2024 Generic Ballot / Recruitment / Fundraising / Ratings Megathread

[Tekken_Guy]

Solid Dem recruit in PA-10

https://twitter.com/TomLehmanWGAL/status/1709510833942741052

Never heard of her. Is she a lock to win the primary?

[Tekken_Guy]

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1713931952594764238

He’s unlikely to win, but if he runs a strong campaign he could come closer than O’Halleran did. Also Crane is the type of candidate I can potentially see a Boebert-style collapse for. That being said he’s fairly uncontroversial for a hardcore Trumper, and I have a feeling he’ll run against Mark Kelly in 2028.

[Tekken_Guy]

Just saying that Crane’s seat is quite demographically similar to Boebert’s seat, and we all know how that ended up.

[Tekken_Guy]

Don’t see Bell doing much better than Steve Roberts. I don’t know anyone who’d vote for Cori Bush in 2022 but not 2024.

[Tekken_Guy]

Don’t see Bell doing much better than Steve Roberts. I don’t know anyone who’d vote for Cori Bush in 2022 but not 2024.

Omar won her primary in a landslide in 2020 and nearly lost in 2022. What changed for her in between?

That was more of a turnout thing. I can’t see turnout becoming more favorable towards Bell in 2024 than 2022.

[Tekken_Guy]

I don't know if there's a better thread to post this in (mods please move if so) but the latest rumblings are that Dems think an all-Democrat general election between Salas and Hurtado is possible in CA-22 based on polling showing Valadao extremely vulnerable to his Trum-aligned Republican challenger.

Unlikely. Dems in this district rely heavily on Hispanic voters that just don't show up in the primaries. Even though CA-22 is a seat that voted for Biden by double-digits, Rs almost always have the advantage in any sort of off election - including midterms.

On the other hand, CA-22 is usually evenly split between the two parties in primaries, making a lockout impossible on either side unless one has way more candidates than the other.

[Tekken_Guy]

Whitney Fox hauls $200K+ in Q4 in battle to unseat Anna Paulina Luna

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/653224-whitney-fox-hauls-200k-in-q4-in-battle-to-unseat-anna-paulina-luna/

Whitney Fox, a Democrat running for Florida’s 13th Congressional District, has raised more than $200,000 for her bid.

Fox’s fundraising numbers are self-reported — financial reports aren’t due to the Federal Division of Elections until the end of the month — so details about donors aren’t yet available. But Fox’s campaign is touting its momentum early in the race, with the earnings coming over just nine weeks on the campaign trail.

Fox reported most of her donors are Florida-based and that the average ‘grassroots’ donation is just over $31.

“Pinellas County deserves representation in Congress who will lead with compassion and pragmatism, reject partisan politics, and work with others to get things done,” Fox said.

Likely R, at best.

This could be Lean R honestly. Luna is a weaker than normal candidate for her seat not unlike Boebert.

[Tekken_Guy]

https://twitter.com/VanceUlrich/status/1760829711213883543?t=NPU2GfVcx9okptbFPWW...

Obvious disclaimer that Whitesides is a self-funder.  However,  the takeaway still holds merit: McCarthy was a Californian and had the connections and preferences to boost the GOP there. One wonders just how much of their comparative success in CA last cycle was down to that simple allocation of resources,  both financial and internal. We may never know, and only can compare past results to future ones.

Well at least this means the GOP will start to become more competitive in Louisiana!

[Tekken_Guy]

Thanks to new McLaughlin and OnMessage polls that were meh for the GOP, the 538 tracker is now back at dead even, 44.1-44.1

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/generic-ballot/

I wonder if the liberal media talking about how much Trump is supposedly favored to win will cause some sort of momentum for down ballot Dems. Voters don't like either candidates, it's easy to see them gravitating towards the opposing party so that they can keep some sort of a check on them. We're already seeing how well Senate Dems are polling. Maybe we won't see any major convergence after all?

In 2020 we saw some incumbent house Democrats lose while Biden was carrying their districts like Donna Shalala and TJ Cox. I could potentially see the opposite happening this year with the likes of Marc Molinaro, Ken Calvert, David Schweikert, Derrick Van Orden, Boebert’s old seat.

[Tekken_Guy]

The folks over at Split Ticket have moved the AZ Senate race towards the Democrats.

No more tossups, according to them. (I personally believe MI, MT, and OH all qualify though).
https://twitter.com/splitticket_/status/1765801426092273977?s=46

Michigan is not a toss-up. Slotkin is pretty clearly favored there.

[Tekken_Guy]

https://twitter.com/robertanglen/status/1757068463498305581

This is pretty funny. Unfortunately/fortunately, he’s definitely the best candidate Ds could run against Schweikert: good-looking, center-left, professional/Ivy/finance background in most educated and wealthy district in the state. Primary voters are going to go with Galan Woods, however, who’s running like a liberal Kari Lake atm.

Woods is not a lock to win the primary, nor do I even think she’s favored ATM; that would be Andrei Cherny IMO.

[Tekken_Guy]

https://twitter.com/TheCalvinCooli1/status/1766557337504903429

I don’t know how much that helps in a district he lost to Nikki Haley

I believe it’ll be close but she’ll end up winning. There will probably be fewer Democrats voting in that primary than in the presidential from February, and I imagine there will be more Haley-Mace than Trump-Templeton voters.

[Tekken_Guy]

https://twitter.com/TheCalvinCooli1/status/1766557337504903429

I don’t know how much that helps in a district he lost to Nikki Haley

A good deal. Mace's 2022 primary challenger was Trumpy; I think she was even Trumpy enough, although I don't recall if she won the endorsement.

Mace won her 2022 primary…

Well she was the incumbent and she’ll be the incumbent here as well.

[Tekken_Guy]

https://twitter.com/TheCalvinCooli1/status/1766557337504903429

I don’t know how much that helps in a district he lost to Nikki Haley

A good deal. Mace's 2022 primary challenger was Trumpy; I think she was even Trumpy enough, although I don't recall if she won the endorsement.

Mace won her 2022 primary…

Well she was the incumbent and she’ll be the incumbent here as well.

She’s a much weaker and much Trumpier incumbent than she was then.  I think the question is less if she wins or loses, it’s which of her challengers wins the race to beat her in the runoff.

Well Haley only won SC-01 because of a lot of Democrats crossing over to vote against Trump. Mace won’t have that sort of problem to the same extent. She could still lose but I won’t count her out.

[Tekken_Guy]

SLF reserving $239M in ads across seven Senate battlegrounds:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/11/senate-democrats-ads-super-pac/

$65M in OH
$42M in PA
$23M in AZ
$14M each in MI and WI

In addition to a previously announced $45M in MT and $36M in NV, and the possibility of offensive spending in FL and TX.

SLF is the Republicans.

[Tekken_Guy]

CA-09 and CA-49 being Lean D at this point is kind of absurd

https://twitter.com/Elections_Daily/status/1771180517234204693

CA-09 had more GOP votes in the primary and the GOP actually has a good candidate. Mayor of the largest city in the district. Lean D seems appropriate, although Likely still makes sense.

CA-49 I'd keep as Likely, but Levin didn't dominate the primary. GOP doesn't have the candidate to flip it though.

Last time I remember Harder was doing fine in the primary.

[Tekken_Guy]

CA-09 and CA-49 being Lean D at this point is kind of absurd

https://twitter.com/Elections_Daily/status/1771180517234204693

CA-09 had more GOP votes in the primary and the GOP actually has a good candidate. Mayor of the largest city in the district. Lean D seems appropriate, although Likely still makes sense.

CA-49 I'd keep as Likely, but Levin didn't dominate the primary. GOP doesn't have the candidate to flip it though.

Last time I remember Harder was doing fine in the primary.

Late returns pushed him from 52 to under 50.

Come to think of it, Harder was barely above 50 in the 2022 primary and he easily won in November. I don’t think he has much to worry about and Kevin Lincoln is Allan Fung 2.0 at best.

[Tekken_Guy]

When was the last time an incumbent Democrat lost a primary from the center?

Al Lawson beating Corrine Brown & Dwight Evans beating Chaka Fattah in 2016?

Marie Newman, although that was member vs. member after redistricting.

Either way, I don't think this would have been done if the group didn't see polls indicating these two are dunzo. It's a big risk. The Squad actively going against Biden during an election year likely changed the calculus a lot.

Does the GOP have a track record of primarying out kooks with more normal republicans? King to Feenstra and Cawthorn to Edwards are the two I can think of. Hopefully Boebert goes down in June.

[Tekken_Guy]

When was the last time an incumbent Democrat lost a primary from the center?

Al Lawson beating Corrine Brown & Dwight Evans beating Chaka Fattah in 2016?

Marie Newman, although that was member vs. member after redistricting.

Either way, I don't think this would have been done if the group didn't see polls indicating these two are dunzo. It's a big risk. The Squad actively going against Biden during an election year likely changed the calculus a lot.

Does the GOP have a track record of primarying out kooks with more normal republicans? King to Feenstra and Cawthorn to Edwards are the two I can think of. Hopefully Boebert goes down in June.

Those are the only ones I can think of. Boebert is done, because she carpetbagged to another district with no interest in her antics. The next Congress will be down at least three crazies.

You also have Victoria Spartz and Nancy Mace of Spartz/Mace cycle fame.

[Tekken_Guy]

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1773308283102589231?s=20

IA-03 is def interesting; I think many people overestimate how red the district actually is, especially since Miller-Meeks literally won by 6 votes in 2020 (underperforming Trump) and didn't do all that impressive in 2022.

Still, it's an uphill battle and I'd say Trump probably carries IA-03 again Presidentially; really the only good part of the district for Dems at this point is Johnson County and idk how many more votes they can squeeze out of it.

Miller-Meeks represents IA-1, and Johnson County is in IA-1 too.  

IA-3 is the Des Moines district represented by Zach Nunn.

But anyway, I think IA-3 is a swing district the rest of the decade.   Nunn only won by 0.7% in 2022 and that was with no Libertarian on the ballot.   Polk and Dallas Counties are still growing and trending D, and are the overwhelming majority of the district too.  

Nunn is definitely someone I think outruns Trump this year.

[Tekken_Guy]

https://twitter.com/JesseAPaul/status/1780289873997422755

Boebert looks a lot tougher to beat than she did when she first moved districts at the start of the year, though it’s less about her own strength as a candidate (her fundraising is down a lot from where it used to be) than the fecklessness of the opposition. No R candidate in CO-04 other than Boebert hit 200k in fundraising this quarter, though some of the Dems in the race did.

That being said, Boebert in CO-04 could be a long term nightmare for the GOP. CO-04 is Trump+18 and stampeding leftward, it could be down to Trump+10 or so this year. It would be in their best interests to oust her in the primary.

[Tekken_Guy]

Cook moves SC-01 to Safe R after the SCOTUS ruling.

https://twitter.com/CookPolitical/status/1794086840753938546

[Tekken_Guy]

Wasn't SC-01 like Trump +8 in 2020 (and moving leftward?) Safe R seems a bit much.

They have FL-13 at Likely R too. If that’s not considered Safe R neither should SC-01.

Also both have Dems with decent fundraising.

[Tekken_Guy]

GOP staying out of Las Vegas is an interesting development

https://twitter.com/AdImpact_Pol/status/1793695332447985787

So Trump’s supposedly ahead in the state by 7-12 points, but Republicans are triaging every competitive house seat in the state? Huh.

Yeah it's very possible GOP does not believe those polls, which I don't blame them. If Trump was winning by 9% in Nevada, they would absolutely be playing here - even given how well Dems did in 2022.

I know people will call me a hack for this but I really do think Trump is being overestimated in most polling. I still think he narrowly wins in the end unfortunately, but not by as much as we're seeing now.

If Trump is being overestimated then he’d likely lose since he’s barely up in the three rust belt states.

Wasn't SC-01 like Trump +8 in 2020 (and moving leftward?) Safe R seems a bit much.

They have FL-13 at Likely R too. If that’s not considered Safe R neither should SC-01.

Also both have Dems with decent fundraising.

Luna is an atrocious candidate, on par with Boebert

Also, unlike in SC-1, Democrats actually have a seemingly somewhat stronger than expected wave insurance candidate in FL-13 (still nothing amazing, but about two rungs above the generic some dude she initially appeared to be).  Mace is a very weak incumbent who may or may not have genuine mental health issues and is at her core basically a really trashy redneck sorority airhead (which isn’t the best fit for her district), but she is now in a Republican enough district that she’s basically safe for the time being in a GE despite being (to quote South Park) something out of a stereotype coloring book.  I think she’d have lost in the old district lines to an A-list opponent, but she’s not going to draw any serious GE opposition right now.  

By contrast, Luna is so unhinged and ideologically out of sync with her district (as opposed to Mace, who is stylistically out of touch, but ideologically bipolar and strikes me as a Ron Johnson type who talks very, very, very differently to her constituents/Charleston local media than she does in Congress or in front of national media or at out-of-district events) that she [Luna] almost lost in 2022 to a pretty unheralded Democratic sacrificial lamb.  At her core, Luna is an unhinged MAGA nutjob and it really shows.  Incidentally, I’d argue that a stronger Democratic candidate almost certainly would’ve beaten her in 2022.  I think Democrats made a mistake by not rubbing anyone more serious than wave insurance here, but who knows what the internal polling showed.  

Mace’s district is bluer than Peltola’s and about on par with Boebert’s current seat, and only a couple points redder than her old one. It wasn’t a dramatic shoring up like Stephanie Bice or Burgess Owens got.