2019 KY GOV Megathread, Andy Beshear wins

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

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

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

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.

The pedophilia factor definitely benefited Jones, though was likely not enough on its own. To get Jones to win, you have to add in Moores racism, his religious extremism, the Republicans trying to pass a deeply unpopular tax bill through Congress in the background, any of these factors being removed causes Moore to win.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

This is not 2007 or 2011 anymore.

Yes it is.

No, it is not. The younger Beshear, if he wins (which he won't), would win by a much smaller margin than his father ever did. The good ol'boys in Elliott, or Knott, or Rowan, or Breathitt County "ain't voting for no Muslim-embracing, Communist-loving, open borders Demoncrats no more." Polarization has greatly damaged the Democratic electoral prospects in Appalachia, to a point from which they may not recover for the foreseeable future. Every other poll I've seen of this race shows a dead heat, and Bevin is starting to pull ahead.

Elliott and Rowan County have a good chance of voting for Beshear. Infact, they both will unless its a Bevin blowout statewide, which admittedly cannot be ruled out.