Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[wbrocks67]

Rick Scott's lead is down to only 26k now in FL. It sounds like Nelson may have the votes in the end.

[wbrocks67]

Not only did Andy Kim pull ahead at the last minute, but so did Torres Small:

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-mexico-house-district-2

[wbrocks67]

Are they gonna call GA-06 or...

[wbrocks67]

Nelson is only down by 21,000 now. Woah. He could actually pull this out.

Also, why do we think Tester was able to get by, even breaking 50%, while McCaskill, Donnelly couldn't?

TBH, there WAS a blue wave besides MO and IN. Even in ND, Heitkamp's -10 loss is pretty good for her, all things considered. I mean even NV's +5 margin is pretty shocking.

[wbrocks67]

Wow, DCCC messed up with pulling out of NE-02. Eastman is only down by 2-3 with a few precincts left.

In terms of 2020, the big swings in PA, MI, WI, and NV bode well for 2020. The suburbs and cities truly turned against Trump. He cannot survive off the rural white base without the suburbs.

MO and IN were unfortunate, but the 6-7 loss isn't THAT bad all things considered, considering Trump won by 20 in both those states. That means Dems did come out, just not enough to win/overcome the R lean of the state.

[wbrocks67]

Apparently the GOP has filed a lawsuit in AZ?

Can't imagine that winning campaigns do this.

Hoping that Sinema can pull out the win. Would be very satisfying to see McSally lose, on top of Sinema being one of the best recruits this cycle.

7pm EST tonight is when more results come in, right?

[wbrocks67]

OMG. Karen Handel going down is amazing. She's also legitimately horrible and extremely bigotted.

[wbrocks67]

Arizona looking to be out of reach.

Florida obviously shouldn’t even be a discussion.

How many total house seats we looking at? 229?

Can you please stop trolling.

AZ has like 600,000+ votes left to count. And FL is literally at like a 21k margin.

[wbrocks67]

WTF is actually happening in Broward

https://twitter.com/MarcACaputo/status/1060654559612289024

[wbrocks67]

Scott certainly doesn't sound like someone who is winning.

[wbrocks67]

So even before the undervote, it's possible that there is still enough votes left in the state to get Nelson the 15k? The hand count should be very interesting...

[wbrocks67]

At the very least, with nearly presidential-level turnout, Dems improved on Clinton's margins just about everywhere, which is reassuring. Both sides were energized, and dems improved their margins everywhere, and got VERY close in places like TX, GA, AZ (where we might still win), so that's good.

Really, the only dissapointing spots were obviously Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, and FL. And in those places, we still beat Hillary's margin.

Also, Donnelly is down less than 7 now in the IN race, which isn't horrific. In like a 75-80% of presidential level turnout, we took places where Trump won by 20 and cut that more than in half. Means Dems WERE energized and out there, but some places are just too red now where sometimes candidates don't matter anymore.

Still shook about my home state of PA. While I'm sad we just missed out on places like PA-1, PA-10, and PA-16, the margins for Casey and Wolf were massive for a swing state. Barletta was pretty much generic R to a tee and Casey still won by +13%. The margins were way higher in PA than WI and MI.

[wbrocks67]

I'm sorry, they are oddly under the impression that Walters and Kim won in CA:

"Mimi Walters [Republican, Calif.-45] ran a great campaign, won a very tough race in a tough district. She was outspent by almost $3 million. Young Kim [Republican, Calif.-39] was one of our biggest expenditures in Orange County. I think she will be a future superstar of the party, the first Korean-American woman ever elected to Congress."

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/09/democratic-republican-majority-house-election-2018-222400

[wbrocks67]

My opinion of the night has steadily gotten better over time.

Yep. I was happy about the house but still not entirely satisfied on election night. Now with nearly 40 seats and possibly AZ and even FL (!!!), it's not looking bad at all. Definite wave.

Not sure why NJ-03 hasn't been called yet for Kim.

[wbrocks67]

Those are only like a fraction of the CA votes in, right? So honestly it looks like Ds may sweep all of them.

AP officially called CA25 for Katie Hill, too

[wbrocks67]

Ugh, MN-01 hurts. It seems there were dozens of races that were so close, within 1%.

[wbrocks67]

Not sure why people are surprised Ducey won in AZ. It was less about it being R, but more about he was assured to win once the McCain stuff happened. Garcia stood no chance after that no matter what.

[wbrocks67]

Thank God this woman didn't win...

https://twitter.com/RussContreras/status/1061469884775727104

She made Lou Barletta proud.

*did* Lou even concede? I didn't even see him write anything about Casey winning

[wbrocks67]

Sinema gains 400 votes, now leads by 30,300 statewide, or 1.4% (49.5-48.1)

[wbrocks67]

NJ-3 is still oddly uncalled.

[wbrocks67]

Only 36k? Really? ugh

[wbrocks67]

Senator Sinema is probably one of my favorite victories in recent years. She's a great image for the party.

She really, really, really isn’t.  I mean winning the Senate seat is important, but there’s a legitimate argument to be made that the better woman lost.  Sinema said about a week after 9/11 that she has “no problem” with Americans joining the Taliban and fighting our country’s own soldiers in Afghanistan.  Sinema is also an exceptionally unprincipled politician who almost compulsively flip-flops, is currently calling Joe Manchin her role model, and said she was undecided on Kavanaugh (which McSally was terrible about too, don’t get me wrong).  That’s not what anyone should want as the future of the Democratic Party.

October 5: Kyrsten Sinema announced on Thursday that she would not support Brett Kavanaugh's nomination if she were a sitting senator.

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/kyrsten-sinema-kavanaugh-blasey-ford-senate-democrat-10888091

[wbrocks67]

I'm skeptical/cynical about McSally. Maybe she's being nice right now because she knows she's incoming to the Senate either way.

[wbrocks67]

Andy Kim wins.

https://twitter.com/6abc/status/1062792872850849795

[wbrocks67]

Mia Love knows she's gonna lose:

https://twitter.com/RobertGehrke/status/1062784161063137281

no love for mia love