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Johnson’s Believe It or Not

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 30th, 2010 at 03:30 PM  | 

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Johnson Feingold

Wisconsin is traditionally the most Progressive state in America. Progressives win there. Progressives have long won there. Progressives have won there even in years when they lost in much of America. Wisconsin even went in for the La Follette-founded Progressive Party, making it a highly successful third party within the state for about a decade.

So I’m just at a loss for words as to how a conservative Republican can lead a progressive Democrat by double figures in the new Rasmussen poll.

Yes, Rasmussen has Republican Ron Johnson ahead of Democrat Russ Feingold 54 to 42, MoE 4. Given a poll result like that, there’s only a 7% chance per my model that Feingold could be ahead in this race.

This isn’t the first such result, either. Public Policy Polling had Johnson up 11 a week and a half ago. Johnson’s worst showing recently was in a CNN/Time poll, and even then he was up 51-45. Russ Feingold has not led a poll of this race since Magellan Strategies and PPP both had him up two points a week after Independence Day.

Is this race any more competitive than Delaware at this point? I don’t know if I can make that case.

From Unlikely Voter

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COMMENTS

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  • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

    http://ace.mu.nu/archives/306322.php

  • Darin_H

    McCain-Feingold was such an abomination (and yes, Bush deserves a LOT of blame for signing that POS legislation into law and punting it to the judiciary)

  • crosley

    Wisconsin has traditionally been a blue state, but I’ve always thought it was odd that they gave a free pass to a Leftist like Feingold. He really is a fringe figure, even in a traditionally Democrat state.

    I don’t want to get cocky, but if you’re an incumbent 5 weeks away from an election and down by double digits, I’d say it’s over.

    Both Minnesota and Wisconsin looked like they were becoming red states during the Bush years, but they seemed to snap back in a big way towards the Democrats after 2006.

    We might be seeing a long term trend developing in that part of the country away from Liberalism. I certainly hope so.

  • throwback59

    Johnson problem.

  • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

    That was a stiff dose of irony…

  • irishfreedomfighter

    has a history of electing progressives, yeah, but you’re making them out to be more liberal then they are. They are a point or two left of center. THat being said, the margin that Johnson is winning by is amazing.

    Connecticut. New York. (G) West Virginia. Pennslyvania. Indiana. Illinois. Wisconsin. Arkansas. North Dakota. Colorado. Nevada. Washington. Maybe even California? And they say we can’t take the Senate. The Senate is in our reach.

  • bk
  • Jack_Savage

    From Real Clear Politics:

    “NC-04 (Action Solutions (R)): Price (D) 46 percent, Lawson (R) 47 percent;

    The NC-04 poll is especially jarring. Price was one of the surprise losers in 1994, but the district was redrawn by Democrats in 2002, and it gave John Kerry 55 percent of the vote and Barack Obama 62 percent of the vote. Again, campaign polls tend to show candidates at their best, so Price is probably somewhere right above 50 percent. But he should really be close to 60 percent, even in this environment.”

    Lawson is a libertarian, but much better than a Yale educated Communist. If this happens I will take a week off and celebrate. No kidding.

  • http://waterfiltercartridgesinfo.com stomiko

    [Instead have a nice video]

  • http://www.libertylives.org madnorskie

    , but it is not corrupt. You have to head two hours south of here for that.

  • Doc Holliday

    and we could do with fewer people with little experience and shady pasts. Also, we better be ready because the Dems are in scorched earth mode. They have abandoned the argument that statism works, they are now down to dumpster diving and paying people off, it is all personal now.

  • Jack_Savage

    You can’t have one without the other.

  • Jack_Savage

    But I am all in for Lawson now.

    I had a conversation with Price’s office after the health care bill passed. I told Price’s spokesperson that I would love to know where she would be in ten years so she could apologize to me for the destruction the bill would cause. She said, “I’ll be right here”, and I said, “Not if I can help it.”

  • http://www.theamericanmind.com Sean Hackbarth

    I’m a Wisconsin native living in DC who still pays attention to home state politics. I don’t know what set off voters who for the most part didn’t mind Feingold. I know a lot of people in Wisconsin are sick and tired of everything DC–I don’t blame them. You add the bad economy and the health care bill rammed down our throats and I can start to see what happened to Russ. Plus, Ron Johnson is running a great campaign: great ads; very good staff; etc.

  • deano64

    Kerry and Obama won by almost identical margins in AZ-07. The so called experts are telling me we can’t win in this district and that we never will. There is no polling because no one believes this race will be competitive. I agree it would take a prefect storm for us to prevail but it could happen. I mean for God’s sake we have the Co Vice Chair of the Americain Socialists Party (Progressive Congressional Caucus) as our Rep. Raul Grijalva. I would dance in the street if we took him out.

  • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

    marxist.

  • http://masonconservative.typepad.com/the_mason_conservative Mason_Conservative

    Tommy Thompson, Robert Kasten, and even Joe McCarthy.

  • dmartin

    When they hold their first televised debate. Feingold is as greasy as they get and Johnson is still climbing the political learning curve. This debate will determine the outcome of the race.

  • techsan

    From a 2000 analysis (PDF)…68% of the population is metropolitan. I’m now here 14 years…up from Texas before that. I don’t feel people are much different here…only less mobile (very deep roots in the Appleton area). Rather, there are a couple of population centers that drive politics (Milwaukee, Madison) and a strong union affiliation (Teacher Unions, paper companies, etc.). which is what I think largely influences rural Democrat support. However, the participation at Tea Party events I attended last year coupled with, as Sean Hackbarth notes above, a decent, well-funded candidate…I’m not surprised. I think Johnson’s lead is real. And Feingold’s ads seem to be struggling to find legs. They’re not about policy…rather about his garage door (guess he put his campaign pledges on them years and years ago). However, I’m not going to believe it till I see it on Nov 3.

  • Christine (Trelaina)

    I wish someone would do at least one poll…NC-13 appears to be written off but you just never know this year…

  • rdelbov

    is to elect a GOP house and senate in NC

    I believe redistricting bills in NC cannot be vetoed.

  • Southpaw75

    I live in a rural WI town that is split pretty even ideologically. I can’t find one Barrett or Feingold sign and I see more and more Johnson/Walker signs every day. People in rural WI are fed up with DC in a big way. And Johnson has run a great campaign. I just hope he holds up in the debate. I think he’ll do fine.
    A 12 pt lead is great as I think Feingold will go heavy on the negative and may slim a few points off that lead. Hopefully Johnson holds.

  • acat

    Mad-town is a special case.

    First, it’s a college town- UW-Madison is huge, so there’s plenty of liberal professors and scads of students, neither of which have no clue about the private sector.

    Second, it’s the state capitol – so there’s plenty of money and votes around to be leveraged by the motivated students led by the idealistic and clueless professors.

    Third, it’s in Wisconsin – the whole state has a sort of self-esteem issue when it comes to Illinois and Michigan. (it’s considered acceptable to steal anything the flatlanders (Illinoisans) don’t chain down when they go back south…)

    They’re liberal, enough so that Madison gets called “the midwest’s answer to Portland” but .. they seem to do a pretty good job at not turning into “the midwest’s answer to San Francisco”.

    Mew

  • GCBWI

    Before that, he was running some pretty negative ads.

    Johnson’s countered with ads pointing out that Feingold followed the party line in voting for Obamacare with the knowledge that a majority of Wisconsinites opposed the bill.

  • dpddj

    is more like it. I went to engineering college there and we called it the Berkeley of the Midwest. Liberal is a rather understatement.

    Now, to matters close at hand for me, I now live in Maine and Moveon.org is moving in to help Chellie Pingree in her re-election bid against challenger Dean Scontras. She is engaged to a billionaire hedge fund manager (see any conflict of interest there?) so has lots of $$$ as well. Dean is running a good campaign and can always use more help.

    Give him a boost?? scontras2010.com

  • neomom

    8 years of Diamond Jim Doyle has taken care of that. He looks like a weasel, he is a weasel. But he is a very slick weasel like Obama, where you see it all around him, but can’t quite pin it on him.

  • neomom

    He went to every county for them before the Healthcare vote. The folks were overwhelmingly telling him to vote against it, but he did anyway.

    Maybe Wisconsin residents actually want someone to – you know – represent them instead of tell them what he feels is best for them.

    (I’m a relocated Badger now in NC)

  • neomom

    Thompson or Kasten were all that conservative. Not old enough to know about McCarthy

  • neomom

    Those listening sessions are coming back to bite him in the hiney.

  • techsan

    …and Johnson’s replies. I agree.

    The encouraging components are the quality of the ads in general, and the targeted responses in specific. Further, Ribble (WI-8) ads plus Walker ads have piled on, going back through the primaries. There is a consistent message in these races….D’s are not good for WI, which is consistent with VB’s comment from Rush…Vote against the Democrat.

  • Raven

    in the kind of Punishment you both deserve…

  • WIBadger

    I would only dispute your third point. It is NOT acceptable to steal anything here from out-of-state residents as would be true anywhere else. I’ve never done so and I don’t know anyone who has. My family owns some lake front property in the northern part of the state alongside many IL folks. We vacation there during the summer. Except for some occasional smack talk about the Packers/Bears rivalry, we enjoy each other’s company a great deal.

    No disagreement with anything else in your post. Just sayin….

  • WIBadger

    and your analysis is pretty much dead-on. The two major urban areas are loaded with liberal boneheads. The outlying part is mostly red but not enough to overcome Milw & Mad-town. Moreoever, the rural Dems are more Reagan Democrats (remember those ?) than anything else.

    Feingold’s problem is the same one Bob Kasten had when he lost to Feingold in ’92. The image of a DC politician whose been there too long and more interested in feathering his own nest and towing the party line than remembering why the people of WI sent him there. Moreover, Feingold ran a great campaign that year (his ads were pretty funny & well done) and Kasten came off as an angry, out-of-touch elite. The shoe is now on Feingold’s other foot.

  • Jack_Savage

    They take Democrats to jail down here by the busload, and it doesn’t seem to matter. The black population is eager to continue to vote themselves back into bondage and they are a significant part of the population, as are the dead – especially in Durham.

    It is nice to think about, though.

  • Jack_Savage

    Not Mel Watt, is it?

  • Jack_Savage

    He really is at least a socialist, and one of the more worthless members of the House, having done absolutely nothing of significance in 22 years. If he is in trouble, with three major universities, three minor universities and the capital of the state in his district, anyone can go down.

  • redtillimdead

    Has to be very thankful we nominated O’Donnell. I think if we had nominated Castle, the Senate would be gone for them. Hell, its slipping further away everyday, with Rossi moving back into contention, and Fiorina will likely start moving too. In WA, right after Murray started hitting Rossi, he dropped down to a high-single digit deficit. After he hit back, he’s in a tie again. In CA, as soon as Boxer hit Fiorina, she dropped to a high-single digit deficit. As soon as Fiorina hits back, she should move this back to a tie.

  • throwback59

    the right direction to Erect a Conservative majority that will Stick it to democrats and Raven flagellates the use of puns.
    I’m deflated.

  • eburke
  • trutexan

    When I visited last year, we sat around in the local pub discussing politics and I couldn’t believe how “Red” everyone was sounding. Even other patrons around us chimed in about how finished they are with the way things have been going. And this is in Southern Wis just north of BO’s stomping grounds. When I asked why the state is so liberal, no one had a firm answer, but the general consensus is, “It’s Over”.

    Incidentally, the pub we were in is just outside the chained fence of a closed Chevy plant where my grandfather used to work. Tragically sad.

  • bk

    But they’ll get mad if you try to clean up the voter rolls. And they’re making it harder to challenge any alleged voter fraud. Just coincidences of course.

  • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

    It just happens. Heck here in Harris County in Houston, someone mysteriously burned up a whole warehouse full of voting machines, so that they are talking about having to do the old fashioned paper ballots.

    Wonder why the democrats like those things better? Can you think of any reason?

  • Christine (Trelaina)

    Brad Miller is NC13, and Bill Randall is his opponent.

  • lineholder

    There’s a shift towards conservatism starting to take root in this state.

    I live in NC12. I’ve posted a couple of times about the lack of interest and enthusiasm in our state. That’s changing now, even here in NC12, one of the most gerry-mandered districts in the state. What’s more, it happens to be African-Americans who seem to be ready and willing to lead that change.

    I wish that Burr had enough of passion in him to inspire people, but he doesn’t. The best we can hope for is that we have a Tim Scott of our own in this state by 2012.

    As for Bill Randall in NC13, he’s gotten tagged as a conspiracy theorist because of the comments he made about the administration’s slow response to the BP oil spill. He said, “maybe they wanted it to leak”. Given all the comments Rahm and company made about never letting a crisis go to waste, it would make sense that they would drag things out a bit just so they could try to play the crisis to their advantage. But the media in the State have run this tag on Randall to the hilt.

  • Jack_Savage

    We are going to need to do well in the state races to have enough of a bench for the federal races.

    If David Price goes down in NC – 04, and Etheridge in the district next door, you will feel the quake all over the country.

    I will bust my butt for Lawson in the 4th, and pray for everyone else.