What Current Polls Can Tell Us About the Midterm Elections

Remember that polls are simply a snapshot in time but National Review's Jim Geraghty has shared the enterprising work of Sean Trende of UVA's Center for Politics that looks at the likelihood that a candidate with a certain percentage lead in the polls at this point in an election will go on to win.  Jim then looks at what Trende's chart tells us about the close races and the chances the GOP will send Harry Reid packing his office and moving to the minority leader's office in the Capitol.  First the good news:

Let’s start with the good news for Republicans.
In Arkansas, Tom Cotton is enjoying a 5.5 point lead. 86 percent chance of victory!

In Colorado, Cory Gardner has a 4 point lead. 91 percent chance of victory!

In Alaska, Dan Sullivan has a 4.3 point lead. 91 percent for him, too!

In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell has a 4.4 percent lead.

In Iowa, Joni Ernst has a 2.5 point lead, right between 2 and 3. Oooh, a 70 to 77 percent chance of victory!

(In Louisiana, Bill Cassidy has a 4.8 percent lead in a head-to-head matchup, but that race is almost certain to go to a runoff. Put that one aside for now.)

In case you were wondering, in South Dakota, Mike Rounds has a 9.8 percent lead in the RealClearPolitics average, but it would be 3.5 if you only used polls conducted in October. So you can interpret his odds of victory as either 97 percent or 91 percent if you round up to 4.

Here’s the kind of intriguing news for Republicans: In Kansas, “independent” Greg Orman’s lead is eight-tenths of a percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average. Rounding that to one, we find on the above chart that Orman has… a 44 percent chance of victory. Yup, somehow having a one-point lead 13 days from Election Day is actually a bad sign. However, by 12 days, the chance of victory with a one point lead jumps up to 88 percent; by a few days later, it’s down to 68 percent.

Georgia Michelle Nunn’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average is 0.4 percent. So she’s not even on the chart. Bump her up to one point for the sake of argument, and she’s in the same spot as Orman.

Then he looks at the not so good news:

In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan has a 1.6 point lead, which we’ll round up to 2 points. Bad news, Thom Tillis, that’s a 70 percent chance of victory for her!

In New Hampshire, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen also has a 1.6 point lead, which comes to a 70 percent chance of victory. Considering how steadily Scott Brown has closed these past weeks, you have to wonder if this is one of those 30 percent cases.

Every other Senate race has a 6 percentage point margin or higher.

This is a nice but not quite ideal scenario for Republicans. Assuming neither Georgia or Louisiana are resolved on Election Night, let’s assume Republicans lose the seat in Kansas and gain seats in Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alaska, Colorado and Iowa. That’s a net gain of six seats! But as great as that sounds, it would give Republicans 50 seats and Democrats 48. If Democrats win both runoffs, they could keep control of the chamber by having Vice President Biden break the ties. If Cassidy wins the December runoff, Georgia’s January runoff becomes moot to control of the Senate.

If you are not a political junkie, then it probably doesn't matter to you whether we will be following run off elections through Thanksgiving and Christmas.  But it matters which party controls congress.  We know what Harry Reid has done to gun owners.  By changing the rules of the Senate, he has allowed Obama to pack the federal courts with anti-rights judges.  It is in the best interest of gun owners that Harry Reid and his band of cohorts are sent into the minority, thus making it harder for Obama to appoint more anti-rights justices to the courts.  And the only way to do that is if all gun owners in states with U.S. Senate races turn out and vote for the candidates who support our rights.

This Hill Article Says it All

Virginia's U.S. Senate race is considered a long shot to send Mark Warner back to the private sector.  But the real prize in 2014 has always been seeing the GOP sending Obama's gun ban supporting Harry Reid packing his majority leader office to the minority.  While many pundits point to signs that the prize is within reach, this article in The Hill should energize gun owners and other voters wanting to turn back many of Obama's unpopular polices to work that much harder until the votes are cast.  The article specifically talks about the Colorado U.S. Senate race but could be about any of the races that the GOP are close to winning.  It's never over until it's over and a good number of election laws that allow voting by mail and to register right up to election day give our opponents the opportunity turn out their voters.

Every registered voter received a ballot in the mail last week, giving both Republicans and Democrats the opportunity to follow turnout in real time and pester holdouts. Coloradans can also register to vote through Election Day, allowing for the possibility that both parties could increase turnout.

Democrats boast that their ground game is better than ever.

So, whether you live in Virginia where the challenger has a hard road ahead in the final two weeks, or Colorado, North Carolina, South Dakota or Kansas, now is the time to get out and do everything you can to see your candidate win, and see Harry Reid lose his job as Obama's top Lieutenant in the U.S. Senate.  You can find an NRA Campaign Field Rep or Election Volunteer Coordinator in your area and volunteer to help by clicking here.

Don't Recall Liberals Calling For Republicans to Change Senate Filibuster Rules

Roll Call has an op/ed today by Nan Aron, president of  Alliance for Justice, that praises the rules change Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rammed through earlier this year and how that change has allowed a number of President Obamas court appointees to clear confirmation by the Senate:

A rule-or-ruin campaign by the Republican minority had turned the filibuster from a rarely used tactic reserved for extreme circumstances into a weapon of mass obstruction, used routinely to block nominations and paralyze entire government agencies.

That’s why the Senate had to change its rules to end filibusters with a simple majority vote. But now a months-long Republican temper tantrum is wasting the Senate’s — and the American people’s — time, necessitating new countermeasures.

I don't recall Aron making the same complaint about the Democrats when they were in the minority during the Bush Administration and how they held up, and in some cases killed, a number of Bush court appointees, using the exact same "weapon of mass obstruction."  And, maybe given the likelihood that Democrats may lose control of the Senate this year, she may wonder if she should have been more careful for what she wished.

Have Americans Finally Had Enough of Government Overreach?

Opening up the news feeds this morning and I find what I think is a pattern. 

As Many As One Million Armed New Yorkers Are About To Break The Law

Feds play waiting game at Nevada ranch

Now that second one is a little more complicated and it is not as easy to come down squarely with the ranch owner but there is also some appearance of cronyism by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Having said that, the picture of citizens  (mostly unarmed) standing up to armed federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) staff is striking

Courtesy of National Review Online

Tom Gresham addressed the latter during the first few minutes of his "After Show" on Sunday.  Add to this the stories of Connecticut gun owners resisting registration of their firearms and ammo magazines by the deadline and you come to the question, has the American people, or at least a portion of the public, finally seen that government is taking away more and more of our liberty and had enough?

Federal Gun Control Dead In Senate for 2014

Bitter has the story here. Seems even Harry Reid is not willing to bet Bloomberg's money can save his majority if he forced Red State Democrats to jump off the cliff for something that a majority of the public opposes.

Is Mark Warner Wishing the Old Filibuster Rules Were Still in Effect?

Last Thursday, Jim Geraghty was doing his weekly appearance on NRANews' Cam and Company. During the discussion on the demise of President Obama's nomination for Surgeon General, Geraghty raised the question of whether endangered Democrats wished that Harry Reid had never imposed the "Nuclear Option" for Obama appointees.

It made me wonder if Mark Warner is one of those who might be second guessing that vote to do away with the 60 vote threshold for moving certain items through the Senate.  Warner has spent a lot of time since 2000 remaking himself from the anti-gun left of center liberal chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia to the "radical centrist" Democrat that supports the Second Amendment, balanced budgets, and bipartisanship. As Governor, he never vetoed a pro-gun bill and in 2004 signed 17 really good pieces of pro-gun legislation.  That earned him an NRA "A" rating in 2008 (but no endorsement as his opponent was also a former governor with an "A" rating that also happened to be an NRA Board member).  Warner probably was just looking for the "A" rating anyway.

Even though Warner has tried to portray himself as bipartisan, he has voted with President Obama and Harry Reid 97% of the time over the last five years.  Most recently, thanks to losing the cover of the filibuster, Warner voted to confirm Debo Adegbile, President Obama's pick to head the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department and an advocate for cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.  This wasn't a case of a defendant needing an attorney to defend him at his original trial.  Adegbile took up the cause of this dirt bag decades after his original conviction for the execution style killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.  Reid miscalculated and was abandoned by the Democrats who are considered endangered this year.  Warner apparently feels confident enough about reelection that even having to vote for the advocate of a cop killer did not cause him to break with Reid and the President.  We likely won't know how he would have voted on the gun ban advocate Surgeon General nominee as Reid did a better job of counting votes than he did with the Adegbile nomination and has pulled it from consideration.

We do know that last year Warner voted for the Manchin/Schumer/Toomey amendment that would have criminalized private transfers of firearms, created a national gun registry and had other negative impacts on gun owners, and he voted to confirm both Sonia Sotomayor and Elana Kagan to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor voted against our rights in the McDonald case. Kagan has not had the opportunity to vote on a Second Amendment case since joining the court but is not considered friendly to our rights based on her time in the Obama administration.

As Governor, Warner had to work with a Republican House and Senate.  He was able to carefully cultivate the bipartisan appearance under such circumstances.  Since joining the Senate, he has voted in a more partisan manner.  It remains to be seen if his yet to be determined GOP opponent will be able to capitalize on this more partisan record and give Warner a run for his money.

Durbin Says Manchin/Schumer/Toomey Might Have Stopped Navy Yard Shooter From Getting Firearm

Based on what we know, (and admittedly the media has done a terrible job of getting the facts straight), the Navy Yard shooter legally purchased his shotgun after undergoing a background check at the firearm retailer.  So, this comment by Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin's reported in The Hill make's absolutely no sense:

Durbin, who is Reid’s top deputy, suggested on Tuesday morning that a measure to expand background checks — which the Senate defeated in April — might have prevented the shooting.

From my recollection, Manchin/Schumer/Toomey was to make sure all (or almost all) firearm transfer's went through a background check.  The Navy Yard shooter did submit to a background check and passed.  So, how exactly might Manchin/Toomey/Schumer prevented him from getting his firearm?

The shooter had several run-ins with the police in the last 10 years, none of which were prosecuted, or at least charged at a level that would make him a prohibited buyer.  Given these facts, even if Manchin/Toomey/Schumer had passed, it would have had no impact on the shooter's ability to purchase his firearm.  Second, it appears that the shooter had mental health issues - again, to my recollection, something not addressed by Manchin/Toomey/Schumer.  Charles Krauthammer discussed the mental health issue last night on Fox News.

For some reason, Congress does not want to address the mental health issue although that was supposed to have been one of the issues addressed after Newtown.  The administration and their allies in the Senate decided to focus only on gun control and when they lost that battle in April, moved on to other unrelated issues.

Jim Geraghty this morning pretty much summed-up why the renewed talk of gun control after Monday's murders rings particularly hollow:

I begin rather skeptical of most gun-control proposals. The ones that are pitched in the aftermath of mass shootings are particularly cynical, as they often attempt to regulate circumstances unrelated to the shooting.

And that is exactly the problem with all of this talk of background checks.  The shooter went through a background check and passed.  Nothing in the proposal from this past spring would have changed that.

Harry Reid, Gun Control, and 2014

Bitter over on Shall Not Be Questioned has this post suggesting Harry Reid's promise to bring up another vote on gun control before the 2014 general election may be an attempt to hold his majority in the U.S. Senate. He must be nuts you might be saying.  Basically, Reid is calculating that it will give his members running for re-election in red states one last chance to cast a pro-gun vote and giving gun owners on less reason to vote against them. Bitter points out other benefits Reid might see in such a strategy like causing the NRA to hold up endorsements until the votes are taken. She makes some valid points and I think she is spot on. Read the post and see if you agree.

Reid to Add Criminalization of Private Sales to Senate Gun Control Bill

The Hill reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will include criminalization of private firearm sales to the gun control bill that will be considered in the Senate in April.

“I hope negotiations will continue over the upcoming break to reach a bipartisan compromise on background checks, and I am hopeful that they will succeed. If a compromise is reached, I am open to including it in the base bill,” he said.

Senate aides noted that the current Schumer "place holder" background check legislation will not receive 60 votes, which is why Reid is hoping to get a 'bipartisan" bill that can garner the necessary votes to break cloture (the process that requires 60 votes to advance legislation to a vote).  Without 60 votes, basically nothing can advance in the upper chamber.

“I want to be clear: In order to be effective, any bill that passes the Senate must include background checks,” he said.

Reid made it clear that anything that cannot get 60 votes will not be included in the "base" bill but that does not mean other proposals will not be allowed from the floor.

“The bill I advance tonight will serve as the basis for opening debate,” he said. “Once debate begins, I will ensure that a ban on assault weapons, limits to high-capacity magazines, and mental health provisions receive votes, along with other amendments. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for all of these provisions to receive votes, and I will ensure that they do.”

So, the battle lines are being drawn.  Background checks is where Reid and the gun banners plan to spend their political capital.  You know what to do - call your Senators now.

American Public's Mixed Message on Gun Control

Buried at the end of this Roll Call article on the tightrope that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is walking on the issue of gun control, is this tidbit from a poll by a Las Vegas CBS affiliate:

A state poll conducted last week for the Las Vegas CBS affiliate found that a majority of respondents favor a prohibition on assault weapons but also that Americans should be allowed to own the firearms of their choosing — a contradictory result that underscores the trouble with the issue. However, large majorities of respondents favor registration and background check requirements.

Did Harry Reid Throw D.C. Voting Rights Under the Bus for Naught

That's the question that the Washington City Paper asks in this article about the NRA's decision not to endorse Reid.

Those who were watching the battle over legislation that would have given the District full and equal voting rights in the U.S. House know Reid’s role in allowing a poison-pill amendment” on the voting rights legislation, a D.C. gun-rights provision that many D.C. officials, including Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, could not in the end stomach.

The NRA noted Reid's votes for U.S. Supreme Court nominees Sonja Sotomayor and Elana Kagan as the reason for not endorsing one of the most endangered incumbents in congress. Over the last six years, Reid has pretty much voted for pro-gun legislation and against anti-gun measures. NRA has shown however that it meant what it said when it opposed both Sotomayor and Kagan.

It should be noted that NRA did not endorse Reid's opponent, Sharon Angle, either. It will be interesting to see what Reid's final NRA-PVF rating is when they become public sometime in October. Virginians will then have some indication just what support for the two anti-gun nominees might also cost Virginia Senator's Jim Webb and Mark Warner, both of whom voted for Obama's nominees to the high court and who have carefully worked to cultivate a pro-gun voting record on things like national carry reciprocity and gun rights for D.C. Webb may be facing former Senator George Allen in a rematch of the 2006 race in 2012.

Democrats and Gun Rights

This Boston Globe story is good news for gun owners.

Democratic candidates in key states are embracing gun owners’ rights, winning favor from the National Rifle Association, a lobby that has long been the target of disdain from the party faithful.

It's good news because when gun owners don't have to worry about a candidate unfriendly to Second Amendment issues winning, then they can focus on other issues that may be important to them in the hope of getting the best candidate elected, not just the best candidate on gun rights.

Conservative gun owners who have expressed dismay that Harry Reid may receive the NRA endorsement should under stand that the NRA can disavow a candidate that has a good voting record. That is how much of their success has been achieved - having a rating system and endorsement that means something to candidates.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, in a bruising campaign for reelection in Nevada, has conservative activists buzzing because the NRA is considering endorsing his reelection.

In the Nevada race, Sharron Angle also has a very good record on gun issues as a state legislator. With the gun issue settled, those working to unseat Reid can concentrate on convincing voters that while Reid may be good on the gun issue, he is horrible on other issues that are taking the country in the wrong direction.

The same can be said here in Virginia's 9th District. Incumbent Congressman Rick Boucher has already received the NRA endorsement. He is running against the equally good, Delegate Morgan Griffith, who as the Virginia House of Delegates Majority Leader, received an A+ rating in his last state house campaign. Gun owners don't have to be concerned about losing a good vote on our issue if they decide the Griffith is better on other issues.

“I think there’s been a change in the country as a whole,’’ said Jon Delano, an independent political analyst associated with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “Unless you’re from an urban area, where gun violence is so intense that there’s a feeling you need to control these weapons, the vast majority across the country do not support gun control.’’

When both parties respect freedom, gun owners win. While the leadership of the Democratic Party may not be pro-gun, individual candidates certainly are in many areas. That is a good thing for the Republic, and for gun owners.