Sunday, February 24, 2008

Special Elections could make new superdelegates

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There are six open seats in Congress, and six Special Elections are scheduled over the next 3 months:

District
Date
Predecessor
Illinois 14thMarch 8, 2008Dennis Hastert (R)
Indiana 7thMarch 11, 2008Julia Carson (D)
California 12thApril 8, 2008Tom Lantos (D)
Mississippi 1stApril 22, 2008Roger Wicker (R)
Louisiana 1stMay 3, 2008Bobby Jindal (R)
Louisiana 6thMay 3, 2008Richard Baker (R)

Democrats are favored to keep the Democratic seats, and Republicans are favored in the Mississippi and Louisiana seats. The Hastert seat leans Republican, but a recent poll shows it could be very close.

And every Democratic winner automatically becomes a superdelegate, and increases the number of superdelegates, and therefore total delegates, by one over the current numbers.

Note: The CA-12 election is an open primary, If no candidate gets a majority, a run-off will be held on June 3. The MS-1 is also an open primary, with the run-off scheduled for May 13.

Update: The latest poll in IL-14 has Foster (D) leading 45-41 over Oberweis (R). Picking up Hastert's seat would be a huge win for the Democrats.

Update 2: Foster is running ads featuring Obama's endorsement, and being from Illinois, Foster is a lock to support Obama should he win.

3 comments:

Miller said...

It would be awesome to see Denny Hastert's seat here in IL turn blue. That's the most consistently Republican district in Illinois.

A few years back, Jim Oberweis ran for a different position and ran an ad all over Chicago where he was in a blackhawk helicopter holding a machine gun and yelling about illegal immigration. If anyone can blow this election for the GOP, it's him.

Travis said...

miller, Is this the ad you mentioned?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nst-aXvdrR4

Miller said...

actually, i think it is. note that there's no yelling, machine gun, or view of the helicopter. maybe i saw a parody somewhere that i'm getting confused with what actually ran. six years is a long time ago, i suppose. my bad!