One of the most important factors that dictates the outcome of any political race is the incumbency factor. According to Herrnson, most of these incumbents "begin the general election campaign organization with higher name recognition and voter approval levels, greater political experience, more money and a baetter campaign organization than thier opponent". (246) Strictly going by this, I would predict Ciro to beat his opponent Canseco, however due to unpopularity with Democrats overall in the nation as well as a very agressive campaign by Canseco, this is a race that could easily go either way.
In the past Ciro has proven that he is a strong contender and has many years of previous political experience. This would ensure that he has high name recognition not only among the people in his district but also among the "political elites" in Washington who willlook at him and assume he'll win. In terms of money, Rodriquez seems to be running a fairly modest amount of funds of 702,422 dollars. The only criteria that I could say Rodriquez doesn't follow from Hernson's theory would be "better campaign organization." This is based solely off th fact that Canseeco just seems to be making himself more heard and more visible than Rodriquez at the moment.
No in regards to Canseco he is currently slightly leading in th polls, however this lead is not a great one and could change at any moment. As stated in the previous paragraph Rodriquez has several advantages over Canseco that he'll need to overcome in order to win. Such as the fact that Canseco only has 453,370 in remaining funds as of early October. However Canseco seems to be putting in all his efforts in trying to not only get higher name recognition among voters through door to door campaigning but also to slander Rodriquez's name with television ads in which he makes false claims of Rodriquez voting for the bank bailouts in 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkIMd_UuSUk
Overall this is on the of th tightest races in not only Texas but in the entire nation. I personally feel that it coul really swing in either direction, however if i had to pick someone to win it, it would be Canseco simply because he's already leading in the polls against all odds. Which tells me that an aggressive campaign may just win over the incumbency factor in this hot race.
That's interesting that you predict that a non incumbent will supersede over an incumbent in this Congressional race. Would that override your thesis that incumbency may not be the most important factor in an election? Why do you feel that Canseco's "aggressive campaign" strategies outweigh Ciro's incumbency?
ReplyDelete(I would also check for grammatical errors in this post)