GA-6 Special election discussion thread

[Tartarus Sauce]

The current trends are actually making it seem possible that Ossof might be more likely to win a run-off than the first round. The narrative so far has been that if he doesn't pull off an upset win in the primary, he'll lose 6-8% in the run-off. That could obviously still happen, but the confidence people have been assigning to that scenario is looking increasingly suspect. A run-off might be a lot closer than people are expecting.

[Tartarus Sauce]

2016 Republican primary voters aren't necessarily Republican voters in this election.

^This

But it'll be more useful to see the final voting percentages and the polls leading up to the June runoff. Don't be surprised if Republicans royally screw the pooch in Congress in the interim either, adding more fuel to the flames. Nothing's off the table until the vote happens, as last election taught us.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Based on the 2% Trump win in Georgia's 6th coupled with the strong wave of Democratic enthusiasm why isn't it at least likely that Ossoff reaches 51% on Tuesday? So far the Democrats are running ahead of their 2016 numbers and this is a suburban Atlanta district. Why would they vote for a Republican if they believe they're voting on the Trump Administration?

I don't have the side-by-side numbers to definitely confirm it, but I'm expecting that a greater share of likely voting Democrats in GA-6 have already early voted compared to who had done so in KS-4 at this comparable point. I remember Cohn saying a few days ago that something like 80% of the people remaining who had a 80% chance or greater of voting in a midterm were Republican or Republican leaners.

That 30-point gap in preferences in Sedgwick between EV (Thompson +22) & ED (Estes +10) could look quite small compared to what we see in GA-6 if there isn't substantial breakdown of usual voting fundamentals.

Will it matter if Ossoff is at 60% in the early vote? According to Cohn, the current EV electorate is 46% D, 37% R, 17% NA, which makes that quite difficult, but perhaps there are a fair amount of "crossover" votes. What % of the overall vote do you expect to come from the EV?

In KS-4/Sedgwick County, Thompson got 61% of the EV; he barely carried Sedgwick overall and lost the CD by 6-7 with Sedgwick comprising 70% of the CD's vote. If the gap between ED/EV is even modestly larger than that for GA-6 as a whole, then there's no way he hits 50% or comes even reasonably close.

We're for sure going to see a massive split between the early vote and the election day vote, but we don't know yet which way that split will tip the balance. It could be the early vote is so pro-Ossoff that the election day vote can't compensate, or Ossoff could indeed miss the 50% mark because Republicans turned out in sufficient numbers on election day. The current D/R primary voter breakdown for the early vote doesn't demonstrate much right now, as the aforementioned Sedgewick County early vote broke 61% for Thompson despite the primary voter EV advantage indicating 2 points in the Republican's favor, so there was a ton of crossover votes. We have no idea just how large Ossoff's lead is in the EV right now, but it's almost assuredly way higher than the 46/37% D/R breakdown would suggest given how hard this district swung against Trump.

Anyway, Republicans don't have as much wiggle room here as they did in Kansas; if the Democratic overperformance is similar to the degree it was in Kansas, Ossoff is coasting past 50% rather comfortably regardless of what the final EV-ED split is. Even if he doesn't hit 50, if he hits anything above 45%, he's got a good chance at winning the runoff, which is a possibility people have been underestimating.

In summary, Democrats will have reason to celebrate either way. Either Ossoff hits 50% and gets the seat outright, or he hits the high 40s which will likely place him as a favorite for the run-off. There's little reason to believe the non-Ossoff vote will entirely consolidate around the winning Republican candidate and many reasons to bet against it. The only result that would truly be disappointing would be if Ossoff cratered in the low 40s.

[Tartarus Sauce]

I'm starting to wonder if Ossoff will do better than we all thought or if this is actually just too early for us to be focusing on this.

Both could be true.

[Tartarus Sauce]

In very typical fashion people are getting way to invested here earlier today someone on this thread would have told you upper 40's against Handel was a good position for Ossoff but now libs are doom and gloom an reps are declaring Handel rep

[Tartarus Sauce]

Wouldn't be surprised if the weaker ED DeKalb showing was due to the nasty thunderstorms that rolled in combined with underserved EV sites. He's holding up better so far proportionally to the regional county lean in Fulton and Cobb than in DeKalb.

[Tartarus Sauce]

There should still be a remarkable amount of vote remaining in Fulton - enough to potentially cancel out the remainder of Cobb's in raw numbers and keep him above 50. The question now is: is the outstanding Fulton vote at or enough above 50 to cancel out a tougher margin in Cobb?

He's likely short if I had to guess, but it's looking like he's going to register at least 47% total which is a stronger showing than many were predicting and places him very well for the runoff.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Well this sucks if you are a Democrat...

Why? Surely you weren't expecting an outright win tonight?

It was our best chance. Handel will smash him to bits 1v1.

Lol not really, if he's in the high 40s that would make him the likely favorite in a runoff.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Here's what SoS is showing as reporting fully (green) and partially (yellow):

Looks like most of the heaviest GOP voting areas are already fully reported if I'm not mistaken.