In winning his special election victory on Tuesday night, incoming Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) joined a dubious but sizable bipartisan House caucus: The Underachievers. … Sanford is in the club because he won about 54% of the vote in the special election, but Mitt Romney won about 58% in the district [...] Read more »
Mark Sanford’s political redemption
When he left office two years ago, it seemed unlikely that Mark Sanford’s future would hold another successful bid for elected office. Since 2009, when the former governor of South Carolina admitted that his absences from the state to allegedly hike the Appalachian Trail were, in fact, trips to Argentina [...] Read more »
Sanford and the Electoral Effect of Sex Scandals
Tuesday night’s special election in South Carolina’s First Congressional District was won by the Republican Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor whose political career was imperiled in 2009 after he disclosed an extramarital affair. As we almost always say about special elections, the race probably does not tell us [...] Read more »
After Mark Sanford’s win, embarrassed pollsters go back to the drawing board
Mark Sanford is heading off to Washington DC, while pollsters are heading back to their workshops. His victory by 9pt over Elizabeth Colbert Busch in South Carolina’s first district special election was surprisingly large. The last two public polls from Public Policy Polling (PPP) and Red Racing Horses (RRH) had [...] Read more »
South Carolina Special Election Won’t Tell Much About 2014
Here’s a prediction: If not on Tuesday night, then certainly by Wednesday and maybe even through Thursday or beyond, one party will be crowing that its victory in the special election for now-Sen. Tim Scott’s former seat in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District is a sign that it is doing [...] Read more »
Why It’s Difficult to Predict the Outcome of Sanford vs. Colbert Busch
Presidential elections are relatively easy to analyze. The economic fundamentals provide an early handicap of the outcome, and by the end the countless polls are so accurate that you often need to try to get presidential elections wrong, as hopeful partisans do. A special congressional election with two unusual candidates—in [...] Read more »
Yes, Mark Sanford really has a chance to beat Elizabeth Colbert Busch
Republican Mark Sanford has closed the gap with Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the South Carolina first district special election to take place on Tuesday. … It’s not as if voters all of a sudden like Sanford, the former South Carolina Governor who is most well known nationally for cheating [...] Read more »
Sanford vs. Colbert Busch: A Very ‘Special’ Election
A former Republican governor of a deeply Republican state is running for a deeply Republican U.S. House seat, but he is best known for claiming to be walking the Appalachian Trail while he was actually visiting his mistress in Argentina, and he has a court date two days after next [...] Read more »
Why Sanford vs. Colbert Busch Could Be Competitive
Former Gov. Mark Sanford won a runoff election this week, securing the Republican nomination for South Carolina’s First Congressional District. He will face the Democratic nominee, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, in a May 7 general election. The First District, which runs from Hilton Head Island in the south to north of [...] Read more »
South Carolina Doubles Down on 2014
When Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) unexpectedly announced that he planned to resign his seat in early 2013 to become president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, he set in motion an odd American political occurrence: the double-barreled Senate election. This is when there is both a Senate special [...] Read more »