There is a lot of speculation on what the turnout model is going to be this election cycle. Will it be like 2008 with high Democrat turnout? Will it be like 1994 with high GOP turnout? Or will it be something brand new – a wave of voter anger fueled by the centrists and Tea Party grass roots? Some new data on early voting tells a surprising story.

We have our first hard data voter interest data from a place called Elko County, NV and in the form of absentee ballot tallies by political affiliation. Elko County is clearly a highly Republican region where 56% of the early voters are registered with the GOP, 24% are registered Democrat, 15% are “non-partisan” and the rest come from a smattering of small parties ranging from the left and right. The following graph (click to enlarge) lays out the 2010 mix of absentee ballots as counted in Elko County by the top three political affiliations – which is also 95% of all the affiliations tracked.

Now what is interesting about the absentee ballots in Elko County is that there has been an overall 13% increase in absentee voting since 2008! That is pretty impressive for an off year election (compared to a presidential election cycle – not to mention one of the most intense presidential cycles of recent times). That tells us something right there – this looks to be a high turn out election. Even more interesting is the fact every affiliation, even the marginal ones, are seeing an increase in interest from 2008 to 2010. But some are more motivated than others – as would be expected.

The following chart, being a percent increase from 2008 to 2010 (and not an absolute number) is a clear indication of which of these three political affiliations is jazzed to vote. And the shocker result is that the group with the highest enthusiasm by far is neither the GOP nor the Democrats:

This is just amazing. While there is a huge gap between the Dems and GOP in absentee voting enthusiasm (+7%-D compared to +11%-R), the independent enthusiasm dwarfs both of them at +24%! If this sample is even close to representing the real force behind this year’s elections, it means you can toss out all those polls that show little to no increase in the Independent component of the turnout models.

In this one county in rural NV, the Dems went from 25.5% in 2008 to 24.1% in 2010 in the absentee ballot count. They had a respectable increase of 6.9% in total numbers while still losing ground in the over all share of votes.

The GOP went from 56.6% of the absentee ballot total to 55.7%. They had an even better increase in total numbers, growing 11.2%, but they too lost ground in the overall count.

It was Non-Partisans (Independents) who are showing the massive wave here in Elko County. They not only increased their total number of absentee ballots by 24.4%, they increased their share of the overall absentee ballot total from 13.9% in 2008 to 15.3% in 2010.

The numbers don’t lie here. The wave is not coming from the party faithful, but is driven straight out of the center of the political spectrum. Yes, they are tilted heavily towards to the GOP (or more accurately repulsed by the Democrats), but now we know why the GOP is winning polls while not gaining an inch in support.

Full disclosure: I had to compute the total ‘non partisan’ absentee ballots for 2008 because someone forgot to put it into the story I linked to. But all other categories were listed, along with total for each year so this was a trivial exercise. I only note this because someone with liberal math skills is going to moan in the comments.

Tags: 2010 Elections, Centrists, Early Voting, Independents, Political Tsunami

Talk about bending the curve and a momentum shift:

Democrat Chris Coons holds an 11-point lead over Republican Christine O’Donnell in Delaware’s U.S. Senate race following the candidates’ debate Wednesday night.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Delaware shows Coons earning 51% of the vote, while O’Donnell draws 40% support. Five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

Rasmussen has had Coons up by 11% pretty consistently since early September. His polls are definitely bucking the trend showing O’Donnell twice as far behind. We will need to see some other polls, but O’Donnell could have quelled enough unease to have a number of voters reconsider if they want the Dems running the Senate (and therefore the country further into the ground). Coons did not help himself in the debates – being a classic silver-spoon elitist. Maybe she pulls the hat out of the rabbit.

I was switching over to the Reid-Angle debate last night and it was such a bad performance by Reid I could not make myself sit through it. Reid was tired and rambling and in a ‘why am I even trying anymore‘ mood. Which is exactly why I think he put the performance in that he did. He knows his numbers have never gone over 45% in months, therefore he knows he is an ex-incumbent walking.

But I think it is worse than that. As one of the top 3 Democrat leaders in DC, he has insights into how this race is shaping up, which must be the reason for his zombie-like performance. He has seen what is coming and he is totally resigned to the apocalypse. He had all the mannerisms of a man heading to the gallows: robotic and rote statements, unfocused eyes, mentally elsewhere.

Reid knows the Democrats destroyed themselves the last two years. He sees things like this all over the country:

Reliable GOP Source: Hey, you can’t print this, but we just had a poll come back saying that [House Democrat who everybody figured was pretty safe] is down 20.

[Jim Geraghty]: Well, that’s swell. But why can’t I use this?

Reliable GOP Source: We don’t think the Democrats know this guy is this much trouble, so we don’t want to tip them off.

A major Democrat incumbent down 20%! When they probably should be up 20%? We just a little over two weeks out and there should be the shift of the last few days coming soon. And no one should assume the pollsters are even close with their turn out models. It is completely possible the wave building is so large the statistical models are barfing like crazy. Because, even Nate Silver knows at 2% chance of happening – it can happen.

The United Kingdom used to be a beacon of innovation and exploration. But once the socialists got hold of it, the UK lost its preeminence as it diverted more and more money into its failed National Health System. To that end you get crap like this:

Cancer is a man-made disease fuelled by the excesses of modern life, a study of ancient remains has found.

Tumours were rare until recent times when pollution and poor diet became issues, the review of mummies, fossils and classical literature found.

A greater understanding of its origins could lead to treatments for the disease, which claims more than 150,000 lives a year in the UK.

What a pathetic leap in illogic. Mummies were the top of human society – they had the best diets and medical care. They DO NOT reflect the general condition of the broad masses of humanity. In addition, there is very little to link pollution and poor diet to cancer, since it strikes with equal vengeance here in the US, hitting people in all conditions.

Cancer is a lot like a virus, turning a normal cell with controls on its reproduction into a mass of rapidly replicating living tissue. There is a fine line between a virus, which mass produces DNA that can survive and invade nearby cells or organisms, and a cancer, where the new complete and dysfunctional cells – not just the DNA – are manufactured and take over from the good cells required to stay alive.

The likeliest source for cancer is it was a virus that went beyond mass producing DNA. When a virus hits a cell the viral DNA takes over production and the cell is filled with new virus entities, which burst the cell and start their journey to invade someplace else. Cancer cells are different. They take over the DNA production, but instead produce more and more useless cells, still very rapidly. Many scientist believe that cancer could have evolved from a virus.

Other well known sources of cancer are radiation and some chemicals. But how this kind of cancer can become inherited and passed down through generations is still being worked out.

However the origin of cancer is worked out, it will not be because someone did not find lesions on mummies (who have all their inner organs removed in the mummification process) or reading literature written by the elites of the time. No wonder climate science was born in the UK – PhDs are apparently handed there out like candy.

Incompetence and Incoherence. That is going to be the epitaph of this liberal congress and administration.

In a bleak economy that is starving for jobs that not only pay really well, but also provide an edge to America across global economies, this administration and congress are shutting down America’s manned space program and out-sourcing the jobs to Russia. I know – sounds too dumb to even be true. What kind of fools would shutter the manned space program and outsource all the jobs to Russia?

Incompetent and Incoherent fools – a.k.a. Democrats in DC. The picture above is a fitting shot of the Space Shuttle Atlantis as seen against the Sun at high magnification. It appears to be sailing into the sunset. (You can click the image to get the back story behind the picture). Fitting, since The Shuttle Program is ending. The aging fleet of remaining work horses that fly human beings into space is being retired. And up until the Democrats took office NASA was going back to the Apollo days with the Shuttle replacements.

The program is/was called Constellation, and it is/was well under way with real shovel-ready projects under contract, up and running. Metal was being bent, SW was being written, prototypes were built and used to test options and reduce risk. The program was meant to continue America’s premier leadership in human space exploration. The first systems would continue to support the International Space Station. Then there were going to be exploration sorties to the Moon or asteroids to prepare for humankind’s journey to the stars. Some of the systems under contract are seen in the picture below (click images to enlarge).

These are the launch, crew and cargo vehicles that were going to send humans into the final frontier. In addition to these, there were designs being worled on rovers, landers, power systems, food production systems, mining systems, maintenance depots, etc required to go with humanity in the great beyond.

I had the opportunity to work the communications architecture for Constellation and it was exciting, ground breaking work. The technology off-shoots would have kept US industry in the lead in a myriad of industries and service areas for a quarter century or more. But the short sightedness of the DC liberals ended all of that this year. Instead of investing in humanity’s exploration of space, and this country’s broad technology base, we will outsource the transportation of our astronauts and their equipment to Russia:

The U.S. Discovery shuttle, the last in NASA’s Space Shuttle series and the 113th over the project’s nearly 3-decade-long history, has been brought to a launch pad in the United States, Russia’s Roscosmos space agency says.Once the shuttle program is shut down, crews and cargoes will be delivered to the International Space Station entirely by Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.

Tens of thousands of US high tech jobs are being lost in this idiotic move. ‘Shovel-ready‘ gets no more ready than already under contract and building the damn things. After $2.5 trillion dollars in deficit spending, the geniuses in DC have not only ended American superiority in human space exploration, they moved all these cherished jobs to Russia.

Can anyone listen to the Democrat spin machine about jobs and outsourcing knowing what they did to NASA and pool of engineers who have kept this nation at the head of humanity’s drive to explore the reaches of space? I know I can’t. I know our small company has seen a bright future with good growth (read ‘jobs’) devastated thanks to this kind of incompetent and incoherent strategy. If the dimwits screwed up when we had the global lead and the work in progress, what makes anyone think they can fix health care or the economy or energy policy? Their answer is jobs with shovels in ditches along roads (not a bad job, having myself work many years in construction). But why take the high tech jobs and ship them overseas???

Incompetent and Incoherent.

Previous Posts:

Our Dream Is Dead
Obama – The Job Killer

Tags: Constellation, NASA, Space Exploration, Space Shuttle

President Obama clearly approaches life with an almost juvenile naivete. He has a strange and self-centered day dream running in his head, which is exposed when he shares his ‘visions’ – as he so famously did in this NY Times Magazine piece. I think one of the strangest scenes exposed in this brutal peek into the mind of someone so far in over their head they don’t have a clue what is happening to them, is the idea the American People somehow still hold him up as The Won. Check out this strange vision of how things will be after November:

Obama expressed optimism to me that he could make common cause with Republicans after the midterm elections. “It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible,” he said, “either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.”

What if this election is a referendum on Obama, and the GOP is being sent to DC to put the breaks on all his loony, uniformed and ill-formed liberal fantasies? Did it every occur to this egomaniac that America is not really looking for the GOP to ‘work with’ him but ‘stop him’? If there was a real journalist at the NY Times the following questions would be obvious to pose to Obama:

Will the President work with the GOP to suspend all the stimulus spending as a way to extend all the Bush tax cuts?
Will the President work with the GOP to repeal Obamacare?
Will the President work with the GOP to stop the EPA from messing with CO2 emissions?

I really doubt Obama’s sincerity, for obvious reasons. He has no intention of working with the GOP in a meaningful way. Who writes such fiction? There is still the idea that Team Obama are the Super Heroes of the ages, not the incompetent numskulls they have shown themselves to be:

The view from inside the administration starts with a basic mantra: Obama inherited the worst problems of any president in years. Or in generations. Or in American history. He prevented another Great Depression while putting in place the foundation for a more stable future.

Some White House aides who were ready to carve a new spot on Mount Rushmore for their boss two years ago privately concede now that he cannot be another Abraham Lincoln after all.

Heroes in their own minds. Looks like this crowd is having a permanent Walter Mitty moment. These fools thought it was all so easy. Throw a trillion dollars around and ‘poof‘, everything goes back to a growing economy. Like I said, a juvenile naivete.

Just look at how broken Obamacare is proving to be. The feds are running around exempting companies because the new laws are making current policies illegal, senior citizens are going to see large increases in medicare costs with fewer service offerings, and the insurance companies are going to be allowed to raise premiums for seriously sick kids – which is what happens now. People don’t lose insurance when they get sick, they become unable to pay the higher prices that come with expensive and long term treatments. All these fixes because the thousands of pages of sausage that came out of Congress is broken in so many ways we won’t know what they did for a decade – except it will be worse and cost more.

It’s all so simple when you roll it in your head as a Sesame Street play. But when you have to apply liberal ‘policies’ to aspects of society that require experts’ life time of work to understand (that’s why we call them ‘careers’) all of a sudden the paint by numbers solution doesn’t produce a Rembrandt. Whoddathunkit.

These people in the White House truly are delusional.

Update: more comments at Hot Air – but it is clear CNN pulled away because O’Donnell was doing too well. Yes, the miner rescue is big, but CNN could wait a few minutes. What a crock. Good luck Christine, you earned it tonight.

Update: What is it with Mrs Coons? Everytime Coons gets in trouble he looks to Mrs Coons to stop O’Donnell and give him a life line! What a loser – end update

If anyone could salvage Christine O’Donnell it has to be that blatantly biased, brunette moderator we have affectionately called “Mrs. Coons.” I am watching the debate, impressed by Christine’s coaching and ability to think on her feet, and wondering who the hell placed a liberal Coons supporter next to Wolf Blitzer – who is seriously wondering about the intentions and bias of his co-moderator.

I am no fan of O’Donnell, but she finally answered my concerns by admitting she did what she had to do to survive this recession. She sold her house and tried to make right. She took care of herself, and apparently tried to avoid the handout. So my concerns are now answered in that regard.

But I still want to know, who is the woman spoon feeding Coons and prompting him when to rebut and how to rebut? Did CNN really think us poor ‘ol dumb voters would not see how the tired liberal medialite was controlling Coons??? If she was any closer to Coons there would be divorce papers being issued!

Good lord – Christine what will you be doing when you win your Senate seat from that fool Coons. His pat response is “there’s not enough time to explain my problems”. What a disaster for the Dems in DE.

OK, We know there is huge wave building out there, and this could be a total head feint, but if Jim Moron Moran is in trouble in VA-8, then I cannot mentally grasp the damage that will be unleashed on the Democrat Party on November 2nd:

An internal poll (R) taken in Virginia’s 8th District (Alexandria, etc.) shows ten-term US Rep. Jim Moran (D) with 45 percent to 32 percent for his Republican opponent, retired Army Col. Patrick Murray. Less than 50 percent is a weak sign for an incumbent, especially this one, deemed a shoo-in by most observers. However, it was a Republican poll.

If Moran were to flame out I would wager that means only 1-2 Democrats would survive in VA. Here are the current VA House members:

R-VA1: Rep. Wittman
D-VA2: Rep. Nye [will go R]
D-VA3: Rep. Scott
R-VA4: Rep. Forbes
D-VA5: Rep. Perriello [will go R]
R-VA6: Rep. Goodlatte
R-VA7: Rep. Cantor
D-VA8: Rep. Moran [could go R]
D-VA9: Rep. Boucher
R-VA10: Rep. Wolf
D-VA11: Rep. Connolly [could go R]

Bobby Scott (VA3) is not in trouble, and it looks like Boucher will hold on in VA9. But they would be the only 2 Dems left standing if Moran lost (I assume Connolly would go too, and he might already be gone). That would be one heck of a wave that knocks out 4 Democrats and leaves only two standing in VA.

This why you don’t elect a phenom to run a country. You need to elect someone who has run a business, an administration – something! I wrote this back on February 21, 2009, after the so-called stimulus bill passed with all its over inflated promises:

Update: Allahpundit makes a great point: did Obama need to blow $900 billion of our hard earned money to figure this out? – end update

And it gets worse, if that were even possible: there will be NO new jobs from the spendulous bill for at least a year. Since the bill is a spending bill and not a stimulus bill it will take the cumbersome federal government months (if not years) to just start the new projects. The proposal process alone will take 6-9 months, and then you have to plan, review plans, get the proper paperwork filled out, review designs, etc.

All this time between now and 2010 there will be no fix to the job market – which will simmer the American people like applying a torch to a can of gas. Instead of jobs the bill does provide 5-10 stories a day for the next year on idiotic ideas on how to waste our money. As people scrape to survive they will be reminded of the daily list of wasteful projects from around the country. Each project in itself enough to take a well deserved family from desperation to riches in one fell swoop. The bill is massive, it has endless wasteful spending to mine and to remind those people without relief what foolishness is being funded.

Seems pretty prescient to be able to call it so accurately 18 months out – but it was obvious the liberals were pulling the wool over a pliant media and a naive electorate. It is also obvious how slow the government wheels grind into action.

The electorate is no longer naive. Apparently even our young, inexperienced President has finally figured it out:

In the magazine article, Mr. Obama reflects on his presidency, admitting that he let himself look too much like “the same old tax-and-spend Democrat,” realized too late that “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects” and perhaps should have “let the Republicans insist on the tax cuts” in the stimulus.

It’s a bit late to finally realize liberal fantasies are actually really bad and conservative fiscal policies are rock solid. Is there any better reason to fire the dems and hire the GOP than this admissions?

The other day I looked at the PVI of races in contention and then pondered various scenarios for the November Tsunami rising out there in the nation. In this analysis I posited three wave sizes to reflect three generic battle poll ranges. I assumed a generic ballot that had the Dems-Reps about even would mean districts with a PVI of R+1 would be where the wave would hit strongly. That means districts with R-0, D+1, etc would be less and less effected as the PVI shifted to the Democrats. The second scenario I assumed was where the generic ballot was trending +3-5% to the GOP. Here I conservatively predicted the tsunami would take out most D+2 districts. And finally I assumed that for a generic ballot of +10% for the GOP, that would wipe out D+6 districts (and everything from D+5 to R+10). Of course there will be exceptions to the rule in all ranges of PVI, and the wave will reach higher to some degree. So I tempered the results using four wave intensities as seen in the following table:

As can be seen I predicted with a D+2 wave and with 90% of those seats going to the GOP, the GOP would win 67 seats (give or take a handful). So I was not surprised when the folks over at HuffPo-Pollster confirmed this model:

So let’s just come out and say it: there is no reason to think that Republicans will do any worse than 1994 (when they picked up 54 seats) and there is plenty of data to suggest that it will, in fact, be a better year for the GOP. Our projection–based on all current available data–is that the GOP will gain between 60 and 70 House seats in November.

Emphasis actually in the original post. As I said last week, the House is lost and Speaker Pelosi is not history (barring something truly out of the blue). I still think these folks are a bit low, since many of the generic ballots are trending in the +8-13% GOP range. I can see an 87-90 seat pick up in the making. But at least I am not alone out here on this limb:

The GOP lead on the generic Congressional ballot is unprecedented. Republicans now lead on the generic Congressional ballot by seven points (48% to 41%) according to RCP. Our analysis of likely voter surveys taken over the last 30 days has the GOP lead at +9. As we have said before, Republicans rarely–if ever–lead on the GCB. According to Gallup, in 1994 the two parties were tied on the GCB the week before the election. Republicans picked up 54 seats that year.

No wonder the Dems are in full panic mode, they have good reason to be. Their party is about to be devastated for generations to come.