#NCSEN: Hagan reelection odds at 50-50
The Washington Post’s political prognosticators are promoting a model showing a 52-48 GOP majority with a 98 percent chance of Kay Hagan being reelected.
Political prognosticator Nate Silver, formerly of The New York Times, also predicts in his renowned Fivethirtyeight blog a 52-48 GOP majority but pegs Hagan’s reelection odds at 50-50. Alaska, North Carolina, Iowa, and Louisiana are pegged by Silver as the tightest races for US Senate seats currently held by Democrats.
Here’s some of Silver’s analysis:
If Americans elected an entirely new set of senators every two years — as they elect members of the House of Representatives — this November’s Senate contest would look like a stalemate. President Obama remains unpopular; his approval ratings have ticked down a point or two over the past few months. But the Republican Party remains a poor alternative in the eyes of many voters, which means it may not be able to exploit Obama’s unpopularity as much as it otherwise might.
Generic congressional ballot polls — probably the best indicator of the public’s overall mood toward the parties — suggest a relatively neutral partisan environment. Most of those polls show Democrats with a slight lead, but many of them are conducted among registered voters, meaning they can overstate Democrats’ standing as compared with polls of the people most likely to vote. Republicans usually have a turnout advantage, especially in midterm years, and their voters appear to be more enthusiastic about this November’s elections. Still, the gap is not as wide as it was in 2010.
The problem for Democrats is that this year’s Senate races aren’t being fought in neutral territory. Instead, the Class II senators on the ballot this year come from states that gave Obama an average of just 46 percent of the vote in 2012.1
Democrats hold the majority of Class II seats now, but that’s because they were last contested in 2008, one of the best Democratic years of the past half-century. That year, Democrats won the popular vote for the U.S. House by almost 11 percentage points. Imagine if 2008 had been a neutral partisan environment instead. We can approximate this by applying a uniform swing of 11 percentage points toward Republicans in each Senate race. In that case, Democrats would have lost the races in Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Oregon — and Republicans would already hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate.
It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that we continue to see Republicans as slightly more likely than not to win a net of six seats this November and control of the Senate. A lot of it is simply reversion to the mean.2 This may not be a “wave” election as 2010 was, but Republicans don’t need a wave to take over the Senate. [….]
You heard it here first.Hagen is re-relected on the ads that will be run by Hagen ,because of the draconian cuts made by the legislature to the elderly,disabled and Alzheimer’s in the budget just signed.Rural hospitals will close.Some will have to drive 70 miles to a hospital.4% pay cuts from medicaid to all hospitals and docs.Huge decline in eligibility in PCS care to elderly and Alzheimer’s.You can look that up yourselves.At least 20,000 CNA nurses will lose their job over the next 12 months.Call Adam Oneill republican mayor of Belhaven and ask him about his hospital.This bill is worse than Obamacare and the dems are going to ram it down the republicans throat this Nov with non stop ads.Memeorial Mission hospital in Ashevile just had Roy Cooper visit and it is firing over 1,000 the next 12 months.Don’t think ol’ Roy ain’t using this in his campaign.
I knew you were a Big Government type. Medicaid is a income redistribution program, and is as socialistic as Karl Marx himself. It jacks up the middle class’ taxes at all levels from county to federal, jacks up medical fees, and jacks up our own medical insurance costs. It is a giveaway program unlike Medicare. The recipients of Medicaid pay nothing in, whereas Medicare patients pay in to Medicare all their working lives.
The problem with hospitals like Belhaven comes from Obamacare itself, which has driven the takeover of individual medical practices as well as smaller hospitals like Belhaven by the larger hospitals, creating medical conglomerates. This will hurt consumers in many, many ways and the closing of smaller hospitals is just one. The big hospitals are acting like any other corporate takeover operation, closing down parts of what they buy on the theory that they can drive the business to other parts of the operation. That is precisely what happened in Belhaven. The smart thing to do if selling a local hospital is NOT to sell it to a local medical conglomerate. A competitor will not have the same consolidation motivation as the local medical conglomerate, like Vidant, does. Others who have sold their hospitals to local medical conglomerates will likely feel the same pain. The Medicaid excuse is just a smoke and mirrors excuse by the medical conglomerate for what is really a consolidation scheme by themselves.
Australia had the same experience when they adopted their version of Obamacare (called Medicare but like our Obamacare not like our own Medicare). The next conservative government tried to repeal it and had the votes, but the roadblock in doing so was that the medical profession had radically changed with the takeover by the very same sort of medical conglomerates we are seeing in this country as a result of Obamacare. They could not put the genie back in the bottle although they tried.
Put the blame for the decline of our medical system where it belongs on Obama and the Democrats. Don’t parrot the excuses offered by both the new medical conglomerates and the Obama Democrats.
Raphael is spot on.
And the mayor of Belhaven turned to Rev. Barber and the NAACP to save the hospital. There was much rhetoric but no one could come up with an economic answer that made sense.
It would be nice if each little community could have its own hospital but I think the Obamacare payment schedule makes it hard to make ends meet.
Driving 70 miles to a hospital? I’ve been doing that for years. And on paved roads too!
But then again government should be able to meet every need. Or is it according to our needs?
Medicare part D signed into law by George Bush the younger pays for prescription medicines that saves seniors lives that is also welfare in your jaded eyes.I suggest all of you survival types find a backwoods and a survival cabin and divorce yourselves from society.None of you will be able to afford medical care if you live to be past 70.The newer medications alone without medicare part D would bankrupt you unless you are millionaires.And as fast as the middle class is disappearing in this country I doubt any of you are.
Well, no. The answer for those medications is to take out your own additional insurance at your own cost in what is known as Medicare Advantage. The premiums are not all that steep. Of course, Obamacare is designed to try to destroy Medicare Advantage as Obamacare is all about Big Government and control. Oh, and Bush was a full blown Big Government Republican.