Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[Ben.]

Election Day vote totals across Nashville's 35 largest precincts have already surpassed the Election Day turnout at those precincts in the 2016 election.

https://twitter.com/joeygarrison/status/1059905876281188355?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1059905876281188355&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs9e.github.io%2Fiframe%2Ftwitter.min.html%231059905876281188355

I might be wrong here, but high turnout in Nashville is good for Bredesen right?

Granted he needs both massive turnout and lopsided margins here and in Shelby to stand any kind of chance.

[Ben.]

It really should be illegal to broadcast exit polls until voting is completely over. Exit polls can influence the election.

And yes, this would bring up the first amendment but surely you can outlaw exit polls on the basis of election interference.

Eh, some countries Ban exit/same day polls. The end result is that they just end up published in neighbors papers under disguised names.

In most countries election day voting runs through to 10/11pm. Just a thought

[Ben.]

Looks like potentially a really bad night for Dems in the Senate if this is right. 46.6% Manchin in exit, 49.4% Morrissey

Racist rural WV hicks strike again?

Manchin is up around 7 in the exit poll.

Where is this being reported?

[Ben.]

Guys, outstanding Florida vote is mostly in Broward and Miami-Dade.

To be fair, that's what people were saying on election night two years ago.

[Ben.]

Looks like Spanberger won; she pulled ahead of Brat, almost all votes have been counted.

73% in and Brat is more than +2 on CNN.   

Where are these figures coming from?

[Ben.]

Manchin is only ahead by 2 points and is under 50% of the vote with 85% of the vote in.

You all owe me and Bagel an apology for calling us trolls for going against the MUH WV SAFE D MANCHIN BY DOUBLE DIGITS conventional wisdom.

Looks as if WV03 was his worst district, if that's true some of the early networks calls could be off. Probably not, but that's your Trump effect right there.

[Ben.]

What areas have we got outstanding in AZ? If what we have today is mostly early vote, which party should the election day vote favour?

[Ben.]

Tragically, Harris is gonna scrape by in NC-09. Truly one of the worst GOP candidates this cycle, and that's saying a lot.

Really? Isn't the outstanding area the Charlotte suburbs?

[Ben.]

What's going on in Arizona?

It's like they reported half the votes then went home.

Narrow McSally lead, but no idea where the rest of the votes are coming from.

[Ben.]

Arizona results here: https://results.arizona.vote/#/featured/4/0

Still a lot of votes to count. What is the make up of the outstanding areas?

[Ben.]

Arizona is making me nervous, but Sinema has more favorable turf out.

Yep, all that is left is 45% out in Apache, 67% out in Pinal (56% for Trump in 2016), and 87% out in Maricopa (which is a lot of votes, by far the largest county in the state).

Looking at the 2016 Results, there is the following % of the vote outstanding (2016 result in brackets):

Apache: 72.8%% (Clinton +32.7%)
Greenlee: 12.5% (Trump +24.6%)
Maricopa: 72.27% (Trump +2.9%)
Pima: 59.04% (Clinton +13.8%)
Pinal: 47.06% (Trump +19.5%)
Yavapai: 2.22% (Trump 31.8%)

Critically, Marciopa and Pima are way larger than any other the other counties. Dems should hope that Apache reverts back to the Clinton margin as well.

[Ben.]

Arizona looking likely to break for McSally, unless I'm reading the county breakdown wrong: https://results.arizona.vote/#/featured/4/0

[Ben.]

Arizona looking likely to break for McSally, unless I'm reading the county breakdown wrong: https://results.arizona.vote/#/featured/4/0

If McSally narrowly wins, that would be embarrassing for Democrats. Especially since Flake only barely won in 2012 and since Sinema led in the polls throughout much of the year until McSally won the nomination.

I might have the counties wrong, but if they stay how they currently are I don't see where the votes comes from.

[Ben.]

Arizona looking likely to break for McSally, unless I'm reading the county breakdown wrong: https://results.arizona.vote/#/featured/4/0

If McSally narrowly wins, that would be embarrassing for Democrats. Especially since Flake only barely won in 2012 and since Sinema led in the polls throughout much of the year until McSally won the nomination.

I might have the counties wrong, but if they stay how they currently are I don't see where the votes comes from.

A narrow McSally win or loss in Maricopa County would be enough for her to win overall, given that she is holding the Republican rural counties.

If she is only meeting the benchmark in the rural areas I would say she loses consider this election has really polarized on a urban suburban divide.

You are right. 93% of the precincts are reporting at this point, according to the Huffington Post (though I've read about the extra ballots that will have to be counted). I also read that the remaining precincts are ones located in Maricopa County.

Maricopa County is currently really tight, Sinema up 452,208 to 449,990. That's with about 83% in.

About 14% left to come in from Apache County as well, so far that county has split about 60/40 to Sinema.

[Ben.]

AZ SoS said that there are "hundreds of thousands of votes" untabulated.

We're not going to know anything about AZ until later this week.

Yeah, anyone waiting for this one tonight/today...probably not gonna happen.

Not surprising. Though it is something that Ducey won by such a landslide margin-roughly 18 percentage points. McSally is running about 9% behind him thus far.

Does the 98% counted figure referenced on the SoS website exclude these untabulated votes?

[Ben.]

According to NYT:

FL 54% chance of going Republican
AZ 59% chance of going Republican

Can someone explain how there's still such a non-negligible chance that the Republicans lose these states?

How AZ is more likely to go Republican I don't know.

Florida is done, but Arizona looks as if there are a significant number of votes outstanding - at least, according to the SoS.

[Ben.]

So, uh.

WV-02 ended up being closer than WV-03.

Trump's "God like status" in WV-03 was too much it seems.

WV-03 was Manchin's worst district, was his best in '12 IIRC?

Didn't polls forecast Manchin winning it by 20+ points? Did the Trump visits make a difference?

[Ben.]

Update from AZ: "estimated 500K uncounted ballots in Maricopa. Update on uncounted ballots at 10 am".

[Ben.]

Update from AZ: "estimated 500K uncounted ballots in Maricopa. Update on uncounted ballots at 10 am".

Is that 10am MST?

Think so.

Source: https://twitter.com/brahmresnik

[Ben.]

Are there many votes still out in places like Mohave and Yavapai? If there are that’s not good news

They haven't been mentioned, the only two counties appear to be Maricopa (400-500k) and Pima (100k). That's according to @brahmresnik at the AZ NBC affiliate.

Still possible there could be more outstanding in other counties, Pima is probably the best bet for the Dems.

[Ben.]

Can someone who is smarter than me tell me that if these ballot counts are accurate, what are the chances of a last minute dem takeover in AZ?

Remaining ballots:
Maricopa 475-500k
Approximate split of outstanding Maricopa ballots:
300k - mailed in or received by post office on election day
200k - "late earlies" dropped off at the polls + provisionals.
Pima 80 to 100k
Pinal 40k

This is according to the twitter feeds of @robodellaz and @Garrett_Archer

Haven't chedked back at the SoS site, but Maricopa was a narrow Sinema edge, Pima was 60/40 Sinema and Pinal was 60/40 McSally.

Given there are a whole load more votes in Maricopa, the Democrats probably need to maintain a clear edge there, push their advantage in Pima and prevent a McSally blow out in Pinal.

I have no idea if any of that is possible or if it would make up the 16,000 vote shortfall, but shouldn't the 'late earlies' lean Dem?

Another thing to note, there are no outstanding rural counties where McSally was running up big margins.

[Ben.]

Can someone who is smarter than me tell me that if these ballot counts are accurate, what are the chances of a last minute dem takeover in AZ?

Remaining ballots:
Maricopa 475-500k
Approximate split of outstanding Maricopa ballots:
300k - mailed in or received by post office on election day
200k - "late earlies" dropped off at the polls + provisionals.
Pima 80 to 100k
Pinal 40k

This is according to the twitter feeds of @robodellaz and @Garrett_Archer

Haven't chedked back at the SoS site, but Maricopa was a narrow Sinema edge, Pima was 60/40 Sinema and Pinal was 60/40 McSally.

Given there are a whole load more votes in Maricopa, the Democrats probably need to maintain a clear edge there, push their advantage in Pima and prevent a McSally blow out in Pinal.

I have no idea if any of that is possible or if it would make up the 16,000 vote shortfall, but shouldn't the 'late earlies' lean Dem?

Another thing to note, there are no outstanding rural counties where McSally was running up big margins.

If these are all the ballots left, and the splits exactly match the counted voted in each county, it won't be quite enough for Sinema; she'd lose by about 4k.  They'd need to be like 0.5%-1% more pro-Democratic than the counted vote to put her over the top.

I mean, its entirely possible they will be.

Dems probably need to bank on a trend within the 'late earlies' similar to what we're seeing in FL.

One thing that might mean the 'late earlies' in AZ are less Dem friendly, is that the early vote in AZ is more established and traditionally more Republican.

[Ben.]

Apparently the GOP has filed a lawsuit in AZ?

McSally has actually gained a bit.  It went from a 0.9 to 1.0 for McSally, with Maricopa reporting.

Totally relevant with the question asked above.

Pretty sure those votes were the final tallies from the rural counties and not Maricopa.

Reckon AZ comes down to whether the outstanding ballots trend in line with the votes already counted in those counties or towards one of the candidates.

[Ben.]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Regardless of the reason, Broward County election administration is clearly incompetent.

They've had 18 years to get this right!

[Ben.]

The experience of American democracy is much like that of living in an old, decrepit house in which nothing has been updated or replaced for years, or even decades. Conditions are uncomfortable and ugly, and few things work as intended. But it's rare for anything to be improved, because the tenants are too senile, lazy, impoverished, or stubborn to tolerate change. (And of course the landlord doesn't care as long as the rent check arrives on time each month.)

I know. And, in fact, it is hard to repair: each time you try to replace a particular tube, you risk the whole house collapsing. In this particular case, the only thing that prevents US elections from massive hacking is how disorganised they are: any hacker would have to separately deal with hundreds of completely independent systems. So, trying to make any centralised improvements may only make things worse. But, frankly, ballot design is not such a horribly complicated task - you do not need a Harvard Ph.D. to come up with something more sensible.

Well, the obvious fix to that is to discontinue all voting machines and move entirely to paper ballots, and have them be manually counted by real human beings from the start. You know, like most countries do.

It might, actually, be both cheaper and faster. There are ways of doing that voting machine thingy well (see India), but US has not mastered it.

But what would happen then to those tech companies that want to sell electronic voting systems to state governments?! And who wants to wait 8 hours to get a full result?!

It would be much easier, simpler and cheaper. Not going to happen though. Voting times should also be extended like in most other democracies, but I digress...