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MA-05: Election Results Open Thread

by: James L.

Tue Oct 16, 2007 at 7:13 PM EDT


9:19PM: Tsongas declares victory.  Nothing to be too proud of in this D+10.7 district, I'm sorry to say.
9:09PM: I'm hearing that local TV stations are calling it for Tsongas.
9:06PM: BMG says Tsongas is up by 2100 votes with 147 of 196 precincts reporting.
9:02PM: With 96 of 195 precincts reporting, Tsongas is down 46%-51%.

Update: Results can be found here.  So far we're at 59%-38% Tsongas, with only 6 of 195 precincts reporting.  Plenty of time for that lead to come back down to earth.

It's decision day in MA-05, where voters are going to the polls to select a replacement for Democrat Marty Meehan in the House.  We'll update this thread as developments occur.  Turnout has been described as "light", but it's anyone's guess as to whether that benefits Republican Jim Ogonowski or Democrat Niki Tsongas right now, but I'm a bit nervous.  Polls close at 8pm Eastern.

Since we still have time, let's do a prediction contest.  (No prizes, though, other than honor and glory.)  Post your prediction for how the race will end up in the comments (percentages, please).  Remember that there are a few independent candidates in the fray, as well.

One final note, for now... I sincerely hope that this doesn't turn out to be a microcosm for the broader campaign:

Jim Ogonowski may be a political newcomer, but the Republican has learned a thing or two during his first run for elective office.

Today, the final day before voters go to the polls in a special election to replace former Rep. Martin Meehan, Ogonowski sprinted up and down the line of cars waiting at a Dunkin' Donuts drive-thru, seizing upon the captive audience - and open driver-side windows - to pass out campaign literature.

"Every vote counts," the farmer and former Air Force lieutenant colonel told one driver. "We're that close."

Democrat Niki Tsongas, the other headliner in the race, employed a slightly less frenetic pace, visiting several senior centers and holding an ice cream social as she sought to claim for herself the House seat once held by her late husband and 1992 presidential contender, Paul Tsongas.
James L. :: MA-05: Election Results Open Thread
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MA-05: Election Results Open Thread | 45 comments
tsongas 53%


Top ten signs you're an SSPer #1: your favorite song is "Panic At Tedisco" and no one understands what you mean.
Narrow Tsongas win
Tsongas: 52%
Ogonowski: 46%
3rd party candidates: 2%
I hope Niki Tsongas gets a real scare here.
Like a 2 or 3% victory.

Dems in DC need to know that putting up the same old mushy generic limousine Democrat is not going to work this cycle.  They need to know that voters are demanding real change, and aren't willing to turn out for the culture of caution we've been getting.  Something needs to convince DC Dems that what they're doing is not good enough and is not going to get the election results they're obviously salivating over, and Niki Tsongas nearly losing might do it.

Paul Hackett showed Dems how to win in 2005, and then Ned Lamont did the same in 2006.  If Niki Tsongas shows Dems how to lose, and they take that message to heart as well, she might do us all some good.

Of course, the 06 results, where cautious Dems lost in PA-06 and CT-05 and IL-06 and TN-Sen and OH-15 and NY-26, while spunky challengers did WAY better than expected in a boatload of districts, should have taught them that.  But in the flush of victory they didn't notice.  Maybe this election will make the point.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

Jack Davis = Cautious Dem?
I was thinking more like "insane Dem", but I hear you on many of your other points.
[ Parent ]
I included Jack Davis
because I recall him running as a very conservative Democrat, barely a Democrat at all really.

Now, most Dems take conservative rhetorical positions cause they're cautious and think they need to.  Jack Davis took them cause he really was a conservative at heart.  But the effect is the same: conservative, centrist, mushy messaging.

You're right: "insane" and "cautious" are typically not considered to be the same thing.  They just happened to lead to the same political place in this case.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

[ Parent ]
Jack Davis
I go to school in NY-26 and my impression was that Jack Davis was more like a zombie Democrat.
[ Parent ]
Tom Reynolds' last term?
How's Jon Powers' campaign?
[ Parent ]
Hmm...
Lois Murphy lost in PA-06 because she allowed her opponent to define her as a liberal tax-hiker. It didn't hurt that Jim Gerlach's campaign was widely deemed the best run of any incumbent running in 2006.

CT-05 was won by Chris Murphy. I assume your referring to CT-04, another rematch between a liberal female Democrat and a male Republican incumbent. Democrat Farrell, like Lois Murphy, outspent her opponent and still lost. This is largely due to Farrell's poor campaign skills, Mayor Bloomberg's crack team of grassroots organizers, and Lieberman's coattails.

IL-06 is a long story. Internecine conflict + GOP with a huge warchest + district that's traditionally Republican + terrible DCCC ads + Democratic candidate who was a carpetbagger = D loss.

NY-26 stayed in GOP hands because of a freak snowstorm and the Democratic candidate's eccentricity.

TN-SEN turned on issues of race and the state's GOP bent. Harold Ford running an ad in a church is not a sign of a "cautious" candidate.


[ Parent ]
i don't know if i'd classify OH-15
and Mary Jo Kilroy as a cautious Dem. It was one of the most brutal races in the country and a lot of folks rolled their eyes when she initially announced she would take on 7 termer Deb Pryce. Totaling all the money spent on that race, and it was upwards of $12 million. Not to mention that it is probably  the top seat most likely to switch next year, in no small thanks to the '06 campaign .
[ Parent ]
I chose those districts
because my impression is that in every one of them, the Dem challenger was soft and mushy on Iraq.

For Kilroy, I got that impression from a post on this site and nowhere else.  For NY-26 and IL-06 and TN-Sen I'm pretty sure I'm right, and I think I'm right on PA-06 and CT-04 as well, though I'm least sure about CT-04, as I seem to recall Iraq being Shays' only real vulnerability, so Farrell may have been forced to go there whether she wanted to or not.

Anyway, since many people have wondered how I assembled that list, there it is.  Challengers who ran well-funded campaigns but who were mushy and "cautious" on Iraq.  As contrasted with the challengers who ran unfunded campaigns but embraced vigorous contrast on Iraq, and who tended to wildly overperform expectations even if they mostly still lost.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

[ Parent ]
Shays shifted his position on the war
He also got support from the environmental community and he's immensely personally popular in the district.  I think in the end a lot of people couldn't bring themselves to abandon him over a single issue.
[ Parent ]
Ugh.
I just found out that in addition to being spunky and outsider and "send a message of change" and all that, Ogonowski is also running hard right on immigration.  That makes me want to puke.

Now I have to hope it's a low turnout election, with neither indies nor Dems bothering to show up, cause a high turnout for an immigration demagogue would send a terrible message to DC.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

[ Parent ]
Umm

Paul Hackett showed Dems how to win in 2005, and then Ned Lamont did the same in 2006.  If Niki Tsongas shows Dems how to lose, and they take that message to heart as well, she might do us all some good.

However hard their races were and however much Hackett and Lamont's campaigns may have energized the party, to say they showed the way to win when they both lost doesn't make a lot of sense.  If you're going to make this point at least talk about Carol Shea-Porter or John Hall.
[ Parent ]
Umm

Paul Hackett showed Dems how to win in 2005, and then Ned Lamont did the same in 2006.  If Niki Tsongas shows Dems how to lose, and they take that message to heart as well, she might do us all some good.

However hard their races were and however much Hackett and Lamont's campaigns may have energized the party, to say they showed the way to win when they both lost doesn't make a lot of sense.  If you're going to make this point at least talk about Carol Shea-Porter or John Hall.
[ Parent ]
Nope.
Obviously you're right that Hackett and Lamont didn't actually win, just as Tsongas didn't actually lose.

However, Hackett found the rhetoric and persona that allowed him to overperform the standard Democratic vote in the district by like 15 points.  Showing Dems what they can do to run 15 points above their normal results is the same as showing other Dems in other future races what they can do to win.

The other key point is that these were off-cycle elections, happening far enough in advance of the upcoming cycle that lessons could be learned from them and applied to coming races.  Carol Shea-Porter didn't teach anyone in any other district how to win in 2006, cause no one knew her strategy was working until election night.  The great thing about these special elections is they let you try out a new strategy, see what works and what doesn't, and apply that to the much more significant full November cycles.

So I'm hoping that Dems will learn from this that running tired traditional establishment campaigns is a good recipe for underperforming the 2004 election results by ten points.  In an election where we're hoping to run much much stronger than we did in 2004, we obviously don't want to do anything that leads us to underperform what was already a very bad year.  Tsongas's campaign underperformed the 2004 and 2000 presidential (that's what PVI measures), and in late 2007, that is an embarrassment.  We can't underperform those cycles in 2008, DC knows that, and hopefully they'll learn how to NOT campaign from this special election.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

[ Parent ]
I'm gonna go out on a limb
and predict Tsongas with 55%. That may seem a bit high, but Ogonowski is relying on Independents while Tsongas is relying onpartisans and in a "light" turnout I'd sure be nervous relying on flaky independents. The machine will turn out a vote for Tsongas...hopefully
I vote in the district
though I'm a student out of state, and I'm not there to watch it first hand. I visited home over Columbus weekend and was disturbed by the number of Ogonowski signs I saw. I want to believe that Niki will pull this one out, but I'm just not sure.

As for my numbers, I'll go with:
Tsongas 50%
Ogonowski 48%

when do the polls close?
it's almost eight, so they should be closing soon, right?  i checked the mass secretary of states' page, but couldn't find anything, nor did the bostone globe or herald have any information.  anyone have a good website to go when the results come in?

Top ten signs you're an SSPer #1: your favorite song is "Panic At Tedisco" and no one understands what you mean.
Pretty sure they close at 8pm.
Still looking for a good place to find results.
[ Parent ]
I never found a good place in the primary
Boston.com was the best I found, but its numbers didn't always seem to add up right.
[ Parent ]
Also
There being a Red Sox playoff game today, election coverage may be a bit harder to find on Boston.com. The Lowell Sun might be a better source.
[ Parent ]
got a site
http://www.theboston...

Top ten signs you're an SSPer #1: your favorite song is "Panic At Tedisco" and no one understands what you mean.
Thanks!
I'll add it to the main post.
[ Parent ]
I guess
Tsongas: 54%
Ogonowski: 45%
3rd party candidates: 1%

There will be another election for this seat in 2008. Any word on if Ogo would try again?

Here they come...
59-38 Tsongas early on with 3% in.

Of course, this would be different if these precincts are from Lowell (8.6% more Dem than the district as a whole), or Dunstable (13.7% more Repub than the district)...

Results from the Town of Concord here...
http://www.concordne...

In 02 and 04, the Town of Concord cast about 4% of the votes in the district. The town is about D+3.6 related to the whole district.

Anything below 54% here for Tsongas will mean a long night. 60%+ would be a good sign.

[ Parent ]
Actual Results
59% Tsongas, 38% Ogonowski
results coming in,
looking good with tsongas at 59 with 3% counted

Top ten signs you're an SSPer #1: your favorite song is "Panic At Tedisco" and no one understands what you mean.
Tsongas is down...
46-51 with 49% reporting...
Blue Mass Group says:
http://www.bluemassg...

Tsongas up 51-49 with 147 of 195.

[ Parent ]
2,109 vote lead for Tsongas

[ Parent ]
2,651 vote lead for Tsongas

[ Parent ]
From my inbox:
FYI, John Henning, the dean of Mass TV political reporters (he works for WBZ in Boston), just said on WBZ-radio  that "if the current trend continues, Tsongas will win by single digits -- 5 or 6 points."

The returns show Tsongas winning Concord (an affluent suburb in the western part of the district) by three to one, but struggling in the blue collar towns just outside Lowell, including Dracut, which is Ogonowski's hometown.

And:

...VERY light turnout in Lowell (Paul Tsongas's hometown, home to about 17 percent of the district's population). Niki Tsongas leads by 56-43 in Lowell right now. Not bad -- considering that the last time there was a real race in this district (Dem. Chet Atkins narrowly edging GOPer John Magovern in 1990), the Dem actually lost Lowell, thanks to pissed off blue collar voters. Ogonowski looks to be running better in Lowell than most Republicans do, but (according to the early returns) not quite well enough to win the election.

We'll see if it's true.

Tsongas smashes Ogo
in Concord: 67.58% to 30.21%. Meehan got about as much in his 67-33 victory in 2004, the last contested election he had.
[ Parent ]
Concord is now an affluent suburb.
As in Lexington and Concord, Paul Revere, etc.

Hm.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

[ Parent ]
My prediction
Tsongas 51~54, I'll give 52 for a single number
Ogonowski 42~48, I'll give 46 for a single number

I haven't been following this race closely, but oh well.

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01

51%-46%
Looks like the final margin according to Lowell Sun.

Considering the 3% that went to the two independent candidates were probably almost entirely from Democratic-leaning voters, the margin in a two-way race would've ben 54%-46%, which is not terrible in this district.

Didn't Kerry Healy lose this district to Deval Patrick by roughly the same margin last year?

Liberty Avenue Politics - a place for politics in Southern Queens

nothing to be proud of
Tsongas is a mushy Democrat from the past.  Ogonowski had a bio and ran on immigration.

To underperform by 10% indicates something's wrong here.  But with the two candidates, the Dems dodged a bullet.

Message to the Democrats:  Dump Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader, pass something useful on Irag and don;t give in on SCHIP, despite Gallup's spinny poll questions.

[ Parent ]
I really feel like...
...we would have been so much better off if Chris Dodd was our Senate leader.
[ Parent ]
Amen to That....
The Dems got so caught up in "appealing to red state voters" after their 2004 flogging that they hurriedly nominated Reid the Minority Leader thinking his mild-mannered demeanor and anti-choice position on abortion would be viewed as benign enough to rein in Bush voters.  Like many of us, and like Hillary Clinton, Senate Dems misread the 2004 election results.  Dodd is smart, articulate, and scrappy.  In retrospect, I bet the majority of Senate Dems wished they would have selected him.
[ Parent ]
Harry Reid
The latest Mason-Dixon poll out of Nevada has his favorable rating at 32%! 

Dodd might be a good choice if he would give up his presidential aspirations.

[ Parent ]
I think Dodd could have been president
if he ran in 2004.

Could've beat Kerry in the primary, could've beat Bush in the general.  I think.

He didn't run because Lieberman was in the race, and apparently it's in poor taste to have same-state senators running at the same time?

Anyway, just one more reason that the Lieberman pick screwed us over.  It let Lieberman run in 2004 and kept Dodd out of the primary.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

[ Parent ]
If Ogonowski Ran on Immigration....
....and did this well in liberal Massachusetts, it reinforces my long-standing belief that the Dems are out of touch by embracing the McCain-Kennedy position on the issue.  I don't think the Ogonowski position is preferable or that the Tancredo wing of the Republican has it right either, but I think there are sensible alternatives on the table that could help position us closer to where the nervous working-class worker stands on the issue. 
[ Parent ]
immigration
Remember, Congress' approval rating really didn't tank until they took up Bush's immigration bill with mostly Democratic support.  That's the bigger problem, not Iraq (though that was poorly handled also).
[ Parent ]
I tend to agree from an Ideological stand point
Dodd would drive the Dems to the reasonable position when it comes to Constitutional matters. I am a little sympathetic to Harry Reid though, because he has been dealt a horrific hand as Democratic leader when it comes to Iraq. For practical purposes he has 50 Dems and 50 Gopers his hands are fairly tied. He knows the senate rules better the anybody save Byrd. But he hasn't controlled the Agenda nearly as well as I would expect. With this narrow a majority in the Senate he can only prevent bad bills from passing (yes the Iraq cave and the FISA gut was fairly horrific), passing good ones require 60, which he flat out doesn't have. Pelosi is another matter however, she cedes too much power to Hoyer.

progressive, NY-8 (home), PA-7 (college)
[ Parent ]
MA-05: Election Results Open Thread | 45 comments

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