KY, MS etc. Results Thread

[morgieb]

68% is a genuine "holy crap" result. Those are the sort of numbers Beshear needed to win. Will wait and see whether the East Kentucky results hold as more precincts come in however - Kentucky's rural enough that if the early results don't hold the margins in urban Kentucky might not matter.

[morgieb]

Beshear is at 65% in the absentee ballots from Jefferson County.

is that good?

That's really bad actually.

Yeah. I was feeling very optimistic, but this gives me some pause.

Yeah that's less ideal. O/c it's just absentee ballots, so the same rules apply to the early vote we're seeing that's good for Beshear.

[morgieb]

Bath County is 100% reporting on DDHQ. Beshear wins with 52%.

Conway won it by 3% in 2015, Beshear (2015) by 11%.

Beshear's victories in Bath and Nicholas, and presumably in Elliott, means that the predictions Bevin would win every county except for Jefferson, Fayette, and Franklin were inaccurate. Beshear is doing better in the rurals thus far than I expected.

Did they expect Bevin's victory to be even larger than in 2015?

I think that what people were saying, yeah. I still suspect Bevin is the slight favourite now, but those saying he was obviously going to win by 20 because #trendsarereal were silly.

[morgieb]

Comparing this to previous maps am I the only one who thinks this looks bad for Republicans?  The R candidate is really underperforming everywhere.

He is underperforming, no doubt. Whether it's enough is another question - Bevin being ahead by a lot in Boone helps his case a little bit (even though it's still a large swing from 2015, he'll make up for it by rural trends).

The bottom line is that Shiny Prize will be key. The problem there is that the Dem losses have been a lot more severe downballot than in Eastern Kentucky.....

[morgieb]

It doesn't look good for Beshear right now.

Is it still too early to tell or is this a good indication right now?

Definitely too early to tell, and right now I'm calling it as a nailbiter. If I had to pick a winner I might say Bevin, but jeez, those Campbell/Kenton results.....

[morgieb]

Whereabouts are IceSpear/TrendsAreReal/etc? Guess trends aren't real anymore, huh?

[morgieb]

This shows that the trends are not proceeding in an even manner. At any rate though, Beshear's win gives me greater confidence that Edwards will pull it out in Louisiana. And if he does, that means Democrats will have won 2/3 of the gubernatorial races in red states this year. This somewhat compensates for last year, when they fell short in Oklahoma and South Dakota.

Actually, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. If I were JBE I’d pay more attention to what’s happening in MS than KY.

Yeah I do think Kentucky rurals are a bit more enlightened (or at least more supportive of good government) than Deep South rural whites. But on the other hand, Louisiana is historically pretty atypical downballot...like up until a few weeks ago I think the Dems held some 80%+ Trump House seats, so in that sense it's also closer to Kentucky than Mississippi. And the fundamentals of that race seem closer to Kentucky (although o/c the difference there is a popular governor from the opposing party rather than an unpopular governor from the dominant party) than Mississippi (where the Dems admittedly had a strong candidate, but didn't have any incumbency factors to help him and the Republican candidate was at least OK - is it worth noting that the thing that doomed Hood was suburbanites not swinging enough to counteract his inevitable rural losses?).

[morgieb]

Whereabouts are IceSpear/TrendsAreReal/etc? Guess trends aren't real anymore, huh?

I mean, mocking the prediction that KY was safe R is of course fair game, but the trends WERE real in this race. Beshear won by about the same margin as he did in 2015 but with far more urban/suburban support and far less rural support.

I mean you're right, I was mostly just being a gloating jerk.

Although it is worth noting that the Demosaurs being woken up for one last ride was crucial in the end. If you looked at the results in yer Campbell's and your Oldham's you'd probably assume that Bevin was looking at a mid-single digit sort of win (still a lot closer than what you were assuming, but still #Bevinevitable), but enough of coal country bolted to a degree that allowed Beshear to make up the extra 5% or so.