I just realized that all the New York posters are my sworn enemies (Eraserhead, Lief, Tweed) so I'm unlikely to get much help.

Lunar maybe?

Lunar's always available, indeed.

I guess this goes to prove that Lunar consistently 'lurks'

or occasionally does a search for who's mentioned his name in the last 50 days, who knows?

who?

I just realized that all the New York posters are my sworn enemies (Eraserhead, Lief, Tweed) so I'm unlikely to get much help.

Lunar maybe?

Lunar's always available, indeed.

puh---------leeeeeeeeeeeeeease.

2012 will have presidential turnout in NYC and this is against Gillibrand who already proved herself against a suburban GOP challenger in 2010 and is strong Upstate overall, case closed.

TBF MA-06 is probably the second most socially-conservative district in MA after MA-09.

From the GOP perspective: who cares? Every GOP primary is extremely socially conservative, but this is one of those districts where it couldn't hurt to to take a chance and try and shake up the traditional D vs R narrative

At D+7, someone with State GOP and Log Cabin fundraising connections could do solid in the primary if properly positioned, as the race won't be THAT contested, while any social conservative types are going to turn out to vote in the general election regardless.

There simply are not 25 more House seats Republicans could win.

I suspect there are, and if the election were held today, with new maps, the Pubbies would pick up the bulk of them, maybe in the high teens. It depends in part on whether New York gets a non partisan map, which would put a bunch of Dem CD's in play, which today I think they might well lose. Right now the environment for the Dems is just terrible. Who knows what it will be in 13 months, of course.

whoah whoah, NYS's Congressional map is not a Republican gerrymander (unlike the State Senate map which is an extreme gerrymander), it's a bipartisan compromise gerrymander.

A nonpartisan map would lead to huge upheavals in the State Senate power structure, but with much more minor ones to the Congressional map.

(Thanks to the smaller size of districts, it's harder to predict the State Assembly, which would still be Democratic, but might force harder primaries on incumbents depending on the lines)

I could see Option 2 happening more than other commenters in this thread. If you write off North Dakota and Nebraska, the Dems would only have to break even across the rest of the map (something that looks slightly easier with Elizabeth Warren's recent surge in polling).

The GOP fumbled a number of Senate races in ways that would have defied conventional wisdom at the start of 2010 -- Colorado, Delaware, Nevada, etc., and it certainly seems possible that the GOP could make a couple missteps in Nevada, Virginia, Missouri, etc.  to potentially muck things up again.  But of course the Senate map broadly favors the GOP, as most of the tossup races are currently held by Democrats.

Option 1 is more likely IMO, but it's a tad bit more complicated than that!

I challenge you to draw a situation where NY-9 is gone that divides the Orthodox Brooklyn vote more than it's currently divided.

I'm not sure if it's possible, it certainly seems quite difficult at the very least.

Here's a question for you: Don't you also argue that it's gerrymandered already?

]

In short If this district is eliminated then Jews across the country will rebel against the dems big Because this will be seen as targeting Jews which it is (the ones who will be furious over this one are growing rapidly)

umm..this district being eliminated would lead to a district with a higher concentration of Jews than NY-9 most likely, and better representation

also -- wouldn't be Democrats, it'd be a bipartisan agreement between the GOP and Dems

I'm still not convinced the orthodox Jew vote itself would have turned this district. What % of the district are they again?

Maybe 12-20% of likely special election voters, but they tend to be far more swingy than other voters and a lot more reliable for turnout, so it depends on other groups'  turnout too for how to calculate it.

Although on the federal level, they're not swingy at all  lately! If you were to hypothetically subtract out Orthodox voters who voted against pre-scandal Weiner in 2010 (Weiner was a 7-term incumbent or something with all the money in the world), their likely voter population might be cut in at least a half, if not two thirds.  Makes you wonder if Weprin was right to spend all that time focusing on the Orthodox community (going onto the radio with Dov Hikind, other Orthodox radio shows, etc., but never once playing up his half-Latino roots, even though Latinos are 14% of the district).

Also, isn't "Jewry" a term that shouldn't be used? I saw that at the top and the only couple of times I've seen that were word it was used in kind of a derogatory way.

http://tinyurl.com/3zuawa4

Yup, and the Democrats are favored, it's a Democratic-leaning district and Republicans only have of handful of districts that Democratic throughout the country.

I'm just saying the Democrats can't treat this seat like it's a joke and nominate whomever.  I don't expect them to.  Hopefully that part is understood, so no need to make a bunch of "Lunar was wrong!" posts when the D's win this one

Special elections CAN be funky and surprising though, if recent history is any indication

I thought Weprin was going to win at the time he was chosen though, to be fair.

One final note on the poll and what perhaps should concern Democrats most of all. 55% of voters in the district report having voted for Obama in 2008, which is the actual percentage of the vote he got in the district. Last year a lot of the races Democrats lost were because their voters didn’t show up and the electorate was far more conservative than for a Presidential year. When you lose that way you can say, well, our voters will come back out in 2012 and we’ll be fine. But there is no enthusiasm gap here. Obama voters are showing up in the same numbers they did in 2008. But only 65% of them are voting Democratic. That’s a really big cause for concern.

This "Dov Hikind" person seems like a real piece of work.

I think he is a survivor of the concentration camps in Germany.  Maybe I have that mixed up, but he is really hard wired.

He was born in 1950, so that seems... unlikely. 

Well back to the drawing board then. I should look up his bio. Isn't he a Dem assemblyman who votes often with the GOP?

his mother was a Holocaust survivor

This "Dov Hikind" person seems like a real piece of work.

He's an interesting fellow, I'll be listening to him interviewing Turner at at 11pm on his radio show tonight

So I take it the only special election where the result isn't all but over now is the OR-1 one right?

Weprin might still have a better chance than the GOP in Oregon

yeah, hah, I noticed that too.

Weprin's done like dinner folks.

isn't it obvious? everyone that picked up was for Turner

Turner would have to hand this back over next year right?

redistricting could easily mean that this one will simply be removed

Social security probably won't fool voters. Wepren is in deep crap for his position on gay marriage with the district's Orthodox Jewish voters. I'd like to see PPP's poll on this, since they were pretty accurate predicting Hahn would win by the margin she did. Being 6 points down the weekend before an election is a pretty steep climb for Wepren to pull off a win.

the # of the district's Orthodox voters who voted for Anthony Weiner but are voting against David Weprin are probably overestimated. Weiner almost lost the heavily Russian & Orthodox Brooklyn part of NY-9 -- I think by less than 1% -- despite winning by 20% overall.  Hell, Weiner lost his old Brooklyn City Council district.

As for PPP, their polling of Orthodox voters is obviously limited on Friday and Saturday evenings, but from their first day...



gay marriage is certainly getting Weprin in trouble, but he'd also be in trouble with his base if he voted against it

Welp, the Democrats really screwed this one up, I guess it was inevitable that they'd be the ones to royally mess up a special election in New York for once.

This isn't over yet.  Weprin and the DCCC's commercials are in heavy rotation in the NYC TV market.  I have yet to see a Turner ad.  If Weprin scares enough seniors with his Turner wants to cut your social security schtick, he might pull it out.  And there's the little issue of the Democrats having a good political machine, unlike the Republicans.

Turner doesn't have the cash for those ads.. but the DCCC's ads would have been best to define Turner early on, instead of at the last second

What a remarkably sh!tty candidate and what a remarkably sh!tty campaign. Are they actually trying to lose?

more stuff on his campaign: http://www.thebrooklynpolitics.com/post/9998757180/why-is-bob-turner-winning

for federal office you only need to live in the state

Kathy Hochul didn't live in NY-26 either, but, like Weprin, she represented part of the district in elected office

Oh dear.

Oh well, this makes the question of which New York City district to eliminate even easier... not that it's exactly possible not to, once the minority seats are in place.

incorrect, I think -- this district was never thought to be on the chopping block before Weiner had his tweetscandal

A Democratic partisan just emailed me to say "Weprin's going down like a lesbian in love"