Special Election megathread (6/25: CO-4)

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

This primary is a sad indictment of the democratic party. "You criticize us, we'll use whatever dirty tactics to make sure you never get into power". Biden was a bowl of sh**t.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

This primary is a sad indictment of the democratic party. "You criticize us, we'll use whatever dirty tactics to make sure you never get into power". Biden was a bowl of sh**t.

No, Nina Turner was just a very awful candidate, and a terrible fit for the district.

She was one of the best candidates to run for office in the last 40 years

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Who wins the California 22 special election today?

Connie Conway?

Conway will likely make the runoff yes.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

The CA-22 special election is looking REALLY bad for Democrats right now.

Right now Republican candidates have 63.8% of the vote and Democratic candidates have 36.2% of the vote.
In 2020 Nunes won 54.2% of the vote to Arballo's 45.8.
That's a margin shift from 8.4% to 27.6%, or a 19.2% swing right.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

The CA-22 special election is looking REALLY bad for Democrats right now.

Right now Republican candidates have 63.8% of the vote and Democratic candidates have 36.2% of the vote.
In 2020 Nunes won 54.2% of the vote to Arballo's 45.8.
That's a margin shift from 8.4% to 27.6%, or a 19.2% swing right.

I wouldn't try and make big judgments from 9% of the precincts reporting - and remember in California everything is a "partial report" on election night:


Unofficial Election Results
Results will be certified by April 14, 2022.

( 19 of 208 ) precincts partially
reporting as of April 5, 2022, 8:42 p.m.


Precincts are listed as “partially” reporting since vote-by-mail, provisional, and other ballots will continue to be processed and counted after Election Night.


Certainly if this margin holds up it's concerning...but it's early.

It says 59% of the vote is in from the Washington Post.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

What did I miss? I was working the entire day and no clue that there was special elections today.

This is to replace Nunes who resigned to run Truth Social.

You haven't missed much, only 9% of precincts are reporting something.

So, is this the election day votes, early votes in, both, partially, what?

Since E-Day votes obviously favor the GOP and early votes favor the Democrats.

Mostly early votes, but it's also disproportionately from the more Republican county in the district. So hard to tell much.

How long will it take for the voting to be counted?

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

84% of the initial report in:

Eric Garcia
(Party Preference: DEM)
9,475
15.1%
Lourin Hubbard
(Party Preference: DEM)
12,484
19.9%
Connie Conway
(Party Preference: REP)
21,631
34.5%
Elizabeth Heng
(Party Preference: REP)
4,095
6.5%
Michael Maher
(Party Preference: REP)
5,539
8.8%
Matt Stoll
(Party Preference: REP)
9,433
15.1%

Almost 2-1 ratio between Reps and Dems LOL

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

84% of the initial report in:

Eric Garcia
(Party Preference: DEM)
9,475
15.1%
Lourin Hubbard
(Party Preference: DEM)
12,484
19.9%
Connie Conway
(Party Preference: REP)
21,631
34.5%
Elizabeth Heng
(Party Preference: REP)
4,095
6.5%
Michael Maher
(Party Preference: REP)
5,539
8.8%
Matt Stoll
(Party Preference: REP)
9,433
15.1%

Almost 2-1 ratio between Reps and Dems LOL

A lot of primaries in 2018 had majority R votes and then flipped D in the general. That being said, this was a highly unlikely flip anyway. Not exactly an amazing bench when the highest D is an "operations manager at the California Dept of Water Resources"

Still, the extent of the overperformance shouldn't be ignored.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

84% of the initial report in:

Eric Garcia
(Party Preference: DEM)
9,475
15.1%
Lourin Hubbard
(Party Preference: DEM)
12,484
19.9%
Connie Conway
(Party Preference: REP)
21,631
34.5%
Elizabeth Heng
(Party Preference: REP)
4,095
6.5%
Michael Maher
(Party Preference: REP)
5,539
8.8%
Matt Stoll
(Party Preference: REP)
9,433
15.1%

Almost 2-1 ratio between Reps and Dems LOL

A lot of primaries in 2018 had majority R votes and then flipped D in the general. That being said, this was a highly unlikely flip anyway. Not exactly an amazing bench when the highest D is an "operations manager at the California Dept of Water Resources"

Not an election Dems have much reason to care about; no impact on the house this congress and the seat will flip to them anyway with the new gerrymandered boundaries in November.

But this could be a bad sign for Democrats in November.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

If this swing holds up nationwide in November, we could be looking at 55 Dem seats in the Senate and a 2008-size majoirty in the House.

LOL

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Damn I wanted Hughes, Malloy will be a meh normiecon like Blake Moore.
At least this all but guarantees Edwards is DOA.

Democrats, can we please swap Nevada and Utah? We don't want the Mormons.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Ironically, if Greg Hughes won the convention he probably would have more easily won, since Hough likely wouldn't have  run against him.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Thank god Edwards was defeated in the R primary, but it seems like Maloy isn't that great either. Was really hoping for Hough but at least it wasn't the worst case situation.

Its a low bar. We got an Andrew Garbarino instead of a Wayne Gilchrest.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Yes we all know the race for NJ-10 is going to be closely watched by Blexit diehards to see how many Black Democrats switch to the GOP to vote for Carmen Bucco...

Except his bid was over before it even got started, because we all know whichever Democrat wins the primary in July (likely LaMonica McIver) will have measured the drapes long before the September special election, let alone November the 5th. Not very many folks care about Blexit anyway, considering its lead champion has since disgraced herself amongst many conservatives over her spat with Ben Shapiro.

You do know that conservatives online were massively favouring Candace Owens' side over Ben Shapiro?
Shapiro lost more favor among conservatives than she did.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Looks like a pretty healthy gop over performance of 6-8 points tonight

Wonder why?

Is it because everyone gets a mail ballot?

I think it's because of high turnout

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

When comparing CO-04 to OH-06, I think there are some takeaways in each district that can foretell the future, especially after November the 5th regardless of who the President will be, and with some odes to two iconic ABC sitcoms.

With OH-06, you have a lot of ancestrally Dem working class areas that largely do not subscribe to conservative economic viewpoints, but largely went Republican because the Democrats abandoned the working class wholesale. These are your typical Roseanne voters, your lunch pail Democrats who are Obama-Trump "pivot voters" and will be voting for Sherrod Brown in November, but who voted for Kripchak despite the race essentially being Rulli's to lose.

It is also important to note that Rulli's underperformance relative to Trump was much smaller in the more urban Youngstown portion of his district (where you have a lot of suburban areas like Canfield and Boardman) that he served in the Ohio Senate as opposed to the more downriver rural areas that moved strongly towards Kripchak. Give or take, it is a special election and the result will likely be different, but while there are a number of voters in OH-06 that won't be going back to the Democrats soon, they aren't necessarily becoming Republicans either and likely would be less inclined to favor a Republican in 2028, whether it's DeSantis or even favorite son Vance. Which is why, should DeSantis- and Rand Paul-style Freedom Caucus Republicans more interested in the Constitution and the Club for Growth than the "culture wars" gain the upper hand in Republican primaries in 2026 and 2028, these areas might or might not be in danger of trending leftward depending on the direction of the Dems (do we go more Roseanne, more AOC, or more (insert name of random soccer mom who has Joy Behar's brain infused into her veins via in IV)?

Likewise, in CO-04, you have a sizable number of areas that shifted Dem in the Trump era - particularly in suburban Douglas County to the southwest and parts of Larimer and Weld counties to the northwest. This is where you have your typical real-life Modern Family voters with the aspirational but goofy parents and their two or three kids, is where the growth is happening in the state, and which trended a lot towards the Dems because they were turned off by Trump's "culture war" preening because his mouth was his own worst enemy and because he and the Republican Congress couldn't deliver on the principles that mattered to a lot of suburban areas where they expect whatever hard-earned money they didn't send to the tax man to not be wasted on Republicans "doing nothing" (in Chip Roy's words). On top of depressed (mostly young) suburban voters who otherwise would be drawn to the GOP like they were in the 2010 and 2014 midterms before that golden escalator ride, you also have a lot of (mostly older) Liz Cheney fanboys who yearn for the days of when Bill Kristol and the Neocon Playboys ruled the roost in the GOP and are fed a pureed meal of Morning Joe every morning, especially unsurprising considering this district partially borders Wyoming. And that's not even counting the tech bros and California transplants who vote Republican on economics but are as socially liberal as you'd expect from many of them, overflowing from the nearby CO-06...which adds more intrigue to these growing and rather perilous western ends of the district, for which the beet, beet red rural eastern Colorado portion is largely irrelevant.

What is interesting here is that given Greg Lopez's numbers here tonight, whatever Dem overperformance exists here barely registers, and if these numbers hold up, whatever feelings a lot of voters in the two western prongs of the CO-04 barbeque tong may now be somehow muted now that COVID has faded into oblivion and Biden's economic package isn't exactly all it's cracked up to be in the voters' minds. Trisha Calvarese couldn't even clear the bar earlier tonight against Ike McCorkle's well-funded blue machine, and the bigger question may be "Can Trisha unite Team Blue in November?", regardless of whether or not Boebert can unite the 50-60 percent of voters who didn't vote for her tonight in the primary. May as well bring up the "Roe card" and the "democracy card" to whip Trump skeptics back in line for them...

It may also be dependent on what direction the Colorado GOP goes in after November the 5th, especially now that the embattled Dave Williams just got blown out next door in CO-05 in an election where Trump's proven theory - halfway proven in Virginia two weeks ago - may now be in jeopardy given Jeff Crank blew out Williams (and also given that Mark Burns barely got edged out in a South Carolina district many, many miles away), since it's obvious Colorado has the worst state GOP in the country right now. By that logic, and CO-03 also soundly rejecting Ron Hanks despite the Democrats' best efforts to buy that election, there just may be hope in Colorado this year for the GOP, if not after the Trump era is over for which the GOP hopes in the suburbs might be a little better not just in Douglas, but also in the core counties of Arapahoe, Adams and Jefferson that haven't exactly been competitive for Republicans for almost a decade if not since the halcyon days of Bill Owens, Tom Tancredo and Bob Beauprez. (The rural remainder of CO-04 will be just fine, as it's as monopolistically Republican as it's ever been all these decades.)

And for the record, I still think the way the Colorado GOP treated Eli Bremer with the nomination process in 2022 was absolute horse****, and that Bremer would have been a fine representative for CO-05.

I think Boebert will be fine in 2024. Her bigger challenge will be in 2026, if the post-Williams COGOP tries to find a single candidate to unite the 56% of GOP primary voters who rejected her tonight.

Why would the COGOP try to primary out an incumbent in a safe seat