Senate District 7 by the numbers
Back when Cheryl Baswell Guthrie was involved in a quixotic quest to win the AL-05 congressional nomination I analyzed the SD-7 poll numbers from when she squared off against Parker Griffith in 2006 and lost by 32 points. That poor showing might lead one to believe that this is a strong Democrat district, but that race was the anomaly, not the norm. Turns out she was just a really bad candidate (or Griffith was a very good one – or both!).
In 14 statewide races the difference between the percentages of votes going to the Democrat and Republican candidates at polling places in SD-7 was within 4 points in each race. The average of all the races gave the Democrats a slight 2 point advantage. And that was before the two year college scandal blew up and exposed the Democrats’ long standing culture of corruption in Montgomery.
Bottom line, this district is a toss up from a party line voting perspective.
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Brian, I have not examined the Guthrie/Griffith race data. That was a general election for the state/county. I did examine last Nov’s polling in district 7. How did you handle the mixed precincts? Example: Southwood Presby is a mixed precinct. You cannot easily extract votes from the ajoining district. You might be able to pull the “threads” if you had the registered Republican database for district 7, then correlated the addresses to the mixed precincts and assumed they voted. The upcoming House and Senate special elections will definitely indicate whether a “shift” is truly occurring. We live in “interesting times”!
I think this race is definitely going to show where conservatives are at this point. Are they fed up enough to go to the polls and vote? I think they are. I think the Tea Party movement has helped a lot to invigorate many conservatives, and others of like mind, who are tired of the big spenders in Montgomery and in Washington.
As someone who has volunteered for both the Parker campaign and Sanford campaign, and has gone door-to-door for both, I can tell you that I personally sense a change. I sense that there is an increased interest and pro-activity with many of the people I have talked to in this campaign. I could be wrong, but I think a lot of people are going to get out and vote next Tuesday who have not done so in the past.
…here’s hoping!
Did Griffith run in 06 as a “Conservative Democrat”?
If he did, it will be interesting to see if Laura Hall’s invisibility campaign can pull those votes?
nutsfortennis, there is no good way of handling mixed polling places that I know of.
Dale, you’ve seen Guthrie campaign! Griffith could have run dressed like one of the Village People and won.