The regional flavors of this election are fascinating.  The first thing worth noting is that the election basically split the country in half along the Mississippi River.  GOP gains were heavily concentrated in the East.  This is very good news for Republicans and goes far toward re-establishing the GOP as a national party with a base in the South rather than a Southern party with a smattering of seats elsewhere. As I suggested might be the case in my very first FrumForum post, much of this benefit was achieved in the I-95 corridor which leaned hard to the GOP with a total pick-up of 15 House seats and a hard-fought Senate win in Pennsylvania.  These victories were the difference between a great night and a good night.  More importantly, the influence exerted by the recapture of the Upstate New York and Philadelphia collar county seats, will be an important counterweight to more Tea Party-influenced wins elsewhere in the country.   Republicans are now the more geographically and politically diverse of the two parties with all the benefits and burdens that designation brings.

The Midwest was every bit the “killing field” Democrats feared it would be.  Ohio is now an Obama nightmare with a Republican governor to drive redistricting and the 2012 presidential campaign along with five new GOP members.  Ditto Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  The 20 seats gained in the states of the Old Confederacy have pretty much completed the 1994 realignment with Virginia, Florida and Tennessee now almost entirely red at the congressional level.  Apart from a couple districts in North Carolina (Schuler, Kissell and McIntyre) there just aren’t many more seats for Republicans to get.

If there were clouds for the GOP last night, they come with pretty significant silver linings.  The Sharron Angle, Joe Miller and Christine O’Donnell defeats will make the management of the Senate, the House and the upcoming presidential nomination contests easier by putting something of a fence around the influence of the Tea Party and constraining its congressional and national leadership.   It will be hard to get past the overall message that Tea Partiers are necessary but not sufficient in making a majority for statewide candidates and presidential coalitions.

The one unqualified negative for Republicans coming out of last night’s results is the GOP’s continued weakness on the West Coast.  We haven’t seen results like these for the GOP since 1938, and even in this best of years, excellent, well-funded candidates like Dino Rossi and Carly Fiorina could not cobble together a majority in Washington state and California.  Republicans need to reflect on why this weakness persists and develop a formula for winning along the Pacific.

Women and independent voters continue to play outsized roles in determining the outcomes of these races.  Several weeks ago, here’s what the splits looked like in these races among the key demographics:

All four of the Republican candidates were facing similar challenges with support among women voters hovering in the low 40s — the very edge of the competitive range.  A larger gender gap for any of these Republicans would have made for a much more difficult challenge.  Earlier this month, Angle and Rossi, and to a lesser extent Fiorina, were keeping it real by virtue of their significant strength among independent voters.

Since early October, the California races have diverged in a significant way from those in Nevada and Washington State.  Here’s the updated chart for the same demographic groups drawn from the most recent Rasmussen polls in all four races:

Angle has surged across the board drawing to near parity with Reid among women and taken a strong lead among independents.  It is interesting that her favorables among both groups lag her vote percentage indicating some “nose-holding” going on; Angle is disliked but Reid is disliked even more.  Rossi has seen similar improvement among women gaining 5 points over the course of the month while his numbers among independents have declined slightly but remain very robust at near 60 percent.  Murray has lost the independents and failed to close the deal with women.  If this trend holds over the weekend, it is difficult to see how Murray gets re-elected.

Moving to the California races, chances for both Whitman and Fiorina appeared to be diminishing this week with their opponents seeming to consolidate narrow leads.  Then, this morning’s Rasmussen poll put Whitman within four points.  The crosstabs tell the story:  both of these contests are coming down to a simple question of women vs. independent voters and their relative strength in off-year electorates.  Both Fiorina and Whitman have seen small to moderate declines among women voters and are close to the point of no return.  On the other hand, both candidates are surging among independents (Fiorina up 11 and Whitman up 16).  If the Democratic base turns out, Boxer and Jerry Brown win.  Most polling, however, indicates a much higher level of interest in the election among independent voters than among core Democrats.  If independent voters significantly outpace Democratic women (a plausible scenario) these races could be upsets in the making.

The first thing to note is how uniform the gender gap is across the region.  Republicans are stuck in the low forties which is something like a bare minimum to remain competitive in statewide contests.  The second factoid of interest is that favorable ratings for these candidates among women almost perfectly mirror their share of women’s votes, with Angle being the only Republican who slightly over performs.

Independent voters, however, are a different story.  In Nevada, Sharron Angle is over-performing rather dramatically among independents, taking half the vote despite low favorability ratings.  These voters may dislike Angle but they dislike Harry Reid even more.  In Washington state we see a mirror image of the Nevada race.  Dino Rossi is pulling 60 percent of independents and has a 65 percent approval rating.  Rossi has room to grow between now and Election Day.  The other outlier is Meg Whitman who is under-performing relative to her fellow GOP candidates between 7 and 27 points.

A couple conclusions:

• Whitman has cratered among independent voters in the past two weeks.  Her approval rating with these voters has dropped 15 percent and her share of their votes by 13 points.   Message to candidates:  check the immigration status of your domestic employees.  How many surprises can there be at this point about Jerry Brown, a man whose record and personal eccentricities have been studied minutely for decades?

• Carly Fiorina is on the bubble and can’t be happy with Meg Whitman and the potential she holds to drag down the rest of the Republican ticket. Her best hope right now is a turnout model that skews hard toward Republicans and independents.  She should be praying that last night’s Gallup poll showing a 13 to 18 point GOP generic ballot lead is accurate.

• This week’s release of a taped “candid” conversation between Sharron Angle and the Nevada Tea Party candidate threatens to play a role similar to Whitman’s maid-gate.  Independents hate politics and especially anything that smacks of a backroom deal.  One of Angle’s greatest strengths is that she’s the anti-establishment candidate; this sounds uncomfortably like another establishment in the making.

• “Mom in tennis shoes” or not, Patty Murray is rapidly being driven toward having to go harshly negative if she wants to win.  She has to push Rossi’s negatives up and make sure her base turns out.  Rossi and his team should get their slickers and boots on and prepare a more-in-sorrow-than-anger response along the lines of “When did she swap her sneakers for stilettos?”

By way of a refresher, Reid has run a scorched-earth campaign against Angle who has been very accommodating in providing lots of raw material on issues like guns, entitlements and healthcare.  The results have been disappointing for Reid who continues to see females and independent voters move toward Angle.

Washington state is not Nevada, however.  Murray has adopted a tough tone with her opponent without being too aggressive which probably wouldn’t work for the “moms in tennis shoes” anyway.  Mostly, her ads are soft reaffirmations of her concern for middle class families with the occasional “Dino’s in the pocket of Wall Street” negatives.  Murray cares about you and your family.  Dino?  Not so  much.

Rossi’s response ads follow the Republican playbook nationally to tie the incumbent to a bad economy and unpopular stimulus and healthcare laws.  He also quietly raises the question of whether 18 years in the Senate hasn’t made Murray part of the problem in Washington.  This is a bake-off compared to the vitriol pouring out of Las Vegas and Reno.  Both sides know that playing too hard will lose you more than it gains among women and independent voters.

So, what difference has it made?  The short answer seems to be that, at least in today’s Rasmussen Poll, Murray is losing, but more slowly than Reid.  While Reid dropped 8 points among women in the past month, Murray is up 2 but at a surprisingly tepid 54 percent.  She is a she, after all, and this is Washington state with a long tradition of women in senior offices dating back to Governor Dixie Lee Ray.  Rossi continues to poll well among independents outpacing Murray by almost 2 to 1.  Given the Democratic voter registration advantage in Washington, he’s going to need every one of those votes.   My guess is that if Murray cannot find a way to increase her share of the women’s vote (or drive Rossi below the 41 percent he’s currently getting) a turnout model with lots of Republicans and independent voters is going to carry Rossi to the other Washington as a United States senator.

The topline number indicates a more or less steady-state race with Reid leading by one point, 48 to 47 percent.  Reid’s number in this poll is down slightly from the precarious 50 percent he got on September 1. Angle started the month at 48 and ended at 47 which sounds unremarkable except that she is the challenger and that the incumbent has thrown everything he has at her without making any headway and falling back slightly.

As usual, the really interesting data is in the crosstabs.  Earlier this month, I suggested the contest for women voters was likely to be decisive and that Reid was in danger of overplaying his hand.  After a month of telling Nevada women that Angle was an extremist who supported armed insurrection, an end to Social Security and Medicare, and that she wanted to deny medical treatment to children with autism, Reid’s support among likely women voters has dropped from 62 percent to 54 percent while Angle has gone from 35 percent to 41 percent.  There has been an even sharper shift among independent voters.  Reid began September with 50 percent of independents but ends with only 40 percent while Angle’s share has grown from 47 percent to 50 percent.

To sum up:  we have a long-time incumbent senator with an immense financial advantage who has waged an aggressive campaign to paint his opponent as an extremist.  This incumbent is still stuck under 50 percent of the vote among likely voters and is faced with growing disaffection among key segments of the electorate.  Reid may be caught in a no-win situation.  He must continue attacking to rally his base but the ads he’s using may be hurting him with women and independents. If Senator Reid seems a little blue, he probably has good reason.

Beyond Pew’s headline numbers, the underlying trends must also be giving Democratic strategists the chills.  In every category except Hispanic and black voters, there are similarly large swings going on.  Democratic advantage among women drops from 13 percent among registered voters to just 3 among likely voters.  Buh-bye, gender gap. College graduates, 1 point Democratic lead to 6 point deficit.  Younger voters move from a 17 point Democratic lead to 4 points.  Republicans even lead among likely voters with a high school diploma by a margin of 48 to 45 among likely voters.

Shifting from the macro to the micro, how bad is it for the Democrats in individual races?  Choose your own adjective:  terrible, awful, unprecedented, catastrophic, McGovernesque.   In the House, the GOP has probably already captured 47 seats with at least another 20 or more still on the table.  In the Senate, with a national wave showing up in places like Wisconsin, West Virginia, New York and Connecticut, the impact of Christine O’Donnell’s primary win in Delaware is beginning to look like an unfortunate side-show.  A 50-50 Senate looks likely now; a 54-46 Republican Senate is the outer range of the possible.  For those inclined to disagree vehemently and start up with the name calling, think back over the past 12 months and the number of times the “unthinkable” has become fact on the ground  – then think again.

Republicans shouldn’t get used to the situation or regard the extraordinary alignment of the political planets as the new normal.  It is more like a once-in-multiple-generations convergence.  Two and four years ago, as the Bush administration drew to its tumultuous close, Democrats enjoyed base momentum and support from unaligned voters.  The unknowns – and the unknown unknowns – could easily reshape the political terrain yet again between now and 2012.   Meanwhile, the exiting Democratic Congress is leaving lots of raw material around for just that purpose:  a shaky economy, a federal budget in shambles, expiring tax cuts, an unpopular health law and, standing behind it all, the president with his bully pulpit and his always-relevant veto pen.  To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, 2010 is not a permanent victory or a final defeat, just another scrum between the two parties to gain a tenuous and temporary hold on voter loyalties.

The main change in this poll was the split among women.  In the September 1 poll, Reid was getting 62 percent of women but in the current survey he’s down to 54 percent.  Angle’s share of women voters rose from 35 percent to 40 percent with the balance sliding into the undecided column.

Reid appears to be responding aggressively to this downtick among women with hard-hitting, negative ads that highlight some of Angle’s less well considered statements on gun rights, “Second Amendment remedies”, abortions for victims of rape and incest (Reid is nominally pro-life), and whether the Social Security and Medicare programs are an offense to the Almighty.  The underlying theme is extremism with grainy black-and-white footage of right-wing militias in training.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I6GELJwJho

Angle has responded by blaming the economy on Reid-Pelosi-Obama including Nevada’s worst-in-the-nation unemployment rate and the collapse in home values.  “And he calls me extreme,” she concludes.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbMmxaUh5BA

Reid is hitting Angle as hard and fast as he can.  And, by normal political standards, it would appear to be working.  Over the past 12 days, Angle’s unfavorables have jumped from 41 percent to 55 percent; among women her unfavorables have gone from a bad 56 percent to an appalling 64 percent.  (Reid’s negatives remain unchanged at 51 percent.)  If Reid’s internals look the same as the public polling, he must be scratching his head:  How can we have driven up Angle’s negatives among women to such stratospheric heights and lost their votes at the same time?

The answer to this question may be as much one of tone as substance.  Reid appears only by voice in the taglines of his ads, “I’m Harry Reid, and I approved this message.”  Angle’s response ad is a “positive negative”:  she stands before the camera, looking relaxed and pleasant ticking through her economic message – hard-hitting, confident and reassuring, perhaps even senatorial.  Could it be that this approach is actually defusing the attacks and negating Reid’s overwhelming financial advantage?  Time will tell.  If Reid wins this race, it will probably be the product not of a better air campaign but because he has invested time, energy and money in a grind-it-out ground game that allows him to squeak to the narrowest of victories.

• Sarah Palin may not own conservative politics in America but she does hold the lease through November and probably beyond.  In race after race where base turnout is all that mattered, her endorsed candidates have won and mostly seem to be holding up just fine.  Since the base Republican vote will remain of paramount importance in the low-turnout mid-terms, most GOP candidates in most places will be begging for her support.  After the elections, Republican leaders in Congress may be placing a lot of calls to Wasilla to solicit Palin’s views on the specifics of legislation rather than just election endorsements.
• There is something a little too pat about the consensus that Christine O’Donnell is unelectable.    The depth of Republican anger and independent alienation over the economy and health reform has pushed us into electoral terra incognita.  Even candidates like O’Donnell who seem fundamentally out of alignment with their states deserve the benefit of the doubt as the general election campaign begins.  Back in August, we were told that Lisa Murkowski had not done what was “necessary” to “define” her opponent and therefore lost.  Mike Castle paid attention to that lesson and “defined” away.  Christine O’Donnell still won.  Could it be with the public so turned off to incumbents that our mental models for how politics is supposed to work are out the window?
• If the pundits are right and O’Donnell can’t win in the general, the Republican path to a Senate majority just got a lot tougher as it would require wins in places like Oregon and New York.  Things are bad for Democrats this year.  But are they that bad?  And, if Republicans are just short of a majority, are they in better political position than having nominal control of, and responsibility for, the fiscal train wreck that is just around the corner?  Also, bear in mind Democrats are facing a very tough year in 2012 defending 21 seats to the GOP’s 9.  The mix of seats isn’t encouraging either.  Democrats will have incumbents up in places like Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana and Virginia while Republicans are mostly concentrated in solidly Republican states.
• The New Hampshire results (if they are ever tabulated) may turn out to be a model of success for Republican coalition management.  As of this writing, Kelly Ayotte (the Palin-endorsed, establishment Republican) has a lead of just under 1,000 votes over conservative favorite Ovide Lamontagne.  If she holds on and wins, Republicans will have chosen candidates for the Senate seat and both House races (former Congressman Charlie Bass and former Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta) who are close to perfect fits in their districts and avoided the rancor that has been such a notable part of GOP primaries elsewhere.
• Republican turnout numbers continue to be impressive.  In Delaware, the O’Donnell-Castle match-up drew almost 60,000 voters compared to 33,000 for contested statewide races on the Democratic side.  The Delaware Secretary of State reports that Republican turnout was 32 percent compared to just 12 percent among Democrats.  In New Hampshire, where independents can vote in primaries, Republican turnout in the Democratic-leaning 2^nd District was 55,000 compared to just 31,000 for the contested primary on the other side.
• Scott Walker, Milwaukee County Executive and one of the bright, young GOP stars from the Midwest, thrashed former Congressman Mark Neumann in the Republican gubernatorial primary.  Walker, who is able to navigate the populist-conservative line in Wisconsin with great skill, will be a very strong contender in the general against Tom Barrett. The combined GOP primary vote in the Republican gubernatorial race was over 613,000 votes compared to 232,000 for the Democratic candidates.  The Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Ron Johnson, drew over 500,000 votes against weak opponents.  Russ Feingold must be very interested in those numbers.

Republican fears of a robust lame-duck session in November and December may be misplaced.  The number of incumbents taken down in primaries means Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will have a lot of leverage over moderates who might consider siding with Democrats on spending bills or major policy changes.   In addition, the Delaware and Illinois contests for U.S. Senate seats are special elections.  Like Scott Brown, the winners of these races will be sworn in almost immediately.  If Republicans win one or both, McConnell will have 42 or 43 votes to block legislation rather than his current 41.

The big immediate challenge before Republicans is what to do about the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. All the regular annual appropriations bills funding the federal government are stalled.  With the September 30 fiscal year deadline approaching, Congress must either pass a Continuing Resolution (CR), probably through November 2, extending all federal programs or let the federal government shutdown.  Extending the pre-election CR into mid-January would be the first, and perhaps only, order of business for the lame-duck session.

After the new Congress convenes in January, a Republican majority would have to choose between engaging in a protracted budget fight with the president and passing a CR for the balance of the fiscal year.  A full-year CR would normally be considered a victory for spending hawks because it would essentially enact an across-the-board freeze on non-entitlement spending, a big change from the rapidly escalating budgets of the Bush and Obama years. The problem with a full-year CR is that the elections are likely to shift power not just between parties but within them producing a large, influential bloc that will probably want cuts below current spending.  This approach would risk being denounced as a betrayal by Republican activists inside and outside the Beltway and tend to depress energy in the conservative base leading up to 2012.  Unless Boehner and McConnell are far more agile than Gingrich and Dole were under analogous circumstances, the GOP could find itself caught between a White House campaign to defend its domestic build-up and a conservative base that wants immediate (unpopular) federal spending cuts.

Extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts is the second leg of the fiscal tri-lemma.  Most polling indicates the public wants the cuts extended – but mostly for the middle class.  Republicans will seek an across-the-board extension of the tax cuts out fear that hiking rates on households and investors will further reduce incentives for economic expansion opening them to Democratic charges of heartless plutocracy. Since neither side will be able to force its will on the other, the most plausible outcome is a partisan tax scrum followed by an unsatisfying policy compromise.

On the healthcare reform, to paraphrase Speaker Pelosi, the legislation has passed and the public is finding out what’s in it.  So far, the returns are mixed.  A July, 2010, Washington Post poll of adults found a bare majority in support of the program including 73 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of Independents.  Sixty-nine percent of Republicans were against the bill.  By contrast, Scott Rasmussen’s polls of likely voters show that 63 percent favor full repeal of the health reform legislation.  Some elements of the law, like the individual mandate and Medicare cuts, are radically unpopular while others, such as the ban on health insurance policies with pre-existing condition exclusions, enjoy high levels of support.  My guess?  If you think the healthcare law is unpopular wait until the White House and the media have dissected the Republican legislation to repeal it.

The outcome on all of these issues depends greatly on President Obama’s willingness and ability to maneuver.  If he really is the ideologue his conservative critics contend he is he might decide to fight openly for his principles and programs.  From a political standpoint, the GOP could scarcely hope for more as it plays directly into the Republican need to sustain political energy and would continue to alienate independent voters.  The President and his party would probably be better served through a triangulation strategy that seeks to preserve the core of his agenda while drawing Republicans into compromises on spending, taxes and healthcare.

So far, this all reads like a replay of 1995 when President Clinton deftly out played the Republican Congress and set up for his 1996 re-election campaign.  There are, however, two large variables present in 2010 that were absent in 1995.  The first is the state of the economy.  In 1994 a strong recovery was already underway that crested in time to sweep Clinton to re-election.  It is unlikely that anything approaching the Clinton boom is going to happen before 2012.  President Obama will probably face re-election swimming against the economic tide.

The other big “what-if” is the potential reaction of the financial markets to a protracted fiscal struggle between the White House and Congress.  James Carville famously said that he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market because then he could intimidate everybody.  The question is whether a tax-spending-healthcare fight between President Obama and a Republican Congress might undermine confidence and destabilize the credit and stock markets forcing the White House and Congressional leadership to the negotiating table.   Call it “Andrews Air Force Base II” or “Son of TARP” but a shot-gun compromise of this kind – or even discussions toward it – would have unpredictable consequences for the president’s re-election campaign, both parties, and, last but not least, the future of the country.

Of course, the real race in Florida has never been between the Republican and Democratic candidates but in the split among Republicans between Rubio and Republican-turned-independent Charlie Crist.  Early polling on the race was inconclusive as to which Democrat would have the greatest impact on the November outcome.  More recent polls of likely voters show that with Meek as the nominee, Rubio stretches his lead over Crist to between 5 and 8 points.  This week’s Democratic-affiliated Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows Rubio leading Crist 40 to 32 with Meek picking up just 17 percent and 11 percent remaining undecided.   It is hard to imagine how Meek’s share of the vote could drop much further which means Crist must capture almost 75 percent of the undecided vote in order to close the gap with Rubio.  Any Crist effort to court Democrats more assiduously than he already is would probably backfire by driving moderate Republicans and independent voters toward Rubio.  It isn’t over until it’s over but Crist has a very steep hill to climb.

In Arizona, the Mac is Back.  McCain’s victory over J.D. Hayworth is a reminder that money still matters –even in a year when incumbency is a dirty word.  Preliminary accounting shows McCain outspent Hayworth by 10-to-1.  Moreover, McCain’s campaign was strategically and tactically brilliant in breaking Hayworth’s hold on the conservative base of the party.   Makes one wonder:  where was this John McCain in 2008?  John Heilmann and Mark Helprin argue in Game Change that the meandering nature of the presidential campaign was an outgrowth of McCain’s ambivalence about running for president in the first place.   McCain’s performance over the past year should put to rest any doubts that he really wants to continue as a United States Senator and probably will.