Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[pppolitics]

Rural counties looking pretty good for Heller.

In the end, it's going go to be up to Clark County and Washoe County.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Tester is going down, sadly.

[J. J.]

With 54% of the vote in Tester is ahead by 0.5 points.  It has been drifting to Rosendale all night.   

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Fox projects Scott wins in FL.

It's officially not a wave, and just a weird election.

It is ludicrous to call an election in which Dems win the popular vote by 7-10% or whatever it turns out to be anything but a wave.

A wave where a 3 term Democratic incumbent senator loses in a state that voted twice for Obama and that Hillary only narrowly lost?

A lot of this was due to expectations not being met.  This, like 2016, was supposed to be a great victory.  It wasn't, though it was still a victory. 

Your question implicitly concedes that "states" are what matter rather than representing the will of the people as expressed through their votes. I do not concede that. If the electoral system does not represent the people's will as they express them through their votes, then the problem lies with the electoral system, not with the people's votes.

But in any case, yes, you always have a certain number of tough losses in a wave. For example, Rs losing NV and CO senate races in 2010, and generally performing badly on the West coast despite doing very well elsewhere in the East and Midwest. This is not really characteristically different from that at all. So if 2010 was a wave, than this is as well. And it is not really reasonable to say 2010 was not a wave, I don't think.

NV and CO were both Democratic held seats. Wave elections don't usally have one party losing 4+ Senate seats and gaining at most 2 Senate seats.

Usually the Senate map is not so unbalanced as it was this year.

As for whether seats are D held or R held, that doesn't matter much. That is the idea that incumbency is important, which it should be clear from these results is not nearly as true as it was a decade or two ago. Incumbency is less and less important (though of course it does still make some difference, it is a comparatively minor factor).

[Calthrina950]

James only took 8% of the black vote in MI.

But he still managed to keep Stabenow within single digits. He is the first Republican to come within that range since Spencer Abraham in 2000.

Overall, though, this election has been a bizarre one. Democrats picked up the House, as many expected, but they have lost three seats in the Senate and did not do as well in many of the gubernatorial and state level-races. Bright spots for Democrats, I would say, include the victories of Kelly and Davids in Kansas and the upset in Oklahoma-5. But Donnelly, Heitkamp, O'Rourke, McCaskill (presumably), and even Nelson (also presumably) losing, along with the gubernatorial putdowns in Georgia and Florida, are the bright sports for Republicans.

Yeah I agree with all of this besides Davids(not really a bright spot it was expected) and Texas . Texas raises fire alarms for the GOP. AG and LG are within 5 and Beto is within 3. Beto was expected to lose and he probably overperformed.

I think TX is more about Cruz's quality as a candidate then anything significant long-term.

The Democrats came within 5 points or less of winning *five* more House seats in Texas, which would have taken them to a *majority* of the Texas House delegation. They didn't manage it, but I wouldn't want to be the one to tell John Carter, Kevin Marchand, Michael McCaul, Will Hurd or Chip Roy -- or, for that matter, Pete Olson, Dan Crenshaw, Roger Williams or Ron Wright, who all won by less than 10 points -- to relax, this will all blow over, they're safe long-term.

This wasn't just about Cruz.

I definitely agree. While I firmly believed that Cruz would win (and he indeed), this election has shown that in the long term, demographic trends are gradually pushing Texas towards the Democratic Party. Cruz only winning by 4 points is a warning sign, one that both Democrats and Republicans should keep in mind.

[emailking]

The real loser tonight was third party candidates. They were repudiated pretty much everywhere, even worse than in 2016. Neal Simon, Gary Johnson, Sam McCann, and Stephanie Miner were the biggest losers.

Because voters are smart and vote strategically. Other than very rare flukes, 3rd party candidates will only win if we change to a ranked voting system.

I'm not talking about literally winning, they underperformed polling worse than most third party candidates. Joe Trillo gets a shoutout for this too.

I guess I don't see much difference between getting 5% and 0.5% or whatever the discrepancy was. In our system the only relevance of their numbers is the effect they have on the main race.

[Illiniwek]

Tester is going down, sadly.

Devastating news. I can't call this night anything but a loss with a result like this.

[lfromnj]

Democrats really messed up in the Senate this year, and it will make it extremely tough to win it in 2020. Depending on how Arizona, Montana, and Nevada break tonight you could have anywhere from 53-56 Republicans in the Senate for the next two years. The 2020 map isn't so great for Democrats either, and they will most likely lose Alabama so long as the Republicans nominate someone who wasn't dating under age girls. They'd need to pick up Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina in 2020 to have a chance.

All they have to do is win the seats they lost in 2014, in what will probably be a much more favorable environment to them.

lol
Im assuming 54-46 senate this night and thats probably generous if I had to guess.
Lets assume the dem wins the presidency in 2020 so they need 4 gains

Seat Ratings-
Alabama- Safe R- 0 chance of victory anyone not named Roy Moore especially after 2018 realiginment.
colorado- Lean D probably closer to Likely D than Lean but Colorado also has R trending parts of the state.
So we can assume thats a trade.
AZ- Tossup/ Tilt D and Lean R if Ducey runs. AZ GOP bench isn't the best as they will hold 0/3 of moderate districts.

The rest left is Texas- Likely R. I absolutely can not remove a 3 percent loss and say its Safe R in a d trending state with favorable demographic changes for Democrats.
NC- Tilt  R- NC is a pretty red state with parts trending both ways and dems are struggling there failing to pick up a house seat.
Montana- Likely R and probably closer to Safe and this is assuming Bullock Runs.
Iowa - Lean R. It looks like Iowa has atleast partially swung back around to democrats so I can assume  its possible democrats could win this

Georgia- Likely R and maybe approaching Lean with the demographic changes. dems absolutely should not nominate a black candidate again.

Maine- No idea actually. I think Golden wins tonight so thats not a bad sign and being one of the few pick ups in a republican trending trump double digit district.

[7,052,770]

Tester is going down, sadly.

NYT has him a 86% chance of winning.

[RI]

Yeah, I wouldn't write Tester's obituary yet.

[Storr]

Tester is going down, sadly.

Devastating news. I can't call this night anything but a loss with a result like this.

No one has called it.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

I thought Cavasso could get near 40% lol.

[gf20202]

Tester is going down, sadly.

Devastating news. I can't call this night anything but a loss with a result like this.

Are you guys attempting a reverse jinx? NYT Model still has him as the favorite.

[MT Treasurer]

Bullock was down at this point in 2016 and won by 4 in the end. Tester should be fine.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Democrats really messed up in the Senate this year, and it will make it extremely tough to win it in 2020. Depending on how Arizona, Montana, and Nevada break tonight you could have anywhere from 53-56 Republicans in the Senate for the next two years. The 2020 map isn't so great for Democrats either, and they will most likely lose Alabama so long as the Republicans nominate someone who wasn't dating under age girls. They'd need to pick up Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina in 2020 to have a chance.

Dems did not mess up on the Senate. The Senate's electoral system messed up on the American people.

The Dems are going to easily win the Senate popular vote by a very large margin (probably more than the House), even without California. Dems appear to be on course to win the popular vote by about 10% (according to what I am hearing, but I can't find actual numbers yet, but we will have them soon enough).

A system in which people in Wyoming count 69 times more than people in California is fundamentally flawed and must be either abolished or fundamentally changed in some of various possible ways to make that no longer be the case.

[lfromnj]

Tester is going down, sadly.

NYT has him a 86% chance of winning.

Wait so even if he loses is it that flat top haircut that won him the election?
I mean mcaskill and Donnely got half Blanched.

[emailking]

Democrats really messed up in the Senate this year, and it will make it extremely tough to win it in 2020. Depending on how Arizona, Montana, and Nevada break tonight you could have anywhere from 53-56 Republicans in the Senate for the next two years. The 2020 map isn't so great for Democrats either, and they will most likely lose Alabama so long as the Republicans nominate someone who wasn't dating under age girls. They'd need to pick up Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina in 2020 to have a chance.

All they have to do is win the seats they lost in 2014, in what will probably be a much more favorable environment to them.

lol

I don't know what's supposed to be funny about it. Anything can happen in 2 years and they're all seats they've held before recently. Alabama is the only one that's a clear cut anomaly.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I think TX is more about Cruz's quality as a candidate then anything significant long-term.

Tell that to Pete Sessions, John Culberson, about 5-10 other Republican representatives who had closer calls than they ever thought they would have in their gerrymandered safe seats, and a very large number of state legislative and local elected R officials who lost (or who had much closer races than they ever expected, and are aware that Texas is not getting any whiter).

[Panda Express]

Not sure how I feel about Nevada just giving us 100% of the county's results in one big shot. I prefer to slowly sip of my results as they come in, like a cocktail.

[emailking]

Not sure how I feel about Nevada just giving us 100% of the county's results in one big shot. I prefer to slowly sip of my results as they slowly come in, like a cocktail.

It's because in Nevada they don't release any results if there are still people in line to vote. They can vote if they're in line at polls close.

[lfromnj]

I think TX is more about Cruz's quality as a candidate then anything significant long-term.

Tell that to Pete Sessions, John Culberson, about 5-10 other Republican representatives who had closer calls than they ever thought they would have in their gerrymandered safe seats, and a very large number of state legislative and local elected R officials who lost (or who had much closer races than they ever expected, and are aware that Texas is not getting any whiter).

Yeah I don't know why people didn't realize what Beto did for Texas democrats. Unlike anyone else he actually had major coattail effects on the rest of Texas democrats besides governor and even then I think he helped quite a bit by bringing out unlikely voters who voted straight ticket D(the Abbot Beto voters are only like 8 percent rather than 12 or 13) Texas is absolutely a state Democrats will need in the near future. CruzWILLWin was correct in his prediction but he also understands that a democrat will win Texas soon.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Tester is going down, sadly.

NYT has him a 86% chance of winning.

Weird, I was just looking at some key counties comparing 2012 v 2016. He seems to be under performing and MT has a early Democratic counting bias.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

The Democrats came within 5 points or less of winning *five* more House seats in Texas, which would have taken them to a *majority* of the Texas House delegation. They didn't manage it, but I wouldn't want to be the one to tell John Carter, Kevin Marchand, Michael McCaul, Will Hurd or Chip Roy -- or, for that matter, Pete Olson, Dan Crenshaw, Roger Williams or Ron Wright, who all won by less than 10 points -- to relax, don't worry, this will all blow over, they're safe long-term, it was just about Cruz.

This wasn't just about Cruz.

And moreover, Cruz will be up for re-election in 2024.

That means 6 more years of demographic change. 6 more years to register more voters. 6 more years for old whites to die, and for more moderates and liberals to move to TX from out of state.

And in 2024, there will be Presidential turnout. Even though obviously turnout was great in TX, it was still a midterm. Imagine how many new people would have voted if the President were on the ballot this year, and not just Beto and Cruz? Should be pretty easily another few million.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Tester is going down, sadly.

Devastating news. I can't call this night anything but a loss with a result like this.

It is indeed a loss for American democracy and the legitimacy thereof.

[OSR stands with Israel]

538 Gives Heller an over 95% chance of winning