OH-12 Special Election: Balderson vs. O’Connor on August 7

[Brittain33]

A leader of the House Ways and Means committee resigns early. Tax reform must be going swimmingly!

[Brittain33]

Hmm. O'Connor has the facebook enthusiasm, surprisingly, considering Balderson is an established state senator. 4.3K likes to Balderson's 1.6K. Moving this race from Safe R to Likely R in my ratings.

In what way was this ever Safe R?

[Brittain33]

I can't read *anything* into early votes other than what we already know, which is that a small number of Democrats are incredibly engaged this year and Republicans are not so engaged. These numbers can be easily swamped by what happens on Election Day.

[Brittain33]

Kasich just endorsed Balderson, unsurprisingly.


https://www.johnkasich.com/blog-posts/gov-john-kasich-endorses-troy-balderson-for-congress/

I dont think it really moves the needle, but makes O'Connors push for moderate republicans slightly tougher.

We will hear a lot about this if Balderson wins by < 3 points which I consider the most likely outcome.

[Brittain33]

Looks like Balderson has not done a good job of brining together Republicans:

https://twitter.com/darreldrowland/status/1024059851822059520

With these districts which are safe R except in a blue wave, any Republican with any ambition should want to let the Democrat win so they can come back in 2020 or at the latest 2022 and take it back. Why wouldn’t they sit on their hands?

[Brittain33]

Predictit is 66c for Balderson, 34c for O’Connor. At this point O’Connor winning would be comparable to Trump’s surprise win in 2016. We can see how it might happen, even if the available polling evidence doesn’t point to it.

[Brittain33]

If Trump has to jump in and campaign for the R a few days before the vote, it usually means their internal polls are showing a massive mobilisation problem among Rs ...

Again, Balderson hasn’t released a single internal to counter the Democratic internals showing he’s stuck at 48%.

...but those same internals have O'Connor down by a small number of points, and in a special election when the votes are counted you will have 0 undecideds and very few 3rd party votes (because why bother?)

[Brittain33]

Oh come on ALREADY Monmouth

[Brittain33]

Guys, only 32% of their respondents were from Franklin county, look at the crosstabs.

What should it be?

[Brittain33]

The "inspiration to our military" shows he or someone else actually did some homework on Steve Stivers' biography vs. Troy Balderson. Hah.

[Brittain33]

Foucaulf's analysis is that, assuming past party composition relationships remain consistent, Democrats only need a mid single digit lead in partisanship in the early vote, even less if "Other" voters break towards O'Connor. Whoever it was that said that O'Connor needed to win the EV by 20 points was not accurate at all.

Again, after the 2016 experience, I question how we can have confidence in early vote as a predicative measure. I really appreciate your work and it is an interesting data point to show engagement... but I would be cautious about trying to derive benchmarks with significance since the numbers are still so low compared to the final totals.

[Brittain33]

Foucaulf's analysis is that, assuming past party composition relationships remain consistent, Democrats only need a mid single digit lead in partisanship in the early vote, even less if "Other" voters break towards O'Connor. Whoever it was that said that O'Connor needed to win the EV by 20 points was not accurate at all.

Again, after the 2016 experience, I question how we can have confidence in early vote as a predicative measure. I really appreciate your work and it is an interesting data point to show engagement... but I would be cautious about trying to derive benchmarks with significance since the numbers are still so low compared to the final totals.

Well, the early vote indicators in Ohio showed that Democrats were in trouble in 2016, so I am not exactly sure what the "2016 experience" is.

What I was thinking of was early vote totals in Nevada and Florida which seemed to indicate a strong Democratic win based on past results. However, there was a massive surge for Trump on Election Day.

I don’t think there’s a massive surge of Republican support that has gone undetected because Republican turnout in specials has been poor all year and I don’t think OH-12 will be any different. But I think predicting the outcome from early vote totals with precision is hard to do based on the high variability.

Personally I’m considering this race a tossup based on polling and PVI and obvious Republican dog sweat, and don’t expect to know more until Tuesday night.

[Brittain33]

This race just aint got the same feeling and spice as PA 18th where initially I was expecting a high single digit victory for Saccone, but it started tightening, and in the final week or so I moved my final guess to Lamb +1.5. This race does not feel right, I stick by my final call of Balderson winning 52-46, I doubt I will be changing it before the election.

Balderson winning by 6 would be remarkable given that the Republicans are behaving like they might lose.

[Brittain33]

I would guess Balderson by about 5 points. The Sarah Jeong story is really going to hurt O'Connor in this 87% white district.

LMFAO. Nobody in OH-12 cares about Sarah Jeong. She's a tech writer (so she's not even in a political section) in a newspaper that is from over 500 miles away. Hell, I bet most people in NYC don't know who the hell Sarah Jeong is.

Anyone who's going to vote based on Sarah Jeong was a Republican voter anyway.

Beet's trolling. Just put him on ignore.

No, the vast majority of white Democrats and center-leftists outside the media and elite are pretty horrified by Jeong's tweets. So the average swing voter in OH-12 will too. Don't think they don't know or haven't heard of this story-- it's been blasted on Fox News quite a bit, and a ton of other media channels. So thousands of voters will have gone to the polls having heard the story.

Yes, no doubt all those Fox News viewers in OH-12 were on the fence about how to vote until Sarah Jeong showed up on their channel.

[Brittain33]

Balderson and O’Connor are converging on Predictit. It’s now 54c for Baldy, 49c for Danny Boy.

[Brittain33]

Bagel, please knock off the trolling. Thank you. —Mod.

[Brittain33]

What committee....limo liberal style trolling deleted.

Second and last warning. —Mod.

[Brittain33]

Don't freak out, but wow:

https://twitter.com/kkondik/status/1026974904590258176

From Ebsy’s numbers, that means O’Connor won the equivalent of all Dems and Indys and a small number of Republicans in Franklin. In truth, he won fewer Indy’s and more Republicans than that.

[Brittain33]

Licking EV split for Balderson 3315-3204. Consistent with 50/50 split of Indy’s if they held their bases.

[Brittain33]

Marion EV IS 220-119 for Balderson

[Brittain33]

Balderson takes home County Muskingum EV 1720-1066.

[Brittain33]

Son of Balder is dropping on Predictit.

[Brittain33]

That’s a lot of Delaware Republicans voting for O’Connor.

[Brittain33]

Both Manchin and Ojeda would have beaten Balderson.

Hard to imagine either one’s message being relevant to Franklin and Delaware County. Economic development and rural isolation is not a problem there.

[Brittain33]

There is zero reason for O’Connor to concede, including zero reasons associated with the November race. Yes, Republicans and pseudoRepublicans, we get why you think it’s a marvelous idea.