Kentucky 2023 gubernatorial election megathread

[EastwoodS]

If anyone knows of any Twitter accounts following ED voting in KY drop their @’ please.

[Del Tachi]

If Beshear ends up winning by a substantial margin tonight (>5 pts) what will be the explanation from the doomers?  The Bradley effect?  LOL

[Alben Barkley]

Well, I just voted. Line wasn't too long and it was mostly older people, but this was at around 11 AM.

Voted straight ticket Democratic, of course. (I like how Kentucky still uses the old Democratic rooster as our symbol on the ballot btw.) But I don't expect any of them but Beshear to have a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

Now all we can do is wait...

[EastwoodS]

Well, I just voted. Line wasn't too long and it was mostly older people, but this was at around 11 AM.

Voted straight ticket Democratic, of course. (I like how Kentucky still uses the old Democratic rooster as our symbol on the ballot btw.) But I don't expect any of them but Beshear to have a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

Now all we can do is wait...

You vote in Lexington right?

[Alben Barkley]

Well, I just voted. Line wasn't too long and it was mostly older people, but this was at around 11 AM.

Voted straight ticket Democratic, of course. (I like how Kentucky still uses the old Democratic rooster as our symbol on the ballot btw.) But I don't expect any of them but Beshear to have a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

Now all we can do is wait...

You vote in Lexington right?

Yep.

[Pollster]

Not sure if this has been clarified yet as I've seen this said multiple times in this thread but Laura Kelly did not lose ground in her re-election - she increased her vote share against lower turnout, a significantly less favorable political climate, and a more popular opponent.

This is like arguing that Bob Dole did not "lose ground" compared to George H. W. Bush because he increased the R vote share between 1992 and 1996.

Different candidates, I know, but the elephant in the room here is Orman. You cannot compare a race with a high-profile independent challenger to one without as that will always affect vote share of the other candidate(s). Without Orman, Kelly would probably not have increased her vote share/the difference would have been near-negligible.

Your focus on vote share as opposed to margins works much better in polling, I think.

You're only looking in one corner of a very large house here. Increasing your vote share among a smaller electorate that is compositionally more hostile to you requires adding significant numbers of raw votes to your coalition, regardless of who those voters went to in the last election. Whether she would have been Orman voters' second choice is irrelevant (she would not have been, for the record), at the end of the day they did not vote for her the first time, and if she added them to her support in 2022 that's ground gained. In this case it's even particularly extreme - she won with a 54% Republican self-ID electorate in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022 with a 58% Republican ID electorate, and the Dem ID share was steady (35% both years) so she pulled this off with a much smaller share of independent voters to work with. There is very simply no way she didn't notably expand her appeal and coalition, to Republicans in particular.

Fwiw, there actually was a right-wing third party candidate in 2022, a sitting state senator who lacked Orman's personal wealth to run a real statewide race but did get 7-9% in his district and cost the actual Republican candidate some support.

[KYRockefeller]

Showed up right at 6 a.m. when the polls opened in a Northern KY county and had to wait about 15 minutes to vote.  Split my ticket for Beshear and Enlow (ag commissioner) and GOP for everything else.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

If Beshear ends up winning by a substantial margin tonight (>5 pts) what will be the explanation from the doomers?  The Bradley effect?  LOL

SnowLabrador jinxed the race for the GOP again.

[libertpaulian]

The vibe I'm getting is that Cameron is enjoying a last-minute surge but is probably too late for victory.

[EastwoodS]

The vibe I'm getting is that Cameron is enjoying a last-minute surge but is probably too late for victory.

Prolly. We don’t really know yet.

[EastwoodS]

Apparently E day voting in Kentucky is “off the charts” according to predicit peoples. Can someone confirm or deny

[BigSkyBob]

If Beshear ends up winning by a substantial margin tonight (>5 pts) what will be the explanation from the doomers?  The Bradley effect?  LOL

Wouldn't it the same explanation if Cameron won by 4 or more points: the polls were incorrect?

[BigSkyBob]

Apparently E day voting in Kentucky is “off the charts” according to predicit peoples. Can someone confirm or deny

That might be true, or it could be someone trying to talk up their futures position.

[DaleCooper]

Apparently E day voting in Kentucky is “off the charts” according to predicit peoples. Can someone confirm or deny

I don't know, but PredictIt users are notorious for posting fake stuff in the comments in order to bump up a particular price. Not reliable.

[DaleCooper]

For context, PredictIt managed to get Blake Masters up to 50 cents after the election had been called for Mark Kelly last year, lmao.

[Young Conservative]

This race has tightened in recent weeks. In 2019, Beshear had some late momentum and in the polling average, Bevin pretty consistently remained below 50.

In the last two weeks, Cameron has definitely climbed-- and it's kentucky. That D4P poll for him was...not good given he only had a +7 approval in a poll with Trump only up by 9-- and it barely had beshear at 50.

Incumbents below 50? Not Good.

What's interesting is that Beshear has been right around 50...hard to tell if he's there. Momentum for Cameron could be too late.

BUT.

This is a lot closer to 50-50 than the conventional wisdom and betting markets are suggesting IMO.

It's Kentucky...and ET is acting like it's North Carolina tbh.

Gonna be a squeaker either way IMO. But I do think it's gone from a strong Lean D to a Tossup/Tilt D just in the last two weeks.

[GAinDC]

what evidence do people have that it's tightened besides one poll? And what does tightening mean?

If you thought Beshear was going to win in a landslide, then the race was always going to tighten relative to your expectations.

However, I've always thought Beshear would win by a couple points, and I think he's still on track to do that.

[oldkyhome]

I think turnout is going to be very low.

Really? I think the opposite.

I also think that if Andy loses, it will be in part because he failed to do enough to tie Cameron to the hated, 75% unfavorably rated Mitch McConnell. He should have emphasized their close ties and hinted that Cameron only views the governorship as a stepping stone to the Senate. If he hired me, that would have been the primary theme of this campaign. In the last few days/weeks especially, I worry because Cameron has gone full on blitzkrieg with advertisements painting Beshear as soft on crime, out of step with KY cultural values, and pro-Biden/anti-Trump. While Beshear's best response is "Hey, you know me and like me don't you?" and "Here's some doctors who don't like Cameron's healthcare plan." It just feels like he's bringing a knife to a gunfight, and like the Republicans have dumped a ton of money at the last minute into this race while the Democrats have failed to respond.

This is why I will sadly not be surprised by a loss tomorrow.

What polls have shown consistently over the past year is that almost without-exception Andy has locked up half of Kentucky voters. By galvanizing the other half of the electorate with petty personal attacks, he would not only supercharge his opposition but also probably alienate his own supporters who appreciate his uncontroversial good guy image.

The polls most certainly have not shown "Andy has locked up half of Kentucky voters." No poll has shown Andy Bashear to have the "certain support" of 50% of Kentuckians. Historically, over 50% well before the election was a good score; less than 50% a couple of week before the election was a lousy result; and less than 50% just before election day with few undecides was a mediocre score. The race has changed. We have witness Bashear slip from an almost commanding position to a mediocre one. He might pull it off. Then again, he might lose.

No poll? Lol

[wbrocks67]

what evidence do people have that it's tightened besides one poll? And what does tightening mean?

If you thought Beshear was going to win in a landslide, then the race was always going to tighten relative to your expectations.

However, I've always thought Beshear would win by a couple points, and I think he's still on track to do that.

I keep asking and no one has answers. I think it's literally just based off of the Emerson poll. There's nothing actually concrete to point to that would've made a difference. It feels the same as 2022 when Masters, Oz, Walker, et. al had imaginary "momentum" in the final weeks

[PoliticsWatcher1]

I hope Cameron can win it.

[It’s so Joever]

Honestly I think this will be razor thin, possibly being the closest KY gubernatorial in history. I geninely don't even have a gut feeling at this point but gun to my head Beshear pulls it off by a few thousand votes tops.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Apparently E day voting in Kentucky is “off the charts” according to predicit peoples. Can someone confirm or deny

Not a valid source.

[President Johnson]

Honestly I think this will be razor thin, possibly being the closest KY gubernatorial in history. I geninely don't even have a gut feeling at this point but gun to my head Beshear pulls it off by a few thousand votes tops.

Closer than the last one is already pretty hard.

My original 52-46% might be a little too optimistic, though I expect Beshear to win by a margin between two and four points.

[Pheurton Skeurto]

Honestly I think this will be razor thin, possibly being the closest KY gubernatorial in history. I geninely don't even have a gut feeling at this point but gun to my head Beshear pulls it off by a few thousand votes tops.

The last election was decided by 5,000 votes lol

[EastwoodS]

Rural counties aren’t turning out atm apparently