2020 AZ Senate Megathread: Kelly's Race to Lose

[ProgressiveModerate]

I imagine Sinema will win reelection pretty handily, especially if the number of ticket splitters decrease. She's up in a presidential year (2024) and Arizona will vote Democrat at the presidential level then (if not 2020, which I expect to happen anyways.)

If AZ continues going the way its going, she'd probably be more vulnerable in a primary than a general (and even that is unlikely).

I kinda feel like Sinema will slowly become more progressive as her state becomes more progressive. She used to be more leftie but as a senator, she had to be moderate to win, and she wants to stick to her word, at least for a while. I think she'll become more like Micheal Bennet by 2024 and less like a Manchin

[ProgressiveModerate]

I was baffled they appointed her & surely there must be someone better in Arizona considering it's such a heavily republican state

The theory is that she got appointed specifically to lose, which would allow Ducey to run in 2022 without handing power immediately over to the democratic SoS.

The hilarous outcome of course is either her winning or Kelly winning and then beating Ducey.

Kelly is in trouble in 2022 if Biden wins.

I don’t see it - dems would have a narrow Senate majority. Not enough to truly rock the boat and if Kelly votes like Manchin/Sinema, I think he’d get a full term

Schumer would be under a lot of pressure from the left, from Pelosi, from the medias and probably from the White House to dismantle the fillibuster. It would open the door to a truckload of progressive legislations ranging from gun control to tax hikes which would probably make thing quite hard for Kelly.

As for Manchin and Sinema both will probably move considerably to the left if democrats take the Senate.

The margin Kelly wins by in 2020 will be a tell tale sign if he'll be able to win in a 2022 Biden midterm. If he wins by 4-5 points or more, it's very possible that he holds on, but if he only wins by 1, then he's likely to lose. Under a Trump wave he would be pretty safe. If McSally wins in 2020, Trump is probably winning and she'll almost certaintly lose in 2022 (Kelly will probably run again).

Manchin is forced to vote more to the right than his actual values because of WV. Even when he got asked about Bernie Sanders on FOX News, he just said that Bernie Sanders got him thinking about ideas and tried to get himself out of the mess. Chances are, Manchin won't run in 2024, meaning he can get away with a more liberal voting record, and will side wih the Ds if  key vote comes down to him. If he starts voting with Rs on key votes, he's probably running for re-election. As for Sinema, her ideology is kinda weird and hard to pin point. My guess is that she'll become more liberal with time but she's waiting to see how AZ will vote in 2020. If it votes D, she's likely to win re-election. If it deosn't, while I still think she'll win, she could be in a bit of trouble. She seems more likely to buck the Dems than Manchin though. Kelly seems liberal but is running on a moderate message which seems to be working very well for him so far. This race should've been a tossup, even a slight r edge, but now it's lean D, approaching on likely D is Kelly's polling numbers hold.

[ProgressiveModerate]

The Republicans have really scrwered up on this race. McSally just lost a senate race, and yet they decided to appoint her to the vacant senate seat. AZ likes moderates and McSally isn't even trying or pertending to be a moderate like Collins. Democrats scored a strong recruit in Kelly, and he leads by 8 points in the rcp average, which is insane for a state where Ds are usually underestimated in the polling on election day. Some of those were decent polls, others seemed a bit strange, and Kelly will probably win by like 4 or so, but this should've been a tossup race, not a lean D race like most people are begginning to call it. Even Sabato, which usually doesn't like to call flips early on has already moved this race to lean D. McSally could still win if Trump does well in AZ, or if a scandal comes out about Kelly, but this race is begginning to look like more and more of a sure thing for Democrats by the day. McSally is clearly desperate to stir up media attention, and teh fact that she had to use her own campaign manager as an AZ citizen in one of her ads is just sad. Lean D for now, could very well move to likely D on election day. Sinema never lead McSally bu this mucg in the RCP average so I'm really curious to see how much Kelly wins by

[ProgressiveModerate]

The Republicans have really scrwered up on this race. McSally just lost a senate race, and yet they decided to appoint her to the vacant senate seat. AZ likes moderates and McSally isn't even trying or pertending to be a moderate like Collins. Democrats scored a strong recruit in Kelly, and he leads by 8 points in the rcp average, which is insane for a state where Ds are usually underestimated in the polling on election day. Some of those were decent polls, others seemed a bit strange, and Kelly will probably win by like 4 or so, but this should've been a tossup race, not a lean D race like most people are begginning to call it. Even Sabato, which usually doesn't like to call flips early on has already moved this race to lean D. McSally could still win if Trump does well in AZ, or if a scandal comes out about Kelly, but this race is begginning to look like more and more of a sure thing for Democrats by the day. McSally is clearly desperate to stir up media attention, and teh fact that she had to use her own campaign manager as an AZ citizen in one of her ads is just sad. Lean D for now, could very well move to likely D on election day. Sinema never lead McSally bu this mucg in the RCP average so I'm really curious to see how much Kelly wins by

McSally may not be exactly like Collins, but she IS a moderate, more so than the late John McCain. Her voting record is a bit closer to the center than McCain's was. Here are McSally's approval ratings from the American Conservative Union so far, starting from when she was in the House:
2015 - 58%
2016 - 72%
2017 - 85%
2018 - 84%
And her only full year in the Senate so far:
2019 - 68%

Be that as it may, I will call the race Tilt D.

Many of these ratings from these organizations can be weird or flawed, and don't always reflect teh characetr of the person. Caling CNN a liberal hack isn't a vote, but it shows how she views the otehr side. She's tying herself to Trump as much as possible, whereas McCain kept his distance from Trump. Being conservative isn't the same as being loyal to your party, or being a partisan. I would consider Manchin to be a conservative. Furthermore, according to the American Conservative Union, Boozman, Moran, McConnel, Graham, and Capito all have lower scores than her. Graham may have voted for both of Obama's SC picks but he comes off as being a huge Trump ally and a partisan and not moderate. Same can be said for McConnel. Voting records don't fully reflected a person's characeter or how they come off as.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Lol it's funny to see how downhill this race has gone for Rs so fast. This might actually become Lean D on atlas consensus forecasts this coming week

[ProgressiveModerate]

THE SHADE

https://twitter.com/CaptMarkKelly/status/1312392110478446598

WOW. I'm not surprised Sinema is voting for Kelly, but initially she said she wouldn't endorse and that AZ would decide what was best.

[ProgressiveModerate]

She should join the SNL cast after she loses her senate seat.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Serious question:  why did Ducey appoint this idiot?

Martha actually seemed like a decent canidate in 2018, but since then she's gone downhill... fast. I'm guessing the same would've happened with Ducey nominating pretty much any pro-Trump Republican to this seat.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Serious question:  why did Ducey appoint this idiot?

Arizona's GOP bench is surprisingly weak. The remaining members of the congressional delegation are all either far-right lunatics (Lesko, Biggs, Gosar) or are bogged down by ethics issues (Schweikert).

I think his logic was that she could take the L this year, allowing him to take the seat back in 2022. We'll see if his approval recovers by then.

I guess I wasn't following Arizona politics too closely back then.  Was AG Mark Brnovich ever considered for the seat?  He seems like he would have been a reasonable choice and probably a better candidate this year.

No, McSally was still considered a future POTUS frontrunner so she got appointed.

Amazing how quickly rising stars can burn out and start a dumpster fire

[ProgressiveModerate]

Pepperidge Farm wants to send out its semi-monthly reminder that McSally was considered "moderate" and a "rising star" not too long ago.

McSally is perhaps the perfect example of how Trump has set the GOP back for potentially the foreseeable future: a candidate like McSally, who once had demonstrable appeal to the voters the GOP needs to win, is about to be defeated (potentially by a large margin) by those exact voters because she rebranded herself as a Trump acolyte for pure political survival.

TBF though, while it has accelerated some trends in favor of the Democrats faster than normal, it has also been able to appeal to people in rural areas in particular, which is really useful in the senate. Trumpism is what blocked Heidi Heitkamp from winning ND in 2018, for instance; I bet if Kasich or someone like that won she would still have had a very good chance of holding on.

[ProgressiveModerate]

can someone give me a reason to ignore those two recent polls showing McSally winning?

I'm not being a doomer I'm just confused why there's been a relative lack of high quality polling of this race in the past week.

I think that so many high quality polls have re-confirmed this race is a pretty safe bet for Ds that it's no longer the best use of resources to keep polling the state. The internal polls re typically used for noise. Kelly's chances are going down in my model because of this which is really bugging me

[ProgressiveModerate]

I think Kelly has enough of a buffer that this won’t really hurt him. unlike sexting scandal, which didn’t even hurt Cal’d head to head, this really hasn’t gotten much direct media from what I’ve seen; if anything I’ve seen more media doubting it