CONGRESSIONAL RESULTS MEGA THREAD

[StateBoiler]

Spartz up on Hale 51-45 with 84% reporting in the Indiana 5th. No called winner by the AP. The lead is 20k votes.

[StateBoiler]

https://twitter.com/HarleyRouda/status/1326223203216236544?s=19

This looks like a CONCESSION by Rep. Harley Rouda!

Well, congratulations to Michelle Park Steel then as the 1st Korean American elected to Congress

Already filed to run against Steel in 2022. lol.

https://twitter.com/CATargetBot/status/1326226014922420224?s=19

Good, enjoy your two year rental while you can

You expect 2022 to be a blue wave or what ?

Just you wait for OC redistricting.

(puts on my naive innocent hat for purposes of drawing out an answer)

But California has an Independent Redistricting Commission as a well-intentioned reform. Are you telling me this Independent Redistricting Commission will suddenly draw districts in Orange County in a way to screw over a particular party in a partisan-purposed manner?

[StateBoiler]

New ABC NEWS House Tally (probably now the most accurate out of the four TV Networks)

DEMOCRATS 219
REPUBLICANS 207
Undecided 9 (CA-21, CA-25, IA-2, LA-5 (Runoff); NY-2, NY-3, NY-18; NY-19, NY-22)

https://abcnews.go.com/Elections/2020-us-house-election-results-live-map

If we give the DEMS NY-3, NY-18, NY-19 they will be at 222
If we give the GOP CA-21, IA-2, LA-5 and NY-2 they will be at 211 Seats
Pure Toss Up CA-25 and NY-22

So, the new House could either be 224-211 or 222-213!

However the few uncalled races left go, with a such a slim majority for the Democrats, all special elections this Congress, no matter how remote the possibility they might be competitive, will garner serious interest from the national parties and media.

Richmond has announced he will make it official and join the Biden administration. He'll probably be there for beginning of Congress and the seat is safe Democrat, but for the 2 to 3 months it'll take to choose his successor, that's a reduced majority by 1 for the Democrats.

[StateBoiler]

how is the house popular vote standing? who is winning?

https://cookpolitical.com/2020-house-vote-tracker

Cook has Dems winning it 50.4-48.1, with four races (CA-21, CA-25, IA-02, NY-22) TBD.

You have to have popular vote ex-California since they have D vs. D and R vs. R races.

[StateBoiler]

how is the house popular vote standing? who is winning?

https://cookpolitical.com/2020-house-vote-tracker

Cook has Dems winning it 50.4-48.1, with four races (CA-21, CA-25, IA-02, NY-22) TBD.

You have to have popular vote ex-California since they have D vs. D and R vs. R races.

California has no R vs R races.

Thank you. Point stands still it's not an apples to apples comparison when 100% of votes cast in some districts voters could only pick 1 party.

You could do house popular vote ex-all those intra-party 2-person race seats, with the understanding that if the party not on the ballot was there, they'd still get a minority of votes.

[StateBoiler]

Uh around the votes Trump got in that district +- candidate quality of the incumbent?

Or Primary percentage and just take that percent of the votes?

You can't do that because so many of the Republicans will leave their ballots blank in a D vs D. There's always a huge underscore if there's 15-25% Republicans. Still, this is a stupid thing to hand wrong over. We're not going to go around suggesting to add the Libertarian vote to the Dems in a R v L race, now are we?

1. National popular vote for the House is literally meaningless, more meaningless in fact than the national popular vote for president.
2. People that to be frank are just less educated on these matters use this literally meaningless statistic to push a pet narrative.
3. Said narrative falls apart in races where one party is unopposed, or is an entirely intra-party race, or a party is not on the ballot. Unless you are naive enough to believe R vs. L or D vs. L races where the L gets 25% of the vote demonstrates that 25% of the people in that district seriously support the Libertarian Party, and add 4 of those up, that equates to 1 Libertarian should be elected in the House.

If we had 435 R's and 435 D's on the November ballots running in all House districts, as happens up in Canada with the major parties, the argument that this statistic means something gains a shred of credibility.

[StateBoiler]

Christy Smith will be joining Amy McGrath, Robby Mook, and Cal Cunningham in the gulag.

Don't forget Shalala!

Ah! Of course. Queen DMP will not, as she did well given how Biden did and is cool.

Who else who else hmmmm. Jamie Harrison perhaps?

Harrison has talked about running for DNC Chair.

[StateBoiler]

Amazing to me that pelosi isn’t going to step down as speaker

I don't like Pelosi, but there is no other Democrat in the House who has the political abilities which she has, while presently being able to command a majority of the Democratic caucus.

The Republicans had this same issue with Boehner/Ryan/McCarthy. It's less to deal with "political abilities" and more to deal with "being able to command a majority of the Democratic caucus". The post-Pelosi generation of congressional Democrats I don't know who is going to be able to meld them all together, which is exactly the problem Boehner and Ryan had. Pelosi's greatest ally is just the people that don't like her can't agree on a replacement.

In any case, I imagine that this is Pelosi's last term as Speaker (whether or not Democrats lose the majority in the midterms), and that she will retire from leadership-if not from the House entirely-in 2022.

6 years late if we're being pretty honest.

[StateBoiler]

RRHElections did their version of the same article over the weekend. They also mentioned 2, 3, and 7, but their "Turkey of the Year" went to Cal Cunningham.

https://rrhelections.com/index.php/2020/11/21/10th-annual-rrh-elections-turkey-of-the-year-awards/

[StateBoiler]

Just read this New York reporter's Twitter for the past day for NY-22. https://mobile.twitter.com/JRosenblattTV

Seems the only solution in Oneida County is zero out the count and start over.

[StateBoiler]

Seems the fairest thing to do in the event of the miniscule chance of a tie is each of the 2 candidates gets the seat for 1 year.

In primaries here, the county party chair picks the winner. There was a very small township race where each of the 2 candidates had 28 votes. Not sure if the county party chair picked a winner or talked to one of them and got one to drop out.

[StateBoiler]

So based on election results, a 222-212 House with the New York district still up in the air, and Richmond's seat being vacant for a few months after he becomes a Biden advisor. So Pelosi for the Speaker vote can afford to have 4 members at a minimum peel off, possibly 5, and once they get going with legislative work it will be a working majority of either 8 or 10.

[StateBoiler]

https://twitter.com/KatieHill4CA/status/1333602380982726657

Had Katie Hill been more careful with how she handled her relationships with her staff, she would still be in the House and probably would have been reelected, although it would have been a relatively close margin.

Wrong again. Her mistake was to let her ex-hasband bully her.

The greatest mistake was abuse of power over a staffer, actually. Perpetrators can also be victims (and usually are, although the opposite doesn't hold).

They just made what she did (and what Clinton did as well) a crime in Indiana the past couple years, even if it is consensual.

[StateBoiler]

Delgado is currently up by 8 with the biggest Democratic county having 19% out

He was never losing

He's running ahead of Biden by a lot

TBH, I am more interested what the Final Margin in NY-11 is (Rose vs Malliotakis). We haven't gotten any Results of the Five NYC Boroughs since Election Day!

Oh, that's just New York Democrat-controlled government operating at its finest.

[StateBoiler]

So Biden actually did better than Clinton CA-39, won it by 10%, and that still wasn't enough to drag Cisneros over the finish line. That's an insane amount of ticket splitters. And maybe pre 2020, but given the GOPs actions over the last 4 years, it's still incredible to me that that many people voted split.

Might be a good idea to see how all the referendums did there to tell you what more of the electorate thinks. Could be a large rejection of Trump, but doesn't necessarily mean the people are left-wingers.

[StateBoiler]

Kwanza Hall won the GA-05 Special Election, and will serve for about a month until the 117th Congress begins:

https://twitter.com/ap_politics/status/1334007595200360448?s=21

There should be a common-sense constitutional amendment to conjoin end of term special elections with the regular election.

[StateBoiler]

So Biden actually did better than Clinton CA-39, won it by 10%, and that still wasn't enough to drag Cisneros over the finish line. That's an insane amount of ticket splitters. And maybe pre 2020, but given the GOPs actions over the last 4 years, it's still incredible to me that that many people voted split.

The democratic party has been far worse over the past 4 years. They've moved super far to the left on almost every single issue, and they advocated for shutting down the schools, curfews, among other inane restrictions. They've (democratic-aligned media and the democratic base) attacked our President for every little thing. Only reason I voted democratic for every federal position was Joe Biden is a good man who punched back at the left enough times for me to trust him. And democratic politicians did surprisingly compromise with Trump a few times despite their crazy base.

Not surprising to see a lot of Biden - R ticket splitters. The democratic party did not deserve to win a lot of seats this election.

It seems Democrats in some areas are starting to shift here. I read an article from a New York City education official that was going into the direction of De Blasio shutting down the schools there again was wrongheaded compared to all the pre-checks they do for secondary schoolchildren and the teachers. Didn't rise to criticism saying De Blasio was wrong, but more disappointing that if we could create a safe situation, the kids need to be in school. There's also the evidence that since schools shutdown this is one giant exacerbator of achievement gaps. My wife's a middle school counselor and to provide an anecdote confirms in a school with few in the way of African-Americans but a ton of Hispanics from Mexico and Guatemala. One educator I read said "There's a lot of kids that when they restart in classrooms full-time should restart back at where they were in March 2020. If they have to be held back a year so be it, that's a compromise you have to make if you care about the child's long-term wellbeing." I know the schools where I am they no longer hold any kids back even if they legitimately flunk, for social reasons.

[StateBoiler]

Pure desperation from Hart.. lol.

It's not desperation. 1984.....

In any case Hart should probably concede.

Power's a wonderful drug.

[StateBoiler]

A 6 vote margin is essentially a statistical tie, with no way of knowing who actually got more valid votes.

You captured my literal anger toward election administration in a sentence there, well done.

I actually wonder if Hart's challenge to the House is Pelosi-encouraged. Democrats will hold a very narrow majority, and while in the end they may just say Miller-Meeks won, while it is being investigated and until the Louisiana special election is held, it gives Pelosi 1 more seat of wiggle room.

[StateBoiler]

Beyond which, while I realize that you really want to pretend Hart's 26 vote gain in Scott County was some sort of controversial/sketchy scandal, it isn't.  The fact that a Democrat gained votes in a recount does not mean you can just ignore the results of that county's recount.

This is an example though of why the Gore recount was wrong-minded. You have to have the same rules and same laws anywhere across where an election is conducted. If you have a recount, you can't pick and choose a few localized areas where the recount takes place. It needs to be "recount everywhere". You also don't get to pick and choose the laws for recounts based on where you're at. There needs to be one universal law set for where an election is conducted. If you want to say what Scott County did was fine, then every single other county in the district should be required to do the same thing, and only then would you have a valid election result. If Scott County wants to say their version of the recount is more accurate and not the existing law, I would ask Scott County to cite where in the Iowa State Constitution does it declare a county has the right to overrule the state's statutes made by the state legislature.

[StateBoiler]

Kwanza Hall won the GA-05 Special Election, and will serve for about a month until the 117th Congress begins:

https://twitter.com/ap_politics/status/1334007595200360448?s=21

There should be a common-sense constitutional amendment to conjoin end of term special elections with the regular election.

There should be a statute requiring special elections to fill vacancies within a month. So in this case on August 17.

I'd agree with a statute along those lines, although 30 days is probably too quick. Maybe 45 or 50 days.

[StateBoiler]

https://twitter.com/millermeeks/status/1334692638566604800

Smh, another Yankee appropriating my culture. It really annoys me when these GOP clowns pretend to be southern despite the fact that I'm pretty sure Miller-Meeks was born in California and obviously lives in Iowa. I realize it doesn't really matter but it's very bothersome.

"Bless your heart" should be more used in politics. It's a way of sounding genteel and comforting with non-Southerners not realizing you're saying "F^*& you".

(Disclaimer: Born and raised in N.C.)

[StateBoiler]

Democrats really needed to find a balance between being safe and still having a GOTV effort.

Just...wear masks and keep a reasonable distance. I think not having a GOTV and door knocking effort was a massive and entirely avoidable own goal.

Too easy to just blame Covid. They didn't have a strong GOTV effort 4 years ago either.

[StateBoiler]

Democrats really needed to find a balance between being safe and still having a GOTV effort.

Just...wear masks and keep a reasonable distance. I think not having a GOTV and door knocking effort was a massive and entirely avoidable own goal.

Too easy to just blame Covid. They didn't have a strong GOTV effort 4 years ago either.

At least they had one

The Clinton campaign literally called a union local from out-of-state that was on a bus the week before the election heading to Detroit where the local heard from their on-the-ground sources there were problems, and told them to turn around. The Clinton campaign did not believe in low-level, person-centric politics at all.

[StateBoiler]

Democrats really needed to find a balance between being safe and still having a GOTV effort.

Just...wear masks and keep a reasonable distance. I think not having a GOTV and door knocking effort was a massive and entirely avoidable own goal.

Too easy to just blame Covid. They didn't have a strong GOTV effort 4 years ago either.

At least they had one

The Clinton campaign literally called a union local from out-of-state that was on a bus the week before the election heading to Detroit where the local heard from their on-the-ground sources there were problems, and told them to turn around. The Clinton campaign did not believe in low-level, person-centric politics at all.

At least they had on the ground sources

That was the union local. It wasn't the Clinton campaign. To show I'm not making sh**t up, here's the Politico article.

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michigan-hillary-clinton-trump-232547

How Clinton lost Michigan — and blew the election
Across battlegrounds, Democrats blame HQ’s stubborn commitment to a one-size-fits-all strategy.

By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE 12/14/2016 05:08 AM EST

Everybody could see Hillary Clinton was cooked in Iowa. So when, a week-and-a-half out, the Service Employees International Union started hearing anxiety out of Michigan, union officials decided to reroute their volunteers, giving a desperate team on the ground around Detroit some hope.

They started prepping meals and organizing hotel rooms.

SEIU — which had wanted to go to Michigan from the beginning, but been ordered not to — dialed Clinton’s top campaign aides to tell them about the new plan. According to several people familiar with the call, Brooklyn was furious.

Posting entire news articles is not allowed.

If I had to back of the envelope simplistic two-cent take of the difference between Republicans and Democrats, it's Republicans believe in organization (Trump doesn't, but he's not really a Republican anyway) and Democrats don't. Democrats are like how Trump views things: everything comes from up top and we don't give a rat's ass about the grassroots and how they function.