Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted. I think I worked harder that I worked in 2008 to GOTV, but it was worth it! What a night, at least for Democrats in Delaware anyway. As of writing there’s still some races not decided but a few surprises: Bennett will probably hold on in Colorado, Quinn will hold on in Illinois and Murray will probably hold on in Washington. I’m not at all surprised by Harry Reid’s win. I am a bit surprised a Lisa Murkowski’s apparent win but Miller just imploded at the end. It’s interesting that the Tea Party candidates that got the most scrutiny – Angle and O’Donnell both lost. I don’t think it’s a coincidence but it allowed some truly rightwing candidates to avoid scrutiny, like Pat Toomey and Marco Rubio.
It’s tough trying to find some non-election news to discuss. I thought you might find this interesting – Nate Silver discusses the Rasmussen polling:
While waiting for the remaining results to trickle in from states like Colorado and Alaska, I did a quick check on the accuracy of polls from the firm Rasmussen Reports, which came under heavy criticism this year — including from FiveThirtyEight — because its polls showed a strong lean toward Republican candidates.
Indeed, Rasmussen polls quite consistently turned out to overstate the standing of Republicans tonight. Of the roughly 100 polls released by Rasmussen or its subsidiary Pulse Opinion Research in the final 21 days of the campaign, roughly 70 to 75 percent overestimated the performance of Republican candidates, and on average they were biased against Democrats by 3 to 4 points.
Every pollster is entitled to a bad cycle now and again — and Rasmussen has had some good cycles in the past. But their polling took a major downturn this year.
Remember – Ras gave Coons an 11% lead, and he won by 16.5%. So in the case of Delaware Rasmussen was off by 5.5%.
The DADT repeal fight is gearing up again and the Log Cabin Republicans are trying to push some Republican Senators. What excuses do they have? The survey results will come out in early December but early results indicate a majority of servicemembers support repeal.
“We have to go back,” Cooper said. “There are a number of senators who were not fully comfortable being vocal for repeal before adjournment.”
There are a handful — four or five, he said — of Republican senators who he expects to be very persuadable. Those are the ones, he said, who asked for data from the Pentagon’s review of DADT before making a decision.
“Those are the ones that are gonna be very open to the idea of actually voting in favor of repeal,” he said. “These are senators who have been very amenable to the conversation, and have put forth positive indicators … but just need a little more.”
The push they might need, he said, is the report the Pentagon will release in early December on its review.
“With that being done and the election being under everyone’s belt, we can finally get this done,” he said.
This could get interesting. McCain is still vowing to filibuster and there will be one more Republican in the lame duck session, Mark Kirk.