Election 2018 Open Thread v2 - Mia, Mimi, Gil, and T.J.

[Oryxslayer]

So with Poliguin down, that puts called dem seats at 229 - 34 flips by my count. Including leaning seats (CA39, CA45, NY22, NM02, UT04) dems now at 234 - 39 flips. Maybe its just me, but I really want to see another flip to make this 235 and 40.

[Oryxslayer]

Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna get you, too
Another one bites the dust

That’s a really wild map

Let's hope there will be a similar map of Harris and Dallas counties in two years.

The Dallas state house one happened this cycle. I believe there is only one leading pub left in the county, and that seat is close vote wise.

[Oryxslayer]

Katie Hobbs has increased her lead for AZ SoS to over 15,000 votes. This is over. Only 60~k ballots left and every batch is increasing her lead. Huge win!

Also, there are only uncounted ballots left in Maricopa and Pima.

Ducey congratulationed her on her victory today btw.

[Oryxslayer]

Mia Love has pulled into the lead in UT-04 by about 400 votes.

I assume that was the remaining Utah County ballots. Do we know what's still out?

3 Precincts in Utah County, 18 in SLC.

Also as a note, Indy Redistricting is up 50.1-49.9 now.

I wouldn't call it for Love just yet in that case. Good news on the redistricting referendum.

So it should pass now unless counting error or rural counties disproportionately out?

dont get the excitement about it. You can easily draw a safe r seat entirely within SLC.

Nope. You can't draw a Safe R seat entirely within Salt Lake City or Salt Lake County.

Salt Lake City is really Democratic, and the GOP areas within the county are just too small to create a whole CD out of.

The best you can draw pub wise is something like R+5 only in the county, 2020 numbers. If that was UT-04s pvi right now, congressman McAdams would be a thing easily.

[Oryxslayer]

Cox might actually win this...

If he does, we can finally definitively answer the question of Diftwood, Cox is clearly a subpar candidate and wouldn't have won if not for the environment. I suspect he gets top-two'ed by Salas in 2020 if he somehow wins.

[Oryxslayer]

Cox might actually win this...

If he does, we can finally definitively answer the question of Diftwood, Cox is clearly a subpar candidate and wouldn't have won if not for the environment. I suspect he gets top-two'ed by Salas in 2020 if he somehow wins.

I don't think it would be possible to shut out an incumbent absent a Duncan Hunter ethics situation or worse?

As you can see from pretty much every SW primary, Hispanics vote for the primary candidate with a Hispanic last name, even if that candidate gets little airtime. So Salas gets a lot of Hispanic Dems, and hypothetical Republican nominee gets White Pubs. Cox would get what White Dems there are, plus some Hispanics.

[Oryxslayer]

Lets fix this confusion:

Dems have 41 seats gains from pre-election, if you consider the only outstanding seats to be UT04, CA21, NY27, GA07. If they get UT and CA, then they will hit 43.

The number that most people care about though is the Net, which is currently at 38. Getting UT and CA would be 40 net.

Either way you calc it, dems hit 235-200, which is nice and round.

[Oryxslayer]

Lets fix this confusion:

Dems have 41 seats gains from pre-election, if you consider the only outstanding seats to be UT04, CA21, NY27, GA07. If they get UT and CA, then they will hit 43.

The number that most people care about though is the Net, which is currently at 38. Getting UT and CA would be 40 net.

Either way you calc it, dems hit 235-200, which is nice and round.

I don't mean to continue this discussion but I'm trying to understand how that becomes a 40-seat gain instead of a 41-seat one.  What are you comparing exactly?  The Democrats won 194 seats in 2016, and 235-194=41.  Are you including Lamb's seat as Democratic?  I wouldn't because while Democrats picked that seat up in a special election, due to Becerra, Slaughter and Conyers resigning, they never had 195 seats in the 115th Congress.  So comparing the 2018 results to the 2016 ones makes much more sense.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Its basically a semantics argument - I always say the dems at 195 pre-election.

Anyway, onto the topic at hand:

Why did AP call CA-21 for Valadao? Have they retracted it?

He was up by almost ten points on election night. It was called on election night IIRC. A lot of people, including the AP, have appeared ignorant of the way late-counted California ballots always favor the Democrats, often quite strongly. And that ignorance is not a new phenomenon, either.

I'm not aware of them retracting the call. They're probably not paying much attention.

If they do retract their call, it will be when Cox takes the lead. Similar to the AZ SOS, the race remained called until the dem had a confident lead. This is because the only thing more embarrassing then making a call would be retracting said call only to see the end result prove your previous call true.

[Oryxslayer]

The great thing about this is that we have another 10 or 20 seats that still appear reachable.

eh not really
Trumps nationalism rhetoric basically cost the GOP all the seats that were suburban and close in 2016.
All thats left to really take is basically
Katko Fitz Hurd  Bacon and 3-4 seats in texas with napping incumbents and weak dem challengers. They really should have saw what was happening to Culberson.

Dems did really sweep the table, but there are some seats left behind.

NY24, NY02/NY01 if retirement
PA01, PA10 & PA16 in a good year
GA07
IL13
MO02 in a good year
NE02
TX10, TX21, TX22, TX24, TX31
CA21 if it fails to flip
WA03 in a good year

[Oryxslayer]

The great thing about this is that we have another 10 or 20 seats that still appear reachable.

eh not really
Trumps nationalism rhetoric basically cost the GOP all the seats that were suburban and close in 2016.
All thats left to really take is basically
Katko Fitz Hurd  Bacon and 3-4 seats in texas with napping incumbents and weak dem challengers. They really should have saw what was happening to Culberson.

Dems did really sweep the table, but there are some seats left behind.

NY24, NY02/NY01 if retirement
PA01, PA10 & PA16 in a good year
GA07
IL13
MO02 in a good year
NE02
TX10, TX21, TX22, TX24, TX31
CA21 if it fails to flip
WA03 in a good year

Yep. I’d say CA-50 could be added to that list along with CA-21 depending on how that district goes.

nah all the losing GOP members now run to the 50th like vultures to get Hunters seat.

50 was only competitive because of ethics. If/when Hunter leaves the seat for a special, a republican will easily win and make the seat safe. I suspect that republican will be Issa again.

[Oryxslayer]

BTW, todays the day when we learn if Erie will pull McMurrey across the finish line.

[Oryxslayer]

NE-02 is now down to a 51.0-49.0 Bacon win. Along with TX-23 (and maybe CA-21) another black eye for the moronic Dems that triaged this race because MUH weak candidate Kara Eastman and MUH unbeatable titan Don Bacon.

Speaking of moronic DCCC decisions, IL-13. Why exactly did we NOT target Davis? That race just sat at Lean R the entire cycle despite it being a Trump +5 or so district with a completely unremarkable incumbent. Unsurprisingly, Londrigan lost by around a point with minimal support.

There was I think a decent amount of spending here? Though I can't remember how much.

What annoyed me more than anything was the 13th kept getting ignored in other ways. Biden never made a stop here, and literally had to cross the district when in the final week he stumped for Underwood and then Kelly. When Obama released his first wave of endorsements he pretty much endorsed every Democrat in a competitive race in the state other than Londrigan; he endorsed Kelly, Underwood, Casten, Prizker, and Raoul. And his first 'major foray' into the midterms was a speech at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which is the most populated and Democratic county in the 13th, and apparently no one thought it would be a good idea to reach out to the Democrat running here. Which was ironic given his speech was on the importance of voting, but apparently from what I heard they weren't even willing to play ball enough to get one photo of him and her together.

Pritzker was a team player. John Lewis was great and came out to Decatur. But it feels like we got ignored pretty much.

Yeah there were a couple million dem dollars sent here, it was prominent enough for NYT to poll it. I think the problem was that the 13th was always in the shadow of the 12th, and then when the 12th faded, and the 13th couldn't escape.

[Oryxslayer]

I remember when Jeppe, Coastal Elitist, and socaldem told me Young Kim would make CA-39 Lean R because she’s a Strong Candidate while Gil Cisneros is a Weak Candidate.

I will also want to laugh at the people (particularly Charlie Kirk) who were calling her Represenative-elect on Election Night.

TBH there was a quality gap and its effects are obvious: despite CA39 being both open and the most Clinton of the OC CDs (not including 49), it has the smallest Dem margin of victory. It's just that partisanship is a hell of a drug.

[Oryxslayer]

Damn, considering NM-02, AZ-SOS, CA-21, IL-13 (Called by CNN as I recall), holy hell there have been so many "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" scenarios this year.  News bois need to wait for the votes to be all counted

I mentioned in the old thread that the abnormal number of bad calls and late elections was a sign that the old order was breaking down, in both partisan and structural ways.

Partisan-ly, it means analyzing counties/precincts that were traditionally blue/red might not be as loyal as they once were. Instead, they Trump/Clinton style coalitions might be the new normal. Structurally, it means more and more states are accepting ballots and counting voters later and later - which is good for democracy since more people are voting.

[Oryxslayer]

It is possible to believe both:

-Republicans should/will/did win NC09
-Results need analyzed for error before verification.

[Oryxslayer]

The NYT polls were pretty spot on on a lot of races but they bungled most of the CA races, most of all Katie Hill's district. They had Steve Knight up by 4, and the final margin there is likely to be like Katie Hill +9.

CA-25's dem base has a large chunk of Hispanic voters. I would not be surprised if the same phenomenon that produced relatively-larger GOP leads in places like TX-21, CA-21, NV-Sen, and to a lesser extent AZ-Sen was at play here as well.