Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I voted at around 9:30, and was in and out in 5 minutes.  A lot fewer people than 2016 or 2018.
But we have no competitive election on our ballot in SW Virginia.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

How is anyone projecting IN when we have zero results from the only two Dem CDs in the state?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I don't get what's going on in KY-6.  Washington Post has McGrath up 6% with 41% reporting, but 538 has Barr as a 92% favorite.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

538's KY-06 estimate just flipped from 91-9 Republican to 91-9 Dem.  So I don't think you can trust that at all.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Dem chances to win the House up to 95% on 538.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

McCaskill sounds like she is conceding on MSNBC.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

At least someone is counting House votes fast...Coffman is losing by 11% in CO-06 with 65% in.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I can see the House call...Republicans haven't won any Clinton districts yet, or really any other district they need to hold the House.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

In VA, Spanberger is looking great up almost 2,000 in VA-07 with 97% reporting, but Taylor has pulled ahead by 1,000 in VA-02 with 91% in.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

If it wasn't for dumbass Florida, I'd be feeling great right now.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Axne is up by 26 points right now in IA-03.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Poliquin up by 12 votes.

But what about the 2nd place votes?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

According to CNN, Jeff Van Drew is losing to an open Nazi.

I don't know whether to be shocked or sad.

I see Van Drew up 3% with 70% reporting.  Still much closer than it should be.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Thank the Gods that it looks like Walker is going to lose. So basically, other than OH and FL, Dems won all the Governorships that we wanted to win for redistricting. Not having Iowa is not nice for the people of Iowa, but is irrelevant to redistricting.

And in the case of OH and FL, there is at least (hopefully) some sort of redistricting reform to somewhat limit the damage that the GOP can do.

IA Gov could be very relevant to the Senate since Grassley is 85.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Missoula is still only 1/3 reporting.  Seems like Tester should pick up at least 10k votes just out of there.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Arizona is making me nervous, but Sinema has more favorable turf out.

Yep, all that is left is 45% out in Apache, 67% out in Pinal (56% for Trump in 2016), and 87% out in Maricopa (which is a lot of votes, by far the largest county in the state).

Looking at the 2016 Results, there is the following % of the vote outstanding (2016 result in brackets):

Apache: 72.8%% (Clinton +32.7%)
Greenlee: 12.5% (Trump +24.6%)
Maricopa: 72.27% (Trump +2.9%)
Pima: 59.04% (Clinton +13.8%)
Pinal: 47.06% (Trump +19.5%)
Yavapai: 2.22% (Trump 31.8%)

Critically, Marciopa and Pima are way larger than any other the other counties. Dems should hope that Apache reverts back to the Clinton margin as well.

Apache won't matter, it's way to small.  Sinema should more than make up for McSally's current margin through the Pima vote, and it will all come down to Maricopa, which should be very close.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

NYT just uncalled TX-23.  WaPo still has it called for Hurd.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

So, whats the latest n Montana? It seems to be the last open senate seat up for grabs tonight since Arizona won't likely be called for another day or two.

I think Tester will win and it won't even be that close.  The remaining vote is heavily weighted toward Gallatin and Missoula.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

FWIW, FL-Sen is now within auto-recount territory.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Latest AZ update was really bad for Sinema...she gained nothing out of the remaining Pima vote.
She needs to pray she does signficantly better in the last 1/4 of Maricopa than she did in the rest of it.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Looks like Dems will win the House Popular Vote by around 4% which is not the 6%, 8%, 10% etc figures we were hearing. It it less than 2006 & 2008. So this isn't a wave. This is like only 2% better than 2016.

If Dems had done 3-4% better like it was expected (D+7/8), probably 30-35 more House seats would have been in play & FL/AZ would have been easy wins with perhaps an upset in Texas ! Maybe we would have had a 51-49 GOP Senate even if ND, IN & MO were gone.

4-5% certainly isn't a wave.  What is shocking is Florida went 5% to the right of the National PV.

I'm not sure where you are getting the 4% figure, but if they are up 4% right now, they'll probably be up 7% once all the votes are counted, especially out of CA.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

As I said at 2am last night, Tester wins this pretty easily.
He's has pull ahead with 88% reporting, and well over 90% of the remaining vote is from his best counties.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I think you guys are overblowing it on the SC getting rid of Ranked Choice. Many on the Supreme Court have affirmed State Rights with elections, and they have never overturned an election system(as far as I know).

Such a case would presumably be making the same argument that was made in the Arizona Redistricting Commission case in 2015.  That was a 5-4 decision with Kennedy siding with the Liberals to affirm the voter initiative creating the commission.  And Kennedy isn't on the Court anymore...

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

FL is still tightening.
Nelson down 30K.
Gillum down 50K.

Just saw. CNN is ahead of NYT here. That was a net of about 4k for Nelson since first thing this morning. Maybe Nelson can pull it out? Seems unlikely to me but I guess not entirely impossible. Gillum is done, though.

https://twitter.com/AprilDRyan/status/1060196196948566017

Gillum camp thinks that when all votes are counted they will be down 15K, so a gain of 35K. If you extrapolate that to Nelson he's up by 5K.

If this is true, then why did he concede so early?  It always seems to me like candidates are too quick to concede.  There's nothing anti-democratic about just waiting a day to see what happens.

People got so grumpy about Al Gore retracting his concession in 2000, as though the election should be decided by a phone call and not the actual vote count.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Somehow it's still possible that we'll end up with no net chance in the Senate.  Not likely, but still possible!