Free Republic

Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) told Chuck Todd today that the reason Barack Obama is unpopular in Louisiana because the state is full of racists and sexists. “And, number two, to be very, very honest with you the South is not always the friendliest place for African Americans. It’s been a difficult time for the president to present himself in a very positive light as a leader. It’s not always been a good place for women to be able to present ourselves. It’s a conservative place.” Governor Bobby Jindal (an Indian American) released a statement in response to the outrageous attack....

Hot on the heels of the Department of Justice’s suddenly-renewed interest in George Zimmerman’s civil rights liability in the self-defense killing of Trayvon Martin (see: FBI Convenes Grand Jury For Zimmerman Civil Rights Case) just days before next week’s election comes another DOJ action timed perfectly for electoral manipulation. National Review Online is reporting that the FBI (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the DOJ) has made the highly unusual decision to disclose their investigation into Mike Rounds (pictured above), a Republican Senate candidate in South Dakota, less than a week before next Tuesday’s vote. The alleged misconduct being investigated is somewhat...

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has opened up a five-point lead over Democratic opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes and appears well positioned to win a sixth term, according to the final Bluegrass Poll before Tuesday's election. McConnell leads Grimes 48 percent to 43 percent in Kentucky's U.S. Senate race, with Libertarian candidate David Patterson pulling 3 percent. In a Bluegrass Poll released early last week, McConnell was clinging to a one-point lead, with 44 percent backing him and 43 percent choosing Grimes. The latest poll of 597 likely voters in Kentucky was conducted by SurveyUSA between Oct. 25 and Oct....

The clock is running out for Democrat Mark Pryor to keep from losing his U.S. Senate seat in Arkansas to Republican Congressman Tom Cotton. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Arkansas Voters shows Cotton with 51% of the vote to Pryor’s 44%. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate in the race, and two percent (2%) remain undecided.

With strong support from men, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, the Republican challenger in the Colorado U.S. Senate race, leads U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, the Democratic incumbent, 46 - 39 percent among likely voters, with 7 percent for independent candidate Steve Shogan, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Another 7 percent are undecided. This compares to a 46 - 41 percent likely voter lead for Gardner in an October 24 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. With Shogan out of the race, Gardner is up 49 - 41 percent.

In a poll released Wednesday by the Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group [Link at URL], Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) holds a commanding lead with early voters in Iowa's open Senate race compraed to his Republican opponent Joni Ernst. While the poll shows the race to be a dead heat, which is consistent with recent polling [Link at URL], Braley holds an impressive 15-point lead with those who have already voted. The poll also shows that Braley has a 10-point lead with independent voters. ...

With projections of a GOP win growing daily, nervousness in Senate committee offices has turned to panic as an army of Democratic staffers braces to be fired, replaced by a Republican majority and their aides. The spoils of political war? Estimates are that 300-600 Democratic committee and personal staff jobs would be on the chopping block if the Republicans pull off the expected victory. “There will be a mass exodus of Senate Democrat staff from committees,” said one insider. And Republicans will get to hire hundreds more aides. A loss on Tuesday that keeps the Democrats in charge of the...

The state of Colorado has embarked on a far-reaching experiment this campaign season: Its 2014 election, featuring a high-profile contest between incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall and Republican challenger Rep. Cory Gardner, is being conducted exclusively with mail-in ballots. Every voter in the state has received a ballot; if a person wants to vote on Election Day, he or she will have to take that ballot to what is called a voter service center, present it to officials and then vote. It's expected most will opt to mail their ballots. And each day, as the ballots arrive, the Colorado secretary...

In the contest for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan, 43%, and her Republican challenger and state legislator Thom Tillis, 43%, are in a dead heat among North Carolina likely voters including those who are undecided yet leaning toward a candidate or have voted early. Six percent are undecided, and 6% of likely voters with a candidate preference say they might vote differently. Hagan and Tillis maintain their support among their respective party’s base. However, Tillis leads Hagan among independents likely to vote. A gender gap also exists. Hagan has a 10 point advantage among women likely...

SALISBURY, N.C. – Regardless of who wins, the North Carolina Senate race will go down as the most expensive, likely ugliest contest of the 2014 midterms, with more than $100 million spent and more than 90,000 ads – most of them attacks – aired across the state. Democrat Kay Hagan is fighting for a second term in the Senate. Six years ago, she famously beat Elizabeth Dole to steal the seat. Republicans are determined to win it back this year and have poured millions into the campaign of Thom Tillis, speaker of the North Carolina House. Until recently, Tillis remained...

A scion of the Udall family is losing ground in this year’s Senate contest, but this time it’s Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico. The Democratic incumbent saw his once-formidable lead over Republican Allen Weh shrink in two polls released Monday. A survey taken by Research & Polling Inc. for the Albuquerque Journal has Mr. Udall ahead by 50 to 43 points, down from 51 to 38 percent in its mid-September poll.

On the most important issue of our time – an issue that directly affects our communities, our schools, our economy, and our security – Michelle Nunn has sided with President Obama, amnesty activists, and billionaire special interests over the citizens of her own state. ##She has pledged to vote for an immigration bill [S.744] that will reduce your wages, increase unemployment, and place enormous new burdens on your family.

The polls this cycle have been cruel to Democrats. A number of surveys have given the president’s party undue hope that they could pull off the impossible on Election Day and retain control of the U.S. Senate. But, like Lucy van Pelt ripping the set football away from a rushing Charlie Brown at the very last minute, Democrats have been robbed of that intoxicating hope just as the buzz was getting good. After abandoning the party’s nominee as determined by the voters, Democrats were thrilled by the prospect that ruby red Kansas might elect a Democrat masquerading as an independent...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (CNN) -- Hillary Clinton swiped at Republican Senate hopeful Joni Ernst on Wednesday for canceling a meeting with the Des Moines Register editorial board last week, telling a labor audience that not answering "tough questions" is "disqualifying" in the state. "I have concluded that Iowans take politics really seriously," Clinton said. "You test your candidates, you actually force them to be the best they can be and they have to be willing to answer the tough questions." Democrat Bruce Braley "has been willing to do this, and his opponent has not," she said. ---snip--- Clinton also knocked...

Well, that got ugly pretty fast. In the last debate before Tuesday’s Senate primary election, the three major candidates took to the LSU Manship School of Journalism podiums (or is it podia?) and gave the voters an hour’s worth of speechifying as to why they deserve our votes. Or in Mary Landrieu’s case, why she’s ready to become a lobbyist. **SNIP** It might have been as good an answer as she could have given, and since Cassidy had already received a max-out donation from Bollinger for this cycle even before he declared for the Senate he probably wasn’t quite the...

Republican David Perdue h as surged ahead of Democrat Michelle Nunn in the race to fill the senate seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, according to the latest poll by SurveyUSA conducted for Atlanta Business Chronicle broadcast partner WXIA-TV. With less than a week to go before the election, Perdue has 48 percent of the vote. Nunn has 45 percent. In a SurveyUSA poll last week, Nunn held 46 percent of the vote and Perdue had 44 percent. Libertarian Senate candidate Amanda Swafford polled at 3 percent. Five percent of voters are undecided. Perdue's gain is credited...

While President Obama has returned to the campaign trail to court the black vote ahead of the midterm elections, race has arisen as an issue in two key Senate races, albeit for very different reasons. A new television ad airing in Louisiana makes the case that the nation’s first black president has been bad for the black community. The ad comes from a group called “Progressives for Immigration Reform” and uses images of Hurricane Katrina devastation and blacks standing in unemployment lines to argue that “our own president” wants to allow in millions of illegal immigrant workers to “take jobs...

In the sprint to next Tuesday's US midterm elections, new polls show some besieged Democrats holding their own, complicating the narrative that Republicans are on track to seize the Senate majority. Alaska in particular bears good news for President Barack Obama's party: two recent surveys show incumbent Senator Mark Begich with a substantial lead, the first polls in a month to put him ahead of Republican challenger Dan Sullivan. Alaska-based Republican-leaning firm Hellenthal and Associates released a poll Friday putting Begich ahead by 10 points. Late Monday, Ivan Moore Research group released an October 24-26 poll on Facebook showing Begich...

Brown is up 48.3 percent to Shaheen’s 46.8 percent in the poll of 1,132 likely voters statewide. The poll was conducted on Oct. 24, and has a margin of error of 2.91 percent. Dr. Wayne Lesperance, New England College's director of the Center for Civic Engagement, attributed Brown’s success to narrowing Shaheen’s lead among women voters. “A 1.5 percent margin is incredibly narrow and makes this race a statistical dead heat. Brown’s recent success comes from narrowing the lead Shaheen had with women to just under 5 percent,” Lesperance said. Shaheen has attempted to reignite the “war on women” rhetoric...

LITTLETON, Colo. — To many Republicans, the Democratic "war on women" campaign against GOP Senate candidate Cory Gardner is an outrage. But for Gardner himself, it is also a test. How would Gardner react when incumbent Sen. Mark Udall and national Democrats accused him of scheming to deny women access to birth control? The accusation seemed ridiculous, but what if Colorado voters took it seriously? Gardner certainly took it seriously, and he reacted by taking two steps. First, he abandoned his earlier support for so-called personhood measures that Democrats charged would lead to bans on some forms of contraception. And...