Miscellany Blue - New Hampshire Politics

The Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI) compares how a congressional district votes relative to the nation as a whole. The index objectively measures each congressional district as a means to allow comparisons between districts that are relevant in both mid-term and presidential election years.

The index is derived by averaging a district’s voting results from the previous two presidential elections and comparing them to national results. The result indicates the number of percentage points by which the party’s vote exceeded the national average.

For example, a D+2 PVI means the district performed two points more Democratic than the nation did as a whole in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The Democratic candidates would have received roughly 53.3% of the two-party vote compared to the national two-party average of 51.3%.

Using this same methodology, I have calculated the PVI for each New Hampshire voting ward and created a map of the results. 158 of the state’s 299 voting wards with at least 25 votes in the 2008 presidential election lean Democratic. They are led by Hanover as the most Democratic ward in New Hampshire with a D+29 PVI. 118 wards lean Republican. The most Republican voting ward in the state (with at least 200 votes) is New Ipswich in Hillsborough county with a R+16 PVI.

Read More →

Marc Ambinder writes perceptively about “the slow mainstreaming of wacky ideas. Call it the victory of the heckler’s vetoers or attribute it to the dynamics of the way groups are formed, but more and more outre ideas are finding their way into politics these days.”

His wacky idea du jour is the tea party-backed call to repeal the 17th Amendment which provides for the direct election of U.S. senators in lieu of having them selected by state legislatures. Supporters of repeal blame the amendment for creating excessive federal control by removing checks and balances previously available to the states to control Congress.

In a debate last week, the Republican CD-1 candidates were asked if they supported repeal. To their credit, each stated opposition to repeal — “for now”. But in follow-up interviews with Granite Grok, they stumbled all over themselves to lend credence to the idea of repeal and its supporters.

Frank Guinta: “There are pros and cons. We need to weigh this one very carefully.” Rich Ashooh: “I’m not sure exactly what the answer is, whether it is full out repeal (or) a different kind of amendment…” Bob Bestani: “There needs to be a discussion about it.” As the campaign heats up and competition for the tea party votes intensifies, watch for more tea party dog whistles.

And let’s hear what Charlie “Their Agenda is Exactly the Same as Mine” Bass has to say about this one.