time it has been at or near the top of the state's sectors in GOP percentage.

In this part of the Keystone State, Republican presidential and other statewide candidates are expected to do well and they need to rack up sizable margins in order to win, given the precarious (or worse) situation in the larger metro areas of the state.

In 2016, Trump won PA by approximately 44,000 votes out of 6.16 million. He amassed a margin of 446,000 votes in The T while losing the rest of the state by 402,000. In 2020 Trump won The T by about 493,000 votes -- but lost the remainder of PA by 575,000. This lamentable result was not due to a relative lack of turnout, or lack of support, in The T. Turnout there was up by 13.5% from 2016 to 2020, and only up 12.3% in the other sectors which contain most of the state's urban and suburban territory.


Photo credit: Richard Nowitz / visitpittsburgh.com

Pittsburgh sector (Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties):

This sector in the southwestern portion of Pennsylvania casts approximately as many votes as The T does -- about 20% of all votes in the state.

As is well known, the greater Pittsburgh region was heavily-unionized coal and steel country back in the days when Pittsburgh was known as the Smoky City. From the Great Depression up through recent years, southwestern PA was the most radical portion of the state. These counties have always been fairly White as major metropolitan areas go, and the ethnic Catholic Democrats who comprise a major part of the polyglot Pittsburgh area have often been moderate or even conservative on non-economic issues. It's true that they like their FDR-style economic "safety net", but they also treasure their guns and their Bibles and they are not rabid pro-abortionists nor do they appreciate governmental pandering to welfare state racists.

Because of these traits, the White working-class citizens of small-town western PA were slandered as being "bitter clingers" by prospective president Barack Obama while on the campaign trail in 2008. In April of that year, shortly before the Pennsylvania primary (which he lost by almost 10 points), Bonzo showed how out-of-touch he is with the heartland of America. While safely ensconced behind closed doors at an expensive Democrat fundraiser in elite ultra-liberal San Francisco, he had this to say about the good folks some 2,000 miles to the east:

    "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and... they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Blinded by their ancestral loyalty to the Democrat party, the Bitter Clingers voted for Obama anyway that November. But as in northeastern PA, when Obama's Environmental Protection Agency declared "War on Coal", the blinders were finally removed and many of these voters were through with the Democrat party once and for all. It sure took long enough.

All through the FDR years, the Pittsburgh sector voted more Democrat than any other sector in the state. Even for several decades after FDR finally perished, the voters of southwestern PA remained attached to his Welfare State programs and their descendants. Pittsburgh didn't like Ike in '52 and voted for Egghead Adlai; naturally the heavily-Catholic ethnic voters of the region (like the ones in northeast PA) strongly preferred their co-religionist in 1960.

Pittsburgh was the most anti-Nixon (36.7%) of all PA sectors in 1968 -- and the most pro-George Wallace (10.6%). It was the only Pennsylvania sector to vote against Ronald Reagan in 1980 and as mentioned previously was the only significant metro area in the entire U.S. to move further left during Reagan's 1984 demolition of hapless Fritz Mondale. Speaking of hapless, Mike Dukakis achieved 59% of the Pittsburgh sector's vote in 1988, a far greater percentage than the intrepid Tank Commander received in any other portion of PA.

During the 1990s Pittsburgh was overtaken by the Philadelphia metro area as being the most liberal in the state, but southwestern PA still gave solid -- though decreasing -- margins to Democrats from 1992 through 2008. By the early 2000s the Steel City area was the most marginal in Pennsylvania, with the potential to tilt either way though it still leaned slightly to the left in presidential elections.

By 2012, the effects of Obama's "War on Coal" were evident and the areas of the country which still depended on coal for what little economic vitality they had, finally rebelled at the ballot box. From eastern and southern Ohio, through small-town western Pennsylvania, all of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia, long-time reflexive Democrat voters began trending Republican in large numbers.

The media and other Democrats will always use urban ghetto and barrio areas as examples of woeful "poverty" because it suits their racist anti-White agenda -- but if you ever want to see real poverty in America, look to the areas of Appalachia mentioned in the last paragraph. They were poor to begin with and now have been further impoverished by Democrat political policies.

In Appalachia, these indigent victims do not tend to use their EBT cards for crack cocaine, nor are they overstuffed to the point of being morbidly obese; "poverty" is not supposed to weigh 300 pounds and have Type 2 diabetes.

The poor people of Appalachia do not drive their Cadillac Escalades down to the luxury grocery store (parking in a handicapped spot, natch) to get their mac & cheese dinners and then plop down in front of the 75" TV in their rent-free air-conditioned apartments so they can tune into Oprah and be told how downtrodden they are and what a hateful, racist country the U.S. is while they consume their 3,000-calorie meal which was purchased at taxpayer expense.

All of these regions of Appalachia, including southwestern PA, flipped from Democrat to Republican as of 2012. Even many inhabitants whose livelihoods were not tied to coal mining and processing began marching resolutely to the right, and the voter registration patterns and election outcomes prove it.

Being more urban and suburban rather than isolated and rural, much of greater Pittsburgh has little in common with the rest of Appalachia, and the region's grip on Republicanism is tenuous in its infancy. As in the rest of the United States, the more-upscale suburbs (of which Pittsburgh has several) have run screaming to the left since 2016 while the less privileged White working-class precincts in urban and suburban areas have moved to the right. Whether these trends will continue in the post-Trump years, we'll have to wait a while to see. If Biden couldn't win southwestern PA even in 2020, it's not likely that he (or whatever stooge replaces him) will be able to do so in 2024 either.

But that doesn't matter a whole lot as far as Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes are concerned, because the ace up the Democrats' sleeve is. . .


Photo credit: Thom Carroll / phillyvoice.com

Philadelphia sector (Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties):

Southeastern PA was actually the most Republican region of Pennsylvania heading into FDR's elongated depression; it voted nearly 60% to re-elect Herbert Hoover in 1932, and no other segment of PA was even close to that figure. As recently as 1948 the City of Brotherly Love was still electing GOP mayors, but never again since that time. The city reached its peak population of 2.07 million as of the 1950 census, and the mass exodus to the suburbs then began in earnest. The end of Mayor Frank Rizzo's term in 1979 marked the last time that someone who wasn't an ultra-liberal coddler of criminals occupied that office; Philadelphia started racing downhill without brakes in the 1980s and has continued to do so ever since.

For several decades, the large suburban counties around Philadelphia were able (and willing) to counterbalance the city's effect on presidential elections. Those suburbs also normally sent Republicans to Congress and voted for the GOP in other statewide races, but their preference was for Republican candidates who were well to the left of center.

Metro Philly grudgingly voted twice for Ronald Reagan, with 46.4% in 1980 and a bare majority (50.4%) in 1984. Philadelphia-area voters have not, as a whole, voted Republican for president at any time since then. This has been far and away the most liberal sector of PA since the 1990s.

The mid-1990s, specifically 1994, was very much a watershed date in metro-Philly politics.

As Sir Isaac Newton might have said, for every political action there is an opposite reaction (but not necessarily an equal one).

The trend, at least at the presidential level, began much earlier than 1994. The glorious outcome of the 1994 midterm election which placed the Republicans in control of the House and Senate for the first time in four decades represented the culmination of a long journey away from the Democrat party in parts of the country where such a thing seemed unlikely to ever happen.

The Democrat hold on the "Solid South" helped to keep them in charge of the Senate at all times and was a major factor in the House too, along with customary hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymanders in the most important states like California and Texas. The overconfidence and venality (and criminality) of Democrat politicians finally caused a critical level of voter discontent to be reached in that wonderful year of 1994, and a major congressional coup was the result.

That was the "action", or at least the most visible part of it. The "reaction" was not necessarily just a backlash against GOP control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, although the liberal media wasted no time trying to make that backlash happen. Congress has always been unpopular with the American people; only beginning in 1995 did the media feel the need to constantly remind people exactly which party controlled Congress, so the voters would know which party they were supposed to hate.


Photo credit: AP / Denis Paquin

The real "reaction" was against the fact that the GOP was now being led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and like-minded conservatives -- and therefore was viewed by the left-wingnuts of BOTH parties as being racists, rednecks, sexists, Bible-thumpers, illiterate trailer-trash, etc. This was no longer the party of moderate milquetoasts like former House Minority Leader Bob Michel. Republicans finally had some power in Washington after four dark decades and -- gasp! -- they might actually try to use that power!

These developments especially did not sit well with the upscale, suburban, country-club elitist wing (the "George Bush wing") of the Republican party, and in few places was the revulsion more obvious than in the suburbs of northeastern cities like Philadelphia. While these areas had been ancestrally Republican, they were never conservative, and now these Republicans were terrified by what they thought "their" party was becoming.

The Philly suburbs had seemingly always been represented by GOP politicians who were self-described "fiscal conservatives" (a true oxymoron, since these so-called conservatives voted for every budget-busting social welfare program that came along). They took great pains to make clear that they were not conservative in any other way. This formula of being on the far left of the GOP on all issues aside from some minor spending bills was sufficient to get elected in moderate-liberal suburbs for many years. It boiled down to "I won't raise your taxes as much as a Democrat would, but otherwise you'll never know from my voting record that I am actually a Republican!"

Democrats occasionally won U.S. House elections in the Philly burbs, but the GOP normally swept those districts every two years or came close to doing so. Naturally there was a clean sweep of the four districts which covered the suburban Philly area in 1994. Things barely held together in 1996 (liberal Republican Jon Fox almost lost the Montgomery County-based 13th district) and began disintegrating in 1998 when Fox did lose to future statewide failure Joe Hoeffel. That district and its successors have never again elected a Republican to Congress.

The old 7th district (mainly Delaware County) fell to the Democrats in the anti-Republican landslide in the "Abramoff scandal" election of 2006. Democrats ran the table in 2008 in their giddiness over the prospect of electing America's first half-black president. The scales tipped back towards equilibrium when buyers' remorse set in and GOP voters kicked numerous liberal Democrats out of the House in 2010; two of those evictions came in the Philly area.

The status quo held until the hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymander which was mandated by the Pennsylvania Democrat Supreme Court became law in 2018 and remains in effect today. Liberal Republican stooge Brian Fitzpatrick has been able to consistently squeak his way to re-election in the marginal Bucks County district, but the remaining districts which ring the city of Philadelphia have been crafted to elect nothing but liberal Democrats -- which they do.

Philadelphia suburbs
2004 John Kerry (D) 657,795 53.3% George W. Bush* (R) 570,671 46.2%
2000 Albert Gore, Jr. (D) 527,812 51.2% George W. Bush (R) 473,466 45.9%
1996 Bill Clinton (D) 427,706 46.8% Robert Dole (R) 385,603 42.2%
1992 Bill Clinton (D) 405,327 39.9% George Bush* (R) 402,877 39.7%


As of the early ("pre-Gingrich") 1990s the country club suburbs were still comfortably Republican in terms of registrations but not always in terms of their presidential voting. In 1992, Bill and Hillary defeated George Bush by the slender margin of 39.9% to 39.7% in the suburban ring around Philly. Aside from the Goldwater year, this was the first time ever for those counties as a whole to vote Democrat for president.

While some deterioration was clearly already taking place as of 1992, the area's leftward lurch gained serious traction after 1994. Dole's losing margin in 1996 was 4.6 points, Dubya was defeated by 5.3% in 2000 and then by 7.1% in 2004.

Things got much worse in 2008, and they haven't improved since that time:

2008: Obama +15.5%
2012: Obama +9.7%
2016: Hillary +13.9%
2020: Biden +18.9%

Philadelphia suburbs
2020 Joe Biden (D) 913,304 58.8% Donald Trump* (R) 620,031 39.9%
2016 Hillary Clinton (D) 742,226 54.7% Donald Trump (R) 553,873 40.8%
2012 Barack Obama* (D) 689,980 54.2% Mitt Romney (R) 566,653 44.5%
2008 Barack Obama (D) 749,127 57.2% John McCain (R) 545,494 41.7%


Remember, all of the above data is for the Philadelphia suburbs only and contains no part of the city.



Registered voters - Philly suburbs
YearRD
2024703,107866,178
2020726,792885,104
2016731,327796,148
2012720,687747,583
2008764,724756,232
2004861,897616,726
2000859,687511,660
1996790,491422,626
1992711,540362,352


Voter registrations are, much more often than not, lagging indicators of an area's voting preference; the trend is evident at the ballot box before it shows up in head counts of party membership. That is because voting is an immediate reaction to a political situation, whereas party membership is part of a voter's identity.

Registration statistics in the Philly sector belatedly confirmed the movement which was already being seen in the election data. These liberal Republicans perhaps hoped that the GOP's unpalatable (though mostly infinitesimal) move toward the right would cease, and the party would "come back to them".

Maybe that was why there was no great rush by suburban Philadelphia voters to abandon the GOP and re-register as Democrats immediately after 1994. In 1994 there were about 341,000 more Republicans than Democrats here, and that margin actually increased to nearly 368,000 as of 1996. Even by 2000, as Albert Einstein Gore was winning the Philly suburbs, GOP registrations in Bucks, ChesCo, DelCo and MontCo still outnumbered Democrats by almost 350,000.

Then the mass exodus from the GOP began, with more and more liberal Republicans completing their journey to the Far Left and officially becoming registered Democrats. As of 2004 the Republican advantage had been reduced to 245,000 and just four years later it was down to practically zero. This movement was not solely caused by new Democrats invading the suburbs, fresh from the Philly ghetto and other places. As Democrat registrations blossomed, the GOP head count was dropping precipitously, whether from party switches or because Republican voters were fleeing these suburbs altogether.

By 2009, Democrats had the bigger numbers and the trend is only lately slowing -- but not reversing. In November of 2020, Democrats were +158,000 in voter registrations here; as of July, 2024 the number stands at +163,000.

Registration totals are not just trivial factoids, because these days ballots are the important thing; every registered voter represents a "ballot", whether the voter casts that ballot or not. If he doesn't, the ballot can still be "harvested" after election day by (Democrat) party operatives. And that ballot, even if fraudulently completed, counts every bit as much as legitimate votes do.

If GOP vote-counters in some tiny Podunk Republican county wished to commit fraud, their ability to do so is very limited because that tiny county has so few registered voters, i.e. so few possible BALLOTS. However, when Democrat vote counters in large metropolitan counties choose to commit fraud on behalf of their party, the number of BALLOTS they can harvest -- whether by pretending to contact persons who did not vote, or by simply scanning the same Democrat ballots again and again -- is virtually unlimited by comparison to what a tiny Republican county could do.

Trump lost the Philadelphia suburbs by almost 300,000 votes in 2020; he lost the inner-city of Philadelphia by another 470,000. He is likely to do about the same in those places, if not worse, in 2024. That's a lot of votes -- over three-quarters of a million -- to make up in the rest of this politically marginal state. Polls currently suggest that Trump may be able to pull it off.

But polls aren't ballots.


Photo credit: Charles Fox / Philadelphia Inquirer

Before we close, there is one other factor to consider regarding elections in Pennsylvania:

PA Secretary of the Commonwealth (chief election officer) Al Schmidt is the token appointed RINO in the administration of far-left Governor Joshie Shapiwo. Schmidt, a Philadelphia liberal with significant experience being around Democrat vote fraud, never met a liberal he didn't love or a conservative he didn't despise. Schmidt became a hero to the left after the 2020 election, at which time he "courageously" resisted Donald Trump's efforts to obtain a fair and accurate vote count in Pennsylvania.

Schmidt will do everything in his (considerable) power to thwart Republican gains of any kind in PA in 2024 -- including protecting the White House and Senate from evil GOP challengers, and trying to ensure that the Democrat-gerrymandered congressional delegation doesn't lose any of its vulnerable leftists and does lose its one and only conservative (Scott Perry).

And don't forget the Rats' one-seat margin (102-101) in the Democrat-gerrymandered state House, which must be protected to the fullest extent possible; and the fact that the Republicans are on the verge of losing just barely enough seats (3) in the Democrat-gerrymandered state Senate in November to give liberals 100% control of PA government at every level -- executive, legislative and judicial.

The transfer of power in the state legislature from Republicans to Democrats may not be all that noticeable, what with many GOP legislators in PA basically being Democrats in Republican clothing already.

The voters will have some say in how these elections turn out, but just be aware that anything good which might happen for Republicans in PA this year will happen over Al Schmidt's dead body. (That's just an expression, ha ha.)

Tags:

2024 Pennsylvania


7/2/2024: Virginia: Not "Good" At All; New York: Fire (Chief) Has Been Extinguished; Colorado: Democrat Manipulators Invade GOP Primaries Again [RightDataUSA]

In Virginia the results were literally "not Good", as staunch conservative Bob Good (100% lifetime ACU rating through 2023) was narrowly defeated in the CD-5 GOP primary by state Sen. John McGuire, who also purports to be a conservative. Bob Good (not to be confused with former congressman and presidential candidate Virgil Goode, who represented this same district from 1997-2008) was first elected in 2020 when he beat incumbent moderate Denver Riggleman -- who later bolted from the GOP -- at the party convention and then prevailed over black liberal Democrat Cameron Webb in the general. The national Democrat party saw to it that Webb had nearly $6 million to spend (vs. Good's barely $1 million) and dumped even more into the pot via an additional $4.6 million in "independent" expenditures against the Republican. Good fit the district reasonably well and had no trouble being re-elected in 2022.

Good is a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and was supported in his contentious 2024 primary by all the right people, including Matt Gaetz, Steve Bannon and Byron Donalds. Good has never been popular with the liberal establishment wing of the GOP however, and they had the knives out for him in much the same way as they treated another 100% conservative in Virginia -- Dave Brat -- back in 2018 (see below).


Photo credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Walking hand-in-hand with liberal GOPeers such as Kevin McCarthy this time around was a guy by the name of Donald Trump, who declared war on Bob Good because the 100% conservative congressman had violated Trump's First Commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me". Good, you see, endorsed Ron DeSantis for president over a year ago but then switched back to Trump and even went so far as to show up in person in New York City to support Trump during the former president's political persecution trial in Juan Merchan's Kangaroo courtroom.

Lord Trump was not forgiving, however, and He smote Good while waving off the Virginian's support as coming "too late".



Hillary Rodham Clinton, among her numerous repulsive traits, is petty, vengeful and unforgiving -- or worse -- to those who cross her; Vince Foster, Ron Brown and Jim McDougal were unavailable for comment on that subject. Bill had nothing to say either.

Although the Clintons do possess an "enemies list", Hillary never acted upon that list -- at least not in any way which would deprive her congressional enemies of their jobs. She did not wreak vengeance on the ultra-liberal members of her party who endorsed Barack Hussein Obama over her in 2008, nor on those who endorsed Bernie Sanders against her in 2016. That's not because Hillary has any kind of warm and forgiving side, it's because only the Stupid Party is stupid enough to deliberately sabotage those who represent its ideological and electoral base. Democrats, like Communists, always put the Party first; RINOs would rather see aggressively conservative Republicans like Bob Good defeated whenever possible. The RINOs got their wish in Virginia last month.

While Trump had his own petty reason for attempting to terminate the career of this particular conservative, the rest of the GOPe had another reason. The squishes don't find themselves allied with Donald Trump very often (but still more often than we would like), but because Good had voted to topple RINO McCarthy as Speaker last year -- and because of Good's resolutely conservative record -- the GOPe were all-in against him alongside the former president.


Photo credit: Steve Helber/AP

The backstabbing of Good was reminiscent of prior events in the Old Dominion, such as when conservative Dave Brat was abandoned by the GOPe and hung out to dry, allowing him to be outspent heavily and defeated by Abby "Deep State" Spanbarger in congressional district 7 in the anti-Trump wave election of 2018.

Brat was first elected in 2014 in a shocking primary win over Eric Cantor, a one-time conservative who became a squish after he was elevated into the GOP leadership. Cantor was the House Majority Leader when Brat stunned him and the establishment in the '14 primary. Cantor spent nearly $8 million in that primary while Brat, relying on conservative grassroots support instead of GOP party and PAC funding, raised and spent only a tiny fraction of Cantor's amount. Brat won the general election by over 20 points and was re-elected in 2016 as well. In those two terms he took the conservative position on every single key vote.

The establishment never forgave him for taking out their Golden Boy.

In 2015, partisan Democrat judges threw out the district map which had been used in Virginia since 2011 and mandated an immediate partisan Democrat gerrymander which altered several districts in the southeastern part of the state. Brat's district, based mainly in the Richmond suburbs, was one of those affected.


VA-4 results in 2014


VA-4 results in 2016

The goal of the gerrymander was to obliterate the 4th district as previously drawn (see above maps), and cause it to expel a White Republican incumbent (Randy Forbes) and replace him with a black Democrat. This was easily accomplished. However a side effect was to significantly alter Brat's 7th district, much to his detriment, as you can see from the following maps.


VA-7 results in 2014


VA-7 results in 2018

Bad areas of Chesterfield and Henrico counties in the Richmond suburbs were added to VA-7, causing their proportion of the district vote to increase to around 60% from 50%. Brat still won in 2016 fairly easily, but with a margin (15 points) that was noticeably down from what it had been in 2014 (24 points). Prior to redistricting CD-7 was rated as R+10; after redistricting it was closer to R+2. Then came the 2018 election, the district flipped from blue to red (proper color usage) where it has remained, and Brat was finished. Democrats were happy; the GOPe was elated.


Photo credit: David Zalubowski /AP

In Colorado, Lauren Boebert took the first successful step in her bid for re-election in her new district (CD-4) as she easily defeated 5 other Republicans in the June 25th primary. Boebert, the current incumbent in CD-3, did not run in the special CD-4 election to replace Ken Buck, the formerly righteous conservative who ran shrieking to the left and exited a few months ago in order to hamstring the narrow GOP House majority even further than it already was.

Boebert is forever a prime target of liberals and other haters in both parties. Because winning the primary in the heavily-Republican 4th district should be tantamount to re-election, the haters are going to have to deal with Boebert in Congress for another two years. Ha ha.

Democrats are not entirely conceding the seat, although they suffered a setback when their Chosen One, liberal Ike McCorkle, was unexpectedly defeated in the Rat primary. McCorkle had all the money he needed, and was going to wrap himself in the American flag and try to pose as a moderate, pro-military Democrat. Instead, the Dem candidate will be Trisha Calvarese; she's from the far-left wing of the party and just lost the CD-4 special election by almost 25 points. She'll almost certainly do better in November, assuming the Democrats (motivated, along with the RINOs, by their intense hatred of Boebert) feel like wasting money to achieve a 10-15 point loss instead of a 25-point landslide defeat which they can get for free.



Federal Election Commission reports concerning Colorado's 3rd district show that something called the "Rocky Mountain Values" PAC spent nearly $200K against conservative Ron Hanks, who was able to raise only $22,000 himself to fight back against the liberals -- Democrats and Republicans -- who supported his main primary opponent, moderate-liberal lawyer Jeffrey Hurd. The left-wing media claims that Rocky Mountain Values actually spent $500,000, and that the funds were spent supporting Hanks, because the PAC calculated that the conservative would be easier to beat in November. This Democrat PAC exists for the sole purpose of collecting and spending money to manipulate Republican primary outcomes in Colorado, one way or the other.

He could have had an impact, but Donald Trump was silent in the CD-3 primary race and avoided endorsing the conservative; probably because that woefully-underfunded conservative was likely to lose the primary anyway. Which he did, by about 13 points in a 6-way race; current figures show Hurd as the winner with 41.3%, to 28.5% for Hanks.

This is not the first time Democrats have openly tried to sabotage Republican primaries in Colorado. In numerous states in 2022, Democrats cleared the field for their chosen candidates in winnable statewide elections, thereby averting needlessly expensive and divisive primaries. That tactic also frees up Democrat voters who, because they have no real contests of their own to vote in, are able to cross over and manipulate the outcome of GOP primaries. Colorado state law even allows "independent" voters to participate in Republican primary elections without having to bother to re-register (no matter how temporarily) as Republicans.



In 2022, only in the Pennsylvania Senate race (among all truly contested two-party races for Governor or Senate in the entire country) did Democrats allow the possibility of an acrimonious primary election. But it never happened because all of the party's heavyweights -- and their money -- were on the side of radical leftist candidate John Fetterman instead of the slightly less liberal candidate, Conor Lamb. Lambykins was never close in any primary poll, usually not even within 20-30 points of Fetterman, so there was never any doubt as to who the winner would be and the puppetmasters could afford to let the voters appear to "decide" that election.

It's more of the same in 2024, where Democrats have once again cleared the field in every primary election where it matters, while Republicans still regularly wage war against each other in their primaries. On the GOP side the primary winner is often mortally wounded heading into the general election, and the RINOs refuse to unite with the conservatives whenever the primary voters have the temerity to select the less liberal candidate.

In no state were liberal manipulations of GOP primaries more blatant than in Colorado in 2022. Democrats, often uniting with anti-conservative Republicans, spent inordinate amounts of money to get their way.

In CD-3 in 2022, Democrats pulled out all the stops to either defeat or severely injure Lauren Boebert in her primary election against RINO Don Coram. They failed to defeat her at that time, but they were able to inflict sufficient damage which -- combined with the vast amount spent by liberal Aspen Democrat Adam Frisch, including over $2 million of his own money -- almost got the job done in November. Boebert narrowly escaped with a 50.1% to 49.9% win. Frisch spent over $6 million in all in 2022, which is chump change compared to what he and the Rats are spending in one more attempt to buy this congressional seat in 2024.

Though failing in CD-3 in 2022, Democrats did get the outcomes they wanted in the more important Governor and Senate elections in Colorado, not to mention the really important Secretary of State election. Though it is not clear why they felt the need to go to so much trouble influencing Republican primaries for offices which the Democrats were always highly likely to win regardless of who the GOP nominee turned out to be.

In the gubernatorial and senatorial Republican primary races, big-money Democrats funneled lots of $$$$ to the more conservative GOP candidates with the idea that they would be easier to defeat in a general election. The conservative who was running for Governor, Greg Lopez, was defeated in that primary by liberal Republican Heidi Ganahl, who was obliterated by almost 20 points by the incumbent Democrat rump-ranger in November. Lopez was elected to Congress last week in the special election in Colorado's 4th congressional district. His tenure in the House will be brief, as he did not choose to run for the full term which begins in 2025.

In the 2022 GOP Senate primary, the puppetmasters feared squishy Republican Joe O'Dea and tried to boost Ron Hanks -- the same Ron Hanks who ran in the 2024 primary in CD-3. Once again the string-pullers failed to drag the conservative across the finish line, but they need not have feared O'Dea -- he lost by over two touchdowns in November to the incumbent liberal Democrat. But not before those same puppetmasters invested over $16 million dollars in "independent" expenditures against O'Dea; O'Dea himself was only able to raise $10 million altogether and $4 million of that came out of his own pocket. He never had a chance, though GOP leaders talked bravely (and stupidly) about supporting him with money -- however little that amount was, it would have been much better spent on Senate races practically anywhere else, like Georgia, Arizona or Pennsylvania.

The biggest liberal coup of all in Colorado in 2022 was capturing the vital Secretary of State office, which is the office in charge of counting votes and abetting Democrat vote fraud (and helping persecute those who call it out). The GOP primary in that race was quite mysterious: How Did A Zuckerberg Charity Stooge Win A GOP Primary In Colorado? Subtitle: "Pam Anderson won a race with no money and very few visible voters".



Photo credit: NY Post

On June 25, Jamaal "Fire Chief" Bowman (D-NY) was soundly defeated in the Democrat primary in New York's 16th congressional district by Westchester County executive George Latimer (D-Israel). Bowman thus becomes the first member of the radical leftist Democrat coven known as "The Squad" to be defeated in a re-election bid.

Bowman was first elected to Congress in 2020 after he surprised 16-term incumbent Democrat Eliot Engel in the primary. No Republican bothered to run, so Bowman won 84% to 16% against a Conservative party candidate in November. The elderly incumbent lost because of being allegedly out of touch with the district, and he was thought to be insufficiently dedicated to racist causes like "Black Lives Matter"; BLM's largely-unprosecuted violence, rioting and destruction were enormously popular among the far left in 2020, in New York's 16th district and elsewhere.

The GOP did field a token candidate against Bowman in 2022, but almost no money at all was raised on her behalf, and Bowman cruised to another easy general election win (64% to 36%) although he did struggle somewhat in the primary, taking barely 50% of the vote in a 3-way race.

As the Washington Times noted while patriotic Americans were celebrating Bowman's defeat, the Congressman's antics had gotten him in mild trouble even before his racist rhetoric against Israel and his support of the Hamas terrorists after their October 7 attack.

    Known for his loud theatrics off the House floor, Mr. Bowman pulled a fire alarm in a U.S. Capitol office building in September [2023] -- a false alarm that delayed a critical spending vote that House Democrats wanted to delay. He previously endorsed 9/11 conspiracy theories and recently said reports of Hamas terrorists raping Israelis on Oct. 7 were "propaganda".

Fire Chief Bowman falsely claimed that he turned in the alarm because he was trying to open emergency doors so he could hustle to the important vote which was taking place elsewhere in the Capitol building -- a phony fire alarm is more dangerous than any alleged "crime" committed by the J6 political prisoners. Bowman was facing a six-month jail term for this stunt, but charges were quickly dropped by Washington D.C. authorities (go figure). The House Ethics Committee, which is led by GOP milquetoasts, also immediately declined to recommend any punishment for Bowman.

New York's 16th district was rated by Charlie Cook as D+25 in 2020 and D+20 after redistricting reduced the Bronx portion of the district to practically nothing; CD-16 is now contained almost entirely (~95%) within suburban Westchester County and remains utterly safe for Democrats. The new Democrat congressman from CD-16 will be just as liberal as Bowman, so don't expect any improvement there; he probably won't be as obnoxious, though.


Westchester County, NY

People who get their demographic information from television sitcom reruns may believe that Westchester County is a bastion of upscale White Republicans in a bucolic setting of well-manicured lawns and endless golf courses. To them, it must be confusing that such an area would have elected and then re-elected a black racist who is one of the most far-left Democrats in the entire House.


Photo credit: Bettmann Archive

In the early 1960's, Hollywood ultra-liberal Carl Reiner placed the main character's home in New Rochelle in "The Dick Van Dyke Show". A decade later, Hollywood ultra-liberal Norman Lear created a spinoff of "All in the Family" based around the strident liberal character of Maude Findlay. The show, called "Maude", was set in the village of Tuckahoe.

"The Dick Van Dyke Show" was generally non-political, but by the time "Maude" hit the airwaves in the early 1970's, it was fashionable in Hollywood to portray women as powerful and influential liberal shrews rather than as dowdy housewives. The writers and producers of "Maude" decided to forego entertainment in order to positively address trendy left-wing issues on a weekly basis, with the main character consistently and courageously taking unpopular (i.e., liberal) stands in supposedly ultra-conservative Tuckahoe. As with "All in the Family", Lear was shrewd enough to know that the audience would eventually balk at being fed foul-tasting medicine all of the time, so the writers of Lear's programs portrayed Maude (and Rob "Meathead" Reiner's character on AITF) as being wrong on rare occasions.


Photo credit: YouTube

When Rob and Laura Petrie and their son Richie were living in Westchester County in their early 60's sitcom world, the county was over 90% White and gladly voted for Republicans -- albeit liberal Republicans. Westchester's influence in New York elections peaked in Maude's 1970's, at which time demographic deterioration was picking up speed as refugees from New York City invaded in larger numbers. This naturally caused many of the good people of the county to flee to more distant places such as the Hudson Valley, further Upstate, or Florida, the mass exodus serving to push Westchester further left.

Formerly rock-solid Republican Westchester became Democrat-friendly territory during the 1980's and 1990's though it did support liberal GOP Governor George Pataki three times. By the early 2000's political sanity in Westchester had vanished and the area has been continuing to move ever leftward since then -- accelerating even more during the Trump years. In 2024, Whites comprise at most about 50% of the population, and voter registration figures also tell an ugly story. The once-overwhelming GOP majority disappeared for good at least 35 years ago, and Republicans now account for less than 20% of all voters in Westchester County while Democrats exceed 50%. Why did folks like Rob and Laura vote with their feet and forsake Westchester County? Because they weren't idiots, that's why.

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2024 U.S. House Virginia Colorado New York


6/13/2024: This Week's Primaries; Meltdown in Maine; The Last Sane Senate Democrat? [RightDataUSA]


Photo credit: WFMJ

Although Republican Michael Rulli easily won (54.6% to 45.3%) Tuesday's special election in Ohio's 6th congressional district over Democrat Michael Kripchak, media liberals are gloating about the Democrat's "moral victory", which is something they do in every special election where their candidate isn't completely blown out of the water by the voters.

In this case, they have a minor point. This R+16 district routinely elects Republicans by 30-point margins, not mere 9-point margins. In extremely low-turnout special elections like this one, normal patterns do not always hold but they typically resume when more voters participate, as they will in November when these two Michaels will face off again. Customary GOP complacency and Democrat wishful thinking aside, there was no discernable reason for the closeness of the outcome in Ohio. Back in March, Rulli was engaged in a hotly-contested primary with fellow Republican Reggie Stoltzfus and one other candidate, however it was conducted in a generally amicable way with very little mud being tossed around; there should have been no lingering animosities from that contest.

Furthermore, while Rulli and Stoltzfus combined to raise and spend over $1.2 million in trying to win this seat, the hapless Democrat challenger raised only $22,000. National Democrats didn't invest anything here for the special election, and they won't do so for November either because they know they are not flipping any R+16 district. It would be the equivalent of the GOP winning a typical district in Massachusetts. And that ain't happening, at any price.


Photo credit: Nancy Mace/Youtube, Getty Images

Nancy Mace 1, Kevin McCarthy 0: In South Carolina, embattled Nancy Mace had an easier than expected time defeating Catherine Templeton, who was a sock puppet for disgraced ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mace received approximately 57% of the Republican primary vote and thus easily avoided the runoff election which would have been necessary if she had failed to achieve 50%.

McCarthy and his well-funded allies created a political action committee (PAC) and spent over $2 million through that PAC for the sole purpose of exacting some revenge on Mace for her 2023 vote to topple the ineffective McCarthy from the Speakership. Tuesday's outcome does not necessarily mean that McCarthy and his minions are accepting defeat; it may just be round one.

As we noted previously, the liberal GOP establishment in this district (and nationally) are by no means averse to sabotaging primary-winning Republicans whom they loathe. Recall 2018 in this district, when Republican nominee Katie Arrington was repeatedly backstabbed by her own party, which caused her to lose the general election to a Democrat that November. The GOPe may repeat that tactic here in 2024, perhaps quietly working on behalf of liberal corporate DEI (Didn't Earn It) stooge Michael Moore -- or perhaps taking a more in-your-face approach and daring the good voters of South Carolina's 1st congressional district to do something about it. Moore spent a large sum to buy his win in the Democrat primary, and -- with some help from anti-Mace moderate/liberal Republicans -- is surely counting on raising a lot more. The anti-Mace PAC which was heavily involved in Mace's primary has at least $1 million remaining in the bank.

But it's still an R+7 district and Mace, though not exactly dominating on Tuesday, received more votes than both Democrat candidates combined. She's not perfectly safe for November, but Mace is certainly favored to win. She just needs to watch her back at all times.



C.I.V.O. -- "Conservative In Voting Only": Elsewhere in the Palmetto State on Tuesday, incumbent Republican William Timmons in CD-4 (Greenville/Spartanburg) barely survived a primary challenge from his right, just as he had barely survived a similar but less focused threat two years earlier. In this heavily Republican district, a primary win is often tantamount to election because Democrats either do not field any candidate at all, or they make only the smallest token effort.

Timmons, now completing his third term in Congress, has displayed conservative tendencies when voting on legislation. The American Conservative Union gives Timmons a lifetime rating of over 90% and he toes the party line (such as that party line sometimes is) at least 95% of the time; he cannot technically be called a "RINO".

On the other hand, there is more to a congressman than how he votes. Given his vastly underwhelming performance in primary elections lately, it is clear that Timmons has done something to annoy a sizable portion of his party's base.

Among other reasons for annoyance, Timmons is definitely not a "fighter" for conservative causes. Timmons was a staunch supporter of disgraced ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and, as a go-along-to-get-along type, would hardly be uncomfortable as a Republican back-bencher in a Democrat-controlled House. Which is something he may well get to see first-hand in 2025. Timmons has rejected calls to join the House Freedom Caucus, that "far-right" group of conservatives who dare to try to influence legislation (gasp!); they also try to influence the moderate House leadership, of which they comprise no part. In order to avert retaliation (which shows you how the GOPe works) the membership list of the House Freedom Caucus is never disclosed. Timmons proudly declares that he is not now nor has he ever been a member of that group, and he also complains that the Caucus is a hindrance to getting certain (liberal) legislation through the House.

Timmons has some other issues (extramarital affairs, support for racist DEI crap) which bolster the assertion that he is not worthy of re-election. In this year's CD-4 primary, unabashed Freedom Caucus member Matt Gaetz of Florida threw his support behind conservative state legislator Adam Morgan; Donald Trump, in an action so typical as to practically be mandatory, threw his support behind the wimpy incumbent even though there was no risk whatsoever of the conservative Morgan losing to a Democrat in November. [The same thing applied in the North Dakota U.S. House race, where Trump bypassed solid conservative Rich Becker in order to endorse a likely RINO in a district which had no incumbent running -- and, like in SC-4, no viable Democrat opposition in November either.]

The South Carolina squish eked out a win on Tuesday, with 51.6% to 48.4% for Morgan. Timmons raised and spent nearly $2 million, although $900,000 of that came from a loan which Timmons was able to make to his campaign. Morgan actually outraised the incumbent swamp critter in terms of individual mom-n-pop type contributions, while Timmons had much greater support from the political/corporate sector, and his own bank account.


Photo credit: Alchetron

The focus in Maine was on the winnable second congressional district which has been held by Democrat Jared Golden since his surprising "Rigged Choice Voting" victory in 2018. Maine voters (mostly Democrats) had just approved a ballot initiative implementing the RCV scheme which took effect in 2018, and those Democrats were delighted when Golden defeated incumbent moderate Republican Bruce Poliquin thanks solely to the provisions of Rigged Choice Voting; without that, Poliquin was the winner.

Golden is extremely well-funded by left-wing labor unions and the "Israel Lobby", and in the past he has done a good job of fooling the voters of CD-2 by faking to the center whenever necessary. The district is rated as R+6 -- that's not even particularly "marginal"; it's an outright Republican district. Trump won CD-2 in both 2016 and 2020, taking the electoral vote which goes with that victory. Alterations to CD-2 in the most recent redistricting were not significant.

As mentioned, Golden has become adept at fooling the voters; yes, he is in fact one of the more "moderate" Democrats in the House, which only means that instead of being 98% liberal he is normally merely 88% liberal. However this year Golden is running scared to an extent which he never has before. In 2024, Golden has broken with his party over 40% of the time on Party Unity votes and on "key" votes he has actually voted with the GOP a whopping 60% of the time. Golden has suddenly become a true moderate; of course the liberal media now considers him a "conservative", which like most everything in the liberal media, is gaslighting propaganda.

Golden was unopposed in this week's primary. His Republican challenger (pictured above) in November will be former NASCAR driver and racing champion Austin Theriault. Theriault, a freshman member of the Maine House, defeated fellow freshman legislator Michael Soboleski in what was apparently a real bloodbath of a primary. Theriault was endorsed by Donald Trump back in March, and he was in part financially supported by NASCAR team owners such as Rick Hendrick, Richard Childress and Bill McAnally.

Theriault also received contributions from some of his prospective colleagues in the House, including Austin Scott, Mike Turner, Gus Bilirakis, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Lisa McClain, Bob Latta, Nathaniel Moran and Tom Emmer. That's pretty much an All-Squish All-Star team. Or, more accurately, the Squish Team's triple-A minor league affiliate.

Anyone who can knock off the Golden Boy in November is OK with us now, but Soboleski was the true conservative in the race. He had comparatively little money and probably lesser name recognition, and Theriault thrashed him by 32 points (66.1% to 33.9%). We referenced the likelihood of that outcome at the end of a commentary which was posted three months ago.

One day after Theriault's resounding win, John Andrews (a member of the Maine House who served as Soboleski's campaign manager) blew a gasket, declaring:

    "I've just resigned my seat in the Maine State House of Representatives. I can't be a part of anything that supports Austin Theriault. Paris [Andrews' home town in Maine] voted for Theriault. That made up my mind. I'm sorry, but I'm done standing up for anything in this community. I'm officially retired from politics. This absolutely disgusts me."

Andrews' "resignation" was merely symbolic and utterly meaningless seeing as how the Maine legislature has already adjourned for the year and Andrews was not running for re-election anyway. He did not elaborate on what the real problem was here, but it's probably spelled T-r-u-m-p. However, like Soboleski, Andrews is also normally a conservative and his voting record backed up that description.

It is therefore possible that Trump wasn't the main point of contention. In every story about this 27,000 square-mile district, the liberal media makes sure to note that it was once the site of a "mass shooting"; Theriault is a supporter of the Second Amendment, which according to the media (and probably John Andrews) makes Theriault somehow personally responsible for that massacre.

Golden's financial advantages and his experience with manipulating the voters of the second district will be difficult to overcome, but the GOP has put this House seat at or near the top of its list of potential pickups, and for good reason. An R+6 district is likely to come to its senses sooner or later, and 2024 may be the year that happens.


Photo credit: New York Times

In the Senate primary in Nevada, Trump-anointed Sam Brown, a moderate Republican, breezed past conservative challenger Jeff Gunter. Gunter was appointed as Ambassador to Iceland by Trump, but the ex-President typically opted for the "electable" moderate in this race instead of the true conservative. Pre-primary polls had indicated a potentially close finish between Brown and Gunter, but the current figures show 59.8% for Brown and only 15.1% for runner-up Gunter.

This is Brown's second Senate run in two years; he finished second (by over 20 points) to Adam Laxalt in his 2022 bid to go to Washington. Laxalt went on to lose by less than 1% to incumbent liberal Democrat Catherine Cortez-Masto in the general election. Although the GOPe now demands complete unity behind Brown -- which is essential if he is to have any chance of defeating ultra-liberal Democrat Jacky Rosen in November -- Gunter for the time being is not willing to forgive and forget the nasty campaign waged by Brown and his establishment supporters.

Brown is absolutely a squish, which sadly may be the best we can do as far as a supposedly electable Republican in Nevada. He has a lot of money (but Rosen has all the money in the world) and all the right squishy endorsements, while his other primary opponents (Gunter and Jim Marchant) were backed by conservatives.

Brown's cabal cites Gunter's excessive conservatism and lack of name recognition as factors which would cause him to be defeated in November if he were the nominee. However the last poll taken in this race showed Rosen beating Brown by 14 points, "name recognition" and all; the last poll in which Gunter was included showed Rosen beating him by exactly the same amount, even though few people knew who he was. Winning the primary would have solved that little problem and helped him close the gap, while Brown will have to find some other excuse for his polling deficit.

This whole scenario, Trump endorsement and all, seems very similar to what happened in the PA Senate election in 2022 with "Electable Dr. Oz". There's no way that Eyepatch McCain 2.0 (Brown) can be as bad a candidate as Oz was, and Rosen couldn't beat a ham sandwich by 14 points in a general election, but....

Even if the GOP does close ranks behind Brown, this is still Nevada. As with Oz in PA, the likely upshot of all of this is that Brown's supporters will be able to console themselves on election night in November by claiming (obviously without proof) that Gunter would have lost to Rosen by even more. It should be close -- nowhere near a 14-point gap -- but the GOP's record in close elections in Nevada, where Democrats count the vast majority of the votes, isn't impressive.

Republican Joe Lombardo was allowed to win a close contest in 2022 because a Governor isn't nearly as important as a U.S. Senator and because Lombardo is a pliable squish presiding over a state with a nearly veto-proof Democrat legislature. Jim Marchant was not allowed to win a close election in 2022 because a Secretary of State is also more important than a Governor (Don't believe us? Then go ask George Soros.), and Marchant scares the hell out of the left with his vow to clean up vote fraud in one of the most corrupt states in the country.

We'll never know whether giving the voters "a choice (Gunter), not an echo (Brown)" would have won the Nevada Senate race in 2024, we'll only know that, barring a somewhat major upset, the "echo" did not do so. All good Nevadans -- including Gunter -- need to rally to Brown now (just like folks in PA held their noses and voted for Oz), regardless of how much of a squish he is, and see if what appears to be inevitable in November might be able to be altered. Standing on principle is nice, when possible, but Brown is the only option we have now.


Photo credit: Gateway Pundit

Speaking of squishy (or far worse) Senators: Lately we have been subjected to numerous articles in the "right-wing" media which have awarded Strange New Respect to drooling Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman. Fetterman, of course, is the combination of the characters of Lurch and Uncle Fester from the old Addams Family television show, and this cartoon character has been a U.S. Senator since defeating Electable Dr. Oz in 2022.

There's this from Townhall.com:

Red Pilled John Fetterman?, which starts out by comparing Fetterman to -- yes, really -- Ronald Reagan. It goes on, like all of these delusional screeds do, to echo Fetterman's claims that he is not a liberal, he is not woke, he's just a regular guy in a hoodie, etc.

Here's one from Breitbart:

Fetterman Rejects Progressive Label While Addressing Left-Wing Attacks

Golly, now he's under "attack" from the radicals in his party. A stroke, and now this? Poor guy.

Fetterman does concede that "eight years ago" he was in fact a "progressive", a label which he now rejects. He's not up for re-election until 2028, but apparently it's never too early to begin campaigning. One of the basic tenets of Democrat campaigns is trying to get ignorant voters to swallow whatever lies they are fed. That becomes easier with every repetition of the lie, and there's no reason for the non-liberal media to help the Democrats with their task.

The liberal puppetmasters, who send Lurch/Fester out there to parrot whatever script they've prepared for him, are rolling with laughter that people are buying this crap. Granted it is impressive that Fetterman can memorize even a simple script, what with his brain damage, and he wasn't any Mensa candidate even before the stroke.

He is all talk, and only talk.

It serves a purpose to have a "last sane Democrat" puppet to put on public display once in a while. The tactic goes back at least to Zig-Zag Zell Miller, through Joe Lieberman (on rare occasions) and then to grandstanding showboat Joe Manchin. Manchin is down to his last few months in office so they need a new one, preferably from a swing state. Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin had no remotely believable (as "sane") Democrat Senate options, so the job fell to Fetterman.

Fetterman is a total fraud with his "I ain't woke no mo'" garbage. The next Senate vote he casts which defies liberal orthodoxy in any way will be his first one and that's no exaggeration. Talk is cheap. Get back to us when he shows up Chuckie Schumer even once by casting a critical non-liberal vote on an important issue. In the meantime, Republican voters (and authors) need to stop being so gullible.

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2024 U.S. House Senate Ohio South Carolina Nevada Maine Lurch / Uncle Fester


6/10/2024: [South Carolina] Who Are You, and What Have You Done With Nancy Mace? [RightDataUSA]

Three high-profile primaries in U.S. House districts will be held tomorrow in South Carolina. In solidly Republican CD-3 (Anderson and the northwest portion of the state), seven candidates are vying to replace 7-term conservative Jeff Duncan, who is retiring rather than face a campaign that would feature nasty (and unproven) allegations from his vindictive soon-to-be ex-wife. In solidly Republican CD-4 (Greenville/Spartanburg) Trump-supported incumbent William Timmons is facing conservative state legislator Adam Morgan, who is being boosted by outspoken conservative congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida. Timmons had no Democrat opposition in 2022 but he achieved only 52.7% in a four-way primary that year, and this one could be close too.

But the most interesting and important primary is taking place in CD-1 (Charleston and suburbs), where incumbent Nancy Mace is being opposed by a pair of foes. The race has attracted attention from major players in both wings of the GOP -- Donald Trump and Matt Gaetz support Mace; squishes like Newt Gingrich and vengeful ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy support Catherine Templeton, who labels herself as a conservative (GOP challengers in right-leaning districts always attempt to appear conservative -- in the primary) and claims a tenuous connection to Donald Trump, in that the former President supposedly once "considered" her for a cabinet position.

Unlike CD-3 and CD-4, Mace's district is certainly not solidly Republican although for now it does tilt in that direction. As recently as 2018, the district elected Joe Cunningham, an extremely well-funded Democrat who squeaked his way into Congress as the result of intra-party squabbling and backstabbing within the GOP. This is the exact same thing certain liberal elements in the Republican party are aiming for in the 2024 campaign here, in hopes of attaining the same outcome -- the ousting of a Republican they despise -- regardless of whether it is by another Republican or by a Democrat.

This time, Mace is the candidate they despise. Which is the #1 reason that the good people of her district should vote for her.



The Charleston-based district has been quite volatile politically in recent years. When the voters of this district sent Republican Mark Sanford back to Congress for a second stint in a 2013 special election, it appeared that they had forgiven him for his erratic behavior including (but not limited to) his Kennedy-esque extramarital affairs, his sudden unexplained disappearance while Governor in 2009, and his surprising reappearance in Argentina several days later.

Sanford compiled a generally conservative record throughout most of that second stint in the House. In 2018 however, Sanford split with President Trump and ran shrieking to the left, opposing Trump on nearly 50% of his House votes that year.

Trump endorsed Katie Arrington, a mostly moderate state legislator, in the 2018 GOP primary against Sanford. Arrington won that primary by the margin of 50.6% to 46.5%, narrowly averting a runoff. In the 2018 general election, Cunningham and the Democrats outstpent Arrington by 50%, while the GOP establishment abandoned Arrington when they weren't busy knifing her in the back; she had to finance a significant portion of her own campaign. Arrington lost by just over 1% in November.

Arrington would be heard from again, but not in 2020 when the Republicans united behind Nancy Mace. Mace, who had compiled a moderate-to-slightly-conservative record during her three years in the SC state House, recaptured CD-1 for the Republicans by about the same narrow margin which Arrington had lost it two years earlier. The Democrats spent over $7 million trying to keep Cunningham in office, plus another $6 million in "independent" expenditures opposing Mace. But the GOP fought back and was able to compete on almost equal financial footing in the 2020 campaign. Mace evicted Cunningham from the House even as Trump's margin in CD-1 was falling from 13% in 2016 to only 6% in 2020.

CD-1 was redistricted to be slightly more Republican after 2020, a pertinent factor which will be addressed below.

Mace was no conservative during her first three years in Congress, and she became a self-appointed poster child for her wing of the GOP. She regularly ran to the liberal media and criticized her conservative colleagues, and others on the right, for their attacks on "RINOs" and she warned that such attacks would severely damage the party at the polls.



Mace, who according to her bio played a substantial role in the Trump campaign in 2016 in South Carolina, eventually broke with the former President. It didn't help matters when she said Trump was "accountable" for the so-called "attack" on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

In the 2022 Republican primary, Trump and the conservatives threw their weight behind Arrington, who was making her second bid for the CD-1 seat. The right did claim a scalp in the 2022 South Carolina primary, that of Trump impeachment RINO Tom Rice in CD-7, but Mace survived without a runoff when Arrington came up several points short. Democrats only tepidly contested this seat in November of 2022, and Mace easily won the R+7 district.

As recently as last year Mace was still being her usual irritating moderate self.... and then something odd happened.


Photo credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

In October of 2023 Mace was part of a small cabal of GOP representatives who voted to remove Assistant Democrat Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. Who knew at the time that Mike "Pence" Johnson would be just as craven and cowardly?

McCarthy then went berserk and vowed to destroy his conservative enemies, of which six remain in the House: Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Bob Good, Eli Crane, Tim Burchett, and Mace. As is well known by now, the petulant McCarthy later resigned from Congress, took his binky -- and his huge bundle of campaign cash -- and slinked home. As of the last financial reports, the spiteful California crybully still has raised more money than any House Republican, even though McCarthy himself is not running for office; that money will finance McCarthy's "Revenge Tour" in an attempt to purge the House of as many conservatives as possible.

In 2024, Mace's voting record in the House has been 100% conservative. Not 75%, not 85%, not even 99% -- 100 percent. She has earned the forgiveness of Donald Trump and regained his support; Trump gave her his blessing in March after Mace had endorsed Trump several weeks earlier.

Many voters may still be reluctant to support Mace despite:

  • Her recent conversion to righteous conservatism
  • Trump's endorsement
  • Her critical role in dethroning Squish McCarthy
  • The fact that the liberal wing of the GOP now detests her

Nobody is suggesting that a politician who sticks her finger into the wind and changes course accordingly is to be respected or trusted. But that's not what Nancy Mace did here, opinions of the haters notwithstanding.

We mentioned redistricting earlier in this commentary. For all of 2023 and most of 2024 there was every reason to believe that Mace's district would be altered again and moved sharply to the left, in a racist effort to favor Democrats. Her move to the right under those circumstances would hardly constitute "blowing with the wind". If anything, in order to be re-elected she would need to run away from anything resembling conservatism in order to attract Democrat votes.

Only a few short weeks ago did Mace get a reprieve. On May 23 the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the arguments of the professional racists at the NAACP. They ruled that South Carolina does not need to redistrict again and gerrymander Mace's congressional district to make it solidly Democrat.

We not only need more conservatives in Congress, we need more conservative fighters. Mace has always been aggressive, and now that she is finally fighting the GOOD fight, we strongly support her re-election bid and all conservatives should do so as well.


Addendum: Mace's main financial opposition -- to the tune of 2 million dollars for the June 11 primary alone -- is something called "South Carolina Patriots PAC" which just sprung into existence a few months ago for the express purpose of torpedoing Mace. It has contributed to no other races in the state, or anywhere else. It's being funded by McCarthy's millionaire allies in order to give the coward some "plausible deniability". McCarthy has apparently only contributed a token amount of the money he bilked his own contributors out of, for the alleged purpose of financing his own re-election which of course isn't happening.

If you like dark-money GOP establishment RINO puppets, you'll love Catherine Templeton.

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2024 U.S. House South Carolina People DO Change


6/6/2024: Incumbent House Democrats: Running Scared or Just Faking Toward the Center? [RightDataUSA]

It's both, but mainly the latter.

A few months ago we published some data pertaining to Party Unity votes in the U.S. House of Representatives for 2023. A "Party Unity" vote is one in which the parties were split, with a majority of Democrats unified in opposition to a majority of similarly determined Republicans.

Nearly all important votes in the House fit that description. Democrats normally march in just about perfect goosestep with the wishes of their party leadership; most (but hardly all) Republicans do the right thing and vote the way we would want them to.

Here is one example among many, a vote from last year. It was on a bill called the "Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act", which would prevent male transvestites from participating in female sports. Every Democrat who voted was against that bill; every Republican who voted was in favor. In 2023, there were 463 Party Unity votes in the House.

The list we published highlighted the representatives who were the most inclined to abandon their party on a Party Unity vote. Not surprisingly, the names were almost entirely those of liberal/moderate Republicans, mostly from the Northeast or California, who helped the Democrats as often as they dared to. Many of these liberals would claim to have practical reasons for running to the left as often as they do, because they represent marginal districts and their re-election chances would be diminished if they appear to be too conservative.



Now we are in an election year, and even though most voters don't have any clue who their representative in Congress is until they see an election ballot -- and they certainly have no idea how that congressman votes -- incumbents are wary of their congressional voting record being used against them in the campaign, and so they often try to "moderate" their record to avoid accusations of extremism.

The vast majority of the time, it is Republicans who must be the most wary and who do the most moderating. The liberal media, and of course Democrat candidates and RINOs who are running to an incumbent's left in a primary, will gladly use whatever ammunition is available against a conservative. It is a rare case that a liberal Democrat -- even in the most marginal of districts -- must concern herself even slightly about charges of being "too liberal".

That is true in nearly all election years. But apparently not 2024.

Our analysis of congressional voting data from Voteview which runs through May 23 shows that numerous Democrats are the ones who are panicking and running hysterically towards the center, while even the squishiest House Republicans suddenly have grown at least a small amount of backbone and are standing united most of the time. This behavior, on both sides, is unprecedented in recent years.

With all of these "moderate" Democrats voting alongside the solid Republican majority so frequently, why isn't more conservative legislation becoming law?

There are at least two reasons. First, these Democrat defections are carefully metered by the party leadership. A certain group of panicky Democrats is permitted to leave the plantation on a particular vote, then a different group is given temporary freedom on a subsequent vote, and so on. No specific bill which is repugnant to liberals has any landslide vote in favor of it. Secondly, even if one does slip past them in the House, the Democrats still have their firewall in the Senate where any conservative bill is D.O.A. Despite only 49 actual Democrats plus two alleged independents, Angus King & Kyrsten Sinema, they effectively have at least 53 fairly solid votes (see below) against any legislation that could be remotely described as conservative.



So these center-fakes are basically a no-risk venture from the perspective of the liberal Democrat House leadership, and there is a significant benefit to playing the voting equivalent of Three-Card Monte: the supposedly endangered House Democrats get vital "moderate cred" for these carefully choreographed votes, which they can use to deflect accusations of ultra-liberalism that may arise on the campaign trail.

No vulnerable Democrat wants to hear her Republican opponent declare "She voted with Hakeem Jeffries 94% of the time!" during a debate or at any other time during a campaign. These tactical departures from lockstep Democrat voting are meant to defuse such allegations and to create the illusion of independence from the unpopular liberal leadership.

In 2024 five Democrats have been voting nearly as much (over 40%) with Republicans on Party Unity votes than they vote with their own party. Another 22 Democrats have been allowed to leave the plantation at least 25% of the time. Twenty-five percent may not sound like a lot, but for Democrats in recent years it is a ton. In 2023 only one Democrat (Jared Golden) rather than 27 reached that threshold of permissible disobedience.

In 2022, the last time these people had to face the voters, Democrats were as united as ever with not even one of them dissenting from party orthodoxy as much as 20% of the time. In 2024, fully 48 Democrats have exceeded that figure so far. The fact that they feel the need to fake to the center so often is an indication that panic is setting in.

The column titled "% GOP" in the table below is the percentage of the time so far in 2024 that the Democrat representative has voted with the Republicans on Party Unity votes. Freshmen are shown in italics; the first re-election bid is normally the toughest.

District% GOPCook PVI
Marie G. PerezWA-348%R+5
Mary PeltolaAK At-Large44%R+8
Henry CuellarTX-2842%D+1
Don DavisNC-141%R+1
Jared GoldenME-240%R+6
Vicente GonzalezTX-3435%D+9
Yadira CaraveoCO-832%even
Angie CraigMN-232%D+1
Josh HarderCA-929%D+5
Jared MoskowitzFL-2329%D+5
Josh GottheimerNJ-528%D+4
Hilary ScholtenMI-328%D+1
Susie LeeNV-328%D+1
Eric SorensenIL-1728%D+2
Steven HorsfordNV-427%D+3
Colin AllredTX-3227%D+14
Greg LandsmanOH-127%D+2
Wiley NickelNC-1327%R+11
Kim SchrierWA-827%D+1
Gabriel VasquezNM-226%D+1
Greg StantonAZ-426%D+2
Marcy KapturOH-926%R+3
Nikki BudzinskiIL-1326%D+3
Chris PappasNH-126%even
Pat RyanNY-1825%D+1
Frank MrvanIN-125%D+3
Chrissy HoulihanPA-625%D+5


Notes:
  • Nickel is not seeking re-election; Allred is running for U.S. Senate and another couple of Democrats who are not listed above (because they crossed party lines in only 24% of their votes) are also not seeking re-election to the House and are instead running for statewide office in either 2024 (Jeff Jackson, NC-14) or 2025 (Abby Spanbarger, VA-7).

  • Peltola and Ryan were both first elected in 2022 and are therefore freshmen, but they initially won special elections and were re-elected once already, in November of 2022.

  • Every one of these Democrats who are running for re-election this year are very well funded; some of them are not particularly endangered at all (Houlihan for sure, probably also Mrvan, Budzinski and some others).

  • Cuellar was first elected in 2004 and was formerly thought of as a conservative Democrat -- which he sort of was, for one term. He has spent most of the past several years as a reliable leftist, but has lurched back toward the center in 2024. Cuellar's ethical/legal troubles may have something to do with him trying to salvage his former reputation as a non-liberal; a corrupt centrist (even a fake centrist) has a better chance in TX-28 than a corrupt liberal would. If Cuellar were a Republican, he'd have been expelled by now.



Photo credit: ABC News

There is no such phenomena in the Senate of Democrats feeling the need to fake to the center. The most (allegedly) endangered Senate Democrats are remaining on the far left, and not even glancing toward the center much less moving in that direction. Their scores on Party Unity votes:




Photo credit: womenzmag.com

On the other hand, the usual Republican suspects -- who are not even up for re-election this year so we're stuck with them -- are still cheerfully voting with the Democrats and against their own party a significant portion of the time:


Even if the Republicans regain numerical control of the Senate as a result of November's elections (they need only a Trump win or one additional victory besides West Virginia in a Senate race), who can possibly believe the GOP will have actual control with traitors like Collins and Murkowski in their ranks? If necessary, one or both of those desiccated crones may bolt the party and claim to be Independent in order to stop Republicans from having even numerical control.

Even the execrable Mitt Romney, who is retiring after 2024 and undoubtedly wishes to end his political career in a blaze of anti-conservative glory, only votes with the Democrats 24% of the time so far this year.

The Democrat analog to Romney is Joe Manchin, who recently announced his departure from the Democrat party to become an independent. Like Romney and fellow "independent" Kyrsten Sinema, Manchin is never going to face the voters of his state again and can therefore follow his conscience from here on out. Be that as it may, Manchin's conscience is still somewhere around 75% liberal, and he still has to answer to the party masters who will not appreciate his defection on any bills which are truly important to them.

The comparison of Manchin to Romney is not completely appropriate though both enjoy the notoriety they sometimes receive for being a thorn in the side of their respective parties. Manchin, unlike Romney, is not a regular visitor to liberal media opinion programs (sometimes disguised as "news") to trash his own party whenever possible. Romney's propaganda value to the left is far greater than his mere voting record in the Senate; Manchin is also a whore for publicity, but his damage to the Democrat party has always been minimal and that's not going to change despite the fact that he has altered his party label for his final few months in office.

Conclusion: Although House Democrats appear to be running scared it's likely just so much political theater. Nearly all of the most vulnerable ones still have sizable money, organizational and of course media advantages over their GOP challengers. On the flip side, the numerous vulnerable Republican House incumbents may be sticking together in terms of votes in Congress, but their chances for re-election will be determined more by money and voter turnout and factors which affect that (such as election "integrity") than those votes in the House. In many instances, that's not a happy prospect.

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2024 U.S. House Scared Democrats? Fakers


5/16/2024: Mid-May Primary Wrap-Up [RightDataUSA]


Photo credit: Mike Braun For Indiana

In the state of Indiana on May 7, the Republican primaries all went as expected although one outcome was successfully influenced by a considerable amount of out-of-state money being spent by single-issue groups in order to defeat a certain GOP candidate.

In the high-profile gubernatorial primary, moderate-conservative U.S. Senator Mike Braun easily defeated a collection of viable opponents; these included current Lieutenant Governor Suzanne Crouch, state Commerce Secretary Brad Chambers and businessman Eric Doden. In the weeks before the primary, the liberal media frequently cried about how horribly conservative all of these candidates were, leaving the impression for the good citizens of Indiana that any of them would make a fine Governor. Braun won with 39.5% of the vote in the 6-candidate field, with Crouch coming in a distant second with 21.7%. Braun won every county but three.

Braun's opponent in November is virulent Trump-hater Jennifer McCormick. McCormick was once elected -- as a Republican -- in a fluke in 2016, happily riding the coattails of the President she hates to an upset win over the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction in Indiana; the office was then abolished by the state legislature in 2019. McCormick switched parties in 2021 and has become the consummate liberal Democrat, attempting to appeal to voters on the basis of favoring unrestricted abortions, radical environmentalism, and of course more taxpayer money for left-wing teachers' unions. McCormick was unopposed in the Democrat primary. She starts the general election campaign well behind in the polls; she will finish the campaign there too.

Squishy state legislators won GOP primaries in CD-1 and CD-8. CD-1 (Gary, Hammond, Michigan City, most of LaPorte) hardly matters because the incumbent Democrat is easily going to win again in November.


Photo credit: AIPAC

In CD-8, ex-Congressman John Hostettler was trying to reclaim the seat he lost 18 years ago. Hostettler wasn't exactly a paragon of arch-conservatism during his time in Washington, but he was OK and he'd be better than state Senator Mark Messmer who at one time was a conservative but is now a total squish. Hostettler was branded as "anti-Jewish" and was opposed by the extremely wealthy Israel Lobby (groups such as the "Republican Jewish Coalition" and "United Democracy Project"). Over $2 million of their money went into this single U.S. House primary with the goal of electing the more liberal Republican. Messmer won with nearly 40% of the vote while Hostettler (who was endorsed by Rand Paul and Charlie Kirk) came up just short of 20% in the field of eight. Money talks, and in this contest it absolutely shrieked. One wonders just how much these particular special interest groups are spending to oust anti-Israel Democrats from Congress; there aren't any shortage of those, but these groups seem to be giving them a free pass.

In CD-5, incumbent moderate Victoria Spartz lately hasn't been too bad on issues aside from ones related to Ukraine. She alone in the U.S. House at least has a personal reason to keep funneling billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to that thoroughly corrupt rathole -- she is from the Ukraine. Spartz had initially decided not to run for re-election this year, and was probably lured back out of GOPe fear that a true conservative would win her district. And one would have, too. Spartz narrowly prevailed over conservative state House member Chuck Goodrich by just 6% (39% to 33%). Max Engling came in third, taking 10% of the conservative vote away from Goodrich, more than enough to alter the outcome. There were 6 lesser candidates seeking the nomination as well.

Jim Baird in CD-4 is an elderly RINO joke but Trump bypassed conservative challenger Charles Bookwalter and endorsed the incumbent since Baird was 98% certain to win the primary based on name recognition and a mere 7:1 advantage in money. Nevermind that the actual conservative would have been 98% certain to win in November too seeing as how Democrats don't even bother with this district. Trump rarely, if ever, passes up a safe RINO incumbent, and at least Baird didn't vote for Trump's impeachment (which is probably all that mattered in this case).

The CD-3 seat is open in 2024 because incumbent Jim Banks is running for the Senate; he was unopposed in the primary and will win easily in November, giving Indiana an actual conservative there alongside his moderate-liberal GOP colleague Todd Young. Conservative ex-congressman Marlin Stutzman (last elected in 2014) attempted to reclaim his old seat, and succeeded in this hotly-contested primary. Four different candidates won at least one county in this northeastern Indiana district which includes Fort Wayne. Conservative Tim Smith was the leading challenger to Stutzman, taking 22.6% to the winner's 24.2%. Stutzman had numerous endorsements from current and former congressmen. Moderates Wendy Davis and state Senator Andy Zay came home third and fourth, combining for over 35% of the vote. Grant Bucher was fifth at 10.3% but he actually won two small counties. Stutzman is heavily favored to return to Congress in November after he defeats unknown and unfunded liberal Kiley Adolph, who predictably won the Democrat primary on the basis of being a female who was running against a male.

In Maryland on May 14, liberal women swept the Democrat primaries for open seats in the U.S. Senate and House districts 3 and 6. We've already profiled the Senate contest, and as far as House races only the primary in CD-6 was of any significant interest to Republicans; it's their one slim chance of picking up a Democrat-held House seat in Maryland, where liberals currently occupy 7 of the 8 districts thanks in at least a couple of cases to hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymandering. CD-6 is the most gerrymandered of them all.

On Tuesday in that district, 2022 gubernatorial candidate/sacrificial lamb Dan Cox ran against perennial candidate Neil Parrott in the GOP primary. Both are conservatives. Parrott was victorious by 47% to 30%, and this will be his third consecutive try to take the 6th district. He'll be facing the wife of former congressman John Delaney, an ultra-liberal who won three terms here (2012, 2014, 2016) due solely to the harsh gerrymander implemented by the veto-proof Democrat legislature in 2011.

When the district maps were redrawn that year, CD-6 was shifted a whopping 16 points to the left by adding execrable areas of Montgomery County to the nice counties in the panhandle west of Frederick. The district was moved slightly back towards the center (7 points) in 2021. Still, Trump lost the redistricted area in 2020 by almost 10 points (instead of the 23 points by which he lost in CD-6 as it stood prior to redistricting). As of 2022, Democrats still have a 6.5% edge in voter registrations here, and it appears that "independents" regularly break left too. The Cook PVI for CD-6 claims it's only D+2, which seems like a crock given recent presidential & House election results. Furthermore, Parrott's chances in the general election are hardly enhanced by the sizable financial advantage which the liberal feminist Democrat has here. Given that this open district is not totally a lost cause, the RNC may eventually decide to toss a few dollars in Parrott's direction.


Photo credit: bacon.house.gov

Nebraska: the state-level GOP organization which, according to surely unbiased media reports, "was taken over by those loyal to former President Donald Trump during a contentious state convention" -- that happened back in 2022 -- decided to oppose (or ignore) all 5 of the Republican incumbents who were running for federal office. This is quite good since pretty much all 5 incumbents are squishes, but unfortunately the tactic proved to be utterly ineffective. For one thing, actions (especially $$$) speak far louder than words, and these were only words; the conservative challengers collectively had about $1.50 to work with here. Also, making the announcement regarding endorsements just moments before the voters had to head to the polls was a great way to make sure that as few people as possible got the message.

Nebraska has two Senate elections this year, one of which was necessitated when Trump-hater Ben Sasse fled to Florida and was replaced by Pete Ricketts, who was appointed by Governor Jim Pillen in January, 2023. The other Senator, Deb Fischer, is also up this year.

There are also 3 incumbents who are running for re-election to the House: Mike Flood in CD-1, Don Bacon in CD-2 and Adrian Smith in CD-3. Here are the lifetime American Conservative Union (ACU) ratings for these guys:

  • Senator Pete Ricketts: 66% (1 year)
  • Senator Deb Fischer: 81% (11 years)
  • Rep. Mike Flood: 72% (2 years)
  • Rep. Don Bacon: 64% (7 years)
  • Rep. Adrian Smith: 85% (17 years)

The NEGOP made no endorsement in the races involving Fischer and Flood, and they endorsed challengers to Ricketts, Bacon and Smith. All 5 incumbents did face primary opposition -- such as it was.

Fischer won on Tuesday with 80% and Ricketts had 79%. Their challengers, official party support and all, didn't even rise to the "nuisance" level. Flood received 82% in his congressional primary, Smith 74% and Bacon 62%. Don Bacon enjoys his role as a rabidly anti-conservative Republican who helps the Democrats on most important issues, and he richly deserved a challenge. His challenge will come not from some destitute conservative Republican in the primary, but instead from a greasy, well-funded liberal Democrat in the general election. Far-left state Senator Tony Vargas (2023 ACU rating: 7%), who nearly defeated Bacon in 2022 is back for another crack at him and carries with him a bank account that is chock full of Democrat dollars.

The district which Bacon represents contains the city of Omaha and some of its suburbs. Omaha may not rank down there with the likes of East St. Louis, Newark, the Bronx, Detroit and similar hell-holes, but it is far from being a good area. The suburban territory is the only thing keeping Republicans afloat here -- barely. Bacon, even as far to the left as he is, is not nearly liberal enough to suit about half of the voters in CD-2. His winning margins have been 1.2% against incumbent Brad Ashford in 2016; 2.0% and 4.6% against radical leftist Democrat Kara Eastman in 2018 and 2020 (a comparatively sane liberal Democrat would have likely won in 2018, but Ashford lost the primary); and 2.6% against Vargas in 2022.

Donald Trump narrowly carried this district in 2016, by just 2.2%, and he lost it in 2020 by 6.5% (!). That loss was significant because Nebraska awards electoral votes by congressional district, and Biden was able to get an unlikely vote from Nebraska (Trump got the other 4).

CD-2 was nearly unchanged in the most recent redistricting (2021), despite the ease with which that task could have been accomplished. But the Stupid Party, which controls the legislature and the redistricting process, deliberately opted not to harm the Democrats in any way. If Trump loses in 2024 by this one electoral vote, be sure to thank cowardly Nebraska Republican legislators.

So for no good reason at all the district remains marginal; Charlie Cook rates it as dead even.

In a totally marginal district such as this, a chump like Don Bacon may be the best we can do since a 60% liberal (R) is better than a 100% liberal (D). These are districts where we must usually accept a compromise; however in other places we can certainly do better -- especially in a state like Nebraska. Politicians like Ricketts, Flood and Fischer are clearly not the best we can do.

Keep in mind that what we conservatives think is "better" is terrifying and loathsome to the GOP establishment. Not because they might lose, but because they might win. Which brings us to:


Photo credit: National Review

West Virginia, where energetic conservative Senate candidate Alex Mooney was swamped by doddering moderate Governor Jim Justice in Tuesday's Senate primary as was expected. "Terrifying and loathsome" is pretty much how the GOPe would describe Mooney. We'd describe him as "conservative". The GOPe would agree, and that's their main problem with the 5-term congressman.

Mooney was the first prominent Republican to enter the race against vulnerable Democrat incumbent Joe Manchin, who later tucked his tail between his legs, chose not to run for re-election and went on to briefly pretend that he could become President (or at least stop Donald Trump from being President, which is the most important thing to liberals and fake centrists).

The GOPe, namely Mitch McConnell and Steve Daines (his little toady who runs the NRSC) flew into a panic and dragged Governor Justice into the race by appealing to his ego, thus creating a potentially divisive primary, which is the kind of thing they claim to abhor -- when it suits them.

The latest results show Justice with 61.8% of the vote, while Mooney received 26.5%. Five others collected approximately 12%. With nothing to vote for on the Democrat side, since electable Democrats are all but extinct in the Mountain State (some, like Jim Justice, now label themselves as Republicans), numerous Democrats undoubtedly crossed over and voted in the Republican primary.

Mooney had the support and the endorsements of prominent conservatives like Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz and ex-Senator Jim DeMint; Justice had some semi-conservative endorsements (Marsha Blackburn, Tom Cotton), some moderate-liberal endorsements (Mitch McConnell, Shelley Capito [whose politician-son endorsed Mooney], Lindsey Graham) and some misguided endorsements from alleged conservatives (Donald Trump).

In the end, Justice also had the votes. West Virginia is now a very solidly Republican state; like many others which fit that description, it is in no way a solidly conservative state.



It's fashionable for liberal elitists to refer to West Virginians using words like "hillbilly" and "inbred" because, to them, hatred of White people is always acceptable. Though we reject their racism, it must be conceded that West Virginia politics does sometimes have a certain inbred-type quality to it:

In the CD-1 Republican primary, it was incumbent Carol Miller vs. former J6 political prisoner ("rioter", in biased liberal media parlance) Derrick Evans, age 39, who was briefly a state legislator before being forced to vacate the premises after his politically-motivated conviction in 2021. Miller, who won this primary with 63% of the vote, is a geriatric 73-year-old moderate currently in her third term in the House. She is the daughter of former conservative Ohio congressman Samuel Devine who was in Congress from 1959-1982. Miller's son, a car dealer by trade, was looking to extend the family's political dynasty by becoming Governor. However Chris Miller finished in third place in the 2024 GOP primary with about 20% of the vote and his political career is likely stillborn.

Arch Moore, a moderate Republican like Jim Justice and Carol Miller, many moons ago had a long and legendary political career including 6 terms in the U.S. House and two distinct stints as Governor (he ran 5 times and won 3). Moore was first elected to office in 1952 and last ran in 1988 when he lost his bid for a fourth term as Governor.

His daughter, Shelley Moore Capito, is a moderate-liberal Senate Republican and has been in Congress for nearly a quarter-century since being first elected to the House in 2000 in an upset victory over a megabucks Democrat trial lawyer who outspent her by a 6:1 margin. Justice's imminent elevation to the Senate in November will ensure that this solidly Republican state has two Republicans -- but no conservatives -- in that body for the first time since 1958. The last time West Virginia had two elected (as opposed to appointed) Republicans in the U.S. Senate was 93 years ago.

Capito's son, former state legislator Moore Capito, ran for Governor this year and came in second to state Attorney General and former Senate candidate Patrick Morrisey in the GOP primary. The younger Capito compiled a somewhat conservative record as a member of the state House of Delegates from 2016-2023.

Shelley Capito's nephew, state Treasurer Riley Moore (the true conservative politician in the family), won the 5-way primary to replace Alex Mooney in the U.S. House. After he wins the general election easily in November, it remains to be seen whether his voting record will be as conservative as expected. There's a good chance that he will at least start out that way, as many freshmen GOP legislators do.

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2024 Indiana Nebraska West Virginia Maryland


5/15/2024: [Maryland] Hogan Wins Senate Primary Easily; Next Race Will Be His Toughest [RightDataUSA]


Photo credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh

As expected, there was no drama in the Republican Senate primary, where former Governor Larry Hogan won the low-turnout contest by over 30 percentage points. The stakes were higher on the Democrat side, where ultra-liberal billionaire congressman David Trone, who represents western Maryland, faced ultra-liberal county executive Angela Alsobrooks, who hails from the deep, dark jungle of Prince George's County.

Trone got started in politics by taking advantage of his massive wealth and the heavy partisan Democrat gerrymander in Maryland's 6th district to purchase (at a cost of over $17 million) a seat in Congress in the anti-Republican year of 2018, and he held it by decreasing margins in the next two elections. The 96% liberal Trone tries to portray himself as a moderate every couple of years during his campaigns, and his idea of "fundraising" is to whip out his checkbook and calmly write a check for $10,000,000 or so to his campaign treasury.

In this Senate primary however, Trone really was the "moderate" candidate. But as a White male running against a black female, he didn't check any of the politically correct boxes which are so important in nearly all Democrat primary elections, and so he never really had a chance. Trone lost by approximately 54% to 42%, in what Republican strategists have classified as a nasty and divisive primary which they hope will have lasting effects through November; it rarely happens that way on the left, and surely won't be allowed in an election as critical as this one.

The backgrounds of the two candidates were not nearly as similar as their comparable liberal ideologies. Even as a rich guy, Trone is not simply a Democrat trust-fund baby. He became a billionaire by founding a successful business from scratch; at one time he really was a political moderate and even donated to GOP candidates. Alsobrooks, on the other hand, has always been on the extreme left and has spent nearly her entire career in the affirmative-action public sector, at the nexus of government and politics.


Photo credit: wamu.org

Hogan, from the staunch liberal wing of the Republican party, was extremely popular in Maryland during his two terms as Governor. Democrats were as thoroughly satisfied with Hogan as Republicans were, and they made only the most token effort to oppose his re-election bid in 2018. At his election-night victory party that year, Hogan predictably gloated about how his liberalism (as opposed to Democrat apathy) had enabled him to overcome 2018's anti-Trump "blue wave". He was at least partially correct.

Democrats had veto-proof majorities or very close to it in both houses of the Maryland legislature during Hogan's entire 8 years in office, and under those conditions -- see also Vermont and Massachusetts in recent years -- liberals often have no objection to an impotent figurehead Republican as Governor, if for no other reason than to have some handy Republican to take the blame from the media and the voters when Democrat legislative policies prove to be unpopular and damaging. Hogan's gubernatorial "success" notwithstanding, a U.S. Senate seat is a far more important prize than a governorship, and Democrats damn sure aren't going to show any apathy this time around.

The liberal media has been dutifully reminding folks in Maryland that Hogan is very much an "anti-Trump" Republican. Obviously they do this not to boost Hogan in the eyes of other Trump-hating liberals; instead it is a totally transparent attempt to damage Hogan with the solid GOP base -- those who support Trump. They're probably succeeding to some extent. Hogan's win in the Senate primary yesterday was far from unanimous, with 81-year-old frequent (but hopeless) candidate Robin Ficker surprisingly outraising and outspending Hogan by a substantial margin and campaigning solidly to Hogan's right, which isn't exactly difficult. Ficker received only 30% of the Republican vote. That's still 30% who voted against Hogan. Five fringe candidates combined to take another 8% of the vote.



General election polls regarding the Senate race in Maryland have been varied but are trending to the left lately even during the supposedly acrimonious Democrat primary. The polls started out by claiming that Governor Hogan was in the lead, however surveys taken this month have shown him with a considerable deficit against either potential Democrat nominee. The recent results are hardly surprising, given that Maryland is a state in which Democrats + liberal-leaning "independents" comprise two-thirds of the electorate, if not more.

As the general election campaign unfolds, it remains to be seen whether the Democrats will bother to campaign on issues of actual concern to the majority of voters, or if they'll merely stick to appeals to racism (it seems to have worked in their primary) and -- of course -- "aborshun, aborshun, aborshun!" Hogan violates liberal orthodoxy by not being in favor of 100% unlimited taxpayer-funded abortion on demand. Even without looking at future polls, you will be able to determine the likely outcome of this race just by observing the evolution of the prominent campaign topics and the candidates' positions on the issues.

When you see Hogan abandoning what few non-liberal positions he holds in order to run shrieking hysterically to the left, while Alsobrooks makes absolutely no pretense at moderation, that will tell you everything you need to know about how November is going to go in Maryland. OTOH, if you see the Democrats in a panic and feeling the need to fake towards the center, then things may be quite interesting here (don't hold your breath). With West Virginia's Senate seat certain to flip to the GOP, and potential if not actually probable pickups in Ohio and Montana and perhaps some other pipe-dreams if a 1994-style "red" wave occurs, the Democrats cannot afford to lose a seat in an utterly safe state like Maryland.

It's highly likely that they won't lose it.

In their desperation for continued liberal Senate control, the professional prognosticators (most of whom should themselves be rated as "Lean Democrat" or "Likely Democrat") are keeping this race pretty solidly in the D column for November. You should too, but it's still a long way to November.


[May 21 update: It sure didn't take long for what we predicted three paragraphs ago to come true. "Maryland Republican Senate Candidate Larry Hogan Vows to Codify Roe Protections". Pandering never works for Republicans. It gains no votes from the left and loses votes on the right, which seems like an odd way to run a campaign -- if you're trying to win.]

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2024 Senate Maryland Hogan Competitive or pipe dream?


4/24/2024: [Pennsylvania] 2024 Primary Election Recap [RightDataUSA]

Here is a review of everything important which happened in the Pennsylvania primaries yesterday.

Turnout:

D votes (presidential): about 991,000
R votes (presidential): about 944,000

People on the right who habitually search for something to be disappointed about are concerned regarding the supposedly low GOP turnout. But based on current registration figures, the percentages are:

D turnout: 25.4%
R turnout: 27.0%

The races at the top of the ballot (President, Senator) featured essentially unopposed candidates for both parties, and there was little to vote for even at the U.S. House level. Since there was basically nothing contested for the GOP anywhere, what reason would there have been for sky-high turnout on that side? Democrats had some things to vote for -- a couple of statewide offices and a couple of U.S. House races.


Photo credit: Philadelphia Inquirer / Patel campaign

The highest-profile Democrat primary in PA took place in the Democrat-gerrymandered 12th congressional district, where terrorist-supporting liberal racist Summer Lee was challenged by a slightly less liberal racist Democrat named Bhavini Patel. Lee didn't bother to campaign much at all (and now we know why) but Patel did. Aside from a minor disagreement on the subject of Israel, Patel tried to stress to her potential primary voters that she was just as hate-filled toward all the "right" things as Lee is. Despite her somnambulant campaign, Lee still outspent Patel by nearly 3:1 according to FEC data from early April, and won by about 20 points.

Months ago when Lee proudly displayed her anti-Semitism by supporting the Hamas terrorists, we considered the impact that her hate might have on this primary election. CD-12 has a substantial Jewish community which did temporarily swing to the right in November of 2023 in the local Allegheny County elections even though Lee herself had nothing directly to do with that movement. That community's financial weight is far more substantial than its voting weight, but there's no evidence that they are suddenly steering their geld to the GOP. Lee only narrowly lost Pittsburgh's heavily-Jewish 14th Ward yesterday (and will apparently win it easily in November), reflecting the fact that she still has considerable support among the more atheistic, secular, ultra-liberal, self-loathing sector of that community. The remainder of the 14th Ward opted for the lesser of the two evils.

Any incumbent who prevails by less than about 70% in a primary election is normally considered vulnerable, depending of course on the composition of the district (Lee barely attained 60%). The CD-12 result in November will probably be closer than many expect but whatever hope yesterday's outcome is generating is highly likely to be false hope. Democrats still outnumber Republicans here by more than a 2:1 ratio and the vastly underfunded Republican in the race, James Hayes, will still probably lose by a considerable amount.

Hayes is a moderate conservative -- a 100% conservative would have a 0% chance of winning this district -- but his campaign treasury contains barely enough to pay for a few yard signs, nevermind expensive media buys. Unless there is some clear evidence in the internal polling that Hayes stands any chance of coming within even 10 points of Lee in November -- which is unlikely -- the RNC is going to spend its limited resources elsewhere, mainly trying to play defense for (at least) a couple dozen vulnerable GOP incumbents. Next up is one of those districts where they are frantically trying to play defense. Or at least they should be:




Photo credit: Bill Kalina, The York Dispatch


That is Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district -- the reprehensible shithole of Harrisburg, the city of York which isn't a whole lot better, and formerly-nice but rapidly deteriorating Cumberland County in between -- where liberal candidates were crawling over each other in their attempt to be "king of the hill" in the Democrat primary and have the honor of taking on embattled conservative Scott Perry in November.

CD-10 contains enough good suburban and rural territory that it counterbalances the Harrisburg and York ghetto vote and the liberal college punkie vote in Carlisle -- but the balance is precarious and getting less favorable every day. The district was heavily gerrymandered by the Pennsylvania Democrat Supreme Court when it trashed the state's entire district map in 2018, and a specific effort was made to "get" Perry from that point forward. He has managed to survive despite that effort, sometimes just barely. Democrats are going all-out this year and will spend as much as it takes; on the other hand Perry has relatively little cash on hand for such a well-entrenched and threatened incumbent.

Perry's status in Congress is unique in one respect -- east of Ohio and north of the Mason-Dixon line there is exactly one conservative Republican in the U.S. House: Scott Perry. An unabashed Trump supporter in addition to his reliable conservatism, Perry routinely causes crazed liberals to foam at the mouth. And not just liberals in the Democrat party; the liberal (money-controlling) wing of the GOP is no fan of Perry either, and there is only scant evidence of the party's support for Perry in 2024 so far.

Perry faced no primary opposition, which is good since he can hardly afford it. The winner of the Rat primary was, as expected, Janelle Stelson, a "bubble headed bleach blonde" talking head from a local Harrisburg TV station.

Stelson wasn't quite the wealthiest Democrat running in the primary field of 6; that was Mike O'Brien, a left-winger claiming to be a "patriot" who ran on his military record. O'Brien was trounced by nearly a 2:1 margin, finishing a distant second. This was always the likeliest outcome; in recent years the Democrat primary electorate nearly always adheres to the diktats of political correctness. Given two candidates with similar leftist credentials and the same mandatory hatreds, female always outranks male, black always outranks White, etc. Sorry, Mikey. If you're not openly gay or a transvestite (and maybe even if you are), you're second-class here.

In any event, the only patriot who was ever in this race is Scott Perry, and he's going to need a lot of help to not only overcome the usual Democrat $$$ advantages, but also to get his message out and overcome the relentlessly negative/biased media coverage from Stelson's allies in the Harrisburg, York and Carlisle areas. Along with the national media, which has made it a priority to help the Democrats pick up this House seat.

Unlike Pennsylvania's CD-12 which is a pipe dream for the GOP, this district really is a battleground and there are at least 20 others just like it nationwide.

These districts have Republican incumbents who are running for re-election, and who are in for the fight of their lives. Some ignorant observers believe that the supposed plethora of open Republican seats will be the ones which are going to be lost and therefore would be the districts responsible for the upcoming loss of House control. That is patently false. Control of the House will be decided first and foremost in these battleground districts rather than the open GOP districts, and both parties know it. The Democrats clearly do, as evidenced by all of the money being funneled into them.



Further down the ballot at the state legislative level, there was some good news for both parties.

In House District 50, GOP incumbent Bud Cook fended off a challenge from Stephanie Waggett. Cook, a mostly conservative representative, was accused of "having a problem with how he treats women" so Waggett changed her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican to oppose Cook. She appears to have lost by a wide margin, and the Democrats did not run a candidate in this GOP-leaning district.

In the extremely solid 80th District, incumbent moderate Republican Jim Gregory was defeated. Gregory crawled into bed with Democrats in 2023 to thwart legislation which would have enhanced desperately-needed election integrity measures in PA by requiring voter ID.

The GOP primary race in the 117th District (Wilkes-Barre suburbs) is still too close to call, but incumbent liberal Republican Michael Cabell was trailing by a very small amount on the morning after the primary. Cabell raised over 5 times as much money as his challenger but hopefully will end up losing anyway.




Photo credit: glensidelocal.com


But the biggest winners at the state House level were the Democrats, who audibly sighed with relief at the results of the district 172 primary, in which mentally diseased liberal representative Kevin Boyle was running for re-election.

In 2021, Boyle was arrested on charges of harassment and violating a protection from abuse (PFA) order. Two months ago, Boyle was drunk off his overprivileged ass in a Philadelphia bar shortly after midnight and played the "don't you know who the f--- I am?!?" card (a direct quote, actually) when asked nicely to leave. This servant of the people then threatened to use his political influence to have the bar closed forever and threatened to assault the female employees.

He emerged from that episode unscathed in exactly the same way that no Republican ever would, but just as the limited furor over that incident had passed, a warrant was issued for Boyle's arrest for violating his PFA. According to an article posted on the "PA Townhall.com" website, the warrant came following "weeks of escalating public outbursts from the state lawmaker, whose deteriorating mental state forced Democratic leadership to rescind his committee chairmanship". Democrats have allowed Boyle to vote remotely on legislation despite his status as a fugitive. Boyle's vote is important given the narrow 102-100 margin the Rats have recently had in the PA House. [The margin is now 102-101 after the GOP easily won a special election yesterday in the 139th District, making Boyle's continued participation from his undisclosed hideout even more critical to Democrats.]

Like any other arrogant Democrat politician/criminal, Boyle figures he's above the law. And he has good reason to think so -- because he is.

Not only is nothing happening regarding his alcohol-fueled activities from February, but just one day before the primary, hyper-partisan Democrat Philly D.A. Larry Krasner suddenly withdrew the arrest warrant which had been issued on Boyle. The D.A. lamely asserted that there was a "piece missing" in the case, that piece apparently being the fact that Boyle is not a Republican. Which means the two-tiered "justice" system works in his favor instead of against him, as Dirty Larry has ensured.

Boyle still lost yesterday, as most Democrats hoped he would. If he hadn't, Republicans would've been handed a golden opportunity to pick up the seat in November. District 172 should be at least somewhat marginal, but it normally favors Democrats pretty heavily these days.

If Boyle had won, his own party was preparing to create a law which would allow them to expel him; then there would have been a quickie special election, a new Democrat elected in Boyle's place, and the seat would have been salvaged for November. This was the same logic which impelled the Republicans to eject conservative freshman George Santos from the U.S. House, but the Stupid Party neglected to take into account the leftward lean of Santos' district and the major funding advantage Democrats always have in competitive districts, and so they threw away the seat needlessly. But at least they got rid of a conservative, so it wasn't a total loss for the RINOs!

Tags:

2024 Pennsylvania


3/29/2024: [Texas] The 2024 Senate Race Has Been Called! [RightDataUSA]


Photo credit: ABC News (from 6 years ago, so don't get excited)

Of course it's really quite far from being over, but not according to some rando with a blog which gets posted on a site called "American Thinker". Not deep thinkers apparently, but at least they are hopeful ones and they're on the right side.

The blogger references a recent Marist poll which shows Ted Cruz with a mundane 51% to 45% lead over celebrity Democrat challenger Collin Allred. As polling organizations go Marist has been reasonably accurate lately, but one poll taken 8 months before the election, which shows a 6-point lead for the good guy with nearly a 4% margin of error is hardly conclusive.

Or is it? The blogger declares that this poll "confirms that Mr. Cruz will win" and he advises the Democrats to spend their money elsewhere. They already are spending money elsewhere -- lots of it -- and do not need to concern themselves with economizing like Republicans often must do.

The poll "confirms" something? Pre-election polls predict (or try to influence) election outcomes. They do not confirm anything except perhaps that a race will either be close or a landslide or somewhere in between, and this particular race sure as hell won't be any landslide.



There is no reason to presume that a positive outcome here is guaranteed, and subsequent polls will definitely "confirm" that, however there are some good reasons to believe that Cruz will be re-elected: this is a presidential election year and Trump's presence on the ballot will help Cruz, unlike in the 2018 midterm when Cruz only narrowly defeated another Democrat celebutard; Allred is of course a media darling but he's a completely dim bulb; and it's hard to imagine so many tickets being split that Trump wins Texas but Cruz loses it.

On the other hand, nobody can doubt that Texas is a rapidly "purpling" state (going from true blue towards commie red). This is not a recent development and has been apparent for quite some time. However what is a recent development is the increased mass invasion of Democrat voters from south of the border. The impact of that is not yet baked into political outcomes, but by November it may well be.

Texas is being invaded from every direction and not just from the south, taking in refugees from all other states but particularly ones such as California, New York, Illinois, etc. which have been destroyed by a long period of thoroughly incompetent and corrupt one-party Democrat rule. Not all invaders are liberals, but the numbers strongly suggest that a majority of them are.



Below is a table which shows the number of registered voters back to 2022 along with the most recent available data for 2024 for the most populous counties in the Lone Star State. Texas does not register voters by party so there is no way to determine how many of these new voters are Democrats, though some folks have methods to derive party-orientation estimates. However these are really just guesstimates and do not necessarily have a great deal of accuracy.

The 12 counties in the table account for approximately 62% of all registered voters in the state. The good news is that the proportionate increase of new voters is the same statewide as it is in these dozen (mostly) leftward-trending counties, and that balance is important. At the present rate there will be a net gain of about three-quarters of a million voters in Texas by this November as compared to last November. That is a far greater increase than occurred between 2022 and 2023. But in a presidential election year, particularly one accompanied by an invasion, a larger number of registered voters is to be expected. Especially if the voter rolls are not periodically cleansed to get rid of ineligible and deceased voters.


County Nov. 2022 Nov. 2023 Mar. 2024 Nov. 2024* 2023-24
Increase
Bexar 1,230,662 1,231,380 1,244,216 1,279,515 3.91%
Collin 693,753 704,486 715,657 746,377 5.95%
Dallas 1,420,223 1,411,043 1,421,371 1,449,773 2.74%
Denton 606,275 621,564 630,984 656,889 5.68%
El Paso 506,554 496,767 502,700 519,016 4.48%
Fort Bend 521,611 521,416 529,558 551,949 5.86%
Harris 2,568,463 2,590,121 2,611,025 2,668,511 3.03%
Hidalgo 416,978 424,886 430,164 444,679 4.66%
Montgomery 409,759 423,577 431,434 453,041 6.96%
Tarrant 1,260,870 1,256,474 1,269,019 1,303,518 3.74%
Travis 886,480 883,569 890,646 910,108 3.00%
Williamson 415,096 420,409 425,749 440,434 4.76%
Total (12 counties) 10,936,724 10,985,692 11,102,523 11,423,810 3.99%
State total 17,672,143 17,759,273 17,948,242 18,467,907 3.99%

* Projected


The fastest-growing county on the list is the best one: Montgomery County, which for the time being retains a healthy Republican majority in all elections. It will continue to do so for many years to come, albeit with decreasing percentages. Rapid, massive growth is not always a good thing. When something grows rapidly inside a body it's called "cancer". Excessive growth in a good county or state always -- eventually -- has a cancerous effect too.

Montgomery County has already absorbed too much detritus from adjacent Harris County (Houston) among other places, and its demographics are showing the strain. Its election results are beginning to show deterioration too; it's still very subtle at this time, but Montgomery County unquestionably has reached its peak.

This doesn't mean that the county has gone insane and will begin electing Democrats anytime soon, just that its rightward motion has stopped and has begun to reverse. Montgomery County's future probably looks very much like Fort Bend County's present.

It's an inviolable law of demographics that bad people always follow (and then drive out) the good people from desirable areas, until those areas are no longer desirable. Fortunately new good areas naturally arise, even farther away from the urban center. The cycle continues as, over time, the new areas are ruined as well.



Like Montgomery County (except at a faster rate), the entire state of Texas has been "purpling", as anyone who actually takes the time to look can easily attest to. To see a bigger picture, we'll pull back and focus on metro areas rather than individual counties. The four metro areas which dominate the Texas landscape are:

  • Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington: 7,943,685 population as of 2022
  • Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land: 7,340,118
  • San Antonio-New Braunfels: 2,655,342
  • Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown: 2,421,115


These four areas accounted for 7,856,153 votes in the 2020 presidential election, which was 69.4% of all votes cast in the state of Texas. Trump got 3,670,374 of those votes (46.7%) and Biden received 4,056,573 (51.6%).

The rest of the state outside these four urban and suburban areas gave Trump a massive 64.0% to 34.7% win.

Here is the data for the 2016 presidential election:

Big-4 Metros Rest of State
Trump2,900,298 (47.6%)1,784,749 (61.5%)
Hillary2,870,422 (47.1%)1,007,446 (34.7%)
Total6,089,982 2,903,184


Between 2016 and 2020 Trump went from narrowly winning the Big-4 (by 0.5%) to being demolished by 4.9%. The areas in Texas which are being invaded the heaviest -- not just via Mexico -- are the ones moving to the left the quickest. Furthermore, these urban/suburban areas increased their share of the state vote by nearly 2% (from 67.7% up to 69.4%) in 2020. Apparently turnout was relatively higher in these demographically-decaying areas than it was in the rest of Texas, or perhaps it was just easier in these urban localities for Democrat vote-counters to "find" more absentee/mail-in ballots in precincts they controlled. Either way.

In the rest of Texas, Trump increased his winning margin from 26.8% to 29.3%. This dovetails with the assertion that Hispanics moved significantly towards Trump (but not necessarily all other Republicans) between 2016 and 2020.

That assertion is only half-true, however. Rural Hispanics in Texas and in some other states did in fact move sharply to the right, a development which the tribe of media controllers has desperately suppressed in its (lack of) reporting since 2020. Urban and suburban Hispanics in Texas and elsewhere have shown no such rightward trend, or if they have it has been mostly inconsequential.

In Texas as of 2022 there were 7,437,831 urban/suburban Hispanics in the four major metro areas out of a total of 12,068,549 Hispanics in the state -- over 61% reside in the metros. Yet they are "underrepresented" there. Texas as a whole was about 40% Hispanic, but the figure in the Big-4 was only 36.5%. In the entire rest of the state, Hispanics account for almost 50% (47.9% to be exact) of the population.

Their swing to the right, even if just a temporary Trump-related phenomenon, is nice but the impact is muted by the far greater number of non-rural Hispanics who are still refusing to leave the Democrat plantation.

The following tables illustrate the recent leftward lurch in the major metropolitan areas of Texas:

Metro Dallas-Fort Worth:

2020 Joe Biden (D) 1,535,525 49.8% Donald Trump* (R) 1,495,550 48.5%
2016 Donald Trump (R) 1,218,897 50.5% Hillary Clinton (D) 1,066,312 44.2%

Metro Houston:

2020 Joe Biden (D) 1,330,116 49.8% Donald Trump* (R) 1,302,436 48.8%
2016 Donald Trump (R) 1,012,507 48.3% Hillary Clinton (D) 991,171 47.3%

Metro San Antonio:

2020 Joe Biden (D) 529,607 50.8% Donald Trump* (R) 495,195 47.5%
2016 Donald Trump (R) 380,665 47.8% Hillary Clinton (D) 371,623 46.7%

Metro Austin:

2020 Joe Biden (D) 661,325 62.3% Donald Trump* (R) 377,293 35.5%
2016 Hillary Clinton (D) 441,316 56.1% Donald Trump (R) 288,229 36.7%


Texas has voted GOP for president in every election since 1980. However as measured by its Republican presidential voting percentage as compared to the rest of the United States, it could be considered as truly "solid" blue (note proper color usage) from 1996 through 2012, based on voting around 10 points (or more) greater than the average for the GOP candidate in the country as a whole.

2020 Donald Trump* (R) 5,890,347 52.0% Joe Biden (D) 5,259,126 46.4%
2016 Donald Trump (R) 4,685,047 52.1% Hillary Clinton (D) 3,877,868 43.1%
2012 Mitt Romney (R) 4,569,843 57.1% Barack Obama* (D) 3,308,124 41.4%
2008 John McCain (R) 4,479,328 55.4% Barack Obama (D) 3,528,633 43.6%
2004 George W. Bush* (R) 4,526,917 61.1% John Kerry (D) 2,832,704 38.2%
2000 George W. Bush (R) 3,799,639 59.3% Albert Gore, Jr. (D) 2,433,746 38.0%
1996 Robert Dole (R) 2,736,167 48.8% Bill Clinton* (D) 2,459,683 43.8%
1992 George Bush* (R) 2,496,071 40.6% Bill Clinton (D) 2,281,815 37.1%
1988 George Bush (R) 3,036,829 56.0% Michael Dukakis (D) 2,352,748 43.3%
1984 Ronald Reagan* (R) 3,433,428 63.6% Walter Mondale (D) 1,949,276 36.1%
1980 Ronald Reagan (R) 2,510,705 55.3% Jimmy Carter* (D) 1,881,147 41.4%


As of 2016 and 2020, the relative voting percentage for the GOP in presidential elections in Texas is back to where it was in the 1980's when it first flipped from Democrat to Republican. In 2020 that percentage actually declined relative to the U.S., despite the fact that rural Hispanics in Texas voted for the Party of Trump in record numbers. As of 2020 and even 2022, it's worth repeating that the dramatic Hispanic trend to the right has been very limited geographically; urban and suburban Hispanics -- in Texas or anywhere else -- are trending that direction only very slightly, if they are even moving rightward at all.



Back to the future: Cruz should win the 2024 Senate election in Texas by about 5 points (plus or -- yes, possibly -- minus) and Trump should win by a little more than Cruz does. It's extremely unlikely that either one, especially Cruz, will get a 10-point margin like Greg Abbott (10.7% margin in 2022) or John Cornyn (9.6% margin in 2020) got last time they ran.

It's no secret that the Rats are definitely going to lose the West Virginia Senate seat and might lose Ohio and/or Montana. Some pipe dreamers would add other states to that list. But even just flipping WV makes it a 50-50 Senate. A Trump win gives the Republicans control with the vice-president breaking the tie, depending of course on whether any liberal Republican Senate incumbents decide to bolt from the party.

To digress briefly, we predicted back in 2022 that Sen. Lisa Murkowski would do exactly that if it had been necessary to deprive the Republicans of a Senate majority (it wasn't necessary, as things turned out) but now it appears that our prediction might come true a couple of years later. Don't rule out Sen. Susan Collins doing the same thing if it appears that President Trump would have a Senate that is under Republican control (oh noes!). Both of these dried-up old RINO hags are fully aware that they are in their final Senate terms and will never have to face the voters again.

So 50-50 is the most realistic partisan breakdown in the Senate for 2025 as things stand now: the GOP goes +1 and maybe gets one or two more if things go unusually well in November. Texas is the one state where Democrats have any chance whatsoever of picking up a seat in the Senate. Does anyone really believe they aren't going to pull out all the stops to try to achieve that?

The latest FEC reports still show the Democrat empty suit with more money to spend than the incumbent Republican. Cruz has raised a ton -- but has spent just about all of it (on what?). He'll get more, but he'll never catch Allred in terms of cash-on-hand unless he hoards all he's got and never spends it. It's not unusual at all for a Democrat to have more money to work with than a Republican. It is unusual for an incumbent Senator to trail in the financial department.

The customary advantages that Democrats enjoy in all major statewide races (financial support, and across-the-board support from the "mainstream" media) still probably won't add up to a defeat for Ted Cruz this time around, but this mindless blogger chatter about some poll "confirming" that he "will" definitely win in November is extremely premature.

Tags:

2024 Senate Texas Going Purple Ted Cruz


3/13/2024: [Ohio] If the presidential slate is set, will Ohio's GOP voters still show up for the U.S. Senate primary? [Ohio Capital Journal]


Photo credit: WCMH-TV

The photo shows the three GOP Senate candidates, Larry, Moe(reno) and Curly, during a recent debate. Leftist Matt Dolan is the stooge who is positioned on the right. Moreno isn't really a stooge of course, but he's certainly surrounded by them here. Speaking of being positioned on the right, the gaslighting article which accompanies that photo was written by an ultra-liberal NPR media twerp and therefore reads like a Dolan campaign commercial.


The past: In 2022 in many important statewide elections, there was nothing to vote for in the Democrat primaries because their nominee had already been anointed. The same is true in 2024. That means Democrat party puppetmasters and Democrat voters are free to spend time and money influencing the outcome of Republican primary elections for their own benefit.

Like Nimrod Haley did during the brief time when she was supposedly a viable presidential candidate, other liberal Republicans like Matt Dolan are desperately seeking Democrat votes in their primary battles against actual Republicans. This is nothing new for Dolan, a left-wing state legislator who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022 and is running again this year. In 2022 he begged Democrats to vote for him in the GOP primary, because otherwise he stood zero chance against Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance.

That tactic came closer to succeeding than it should have. In polls taken only a few weeks before the 2022 Ohio primary, Dolan was barely cracking double-digits in what was essentially a three-way race with Vance and Josh Mandel. Mandel, the former state Treasurer, had been a milquetoast candidate against Sherrod Brown in 2012 and Brown mopped the floor with him. That happened despite the fact that the Republicans actually competed on nearly equal financial footing with the Democrat, which has become quite an uncommon occurrence in contested states since that time.

With the help of thousands of Democrat voters and the endorsements of other liberal Republicans, Dolan surged in the final voting to over 23%, just a fraction of a percentage point behind Mandel. Vance of course won that primary, but with barely 30% of the overall vote. Vance didn't break the one-third mark even though he had the endorsement of Donald Trump and the endorsement of former primary opponent Bernie Moreno. Moreno had dropped out of the race in February of 2022, heroically sacrificing his campaign in order to avoid a damaging split of the conservative primary vote.



The present: There's another three-way race in Ohio in 2024 for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate. Having patiently waited his turn, Moreno is back for another run and has Trump's endorsement. That endorsement was made in December but, oddly, has not resulted in a great leap forward for Moreno in the polls. The next poll after Trump's blessing actually showed Moreno with a smaller lead over liberal Dolan and moderate Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

Subsequent polls did show a small bump for Bernie, however a poll which came out this morning puts Moreno down by 3 points to the liberal Dolan with many voters still undecided less than one week from election day. That poll also shows incumbent ultra-liberal Democrat Sherrod Brown winning vs. all three GOP candidates though not yet breaking 40% against any of them.

Brown, like all Democrat Senate nominees in competitive states, has an astronomical advantage in campaign cash over his Republican challengers. LaRose in particular has practically nothing to work with compared to his opponents in both parties. As of the end of February, Brown had raised over $33 million with nearly $14 million of it still in the bank. Dolan and Moreno each are somewhere around $2.4 million while LaRose has the piddly total of $591,000 cash-on-hand. That's not enough to compete for a hotly-contested U.S. House race in a single district these days, nevermind trying to run a statewide campaign in Ohio on such a thin shoestring.

Article author Nick Evans, evidently writing on behalf of the Dolan campaign, describes the liberal legislator as "quite conservative". This causes the remainder of the article to be read through tears of laughter by anyone who is actually familiar with Dolan. In an attempt to make Dolan palatable to other supposedly conservative Trump-haters, Evans ludicrously claims that Dolan has worked feverishly to enact the "Trump agenda" in Ohio while at the same time distancing himself from the President as much as possible.

Insofar as a political candidate is known by the company he keeps, Dolan is supported by Rob Portman, the former senator and squish who is still highly regarded in RINO circles; and the highest-ranking squish in the state, wimpy Governor Mike DeWine. LaRose is doing just about as well with high-profile endorsements as he is with campaign fundraising (pretty much none at all of either one). LaRose does have the support of liberal Republican congressman Mike Turner of Dayton.

Moreno not only has Trump in his corner, but also solid conservatives such as Senators Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, J.D. Vance, Tommy Tuberville, Marsha Blackburn and others with whom Moreno will work as part of the opposition (non-RINO) caucus in the Senate if he is elected. He is also endorsed by bigwigs such as Jim Jordan, Kari Lake, Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump Jr. and (oh well) Newt Gingrich. Like them or not, they are all conservative heavyweights or were in the past (Gingrich).



Insofar as a political candidate is known by what he has actually done legislatively, here is Matt Dolan's record:
  • Pro-abortionist
  • Anti-gun
  • Supported "contact tracing" and dictatorial powers for "health" officials during the plandemic
  • Opposed arming teachers (or any armed security) in dangerous urban schools or ghetto-ized suburban schools
  • Supports the Democrat vote-buying tactic of student loan "forgiveness"
  • Supports "green" energy mandates
  • Favors higher property taxes
  • Favors taxpayer-financed handouts in corrupt ghetto areas under the guise of "neighborhood development"

Yeah Nicky, he's quite the conservative.

There is only one logical conclusion, and it's addressed to only one candidate though it's probably already too late to have a significant effect:

Drop out now, Mr. LaRose, and endorse Bernie Moreno. Don't be the person responsible for giving the puppetmasters, the media, and other Democrats a win-win in November.

Tags:

2024 Senate Ohio Moreno & the Two Stooges Win-win for Democrats


3/4/2024: [New York] NY Dems adopt new redistricting map with no threat of GOP lawsuit, ending 3-year saga [Lohud]


Photo credit: NY "Independent" Redistricting Commission

There's considerable talk about how the Democrats played nice this time by not screwing Republicans as hard as they were expected to (i.e. as hard as possible). Doddering old NYGOP chairman Ed Cox -- yes, THAT Ed Cox, Tricky Dick's son-in-law -- believes that his party was merely bent over to a small degree, therefore he has unilaterally declared that there will be no lawsuits filed against this Democrat gerrymander.

Even though Democrats never had any reason to fear a challenge to their latest attempt to seize control of the U.S. House of Representatives, they wanted to implement a plan which would be described by the always-cooperative media as "modest" yet still be highly effective. This modest Rat plan rigs the election outcomes against the four remaining vulnerable freshmen GOP incumbents in New York as much as necessary, while mostly leaving the other districts alone. Aside from the one formerly represented by George Santos and recently lost in a special election; the Democrats are taking no chances of that district flipping back to Republican control in November.

Here is an article which reveals Democrat gaslighting regarding their New York gerrymander, with a surprisingly fair (by far-left media standards) account of the situation in between all of the usual drivel supplied by the quotes of liberal Democrats:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/new-york-redistricting-maps-democrats-gerrymandering-house-majority.html

Their punch line is that this gerrymander is plenty good enough for Democrats -- which it is -- and if it had been rejected and replaced by a more aggressive Democrat gerrymander authored by the state legislature, even sleepy Ed Cox would have been inspired to take action. The resulting lawsuit would have possibly required that the current (2022) district lines be used in the meantime, and even worse (for Democrats) the suit may have succeeded and caused a fairer district map to be created. By reaching just enough, but not overreaching here, liberals have greatly increased their chances of House control in 2025 despite their crocodile tears.

The significantly endangered New York freshmen Republicans are Anthony D'Esposito (CD-4), Mike Lawler (CD-17), Marc Molinaro (CD-19) and especially Brandon Williams (CD-22). They were significantly endangered even before having to deal with newly-gerrymandered districts, as we have written several times. Each of these four are cowardly liberal backstabbers -- just ask George Santos -- but at least they're our cowardly liberal backstabbers; they have R's after their names and that's a lot better than having a D there.

Well, it's a little better anyway. Maybe.



As to the argument that squishes like these guys are the best we can do in marginal or left-leaning districts, sometimes it's better to keep your enemies as far away as possible rather than letting them pretend they're "team players". They may be team players, but they aren't necessarily playing for the team whose uniform they are wearing at the moment.

For example: there's a liberal Republican stooge in the House from Pennsylvania by the name of Brian Fitzpatrick. He represents a marginal district in the rapidly-deteriorating suburbs of Philadelphia, and Democrats are so satisfied with this RINO that they don't seriously oppose his re-election bids.

Fitzpatrick's late brother Michael once served in Congress from this same district. Michael was no conservative by any means, but at least he never forgot which party he belonged to. However in 2023 there was exactly one member of the House of Representatives who voted against his own party more often than he voted with his party. That turncoat was Brian Fitzpatrick, who, over 50% of the time, voted exactly the way the Democrats wanted him to vote.

Last week, Brian came in for some flattery from the liberal media when he stated that he and several like-minded traitors in the so-called "bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus" were preparing some shenanigans to do an end-run around Speaker Mike Johnson unless the reluctant Speaker permits a vote on a bill which would send even more American money to the corrupt Democrat money-laundering regime known as "Ukraine". This must happen, so say the RINO scum, without any linkage to legislation which would address real problems of actual concern to the good people of America -- like the unabated sewage flowing north from Mexico which will adversely affect our economy and the integrity (LOL) of our elections.

If the Democrat coup is successful in November, look for this traitor to collect his 30 pieces of silver and switch over to the new majority party in the House. BTW, the filing deadline in PA has passed and Fitzpatrick has no viable primary challenger (just one woefully underfunded opponent) and the same Democrat loser who ran halfheartedly in 2022 is running again, albeit with more money this time. So "prymarry hiz azz!!!" isn't going to work this time around; it rarely ever works at all.

Speaking of liberal credentials, guess which "Republican" supported President Alzheimer the most in 2022? Actually Fitzpatrick was only second on that list. Number 1 was the late (but not lamented) drooling Trump-hater Adam Kinzinger, who supported the Biden agenda fully 80% of the time with his votes in the House.

Here are the 2023 Party Unity scores for the Dirty Dozen who top the RINO charts:

  1. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1): 47%
  2. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR-5): 64%
  3. Mike Lawler (NY-17): 65%
  4. Tom Kean, Jr. (NY-7): 67%
  5. Mike Turner (OH-10): 70%
  6. Don Bacon (NE-2): 71%
  7. Anthony D'Esposito (NY-4): 72%
  8. Young Kim (CA-40): 72%
  9. Kevin Kiley (CA-3): 72%
  10. Andrew Garbarino (NY-2): 72%
  11. Marc Molinaro (NY-19): 73%
  12. David Valadao (CA-22): 73%

By way of contrast, Santos, whom many of his GOP colleagues abhorred and voted to expel back in December, voted with his party 92% of the time in 2023. He also voted the conservative position on 91% of key votes according to our calculations, so you can see why RINOs and other liberals wouldn't want him around. We'll post Santos' American Conservative Union score along with the scores of all other Congressmen and Senators if that organzation ever gets around to releasing its 2023 ratings of Congress.

Of the 25 representatives who deviated from their party most often last year, 24 of them were Republicans. This helps explain why even with a (miniscule and getting smaller) numerical majority in the House, Republicans do not truly have "control". The same phenomenon applies in many state legislatures, particularly out West, where the GOP appears to have tremendous numerical advantages. Those tremendous advantages are often caused by Democrats masquerading as Republicans in order to get elected -- and then, to their delight, these Democrats discover that as moderates/liberals they are comfortably in line with the ideological majority in their GOP caucuses.

There was only one House Democrat in 2023, Jared Golden of Maine (72%), who was disunited from the rest of his Democrat comrades at a similar level to those Republicans who are listed above. He represents a Republican-leaning district which voted twice for President Trump but has also voted 3 times for Golden. Between his ability to fool a sufficient number of constituents into thinking that he's a moderate, and having Rigged Choice Voting around to save him when necessary, Golden has managed to be continually re-elected.

Maybe that will change when he faces former NASCAR driver and current freshman Maine legislator Austin Theriault in November. Don't get your hopes up too high though; Golden currently has nearly 5 times the amount of money as his Republican challenger. As anyone who looks at candidate financial reports can easily discern, there's not a House district or Senate seat in the U.S. where Democrats can't outspend Republicans by incredible margins if they want to. We're probably going to see more evidence of that in 2024 than ever before.

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2024 U.S. House New York Democrat gerrymander Say goodbye to Speaker Johnson


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