GA-06 and SC-05 election day & results thread

[Technocracy Timmy]

This election is very important in trying to understand how Democrats can successfully win over the affluent college educated suburban reluctant Trump cohort. A lot of the campaigns in GOP districts near and around Orange County are predicated on winning enough of this demographic over to win the races here.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Regardless of outcome, we're sure to see a ton of hot (and hyperbolic) takes. Should be amusing and/or really frustrating.

Hopefully things turn out better here than whatever happened in Assaultana^TM.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Ossoff probably wasn't the best candidate Dems could've chosen.

Sigh, care to tell us which was the best candidate?

Let me guess we should just run bernie-esque candidates across the board regardless of social/demographic profile?

Jason Kander. He's perfect for anything.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Ossoff probably wasn't the best candidate Dems could've chosen.

Sigh, care to tell us which was the best candidate?

Let me guess we should just run bernie-esque candidates across the board regardless of social/demographic profile?

That's not what I was thinking at all. Dems should have ran a candidate who isn't a 30 year old documentary filmmaker with no political experience.

Justin Trudeau was a local high school drama teacher...

You are aware that his father was a former infamous Prime Minister of Canada right? You're comparing apples to oranges here.

[Technocracy Timmy]

i would be happy with a SUPER NARROW republican victory for a change.

I would not be. I want Rohrabacher to go down.

http://harleyforcongress.com

[Technocracy Timmy]

Should Perez be fired after this? Spending this much on a congressional race and losing is embarrassing.

Dude he just got the job like two months ago. If we lose Virginia or New Jersey governors election, yes.

If the Democratic Party loses the New Jersey gubernatorial race then they should disband as a political entity.

[Technocracy Timmy]

I see Ossoff going the way of Elizabeth Colbert and being forgotten as democrats find a new shiny object

Tell that to Jason Kander

[Technocracy Timmy]

I guess my suspicions about affluent college educated whites trending strongly for Democrats were somewhat justified.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Well the DCCC has got its work cut out for them in the Romney-Clinton districts in and around Orange County. Obviously it's not the same; but a lot of the groups Dems need to win over here are quite similar to the constituents in GA-6.

Ossoff was probably the best fit in terms of ideology and messaging for these kind of voters. Sh!t

[Technocracy Timmy]

Well the DCCC has got its work cut out for them in the Romney-Clinton districts in and around Orange County. Obviously it's not the same; but a lot of the groups Dems need to win over here are quite similar to the constituents in GA-6.

Ossoff was probably the best fit in terms of ideology and messaging for these kind of voters. Sh!t

Those districts are anywhere from 2-4% more Democratic than GA-6 and they aren't Republican gerrymanders. It wouldn't even take the sort of swing that occurred in GA-6 to totally turn Orange County blue.

They also won't have national attention and the same amount of money poured into them. Also GA-06 is about 13% AA. CA-48 for example is only 1%. Hispanics and Asians are far more elastic and they make up the bulk of minority voters in these areas.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Well the DCCC has got its work cut out for them in the Romney-Clinton districts in and around Orange County. Obviously it's not the same; but a lot of the groups Dems need to win over here are quite similar to the constituents in GA-6.

Ossoff was probably the best fit in terms of ideology and messaging for these kind of voters. Sh!t

Those districts are anywhere from 2-4% more Democratic than GA-6 and they aren't Republican gerrymanders. It wouldn't even take the sort of swing that occurred in GA-6 to totally turn Orange County blue.

They also won't have national attention and the same amount of money poured into them. Also GA-06 is about 13% AA. CA-48 for example is only 1%. Hispanics and Asians are far more elastic and they make up the bulk of minority voters in these areas.

Those districts are all at the top of the list for potentially Democratic gains, so they will get attention and locally there are plenty of resources to be competitive. With that said, none of those districts is an exact match for GA-6, so there is only so much you can compare.

I'm not suggesting that we can't win these areas, but tonight's results suggest that the typical suburban affluent college educated white demographic isn't as malleable as people have made them out to be. Ossoff ran a great campaign and messaged himself as exactly the kind of candidate who could appeal to these voters. The districts in and around Orange County are gonna tougher than people realize.

I was at a campaign training session for Harley Rouda and spoke to a consultant who is affiliated with the DCCC (and who was the person training us volunteers) and my question to her was about Clinton-Rohrabacher voters. She explained that the data collected on GOP rep-Clinton voters in the surrounding competitive districts in socal suggests that they're ultimately still Republicans who just didn't like Trump in particular but were satisfied with their incumbent GOP representative. That's not particularly good news when you look at tonight's results and compare her statements.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Ossoff couldn't even match his percentage in the 1st round. Sad!

There was a poll where half of Republican Iowa caucus goers supported single payer. Why should Democrats take a position to the right of most Americans on healthcare?

Iowa is different from GA-06.

Iowa is alot more open to government subsidize. GA-06 is dominated by well-off white people. Talking about single payer isn't going to win these people over.

Well, Berniecrats aren't the ones who said to put all the resources into winning districts like GA-06.

Democrats didn't.

Alot of Ossoff's cash came from small donations.

Over $6 million came from the DCCC. It's obvious they want to double down on the Hillary strategy of running a bland campaign that avoids the issues and try to win rich people in the sunbelt, while ignoring the midwest.

The most vulnerable Republicans are in the sunbelt, not in the midwest. Why target areas, where Trump is still doing fine approval ratings wise?

Is Trump's favorables in MI, WI, or PA higher than AZ, FL, NC, or GA though? Last I checked he was negative across the board.

[Technocracy Timmy]

The Atlas takes are the worst part of these special elections.

Nah, national pundit takes are the worst part about special elections.

Don't talk about the profession of future semi-attractive atlas posters like that.

[Technocracy Timmy]

I find it funny that Trump and Republican are celebrating about winning in Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Still celebrating winning in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc.

Things look very good for yall right now, I can see it and I admit it. But a piece of friendly advice, don't get too cocky, just trust me and all the other liberals feeding you our tears now, you don't want to end up like us.

I acknowledge the fact that these special elections are sending mixed signals about 2018 midterms. Though Democratic candidates are making these elections very close, they can't quite make it to the finish line.

This is why I don't see the Democrats taking the House back in 2018 unless we're in the middle of a recession. Yes, Democrats clearly have more enthusiasm and they'll net gain 10-20 seat but that'll only get them so far.

[Technocracy Timmy]

This is bullsh*t. Democrats should start running undercover liberals acting like Stephen Colbert's character as Republican candidates from now on. We'd probably do better at this point.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Xingkerui,

If I'm reading what you wrote correctly I think you're saying that Dems should first get a lockdown on Obama-Trump voters before they target Romney-Clinton voters correct? If so, then I fully agree as somebody who knows the latter cohort quite well. I asked a DCCC consultant at my local campaign volunteer event about GOP rep-Clinton voters in and around Orange County and she told me clearly that those kind of voters were primarily republicans who didn't like Trump but were satisfied with their incumbent GOP reps based on the internal polling that had been done on them. Dissapointing albeit totally non-surprising answer.

[Technocracy Timmy]

But I still dispute the idea that we'll 100% see this person coming before they even run.

One of the few things that Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan all shared in common was a history of losing certain races in their lifetimes. They were also older (at least for their era with Roosevelt and Lincoln). So I'm guessing it'll be somebody who isn't currently on the national stage and born in the 1950's (assuming it's in 2024). The 50's also saw the most births in American history so it's a safe bet there.

People also usually don't expect the figures to be as successful or see them shift quite rapidly while in office. Lincoln campaigned on preventing the expansion of slavery and had no interest in abolition. Roosevelt campaigned on a balanced budget amendment and was seen as a lightweight by the political establishment. Nobody thought Reagan would be anywhere near as transformative as he ended up being.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Reagan didn't change anything. Look at the vast stretch of counties Dukakis and Clinton won that are now Tea Party strongholds.

Nixon and Reagan clearly forced the Democrats to abandon much of their New Deal Rooseveltian ideology going into the late 70's all the way to today. Bill Clinton wouldn't have decided to end welfare as we know it, cut capital gains taxes, tough on crime laws, NAFTA, deregulation, etc. if it weren't for these men laying the groundwork for a powerful rightward shift in our politics.

The big difference between Nixon and Reagan was that Reagan actually got congressional Democrats to get on board with most of his agenda (deregulation, tax cuts, increased military spending, small cuts to social programs, etc.) in a way either Nixon couldn't do or didn't want to do. That's what Reagan changed. He got the Democrats to kowtow to a new kind of agenda in a way that Nixon never did. The Democrats in the 80's were also much friendlier to Reagan than they were to Nixon. That's why nobody cares about Nixon but points to Reagan as the realigning ideologically successful President.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Reagan was a drooling senile war criminal who traded arms for hostages and America's social safety net for tax cuts. So maybe we shouldn't aspire to that.

But that wasn't how the base saw him now was it?

He drove the republican party into the crazy ideological brain-dead party of taxes are hitler heil America party it is today. The democrats shouldn't aspire to nominate a charismatic senile old man who wrecks systems in a way that devastates the country due to his stupid sociopathy.

The way you make it sound suggests that Reagan set the country on fire and by 1989 he had throughly destroyed both the country and his Party. None of which is true but yeah.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Lol I'm loving all of the "Republicans are idiot fascist sexist bigots" s***. Couldn't be more wrong. Stay classy, Democrats.

Then they run people like Ossof in an effort to win over lifelong Republicans since many voted against a Republican once in their entire lives (Trump) all of sudden they're gonna embrace the Democratic Party in droves.

This strategy doesn't work. Didn't Hillary already try to court moderate republicans in 2016 with mailers to Utah about how religious she was and giving speeches with neocons on the stage with her? I thought I remembered her trying to do outreach programs to moderate republicans as a way of pulling states like AZ and NC into the Democratic fold. She made inroads, but let's not kid ourselves and expect lifelong R's who flipped once in their entire lives to become permanent members of the Democratic Party.

[Technocracy Timmy]

This is a Republican district. Karen Handel may have been a terrible candidate (and person) but that doesn't mean they wanted someone ideologically different from them in the seat. The doom and gloom reaction to this loss by both the left and right is intellectually dishonest.

Yeah but given that the DCCC is trying to expand their outreach largely in areas like GA-06 (suburban Republican strongholds that don't like Trump), then this result is still concerning. Many of the Republican districts in California are exactly just that.

[Technocracy Timmy]

When will some people realize it takes more than just a good candidate to win a race? Ossoff was by no means a bad candidate. He wasn't perfect, but he did probably pretty close to the best a Democrat in his position could do given the circumstances. People don't lose just because of how good they are as a candidate. Perhaps there is a set of factors that could have aligned to provide a victory, but that was not the case here at this time.

I generally agree with this but I think the broader lesson here is that the number of anti-Trump wealthy downballot republican voters who are willing to vote for a Democrat downballot is smaller than people expected.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Ossoff actually got less raw votes than the 2016 Democrat who ran against Price. Did he win some Republicans over? Probably. Did low information Democrats not turn out even though there was a bombardment of advertising? Unquestionably.

Good point. The Democrats appear to have a much lower ceiling among upscale college educated Republicans than they'd like to admit.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Ossoff actually got less raw votes than the 2016 Democrat who ran against Price. Did he win some Republicans over? Probably. Did low information Democrats not turn out even though there was a bombardment of advertising? Unquestionably.

Good point. The Democrats appear to have a much lower ceiling among upscale college educated Republicans than they'd like to admit.

As far as I can tell, the whole point of that post was that the electorate in the special was much whiter and more full of Romney voters then in 2016.

80% of voters in 2016 voted in the 2017 runoff special election and the district itself is 72% white so to have it skew slightly whiter isn't that much of a surprise to anyone. But let's entertain the notion that somehow wealthy republicans are gonna start flocking to the Demcorats in large enough numbers (despite their lifeline voting habits, the hyper-polarized climate, Ossoff losing, voting against their own economic self interest, etc.) to somehow mitigate the Democratic Party's losses with WWC voters. Here's your problem:

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The only way this strategy actually works is if you can get enough crossover votes from Republican voters to win in districts where the incumbent GOP candidate won by double digits. That's not happening. Whites without a college degree are far more swing-able than wealthy college whites.