GA-6 Special election discussion thread

[Brittain33]

5 in DeKalb County

RIP Handel

[Brittain33]

Or maybe we should just be happy that 2 polls have Ossoff up and only one in the past 2 weeks has shown Handel up.

1) They're all within margin of error and don't show anyone cracking 50.
2) Again, victory at what cost and for how long. Seriously, the $/vote ratio for this race is going to be [inks]ing insane. We cannot go toe to to with the GOP in funding. What are we taking from potential strong recruits in KS, PA, the ME-2, the IN-9, and the NE-2 so that Jon Ossoff is in a tossup race on June 20?

I disagree that the funding dynamic is bad for Dems. Ossoff has tapped into new money just for this race. If he wasn't getting this attention, the money would have stayed in people's pockets. It would be better if the wealth were spread around more, but there is always the potential for future Dem races to get Ossoffied and capture millions of dollars.

It's Republicans whose fundraising is static and which won't find new sources of funding they don't already have.

[Brittain33]

1) that's a fair point that I hadn't considered. But again, at this point Ossoff would be doing better for the party if he took like, half of this money and put it into a leadership PAC that he helmed if he lost or something equally ludicrous. 

True, the actual sums here have gotten obscene.

[Brittain33]

Someone on the ground may be able to answer this but is Handel running a poor campaign?

I don't think this environment enables a Republican to run an effective campaign. Either she stakes out an unpopular position on what her colleagues are doing in Washington or she can't talk about anything. She's doomed either way. This is what I saw with Dems running for Congress over the last several years.

[Brittain33]

I don't understand why people think it's going to be really close (<0.5). I mean, based on the results of the first round, Ossoff was the favorite and Trump has become even more unpopular now.

The GOP just has a way of always doing better than expected, and they have a tight leash on the one demographic that will cut off their arms to vote.

By which you surely mean that the GOP generally runs better campaigns.

I don't think Trump, Thom Tillis, Roy Blunt, Richard Burr, Matt Bevin or Pat Toomey really ran better campaigns than their counterparts...didn't stop 'em from winning. I don't think Handel's running better than Ossoff now.

That seems to be an argument for the overall political environment... and that wouldn't favor Handel in 2017.

[Brittain33]

Too many here seem far too confident that Ossoff will win--is there any polling to indicate it won't simply be a repeat (total party %) of the runoff, give or take a point?

The path to repeating the primary results is much harder for Handel than for Ossoff. Ossoff just has to keep his voters, more or less, and Dem enthusiasm seems guaranteed. Handel has to keep her voters and win over all the other R candidates' voters in an atmosphere that, to date, has gotten only worse for Republicans. She can't fight her way out of this conundrum; I think something big external has to happen to shift the election in her favor.

[Brittain33]

Pence drew 800 people in Billings in March, which isn't that bad. Not as many as Bernie but it was 2 months ago.

[Brittain33]

BRING THE ORB, TRUMP

[Brittain33]

If I had the confidence in making predictions from past polls and atmosphere that I last had on November 8, this is where I would expect this race to be...

[Brittain33]

It will be very tough for dems to take the house without winning one of these special elections.

I don't see the logic there. With the swings we've already seen in KS-4 and MT-AL, Democrats are projected to take the House with seats to spare in 2018, especially as they line up better candidates than Quist.

It would be a disappointment, and currently unexpected, if we lose GA-6 in June given that unlike Montana that district is relatively sour on Trump. But there's no such thing as a special election 16 months before being a "last chance" to determine a midterm victory!

[Brittain33]

By the way, this thread is fast approaching 2,500 posts. Will it be locked at some point, or are we going to try to see this election through on one thread?

I'd lock this thread and open a new one, but what should the new one would be called?

[Brittain33]

By the way, this thread is fast approaching 2,500 posts. Will it be locked at some point, or are we going to try to see this election through on one thread?

Personally I'd use this one through the election. I think the issue Dave specified with large threads is that their continued use can cause MySQL to perform slower when it has to fetch data for the thread in question, but since this is a temporary election thread, it will be gone by June 24-25. After that, it will fade into obscurity and the server will no longer be stressed by its biglyness.

Anyways, it's up to ya'll. But fwiw, had already thought about this and left the thread alone because it seemed better to have one collection of Atlas's thoughts on this election as opposed to splitting it up.

I'm happy to defer to you on this, Virginia.

[Brittain33]

Strong numbers from DeKalb in the early voting so far: http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/06/02/democrat-heavy-dekalb-punches-above-weight-in-early-sixth-district-voting/

Total: 33,957
Cobb: 6,709 (20%)
DeKalb: 9,991 (29%)
Fulton: 16,897 (50%)

The distribution of registered voters in the district is approximately:

Cobb: 29%
DeKalb: 23%
Fulton: 48%

And in the April 18 primary, the vote distribution was:

Cobb: 32%
DeKalb: 23%
Fulton: 46%

As a reminder, Cobb is the most Republican of the three, DeKalb the most Democratic.  Obviously, turnout in DeKalb is strong so far (with the important caveat that it's still very early).  Todd Rehm, a Republican consultant in Georgia, characterized the numbers so far as "alarming".

Early vote (mail and in-person) updated through Friday, June 2:

Cobb: 7997 (19.2%)
DeKalb: 11929 (28.7%)
Fulton: 21642 (52.1%)
Total: 41568

This is the reverse of what we saw in Montana where Trump counties were ahead in % of ballots returned compared to 2016.

[Brittain33]

Ossoff has decided to skip a national CNN debate on June 13.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/democrat-jon-ossoff-to-skip-cnn-debate/article/2624921

What do we think is going on here?

[Brittain33]

Not going to lie, it's going to be a big blow if Ossoff loses this election.

[Brittain33]

That particular attack line is more about the location of the donations, and not necessarily the amount. For better or for worse, the vast, vast majority of donations to the Ossoff campaign are from out of state, and a number of them are from Nancy Pelosi's congressional district.

To be fair, I believe the vast majority of residents of GA-6 moved to the Atlanta area from somewhere else.

[Brittain33]

Between the polling and the turnout so far I don't see how this can't be described as lean D at this point.

Agreed. I'm still gunshy about drawing conclusions from early voting after November, but Ossoff overperformed his polls in round 1 and it's hard to imagine the environment favoring Handel.

[Brittain33]

Lean D, confirmed.

[Brittain33]

I find it somewhat odd that such a wealthy district like this has such an unfavorable view of the health act.

Polls a few years ago found the strongest opposition to the aca in suburban districts.

Maybe this suburb isn't as fiscally conservative as it first appeared

People don't like government making changes to healthcare, and the response to AHCA is going to be "what bad could the AHCA do," not a mirror image of opposition to ACA.

[Brittain33]

Delta Air Lines pilots' union endorses Ossoff today. It represents 14,000 pilots; unclear how many live in GA-6 but surely a few.

[Brittain33]

FWIW, Ossoff overperformed the SUSA April poll even if you allocate him half of the undecideds (he had 43% with 7% undecided). All that said, I liked it better when no poll was showing Handel doing this well.

[Brittain33]

The DCCC is out with a "we really tried" memo that sure sounds like it's setting a narrative for a loss to Handel. Um.

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/874616868409155584

[Brittain33]

Tom Bonier did a breakdown of EV an Ossoff seems to be getting more black and female irregular voters then first round https://mobile.twitter.com/tbonier/status/875341387763519488

Can anyone explain his table?

[Brittain33]

New Fox/Alanta: Ossoff 49.7% vs Handel 49.4% https://mobile.twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/875740251540553732

A difference of 2 voters out of 537 respondents.

Early voters report 58% Ossoff - 42% Handel, which is enormous for Ossoff if true.

[Brittain33]

The Obama-Clinton discussion belongs on another thread, guys. I don't want to have to delete posts on it. Thank you.