The Progressive Midwesterner

Since the population of the average state legislative district in North Dakota is significantly less less than the population of, for example, the population of the average state senate district in my home state of Illinois, it's, as far as I'm aware of, not common to see television advertising for state legislative candidates in North Dakota. However, the all-female Democratic-NPL slate of candidates in North Dakota state legislative district 17, which includes part of Grand Forks County in the northeastern part of the state, is running a high-quality television advertisement featuring state senate candidate Phyllis Johnson and state house candidates Monte Gaukler and Angela Urlacher engaging in conversations with voters: There is immense energy working cooperatively with empowered women. @Angela_Urlacher , Phyllis Johnson, and I have enjoyed our journey together and we are hoping to travel to Bismarck. We would appreciate your support on November 6th. #WorkingTogetherMovin...

After eight years of busting labor unions, mismanaging Wisconsin state government, and alienating some of his own former state cabinet members, it appears that Wisconsinites have finally had enough of Scott Walker's destruction of Wisconsin. It is my hope that this is the final time that I will write a blog post criticizing Walker. Unlike the failed 2012 recall attempt against Walker and the 2014 general election, this time feels a lot different in regards to Democratic prospects of defeating Walker. One reason why Walker is in bigger electoral trouble than in previous elections is because of the Democratic challenger who is running against Walker this year. Unlike past Democratic opponents against Walker, which included Tom Barrett and Mary Burke, Tony Evers is already well-established in Wisconsin politics as the state superintendent of public instruction, so he had an iron-clad electability argument that was one of numerous reasons why he was able to win the Democratic guber...

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...

At a League of Women Voters (LWV) forum for Minnesota State House District 25A (district map here ), which includes northwestern Olmsted County and portions of Dodge County in southern Minnesota, Republican incumbent Duane Quam and Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) challenger Jamie Mahlberg were required to share a microphone. While that was a well-intentioned idea on the part of the local LWV chapter in that part of Minnesota (I assume they didn't want the candidates talking over each other, which is a common occurrence in political debates/forums where each candidate has a dedicated microphone), it didn't work out well. That's because Quam, at one point in the forum, ripped the microphone out of Mahlberg's hands, and, after giving a rebuttal to Mahlberg's response to a question about education funding in Minnesota in, threw the microphone down in front of Mahlberg: It's inherently clear that Representative Quam has zero respect for women. I seriously doubt th...

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...

Based on recent pre-election opinion polling in the gubernatorial race here in Illinois, Democratic nominee J.B. Pritzker has a commanding lead over Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner, with Pritzker close to majority support in Illinois (only a plurality of the vote is needed to win election to the governor's office in Illinois). Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU Carbondale) has a pre-election opinion polling operation that focuses on polling high-profile Illinois electoral races, such as races for governor, and a recent poll that they conducted had Pritzker with a commanding, but not prohibitive, lead in this year's gubernatorial race : The poll was conducted September 24-29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage point for the entire sample. The poll covered a sample of 1,001 registered voters. The election analysis presented here is based on 715 likely voters. The margin of error for likely voters is 3.7 percentage points. When asked, “If th...