Don't Call It A Comeback

He's been here for years.  Looks like I may very well have to eat my words on Mark Sanford losing tomorrow.

PPP's final poll of the special election in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District finds a race that's too close to call, with Republican Mark Sanford leading Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch 47-46. The 1 point lead for Sanford represents a 10 point reversal from PPP's poll of the race two weeks ago, when Colbert Busch led by 9 points at 50-41.

Sanford has gotten back into the race by nationalizing it and painting Colbert Busch as a liberal. A plurality of voters in the district- 47%- say they think Colbert Busch is a liberal compared to 43% who characterize her as ideologically 'about right.' Colbert Busch's favorability rating has dropped a net 19 points compared to 2 weeks ago, from +25 then at 56/31 to +6 now at 50/44.

While Colbert Busch is seen as too liberal, 48% of voters think that Sanford's views are 'about right' on the issues compared to just 38% who see him as too conservative. Sanford's also seen some repair to his image over the course of the campaign. Although he's still unpopular, sporting a -11 net favorability rating at 43/54, that's up a net 13 points from our first poll in March when he was at 34/58.

Pretty good, considering national Republicans walked away from the guy.  SC-1 remains a R+11 district according to the Cook Political Report, meaning that Colbert Busch's 9 point lead was not going to last.  It didn't.  The liberal card still works, folks....and SC Republicans set up the district to make sure that card could be played.

So now we have a tight race that Sanford can definitely pull off, and the election is tomorrow.  We'll see if Colbert Busch can get out the vote, but even if she wins, next November she'll be among the top targets for the GOP to take back in 2014, and the reality is thanks to gerrymandering, it will be a lot easier for them to do so with any candidate who isn't as flawed as Sanford, as Nate Silver points out.

Since 1997 (which is as far back as records of special elections go on history.house.gov), candidates who won a special election in a district carried by the opposing political party in the preceding presidential election have had fleeting tenures in Congress.

There have been 59 special elections since 1997, and just 14 candidates have carried districts that leaned away from their political party (a Republican representing a Democratic-leaning seat or vice versa). Of those 14, 13 no longer hold those seats.1 The lone exception is Representative Ron Barber, who won a full term in Arizona’s Eighth Congressional District in 2012 after winning a special election to replace former Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Here's a guy who should be losing by 10...in a district where the Republican has an 11 point advantage.  Voila, a one point lead.  Any nominally competent Republican would win this by double digits, and even if she does pull it off tomorrow, odds a really good that November of next year this goes back to the GOP.

This is the political reality of gerrymandering, folks:  flipping partisan House districts long-term is nearly impossible.