Talk Elections

Link (https://www.docdroid.net/BWaK9w1/bfs-poll-memo-internal.pdf).

Bredesen 51%
Blackburn 41%

Positive/negative ratings:

Bredesen: 44/16
Blackburn: 33/30

Looks like an internal for the Bredesen campaign.

I'd be surprised if Bredesen is not elected in November.

He fits the state well, had some 70% approval ratings when he left as Governor and still has almost a 100% name recognition in the state. Plus, the climate for a Democrat is solid this year.

This is as I expected for TN, but it's still a D internal :P

Tossup still, go Bredesen

Race is probably more like Bredesen+3 or +6, but yikes lol

If Bredesen is still leading the polls a few months from now, then we can talk.

Inb4 Limo says but but this poll was before Drumpf brought peace to Korea

Not that I disagree with you, but for what it's worth - laws in ND and IN make polling incredibly expensive, to the point that public pollsters typically don't wade into them without a client.

WISH THAT I WAS ON OLD ROCKY TOP!!!

Polls in ND are fine, but polls in MT/IN now suck because I don't think the republican candidates in MT and especially IN are well known.

FL & TN polls are good because in both races, people actually know the guys running.

I doubt any more out of IN or WV until the primaries are finished.

This, but I don't think it's a safe assumption that he's going to get Bayh'd. Bayh jumped into the race much later, it was a far worse year for Democrats, and the fact that he was running for the very seat he abandoned in 2010 made him look like a coward.

Phil Bredesen 2018 = Evan Bayh 2016

Phil Bredesen may very well lose, but he is not a coward and DC lackey like Bayh, not equal.

Such as? Genuinely curious here. I assume it's Indiana's fairly strict no-call / robodial prohibition, but I'm not sure honestly.

Yup. And this is a better year for Democrats.

I mean they both led in polls in red states for months and Bayh went on to lose by 10 points, which means Bredesen’s current advantage doesn’t guarantee him victory.

This, but Tossup out of caution.

Ftfy

But IceSpear told me that this race wasn't competitive! :(

Lean D.

Fair enough

The link notes that Bredesen is carrying Independents by 20 points, and picking off about one in five Republicans.

If a Democrat is going to win in the 2018 version of Tennessee, that's how they do it.

(Side note: I was a little astounded to see that he carried 42% of the Republican vote in his 2006 victory, per CNN exit polling. Then again, he carried 69% of the overall vote that year).

Governor's races, especially 12 years ago, were far less partisan than Congressional races. The former have to do primarily with the nuts and bolts of governing and somewhat less divisive issues of State Taxation and spending, at least somewhat less emphasis on social issues. Federal taxing and spending + social issues are front-and-center in federal races.

Not to mention, again, even Governor's races have become far more partisan in the last 12 years.

The Ohio Senate race was competitive in April 2016, lol. Hell, it was competitive as late as August!

Bredesen would probably win if the election were held today, but it won't be. There's nowhere for him to go but down. Will he go down enough for Blackburn to win? That's basically what people are arguing about.

LOL, I change my rating from Toss-up to Lean Democratic. Of course, it's early and it may change, but Bredesen is a very strong candidate while Blackburn isn't for a general election.

Was not competitive in August, it was pretty obvious Portman ran away with it by mid to late June.

The same for Todd Young in Indiana in the summer of 2016.

You know who might be the Evan Bayh/Ted Strickland of 2018?
Dino Rossi.

Actually, I think Dino Rossi will be the dino Rossi of 2018

Some Republicans aren't turning out without boogeyman Obama and Clinton on the ballot

Uh, no. The polling average in June ranged from Strickland +0.5 to Portman +0.5, lol.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/senate/oh/ohio_senate_portman_vs_strickland-5386.html

Democrats discovered that the much vaunted Obama coalition did not turn out in midterms. Trump supporters will learn the same lesson in 2018. Trump cultists will not turn out if their orange god is not on the ballot.

Lean R -> Tossup.
Polling consistently has Bredesen ahead, but the risk remains that TN voters will come home to the GOP and Strickland/Bayh/Thompson Bredesen.

Seems like a reasonable rating change. Across five polls conducted since March, Bredesen averages a  47-41% advantage, and leads Blackburn in all five polls by margins ranging from one to ten points.

Axios/Survey Monkey, 4/2-23, D+1
Mason-Dixon, 4/17-19, D+3
Garin-Hart-Yang (D-Bredesen), 4/9-11, D+10
Middle TN State Univ., 3/22-29, D+10
PPP, 3/15-16, D+5

It's not Bayh...it's Bob Kerrey whom the comparison should be drawn.

Even then, the big issue with Kerrey was that he had been out of Nebraska after leaving the Senate and parachuted back in only after Nelson retired. Bayh similarly came back to Indiana only to swoop up an opportunity in the Senate race. Bredesen has been in Tennessee since he left office, so that will not be an issue to attack him on.

The same people who are comparing Bredesen to Bayh and Feingold compared Conor Lamb to Jon Ossoff just a few weeks ago.

Anyways, Bredesen isn't a Washington insider, and as we are seeing, he's separating himself from the Democratic party. Completely different people, completely different strategies.

Still toss-up with a slight Dem tilt. But definitely a good sign that he's above 50%, but I need to see more polls over a few months.

This race is eerily reminiscent of Todd Young vs. Evan Bayh...

Like PA-18 was "eerily reminiscent" of GA-06?

Actually, I think a big part of Trumps Coalition, which remember only got him to 46.5% of the vote, were number of folks who voted for Obama at least once, usually twice, but we're disillusioned by the continuing disintegration of the country's industrial job base and the role foreign trade has to play in it. Trump's running as a populist fighting for manufacturing jobs 1 a number of those voters over as we saw in places like Trumbull County Ohio and Oakland County Michigan. However, his governing as a billionaire plutocrat has chased away most of such voters who were willing to give him a shot.

Such voters were concentrated in the industrial Midwest and to some degree in the Northeast, so I'm not sure how much that'll play in Tennessee. But to what degree it does, those voters are likely to show up for the orange god-king in 2020 either.

Who'd have thought an April poll might be inaccurate?

Narrator: It was not competitive.

Phil Bredesen lost by MORE than Evan Bayh.

It was when I made that post.

I never denied that Bredesen could've won an April election though.

TN-Fart Research

Bredesen is the Ted Strickland of this campaign