2010 Already
December 17th, 2008 by Steven GardnerPolitical geeks are like baseball geeks, always examining numbers to try to find the juicy nuggets on which to make some kind of prediction.
The Democratic leaning site Swing State Project has an entry looking at Washington legislative districts, measuring whether they are more Democratic or Republican than the national average. The 26th District gets an “R+1″ because it voted 1 percent more Republican than the rest of the country in the presidential election. Obama still won in the district, but it was closer there than it was in the rest of the country.
Meanwhile the 23rd District was 6 points more Democratic than the country and the 35th District was even.
The blog’s authors found something in the 26th to be worth noting.
Democrats will also be defending two senate freshmen in 2010 in districts that have an R+ PVI (although that Obama won): Derek Kilmer in the 26th and Chris Marr in the 6th. These are the two districts where the GOP picked up Democratic-held open House seats, so these races will bear watching.
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Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
December 17th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Ah yes the Partisan Voter Index or PVI ranking as all the cool wonk kids call it.
At the Kitsap Democrats holiday party I pointed out to Josh Brown that he is now closer to his re-election fight than his election victory.
The 26LD continues to be the bleeding edge front line of the political battle ground and everyone in Washington state electoral politics knows it.
Derek Kilmer knows it and he has been working pretty darn hard in Olympia as a Senator to get ready for his next Campaign. In a correspondence with Derek when we were butting heads on his codifying Tim Eyman 1% property tax cap budget disaster creation plan into law in the special house session after Tim Eyman’s “questionable” law was ruled unconstitutional by the State supreme court he pointed out that the 26th LD slightly voted for Bush in 2004. Derek is a tough political fighter and I can’t think of anyone better suited to run for that State Senate seat.
I also met Senator Marr during his campaign and he is no push over either.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Although the 26LD is always a battleground and it’s hard to take anythnig for granted, I think characterizing Kilmer as a “freshman senator” is a bit off the mark…
Although he is technically a “freshman senator” since he is in his first term in the Senate, he was previously a member of the House. Thus, he has already been elected twice in the 26LD – winning his Senate seat in 2006 by a wider margin of victory than his House seat in 2004.