MT-AL: Rob Quist (D) vs. Greg Gianforte (R) vs. Mark Wicks (L), May 25

[Matty]

Quist is pretty goofy

[Shadows]

We can win these voters for sure (here's me being optimistic), but it'll take 3rd way Clintonite centrists like Jim Justice, John Bel Edwards, and Joe Manchin, not far-left purity troll-endorsed candidates who are foisted on the party by the likes of ssuperflash and jfern.

Ah, yes, let's just keep doing the exact same thing we did in 2016. That worked out really well.

Suburban whites across the board are more liberal then rural whites, since a good portion of them are college educated.

If you want to win over rural voters, you are going to have to shift to the right on both economics and  social issues and I know that is something you don't want to do.

You really think Democrats couldn't successfully appeal to rural voters stricken by massive economic anxiety with policies that involved broad wealth redistribution?

History says no.

Just look at the type of Democrats who had any kind of success in those regions. Some on the left don't want to hear it, but left-wing economics isn't some silver bullet that will win over these type of voters.

You have made comments showing very little intellect & continue to make false statements (like Trump) & acting like a political hack.

The Democratic party under FDR & Truman were wild left on economics & won rural white voters & voters everywhere in huge margins. No1 could touch FDR who is considered one of the greatest POTUS' in history.

There is absolutely no statistical or empirical evidence to say rural whites are economically very conservative in which case Rand Paul or Ted Cruz would be the nominee & not Trump. Obama, the so-called Kenya born Muslim socialist communist won the rural votes in Iowa.

As we type, Quist is going to lost by 7% odd, much better than Hillary's 21% margin. KS-04 went from 30% to 6% loss, a massive boost for the Democrats - Both ran as unabashed liberals. Jason Kander who ran a pretty liberal candidacy ran 15-16% points ahead of Hillary or so.

Bernie Sanders was running 10% ahead of Hillary in all polls after a gruelling primary campaign. So you can keep making generalized statements which are completely political hackery & have no business with reality.

But the sad truth is rural voters vote on culture issues before economic issues FDR won so well with economics because he didn't touch civil rights with a 20 foot poll. That is Trump's appeal he makes cultural warrior issues his bread an butter

That is 100% true - Guns, abortion, gay rights, religious issues, opposition to affirmative action etc etc - Cultural conservatism is a massive problem for Democrats. Working Class & Middle class folks will vote against their own economic self interest due to socio-cultural issues. That will change as baby boomers die & more millennials come in - Millennials will be 45% of the electorate by 2024.

(There's a reason the GOP has lost 6 out of the last 7 Popular votes & needed a so-called "War President" to win in 2004).

FDR's administration was crazy - It had nothern hippie uber progressives & conservative segregationists from the South being bullied by FDR to support his economic agenda. However, FDR did do something for African Americans - He signed the historic Executive Order 8802 which banned hiring based on race. This massively helped African Americans & shifted them to the Democrats from the GOP. But yes, he could never go forward with legislations related to race & civil rights !

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

But honestly, the most shocking result has got to be Yellowstone County. Not only did it vote 12 points to the right of the state, but the gap between Yellowstone and Missoula has never been wider than that. Insane.

As soon as I saw those results from Yellowstone, I knew Quist was toast. Even with just 15% in, there was no way to catch up with that.

Yeah, I thought he would close the gap with the election day vote coming in, but no... Also, like you said, if Gianforte actually wins Big Horn, it will be quite a story. I think Quist will carry it in the end, though.

Yeah probably. I did not think he would close the gap on election day barely at all. I thought his path to victory was to have a great EV lead, and pin down Gianforte with Wicks on the election day vote, and hold him off to pull off a close one, and when I saw that the EV was tied if not slight PF, I gave up hope. I was too distraught and choking up on my liberal tears to get on here while this was unfolding. But I've come to terms with it now...

[smoltchanov]

Quist did ok, people are looking way too much into this race. I mean a pot smoking hippie with herpes and unpaid medical bills basically lost by 6%

Yeah, I would tend to agree, but there was an outside chance of a win in this political climate. Hell, maybe he would have won without the assault (kidding, kidding).

The simple truth is that Quist was a much lower quality candidate then Bullock. And even Bullock won it by only few percentages....

[krazen1211]

Hahahaha!


The party of  'voter rights' is trying to cancel the election! Not the way it works!

Link


DCCC chair Rep. Lujan: "Greg Gianforte is unfit to represent MT. There’s no question in my mind Gianforte should not be sworn into office."

[Heisenberg]

Nice maps Griffin! If you don't mind, I (and I'm sure many others) would like to see a Governor '16 to House '17 swing map (to show where and how much Gianforte did better/worse).

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

Hahahaha!


The party of  'voter rights' is trying to cancel the election! Not the way it works!

Link


DCCC chair Rep. Lujan: "Greg Gianforte is unfit to represent MT. There’s no question in my mind Gianforte should not be sworn into office."

Unfortunately you got a point. As much as it pains me to say, PF won fair and square.

[Tender Branson]

There's still GA-06, where I see the chances for Ossoff as high as never before ...

KS and MT were simply too Trumpist.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

What's up with Glacier county?

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

There's still GA-06, where I see the chances for Ossoff as high as never before ...

KS and MT were simply too Trumpist.

Yeah, it's a miracle that Bullock survived.

[Shadows]

I know Franklin Delano Roosevelt. My great-grandparents voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Bernie Sanders is no Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

+100. And there is no Great Depression for almost 4 years NOW, as it was by the time of FDR election. I admire FDR, but US now is not what it was in November 1932.... And after depression was ... well, mitigated by 1937-38, even FDR began to have some problems and to lose some "initial supporters" (in the South, for example, which gradually began to doubt him at least..).

Another untrue statement. FDR won every single state in the South in 1940 - To repeat, every single one & had 449 Electoral college votes.

The great depression will never be similar to any even that has happened after that (as someone who has studied it a bit), but the conditions in many ways are remarkable similar - Similar rates of tax rates, falling real wages for the middle & lower class, massive income inequality, stock market crash & slowdown, abuse of power by financial institutions, concentration of economic & political power.

If people are looking for exact replication of the Great Depression, it may never come in human history !

[Suburbia]

If Democrats want to be a national party, they need to compete all over. Even Republicans.

[Dr. MB]

Hahahaha!


The party of  'voter rights' is trying to cancel the election! Not the way it works!

Link


DCCC chair Rep. Lujan: "Greg Gianforte is unfit to represent MT. There’s no question in my mind Gianforte should not be sworn into office."

Let him take office. Hopefully he'll be a terrible congressman and is easily defeated in 2018.

[Adam Griffin]

Nice maps Griffin! If you don't mind, I (and I'm sure many others) would like to see a Governor '16 to House '17 swing map (to show where and how much Gianforte did better/worse).

I'll get around to it shortly.

I know this is probably too much to ask for, but would you mind doing a 2014-2017 trend map, Adam? I might give it a try as well, but your maps are 100 times better than mine.

A trend map, or do you mean a swing map?

[NOVA Green]

A reminder that the DCCC spent a tenth on this race what they've spent in GA-6 so far.

Quist has also raised millions of dollars, getting a fundraising advantage over The Piano Man.

Quiet, it just easier to blame the DCCC then to admit that left-wing populism isn't some magic elixir that is going to win over rural voters.  

This is the easy answer. Instead of looking at vast swaths of the country disappearing from Democratic control over the course of a decade, and Republican governments in states like Wisconsin and Kansas utterly DECIMATING the livelihoods of their voters, it's far easier to say that either you've just lost one giant group of voters forever and/or that rural folk just decided to become anti-establishment for no apparent reason besides spite. It can't possibly be that Democrats lost their way with rural voters and fell out of touch when it wouldn't support the policies that would alleviate their economic stress.

If the answer for the Democratic Party's future lies in suburban "Panera bread" districts, then it has no future. As soon as Trump's out of office, most likely before or after 2020, these anti-Trump Republicans that are voting for guys like Ossoff are going to go back to voting Republican. That could happen as soon as 2022. Suburban voters don't support liberal policies. They don't even support centrist policies like Obamacare that tried to balance private health insurance with Medicare. Suburban voters have, throughout history, been some of the biggest breeders of fascism in multiple countries including our own.

Suburban whites across the board are more liberal then rural whites, since a good portion of them are college educated.

If you want to win over rural voters, you are going to have to shift to the right on both economics and  social issues and I know that is something you don't want to do.

Yank2133----

I don't know what type of "rural" area you live in, but from all of the evidence of rural areas that I have seen (Outside of the South and Appalachia perhaps), it's actually pretty clear that one of the major reason why Democratic Presidential fortunes have declined over the past 30 years, is precisely because they shifted to the "Right" on economics, and neglected discussions of issues more specific to rural voters.

Additionally, you have had a few Democratic Presidential candidates (Gore & Clinton) that went way too far above and beyond common sense Gun Regulations (Universal Background Checks & closing Gun Show loopholes) that a majority of Gun owners support (Including all of my extended family) and instead go crazy trying to push additional items as "wedge issues" to win votes in suburbia, while at the same time opening themselves up from the assaults of the NRA (Basically a schill for the Gun MFG Industry these days trying to expand to new markets).

Hell--- If you ever want to come out to Oregon, I'll take you to one of my Son-in-Laws Fathers 4 acre property, and we'll do some target shooting with a few of my other son-in-laws....

They are all Democrats, so maybe you'll shed some of your stereotypes on the "Gun" schtick.

[Hammy]

There's still GA-06, where I see the chances for Ossoff as high as never before ...

KS and MT were simply too Trumpist.

You're in for a terribly depressing night next month if you think Ossoff is going to get more than 48%.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

It was too late in the game to matter. It'll be old news by 2018. I don't see how this endangers Tester, though, at the rate we're going.

Tester was already in a tilt D to tossup scenario. The results from tonight just make me even more nervous as a democrat. I've moved it to pure tossup, and seriously thinking about tilt R.

I'm more interested in North Dakota, actually. I have it in the "Likely D" column right now (it's the red state that I believe will be most difficult for the GOP to flip), but I think I'm being too generous to Heitkamp. And no, I'm not saying this because of the results of this election, but with this astonishingly high level of partisanship and polarization...

I'm not even slightly interested in ND. I think it's a lost cause, and likely R, just another loss we will likely have to endure.

[Figueira]

Hahahaha!


The party of  'voter rights' is trying to cancel the election! Not the way it works!

Link


DCCC chair Rep. Lujan: "Greg Gianforte is unfit to represent MT. There’s no question in my mind Gianforte should not be sworn into office."

Unfortunately you got a point. As much as it pains me to say, PF won fair and square.

Winning an election does not make you above the law.

[Tender Branson]

There's still GA-06, where I see the chances for Ossoff as high as never before ...

KS and MT were simply too Trumpist.

You're in for a terribly depressing night if you think Ossoff is going to win.

Well, of course he might lose.

But under the circumstances he's a strong fit for this district and Handel is a rather weak candidate.

I'm currently about 80-85% sure he'll win.

[smoltchanov]

I know Franklin Delano Roosevelt. My great-grandparents voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Bernie Sanders is no Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

+100. And there is no Great Depression for almost 4 years NOW, as it was by the time of FDR election. I admire FDR, but US now is not what it was in November 1932.... And after depression was ... well, mitigated by 1937-38, even FDR began to have some problems and to lose some "initial supporters" (in the South, for example, which gradually began to doubt him at least..).

Another untrue statement. FDR won every single state in the South in 1940 - To repeat, every single one & had 449 Electoral college votes.

The great depression will never be similar to any even that has happened after that (as someone who has studied it a bit), but the conditions in many ways are remarkable similar - Similar rates of tax rates, falling real wages for the middle & lower class, massive income inequality, stock market crash & slowdown, abuse of power by financial institutions, concentration of economic & political power.

If people are looking for exact replication of the Great Depression, it may never come in human history !

Naaturally - he did. It was a SOLID South then. But a lot of Southern politicians began quietly (and in some cases - openly) sabotage him and his programseven before. Remember "Conservative Manifesto"? Or "Texas Regulars"?. It was a begiining of end for FDR coalition of 1932-36

[Shadows]

Democrats got like 20-25% of the vote in ND against Trump so ND will be very hard anyways & saying Heitkamp is favored big could one like one of those NH fetishers.

Anyways, Gianforte has like 90% in Garfield county. The polarization in some of the rural areas is absolutely crazy. Gianforte could have killed a person & they still would have voted !

[136or142]

Sooo, all the over-confidence from you guys last night and even before last night, all the predictions of a quist 2 point or 3 point win, they were all fake hope?

This happens all the time on here. You guys hype up dem chances, and then when it actually doesn't happen, you pretend you never had any "true" hope for a win.

While I generally agree with you, Atlas wasn't the only place that thought this thing was going to have a serious impact on the race. I think in this case it's fair to say Quist would have done a lot better had he actually run a good campaign, but yeah... it also shows us that polarization is still a thing.

So yes, Republicans outperformed everyone's expectations this time (I should have stuck with my original prediction and not changed it at the last minute), but I'm still taking nothing for granted in this goddamn state. Harry Enten should feel kind of stupid for saying that Tester is going to be very happy about this result, though. Congrats to Mr. Daines, who won the Daines vs. Tester/Bullock proxy war.

I even thought Quist was a shoo-in after last night, but I'm happy that the Montana voters realized that a vote for Quist was a vote for 3000 murders a day, regardless of any personal flaws in Gianforte.  And, we're not trying to elect our pastor or role model, but rather someone who will vote to lead our country in the right direction, and I am confident that Gianforte will vote in the right way.

Doesn't really fit here, but a fetus is not a human, moron.

After all... human women give birth to monkeys, sea urchins, dolphins and all sorts of things.

Fine, a first trimester fetus is not a human.  You know, the trimester when 99% of abortions really occur, whatever you idiot Republicans lie to each other.

So sometime after the first trimester, the horse inside the human woman, morphs into a human.

That's an amazing take on the reproduction and life cycle ..... of humans.

So, is a zygote a human as well?

[Hammy]

There's still GA-06, where I see the chances for Ossoff as high as never before ...

KS and MT were simply too Trumpist.

You're in for a terribly depressing night if you think Ossoff is going to win.

Well, of course he might lose.

But under the circumstances he's a strong fit for this district and Handel is a rather weak candidate.

I'm currently about 80-85% sure he'll win.

I'm not putting it at "might", I'm guaranteeing he won't get more than say 48.5%

[Adam Griffin]

Nice maps Griffin! If you don't mind, I (and I'm sure many others) would like to see a Governor '16 to House '17 swing map (to show where and how much Gianforte did better/worse).

I'll get around to it shortly.

I know this is probably too much to ask for, but would you mind doing a 2014-2017 trend map, Adam? I might give it a try as well, but your maps are 100 times better than mine.

A trend map, or do you mean a swing map?

A trend map would be really nice, but it might take too much time, right?

Maybe I'm a tad too drunk, but I'm trying to think of how to even do that? Would we compare MT 2014 against the national House PV for 2014, and then stack that up against the 2017 margins (no trend for 2017)?

[Adam Griffin]