VA-Monmouth: Gillespie +1

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Even though it's an outlier, it's pretty embarrassing for Dems that this is even close. If Hillary was president Gillespie would probably be a shoo in.

Maybe yes, Maybe no. Virginia has become pretty inelastic, stuck between D+1 and D+6 for all races between 2005-2016, with the exception of the 2008 senate race, which was "Moderate Dem vs. Total Gadfly", and the 2009 gubernatorial election. However, in the long-term nationally, it is probably better strategically for dems that they lost the presidency. With Trump as President, dems have a chance at breaking even in the senate in '18, maybe even a net gain of 1 seat. With Hillary as President, the GOP would have a shot at 60 seats.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

@IceSpear: In case you're not aware, the official excuse for Dems not being able to beat Assaulterforte in MT (I refuse to call him by his real name after his actions), is that most of the vote was cast during early voting.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Even though it's an outlier, it's pretty embarrassing for Dems that this is even close. If Hillary was president Gillespie would probably be a shoo in.

Maybe yes, Maybe no. Virginia has become pretty inelastic, stuck between D+1 and D+6 for all races between 2005-2016, with the exception of the 2008 senate race, which was "Moderate Dem vs. Total Gadfly", and the 2009 gubernatorial election. However, in the long-term nationally, it is probably better strategically for dems that they lost the presidency. With Trump as President, dems have a chance at breaking even in the senate in '18, maybe even a net gain of 1 seat. With Hillary as President, the GOP would have a shot at 60 seats.

If Hillary had won, she would've done better downballot taking a few seats away from the GOP.

Compare the downballot performance of 2012 vs 2016, it's very clear that the GOP overperformed in 2016. Part of that can be attributed to Hillary's GOP courtship strategy.

Depends. If Hillary had just barely eked out narrow wins in MI, WI, PA, she would have won the presidency narrowly, but downballot results probably stay the same.  If she had won by something more like Obama's margin, then yeah, you have a point.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

@IceSpear: In case you're not aware, the official excuse for Dems not being able to beat Assaulterforte in MT (I refuse to call him by his real name after his actions), is that most of the vote was cast during early voting.

I'm pretty sure most Democrats agree that it had more to do with the fact that Quist by all accounts proved to be a piss-poor candidate despite initially looking solid on paper.

I was referring to the excuse for why the assault didn't have much effect, rather than the excuse for why Quist wasn't ahead before the assault.

Even though it's an outlier, it's pretty embarrassing for Dems that this is even close. If Hillary was president Gillespie would probably be a shoo in.

Maybe yes, Maybe no. Virginia has become pretty inelastic, stuck between D+1 and D+6 for all races between 2005-2016, with the exception of the 2008 senate race, which was "Moderate Dem vs. Total Gadfly", and the 2009 gubernatorial election. However, in the long-term nationally, it is probably better strategically for dems that they lost the presidency. With Trump as President, dems have a chance at breaking even in the senate in '18, maybe even a net gain of 1 seat. With Hillary as President, the GOP would have a shot at 60 seats.

If Hillary had won, she would've done better downballot taking a few seats away from the GOP.

Compare the downballot performance of 2012 vs 2016, it's very clear that the GOP overperformed in 2016. Part of that can be attributed to Hillary's GOP courtship strategy.

Depends. If Hillary had just barely eked out narrow wins in MI, WI, PA, she would have won the presidency narrowly, but downballot results probably stay the same.  If she had won by something more like Obama's margin, then yeah, you have a point.

You need to remember though it wasn't just Trump who outperformed the polls, those GOP downballot candidates also outperformed the polls. So, the same phenomenon that helped Trump in the end, also helped them.

We know that Comey made his decision to go public based on a forged russian document.

If we assume that each GOP downballot candidate outperforms or underperforms Trump to the same degree as they did in real life, and adjust the presidential result the 1% that is needed for Hillary to win WI, MI, PA, no senate race flips. (Although Toomey's race becomes perilously close at R+0.43)

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

@IceSpear: In case you're not aware, the official excuse for Dems not being able to beat Assaulterforte in MT (I refuse to call him by his real name after his actions), is that most of the vote was cast during early voting.

I'm pretty sure most Democrats agree that it had more to do with the fact that Quist by all accounts proved to be a piss-poor candidate despite initially looking solid on paper.

Why is it that the Dems need stellar candidates to win, but the GOP can nominate and elect Trump, Greg Gianforte, Roy Moore, Roy Blunt, Sam Brownback, Pat Roberts, Thom Tillis, Rick Scott, Paul LePage, etc. etc. without repurcussions?

I think Dems need to start accepting that deplorables are unwinnable and Republicans are far more "locked in" than Democrats are. Times have changed drastically since Akin/Mourdock, both of whom were exceptions to begin with. If Democrats routinely nominated candidates as piss poor as that above list we'd be a permanent minority. Even lazy but otherwise harmless milquetoasts like Martha Coakley and Anthony Brown end up losing in the most Democratic states in the country. When Dems imported some rich guy to run in an evenly split upstate NY seat, something Republicans do on the regular with occasional success, he lost by like 57 points, lol. The double standard is real.

Deplorables, per Hillary's comments, are half of Trump's supporters. 46% (Trump's NPV total) * .5 = 23% of the country consists of deplorables. Quit acting like deplorables are 40% or something.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

If 3% of voters were solidly in the D camp, and solidly moved to R following Comey's announcement, that would cause a 6% swing in the results.

I think that's probably an overestimation of the Comey effect. I could see half of that though, which would be enough to get Kander and McGinty over the top, so there's your Manchin Majority. Of course, it's not as if dems would be able to do much of anything with that sort of majority.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Wow, people are seriously losing their minds over ONE poll showing Gillespie up by ONE!? First of all, this race was never Safe D. There was always a chance that Gillespie could win. Also, has anyone ever heard of "averages"? Yes, this poll shouldn't be tossed out the window, but if you average it in with the other polls, it's clear that Northam is still the favorite, though he probably won't win by more than mid-single digits.

It's typical Atlas. It regularly bounces between both extremes - "DEMS ARE GOING TO WIN TEXAS!!!!" one day, then "OOP, REPS LEADING IN FLORIDA BY 1%, HERE COMES THE YUGE WAVE" the next, then back again.