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

[Gass3268]

A great David Weigel piece about this race

Essentially O'Connor has been 100% on protecting the ACA and Social Security and bashing the Trump tax cuts. He was able to get on the air first and define himself before Balderson could. Republicans are starting to grumble a little bit like this could turn into another PA-18. Personally this feels more like AZ-08.

[Gass3268]

A great David Weigel piece about this race

Essentially O'Connor has been 100% on protecting the ACA and Social Security and bashing the Trump tax cuts. He was able to get on the air first and define himself before Balderson could. Republicans are starting to grumble a little bit like this could turn into another PA-18. Personally this feels more like AZ-08.

Funny how these races always seem to start to head that direction innit

They really all have, except for TX-27. The next question becomes, does this same occurrence happen nationwide in November?

[Gass3268]

DCCC is going up with ads tomorrow:

https://twitter.com/MediumBuying/status/1019960903767293953

[Gass3268]

Looks like they're going to be moving this to Toss Up:

https://twitter.com/kkondik/status/1020680579988230144

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1020811550771294211

[Gass3268]

Interesting numbers from Dave Wasserman:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1021473508512210944

[Gass3268]

So really it's the "other" that's eating into the Democratic lead. I.e. new voters/new residents to OH-12.

[Gass3268]

O'Connor is raising more and spending more:

https://twitter.com/allymutnick/status/1022812641209868288

[Gass3268]

Do these figures include independent expenditures? That's always something to keep in mind in a post-CU world.

I don't think so, but those dollars are worth less due to preferential treatment that is given to candidates. Republicans/Saccone/Outside Groups outspent Democrats/Lamb/Outside Groups 3-1, but it ended up being almost 50-50 in terms of airplay.   

[Gass3268]

The Balderson campaign has gone dark, really odd:

https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1022897317920366592

[Gass3268]

56-32 is not exactly a comforting margin for O'Connor given expected E-Day turnout.

Given the number of relocated and, especially, first time voters the other category constitutes, I wouldn't be too worried if I was O'Connor

I think this hits the nail on the head. Probably tonight and throughout the week I will have some more analysis of how many of early voters are new registers and also what the return rates are for the various parties across the 7 counties. Expect to see the numbers for the latter tonight or tomorrow at the latest.

Do we know what the final early vote numbers looked like here in 2016? I thought I saw on Twitter that it was a pretty decent Republican lead.

[Gass3268]

Trump just tweeted about this race for the third time. This time promoting that Balderson will protect your Social Security and Medicare, which deviates from the typical Trump endorsement template.

[Gass3268]

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

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

[Gass3268]

This was from about a week ago, but it shows what the early voted looked like in 2018 and in this year's primary.

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1022314841397051392

[Gass3268]

Trump's approval rating dropped 4 points since June and there has been a 7 point drop in folks supporting Trump on the issues.

[Gass3268]

Some group affiliated with the Balderson campaign is texting Democrats and telling them that theor polling location has changed.

Is this even legal?  (It's clearly unethical.)

It is legal unfortunately.

I know I'm the Ohio lawyer here, but.....how could that be? I'm not denying it per se. I'm just shocked.

Pretty sure it's not. From what I've seen, the scam is being targetted to voters in Clintonville -- an affluent and activist neighborhood of Columbus within OH-12. Local Democrats are urging anyone contacted to report the incident to the Franklin County BOE.

Today's update:



Richland County's website is down so that was the only wrinkle today. Republicans edged out Democrats for the first time yesterday, turning in 90 more ballots, 1004 to 914 with 336 for other. Obviously it depends on how the next few days go, and how much ground Dems can make up on Saturday and Sunday, but I think O'Connor is right about where he need to win.

Out of curiosity why do you think that O’Connor is where he needs to win as each day his EV lead shrinks a point or 2? Are you confident that “others” will break that much for him?

As of right now, O’Connor only needs to win 52% of the ‘Other’ vote to win 60% of early voters overall.

But that’s my point “as of now”. We’ve got enough days left that at the rate Danny’s going he’s going to needs 60% of others

O'Connor doesn't need 60% -- he needs to win at least a 20% margin. O'Connor's still well on track for that assuming everyone actually registered the two main parties is actually voting that way. (And given the strong Democratic crossover into the 2016 Republican primary, especially in Franklin County, it's fairly safe to say a fair number of those Republicans are voting for O'Connor.)

We might also see some registered DINOS out in Balderson turf also vote for Balderson though.

There are no registered voters in Ohio, the party ID here is based off what ballot you pulled in the last primary. I don’t see many Clinton/Sanders voters going for Balderson.

[Gass3268]

EV getting a little too close for comfort now, isn't it?

Republicans won the early vote here in both 16 and in the 18 primary. Still a pretty big margin.

[Gass3268]

Today's update:



5 days left, including the two weekend days.

Again what I said last night he’s falling a percent every day. At the rate he’s going 5 days means he could be at only 45% of ev

I know you know this, but we dont actually know who these ballots cast their votes for.

Yes but the odds that more then 2% of r’s are breaking for Danny are low

This is based on who folks voted for in 2016, so it's possible that some Democratic and left leaning Independents that crossed over to vote for Kasich against Trump would be counted as Republicans.

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/PollsterPatrick/status/1025783143956185088

https://twitter.com/PollsterPatrick/status/1025785145360621574

[Gass3268]

Balderson did not invite Trump to come yesterday, he came on his own:

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1026146229414244352

[Gass3268]

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.

Yeah, I had to add him too.

[Gass3268]

Ohio Republicans are not happy with Kasich:

https://twitter.com/JackTorry1/status/1026518776056037379

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/darreldrowland/status/1026563536993091585

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/JWGOP/status/1026661382538895360

He's another big time on the ground Ohio guy who thinks tomorrow will be good for Democrats.

[Gass3268]

If the Emerson (lol) poll were after the rally, then I'd predict an O'Connor win by about that margin, but it wasn't. We gotta remember that Saccone was down about 5 or so before Trump swooped in to stump for him, and said stumping erased that deficit into the virtual tie that that race was. So now, I could see it go either way. I genuinely don't know.

Sean T from RCP, who lives in the area, thinks that Trump's rally probably did more to help O'Connor than Balderson.