PA-18 Special Election - Lamb by a nose

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Monmouth releases 1:00 EST

Whatever the result, I just hope it's on the mark.
I would hate for it to show Lamb up a couple of points, shifting the BREAKING NEWS narrative and causing the Blitzer's and Cizilla's to go into TITANIUM D mode, only for him to narrowly lose tomorrow. It's obvious that a narrow loss has the same implications as a narrow Lamb win, but a loss would lead to a deluge of THE WAVE IS DEAD hottakes, that could damage fundraising and morale for rural dem candidates like Ojeda.

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I hate that the media has done such a poor job of setting expectations. It's a Trump +20 district, ffs.

Exactly. I can just imagine the CNN roundtable discussions in November.
"So Chris, you say the midterms were disappointing for the Democrats?"
"Welll yes Wolf, some polling suggested a 50 seat advantage in the house and a 52-48 split in the senate, so it's frankly embarrassing that they ended up with a 10 seat majority and a 51 seat majority. If this holds up, Trump is a lock for re-election."

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I hate that the media has done such a poor job of setting expectations. It's a Trump +20 district, ffs.

Exactly. I can just imagine the CNN roundtable discussions in November.
"So Chris, you say the midterms were disappointing for the Democrats?"
"Welll yes Wolf, some polling suggested a 50 seat advantage in the house and a 52-48 split in the senate, so it's frankly embarrassing that they ended up with a 10 seat majority and a 51 seat majority. If this holds up, Trump is a lock for re-election."

I imagine that the Democrats would be quite happy with that outcome regardless of how CNN might spin it.

Absolutely, and the sweet irony of Trump being put in a similar position Obama was would be the icing on the cake.

Oh hands down,  it would an amazing night. It's just that the cognitive dissonance is exasperating.

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Here we go...

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Holmes: Sherlock of Polls

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The other questions in this poll are brutal for Republicans:

Trump Approval: 49-49 (Strongly numbers are 39-41)
Will Tariffs Help or Hurt: 43% Help - 36% Hurt (THIS IS STEEL COUNTRY!)
Republican Party: 44% Favorable - 48% Unfavorable
Democratic Party: 44% Favorable - 47% Unfavorable
Who do you want to see control Congress: 42% Democrats - 42% Republicans

If these numbers bear out in exit polling tomorrow, then I wonder what effect this will have on GOP funding for the PA Senate and Governor's race in November. I imagine they'll fight like crazy for the House seats on the new map, to prevent Democrats from taking vulnerable seats and establishing incumbents. But if Trump is this unpopular, it's going to be hard to beat Casey and Wolf.

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The other questions in this poll are brutal for Republicans:

Trump Approval: 49-49 (Strongly numbers are 39-41)
Will Tariffs Help or Hurt: 43% Help - 36% Hurt (THIS IS STEEL COUNTRY!)
Republican Party: 44% Favorable - 48% Unfavorable
Democratic Party: 44% Favorable - 47% Unfavorable
Who do you want to see control Congress: 42% Democrats - 42% Republicans

If these numbers bear out in exit polling tomorrow, then I wonder what effect this will have on GOP funding for the PA Senate and Governor's race in November. I imagine they'll fight like crazy for the House seats on the new map, to prevent Democrats from taking vulnerable seats and establishing incumbents. But if Trump is this unpopular, it's going to be hard to beat Casey and Wolf.

Wolf will be fine. Casey is not vulnerable.

The real question is whether the GOP still throws money at the races, or triages them to funnel cash into other races. I'd much rather they knock a couple of percent off of Casey's vote total than Heitkamp's

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Saccone' calling himself the underdog.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/13/rick-saccone-underdog-458346

Saccone should realise that there is a difference between being an underdog and blowing a race that should be an easy win.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/upshot/needle-forecast-pennsylvania-special-election.html

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This editorial is sponsored by King Lear, your one stop shop for breathlessly negative hottakes

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20 mins and it's needle show-time.

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Guys CNN says "To Early to Call". "To Early to Call"!? Atlas, what is your take on this development?

My mom's friend's dogsitter's son's cat's former owner says that CNN has exit polls showing Lamb up 65-35.

Big if true

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Before first votes are cast, NYTimes prediction ranges from Lamb +13 to Saccone +13, will update as it narrows

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Which Atlas member was it, who didn't trust the NYT numbers (at all) during the Alabama Senate (Moore) election, and kept "making a call" that Moore had already won hours before the numbers were all in?
This member was moded, corroded, candy-coated about the entire incident.

Has these member made any predictions for this election?

It was Ben Kenobi, who to my knowledge hasn't commented on this race

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Nate Cohn
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Still early, but Lamb is getting decent news. On average, Lamb running 3 pts ahead of our estimates in fragmentary returns.

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Saccone up to 59% in the needle...

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Can anyone explain why NYT is making it look like it's Saccone to lose? Everyone seems to believe it's leaning strongly to Lamb. Buzzfeed/DDHQ seems like they're about to call it for Lamb.

NYTimes currently has Saccone favoured

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Nate Cohn
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Still quite early, but you can see the pattern on the bottom end of the chart. That shows that, in GOP areas, Saccone doing a bit better than we thought he would. But we don't have many GOP areas in so far. I'm a little concerned the needle is overreacting here, but we'll see

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64% Saccone. Yikes

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Well folks, we have some bad news. Westmoreland County has told us that they aren't going to report results by precinct tonight (though they had previously told us they would). The model runs on precinct results so, this is a problem.

ugh

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Nate Cohn
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Over all, the results do make Lamb a favorite, but it sure looks close.
The state of the race in the non-Westmoreland precincts:
Expected vote in a tie: Lamb 55.7%;
Actual vote, Lamb 56.3% percent
Turnout at 97.7% of expectations