2019 KY GOV Megathread, Andy Beshear wins

[Pericles]

Surprised how close both parties primaries are.

[Pericles]

Republicans are good at managing expectations, and they can misread their races too-most Republican elected officials probably thought Trump was doomed in 2016. The word of some elected official doesn't count for much compared to Kentucky's recent history and the evidence which suggests that Bevin is favored.

[Pericles]

What are some gubernatorial races with similar dynamics in states as Democratic as Kentucky is Republican? What were the results of those (not just who won but the margin)?

[Pericles]

No, it's the other way around — it was only close for Jones because of the pedophile scandal. If that doesn't happen, Jones wins comfortably.

Man, that is a scorching red hot chili pepper take if I've ever seen one.

It's not a take, exactly. I had a chance to meet with one of the senior advisors on that campaign and all their internal numbers were showing a comfortable win over Moore right before the news broke, which brought in a lot of outside partisan actors and polarized the race along party lines.

Before the allegations broke, Jones was simply running an election against a high-profile and not particularly well-liked political figure. Draw your own comparisons to this race.

Tbh the Jones people have an incentive to spin the results as a mandate for Doug Jones and not just a fluke caused by Moore's pedophilia accusations. The public polling also showed a sharp trend towards Jones as a result of the accusations and Moore never got back to the same lead he had beforehand. Without the accusations I think Moore wins by high single digits, which would still have been an embarrassing performance for a Republican in Alabama and a good performance by Jones.

[Pericles]

Governor Kobach

Kobach would've won easily if KS was as red as KY.

The difference is way smaller than you think:

KY: Trump + 30, Romney + 23
KS: Trump + 20, Romney + 22

Hypothetically, if Beshear outperforms the presidential margin by the same amount that Kelly did, he loses by 3%.

[Pericles]

It's not a take, exactly. I had a chance to meet with one of the senior advisors on that campaign and all their internal numbers were showing a comfortable win over Moore right before the news broke, which brought in a lot of outside partisan actors and polarized the race along party lines.

Before the allegations broke, Jones was simply running an election against a high-profile and not particularly well-liked political figure. Draw your own comparisons to this race.

Tbh the Jones people have an incentive to spin the results as a mandate for Doug Jones and not just a fluke caused by Moore's pedophilia accusations. The public polling also showed a sharp trend towards Jones as a result of the accusations and Moore never got back to the same lead he had beforehand. Without the accusations I think Moore wins by high single digits, which would still have been an embarrassing performance for a Republican in Alabama and a good performance by Jones.

This was not a public meeting and I was not working as a journalist at the time. This staffer was also no longer employed by Jones.

It's still something they'd want to believe and would make the Jones campaign look good. I remember seeing this argument in an interview with Vox and it doesn't seem plausible tbh. The evidence points strongly that this take is not accurate and the conventional wisdom actually gets this one right. You could argue about how much the pedophilia factor benefited Jones, but it's almost certain that this factor did help him, and likely that it helped him significantly.

[Pericles]

After a heartthrobbing loss in NC-9, Dems should have a Great election night this Nov.

In Virginia.

[Pericles]

The state of polling in the US is an utter mess rn

Eh polls overall are pretty good and they mostly got the midterms right, 2016 is framed as a big miss but was a pretty normal miss and indeed nationally the polls were more accurate than in 2012.

[Pericles]

Just been called for Beshear. WOW.

[Pericles]

I haven't read this thread yet, but since I'm sure at least one person asked where I was, I was at work. Some of us who don't live in Owsley County have to work for a living.

Anyway, I'm of course glad to be wrong and will happily eat crow/eggs. But at least I share embarrassment with all the people who thought Beshear would win in a landslide and actually believed that Targoz poll, lol.

Literally isn't though. Just off the top of my head KYWildman, Tender Branson, and Bandit thought this.

Nobody believed Beshear would win by 19 points, and while Tender overestimated the margin overall they just predicted a Beshear win. They did not predict a 19 point Beshear win as you misleadingly imply, so yes you are strawmanning here. I hope this is a lesson to people to show more humility and not make such arrogant predictions in the future (I highly doubt it will be though).

[Pericles]

In the defence of those of us who called this Safe R (and sure, we don't have much of one but hear me out), we were (I certainly was at least) approaching this race very logically - polarisation and the urban-rural divide, coupled with basically every election result since the midterms pointing towards both of those things increasing, led to a fairly logical conclusion. It just turned out this wasn't a very logical race and thus produced an illogical outcome.

It does however lead to a new logical conclusion - Democrats can win in red states if they're a moderate with deep ties to the state and they're up against really bad Republican candidates. It was how Manchin won and it was how Beshear won. At least that's how it looks now.

Anyway, just my thoughts on it. I'm going back to looking an election that actually has consequences for me.

Maybe it depends to an extent on the red state that is being discussed, and KY while having a big Trump margin had dynamics that made a Beshear win more plausible than red states with similar partisanship at the presidential level.