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"The people, they want her"? What is Bill Clinton talking about?

Remember when a lot of the internet left loved Bill Clinton, when he was "the Big Dog"?  

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2008:A Miracle In Slow Motion

"A miracle in slow motion" is how I described the 2008 primary election on the phone the other day.  In a contest this long, where expectations have shifted suddenly or gradually, it's easy to forget...

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What does it mean to "hold Obama accountable"?

I've been thinking about this on and off for a while, because my biggest concern about Dailykos under a President Obama has always been that it will become either a talk-radio-esque cheering section or...

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Question for Ohioans--Richard Cordray?

I'm a bit of a resume junkie, and I've never seen one quite like Richard Cordray's, the marshall scholar/supreme court clerk/jeopardy champion/state representative/state solicitor/failed house...

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What the hell is up with Marc Ambinder?

I know Marc Ambinder is supposed to be the Atlantic's resident "objectiver reporter" guy, but I'm having trouble reconciling his zigs and zags on Surgegate.  

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What the hell is up with Marc Ambinder, part 2?

I just wanted to post this in the comments to Ambinder's post (especially since he includes comments so capriciously you may as well take advantage of them when they're there) but the site seems to be...

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Headline of the Year, or, Absolute Zero Achieved

I'm an avid reader of TPM and TPM's prolific Greg Sargent, but sometimes, I have to wonder how hard it is to keep that site running.  

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"Oh, Change for Obama!"--A True Story

This isn't the most serious diary in the world, but I have to share this completely-true volunteering story.  

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 Political Trivia Question--Who's won office in more than one state?

This is just for fun for political trivia junkies out there.

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Appearances can be deceiving: A Regression Analysis of the 2006 MD-04 Primary

In 2006 and 2008, a nonprofit executive named Donna Edwards ran against incumbent Congressman Al Wynn in Maryland's Fourth District, which includes portions of Prince George's County and Montgomery...

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The Cities, States, and Counties that "Look Most Like America": A Futile...

When I was discussing how I had been playing around with Census spreadsheets, a friend of mine suggested I find places that are the closest, ethnically speaking, to the United States as a whole.

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Janice Hahn and the Ideology of the Los Angeles City Council: Part 1

When people were discussing the CA-36 special election, some of them called the Democratic candidate, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, a moderate or even conservative Democrat.  I usually...

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What if Baldwin had run statewide in 2000? A precinct approach.

Introduction: Tammy Baldwin is a U.S. Representative from Wisconsin's Second District and the presumptive Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Herb Kohl.  On DK Elections, we've had...

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Baldwin's More Recent General Elections

In my last diary, I looked at a regression analysis I performed at the precinct level of Rep. Baldwin's 2000 election, where she narrowly won by a 2-point margin even as V.P. Gore won her district by...

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How competitive is the AZ legislature post-redistricting? (Note: Numbers...

This is just a quick diary on the new (well, "tentative final") map for the Arizona Legislature as drawn by the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC).  Note: When i was reading CF of...

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Did Outside Spending Take Down Any Democratic Incumbents in 2010?

Here on DKE and elsewhere, it's common to look at a candidate's fundraising to try to see how strong they are.  Sometimes, now, people will say that it doesn't matter how much a candidate raises,...

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Tulsi Gabbard: The Curiously Conservative and Nepotistic Network of a...

Tulsi Gabbard is a candidate for the HI-02 House seat vacated by Congresswoman Hirono to run for Senate. She has previously served in the military, in the Honolulu City Council, and in the Hawaii...

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Tulsi Gabbard's Recent Fundraising Still Shows Heavy Donations from Mike...

My last diary was about the connections--the common donors, staffers, and history--between the organizations of Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic candidate for Hawaii's open second Congressional district,...

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What's the matter with Kailua?: (Still) More on Tulsi Gabbard's Fundraising

Now that HI-02 candidate Tulsi Gabbard's year-end fundraising report has been digitized by the FEC, we can take a more comprehensive look at her itemized individual donations to date.  This will help...

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Representative Robert Crosser of Ohio (and other overlooked liberal forerunners)

If you're a modern-day liberal, it's an interesting exercise to look at Congressional roll-call votes from the 1910's--from the "Progressive Era".  Congress voted on a number of issues with modern...

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How often have candidates like Brad Schneider become Members of Congress?

Brad Schneider is a businessman and the newly-elected Democratic nominee in IL-10 to face Bob Dold in perhaps the most Democratic House seat currently held by a Republican.  Much of the discussion in...

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Mythbusting: Why I don't think "Citizens United", SuperPACs, or Karl Rove...

I think there's a story popular, to varying extents, among liberal and Democratic activists, about the 2010 elections, SuperPACs, and "Citizens United".  David Jarman, who spends a lot of time looking...

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Did 2008 "redraw the map" compared to 2004? Why? Where?

Yesterday, we had a very interesting discussion about the importance of the electoral college "map" vs. national polling.  I quoted Andrew Gelman, who said that "in 2008 the red/blue map was not...

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Andrei Cherny's Elite Democratic Networks: A Fundraising Analysis

Former Arizona Democratic party chair Andrei Cherny has a wide lead in fundraising for the primary for Arizona's new, Tempe-based 9th Congressional district, according to the FEC.  He's raised...

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The Hornet's Nest Stirs Against Amendment 1: LGBT Rights in Charlotte, the...

Yesterday was a huge day for LGBT rights, as the President of the United States came out for same-sex marriage.  But the previous night was also important, as North Carolina easily passed Amendment 1,...

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Kyrsten Sinema's Donor Network: Liberal Activists meet Arizona Insiders

Kyrsten Sinema is a former Arizona State Senator, former State Representative, and candidate for Arizona's new Ninth Congressional District.  This is a conventional biography, but Sinema is anything...

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Republicans Could Lose Control Of The Arizona Legislature--And It Could Come...

In the comments to his diary about the Arizona legislative elections--where the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission significantly altered the status quo--CF of Aus speculated that the...

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Republicans Could Lose The Arizona Legislature, But It Might Come Down To...

In my last diary, I looked at the race in Arizona's new LD-18, which has a Republican quasi-incumbent but where statewide Democrats have performed pretty well.  I said that Republican control of the...

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Craig Huey's Return: A Post-Primary Look At The California Assembly Elections

This is a relatively quick diary looking at the (current) results of the June Primary election in California, and what they tell us about the State Assembly.  Democrats, of course, will keep the...

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Don't Believe The Hype. Democrats in Wisconsin Weren't Outspent "7 to 1".

Nor were they outspent "eight to one" or "ten to one" or whatever.  In the election to recall Republican Governor Scott Walker and replace him with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Democrats were probably...

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Going Home Again: Fairfield County's Towns, Precincts, and Representatives...

Talking to sapelcovits the other week, I realized that I've mostly written about places very far from where I've ever lived. I wanted to write, instead, about my home area of Fairfield County,...

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Surprise, It's Bridgeport!: Fairfield County's Towns, Precincts, and...

Sorry it's taken me a bit of time to return to this series!  In this entry, I'll be showing some interesting visual representations I found of just how much Fairfield County has diversified.  After...

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DKE History: Who were the best and worst House candidates of 2004? (Part 1:...

I've been thinking we need to look more at history here at DKE, so let's step into the Wayback Machine and consider the 2004 House Elections--the last non-"wave" election cycle, and just far enough...

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Scott Walker's ACA Reading Comprehension Problem

Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, has an op-ed bashing the ACA based on a linked report by Gorman Actuarial, LLC and Jonathan Gruber.  (Which I found out from Bernstein.)  There's a kind of amazing...

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The Best- and Worst-Performing Republican Incumbents of the 2004 Election:...

In my last diary, I gave some of the results of an analysis I ran on the 2004 House Elections, trying to find candidates who did better and worse than they "should" have.  To keep the diary from being...

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Party Matters: Joe Manchin is closer to Bernie Sanders than he is to any...

The other day in DKE, Jacoby Jonze said that Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia "runs as a Dem, but acts like a Repub" and asked "what part of the Dem big tent does he fit under?"  These kinds of...

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Beyond the Netroots Bubble: Tulsi Gabbard's precincts were inversely...

Here on DKE, liberal activists seemed to have two clear favorites in the Hawaii primaries: Representative Mazie Hirono over former Representative Ed Case, and Honolulu City Councilwoman Tulsi Gabbard...

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Where did Bill Clinton do well in 1992 and 1996? The Partial Myth of Bubba....

Lawton Chiles famously said that Bill Clinton "knows how to speak cracker", and Clinton's drawling persona and successful performances in the 1992 and 1996 Presidential elections have contributed to...

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Clinton's strengths and Democratic trends accounting for Perot: A national...

I was very grateful for all the attention I got for my last diary on Clinton's areas of strength and weakness relative to Dukakis in 1992 and 1996.  Still, despite all the work I put into that diary,...

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AZ-LD-06: The tough (but maybe winnable) district between Democrats and the...

For a while now, I've been saying Republicans have a shot at losing control of the Arizona legislature under the newly-redistricted map.  And I still think so, but if I'm right, the swingiest open...

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A Surprisingly Predictable and Nationalized House Election? A preliminary...

We keep track of so many different elections here at DKE that sometimes it's important to step back and try to look at national trends.  Take the 2012 House Elections.  How "predictable" were they?...

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Don't Overthink the 2012 Election: Why One Equation Seems to Explain (Almost)...

Daily Kos Elections does a lot of good by compiling information about the politics of different places all over the country.  But there's a real danger if we focus too much on all of those differences....

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Why Arizona Didn't Trend Blue in 2012: Presidential Results by Legislative...

I've long been bullish on Democratic chances in Arizona, but the 2012 election saw Obama do surprisingly badly there, although Senate candidate Richard Carmona did surprisingly well (in part thanks to...

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Presidential Results by 1952 Districts: An Overview.

The 83rd Congress is interesting for a few reasons.  It was one of just two Republican Congresses of the post-FDR, pre-1994 period.  It's also the first Congress that I have Presidential results for,...

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How Democrats Won Back the House in 1954 (and how they lost it in 1952):...

In 1954, Democrats won back the House of Representatives after losing it in 1952, and despite my irritation at the mistakes I found in the 1952 results by Congressional district, there are still ways...

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The Palm Beach Puzzle: How did a diversifying urban county trend Republican?

After the 2012 election, "demographics are destiny" became a popular phrase.  As the country diversifies, so the story goes, pretty much everywhere will trend Democratic.There's no denying that many...

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Mapping Historical Votes: When Women's Suffrage Failed, 1915.

With the release of the amazing new historical Congressional shapefiles (by Jeffrey B. Lewis, Brandon Devine, Lincoln Pritcher, and the invaluable Congressional geographer Kenneth Martis), along with...

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Mapping Historical Votes: Prohibition Passes The House.

(cross-posted at my site, Xenocrypt's site.)Introduction:In a previous post, I mapped when women's suffrage failed in the U.S. House in 1915.  For this post, I thought I'd map the (House) passage of...

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Why Dallas County, Iowa had the greatest increase in college-educated...

IntroductionSome time ago, I noticed that Dallas County, Iowa had the greatest increase of any large county in the country in percentage of residents 25 years and older having at least a bachelor's...

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When did Fairfield County, CT trend Democratic? A town-level, interactive,...

I've writtenbefore about the political geography of Fairfield County, Connecticut.  As it happens, the Secretary of the State has town-level election results for every election back to 1922.  I decided...

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