MS-1: Will Nationalizing Obama Work?
by Patrick Ruffini :: May 11th, 2008 10:48 pmAnother too-close-for-comfort special election looms on Tuesday, with Republican Greg Davis in a dogfight with Democrat Travis Childers in MS-1, a Bush 62%, Cook PVI R+10 seat. Childers nearly won an outright majority in first round balloting two weeks ago.
Once again, the strategy of tying Obama to a Democratic Congressional candidate is being tested aggressively, with Childers stirring the pot after denying Obama had endorsed him (when he in fact had).
This was what the NRCC put on the air in LA-6, our last special election defeat:
It’s no wonder Woody Jenkins came up short. This is a conventional cookie cutter ad that could have been run in any of the other 434 districts in any election this past decade. The NRCC claims some credit for tightening the race from the 5-9 point lead Don Cazayoux had a week or so out to three points, but at the House level and with the additional variable of a conservative independent on the ballot, that spread is not too convincing. Obama/taxes was ALL the NRCC ran in LA-6.
The NRCC’s IE unit is doing better work in MS-1, targeting its ads squarely against Childers:
Still, the Obama message is being heard in a big way, with Freedom’s Watch dumping at least $500,000 into anti-Obama spots like this one.
I have to ask: Is this it? Is this the best we can do? Demonizing Nancy Pelosi has worked nowhere because of the Speaker’s milquetoast public persona. Absent some scandal or hugely controversial statement, it’s difficult to nationalize a local race around a party leader. In the wake of Rev. Wright and “bitter,” some are betting Obama can be this lightning rod.
He may well be, but these special elections are the wrong places to test the theory. Special elections are low-turnout affairs dominated by high information voters likely to know a lot about local issues. These are the voters least likely to be swayed by a boilerplate nationalization of the race. This is part of why specials can often diverge so wildly from the partisan trend in a district despite the local majority party’s best efforts. In special elections more than most elections, candidates rise and fall on their own merits.
In the general election, with an extremely high noise level surrounding the Presidential race and Congressional elections an afterthought, Republicans might have better luck with tying red state Democrats to Obama. In November, a smaller percentage of the electorate will be making an independent decision about a local Congressional candidate. For many, their Presidential vote will influence their votes down ballot. This is why we seldom see huge partisan swings at the Congressional level in Presidential election years. Expanding the universe of low-information partisans voting tends to dampen the partisan mood swings we see in midterms. In Presidential election years, districts more easily revert to their partisan norms, normally a good thing in places like LA-6 and MS-1.
Still, we have to do better than the ads Republicans have run in these spring specials, which are so conventional they’ll automatically get tuned out and have zero persuasive impact whatsoever.
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