Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has just introduced his new "Partisan Propensity Index" (PPI). If you've been following elections closely, you're probably already familiar with the Partisan Voting Index (PVI) from Cook, and similar statistics from Swing State Project. Cook's idea is to look at how each Congressional District voted for President compared to the nationwide average. So, for example, the NJ5 district (Garrett's) is rated R+7, meaning it voted 7 points more Republican than nationwide, while NJ13 (Sire's) is rated D+21. You can see why Democrats had such a hard time even with a good candidate against Garrett, and why Republicans didn't seriously contest NJ13 when Menendez left it. Unlike Congressional races, where often one candidate is hardly covered in the news and has hardly any campaign budget, the two party's Presidential candidates are well known. The PVI index is widely used to identify competitive districts.
Here's Silver's idea:
Are there any systematic differences in the ways that votes tend to fall for the Congress, as opposed to the Presidency? Are certain districts better or worse for Democrats, or Republicans, than PVI alone would suggest?
It turns out that there's one other factor which is fairly useful to look at, which is socioeconomic status. Relative to how they do for the Presidency, Democrats are somewhat more likely to win races for Congress in poorer districts, and somewhat more likely to lose them in wealthier ones. Another way to put this is that a split ticket of Republican for President, Democrat for Congress is more likely to occur in a poor district, whereas a split ticket of Democrat for President, Republican for Congress is more likely to occur in a wealthy one.
Click through for the statistical analysis he uses. Silver expresses his PPI index as the chance for Democrats to win an open seat in an average election cycle, based solely on two factors: the recent Presidential Vote and the percentage of the population with incomes under $25,000/yr. Here are the results for New Jersey:
District
Name
PVI
PPI
NJ11
Frelinhguysen
R+7
2.5%
NJ5
Garrett
R+7
3.2%
NJ4
Smith
R+6
10.9%
NJ7
Lance
R+3
13.9%
NJ3
Adler
R+1
27.9%
NJ12
Holt
D+5
62.9%
NJ2
LoBiondo
D+1
66.0%
NJ6
Pallone
D+8
85.2%
NJ9
Rothman
D+9
88.8%
NJ8
Pascrell
D+10
96.6%
NJ1
Andrews
D+12
97.0%
NJ13
Sires
D+21
99.95%
NJ10
Payne
D+33
99.998%
The main lesson, if you take this ratings seriously, is that New Jersey's wealth makes the battleground Congressional districts lean Republican compared to how they vote at the Presidential level. In many states, the R+3 and even the R+7 districts have a great chance of going Democratic at the Congressional level, but here NJ5 and NJ7 are actually quite unfavorable, and should vote for the House like R+14 districts in the rest of the country. When we evaluate how our candidates did, it's worth keeping this effect in mind.
Frank LoBiondo's district is the poorest in New Jersey, and by this measure is slightly better for Democrats than Holt's district, but we are stuck with the echo of 1994. In case it's not obvious, being an incumbent matters, scandals matter, and cycles can be more or less Republican than the average cycle, and you should always remember that the most likely outcome doesn't always happen. All of our 2010 races have incumbents so the percentages definitely do not apply. Also, this is the last election in the current districts.
As I was watching Scott Sipprelle giving his victory speech, I could not help but notice how elitist he was when he, in illustrating the economic hardships of the state, stigmatized food service workers.
Now, food service is an unpleasant job, and I wouldn't do it, and the suggestion I would do it would be triggering for reasons I won't disclose here. However, these people show up everyday, work in loud, noisy conditions with sometimes ungrateful customers, and have to deal with low pay and not having healthcare (one of the reasons I am an uncompromising advocate of single payer) and being in an at-will workplace.
The Honorable Governor Chris Christie says, "we must share the pain." He wants to cut $850 Million from the state education budget. He needs to do this to support a tax cut of $900 Million to people who make over $400,000 per year.
What pain is he asking the poor suffering masses who make over $400,000 per year to share? The pain of sunburn from a few extra days at the beach on the French Riveria? A few more days jetlagged? An additional hangover?
But Christie's priorities don't surprise me. He is a Republican. His economic policies are the same failed economic policies of Hoover, Reagan, and George W. Bush. We need to listen to Keynes, Daly, Stiglitz, and Krugman.
I am asking you to take Election Day off from work and come to Somerset County to make this election as painful as possible for the Republican bosses. We can win this county for Barack Obama and put some serious dents in the Republican hold here.
Just last month Somerset's registration advantage moved from the GOP to the Democrats, we have awesome candidates for Freeholder in Doug Singleterry and Cecilia Xie Birge, have four different Congressional races (Pallone, Holt, Wyka and Stender), and candidates running in just about every town. This is an opportunity we haven't seen in a long time, and we need your help to make it happen.
We will be working out of Bridgewater (Martinsville), Hillsborough, Montgomery and maybe one other town but our goal is to reach every single district in the county at least once. We need you to give us a few hours to make this happen.
This is an amazing opportunity to put NJ7 in the Democrats' pocket, elect Democratic Freeholders in Somerset for the first time since 1979, take some of the wind out of Rodney Frelinghuysen, and win control of at least four towns.
We need challengers at the polls, van drivers for our volunteers, people to go door-to-door to our voters reminding them to get to the polls, and others to staff the staging areas. Anyone 16 years or older can volunteer on election day and make a real difference.
If you can give us one, two, three, four or eight hours on election day, please give me a call at (908) 561-6387 or e-mail me at nathanrudy@gmail.com .
If you can't come to Somerset, please be sure to volunteer in your home town or county. The more workers we have the more votes we'll get!
Representative Rush Holt held a press conference today to address irregularities with some electronic voting machines in last week's elections.
As we stand here today, the results in at least one House race remain unknown because thousands of votes were lost by electronic voting machines. Until we require that these systems produce a voter-verified paper audit trail, voters will continue to doubt the outcomes of elections involving these machines, because the results will be unauditable.
The inaccuracy of electronic touch-screen voting machines poses a direct threat to the integrity of our electoral system and to our nation’s democracy. Once again this broken system has been exposed in Florida’s 13th Congressional district where over 18,000 votes went uncounted. Without the means to fully guarantee that every vote is counted as fairly and accurately as possible, the authenticity of our recorded vote will always be uncertain and open to electoral and legal challenges.
(Congressman Holt is answering more of the questions posted earlier. - promoted by jmelli)
Today I announce my campaign for reelection as the Congressional Representative for the people of the 12th Dictrict of New Jersey.
I am announcing on the web and through this blog intentionally to make the point that in my campaign and in my work as Member of Congress I seek input from citizens and I seek to build community.
A different kind of Congressman kicks off a different kind of campaign...This Monday, May 22, at 10:00 a.m., Congressman Rush Holt will hold his Campaign Kick-Off. This year, in addition to doing an event on Monday morning at Rider University, we’ll be broadcasting the event in real time via RushHolt.com. If you can’t join us in person, we hope you’ll view it on the web with fellow supporters at selected meet-ups throughout the district. Also, join Rush at 10:30 a.m. right here on BlueJersey for live blogging. He’ll take questions about the direction of the country, issues before Congress, and anything else on your mind. I really, or virtually, hope you can join us! Click here to see event flyer!
This is the most recent listing of candidates that have filed petitions for federal office. The first candidate listed in each category is the incumbent. The number after their names indicates the number of petition signatures submitted, and I also included the slogans of some of the candidates running without the party endorsement.
US Senate:
Bob Menendez (D) 8029 James D. Kelly Jr (D) 1300 Thomas H. Kean Jr. (R) 4202 John P. Ginty (R) 1742
House Districts
1: Rob Andrews (D)
2: Frank LoBiondo (R) 804 Viola Thomas-Hughes (D) 298 Henry David Marcus (D) 207 "Change the Course!"
3: Jim Saxton (R) 949 Richard Sexton (D) 293
4: Chris Smith (R) 675 Gary Schiavone (D) 310
5: Scott Garrett (R) 513 Michael Cino (R) 300 Paul Aronsohn (D) 495 Camille M. Abate (D) 427 "A New Spine For Congress"
6: Frank Pallone Jr (D) 310 Leigh-Ann Bellew (R) 278
7: Mike Ferguson (R) 896 Linda Stender (D) 532
8: Bill Pascrell (D) 4301 Jose Sandivol (R) 407
9: Steve Rothman (D) 1020 Vincent Micco (R) 321
10: Donald Payne (D) 1244 Deshon Porter (D) 211
11: Rodney Frelinghuysen (R) 699 Tom Wyka (D) 332
12: Rush Holt (D) 1216 Joseph Sinagra (R) 225
13: Special election for unexpired term Albio Sires (D) 530 James Geron (D) 268
13: For full term Albio Sires (D) 3229 Joseph Vas (D) 594 John Guarini (R) 255
Update 3 (A big one, so I'm posting it up top): There WILL be two Democratic challengers to Frank LoBiondo in NJ-2. Fairfield Township councilwoman Viola Thomas-Hughes and Henry David Marcus will compete in the primary. This now means that every Republican House member in New Jersey will face a challenger in November.
According to the Division of Elections, Gary Schiavone has filed to challenge Chris Smith in the 4th Congressional district. With about two hours left until the filing deadline, no Democrat has filed in the 2nd yet to challenge LoBiondo.
The GOP has failed to file challenges to Rob Andrews (NJ-1) and Donald Payne (NJ-10).
Update 1: Donald Payne (NJ-10) will have a challenger in the primary, and Michael Cino has just filed to challenge Garrett in the primary. Assemblywoman Oadline Truitt (D) from the 28th legislative district will face a primary challenge.
Update 3 (A big one, so I'm posting it up top): There WILL be two Democratic challengers to Frank LoBiondo in NJ-2. Fairfield Township councilwoman 
