Talk Elections

Congressman Altmire's campaign released a poll on Thursday showing him up 56%-40%. The poll was conducted...in February.

http://www.timesonline.com/articles/2008/05/12/opinion/jd_prose/doc48266c9764b61755689283.txt (http://www.timesonline.com/articles/2008/05/12/opinion/jd_prose/doc48266c9764b61755689283.txt)

It will be closer than this, but I think Altmire will win.  He is a good fit for this district and hasnt really done anything to warrant his defeat. 

Obama being at the top of the ticket doesn't help him. I have no idea why he'd endorse him in the primary.

He didnt endorse him.  Anyway, I think Clinton would be just as bad or even worse for Altmire as she would bring out many of the Republicans in Alleghany county where Altmire needs to hold Hart to a draw to win districtwide. 

Ok, he didn't officially endorse him but didn't he make some strong hints that he wanted Obama?

He seems pretty neutral.  All he said was that he was reluctant to endorse Clinton because she would bring out an avalanche of Republican voters in his district. 

The only thing distinct about this poll is that it was conducted in February and released now.

Which is something Phil is missing. Hillary is hardly beloved in that district. She may be more popular among Democrats, but most of the Democrats would vote for whoever the Dem nominee is even if they greatly preferred Hillary in the primary. However Hillary would bring out the GOP much stronger against him.

And guess what? Obama will hardly be beloved in that district and I wouldn't be so such that Dems out that way "would vote for whoever the Dem nominee is."


Which is my point. It just proves it's ridiculous. It's the first sign that Altmire 2008 will be amateurish.

Just about everywhere the vast majority of Democrats will vote for whoever the Dem nominee is. Even 75% of Democrats is the vast majority.

I believe 88% of Dems voted for Kerry in 2004. That's a vast majority. Now let's say 82% of Dems vote for Obama in the General. Of course that's still a vast majority but that's a significantly lower percentage and Dems will feel that.

This could be another district where McCain's coattails help the GOP challenger. Considering how flukish Altmire's win was, some voters may still think of Hart as the incumbent.

It wasn't a fluke; it was firmly a part of the wider trend.

How many people predicted an Altmire win in 2006? IIRC, very few folks correctly called this race. I predicted an Altmire win, but I also said Gerlach would lose.  As Keystone Phil and others would say, Hart lost because of her own lackadaisical approach to campaigning. After routing Democrats by huge margins in every House race (including her open seat win in the more Democratic version of this is CD), Hart probably assumed that she had solidified her hold on this district. Consequently, she refrained from running negative ads till the last few weeks of the campaign.

If Hart had followed Gerlach's lead and defined her opponent early on, say, after a nearly broke Altmire barely won the Democratic primary, she would've held this seat. Gerlach, Wilson, Pryce, Ferguson, and Reichert all proved in 2006 that scorched earth campaigns work.

Finally, the very fact  that Hart, the consummate campaigner, was taking drumming lessons instead of fundraising during an election year is quite flukish.

Hart got lazy and, at the time, I couldn't blame her. She is a personally popular figure out that way but polling started to show that she was vulnerable because of the terrible year for the GOP (especially for the PA GOP). She didn't care. This time will be different.

I'd say that this seat is a tossup/slight lean for Hart now. It's going to be a tough race and very close, in the end. Altmire is a good fit for the district but, as Warner08 said earlier, I wonder how many people even know that Hart lost.

I'm very excited about this race because it's local and will end up being so close.  I plan to do some voluteer work for Hart over the summer.

Felix Grucci will be glad to hear that. I would also note that Wilson, Pryce and Ferguson are all retiring now.

I had my eye on it from the early summer onwards :)

Lewis, we both know that Grucci's ads were filled with scurrilous allegations and backfired due to that fact.  Attacking Burner's inexperience,  Madrid's lack of composure under fire, Kilroy, Murphy, and Stender for supporting higher taxes may have been overly negative and intellectually dishonest but those attacks weren't mendacious.

You should move to America and work for Charlie Cook!

Did Altmire defeat Hart by 54%-45% in 2006? 

More like 52-48.

And if it were 54-45 I'd have laughed the Reps off the thread for thinking they could retake it. But  52-48 is something else.

Yeah, the general rule is that if the race was anything more than 51%-49% against the incumbent, a rematch usually doesnt pan out. 

What I found hilarious actually was Altmire's ads. Not that they were hilarious in themselves (they were quite good of course) but how they completely contradicted what Phil said at the time. They were standard 2006 anti-Republican ad, but the one I remember went like this "Melissa Hart keeps voting with Rick Santorum and George Bush..." *picture of Hart flies up next to pictures of Santorum and Bush as voiceover goes over a laundry list of Hart votes*. And this is in a part of the state which at the time Phil and soulty kept telling us Santorum was absolutely beloved. But hey, no one's going to argue with success.

Anyway, if Altmire can run the same type of campaign, he should have little problems. Just run contrast ads between their voting records (Basic "Melissa Hart kept voting against raising the minimum wage, Jason Altmire helped increase it, Jason Altmire is helping get out of Iraq, Melissa Hart kept voting to "stay the course", etc. type stuff.)

I never argued that he was beloved out west especially not in 2006. I said he'd perform better out there compared to most of the rest of the state. Yet another sad little Zach attempt at picking on others. When you want to actually want to stay on topic and discuss the subject at hand, let us know. Otherwise, you really should seriously leave.

Yes, Santorum sure kicked ass in Beaver county.

Yay for you! You picked out a county he lost pretty badly and ignored several other counties that were rather competitive!

Beaver County is the core of Democratic support in that district. That's why I picked it.

I see no county in western PA where Santorum did well except the hardcore GOP ones like Butler. Hell, Swann did better than Santorum out west.

So Santorum scoring between 44-48% of the vote in some counties out west isn't doing well especially when he was at 41% statewide?

Again, the point wasn't that he was beloved so stop trolling.