The Progressive Midwesterner

Here's a couple of interesting points of analysis about the elections in North Dakota earlier this month, which included a whopping 13 (!!!) statewide elections in North Dakota this year (two federal legislative elections, six state executive elections, one state supreme court election, and four state referenda). First, soon-to-be-former U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (DNPL-ND) got a similar percentage of the vote in her unsuccessful U.S. Senate re-election bid this year to the percentage of the vote that she received in her unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2000. Here's a set of maps, courtesy of J. Miles Coleman of Decision Desk HQ, comparing the 2018 U.S. Senate election in North Dakota to the 2000 gubernatorial election in North Dakota: The #NDSen result this year was very similar to 2000, when Heitkamp ran for Governor. She lost to John Hoeven by 10% then. Most of her gains in 2018 were around Fargo & in American Indian counties. The western region, however, has gotten...

Yesterday, I created this spreadsheet containing a county-by-county analysis of the 2018 early vote in North Dakota, as of October 20. Early voting participation in North Dakota has been high: some North Dakota counties have already seen numbers of received early vote ballots that are more than one-quarter of the total number of overall votes cast in the 2012 U.S. Senate election in North Dakota. Here are some important notes regarding the analysis of the North Dakota early vote so far: As of this writing, no votes have been actually counted for any candidates in North Dakota in the 2018 elections; vote totals for specific candidates are not reported until after the Election Day polls close. Unlike every other U.S. state, North Dakota lacks voter registration, so there aren't official early voting statistics based on party registration and/or race like some, but not all, other states provide. The North Dakota Secretary of State's office maintains a drop-down list of earl...

At yesterday's U.S. Senate debate in Missouri between Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill and Republican challenger Josh Hawley, McCaskill's response to Hawley's claim that he'll protect health care coverage for Missourians contained multiple sentence, but one sentence in particular stood out: If he believes we should protect pre-existing conditions, he should ask tomorrow for the case to be dismissed. Hawley is currently the Attorney General of Missouri, and Hawley is one of numerous Republican state attorneys general who are suing in an attempt to undermine health care coverage protections for those with pre-existing conditions. Hawley, if he wanted to, could withdraw the State of Missouri from the lawsuit, but he hasn't done so. What Hawley and a lot of other Republicans are doing amounts to gaslighting, since they're claiming to support protecting health care coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, while, at the same time, their actions seek to...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may not have to face Kentucky voters himself until two years from now, although he recently proposed cutting the budgets of three core programs that are part of America's social safety net, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid : McConnell said it was “very disturbing,” and driven by Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid spending. The solution to cutting the deficit, he concluded, is making “entitlement changes.” Asked about the federal debt reaching $21 trillion and the deficit projected to top $1 trillion next year, McConnell did not mention tax cuts at all. “It’s very disturbing, and it’s driven by the three big entitlement programs that are very popular,” he said. “Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. That’s 70 percent of what we spend every year. The subject we were just discussing, the funding of the government, is about 30 percent of what we spend. There’s been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes bec...

I feel nauseously disappointed having to type this, since I don't like having to say this about any Democrat running for re-election, but I'm beginning to seriously doubt that U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (DNPL-ND) can win re-election. A recent Fox News poll had Heitkamp trailing Republican challenger Kevin Cramer by 12 percentage points (41%-53%) among likely voters and by nine percentage points (41%-50%) among eligible voters. The sample of the poll was 29% Democratic, 54% Republican, and 17% Independent/Other by political party identification among likely voters, and 29% Democratic, 52% Republican, and 19% Independent/Other by political party identification among eligible voters. The poll represents an apparent surge in support for Cramer, despite Cramer having made a series of disgusting remarks about sexual assault . Furthermore, the poll appears to corroborate a recent poll by an obscure marketing firm called Strategic Research Associates showing Heitkamp trailing by ten p...

TRIGGER WARNING: An alleged act of sexual assault committed by a nominee for a U.S. Supreme Court seat is referenced in this blog post. Reader discretion is strongly advised.