GA-06 and SC-05 election day & results thread

[Tender Branson]

Special elections for GA-06 and SC-05 are held today.

Latest polls show a tied race in GA-06 (with a trend towards Handel) and about a 10-point lead for the Republican in SC-05.

Polls close at 7:30pm Eastern in both states.

Results can be found here:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/elections/2017/by_state/GA_Page_0620.html?SITE=AP&SECTION=POLITICS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/elections/2017/by_state/SC_Page_0620.html?SITE=AP&SECTION=POLITICS

NYT:

GA-6: https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/georgia-congressional-runoff-ossoff-handel

SC-5: https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/south-carolina-house-special-election

And here:

http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/70059/Web02-state/#/

http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/68145/187360/en/summary.html

[Tender Branson]

Here's the link to the main GA-06 thread:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=258437.0

[Tender Branson]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Tender Branson]

I heard it's going to rain today in the 6th. Are they calling for bad rain or a drizzle?

Rain and thunderstorms steadily through the afternoon, but not an extremely hard rain.  At the moment  it's cloudy and pleasantly cool for a June morning in Atlanta.

We have slightly over 90°F here today.

[Tender Branson]

Is there any evidence of weather (outside of catastrophic weather) actually having an impact on elections?

In Austria, there has actually been a study on this:

Rain-weather increases turnout here, while sunny weather leads to lower turnout (mostly because people have better stuff like hiking or cycling to do).

Did you ever notice that shopping malls have like 3-4 times the number of customers when it rains rather than when it's sunny outside ? If it's sunny, shopping malls (like precincts) are virtually empty (well, not really, but there's still a difference).

[Tender Branson]

Just woke up (it's 7am here) and WOW !

I knew something was going on in GA-06 in the final days, but 52% for Handel is still something. Maybe it was the shooting, maybe it was the undecideds breaking for her in the end who leaned Republican, who knows ...

48% is still a good result for Ossoff though. We have to remember that this district usually voted 20%+ for Republicans and Handel is no Trumpish candidate and even he won by 1% there ... Ossoff continues a trend for Democrats doing some 15% better on average than they did in the 2016 elections.

SC-06 was surprisingly close, probably because Dems were much more motivated and because of the lower turnout. Still, Parnell continued the strong trend towards the Dems: he only lost by 3 in a GOP+20 district.

[Tender Branson]

Ossoff did as well as he could do.

We are talking about 4 special elections in districts that were at least R+16 in the previous elections and ALL Democrats improved by between 10 and some 20 points.

Maybe Ossoff would have had a chance 2-3 weeks ago after Handel's wage comments and before the shooting, who knows, but that's not how it works ...

Democrats now need to focus on VA an NJ and work on a program on their own that they can present to voters in 2018. You can't win elections if you do not create a convincing platform on your own to sell to voters. If they can do this and maintain some momentum, they are in good shape for 2018 in closer House races than the extremely GOP-leaning ones this year ...