NE-2 stays RED

The voter registration tallies for Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District are out (as opposed to those for just Douglas County). They show that the 2nd is still a majority an advantage Republican district:

Of course this shows that, assuming party-line voting, this election will come down to the large number of Independents.

One interesting dynamic in this is the turnout of voters. In 2004 it looked something like this:
R - 72.1%,
D - 65.9%,
I - 56.4%.

Will things tighten up this election? Could be. We'll see.

The reality of the 10,000 registration advantage for Republicans in heavily military Sarpy County also shows one of the big reasons Jim Esch is trying to frame Lee Terry as soft on veterans support. Of course those are based on out-and-out falsehoods of the Esch camp, but nevertheless...

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New NRCC ad out entitled, "Jim Esch Doesn't Care About Us". Note that it's to the tune from "Curb Your Enthusiasm".

See it here:

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On that note of curbing one's enthusiasm (in this case, the Dems) we'd like to take a look at the recent "Cook Political Report" prognostications.

In the latest from Cook, they draw the NE-2 race between Terry and Esch as a "toss-up".

That's an interesting take. We don't see it that way, but we suppose you could argue it.

But from Cook, we would hope to have some data behind such a claim. It seems to be based on the spending of the parties, Obama's spending and, most notably, a recent Esch internal poll that no one has actually seen.

So is it worth even giving that sort of "analysis" any credence?

Well, let's look at their analysis of the Nebraska Senate race:

In find Mike Johanns ahead they said,

Secretary Mike Johanns has seemed in command of the race since the day he announced his candidacy.

There has been a frustrating lack of reliable public polling in this race...

Our sense is that Johanns is over 50 percent, while Kleeb trailing somewhere in the mid- to high- 30s.

So basically it comes down to, here's the gist were feeling so....here are some numbers. Not based on anything.

Are they correct about that race? Maybe. Maybe not. But when main stream media outlets point to Cook and say, "Cook says it's a toss up!", they don't follow that up with, "Of course it's based on some sort of gut reaction and not any poling data."

As we've said here on Leavenworth Street, we like more information rather than less. We just ask that if it's the "less" side, the media restrain themselves.