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Monday, August 21, 2006
Soonerfan at Redstate.com gives his predictions for tomorrow's runoff elections.
Friends, Sooners, Countrymen:
Tomorrow is Runoff Election Day here in the great Sooner State and what better time than the present to offer final predictions and notes on the races? None, of course.
*GOVERNOR'S UPDATE*
You will find no reputable pollster, other than, perhaps, Brad Henry's own, who has polling data showing the vaunted (but often daunted) governor pulling in over 50% of the vote in a head to head matchup. In fact, it's usually in the mid-40's.
If you've worked in DC for any length of time, you've probably had the opportunity to go to a BIPAC (Business-Industry Political Action Committee) conference and heard the dean of DC political scientists, Bernadette Budde, say the following when analysing political polls: "Incumbents get what they get and they don't get any more."
What Ms. Budde means, of course, is that everyone knows incumbents and so voters have had the chance already to make up their minds about them. Undecideds typically don't break for incumbents. So an incumbent getting 44% is generally in what one might describe as a "heap 'o trouble."
This is why when polls say Henry 44% - Istook 40%, there is just cause for extreme optimism among the Istook crowd, the RNC crowd, the Republican Governors Association crowd, etc., etc., etc. And if I were Brad Henry, I'd either be looking or a cure for cancer right about now or I'd be spending time chatting up senior partners at the bigger law firms in whatever town I wanted to live in come January.
NOTE: Brad, it's probably not too late to see if the Borens could legally adopt you (referring back to an earlier quote that the only way a Democrat could win in a 2-person race at the top of the ticket in Oklahoma these days were if his last name was Boren).
*5TH CONGRESSIONAL UPDATE*
They said it would get ugly. They said it would get nasty. They were wrong. This was the snooze-fest of all time, but in some ways, it was nice.
I've admitted it before, so I'll admit it again: I've endorsed Mick Cornett. He got my support when he was the ONLY one of the six candidates in the primary to endorse Ernest Istook for governor. Well, that's actually just one reason. Here are several others...
-->Mary Fallin voted for a tragic piece of "early release" legislation that led to the release of convicted drug dealer LaMont Fields who, within a week of his release, brutally murdered his girlfriend and her parents right in front of her two small children. Fields had served just 14 months of a 15 YEAR sentence. Here's a clue to any legislators or would be legislators out there: some people are in prison for a reason. Build more cells if you need to. Don't mess with jury decisions by thinking you know better than the citizens who put criminals behind bars.
-->Mary Fallin voted to spend $61.8 million from the state's Rainy Day Fund. Ernest Istook was in the Legislature at the same time. He voted against raiding the fund and said the state should cut spending instead. Which one sounds like a conservative to you? Sure, after the whole "early release of a drug dealer" thing, this one doesn't sound so bad, but it's still a big deal.
-->Mary Fallin voted to create new agencies, buy airplanes the state didn't need, raise college tuition on students who couldn't afford it, and all the while took pay raises and increased her own office budget.
-->Not to mention that she broke up her marriage and the marriage of a state trooper because neither of them could keep their hands to themselves. "We only kissed." Right. We've heard that one before. "I did not have sex with that woman, with Miss Lewinsky."
The question was asked earlier today how does one predict a race in which one candidate started out with a big lead but did not campaign, while the other candidate started out with a big deficit but worked his b*tt off? Runoff elections are all about turnout. For this race and the LG's race.
I stand by my earlier predictions of victors, but here are my updated percentages:
ISTOOK..........53% (November)
HENRY...........47%
HIETT...........60% (Tomorrow)
PRUITT..........40%
CORNETT.........52% (Tomorrow)
FALLIN..........48%
Posted at 8/21/2006 01:06:00 PM  
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