Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[Nyvin]

At this point I'm calling it a 53/47 senate. The numbers aren't there for Scott to lose and Hyde-Smith isn't losing barring revelations of her being a female Roy Moore. The only race that is still in question is Arizona and I don't think Mcsally survives the late deluge of votes

Ironically, exactly the inverse of what it was after the 2010 elections.

[Nyvin]

https://twitter.com/RyanCostello/status/1060222202212171776

Somebody's bitter. 

Man he always sounds like a whiny little brat.   He must've been spoiled as a child or something.

[Nyvin]

Steve Knight (R, CA-25) conceded to Katie Hill.

[Nyvin]

A Republican equivalent of Tester would be a Republican senator from New York who votes like he's from Kansas and somehow keeps getting reelected over and over again.

Montana isn’t nearly as Republican as New York is Democratic...

Maybe Connecticut is a better comparison? It has a Republican streak statewide in the way Montana does a Democratic one.

No, Rhode Island is almost perfect, similar PVI's and population, and it has those "moderate dems" quirks in it's voting behavior too.

[Nyvin]

People all over the internet are putting WAY too much effort into determining whether or not it's a "wave".   Who cares?

[Nyvin]

Those are only like a fraction of the CA votes in, right? So honestly it looks like Ds may sweep all of them.

AP officially called CA25 for Katie Hill, too

Only CA-39 and CA-10 are in doubt at this point.  CA-39 probably leans to Cisneros now.  Denham really could hold on though as that wasn't much of a shift.

Good!   The Northern Cal house map will looks so much more aesthetic with CA-10 as a dem seat!

[Nyvin]

It's amazing how Republicans are slowly going extinct in California.

Yep,  Democrats can potentially win >70% of the seats in both the state senate and state house this year.   That's nuts.

[Nyvin]

So what was dropped? The Pro-Sinema vote bucket or the Pro-McSally vote bucket?  I'm confused.

[Nyvin]

Hobbs takes the lead for SoS by 150 votes.

[Nyvin]

Is Pinal county still posting today?    That'll most likely wipe out Hobbs' lead.

[Nyvin]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-lost-the-house-john-mccain-1541968422

Glad this dirtbag got thrown out.

Isn't this the same ***hole who was campaigning in the wrong district?

Also the guy who complained about not being allowed to call women sluts.

[Nyvin]

McAdams up by 1,020 after the latest Utah County dump. Another Salt Lake dump is coming at 5pm ET. Not sure how many votes are left.

The fair districts amendment has fallen behind

[Nyvin]

In the first round of voting in LA-SEN 2014, Mary Landrieu got more votes than Bill Cassidy, fair and square. And yet, she's not a Senator anymore. I wonder why Poliquin isn't complaining about that...

You're mixing up apples with oranges here. Cassidy beat Landrieu fair and square in a Runoff. Meanwhile in Maine a Computer decides the Race. How weird! Maine has no Runoff.

A computer decides almost every race nowadays.   It's just a matter of how the computer goes about doing that.

[Nyvin]

I’m definitely not a fan of ranked choice voting. But Poliquin knew the rules of the game.

You could also say all the people voting third party did too and taking out RCV would be a disservice to them.

[Nyvin]

McAdams up by 1,020 after the latest Utah County dump. Another Salt Lake dump is coming at 5pm ET. Not sure how many votes are left.

The fair districts amendment has fallen behind

Hopefully Salt Lake pushes that back up and over.

Stephen Wolf thinks it will narrowly fail when all is said and done.

I don't think it really matters in the end. It was only an initiated statute and the legislature could have repealed it, and given that Congressional repercussions of not doing so, it's easy to see them gutting it or repealing entirely. But maybe it's worth trying again in 2020.

Wouldn't it just be easier to give the Democrats a Salt Lake City anchored district and be done with it? Salt Lake City isn't even in the 4th district and it looks like McAdams is going to win anyway. The gerrymander failed, and they'll have to add a 5th seat in the next round of redistricting.

No,  Colorado and probably Arizona are adding seats, not Utah.

I really doubt the Utah GOP would give up the seat willingly.   

[Nyvin]

Salt Lake Tribune still thinks McAdams will win, but it's looking better for Love than it did before.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/11/13/gehrke-math-doesnt-look/

https://twitter.com/RobertGehrke/with_replies

That was before today's disappointing update from Salt Lake City. There are over 30,000 ballots left in Salt Lake City, but McAdams needs to win them by a bigger margin in the coming days to offset Love's huge margins in Utah County. While Utah County only has about 5,000 votes left, Love won 74% of the last batch. McAdams won the latest batch of Salt Lake City by about 6 points.

Salt Lake City isn't in the district.   It's the southwestern part of Salt Lake County.

[Nyvin]

I'd think Love wins this, but really all it would take is one good batch for McAdams to come in to throw the whole thing to him.

[Nyvin]

Stanton passed 60% in AZ-9

[Nyvin]

Salt Lake Tribune still thinks McAdams will win, but it's looking better for Love than it did before.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/11/13/gehrke-math-doesnt-look/

https://twitter.com/RobertGehrke/with_replies

That was before today's disappointing update from Salt Lake City. There are over 30,000 ballots left in Salt Lake City, but McAdams needs to win them by a bigger margin in the coming days to offset Love's huge margins in Utah County. While Utah County only has about 5,000 votes left, Love won 74% of the last batch. McAdams won the latest batch of Salt Lake City by about 6 points.

Salt Lake City isn't in the district.   It's the southwestern part of Salt Lake County.

Not to be pedantic, but in case it hasn't been mentioned before, there are (11) Salt Lake City precincts within the district (SLC 146, SLC148-152, SLC 156, SLC 158-160, SLC 167) that according to my SLC spreadsheet went in

2016: 3,903 HRC (60.9% D)- 1,201 DJT (18.8% R)- 1,301 OTHER (20.3%)----

According to the latest precinct file I just downloaded from Salt Lake County---

2018: CD-04--- 4,515 McAdams (77.7% D)- 1,282 Love   (22.1%)- 14 Write-IN     

Huh,  guess you're right, I never noticed there is a tiny smidge of the city in the southeast there.

[Nyvin]

It's a good thing for Dems that their majority is mostly built off more durable suburban districts rather than very Trumpy districts which probably would've been one term rentals like NC-09, KY-06, IL-12, WV-03, KS-02, etc.

Yep. Dems have good reason to be very happy about how the House elections went. Less so the Senate (depending partly on how FL turns out), but not only did Dems pick up a lot of seats in the House, but they picked up the ones that are more holdable in the future.

Downside is that there are less house seats to grab from the GOP later to protect the majority - I count around 10 left on the table, mostly in PA/NY/TX.

At least it's the last election before redistricting.   The maps in 2022 are looking to be considerably more favorable to dems than what we have now.