The Bad News is Still Good

As the November elections closes in on us, there are some interesting movements within the polls. It looks like the race for Governor in Massachusetts is tightening, as is the Kentucky Senate contest. Meanwhile, an Idaho Democrat looks poised to win re-election in what ought to be a solid Republican area. What gives?

The quick and easy answer is that it's little more than the usual mixing bowl of the election cycle at work. Rarely are things as simple and straightforward as we would like them to be. Rand Paul wasn't going to win in Kentucky by 15 percentage points; there are too few Senate contests which result in such statistical blowouts, and we all know it. In Massachusetts, the liberal vote is being split by an independent and the Green Party candidate, who are siphoning off around 15 percent of the support which would be expected to go to Democratic incumbent Deval Patrick.

Then, too, polls themselves do not necessarily give us the most reliable testing of the waters. Polls can be as slanted as the mindset of the pollster: if a poll talks to more Democrats than Republicans, for example, the outlook can be skewed. One of the recent measures of that same Kentucky campaign, done by Service USA, had the Democratic sampling at 51 percent while being made up of 36 percent Republicans. That's bound to affect any predictions based on that particular poll.

As to Idaho, we are looking at a Democrat who actually received an endorsement from a national Tea Party unit. He is virtually certifiable as a Blue Dog, or conservative, Democrat. Should Walt Minnick retain his seat against a virtual unknown without much cash, we should not be shocked. Further, as we mentioned in these very pages just a few days ago, with enough Blue Dogs the GOP may actually gain an effective edge in Congress even without a definite majority.

The bottom line is that even the bad news might be good for the Republican Party. With the overall feeling that Democrats are doomed this November (many pundits are actually coming to believe that 2010 will be worse for the left than '94) a minor setback or two isn't too worrisome for the right. Indeed, they may only serve to spice up what is appearing to be an election already over.