More Election News

• NM: Richardson's Shadow Looms
• CT: Blumenthal, McMahon Spar in Televised Debate
• MA-4: Frank's Own Battle Erodes Help for Fellow Democrats
• MN-6: Bachmann Agrees to Three Debates
• OH: Portman, Fisher Fight Over Economy in Debate
• PA: TV Ads Play Loose With Truth
• TX: Deep-Pocketed Donors Give Perry Big Cash Lead
• WV: Manchin Touts Independence
• CA-47: Clinton to Stump for Sanchez
• RI: National Democrats Go After Chafee's Tax Plan
• IN-9: National Republicans Attack Baron Hill With New Ad, Spending
• NC: Burr Boosted by GOP, Tea Party Energy
• OR: Dudley Seeks to Become State's First GOP Governor in 23

If you've been following the New York Senate polls closely for the last year, you've noticed that Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has been hovering around 50 percent for most of the past two years. This is dangerous territory for any incumbent to be in - by my count, only three incumbents in the last three years who averaged less than 50 percent in August polling have gone on to win in November.

But it was still something of a surprise when a flurry of likely voter polls taken shortly after the September 14 primary showed a very close race. A Rasmussen Reports poll showed Gillibrand leading Republican Joseph DioGuardi by 10 points, 49 percent to 39 percent. Quinnipiac and SurveyUSA showed Gillibrand with 6- and 1-point leads. Marist weighed in with a poll showing Gillibrand up 11 points, but among registered voters who described themselves as "very enthusiastic" about voting, Gillibrand actually trailed DioGuardi, 52 percent to 43 percent.

So what are we to make of this? Could Gillibrand actually lose this race?

Let's be clear up front: A straight-up Republican win would be unheard of. No Democratic senator has ever been defeated for re-election in the Empire State, and the last time a non-Democrat won an open seat in New York in a two-way race was in 1958. The typical formula for a non-Democratic win in New York is to have a Republican running on the Liberal Party line who splits the anti-Republican vote with the Democrat; this is in part how Alfonse D'Amato and James Buckley won their Senate races. This won't happen this year - there isn't even an independent Liberal Party in New York anymore.

Nevertheless, it is certainly possible for DioGuardi to pull off the upset, though I certainly would require some decent odds before taking the bet. DioGuardi would need to make the final results a little better than what is presently showing up in SurveyUSA's crosstabs. I think he can do this.

The Candidates
Let's start by looking at the candidates. Most people who talk about Joe DioGuardi refer to him as the father of former American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi, but he's not a complete outsider to the political game. DioGuardi, a C.P.A., represented what was at the time a D+2 district in Westchester County for two terms in Congress, before falling to now-Representative Nita Lowey in 1988. During his two terms he compiled a solidly conservative voting record. Though he is a social conservative, his efforts focused on balancing the budget and other economic matters. After losing to Lowey, DioGuardi twice waged third-party campaigns against moderate Republican Sue Kelly in the 1990s, but was unsuccessful in both attempts.

Kirsten Gillibrand brings a lot to the table. She's young, energetic, and hails from the Republicans' base in upstate New York. She upset Republican Congressman John Sweeney in 2006, and held the seat handily in 2008. She compiled a moderate voting record while representing upstate, which could have prepared her for a solid general election run.

But Gillibrand had to tack left once she was appointed to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton. And the appointment process itself was problematic. After all, it left her with the imprimatur of deeply unpopular Governor David Paterson. She's now in an awkward position - tied to an unpopular governor and without a real base to rely upon in the general election.

Upstate
Unfortunately, it isn't clear from the SurveyUSA writeup where the dividing line between Western New York (presumably Rochester and Buffalo) and "upstate" is, so I am averaging them and dealing with them as a single unit. According to SurveyUSA, DioGuardi is presently winning upstate New York roughly 48 percent to 40 percent.

I actually think this is the least likely of the numbers that SurveyUSA has released. Upstate New York used to be the hub of the state Republican Party - the fight on election night was between upstate Republicans and New York City Democrats. But over the years, upstate shifted toward the Democrats. In 2004, George W. Bush and John Kerry tied upstate (about 1,000 votes separated them). In 2008, Barack Obama carried it with 53 percent to John McCain's 47 percent.

Moreover, Gillibrand hails from upstate. While I don't think she's a well enough established figure to move the numbers in her direction all that significantly, she would probably outperform a typical Democrat there, at least in her old district.

Nevertheless, given the national mood, it is not impossible to see upstate returning to its Republican roots this election. Obviously DioGuardi is unlikely to carry inner Buffalo or Rochester, but at the same time the longstanding economic malaise that has affected the region is likely pointed directly at the Democrats now. It really isn't that hard to imagine that the political environment alone could propel DioGuardi to a number four points better than Bush managed in the district: roughly the numbers that George H.W. Bush managed in 1988.

City
SurveyUSA also has DioGuardi trailing in NYC 35 percent to 54 percent. One very smart blogger at Beyond the Polls assembled a chart of GOP performances in New York City over the past sixteen years, and concluded that it was "difficult to see any realistic scenario under which DioGuardi could get 35% of the vote in New York City."

I've reproduced the chart here:

As you can see, Republicans have averaged 23 percent in New York City. If we remove the 2004 Senate and 2006 Governor as essentially uncontested races, Republicans do a bit better - about 27 percent of the vote. At the same time, it isn't unheard of for a Republican to push into the 30s - Governor Pataki did it twice.
So how would this happen for DioGuardi? Consider the following map:

This map, courtesy of Dave Bradlee's wonderful redistricting widget, shows the partisan vote in Brooklyn and parts of Queens in 2008 by precinct. What should jump out at you is that South Brooklyn is actually quite willing to vote Republican. Indeed, there are enough voters there to create a 58 percent McCain Congressional district, while keeping the already-Republican leaning 13th District intact. Some of the precincts in heavily Orthodox Jewish Borough Park would be among the most heavily McCain precincts in Arkansas. You'll also notice patches of red and reddish purple in Queens, to the northeast, indicating a willingness to vote Republican there.

You'll notice some correlation between the blue in the above map and the blue/green in the below map:

This is the racial map of NYC precincts. Blue represents African Americans, green denotes Hispanics, and red signifies Whites. You'll first notice how heavily segregated New York is, you'll next notice the sometimes uncanny parallel between where white precincts end and where Obama precincts begin. Obviously, New York still has heavily racialized voting.

For DioGuardi to equal Pataki's 2002 vote share in New York City, two things have to happen. First, whites have to be excited about voting for him. I think that's possible for two reasons: (1) whites who didn't live on Manhattan were never crazy about Obama in the first place and are presumably ready to cast a protest vote against him today and (2) DioGuardi has an Italian surname. Having attended more than my share of the DiFranco family reunions on the maternal side of my family, I can only attest that the cultural affinity is still pretty important in the Italian-American community. This will help DioGuardi in parts of Queens and in South Brooklyn (and in Staten Island, a notable Republican bastion that is off the map). In fact, this is probably a large reason why DioGuardi is getting 35 percent in the SurveyUSA poll while the other Republican candidates polled are receiving the 25 percent a Republican customarily receives (remember, Paladino is running against a Cuomo).

The second thing that has to happen is that minority turnout needs to be low. I think that's entirely possible as well. In the 2009 Virginia governor's race, the white share of the electorate was 78 percent, up from 70 percent in 2008. And we've seen a recent spate of election polls showing members in minority-majority districts vulnerable - GA-02, FL-03, MS-02, and AZ-07. Even controlling for the fact that these are campaign polls, these results wouldn't be possible unless minority enthusiasm was down considerably. And it is hard to imagine Kirsten Gillibrand - an upstate Congresswoman who had a fairly conservative voting record until 18 months ago - firing up this portion of her base.

To be clear, I don't think hitting the 30% mark in the city is a "done deal" for DioGuardi. But I do think it is realistic.

Suburbs
That leaves us with the suburbs. Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties were long Republican bastions. But they swung toward the Democrats as the Republican Party increasingly adopted a Southern twang and focused on social issues. Barack Obama won 64 percent of the vote in Westchester County, 54 percent in Nassau County, and 53 percent in Suffolk County.

But recent elections in the suburbs indicate that there may be hard movement back toward the Republicans. In November of last year, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi lost to little-known, underfunded challenger Ed Mangano. In Westchester County, Rob Astorino defeated Executive Andy Spano 57 percent to 43 percent; just four years earlier, Spano had defeated Astorino by a similar margin.

Then, in February of this year, while Washington was still focused on the health care debate and Scott Brown's win, Republicans won a special election victory in a Suffolk County seat that had gone for Obama in 2008. That same day, Republicans won a stunning upset in a Westchester district that had given Barack Obama about 61 percent of the vote only 15 months earlier.

In other words, the Democrats' grip on the New York City suburbs seems to be slipping. This is a problem that Democrats are facing elsewhere in the country as well, but it seems especially pronounced here. A 12-point, 51 percent to 39 percent win here is not at all out of the question.

Conclusion
DioGuardi isn't likely to win, but it certainly is possible. The SurveyUSA poll is a best-case scenario for DioGuardi among current polling, but it nevertheless depicts a realistic scenario for him to get within a point of Gillibrand with the present electorate. Of course, his "reward" for winning this race would be to run again two years later, against a Democratic opponent approved by the Democratic Party, with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket.