elections

Republicans looking to take back the House say they hope a pool of fresh faces will be just what the voters ordered to cure their incumbent fatigue.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has been nurturing a program since the last election cycle to recruit and build a base for a crop of new congressional challengers. The recruits are not quite entry-level. Many are lawmakers at the state level, business leaders, veterans and lawyers.

But to mount a run for Congress, the "Young Guns" program gives those would be federal candidates a platform. And Republican leaders are counting on those candidates to help win them a majority....

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new poll finds Republican voters are more excited about the upcoming November congressional elections than are Democrats. That enthusiasm gap has produced victories for pro-life candidates already in off-year elections and it could result in more victories and potentially retaking one or both houses of Congress.

The new national survey from the Public Policy Polling Institute, which leans Democratic, finds "enthusiasm gap is still out there and certainly a problem Democrats are going to have to contend with this fall."

The survey found 66% of Republicans 'very excited' about voting this fall to only 51% of Democrats, for a 15 point gap...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new poll from the respected Quinnipiac University polling institute finds Americans don't want to re-elect pro-abortion president Barack Obama in 2012. Instead, they prefer an unnamed Republican - referring to any of several pro-life candidates who may launch presidential bids against him.

The poll finds Obama's political honeymoon has clearly ended, likely thanks in part to his aggressive promotion of abortion and abortion funding.

Obama's job approval rating has dropped to a negative 44-48 percent, his worst net score ever in the college's presidential tracking polls...

An Obama administration effort to rein in states treading toward using new health care laws to fund abortions - and provide political cover for pro-life Democrats - reignited a politically explosive issue that Republicans and pro-life activists are eager to exploit in the lead-up to the fall midterm elections.

Seizing on a Health and Human Services Department announcement last week that states must comply with a White House executive order that prohibits most abortion coverage in government-backed insurance pools, anti-abortion groups and Republicans see more ammunition in their effort to rally pro-life voters to the polls.

"You cannot exchange 30 years of pro-life protections in the law for a piece of paper signed by the president of the United States," said Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, chairman of the House Republican Conference...

Voters will go to the polls this November with control of Congress at stake. Yet most voters say when they pull that lever, they will be sending a message to the White House, according to a Fox News poll.

The poll, released Friday, finds that 41 percent of voters will cast their ballots to register opposition to President Obama's policies. A third (33 percent) will vote to express their support. The policies of the administration will not be a factor for 20 percent of voters.

Most Republicans — 72 percent — describe their midterm vote as expressing opposition to the Obama administration. That's a bit higher than the 64 percent of Democrats who say their vote will express support. One in 10 Democrats will vote to express opposition to the president (11 percent)...

The top Senate Republican said Thursday the GOP is "on a comeback" politically as Democrats scrambled to bury the hatchet after several days of intraparty squabbling over their chances to hold the House in November's elections.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, denied any friction with the White House, dismissing reports that she and her House colleagues are angry at the president for ignoring their interests.

"There is absolutely no reason to think that the White House has been anything but cooperative with us in terms of our political efforts to retain control of the Congress," Mrs. Pelosi told reporters...

The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.

That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes -- fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority's newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records...

In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama's political coattails extended across the country. But heading into this year's midterm elections, Democrats face a tricky task of where to deploy their party chief on the campaign trail as they try to hang onto majorities in both houses of Congress.

President Obama's record over the past 17 months has been mixed: His party won a series of special House elections, but he put himself on the line as Democrats lost a pair of high-profile gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia. Then there was the special senatorial election in Massachusetts, where even a personal last-minute pitch by the president couldn't stop Republican Scott Brown from winning the seat long held by liberal lion Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Still, even as poll numbers have dropped from their lofty post-inauguration levels, campaigns have requested varying levels of involvement from Mr.  read more »

The phone in Sen. John Thune's office is about to start ringing -- a lot.

The South Dakota Republican -- who also leads the Senate GOP Policy Committee and is widely viewed as a 2012 presidential contender --is up for re-election this year. But no Democrat or Independent filed to run against him, leaving him with plenty of time and money to help Republicans win seats this November as the party seeks to regain a true sense of relevancy on Capitol Hill.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) said Thursday he planned to meet with Thune soon to explore ways the up-and-coming first-term Senator could help the NRSC and GOP candidates from now until Election Day. Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) added that he fully expects Thune to be a strong political asset over the next 135 days...

Karl Rove says evangelical Christians are looking for candidates who will live out the values they espouse -- and if they don't find them, those believers will simply stay home from the polling places.

Evangelical Christians are typically an important contingent of voters for conservative Republican candidates. Polls following the 2006 elections show many Christians did not turn out and vote because they had issues with many of the candidates who were not reliably conservative. Karl Rove, senior advisor to former President George W. Bush and his deputy chief of staff, talked with OneNewsNow concerning what drives Christians to the polls...