Will Mia Love lose in 2016?

[jamestroll]

Yea.. there is a reason I do not like retreads. Pretty much this.

It is all the Jason Kander for Senate hype I hear in 2022 in a rematch against Roy Blunt is nonsense. To be fair, in an open seat or a second Trump Midterm, Kander would have a good shot in winning it.

Kander would be better off running for Governor or an open or vulnerable row office in 2020. I think he could do that for sure.

As a rule though I find that rematches to always falter. The candidate doing the rematch often can not find reasons to give voters to vote for them if their opponent is uncontroversial. Which did happen in Utah 04 in 2016. Also the candidate doing the rematch often gets overconfident. I remember everyone at the Owens campaign thinking that since they got 46% in 2014 they would be able to get 50% in 2016 with presidential year turn out up and Trump on top of the ticket. It does not work like that.

That all being said: if Love runs for Senate in 2018 and the seat becomes open and/or Ben McAdams runs for the seat it could become interesting extremely quickly. No Doug Owens please. Honestly, he should have ran for a lower office this year or in another year.

Rematches rarely work!

[jamestroll]

So why is she such a bad candidate in general, though? Her elections should not be even remotely this close, nor should she have lost to Matheson in 2012. This is a double-digit R PVI district.

Romney skewed the districts PVI. It is not overwhelmingly Republican. Also 82% of the district is in Salt Lake County. Salt Lake County routinely elects Democrats. That even includes many parts of that district. Plus there was some desire to have one Democrat in high office in Utah.

A wave could get Love, but I think she is more entrenched now. Open seat in a Democratic wave year would be interesting though. Still, her opponent would not be able to defeat her if he/she/it can not give a good reason to vote against her or for the opponent.

Of course your party made a vicious gerrymander. It would not have been too difficult to draw a district entirely in Salt Lake County that Democrats could routinely win.

I know its a very controversial opinion I have but I think the main requirement of Congressional Districts should be that they make as much geographic sense as feasible and correspond to population requirements.

[jamestroll]

Also the race factor probably contributes to 1 to 2% loss. She also has had several innocuous controversies. Not really politically damaging but they are there.

She only lost in 2012 due to the Matheson brand. I do not think Matheson will be coming back though. He is a lobbyist now and done with politics. Though he does have a war chest. Perhaps he could win an open gubernatorial election if he really wanted to.

[jamestroll]

Mia Love's District-I think they like incumbents since they sent Matheson to office from 2002-2014.

lol? what?

UT-04 is barely anything like the UT-02 Matheson represented. In fact, he took on a lot of new constituents when he made the district switch. UT-02 was largely eastern Salt Lake County plus all of southern Utah linked with Wasatch and part of Utah counties.

UT-04 is basically central and southern Salt Lake County plus parts of Utah County and a tiny slice of rural Utah.

[jamestroll]

I also think Mia Love is a bit more moderate than she gets credit for.

She is.. if she went to far right Democrats could launch a credible challenge to her real quick.