Kyle Kondik has analyzed what it’ll take for the Democrats to win the House and keep the Senate in ’12. Not looking too good for Obama’s down ticket, which is depending on him keeping the White House.
Kondik gives a little history before getting into the names and numbers:
Just a day before Election Day, the painful reality hit home for Jimmy Carter: He was toast.
As recalled in Dominic Sandbrook’s excellent history of the late 1970s, Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right , President Carter’s chances for a second term — despite the Iran hostage crisis, a lousy economy and terrible approval ratings — were apparently alive and well until the final days of the 1980 campaign.
Going into the final weekend of the campaign, Sandbrook writes, Gallup had Carter’s Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan, up three points. Harris had him up five points, while Newsweek and The Washington Post had Carter up one.
But at the end, the bottom fell out for Carter. “I’ve never seen anything like it in polling,” said Pat Caddell, Carter’s pollster. What was a close race turned into a big Reagan lead in the last hours of the campaign; he ended up winning 489 electoral votes and a 51%-41% victory over Carter. Likely aiding Reagan at the end was the one and only debate between the two, held just a week before the election, when Reagan memorably asked voters “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Another factor: negotiations to release American hostages in Iran broke down just a couple days before the election. “I wish that I could predict when the hostages will return,” Carter told the nation the Sunday before the election. “I cannot.”
(The hostage crisis provides a lesson for election-watchers: We have no idea at this point what event might change next year’s election.)
With Carter captaining the Democratic ship, election night in 1980 was Titanic-esque. Democrats lost 12 Senate seats and 33 House seats.
Comparing 2012 to 1980, especially down the ticket, is perilous.
Read the rest, including the Republican chart.
Hi, in this analogy of Obama policy and how this is effecting everything he tries to Implement because of the Voter base he has being all about this topic , how can he go around the USA preaching for a Open Borders Policy or any kind of Immigration Policy that just gives the Illegal’s a Free Pass into the USA when Obama’s voter base of Environmentalists are screaming Population Control even his own CZARS scream Population control , so I think we should ask Obama how can you have it both ways Mr. President ??? Its Not the USA that has the problem with Overpopulation , if we enforce Border Laws , so why should we the people have to give up our Liberties ?
these next links are Obama supporters ….. http://dieoff.org/page27.htm , you know these guys are who wrote Obamacare .
http://www.applythebrakes.com/
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/eye/overpopulation/overpopulation.html
http://www.overpopulation.org/