AZ-08: April 24 general election (Update: Lesko-R wins by 4.72 points)

[Tintrlvr]

Like I have been saying this entire time: be cautious about writing off this race. We did the same thing with Doug Jones and Conor Lamb.

I agree that Lesko is probably going to win in the end, but I think it's going to be closer than expected. Either way, the GOP should be panicking right now.

Most people realized Lamb could win before election day

The issue is here, the raw data says that the people who have actually voted are 45%+ gop. Until that changes, I can't see Tipinerni losing by 8, let alone even getting close

We have 3 data points, two that show Tipinerni losing by double digits, and one where she is winning, but you are cherrypicking the best stat

Keep in mind that this district voted for the nazi sherriff arpairo, while lamb's district voted for statewide dems even in 2016

I didn't say Tiperneni was going to win, in fact, I didn't give a specific margin of victory for Lesko, I just said it was going to be closer than what all of us expect. And I didn't "cherrypick" any poll on here. I had the Lesko +10 poll in mind while typing my thoughts.

I mean I really don't see how this race will even be close. 49% of the voters who have voted so far are Republican (and 122k votes have been cast so far). This Emerson poll only has 40% of voters being republican.

And only 6% of voters are 18-34.

The early vote does skew strongly R in this district, though, due to the very high percentage of retirees. 49% R early vote and 40% R overall vote wouldn't be an unrealistic breakdown at all, even if as many as 2/3rds of all votes are cast early.

I don't think Tipirneni will win, but the poll doesn't seem inherently flawed. Congressional polling is hard, though, and I wouldn't be shocked if it ends up being way off.

[Tintrlvr]

Yes, it's a Republican district but let's wait until we see what happens next Tuesday before we start writing the postmortem.

That's quite an understatement.

There are around 150 Republican-held seats that are less Republican than this district; i.e., if the Democrats actually won all of them, the Republicans would be reduced to less than 100 seats in the House of Representatives, which as far as I can tell has only happened once to either party (to the Republicans in 1936) since the number of seats was fixed at 435.

[Tintrlvr]

Why is this race getting so much less attention that ga 6 and pa 18?

It's a lot less competitive. There was even less attention paid to the South Carolina and Kansas special elections.

[Tintrlvr]

Wasserman is heavily implying lesko is poised to win based on early vote data

Not sure how he is assuming that

If on-the-day votes are as low as reports sound, this is probably right. Lesko clearly won the early vote based on the partisan breakdown, the question was only whether it was enough to ensure that Tipirneni couldn't win by pulling out a big margin in the on-the-day vote (which is much less Republican/more Democratic in this district than the early vote, so that wasn't entirely implausible). But if on-the-day turnout is dismal, Lesko should be fine.