Wake Up To Politics - October 30, 2014
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Thursday, October 30, 2014
5 Days Until Election Day 2014
740 Days Until Election Day 2016
It's Thursday, October 30, 2014, I'm Gabe Fleisher for Wake Up To Politics, and reporting from WUTP world HQ in my bedroom - Good morning: THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL!!!
To send me questions, comments, tips, new subscribers, and more: email me at wakeuptopolitics@gmail.com. To learn more about WUTP or subscribe, visit the site: wakeuptopolitics.com, or read my tweets and follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/Wakeup2Politics.
Election Central
Early Voting Well Underway While early voting statistics are no clear predictor for results, they are interesting to look at and can tell us something about the way a race is looking. The Elect Project compiles statistics on early voting, and reports 11,879,834 people across the country have already cast their ballots in the 2014 midterm election.
State-by-state statistics on early voting from the Elect Project are here.
Poll: Crist Leads Scott in FL Gov While the Senate may be lost for Democrats, the party is still looking to pick up a few governorships, and Exhibit A is in the battleground state of Florida.
Former Gov. Charlie Crist, who was a Republican when he served in the State House, and since switched to become Independent, is running as a Democrat to get his old job back, challenging his successor, Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL).
A poll released Thursday morning from Quinnipiac University showed Crist 3 points ahead of Scott, leading 43% to 40%. Libertarian Adrian Wyllie has nabbed a full 8% of the vote, a large figure for a non-major party candidate, and a sizable portion of votes that would probably have gone to Scott.
White House Watch
The President’s Schedule President Obama is in Portland, Maine today attending a DNC roundtable, and later a campaign rally for Mike Michaud, the Democratic nominee for governor, and other Maine Democrats.
After the events, Obama will travel to Providence, Rhode Island, where he will remain overnight ahead of campaign events tomorrow.
Question of the Day
Today’s Question The late President John Adams would have celebrated his birthday today, October 30. What month has the most presidential birthdays?
Yesterday’s Answer Wednesday’s trivia question was…(besides Frances Cleveland), which former First Lady remarried after their husband’s death?
And the answer is…Jackie O! After her husband was assassinated in 1963, Jackie Kennedy had to leave the White House, widowed and alone at age 34. By October 1968, not five years after John F. Kennedy was shot, Jackie married Aristotle Onassis, the wealthy Greek shipping magnate, making her the answer to our trivia question!
GREAT JOB…Steve Gitnik, Joe Bookman, Lisa Mandel, Janice Goodman, Randy Fleisher, Leslie Caplan, Madge Treeger, and @amusedlibrarian (longtime reader Christa Van Herreweghe, who answered via Twitter)!!!!
Letter to the Editor
Joe Bookman asks, “Did any President remarry after leaving office?”
Thanks for the great question, Joe! This is obviously related to the trivia question I asked Wednesday on First Ladies remarrying after leaving the White House (and once their husbands died), just the inverse.
Both Millard Fillmore and Benjamin Harrison fit in this category. Fillmore’s wife Abigail died less than a month after he left the White House, and he remarried to Caroline McIntosh five years later. Benjamin Harrison’s wife died two weeks before the 1892 election, when he lost re-election. Harrison then went into his Post-Presidency a widower, and four years later, at age 62, married Mary Scott Lord Dimmick, the 37-year-old niece of his late wife. Harrison’s two children, at 41 and 38, were both older than their new step-mother, and disapproved of the union.