PA-18 Special Election - Lamb by a nose

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

I'm expecting Saccone to win by 10 but if tax reform is underperforming Trump approvals, I'm not too concerned about a tax reform bump.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

This race must be so frustrating for Republicans. The Democratic candidate is young, good looking, a veteran and goes around speaking to voters wearing his inoffensive Steelers jacket and talking about how both parties and all leadership is bad. Whereas Republicans have..... some old guy who's a total leadership kiss ass and has no charisma or fundraising skills whatsoever.

Eh, it doesn't really matter. Saccone should have a fairly easy time winning anyways.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

That ad convinced me to vote for Rick Saccone

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

BTW, if Lamb manages to win this thing, he becomes the instant favor to challenge Toomey in 2022, especially if Dump gets re-elected.

Thoughts on that theory?

Possibly. But Toomey is probably Safe if democrats win in 2020 (unless there's a realignment of sorts), and probably screwed if Trump wins in 2020.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

BTW, if Lamb manages to win this thing, he becomes the instant favor to challenge Toomey in 2022, especially if Dump gets re-elected.

Thoughts on that theory?

No way Toomey would win against Lamb. Toomey will be an old man by then. His face already looks like a waterlogged costume stiched at gunpoint

Toomey can easily win if a democrat is in office, unless the democrat is very popular or Toomey does something particularly stupid besides just be far right.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

I doubt Lamb wins this given how hard the GOP is investing in this seat.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

I expect to see Saccone up 7. Everyone will immediately panic for absolutely no reason.

Same

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Cross tabs at the bottom of the link are interesting.

Saccone basically gets no one who didn't vote for Trump other than 1/6 of Johnson voters. Lamb gets half of Johnson voters and 37% of 2016 non-voters.

More proof that Johnson probably hurt Clinton more than Trump.

I mean, Johnson voters voted Republicans in the house by like a 60-40 margin, so I'm going to have to disagree there lol. This just shows that Johnson voters may be switching over to democrats after seeing the radical rightwing racist reaming republicans are doing to America.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Saccone really needs to get off mentioning Pelosi every single time. The ones who would hate anyone for siding with her are already voting for him. The swing voter won't care.

Not necessarily... polls have indicated that a lot of the undecided voters aren't really a fan of Pelosi. They also indicate that these undecided voters are more likely to support Connor Lamb if they know that he has a pledge to not support Pelosi.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

You guys do realize that it is very common for 20% of people who slightly approve/disapprove of the president to vote for the other party right?

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

watch the major upset is saccone + 30

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

What exactly are you saying/asking on these calls?

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

The momentum seems to be with Lamb... but this is a total Tossup. I’ll say Lamb+1, but I have little confidence in this prediction

By the way,
Am I the only one who doesn't really care about this special election? I mean, no matter the result Lamb will run in Rothfus' district.

I imagine there would be a slight advantage for Lamb taking on Rothfus as a fellow incumbent. Plus it would probably help push some more Congressional Republicans to retirement.

Something like this could have HUGE impacts on several other races like influencing Rick Scott on whether he should run.

Yeah. Also could impact fundraising.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

It's not so much anti-cop as holding police accountable when they do screw up. There is a big difference.

True, but optics are everything in American Politics. There's a way to go about it without alienating anyone.

Keep in mind that as far as activism goes, that isn't something the party itself can just tweak until it gets it right. Those are real people out there, many of whom constantly see a side of the criminal justice system that just doesn't react the same way to vast swathes of white people. They don't really care about optics, even if maybe they should.

Also let's remember that many conservatives don't even believe that the criminal justice is unfair to PoC, or they substantially marginalize any perceived shortcomings. You can see this not only from the voters themselves but the politicians who represent them, as well as polls on relevant issues.

edit: as per Lyndon's comments, it does raise a good point - Republicans seem to be pro-police only up to the point where it doesn't threaten their political power or their Dear Leader. But once that happens, they seem to have no problem going full anti-FBI, which is funny because they seemed to pride themselves on being the guardians of the FBI for decades prior 

Hofoid constantly goes on about democrats talk too much about PoC, talks about how miniorities will always vote dem anyways (even though Hillary doing as well among blacks as Obama did would have given her a 328 electoral college victory), and constantly seems to disregard miniority struggles. I wouldn't take their posts about race particularly seriously.

Most progressives on this forum are generally good about combining economic justice and social justice, but this new user seems to barely care about social justice because we need to focus on muh "WWC" or something.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

College graduates were 50% of the electorate in 2016 nationally, and this district is more educated than the nation as a whole, so I don't understand why Cohn thinks it's so funny for 60% to be in this race (especially when coupled with college graduates being disproportionately represented in low-turnout contests)...?

Unless he thinks that age will be a much stronger factor than education (presumably a large percentage of 55+ in this district are not college graduates), I'm not seeing what's so wrong with that figure.

Uneducated whites were 44% of the electorate. Exit polls vastly overpoll college educated voters. Center for american progress has a good article about this. Nate Cohn too

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

The NYT is going to bring out the needle for this race. Can't wait.

Oh how fun lol.

I wonder when we're finally going to get a quality pollster for this race. Monmouth's poll is coming out soon, but where the hell has Fox News been?

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

The NYT is going to bring out the needle for this race. Can't wait.

/triggered

The needle was our savior in Alabama tho

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

There might be a good poll releasing for Lamb but I don't know when. It could be the Monmouth one.

You see that in a tweet?

I know someone. He's been right before, for example the Jones+10 Fox News poll.

Can you uhh be a bit more specific?

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

What is the poll that "this guy" knows of? Is it Connor Lamb + 6?

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

This *may* be the end for Lamb...ugh: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/03/11/pittsburgh-paper-backs-republican-in-house-race-warning-of-impeachment-distraction-if-democrats-win/

This newspaper endorsement will shift the race approximately 0.02% to Rick Saccone. Nobody hears about newspaper endorsements, and even less people care.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Supremely hottake:

- A Connor Lamb win does not mean that democrats will take the house.
- A Connor Lamb loss does not mean that democrats will not take the house.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Supremely hottake:

- A Connor Lamb win does not mean that democrats will take the house.
- A Connor Lamb loss does not mean that democrats will not take the house.

Though I would argue that a Lamb win would make it significantly harder for Republicans to argue against the odds of a Democratic takeover.

This is an exceptional area, having such a Democratic heritage that it was both +20 Mondale in 1984 and +40 Trump in 2016.  A Lamb win would boost candidates like Ojeda and the Dems running in the Obama-Trump Upstate NY districts significantly, but it says next to nothing about e.g. the Romney-Clinton CDs.  

That having been said, if they are winning back this kind of seat, there is an all Midwest/Rust Belt path to a Dem House majority out there.  

shrug* If lamb wins, it will be because the highly educated suburbs in Allegheny pulled him over the top, not the southern areas returning to the fold. Which largely lines up with what we are seeing in federal special and regular elections - a dem over-performance everywhere but more tied to suburbs/urban zones and education levels.


Also, the main reason for my post, Cohn's got a nice map with data:

But both the educated and uneducated areas are swinging. Which means it'd be a good result for both Clinton-Republican districts and Obama-Trump districts.

Anyways my point about the whole "this doesn't prove dems are winning house thing" is just that it's 1 data point. 1 good data point of out like.... 50 different good data points we have for dems.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

That reader poll just got a 65+ eskimo voter that voted for Connor Lamb

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Conor Lamb is awakening the sleeping Democrats in the rust belt. The DNC would be wise to listen to him.

Anyways, Favorable ratings -

Conor Lamb: 53/33 +20
Rick Saccone: 47/43 +4

Candidate quality is important.  (Fundamentals are important too.)

The human capital of the democratic candidates for the midterms has been phenomenal. We got Phil freaking Bredesen to run in Tennessee. The best the GOP could get is Kevin Cramer.

Well, Rick Scott is extremely good. And I'd consider Evan Jenkins a good candidate as well (better than Kramer).

But yeah, the GOP recruits are... not great.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Saccone's closing message.



https://twitter.com/VaughnHillyard/status/973325643160215560

Mann... I liked Saccone until that. Wtf is wrong with him?