Independent Greg Orman campaigned in typically Republican rural Kansas with the argument incumbent Pat Roberts doesn’t keep the state’s agricultural interests in mind, says the Associated Press. Roberts, who says he expects to chair the Agriculture Committee if Republicans win control of the Senate, voted against the 2014 farm law. Orman says he is committed to crop insurance and rural economic development. Roberts said the farm law set subsidy rates too high for some crops.
A week ahead of the Senate election, there are a lot of undecided voters in Kansas – 10 percent according to SurveyUSA/KSN-TV, up from 7 percent three weeks ago. The poll of 623 “likely and actual” voters put Orman ahead, 44-42, with Libertarian Randall Batson drawing 4 percent. The previous KSN News Poll gave Orman a 5-point lead. Pollster’s tracking model says Roberts is ahead 43-42, with a 50 percent probability of winning – a toss-up.
Repondents to the KSN poll, which has a margin of error of +/-4.4 points, said jobs and the economy are the most important issue, a topic where Orman out-scores Roberts by 25 points. But Roberts has a huge advantage on immigration. The senator leads 2-to-1 among voters ages 18-14; Orman leads the other age groups.
FiveThirtyEight mentions the Kansas Senate race as one of its examples of the fading of the “incumbency advantage,” which topped 8 percent in the 1990s. “It used to be that sitting politicians were loved by their home districts. But things aren’t what they used to be,” wrote analyst Dan Hopkins of FiveThirtyEight.
The NPR blog The Salt talked to activists on both sides of the soda-tax referendums in Berkeley and San Francisco. It closed with mention of a study by a Duke economist says Americans spend 10 percent of their grocery money on sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soda. When prices go up, consumers “made more nutritious purchases,” says The Salt.
“The Upshot” column of the New York Times describes the difficulties of producing accurate polls, from declining response rates and proliferating use of cell phones to vexing questions of how to identify a likely voter before the fact.