Election 2018 Open Thread v2 - Mia, Mimi, Gil, and T.J.

[Tintrlvr]

Kern has only updated once since election night (or early on 11/9), so there should be another vote dump coming.

Kern has a little over 22,000 votes outstanding. Not all of those will be in this district; maybe 8,000 will be. They include some late VBM ballots but are mostly provisionals. (While the California SOS is not always the most up-to-date source on remaining ballots, it says Kern was updated on 11/11 when the county last reported updated totals on 11/9, so I'm fairly confident that the numbers here are accurate for Kern.)

There are some but significantly fewer ballots left in Kings County (about 5,000), mostly late VBMs but also some provisionals.

Unclear if there are any ballots left in Fresno County since the last update to the CA SOS was on 11/9 so does not reflect today's report. If I had to guess, I'd say they're probably done on late VBMs but have not reported provisionals.

Tulare County is only a very small part of the district but still has a lot of ballots outstanding overall, though most will be from outside of CA-21.

For what it's worth, I don't think any provisionals have been counted yet in any of the counties in the district (or, at least, not in Kern or Kings; perhaps some were in today's report from Fresno), so we can't say much about how they will break with any certainty. However, based on history in the heavily Latino counties of the Central Valley, Cox will probably win the provisionals even in Kings. Late VBM ballots will probably be about the same breakdowns as what has been reported over the last few days thus far, i.e., Valadao wins them in Kings by a wide margin and Cox wins them in Kern by an even wider margin.

https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/statewide-elections/2018-general/unprocessed-ballots-report.pdf?_ga=2.46213028.2001522264.1542155537-1293758651.1542155537

[Tintrlvr]

I actually don't really want Cox to win as I feel like he'd perennially have trouble holding the seat down as an Anglo

He'd probably be knocked out of the top two in 2020 by a Latino Dem.

[Tintrlvr]

Surprised it was that close, so how many indies voted for Poliquin then?

Since this was the first RCV election, I would not be surprised if a very large portion of voters failed to indicate a second choice.

[Tintrlvr]

Katie Hobbs’ lead at 5918. Not sure what county updated but it doesn’t look like Pima or Maricopa

Apache

Also Cox added 180 votes in the Tulare County provisionals:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1063103638732591104

Yup. This doesn't make much a difference on its own as Tulare County is just a tiny portion of the district, but, as I predicted, provisionals are going to be really ugly for Valadao. Cox could hit 80% in the Kern County provisionals, e.g., and, especially given that Tulare result, should be ahead in the Kings County provisionals, too. Mostly comes down to whether Valadao can build up a bit of a buffer in the remaining Kings County VBMs; right now, if only provisionals were counted, I think Cox wins.

[Tintrlvr]

So that exit poll of 90ish% of indies going to Golden was BS.

About 44% chose Golden,  20% chose Poliquin, the rest apparently didn't chose anyone...?

Seems to be the case. About 0.5% were overvotes (ranked two choices the same, e.g.), about 1.5% were exhausted before reaching the top two (e.g., a first-preference Hoar voter who ranked Bond #2 and failed to rank either Golden or Poliquin) and the remaining 33% were undervotes (failed to indicate any second or later choice, only a first choice). Undervotes are always a problem when introducing IRV/RCV election systems, and I'm surely especially in a context like this one where this was the only IRV/RCV election on a ballot where all of the other elections were FPTP.

[Tintrlvr]

Katie Hobbs’ lead at 5918. Not sure what county updated but it doesn’t look like Pima or Maricopa

Apache

Also Cox added 180 votes in the Tulare County provisionals:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1063103638732591104

Yup. This doesn't make much a difference on its own as Tulare County is just a tiny portion of the district, but, as I predicted, provisionals are going to be really ugly for Valadao. Cox could hit 80% in the Kern County provisionals, e.g., and, especially given that Tulare result, should be ahead in the Kings County provisionals, too. Mostly comes down to whether Valadao can build up a bit of a buffer in the remaining Kings County VBMs; right now, if only provisionals were counted, I think Cox wins.

But have Kern's counties vbms been counted either?

Also, can I just save that I realize this is totally greedy of me, but with the utter decimation of the California Republican Congressional Delegation, is it wrong that it's still bugs me Devin Nunes is one of those survivors (for now)?

Kern only has a few VBMs left (3,885 county-wide but only around 35% will be in CA-21) but a lot of provisionals (16,342 county-wide). Kings by contrast has significantly more VBMs (3,162, all in CA-21) than provisionals (1,354) left.

https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/statewide-elections/2018-general/unprocessed-ballots-report.pdf?_ga=2.248679044.2001522264.1542155537-1293758651.1542155537

The difference for Nunes is that his district is still solidly a Trump district. I believe all of the Republicans who lost in California are in Clinton districts.

[Tintrlvr]

I realize it's not going to flip, but how close is CA-50 likely to end up?

Probably within 3-4 points. San Diego County has about 250,000 ballots left to count, of which around 50,000 will be in CA-50, so there are a lot of votes still out there.

[Tintrlvr]

With the exception of the open seat in CA-39, all these losing California House Republicans voted for ACA repeal.  Screaming ME ME can go home and have recurring nightmares about Elizabeth Warren, lol.

Looks like Young Kim lose long time.

Don't make racist jokes here.

[Tintrlvr]

Mia Love has pulled into the lead in UT-04 by about 400 votes.

I assume that was the remaining Utah County ballots. Do we know what's still out?

[Tintrlvr]

With the exception of the open seat in CA-39, all these losing California House Republicans voted for ACA repeal.  Screaming ME ME can go home and have recurring nightmares about Elizabeth Warren, lol.

Looks like Young Kim lose long time.

Don't make racist jokes here.

He’s not that good-looking, either. He’s average. He also has serious gayface, not especially surprising for a young Republican.

A few points:

1. I did not know that you were Asian American, as someone else pointed out. I don't think this totally removes the racism inherent in that comment but I totally understand that it gets toned down.

2. My comment is not homophobic at all - "gayface" is a (largely joking but also semi-serious) gay male reference that honestly straight people don't know about at all, and it certainly doesn't have homophobic origins (unlike the "me love you long time" trope's obvious racist history). I can understand if you're straight not getting this (maybe you're gay and just don't like the topic). (By the way, I am gay, although I don't think this would necessarily absolve me of any borderline homophobic jokes.)

3. It's a bit ridiculous to go combing through someone's post history looking for potentially off-color remarks to retort with instead of just explaining.

Thanks.

[Tintrlvr]

Mia Love has pulled into the lead in UT-04 by about 400 votes.

I assume that was the remaining Utah County ballots. Do we know what's still out?

3 Precincts in Utah County, 18 in SLC.

Also as a note, Indy Redistricting is up 50.1-49.9 now.

I wouldn't call it for Love just yet in that case. Good news on the redistricting referendum.

[Tintrlvr]

BREAKING

Utah County posted new Results for the UT-4 Race and Mia Love now leads by 1516 Votes.

McAdams needs 58.5 of the SLC Provisionals to pass Love.

Yeah, doesnt look like Democrats will win UT-04. At least the commission is passing, so that should make taking the seat easierand also possibly unseating Valadao will mean the Ds still take 39 seats.

Democrats will never ever take that Seat if they don't win it this year. They're certainly won't be getting it in a POTUS Year. And the 2022 MidTerms will only be favorable to Dems if Trump wins; If he loses Republicans will gain most of the Seats back they lost this year.

Well, thats not true. As I said before, if the commission passes, they will have to make a Lean-Likely D seat in SLC county, which would be easily winnable for Ds.

Republican map drawers wouldn't make a Lean/Likely D seat in SLC even with the commission recommendations. At best they'd draw a south SLC seat that is R+9 or so. Granted, McAdams would've won that this year, but it's not Lean/Likely D by any stretch of the imagination.

You shouldnt use PVI for a place like UT, especially with its bloated 2012 result(the UT-04 district has a PVI of R+13, to give an idea). The most likely result would be around an even seat, or one that voted slightly Democratic, as counties must be kept whole(cant cut SLC).

I am well aware. The resulting seat would still not be leans/likely D solely because McAdams would've carried it in a D+8 year. Don't be a hack.

If you draw an R leaning seat in the southern part of Salt Lake County, then the northern part of Salt Lake County, including Salt Lake City, still has to go somewhere else. That other district will at the minimum not be safe R, and is not likely to be more than about R+6 or R+7 at the most, and that is with the bloated PVI including Romney 2012.

Right. Given this result especially, even though it appears Love narrowly won reelection, because of the constraints put on the commission (and the legislature, if it rejects the commission's map) by the amendment (aside from the commission, the general constraints on districts basically require them not to split Salt Lake County more than two ways and not to split up Salt Lake City at all), the Republicans have a choice between creating two competitive seats (one entirely in Salt Lake County but excluding Salt Lake City and one including Salt Lake City and other out-state areas) or one likely D seat based on Salt Lake City and its immediate environs while leaving the other three seats safe. If Mia Love were less unpopular and generally more politically connected, they might take the risk and draw two competitive districts to try to save her, but it would have to be over the howls of another Congressperson, and she would probably lose reelection in an ~R+5 seat anyway, so her lack of political connections mean they won't do it.

Note that the commission requires the support of at least one Democrat to pass its maps (5/7 members and 3 are appointed by the minority party), so the commission at least won't be blatantly partisan in its map-drawing. The commission and the legislature both are also technically forbidden from taking into account partisan considerations or incumbent protection, so any partisan map could be subject to a court challenge on those grounds.

[Tintrlvr]

Right. Given this result especially, even though it appears Love narrowly won reelection, because of the constraints put on the commission (and the legislature, if it rejects the commission's map) by the amendment (aside from the commission, the general constraints on districts basically require them not to split Salt Lake County more than two ways and not to split up Salt Lake City at all), the Republicans have a choice between creating two competitive seats (one entirely in Salt Lake County but excluding Salt Lake City and one including Salt Lake City and other out-state areas) or one likely D seat based on Salt Lake City and its immediate environs while leaving the other three seats safe. If Mia Love were less unpopular and generally more politically connected, they might take the risk and draw two competitive districts to try to save her, but it would have to be over the howls of another Congressperson, and she would probably lose reelection in an ~R+5 seat anyway, so her lack of political connections mean they won't do it.

Note that the commission requires the support of at least one Democrat to pass its maps (5/7 members and 3 are appointed by the minority party), so the commission at least won't be blatantly partisan in its map-drawing. The commission and the legislature both are also technically forbidden from taking into account partisan considerations or incumbent protection, so any partisan map could be subject to a court challenge on those grounds.

Other option: just repeal the initiative entirely using their ginormous majorities, and say "the result was too close to decide something important," or "we're just making a few small changes" (that cripple the entire initiative), or some other tripe like that.

Utah has no rules against modifying initiatives, and voters can only get initiated statutes on the ballot, not constitutional amendments, so the legislature can repeal what it doesn't like for any reason. The only question here is, will they do that?

Ah, fair. I was assuming the initiative was definitive.

[Tintrlvr]

Apparently, Mia Love's gain in Utah County was actually not great for her, since it was a weaker margin than before, and now almost all of what's left is SLC. McAdams needs to win about 58% of the remaining votes in SLC, which is only a few points higher than what he's been getting recently (54%).

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/11/19/gehrke-good-news-is-bad/

That sounds like we'll be within 100-200 votes in the end either way anyway, so probably recount territory.

[Tintrlvr]

Valadao lead plummets to just 930 votes-

The legend of the Kern County provisional ballots lives on!

As Nate Silver noted, this one is going to be an extreme nailbiter. The AP should really un-call the race.

[Tintrlvr]

Yeah, I never understood why people thought Valadao and Hurd were unbeatable juggernauts. I didn’t even move these races out of the Toss-up category when it appeared that Democrats had given up on CA-21/TX-23.

Neither did I tbf....

The problem with both these districts was trying to forecast voter turnout and the composition of the electorate knowing that turnout in 2018 would be a bit different in both districts than in 2014.

One the one hand there are significant concentrations of relatively affluent educated Anglo Republicans in places like Bexar and Fresno Counties... one the other hand you have Latino populations that have tended to vote in lower numbers in Midterm elections in both places, especially working-class Latinos that tend to be much more heavily Democratic than Middle-Class Latinos, on the other hand you've got a decent pool of younger voters in both districts, that tend to skew more heavily Democratic, etc....

It will be interesting to dissect both districts in further detail once we get precinct level results....

There are affluent Anglo Republicans in Fresno County, but not so much in Valadao's district. They're mostly in Nunes's district with the rest in Costa's district. Valadao has the poor parts of Fresno County and no suburbs, really, just rural areas and small towns.

[Tintrlvr]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1064685454556127232

Guess I should have been more optimistic. I guess those were provisionals or something and thus more Democratic than expected.

[Tintrlvr]

What do they even have left other than their rump of rural Central Valley and far north districts?  If TJ Cox wins, I don’t know of any Republican seats that could fall even in a tsunami, unless Duncan Hunter sticks around.  At the same time, I can point to at least five Democratic seats that could feasibly fall in a good national year for Republicans.

Dems might be able to pick off a few more seats in the state assembly or state senate, but it doesn’t really matter.  Republicans are powerless on the state level.

I called my friend who lives in Cali tonight and ended it with "your state is now boring" (more or less )

Not much left there. Democrats already control a much higher % of seats in Congress and the legislature than their vote share would suggest too. It's probably all defense from here on out.

Not necessarily; there is still some room for the Republican Party to fall.

I mean excluding a hunter special election is there any other house seats the Cali GOP can lose.
Anyway the future of the Cali GOP is Poizner.

Not in the House, at least until redistricting, assuming CA-21 flips. But there are still some state legislative seats that could flip to the Dems.

And Poizner has been around for a while, is 61 and hasn't won an election since 2006 (and that to a tertiary office). He's hardly the future of anything; that's like saying Dino Rossi is the future of the WA GOP.

[Tintrlvr]

Why did AP call CA-21 for Valadao? Have they retracted it?

He was up by almost ten points on election night. It was called on election night IIRC. A lot of people, including the AP, have appeared ignorant of the way late-counted California ballots always favor the Democrats, often quite strongly. And that ignorance is not a new phenomenon, either.

I'm not aware of them retracting the call. They're probably not paying much attention.

[Tintrlvr]

The real question is why CNN refuses to call NM-2. There are no votes left to count there and the Democrat leads by 2700.

Hey, at least they managed to un-call it!

As I recall, some networks simply leave certain races uncalled and never call them. After a while, they stop caring entirely and don't bother updating. CNN, with its obsession with the latest news story, is especially prone to this.

[Tintrlvr]

FTR, according to DKE OK-05 voted for Drew Edmondson by almost 10 points. So Kendra Horn might not be so vulnerable as many people thought at the beginning.

It only voted for Trump by 13, and I think it will trend further against him in 2020 given that it is an urban district and what happened nationally this year. My guess is that it will only vote for Trump by around 7-9 points in 2020 if the Presidential election is very close. In which case Horn should have a good chance of holding out. (May depend to some degree on whether Stitt manages to turn things around for the OK GOP - but I rather doubt he will.)

[Tintrlvr]

I wouldn't quite call MN-07 Safe R unless Peterson retires, but he probably needs 2020 to be very good for Democrats to survive. Probably at least Lean R, if not Likely R.

Anyway, in CA-21 we got... 7 more votes from Tulare. I really hope we get something from Fresno, since that's pretty much where this race will be decided.

Hey, that 1 net vote for Valadao might decide the race!

[Tintrlvr]

https://mobile.twitter.com/AP_Politics/status/1065033426506522624

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YMPAH67f4o

100%.
To think that I wrote this seat off once Romney announced.
It’s crazy to think that Love managed to lose a heavily-gerrymanderred R-leaning seat as many times as she won it.
Almost as weird as the fact that both times coincided with Mitt ‘King of Utah’ Romney’s presence on the ballot. Maybe there’s a quiet anti-Mitt vote in Salt Lake?

If she were a Dem, you guys would be screaming about how racist Utah is for not voting for her. I, for one, am not celebrating that the only black Republican in the House has lost, someone who was mocked by Trump for opposing his bigotry. Yeah, I know we don't need more Republicans and all, and if a future piece of legislation or big vote comes down to one Congressman named McAdams, it might be a good thing, but somehow I doubt it.

There's another black Republican in the House, although he almost lost reelection this year.

[Tintrlvr]

DDHQ retracts Election Night call of CA-21.

Calling potentially close CA races on election day already is pretty foolish, considering CA counts tons of votes for weeks after election day ...

I think the problem was that the conventional wisdom before election night was that CA-21 did not have the potential to be close.

[Tintrlvr]

Kings County only has 1,577 ballots left, and 1,040 of those are provisionals.    Kings County won't be enough to bring Valadao back in the lead, he pretty much has to have a major breakthrough in the remaining Fresno ballots to win at this point.

https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/statewide-elections/2018-general/unprocessed-ballots-report.pdf?_ga=2.239144771.1185529446.1541696745-1813463894.1541538118

There are a fair number of Kern ballots left, too. No more provisionals but still nearly 3,000 ballots (probably around 1,000 of which are in CA-21). Valadao would also need to basically break even in those ballots to have any chance of retaking the lead by the end of counting, deeply unlikely considering how every Kern report has been going for him.