PA-18 Special Election - Lamb by a nose

[Adam Griffin]

Did Al Gore win PA-18 under current borders in 2000?

Just some quick napkin math/approximations here:

Obama lost PA-18 by 11 in 2008. Judging by the swing map for 2008 and the population distribution of the district, I'd say Kerry lost by roughly the same amount. The 2004 swing map suggests that Kerry did anywhere from 1-5 points worse than Gore, so that leads me to believe that Bush won PA-18 in 2000 by around 5 points.

[Adam Griffin]

I feel like this is a race where Saccone will win by 3 in the end, but my gut predictions have consistently underestimated Dems this year. Based on that, I'm thinking Lamb by a similar margin.

[Adam Griffin]

Solid, if you're going off of my phone banking then your prediction isn't accurate. Far more are saying Lamb, I'm just saying people are so nice and it's difficult when even the nicest say they are voting Saccone.

Well, I assume like most phone banks that you are targeting at least undecided to soft democratic voters, or possibly even just get out the vote for historically reliable Democrat votes. Even if it's the former, you should expect a significant lamb advantage, as not too many reliable let alone hardcore Republican voters are going to slip into your call list ( with inevitable exceptions of course).

It was a random HubDialer, so you're incorrect.

Even HubDialer/predictive dialing campaigns are usually configured to target a specific subset of the voting populace - in large quantities, no less, so that volunteers are constantly being placed on the phone with live voters rather than inefficiently dialing numbers manually. For instance, a campaign might target all of the solid Democratic voters in a county who have between a 40-70% chance of voting in an election.

Among whichever groups the predictive dialer is targeting, the person on the other end should be random, but I'd be highly doubtful (and skeptical of) any campaign just throwing any and all voters into HubDialer. That would be woefully inefficient. From the sound of your responses, you were likely being connected with undecided voters and/or soft supporters of both campaigns.

[Adam Griffin]

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.

[Adam Griffin]

Looking at statewide returns from 2012-2014 for the past five elections for state races (Gov, AG, Senate, Auditor & Treasurer), the Democrat has averaged 45.2% of the vote in this district. It's not unfathomable at all to see him easily clearing 50 now that I've seen these figures.

[Adam Griffin]

Does anyone have any info on what the unions in the District have been doing in the election/the importance of the the various unions?

http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/unions-conor-lamb-pa-18

[Adam Griffin]

"If you hate our President and especially if you hate our party, then you also hate God"

- Rick "Sacc'd" Saccone

[Adam Griffin]

Is everybody ready for the ride? Because it never ends!

Get your panic and popcorn ready, and be prepared to overreact to every single morsel of information as it comes in!

[Adam Griffin]

[Adam Griffin]

Looks like Lamb won WashCo absentees by around 5 points. As MaxQue pointed out, there's a bigger margin now than there are votes left to count (including military ballots).

[Adam Griffin]

Figured I'd reverse-engineer us a map using Atlas colors and a more sensitive gradient:

[Adam Griffin]

Interesting thread...because the DCCC is so openly bragging after the fact and outlining what it did:

https://twitter.com/dccc/status/973890765981011968

https://twitter.com/dccc/status/973892233928822784

https://twitter.com/dccc/status/973892236126703616

https://twitter.com/dccc/status/973892241864478721

[Adam Griffin]

Basically, there'll be 200 absentee ballots from Greene that break 50-50, 200 provisional ballots counted that break 60-40 Lamb, and 200 military ballots counted that break 60-40 Saccone. The end result? Not a damn thing changes, neither in outcome nor in margin.

Even if 100% of those votes went to Saccone, he would still lose.

[Adam Griffin]

Apparently Greene's absentee votes were more GOP than the county as a whole...?

Lamb's margin dropped by exactly 50 votes and there were 200 absentees (approximately), meaning 125-75 Saccone (63% Saccone).

[Adam Griffin]

[Adam Griffin]

BUT GUYS 50K DEM VOTER REGISTRATION ADVANTAGE IN PA-18

[Adam Griffin]

BUT GUYS 50K DEM VOTER REGISTRATION ADVANTAGE IN PA-18

I think Dems will blow out locally in western PA. Not that they're in a bad place there locally right now, but still.

Indeed. Unfortunately, the above is a prevalent Twitterturd talking point among the GOP right now. #NoBlueWave